Delicious! (42 page)

“Really?” He let out his breath.

“Really.” I was thinking about Mitch now—I couldn’t help it—and what he’d said about his parents. When Dad reached to put his arms around me, tentatively, as if he was afraid I’d push him away, I pulled him close. “You’re making me think that we might actually find her.” My voice was muffled in his jacket.

I could feel his muscles losing their tension. “That’s why I came.” Behind us, a man coughed impatiently; the line had moved forward. It was our turn.

Dad handed over his credit card. “I’m paying.” When I protested, he said, “You’re unemployed now, remember?” We took our keys and walked to the elevator. “You hungry?” Dad punched the button for the eighth floor. “There are supposed to be some good restaurants nearby.”

“It’s been a long day. I was planning to hole up with room service and a juicy television drama. Want to join me?”

Dad looked at me, shoulders slumped with relief. “I was on a five forty-five flight to Chicago this morning, which means I’ve been up since three. Room service sounds like heaven.”

We ate in Dad’s room, each on our own full bed, passing a bottle of Merlot back and forth as we watched a rerun of
The Sopranos
. “Just like old times,” Dad said, leaning back against the pillows. For a brief moment a shadow fell across the room, because of course it wasn’t.

Dad fell asleep halfway through the show. I stayed awake until the end, then slid both our trays outside the door, removed his shoes, turned off the light, and left him sleeping in his clothes.

—

IN THE MORNING
, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, Dad looked ten years younger. “I was so tired last night, I never even asked whether you’d turned up anything useful.” Dad poured milk into his cup of coffee.

“I might have.” I dipped a slice of toast into my poached egg and took him through my day, ending with Mrs. Cloverly’s box. “It’s probably not the right Lulu—Babe says the name’s very common around here—but still …”

“We begin with the box!” Dad sounded excited, and it hit me that he wasn’t doing this only to be supportive; he was relishing the chase. Aunt Melba must have known that when she encouraged him to come.

“And if that turns out to be a dead end, we’ll go back to Akron. But the box sounds very promising. What time does the library open?”

THE MAIN BRANCH
of the Cleveland Public Library, a distinguished temple to literacy, opened at ten. As we walked up the steps, past the imposing marble columns, I felt hopeful; the solid building was reassuring. The woman at the information desk was knitting a long green scarf, but she put her needles down and asked how she could help.

“I can certainly tell you about the Cleveland Cookshop. Any Clevelander could—it was a local institution. I learned to cook there; they used to give these classes for kids that were great fun. We all took them.”

“You mean like cake decorating?” I said. Dad shot me a worried look. I patted his arm.

“No!” The librarian seemed almost offended. “None of that cutesy stuff. Mrs. Taber—she ran the Cookshop—didn’t believe in that. She taught us how to make real food. After my first class, I went home and cooked dinner for my parents; I think I was ten or eleven, and I was very proud of myself. But she was mostly known for her foraging. She’d take us to parks or for walks along the lake, and we’d come back with
enough food for dinner. It wasn’t the usual mushrooms and watercress; it was weird stuff.”

“Weird stuff?” Dad asked. “Like what?”

“Knotweed. Lamb’s lettuce. Milkweed.”

“Milkweed?” I hadn’t meant to exclaim so loudly.

The librarian shot me a sympathetic glance. “I know it sounds odd, but it’s really quite delicious. To this day I go out and collect the floss in the autumn. It’s the oddest thing; if you didn’t know different, you’d swear it was cheese.”

I squeezed Dad’s arm, and he patted it in a don’t-get-too-excited gesture. “Why did the shop close?”

The librarian looked down at the green scarf she was knitting. “I don’t remember,” she said slowly. “But I think it was something dramatic. Did the owner pass?”

“No!” Dad and I said it in unison, and the librarian’s head jerked up. “Were you related to Mrs. Taber?”

“No.” Again we said the word together. Dad added, “But we were hoping to meet her.”

She took a pair of glasses out of a case. “I could be wrong.” She put them on. “I remember that something happened, but I can’t recall exactly what. Let me see what I can find.” She stood up. “I’ll just be a minute.”

She returned empty-handed. “I was wrong.” She sounded more cheerful. “There was a fire some years ago. The entire shop went up in flames, but as far as I can tell, no one was hurt. And I did find something that may be of interest to you: before the fire, Mrs. Taber made a donation to the library. Documents of some sort—they have yet to be cataloged, but we could call them in if you like. They’re stored in our remote facility, so it will take a day or two. I’ve brought a request form, should you want to do that. But in the meantime, why not look up the fire in
The Plain Dealer
? It was eleven or twelve years ago, and I’m sure the paper ran a story. As I said, the shop was a Cleveland institution.”

“In that case,” I was thinking out loud, “there’d be an obituary if Mrs. Taber has passed away. Wouldn’t there?”

“Without a doubt. The computers are over there. Good luck.” She looked beyond us to the next person in line. “Can I help you?”

THERE WAS NO OBITUARY
for Lulu Taber.

“But that doesn’t mean she’s alive.” Dad was still typing, still scanning the screen. “She might have moved away. Wait”—his fingers stopped—“I think I’ve found something. Look at this. It’s an obituary for a Peter Taber. Fourteen years ago. Maybe he’s related.”

Dad clicked a few times, and an elegant older man, quite thin, with white hair and a kind face, was staring out at us. I liked him immediately. “ ‘Doctor Peter Taber,’ ” read Dad, “ ‘is survived by Lulu Swan Taber’—”

“Lulu Swan Taber!” I shouted. Heads all over the library swiveled toward us, frowning.

“—‘his wife of forty-six years,’ ” Dad continued, “ ‘three children, James Swan Taber of Cleveland, Joanna Taber of Manhattan, and Francesca Taber Cappuzzelli of Los Angeles, and eight grandchildren. The family asks that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Food Bank.’ ”

“It’s Lulu.” I felt dazed. “She didn’t marry Tommy. And she had three children!”

“Dr. Taber sounds like quite a guy.” Dad was still reading. “He was a general practitioner, a published poet, and an authority on birds.”

“We found her.” I could not quite believe it. “We actually found her. She named her son for her father. And one of her daughters married a Cappuzzelli! I wonder which son? Oh, please, let her still be alive.”

“There’s no obit.” Dad superstitiously touched the top of the wooden desk, banishing bad luck. “Let’s see if the phone book can tell us anything.”

LULU TABER WASN
’
T LISTED
. “Well, she wouldn’t be.” Dad was still tapping the computer. “Widows rarely take the trouble to change the
name on their utility bills. She probably left the phone in his name. And …” He clicked a few more times. “Here he is! Dr. Peter Taber. Damn!”

I looked over his shoulder. “What?”

“Address and phone number both unlisted.” Dad tapped some more, then let out a sigh of satisfaction. “There we go: the son, James S. Taber—address, phone number, the whole nine yards.”

I sat down heavily in a chair. I felt slightly dizzy. It had taken Sammy and me months to locate Lulu’s letters, and after our long, crazy chase, this seemed so fast. Dad and I had been in the library less than an hour. “We found her,” I kept saying, over and over like a mantra. “We actually found her.”

“Don’t you think you’re jumping the gun?” Dad was watching me, worry in his eyes. “We haven’t really found her. We don’t even know that she’s alive.”

“But now we know how to find out. She’s not a ghost anymore.” I shivered as I said this; I’d unconsciously used Mitch’s word. “We know her name; we know what she did with her life; we know where to find her children. It’s all happened so fast!”

“You sound disappointed.” Dad took his fingers off the keyboard and sat back in the chair.

I didn’t know what I felt. Excited and let down, both at the same time.

“I wonder how long it would have taken if you hadn’t seen that box of Mrs. Cloverly’s?” He was thinking out loud, but Dad had made his point. If I hadn’t seen that old box at Babe’s, we might have spent weeks looking for Lulu; it had been a fortunate shortcut. “What now, Sherlock Holmes?”

“Call James, I guess.”

The library was no place to have a conversation, so we went outside and stood on the steps. It was a bright morning, and the light bouncing off the marble columns was dazzling. Somewhere, an answering machine clicked on. “The Tabers aren’t home now, but you can leave a
message for Clara, Jim, Pete, or Sophie, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

I didn’t leave a message. “It would be good to know if Lulu’s alive before we start throwing questions at her son. Let’s go over to that market and see if we can find someone who knew her.”

We crossed the street and walked through the Arcade, an ornate glass-covered Victorian building that had been transformed into an indoor mall. But half the shops were out of business, and our footsteps echoed mournfully through the beautiful empty space. Dad pointed to one of the boarded-up shops. “I imagine the market will be a lot like this. We’ll be lucky if we even find anyone to ask about Lulu.”

“I won’t get my hopes up.” I was remembering the shabby old public markets of New York, only recently making a comeback after years of neglect. We left the Arcade, walking north toward the market. “It’ll be a miracle if anybody’s there.” As we walked down sparsely populated blocks, I was thinking about James Taber, wondering what I should say when we called. Would he even know about his mother’s correspondence with James Beard? Deep in thought, I barely noticed that the streets were beginning to fill with people carrying bags of produce, and it was a shock to turn a corner and see the clock tower over the West Side Market and the streams of people pouring out its doors. From a block away you could feel the vibrant energy of the place, and by the time we walked into the huge, brightly lighted building, we were thrumming with anticipation.

Even so, the West Side Market, with its tiled and vaulted ceiling, came as a surprise. It was a beautiful old building, so filled with people munching, exchanging money, and exclaiming as they went from one well-stocked stand to another that we had to shout at each other to be heard. There seemed to be hundreds of purveyors, selling every imaginable edible from every corner of the world.

Dad squared his shoulders and began to walk purposefully through the market, a man on a mission, eyes taking in the various vendors. He looked at butchers, cheesemongers, fish men. Finally he strode toward
a stall displaying a tangle of pink and brown sausages with strange, unpronounceable names. “Csabai kolbász.” He struggled with the syllables. “Kielbas.” He pointed to a weathered white-haired man in the adjoining stall. “Over there,” he said. “We’ll ask if he knows Lulu. He looks like someone who might.” Above the man’s head, a sign proclaimed, O
UR FAMILY HAS BEEN SELLING SMOKED MEATS HERE SINCE
1912.

We approached the stall, and the old gentleman’s faded blue eyes warily inspected us as he considered Dad’s question. Then he picked up a pale-pink loaf, carved off a couple of thin slices, and handed them across the counter with gnarled fingers. “It’s our secret family recipe. Lulu likes this; she never comes to the market without picking up some leberkäse.”

Dad squeezed my shoulder so hard it hurt; the man had used the present tense! I took a bite, and the flavor filled my mouth—pungent, slightly spicy, with the tang of onions and just a hint of … “What was it? Marjoram! The taste was strong, primal, comforting.

“Never misses a week.” The man handed me another slice. “She was here yesterday. She’s loyal, is Lulu. It was a shame about her shop, but she had a good run. She doesn’t complain.” He looked across the counter, his pale eyes still penetrating.

It was the right moment; I could feel that. “Do you,” I asked carefully, “know how we can find Lulu?”

Dad touched my arm softly, a suggestion of restraint.

But the old man was unfazed. “I must have her number here somewhere.” He began riffling through little strips of paper on the counter behind the meat case. “Let me look. She doesn’t live far, still in that place she and the doc bought years ago when they first came to Cleveland. Her kids keep trying to get her to move someplace more convenient—all those stairs!—but Lulu won’t budge. What I say is, good for her.”

He rummaged about, muttering to himself and shaking his head. “It’s no use.” He sounded apologetic. “Can’t seem to find it. Never call, myself; just stop in now and then on my way home.”

“Then perhaps you could give us her address?” I hated the way my voice trembled.

“No trouble.” Taking a flat stub of pencil from behind his ear, he turned one of the bits of paper over and wrote an address on the back. “Just over there on Bridge Avenue.” He pointed out the door. “You tell her hello from Wally.”

My hands were shaking so hard I couldn’t close my fingers around the strip of paper he held out to me. Wally looked at me strangely. Then Dad’s hand reached across my shoulder. “Good thing I’m here,” he said drily.

L
ULU LIVED IN A LARGE COLONIAL THAT SPRAWLED COMFORTABLY
across a corner lot, its faded bricks soaking up the sun. The house was surrounded by ancient trees, their branches spread across the roof; in summer it would be sheltered by a canopy of leaves. A crooked wrought-iron fence meandered casually around the house, protecting a large garden. The windows looking down on it were framed by black shutters, flung open so that we could see a big orange cat curled in a patch of sunlight on the second floor.

“I like the angle of that roof.” Dad looked up at the single window just below the eaves. “I bet the kids fought over who got that room.”