The Kitchen Daughter (6 page)

The dictionaries are here, nestled among all the other hundreds of books in the floor-to-ceiling bookcases. This is where Dad spent most of this time when he wasn’t at the hospital. His leather chair is here, and his desk, with another chair behind it. The desk is a broad, flat slab of wood, with legs but no drawers, therefore no hiding places. I look at the walls of books instead. The Normal Book would be at home here, but thinking ahead, I can’t chance it. Amanda didn’t finish what she was saying about the will. Maybe Ma and Dad wanted their books to go to charity too. It won’t work.

I walk out into the hall and remember when Ma chose the paint. Mountain Sage out here, Irish Oatmeal in their bedroom, the master bathroom in Ice Blue Gloss. She gave me the samples from the paint store and I cut them out in little identical squares, playing the game of remembering which was which, knowing every color by its name.

The carpets on the second floor are soft under my bare feet. The next room down is Amanda’s, a pale buttery yellow called Chardonnay on the walls, boxes of shoes still under the bed. Then my old room, now a spare, painted in the same color. Another bathroom, its cabinets full of towels and medicines and soaps. When I graduated high school I moved upstairs to the attic. Ma didn’t want me to at first
because she thought it got too cold up there. But I insisted, and since there wasn’t a rule against it, she let me go ahead. My rebellions have always been small ones.

I descend the stairs. On the ground floor there is the living room in front, then the dining room, both floored with long bare planks of hardwood, both with the swirling patterns lining the ceilings. In the living room is a fireplace, which works, though I have never built a fire in it. Behind me on the right is the bathroom, behind me on the left the kitchen.

Under the stairs, there is the coat closet. Two days ago—was it only two days?—I hid there and put my hands in Dad’s rain boots. What I really wanted was the closet in their bedroom. I walk upstairs to look at it. I rub my cheek against the rough wool of a winter suit Dad hadn’t worn in years. He hated suits. I don’t know what Amanda put on him and on Ma, after. I didn’t see.

I look down. On the floor of the closet are Dad’s dress shoes, probably the only wearable thing he hated more than suits. They smell of leather. Next to them are Ma’s bedroom slippers, the ones that always made her laugh. Years ago she told Dad she wanted marabou slippers for her birthday, so he took her wool slippers and sewed a strip of marabou across the toe. The slippers are gray-green cable-knit and the marabou is a frilly hot pink. A few feathers have been shed on the floor of the closet. When I touch the soft marabou I hear Ma laughing, even now. Ma’s laugh sounded exactly like spearmint bubble gum. Her voice was like regular spearmint, clean and cool, but the laugh was a gum bubble popping.

I don’t know if there’s anywhere in here to hide the book. I look around. Their suitcases sit next to the bed. Amanda must have gotten them back somehow. No, I don’t want to think about that. Think about the window seat, the fireplace, the closet, the bureau. This fireplace doesn’t work and I don’t know if it ever has. Ma keeps a
rectangular pot of bright red geraniums there instead. Watering them is part of my routine on Mondays and Thursdays.

If I have to leave, what will my routine be then? I can’t even imagine.

Amanda wants to sell this house with me still in it. I’ve never lived anywhere else, and can’t imagine any other home.

Do no let her.

Don’t let Amanda sell the house? That could be what the warning means. The warning won’t help me stop her—
Amanda, we can’t sell the house because our dead grandmother said so
—but it would still be nice to know what and who it is I’m supposed to be stopping.

Need to stay focused. Hide the Normal Book.

I tap my fingers on the mantel of the fireplace while I’m thinking. Thumb to pinky and back. One two three four five four three two one. I look down at the fireplace. It might work. I get down, move the geraniums aside, and peer up into the darkness. I can’t imagine Amanda will go digging around in here. I crouch inside the chimney and fill my lungs with air in case I need it, and reach my hand up.

Three-quarters of the way around, my fingers find a loose brick. Excellent. I wiggle it loose and tease it out, setting it down gently on the red glazed tile around the base of the fireplace. Reddish dust the color of smoked paprika sprinkles down and settles on my shoulders and hair. Hold in the sneeze. I reach my fingers into the gap where the brick used to be. I need to know if the space is large enough for the Normal Book.

It is, but—there’s something in there already.

Holding myself steady with one hand, stretching and reaching up with the other, I stick two fingers into the space and draw out what’s there. An envelope. Not addressed, not sealed. Inside, a letter. There are no names but I know the handwriting. Scrawled, messy, almost unreadable.

I need you to forgive me. You always tell me I have a great mind but sometimes it’s not so great.
She
Her
It’s my fault and I can’t pretend it’s not. You say it’s okay but I don’t know. I can’t tell. Maybe if I tell you I’m sorry, if I take responsibility, you’ll truly forgive me. I love you too much not to say something.

There isn’t a date on it, but there’s a yellowish tint to the paper, and the letter almost falls apart at the crease when I unfold it. It’s old, maybe ten or twenty or even thirty years. When did Dad need Ma to forgive him for something? And what was it? Who is the
she
, the
her
, crossed out? Another
her.
I don’t know who they are, and I don’t know how to find out.

Then, it occurs to me, maybe I do.

I saw Nonna. She told me I brought her. How did I do it? Thinking about the person clearly isn’t enough. Neither is food or drink. Dad’s scotch didn’t bring Dad, and Grandma Damson’s shortbread didn’t bring Grandma Damson. There’s something else to it. There has to be. If I could figure out what brings them, I could find out if they have the answers I want.

Maybe they only come if they have a message. Nonna wanted to tell me not to let someone do something. Don’t let—who? Amanda? She seems most likely. But how am I supposed to stop her from doing whatever she wants to do? Am I too late, has it already happened?

Panic, panic, can’t panic. Think of food. Think of sugar. I am a sugar cube in cold water. I won’t dissolve. Precise edges. Made up of tiny, regular, secure parts. If the water were hotter I would worry, but it’s cold. I stay together. Precise. Clean. Surrounded, but whole.

Okay. I need to cook. It’ll calm me down.

I fold the letter and put it back in its envelope, and slip the envelope inside the front cover of the Normal Book. Then I tuck the book into the gap inside the chimney and slide the brick back into place. More
paprika-colored dust falls on my shoulders. The pot of geraniums goes back too, making a perfect rectangle within a rectangle, settling into the spot where it belongs.

Everything in its place, I head down to the kitchen and pull the step stool into position.

On Ma’s side of the cabinet, all the way on the top shelf, is a box. I bring it down. It’s a small Japanese tea box, covered neatly in red-and-gold chrysanthemum paper, worn gray-black at the corners over time.

These are Ma’s recipes, the ones she made for company, neatly copied in an identical hand. I think she had penmanship lessons. They do things like that in Georgia. The box is filled with identical cards, lined up like Confederate soldiers. When she taught me to cook, sometimes we used these cards, and sometimes cookbooks, and sometimes just things she knew from memory. I’ve taught myself a lot about cooking over the years, but Ma’s lessons were where it all started.

Food has a power. Nonna knew that. Ma did too. I know it now. And though it can’t save me, it might help me, in some way. All I have besides food is grief. I close the glass doors over the cookbooks, protecting them from the heat and grease of kitchen air.

There are two cards in the box in a handwriting that isn’t Ma’s. One is the recipe for Grandma Damson’s shortbread that Amanda wrote down, years ago. So neat and even. Dad always joked about that. He said I had the handwriting of a doctor, that I take after him. Took. Our family had two matched sets. Ma and Amanda with crisp, regal penmanship, Dad and me with illegible scrawls. The other card, clearly older, is labeled
THE GEORGIA PEACH
at the top. I read through the brief instructions. On the back of the card is only a name: Mrs. John Hammersmith.

I get started.

The martini glasses are not hard to find. I set one out. Next I go out to the dining room and open the china cabinet, tugging out each
bottle to read its label, clinking them together until I find the right ones. Schnapps, amaretto. Along with the bottles I find a shot glass and bring it all back to the kitchen. I take the ginger ale and orange juice out of the fridge, and I’m ready.

First, a cube of ice in the martini glass. I look at the recipe and decide I need to combine the liquids separately, so I measure a shot of ginger ale and pour it into a Pyrex measuring cup. I add an equal amount of the schnapps, then a half glass of amaretto and another half of juice. I stir with a spoon and pour it over the ice cube, which makes a single cracking noise as the temperature around it changes.

There’s too much liquid. It almost overflows the glass. Maybe the person who wrote the recipe owns larger martini glasses, or makes smaller ice cubes. It’s so full I can’t lift the glass without spilling. I bend over to put my lips to the rim of the glass. The strong smell of alcohol hits my nose, wafting up, and the closer I get the sharper it smells.

I brace myself to drink at least a little. I decide to count to three first. So I’m awkwardly hunched when the woman’s voice behind me says, “That doesn’t look entirely dignified, but I admire your spirit.”

I turn. The woman behind me is lovely, her full-skirted navy dress covered in tiny white polka dots. Her brown hair is neatly rolled into curls above her shoulders. Her lipstick is a perfect, precise red, and she wears wrist-length white gloves.

I say, “Mrs. John Hammersmith?”

“Oh, call me Necie, please,” she says. “This isn’t the Junior League.”

“My mother was in the Junior League,” I say. I know this because she had their cookbook. We made recipes from it. City chicken. Pimento cheese. Ambrosia.

“Who is your mother? Might be I know her.”

“Caroline Selvaggio. Damson, originally.”

“Caro!” she says cheerfully. “And how is dear Caro?”

“Dead,” I say, before thinking it through, and once I realize my mistake, I wish I could take it back.

Necie Hammersmith laughs. “Oh, sugar, your face,” she says. “It’s okay. I’m sad to hear she’s dead, of course, but you must understand it doesn’t sound like such a tragedy. I’m dead too. A long time now.”

“Ma just died a few days ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she says. “I would have thought longer, by the way you’re acting. You don’t seem all that sad.”

“I am. I’m very sad.”

“Well, you don’t look it. And your father, how’s he?”

This time I break the news slowly. “As it happens, he and my mother were killed in the same accident.”

“They made it this long, though? Good for them. We didn’t … I mean, I don’t want to speak out of turn, but it didn’t make a lick of sense. They went together like whipped cream and sardines. That and the speed of it. You weren’t an eight-month baby, by any chance?”

I answer slowly, “I believe I took the same amount of time as other babies.”

“Strange,” says Necie, straightening her gloves. “They just seemed in such a rush. Though I suppose his fellowship was ending and she wanted to move with him to … where did they move?”

“Philadelphia.”

“City of brotherly love,” she says, “how delightful.”

“So you were my mother’s friend?”

“One of her best. Which is why I supported her, hosted the shower, all that. Of course I had my doubts, we all did. He wasn’t exactly a charmer, your dad. But I’m glad to hear it all worked out so well for them. Lovely daughter. Long lives. Well, it’s just wonderful, that’s what it is.”

I try to put together a question, but I notice the light starting to peek through Necie’s dress and then her hair and her skin, as she begins to fade.

“Lovely speaking with you,” she says, her voice softer on every word, until the “you” is barely audible. Then she’s gone.

On one hand, Necie’s told me nothing at all. That my parents had dissimilar personalities, which I already know, and that they got married in a hurry, which doesn’t much matter.

But on the other hand, I’m so excited I want to run around the kitchen in circles. I’ve learned something very important.

She’s helped me discover the key to bringing the ghosts: their own recipes, in their own writing. If I can bring any ghost whose handwritten recipe I have in my possession, who else can I see? What else can I learn?

I dump the rest of the cocktail down the sink. I turn to the cookbook shelves, full of recipes.

People use it as an expression, to mean something else, but it’s also a statement that’s literally true: there’s no time like the present.