The Glass Kitchen (21 page)

She hadn’t given much thought to the fact that she was going to be in a car. The kind of car that wrecked. Just like when she was with her mom. She had barely been in a car since.

Ariel reached up, wrapped herself securely in the seat belt, and prayed.

The cabbie careened through traffic, clutching the steering wheel with both hands and talking the whole time into his cell phone headset. She couldn’t understand a word. There was a ton of traffic, but that didn’t faze him.

Ariel closed her eyes, concentrating. “If you take one yellow cab,” she whispered to herself, “moving at one hundred miles per hour for five-second intervals, how long will it take the cab to go three miles?”

But word problems didn’t calm her.

“You say something?” the cabbie called back to her, their eyes meeting in the rearview mirror.

“No. Not a word. No reason to look back here. Best to look up ahead.”
Where the traffic and cars are,
Ariel added to herself.

They took rights, then lefts, and swooped under a bridge. By the time they arrived in front of a building made of huge rectangular bricks, Ariel’s legs were rubbery. On the backside of a heinous cab ride, she wasn’t sure she was up to the task of sleuthing out any information.

But which was worse? Stay in the cab and ask to be taken home, or get her sea legs back and continue her mission? The decision was made for her when the driver barked out the fare.

“Eighteen?” Ariel squeaked. “You mean eighteen dollars?”

He jerked around, eyes murderous. “Eighteen! If you don’t have money, you should no get in my cab!”

“Oh, no, it’s fine. I have the money.”

Keeping her hands from shaking by sheer force of will, Ariel counted out eighteen dollars. She knew she was supposed to tip, so she added some more. The cabbie grabbed it, waved her out of his car, and raced off, leaving her standing on the curb with only three dollars.

As much as she couldn’t imagine getting back in a cab, the thought of taking the subway home paralyzed her. She didn’t have a clue how to take the train home from downtown.

She started to panic.

“Buck up, Ariel,” she chided herself. “It’s a subway. You take it on the Upper West Side all the time.”

She turned to face the imposing heights of the City Clerk’s office. “You are fine,” she whispered to herself.

Inside she was confronted by intense security. She made it through, though not without a few raised eyebrows, and stopped at the information desk. “I’m here for the records department.”

A gruff woman with steel-gray hair looked down at her. “What kind of records?”

“Marriage.”

“You seem kinda young to be getting married.”

A man behind the desk glanced up from whatever he was doing and chuckled. “A mite young, indeed.”

Great. A couple of jokesters. “I’m doing a report for school.” Ariel tried to look young and smart and like she had a really good reason for them to let her in. “We have to document a city record’s search. I’m going to write about my experience working with New York City and the kind of treatment one gets while pursuing their rights within the law.”

“Whoo-whee,” the man said with a chuckle.

The woman got serious. “Are you some kid reporter?”

“Well no. Just doing a report for Miss Thompson’s social studies.”

The woman glanced at her watch for the first time, probably noting that as it was early afternoon, Ariel should have been in school.

“It’s a teachers’ training day. I’m using the time to finalize the details of my research.”

God, she was good.

“Whoo-whee,” the man said again. “A smart one.”

The woman debated, and then nodded toward a hallway. “Third door on your left.”

“Thank you,” Ariel said. “I appreciate how helpful you’ve been.”

Maybe that was a little much, she conceded. But she was glad she had thought of the whole research angle. She was even gladder after waiting in line for nearly an hour only to learn that she had to be one of the spouses to get the record.

“But, ma’am, I’m just doing a report. I don’t want the actual record. I’m just reporting on how it’s done.” Ariel trotted out the whole social studies angle, eyes wide and earnest. “So if I could just look up a record and explain how the process is handled, you know, how easy it really is for New Yorkers to get the things they need from the government, I would appreciate it.”

This woman gave her a strange look, half disbelief, half worry. No one wanted to be shown up by some kid publishing a tell-all blog.

And her dad said the Internet was a bad thing.

“Fine,” the woman said. “Go to that door over there and tell Ida I said to help you.”

Thankfully, Ida couldn’t have cared less who Ariel was, why she was there, or what she wanted. Ariel blurted out her mother’s maiden name and father’s name, and with a few keystrokes, Ida came back with a date. “June 27, 1998.”

Ariel wrote it down so she wouldn’t forget it. Something seemed wrong, but she couldn’t place what. She gave her parents’ names again. “That’s definitely the date for them, right?”

“Yes.”

Ida clearly wasn’t one to waste words. “Is that all you want?” she said. “It’s 3:15. We close at 3:45.”

“Really?” That seemed really early to close an office. But then Ariel realized she had to get home before anyone found out she was gone. And she still had to figure out the subway route. She slapped her notebook shut. “I mean, no problem.”

But outside, her heart raced. Spotting a policeman, she raced over to him. “Where is the subway? Ah, sir.”

The guy gave her a crooked smile and pointed. “At that brown building, take a right. The subway is a few blocks up on Canal Street.”

She followed his directions. Sure enough, when she came to Canal Street she saw the station. But it was for the N and R trains. She had never even heard of the N or R train.

Fear started to creep up, the kind of fear Ariel rarely allowed herself to feel. “You are not a panicker, Ariel,” she muttered.

Shaking herself, she found one of the posted subway maps. The spider’s web of multicolored lines wasn’t for the faint of heart, but Ariel wasn’t faint of heart, she reminded herself.

With her remaining three dollars, she purchased a single-ride MetroCard and made it to the uptown platform just as a train arrived. She hopped on. The bell rang, the doors slid shut, and Ariel offered up another prayer that this train would get her somewhere close to the Upper West Side.

“Excuse me,” she said to a lady standing next to her.

The woman narrowed her eyes at her.

“Does this go to Seventy-second Street on the Upper West Side?”

The woman hesitated, and in the silence, another woman answered. “No, sweetie, it doesn’t. You’ll need to get off at Thirty-fourth and change to a B. Or, if you need a 1, 2, or 3, you’ll have to go to Forty-Second and change there.”

Ariel’s head spun with a plethora of numbers and an alphabet soup of letters. She concentrated with every ounce of her ability as they came into each station. Prince. Eighth Street. Fourteenth Street. Stop after stop, the train getting more and more crowded, making it harder and harder to see station signs. Finally Ariel caught a glimpse of a sign when they pulled into the Thirty-fourth Street station. She squirmed out, relieved, only to find that she didn’t have a clue what to do next.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for the B train.”

She made it to a B just as it arrived in the station. On board, her heart pounded at stop after stop until she recognized Seventy-second Street.

When she came up onto street level across from Central Park, she was only a block from home. Ariel had never been so glad to see the horse-drawn carriages and masses of people taking photos of the building where some singer named John Lennon had been shot. And when she blew into her house, falling back against the closed door with a gasp, she nearly broke down in tears.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Her head jerked up. Miranda stood at the top of the stairs, scowling.

Ariel blinked furiously. She had no idea what to say. She had been fixated on the maze of subway tunnels and platforms, and hadn’t yet thought about the information she had found: Their mom and dad’s wedding was on June 27, 1998.

Miranda was born on November 19, 1998. Five months after their parents were married.

Twenty

A
T FIVE
, Portia bolted upstairs to make dinner. From the sunroom, she was surprised when she heard Gabriel’s and Anthony’s heated voices. She hadn’t seen or talked to Gabriel since he’d slipped out of her bedroom that morning. She felt her body in a way that she hadn’t in years, if ever. He had allowed her no modesty. He had taken what he wanted. But, if she was completely fair, he had given as well. Her body shuddered and sighed at the thought. “Bad, bad, bad,” she muttered to herself.

There was no denying that the whole fried chicken–meal thing had thrown her.

The other issue that threw her was that Robert had called three times during the day, but without leaving much by way of messages. Then her lawyer had called, saying that her ex was contesting the small amount he was supposed to pay her.

Her stomach twisted at the thought. She had to breathe through her nose to try to stay calm, releasing her breath slowly into the quiet kitchen. She didn’t have the money to fight him. Very soon, even with the money she was making from working for Gabriel, she wasn’t going to be able to survive in New York.

For the first time she was having to admit to herself that she might have to sell the garden apartment. No question the clock was ticking on her dream of building a new life in the city.

She left lasagna and garlic bread warming in the oven and a salad in the refrigerator and tiptoed out of the house. Once she was outside, the beads of panic didn’t lessen. Nothing was going as planned in New York. She felt as if she was trying to start over, transform her life, remake herself in quicksand. The harder she tried to get free, the deeper she sank. Trying to cook without embracing the knowing wasn’t working; it popped up constantly without warning. Trying not to fall for Gabriel? Also not working. Creating a viable way to support herself and help her sisters? Going the way of women wearing hats.

With no answer in sight, she began to walk. Traffic was heavy on Central Park West before she crossed into the park, veering onto the bridle path. Trees overarched like a canopy of green, runners passing her, generally in pairs, followed by two mounted policemen on giant horses. Portia walked fast, trying to outpace her thoughts. But even when she came to the Reservoir, she couldn’t slow her brain.

She headed out of the park, then turned south. She walked forever, hooking over to Broadway and the crush of tiny shops.

It was right outside of the Sabon bath shop that it hit her, the scent of luscious soaps drifting out into the street. Inside, the space was filled with soap and lotions, bath washes and candles. Her senses were filled, surrounded. Teased.

In an instant, after hours of walking and trying to stay out of her brain, a glimmer of an answer came to her like disparate ingredients coming together to make an unexpectedly perfect whole.

She couldn’t get home fast enough. Banging into the apartment, Portia went straight to the cabinet where she had stored the Glass Kitchen cookbooks. She pulled out volumes one and two, skimming through the first. Then she took up the second book, leaving the third volume where it was stored. Holding the second in her arms, close to her chest, she drew a deep breath.

The answer was here, she realized, in this cookbook. She just had to find it.

She cracked open the old spine and started flipping through the pages, taking notes. Once she had five pages of hurried scribbles, she condensed things down into one single shopping list. Then she began to turn the vision into reality, and a week later, a week of barely managing to avoid Gabriel with an odd assortment of excuses and meal preparation at even odder times, Portia was ready. She had finally put into place exactly what she needed to prove that a Glass Kitchen would work in New York City.

Fourth Course

Palate Cleanser

Blood Orange Ice

Twenty-one

“W
HAT IS GOING
ON
here?”

Gabriel stood in the doorway of her apartment, dark tension carved into his features, and for a heartbeat Portia forgot all about what she was doing. She just stared at the man.

He wore a simple black T-shirt that showed off his chest and arms, his dark hair raked back. He looked rugged and sexy, and memories of his hands and mouth on her body made every inch of her thrum to life.

Bad, bad, bad,
she reminded herself.

His dark gaze narrowed.

“We’ve created a version of The Glass Kitchen,” she hurriedly explained, giving him a sunny smile.

Olivia and Cordelia came out of the kitchen to stand behind her. Cordelia glanced from Portia to Gabriel, then back. “Portia, didn’t you clear this with him?”

Cordelia still wasn’t herself, her husband’s problem growing deeper. Portia and Olivia did everything they could to keep her mind occupied, and Portia still hadn’t had the heart to question Cordelia about implying to people that somehow Gabriel was involved with The Glass Kitchen.

“Actually, it’s more a venture where I’m cooking the food of The Glass Kitchen, and people can come to try it.”

After reading the second Glass Kitchen cookbook, she had taken its advice to heart. Losing herself in the words, she had put them into action.

For a meal to work truly, it must be an experience. From the moment a guest arrives in
The Glass Kitchen
to the moment they set their napkin down, they must be enchanted. More importantly, the giver of food must believe that they have the power to enchant. No person, whether she is a scientist or a cook, can find success if she doesn’t first believe that she holds power in her hands—not to use over people, but to use for the good of another. Food, especially, is about giving. A cook must find a way to make the recipient a believer, for what is a person who sits down to a beautiful meal but someone who wants to believe?