Small Plates (16 page)

I remain your loving daughter,

Franny

The rest of the letters spanned a number of years and told of the reconciliation; Patrick O'Hara's advancement leading to his own big home in Jamaica Plain to house his growing family—another girl and two boys; Albert's and Will's inevitable Harvard degrees and Will's surprising match with the daughter of an English earl that meant moving to a castle in Yorkshire; the death of Elliot Fairchild; and then a last letter in a different hand. Victoria's. It was in an envelope addressed to “Mrs. Patrick O'Hara, 114 The Jamaicaway, Boston, Massachusetts.” It had never been mailed.

Dear Franny,

As I am about to pass onto a better world and will soon be facing my Maker, it is time to unburden my conscience after so many years.

What I did was wicked and I can only hope God will forgive me when I stand before his throne for I have been truly penitent every day of my life since. I know you have always suspected the true nature of the events at that dreadful Christmas dinner.

I think I must have indeed been driven a bit mad at the idea that you would marry Patrick O'Hara, and the fact that he has been such a good provider and husband to you has proved me wrong many times over. I am not excusing myself, but it was something I would not have believed possible then.

I must now write the words, however painful. To say them to you would be worse.

I am responsible for the death of Sumner Cabot, and Patrick O'Hara was the man I wanted to kill. Bridget had been instructed to give the slice of pudding with the horseshoe charm to Mr. O'Hara—may God forgive me that too, seeking to make her the instrument of her own brother's end, although I did not know of their connection until that day. I mixed arsenic powder into the sugar to top that portion and you well know the outcome. I cannot bear to write any more of the details. It doesn't matter now.

The doctor here says I have but a few more days, perhaps only hours, on this earth. The cancer has spread.

Forgive me.

Mother

“Do you think Franny ever read this?” Faith said.

Marian shook her head. “It was never mailed, and you saw that it was on the bottom of the pile of Franny's letters. Perhaps her mother hoped when they packed up her things after her death that her daughter would come across it, but you can see the bow appears to have been untied.”

There was a slight catch in Marian's voice. “It was a terrible, no heinous, thing to do, but what that woman must have suffered.”

“No more curse now, though,” Faith said. “We know the truth.”

Marian nodded and took her daughter-in-law's hand. “But still . . .”

Faith gave the hand in hers a squeeze. “I'll call James Holden, our associate minister. See if he can make it.”

“I think that would be wise, dear,” Marian said.

W
hat reality TV cooking shows fail to depict is the true hell of being in a greenroom with the other contestants. Sure, there are close-ups of knitted brows and piercing glances filled with pure or assumed malice. And the cameras zoom in on spats so staged that only the most gullible viewer could believe in them. Voices are raised. Words are bleeped. It's Showtime! The reality is, in fact, very far from Reality.

Faith Fairchild was sitting in a greenroom now. It wasn't network TV, not really TV at all, despite the high school kid walking around taping the night's event for the local cable channel. The greenroom hell she was experiencing wasn't one created by knives drawn or pots hurled and would have made for exceptionally bad ratings. No, the room was filled with a total lack of overt drama and a complete absence of conversation. The air was as dead as a doornail. The chefs sat mostly hunched over, eyes on their Crocs, avoiding any semblance of interest in one another. Mind-numbing boredom seized Faith, along with something akin to panic—had she only been sitting here for fifteen minutes? How long before they started?

There was no way the night was going to be a pleasant one. Faith looked up, knowing all too well what she would see. Three other chefs, professionals like herself, dressed in their work clothes—except for the toques the event planner had insisted upon. Faith never wore one and was pretty certain the others didn't either. The others. She knew them all, disliked them—some intensely—and she suspected they her.

F
aith had regretted saying yes to this fund-raiser almost from the start. Grave doubts had sprung up during the initial phone call from the planner hired by the organizers, but Faith's best friend and neighbor Pix Miller was on the committee and had asked her to participate. Pix almost never asked her for favors, and when she did, Faith knew it was something near and dear to Pix's heart. Not that raising money for breast cancer research wasn't important to Faith, but the woman who had contacted her had been extremely obnoxious, abruptly ending the conversation with one of Faith's least favorite kiss-offs: “Our people will get in touch with your people.”

“I don't have ‘people.' I am the people person,” Faith had said, immediately wishing she could take the words back. She'd sounded like a Dr Pepper commercial. “I mean, I handle my own publicity. If you send me all the information, I'll post it on my company, Have Faith's, Web site, our Facebook page, Twitter, and get a press release to the local paper.”

That had been four months ago. She needed to needlepoint a pillow—first learning how to—with
OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR
as she invariably accepted dates thinking they were distant and then suddenly, there they were on her doorstep. Tonight was a perfect example. She'd thought she had plenty of time to think about possible mystery ingredient combinations that might be thrown at her, maybe watch a few shows on the various food channels. Certainly consult further with her assistant, Niki, who, when she'd heard Faith was competing, had shaken her head and told her, “Presentation and the clock. Of course try to do something more than edible, but the other two criteria will be what the judges go by most. How it looks and getting it all on the plate. Above all, don't leave an ingredient out or use it without modifying it.” Niki obviously watched these shows a lot.

For this fund-raiser, four acclaimed New England chefs would battle it out for a Golden Toque, producing the three courses: appetizer, entrée, and dessert, from the stipulated ingredients plus a pantry of basics in front of an audience that was paying big bucks to watch while drinking champagne and nibbling from a lavish buffet. The event was being held in a regional technical high school with an extensive culinary arts program, so the kitchen had the requisite stoves, counter space, and equipment with a large dining area where students ran a café three days a week.

The four chefs had been given a quick tour before being ushered into seclusion. The only thing they had been allowed to bring were their knives. Faith's case was sitting by her side. She'd brought more than she'd probably need, but packing them made her feel prepared.

Why weren't they starting? The audience must all be here by now. Pix had assured her that there would be a brief pitch, but Faith knew these things always went on longer than planned and then there were drinks to be poured. Poured liberally, especially between the courses, when there would be auction items to view such as vacation homes, artwork, and a private dinner party prepared by the Golden Toque winner, which the organizers hoped would prove to be the biggest ticket item. The live auction would cap off the evening after the winner was selected.

After each round, students, dressed as the chefs they hoped to become, would clean up the stations for the next course. The competitors would once more sit it out in the greenroom having just heard the judges' verdict.

The judges. All Faith was told initially was that they would be “three professional food writers and critics.” Pix had leaked the names to Faith as soon as she'd gotten them herself. Faith was very grateful, as for some reason—drama?—the planner thought it would be fun for the chefs to be kept in the dark until the night itself. When it became clear that they would read the press releases along with the rest of the public, she abandoned the idea two weeks later. Faith had been relieved to get the names earlier, though. The judges would not be a problem—or rather she hoped they wouldn't be.

Mandy Klein was a food blogger with an impressive following. She lived in Cambridge, and while Faith had met her, she didn't know her well but had read some of her posts and found they were entertaining, expertly written, and very informative. Ms. Klein was managing to appeal to many levels of proficiency at once, no mean feat.

Simon Lake was the restaurant critic for a newspaper syndicate covering Boston's western suburbs and the North Shore. Their paths had never crossed, but Faith liked his reviews. He knew food and how it should be presented—eye appeal and without the distraction, and annoyance, of poor service. He was famous for walking out of places the moment he or a fellow diner was told “This is how the chef prepares it.” In other words, Lake always commented, “We're ignoramuses who are supposed to like it or lump it.” Adding, “So, leg it.”

The last judge was someone Faith
did
know well, as she was sure the other chefs did too. Pierre Jacques was a legend in the business, especially in New England. As a young man in France, he had survived the torturous training so perfectly described by Jacques Pepin in his autobiography,
The Apprentice,
starting as a
commis.
Long hours of sheer drudgery and often what amounted to abuse in restaurant kitchens, but one learned
la technique
. Pierre left France and came to Boston, where he first found work as a maître d', lending an air of authenticity to a French restaurant with owners and a chef who had never been there. Both their speech and food lacked the accent. The cooking was decent, but when Pierre began lending a hand, stirring the pots, raves rolled in. His personality—true Gallic wit—and good looks—Gerard Depardieu in his salad days (the ones before the too-many-baguette ones)—soon made Pierre Jacques a star outside the restaurant as well. He was the go-to
homme
for anything relating to all kinds of food, appearing with Julia on TV and off.

Armed with an introduction from a mutual friend, Faith had called Chef Jacques for advice when she was thinking of reopening the catering company she'd started in Manhattan before her marriage. They'd met for what was the first of many lunches, and he'd been an early supporter of Have Faith—word of mouth from Pierre couldn't be bought and was worth a fortune. Despite their friendship, she knew he would be as hard on her as the others and welcomed the chance to shine before him.

That was before she knew whom she'd be competing against. When she heard those names, what she had begun to regard as fun and challenging turned to ashes in her mouth.

I
f she had to sit here even one minute more, Faith thought she might scream. The greenroom, aka the teachers' lounge, had a restroom, so she couldn't use a sudden need to wash up as an excuse to leave. No one had told the chefs specifically not to wander around the school, but it had been implied with the instruction to “Make yourselves comfortable and we'll come get you.” There was an attempt at a craft services table with bottles of water, juice, and soft drinks plus the kind of assortment of snacks sold at big-box stores—small packages of cookies, granola bars, chips. Not exactly cordon bleu. Faith had grabbed a bottle of water when she came in and realized that she'd finished it. Best not to drink another. And she wasn't hungry, even for a Frito, a guilty pleasure. There were bags of them on the table.

She sighed and hoped it hadn't been audible. The last thing she wanted to display in front of this group was a suggestion of weakness. They were going to be on her, trying to cut her from the herd, soon enough—no holds barred. Her eyes rested on the chef sitting nearest to the door. He wasn't fat, but he was large. Everything about him was super-sized—well over six feet tall, hands like catchers' mitts, head like a basketball, and shoulders so broad one wondered whether he had to turn sideways to enter a room. His name was Billy Gold and he had immediately told the others they might as well “pack their knives and go,” since he was going to win the toque by virtue of his name—and skill. A super-sized ego and, Faith gave a slight shudder, a super-sized temper. He'd been her first boss back in the day, before Have Faith and before marriage. It was an experience she'd tried hard to forget. She had heard he'd opened a restaurant at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, but what was he doing here? This was a very small-potatoes event for him.

F
resh out of culinary school, Faith did remember how excited she had been when Chef Gold, the man routinely referred to as the “Twenty-First Century's Escoffier” hired her to assist the pantry chef—or the
garde manger
in French. It was his job to prepare all the cold dishes: salads, cold appetizers, pâtés. Mostly she'd be washing and chopping vegetables. It was what she'd expected when she took the job, eager to gain experience. Her first day had been an eye-opener. The air was blue—blue with smoke from something that had spilled on a burner and blue with the stream of invective spewing forth from the chef's mouth. The chef's anger had been directed at his long-suffering sous-chef, but she'd feared for the moment it would be aimed directly at her. Days passed and Chef Gold had yet to acknowledge her presence. “Morons, idiots, I am surrounded by them!” yelled at the entire staff was the closest she'd come. It actually meant he was calming down. No more four-letter words. She'd been somewhat shocked the first day. Not by the language, but by the frequency and volcanic quality of the chef's eruptions. When the
F this
and
F that
s became less numerous, the worst was over. By the end of the third day at the restaurant, she'd decided it was pure self-indulgence on Gold's part, and even counterproductive. Faith saw her coworkers, eager to avoid being the target, frantically covering up mistakes—even sending out food they knew wasn't right to stay on schedule and avoid the chef's wrath. She'd stuck to her station and kept her head down.