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Authors: Sarah Strohmeyer

Sweet Love (30 page)

BOOK: Sweet Love
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“You’ve got to go to that party,” she says as I dab her lips. “Life goes on, you know.”
“Well . . . I was thinking of taking Liza. She’s got the hots for D’Ours.”
“No, she won’t get together with him. Liza’s meant to be with Paul.” Mom takes another spoon of the applesauce. I’m really doing well. “Aunt Charlotte says so.”
“Aunt Charlotte?” I pause, empty spoon in midair.
“We talked about it when she came to visit yesterday. You know, what with Liza’s wildness and Paul’s reserve, they could be quite a match. Hey, that applesauce isn’t half bad.”
Perhaps I misunderstood. “Did you say Aunt Charlotte came to visit yesterday?”
“As bossy as ever. She wants me to go to Green Forest, where Nana went. Charlotte says the care there is top-notch. There are lectures and movies and cake every night. Can you call them for me?”
Okay. Stroke brain. Mom’s other nurse‚ Nurse Kennedy, warned me about this and how important it is to reel Mom back to reality. “Look, Mom. Aunt Charlotte has been dead for seven years.”
Mom wipes applesauce from her chin with her good hand‚ her droopy blind eye seemingly fixated on the floor. “No‚ she’s not. She spends a lot of time at Green Forest reading in the library. Check it out.”
“She’s dead. She died in her sleep on May seventh, after ten years of battling breast cancer. I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”
“That’s funny.” Mom scratches her head as if trying to remember where she’d placed her glasses. “Well, she was sitting right where you were sitting last night. Even pooh-poohed the broken blind behind me. Said it was a disgrace. They’d never allow that at Green Forest. I can’t even see over there. Is there a broken blind?”
I look up and, sure enough, there’s a broken blind.
“Say, when you go to that dessert party, bring me back a goody, would ya?” she asks, as if nothing is out the ordinary, as if she hadn’t been holding a discussion with her long-dead sister. “I’m jonesing for something really sweet.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever
—MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, ACT II, SCENE 3
For the dessert party, I cop out and bring one of my mother’s quick refrigerator specialties: limeade pie made with cream cheese, limeade, lime zest, and a purchased graham cracker crust. About ten minutes to make and an hour in the fridge. So easy and quick, it’s one step up from bringing Carvel.
Fortunately, I’m not to be outdone by Liza.
“It’s a test,” she says, drawing out a pan of cinnamon baked apples stuffed with chopped pecans, brown sugar, butter, cinnamon, and raisins. “It’s from
The Hot Cook’s Guide to Haute Cuisine, Volume IV
. Our entire future as a couple depends on his reaction to my pommes de Librecz.”
“Pommes deLibrecz. You just made that up, didn’t you?”
She scoops the apples into a serving tray. “He has a peach cobbler D’Ours. It’s only fair.”
Liza is smashing in a dramatic purple and silver silk sheath with a plunging neckline she picked up in Florence to go with a pair of Emilio Pucci crisscross sandals. Me? I’m much more reserved in a white skirt and green top to match my pie.
“We need code words,” Liza says as we search for the “tasting room” where the party’s being held. “If I plan on leaving with Chef Rene, I’ll talk about the wallpaper I’m buying for the guestroom. If he’s a total washout, I’ll claim food poisoning and run to the bathroom.”
“That won’t be too obvious.” The party’s right ahead. Lots of laughter and music. “And what if Michael shows?”
“Without Carol, then you’re leaving with him, no question. With Carol, then we’ll have to round him up and force-feed him that pie of yours in retribution.”
In fact, neither Michael nor Carol are here, though everyone else is, even the nuns who are surveying the dessert table piled high with the new old familiars.
There are two
Torta Capreses
and one almond biscotti tiramisu. Someone’s brought a cherry crisp and a cold English summer pudding. Next to them, my limeade pie stands out like a hooker at a Park Avenue cotillion. All tarted up and frothy.
Snatching a glass of champagne off a silver tray, Liza sizes up D’Ours, who’s talking to the woman known as Lilly Pulitzer. “What’s her deal?”
“I don’t know. I think she’s a friend of Carol’s. Not much of a threat. Want me to introduce you?”
Liza says, “I didn’t come here for the tiramisu, that’s for sure.”
“Ah, Julie,” D’Ours purrs, kissing my hand as we approach. “Just the woman I wished to speak with.”
Liza shoots me a curious look.
“Actually, Rene,” I say. “I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. This is Liza Librecz. She writes the—”
Owww!
Why is she stepping on my toe?
“I taught a class here a few weeks ago,” Liza says. “Maybe you remember? ”
“I don’t think so.” He wrinkles his brow, confused.
“Let me refresh your memory.” And linking her arm in his, she boldly drags him away.
“I was talking to him,” Lilly Pulitzer says, frowning. “And she just . . .”
“Yeah. Liza’s like that. I’m Julie Mueller, by the way.” Extending my hand, I make a mental note to not slip and call her Lilly. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Deb Mundy.” She purses her lips. “You’re Michael’s friend, aren’t you? From long ago?”
So that’s the cover, is it? “Something like that.”
“He was talking about you at the last class. I mean, the second-to-last class. I wasn’t here at the last one.”
Chris passes by and proudly adds a spiced pear and Roquefort flan to the table. “The Crock-Pot pears,” she declares. “Now he’ll see what I was talking about.”
When she goes, Deb hops right back onto the subject of Michael. “Are you two close?”
I’m not quite sure what to say since “close” has so many connotations. “Err . . .”
“The only reason I ask,” she continues, fingering the pearls at her throat, “is that I’ve been playing matchmaker with him.”
“Oh?”
“I’m a client of his, you see, and Carol’s a friend of mine. We have children in the same class at Newton. Anyway, since her divorce she’s gone through an awful ordeal.” Lowering her voice and bending close, Deb whispers, “Eating disorder, you know. Hospitalized twice.”
“I had no idea.” I take a peek at Liza and D’Ours, who are facing each other, arms folded. “Anorexia?”
“Bulimia. She has a very unhealthy relationship with food, which is why this class is so good for her. Moderation and all that.”
Moderation? What moderation? I could snarf down that tiramisu in one gulp.
“So, when Michael told me he’d won these classes, I had a brilliant idea. Carol and I could go, too, and that way I could get her together with Michael. He’s such a super guy. I can’t understand why he’s still single.”
Got a few hours? ’Cause I got a few theories.
“Turns out, my instincts were spot-on. They hit it off right away. They are the perfect pair. I’m so pleased for her.”
“Me too.” Never mind that the glass of champagne in my hand is about to be crushed.
Liza . . . get me out of here.
“In fact,” Deb continues, “they’re out tonight and I wouldn’t be surprised if he pops the question. Supposedly, he went down to the Cape last week to walk the beach and think about it, alone. Isn’t that so romantic? Like something out of
Pride and Prejudice
. So Mr. Darcy.”
The glass falls out of my hand and bounces on the carpet. “I’m so sorry,” I say, bending down to mop it up before a waiter swoops in with a cloth. “You just caught me by surprise.”
“Did I?” Deb holds out her arm and helps me up. “Well, then you caught
me
by surprise because Carol said Michael told you all about them. How did she put it? She said you two were as close as brother and sister, having grown up together. Is that true? Did you grow up together?”
“Everything okay over here?” It’s Liza, eyes flashing, hair out to there, as if she just stuck her finger in a light socket. Behind her, D’Ours is glowering.
“I was just telling her about my matchmaking scheme,” Deb chortles. “Did you know, Chef, that I brought two lovebirds together in your class?”
But D’Ours pays no attention. He’s too busy heaving and panting at Liza, who mouths, “Michael and Carol?”
When I nod, she shakes her head. “I am definitely feeling sick to my stomach now,” she says. “Obviously it’s botulism.”
“Oh, my,” exclaims Deb. “Was it something you ate?”
“More like something she heard,” barks D’Ours, the sinews in his neck standing out like twisted rods. “The
truth
.”
Spinning around, Liza hisses, “How dare you? Listen, some of us don’t have all day to reduce browned bones and broth into a Sauce Robert, did you ever think of that? Some of us have a life!”
D’Ours goes
Pfft
.
“Thanks to me, families can sit down to a healthy, balanced meal that’s ready in under an hour.”
“Under an hour.” He sniffs. “As if that’s cooking. Dog food, that’s what takes under an hour. Open a can—voilà!”
“That’s outrageous! Don’t you think what he just said is outrageous, Julie?” Liza screeches.
I don’t care. I just want to get out of here and away from any connection to Michael and Carol. It can’t be true. He would have said something if he were going to propose to her. How could he not? Unless he didn’t want to upset me, considering Mom’s condition. Still, it doesn’t make sense.
“I’ll meet you outside,” Liza says, brushing past me. “I’m feeling sicker every minute.” Deb, now concerned that she might have eaten something bad, too, follows on her heels.
“Good. I’m glad they’re gone,” D’Ours says to me. “It was you I wanted to speak with, alone, anyway.”
I keep an eye on Liza, who’s been distracted by another glass of champagne. Some case of food poisoning. “I really should go. She’s my friend, you know.”
“Ah, don’t bother about her. Her pride is hurt, but I will give her a call and patch things up.”
“You will?”
“Sure. Why not?” He wiggles his head. “She may be the best example of why American cuisine is an oxymoron, but she is pretty and she has feist.”
Feist. A new word.
“Though, perhaps you’re right. Maybe this is a bad time and you’re not ready to hear my idea about coming to work with me on the cooking show.”
“You want me to work
with
you?” Momentarily, Liza and Michael fall from my thoughts. A new job away from TV news. Though that would probably mean publicity, right? Public relations, advance work. Was I ready to sell out my journalism career and do,
gulp,
PR?
“If you’re interested, I will tell you. But you should know, this is very, um, shaky,” he’s saying. “My producers have given me no assurances that this show will go beyond the pilot stage or that, if it does, we will be picked up for more seasons. I am learning very fast that this business is touch and go. Up one day, down the next.”
“Yes?” This might be the break I need to wean myself from TV journalism. “If it’s public relations you’re interested in, I think I could do it. I have lots of contacts across several markets and . . .”
“Public relations?” He arches his French eyebrow. “No. I want you to cook on the show . . . with me.”
Is he joking? “I can’t cook. I couldn’t even roll out a piecrust or make chocolate sauce. I was the worst student you had.”
“
Exactement!
That is why you are so ideal. You have experience in front of the camera and you are horrible.” He said this by dropping the “h,” as in ’
orrible.
“Horrible at cooking. You are virtually without skill.”
Now wait a minute‚ buddy, I want to say. That limeade pie didn’t just make itself.
“You see,” he goes on, leaning closer. “All these shows on The Food Channel are centered on chefs demonstrating how easy it is to make a steak au poivre. Pepper, some shallots in butter and cream, easy, no? And while, yes, I agree it is easy for them‚ it is not so easy for their viewers, no?”
“No,” I agree, thinking,
What the hell is a steak au poivre?
“So if I had you on the show fumbling and bumbling, turning up heat as you did with the chocolate sauce and making a total disaster, it would add some . . .”
“Comedy,” I finish for him.
“And also education.” He holds up a finger. “That is very important. People will recognize you. They will . . . how do you say . . .”
“Relate.”
“And they will see that they, too, being bumblers and fumblers in the kitchen, can make steak au poivre, not just the expert like me. Plus, if it’s your family obligations, you need not worry. I will require you go to California only two weeks at the most out of the month and whatever you’re earning at your television station, I will more than double it.”
This is stunning, a reversal of fortune. An unexpected swirl of events to play Jerry Lewis to his Dean Martin. A fumbling and bumbling assistant. It’s so . . .
French.
“But mostly,” I say, “you want me for the comedy.”
He shrugs. “
Oui.
So you will let me know?”
“By next week. First, I have to tie up a few loose ends.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Sweets to the sweet: farewell!
—HAMLET, ACT V, SCENE 1
Several days before Mom’s supposed to be released, Paul and I find a nursing home. Riverhead Elder Center. It’s not ideal—it never is, when you have to put your mother’s name down among many as just another anonymous person to be cared for—but it is better than the alternative: her going back to live with Dad.
Even I couldn’t help her this soon after she’s released from the hospital. There’s too much “physical” work involved since Mom is still partially paralyzed and, well, not the lightest feather in the pillow.
“So much heavy lifting,” Doria the social worker says, though we both know what she really means is that I would have to learn how to take care of my own mother’s most private needs as if she were an infant. A 150-pound infant. “You’ve got to be trained yourself.”
BOOK: Sweet Love
13.87Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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