Recipe for Disaster (16 page)

“Yeah, maybe,” I say, just to get her to shut the hell up. Except now her whole face lights up and I realize that I have just opened Pandora’s freaking box. “But not today. I’ll, um, let you know if we’re doing something worth seeing.” Not.

“You’re so awesome, Anneke.”

“Thanks. But I really should . . .”

“Oh god, yeah, I’m totally leaving, I promise, just one more thing, do you like really get completely immersed in the work all day? Where disruptions like really mess with your flow and stuff?”

“Pretty much.” Maybe this will keep her from more drop-ins.

“I figured. So I’m wondering, if you ever wanted me to come over and walk Schatzi, or take her to the dog park or something, like be her doggie day care person, I would totally love to do that. If it would be helpful, you know, so you didn’t have to worry about her or stop work when she wants to go out or needs her exercise or whatever.”

“That’s very nice of you.” Which it is, even if it is the last thing I would ever agree to. Schatzi can go all day without a potty break, and the fact that she likes Emily so much means that by saying no I both prevent ADHD Emily from being in my airspace AND deprive the undeserving dog of loving companionship, which I think is a win-win.

“COOL!” she says as if I have said yes, and now I have to rack my brain to see if she has tricked me into something. “Okay, well, I’ll maybe come by tomorrow afternoon to play with her, around two or so, that will be awesome, and if you don’t want to be bothered, you can just leave the door unlocked or something and I can just pop in and grab her quiet as a mouse. Thanks again, Anneke, have a good workday, I’ll see you later!” And she pops out of her chair, and picks up the dog. “I’m going to be your dog walker, pretty girl, what do you think about that?”

“NO.”

She stops twirling with the dog, who glares at me with the fury of a thousand suns.

“Emily. The dog is fine. It was a nice offer, but I have to decline. And I have to get to work.”

Her face falls like I just took her ice cream cone away from her.

“Oh. Well, if you change your mind . . .”

“Yeah. I’ll let you know.”

I follow her downstairs, and she gets back into her festive winter garb.

“Thanks again, Anneke, I’ll talk to you soon. And really, the house”—she gestures around—“it’s just, EVERYTHING.” The look on her face is killing me, and I can feel myself soften the tiniest bit.

“Thanks, Emily, it means a lot to me that you appreciate it.” I know I should probably let her walk the hateful dog. Or that I should tell her that later this week we are going to do a cool conversion of an antique sideboard into a bathroom vanity for the second floor. But I can’t make the words come. I can’t give her what she wants or needs from me.

“Cool. Good luck with the bathrooms.” And she leaves.

My main feeling is one of relief to have her gone, but there is the smallest little part of me that feels shitty about how I treated her. Which pisses me off. Why should I feel bad for this unwanted interloper who keeps foisting herself on me? Why on earth should I care what she feels or thinks, when two weeks ago I didn’t even know she fucking existed?

Which does make me think. She did know about me. My mother might not have mentioned her little mini-me of a stepdaughter on the rare occasions we would have spoken during her time as Mrs. Walsh, but clearly she said something about me to Emily. Something that wasn’t so awful since it made Emily wonder why I never visited, made her want to seek me out. And despite myself, I’m very curious about what exactly my mother might have said about me, how she described me, what characteristics she attributed to me. Was there even the smallest bit of pride on her part?

Doesn’t matter. Can’t matter. I do not have time to get embroiled in this kind of familial bullshit. The only good thing about not having family is that you don’t have to put up with family crap. I look at Caroline and her siblings; who needs that kind of hassle? I’ve safely removed my mother from my life. And I realize that all she knows about me right now is my email address. I had to get a new cell phone when I left MacMurphy; the old one and its number belonged to them. I didn’t exactly send out an I’ve Moved card when I left Grant’s and came here. Of course, Emily found me, since the landline here is in my name, but that would require someone caring to look me up, which Anneliese never has. I certainly haven’t missed her.

I can’t help but wonder what sort of fictional daughter she created in my name that would make Emily so hell-bent on weaseling into my life. I already have a dozen reasons to be annoyed at that girl; the very idea that she has me even pondering my mother in the most superficial way is just one more.

I head into the front room and catch Schatzi perched on the windowsill, staring out the window like a war bride waiting for her soldier to come home. When she turns to look at me her gaze is downright soulful, and from her mouth dangles a single sunflower-adorned mitten.

F
rom Gemma’s Journal:

Cooking is both an art, and a craft. Anyone with time and inclination can become a good cook. To be a great cook, one must have deeper passions.

“Anneke? I’ve brought leftovers from my potluck dinner last night, can I offer you lunch?”

The smells wafting from the containers Jag has brought make this a very easy decision.

“Yes, please! What are we having?”

“Tandoori chicken, rice and lentil pilaf, samosas.”

“Yum. Lucky me.” The past two weeks have been a sad backslide in my tentative new relationship with cooking. It started with my attempt to make a baked sweet potato. For whatever reason, I just wanted a simple baked sweet potato. With butter and a little cinnamon. And Gemma keeps saying that you can smell when things are done, which Grant always said too, so I didn’t set the timer. Some people can smell when things are done. You know what I can smell? The smell of a baked sweet potato that has exploded inside a very high-end oven, and burnt into unsalvageable superglue all over the interior. You know what that smells like? It smells like two and a half hours on your knees with your torso in an oven, huffing oven-cleaner fumes till you hallucinate the dancing-hippo scene from
Fantasia
as reimagined by Lady Gaga. This triumph was followed by two days of ramen with cut-up hot dogs in it, which was a level of sodium that turned my fingers and toes into plump little sausages. Then when I got my courage back up to try to cook something again, the unfortunate discovery that the pork chops in the clearance bin at the little convenience market should probably not hang around for three days before you cook them. Remember the exploding Yorkie? I think I may have shat one out. Want to know why I invest in Toto toilets and no other brand? Three words: Double. Cyclone. Flushing. Essentially, they sort of automatically clean the bowl while they flush. The stupid old toilet that was the vessel of my unfortunate post–pork chop buttpocalypse? Needed cleaning after every event. I’m so excited to have the new Toto installed downstairs. Not that I have plans to poison myself again, but one never knows.

You would think two days of essentially living in the bathroom with cramps doubling me over, my poor little pink starfish ravaged by liquid colon acid and subpar toilet paper, would have taught me a lesson, but nope. I went back to the kitchen as soon as I was feeling better to whip up such classics as “Not Enough Ketchup in the World Meatloaf” and “Brick Chicken: Not Cooked Under a Brick, Cooked to the Consistency of a Brick.” I tried to make Caroline’s famous mashed potatoes, she sent me the recipe generously, but I didn’t have a ricer, or even know what one is for that matter, so I just attacked them with the hand mixer and made something so gummy and gluey I was tempted to save it for spackling. Apparently my early successes were not an indication of being any sort of natural cook.

The past three days I’ve just made microwaved frozen meals for dinner, followed by enormous bowls of popcorn. Whatever else I suck at in the kitchen, which is turning out to be pretty much everything, I make spectacular popcorn. Especially on this stove. I do it over the simmer burner, which makes it all pop up huge and fluffy and never burns. The same cannot be said of my one attempt at salmon. Let’s just say that charred salmon jerky does not a lovely supper make.

I let Jag serve me a plate, and tuck into the weirdly vivid magenta-tinged chicken, still tender and moist despite being reheated. The rice pilaf is studded with whole spices and sweet strings of fried onions and nuts and nuggets of dried apricot, and the thin crisp pastry of the samosa hides a spicy mix of potatoes and peas. It is the best thing I’ve eaten in forever, and I wolf it down. Jag laughs at me, and my lack of manners.

“Did you cook this?” I say around a huge mouthful of rice, at least the rice that didn’t fall off my fork into my lap.

“I made the chicken, my friends made the rice and the samosas.”

“Please thank them for me.”

“I shall. I shall.”

We eat our plates in contented silence. It’s been a good productive couple of days; we finished the first-floor bathroom, and it is a full realization of the design I had in my head. The Carrara marble wainscoting I’d discovered under the drywall cleaned up like a dream, brilliant white shot through with subtle gray veins. The basket-weave-pattern marble tile on the floor is a classic pattern, and Jag was a very quick study in fixture installation. In addition to the Toto toilet I picked out, one with simple traditional lines, I got their matching pedestal sink. I had the original claw-foot tub reglazed, and we put it in with a vintage nickel-plated floor-mounted faucet and handheld showerhead I found at a salvage yard.

The small square shower I wanted to install in the corner had been troubling me. I wanted the bathroom to have a separate shower, I personally hate taking showers in a bathtub, and we had the room to include it, but all of the surrounds I saw just felt clunky and didn’t match the clean, open feel of the elegant space. Then Jag suggested we use a pair of old greenhouse doors I had in the garage, tall with weathered iron strips holding nine-inch squares of wavy old glass. The two were big enough to create a comfortable square; we firm mounted one door and left the other to swing open and serve as the shower access. When we got it in, it was clear that it was the perfect choice, mostly glass, the shower floats in the corner, and the dark squares look terrific against the pattern on the floor. More than ever I’m grateful for Jag and his ideas, his assistance, and especially for his very pleasant company in these very long days of hard work.

“There is something we need to discuss,” he says, looking down at his plate.

Uh-oh. I feel the proverbial rug begin to shift under my feet. “Sure, Jag, what is it?”

“Um, this is very bad timing, I know, but it’s about my visa. The six-month visa was denied.”

Suddenly this delicious meal turns to lead in my stomach.

“I’m so sorry. What did they say?”

“No real info, something about it being in conflict with my existing visa. The good news is that means that school hasn’t sent any info to anyone that I’m no longer enrolled, so my current visa is still okay. But the bad news is that it makes me ineligible for the tourist visa, and now that I’ve been denied that once, apparently it makes it unlikely that I would get one again unless I go home for a few months and then come back.”

“Crap.”

“Indeed.”

“What about just staying illegally? Good lord, people do it all the time. You’re not a criminal, just stay and if you get caught, you can just say you didn’t know your visa was up or something.”

“I can’t take that risk. If I got caught? It would be horrible for my dad. He has an impeccable reputation, and takes his good name very seriously. As much as I love it here and want Chicago to be my home, I would never stay and risk any sort of public humiliation for him. The tabloids in Britain are horrific and relentless; you’ve seen the lawsuits and scandals. The minute they get a whiff of anything, they’ll attack. And while you and I know what’s real, things over there are xenophobic enough these days; no one needs another guy in a turban on the cover of a paper doing something that can be blown up from illegal to insidious.”

“Never thought about it that way.”

“It’s just too complicated.”

“Can I ask? You keep saying how much you want Chicago to be your home, why is that? I mean, I know why I love it here, but I’m always interested in what it is about the city that gets under people’s skin.”

“I find it magical. The people have been wonderful. I’ve found a surprisingly rich Sikh cultural community that has welcomed me despite the fact that I am somewhat modern in how I practice my faith. I’ve built a wonderful circle of friends that I feel deeply close to. I actually love the extremes of the weather, and I don’t have to tell you that there is no better city in the world for food, or art, or theater. I love the sports teams, even as they break my heart. As someone who has fallen in love with architecture and buildings, it is so beautiful here. And considering how I want to make my living, I love that it can be done here in a way that is both affordable and manageable.”

It touches my heart to hear him express everything that I adore about my hometown. “I hear you. There is no other place in the world like it.”

“I’m trying to figure something out, I still have a little time before the student one runs out, provided Northwestern doesn’t send in the paperwork, so no need to panic yet, but I didn’t want it to be a surprise in case you wanted to try to find someone else.”

“No.”

“Well, I mean . . .”

“No. Stop talking. You aren’t leaving. I’m not doing this without you. I will figure it out, I’ll get you a work visa or something.” I cannot let this injustice happen. I will not let this wonderful man be ripped away from the city he loves, or the work we still have to do together.

The smile is both sweet and sheepish, perfect white teeth shining in his dark beard. “That is much appreciated. I’m very hopeful we will figure something out together.”

“Don’t you worry, I’ll fix it.”

I
can’t fix it.”

“What do you mean?” Marie says. We’re having a quick lunch at Manny’s. I needed a massive matzo-ball fix, and Marie has a weird affinity for their chocolate pudding.

“I mean I can’t fix it. I don’t actually have a business, not an incorporated established business; I can’t get him a work visa. And I can’t afford the legal stuff involved in becoming an incorporated established business, and even if I could, I don’t have time to get it all squared away before his current visa runs out.”

It’s been a long week of exploring options and talking to friends of friends, and trying to figure out how to make good on my promise to Jag.

“He’ll understand,” Marie says soothingly.

“Of course he will. That isn’t the point. I can’t lose him.”

“You’ll find another helper.”

“You don’t get it. He isn’t a helper. He can do the electrical stuff I’m not fully comfortable with, the plumbing.”

“You do plumbing.”

“No, I do installation of plumbing
fixtures
. I take the existing pipes that come out of the wall or floor and attach things to them, toilets and tubs and sinks and faucets. But getting the pipes from the water supply line to the floor or wall? Not. Qualified. Not to mention the structural engineering stuff and the heavy lifting, and he has amazing ideas about design to boot. Seriously, Marie, I can’t lose him.”

“Can I say something without you getting mad?”

“Of course.”

“Do you think you want to fight so hard for Jag because you feel badly that you didn’t fight harder for Grant?”

“What does that mean?”

“I dunno. I mean you loved Grant, and you were together and great for a long time, and yes, he cheated, but he wanted to work on it, he wanted to go to therapy, to try, and you didn’t try at all, so I wonder if any part of this is about that?”

“Marie, he cheated on me. Twice. With a MAN. What exactly did you expect me to do? Buy a rainbow flag and ignore it?”

“You said you wouldn’t get mad.”

“That’s before I knew you were going to psychobabble analyze me and accuse me of some sort of weird projection just because I didn’t want to try to save my relationship with my gay ex-fiancé, and I do want to help a kind, talented man who is making my life possible stay in the country to do the work he wants to do.”

“Bi.”

“Excuse me?”

“Grant said he is bi. Not gay. And yes, if he were gay, I would say that marriage would be a bad idea, but he’s bi, and if he’s bi then he can equally be madly in love with you as he could with a boy. Besides, why is it so different for him to have to resist the temptation to cheat than it is for you?”

“I cannot BELIEVE we are even having this conversation.”

“Look, I’m not saying you should still be with Grant. I’m not. I get the hurt and betrayal, I do. But I know that people come back from infidelity if they love each other; it’s possible, I’ve done it.”

“John?”

“Once. Five years ago. He was at a tattoo convention in Vegas, got hammered, hooked up with an old flame from when he worked there. Came home and confessed, cried, we went to therapy, dealt with some of his commitment crap, got over it.”