The Lost Recipe for Happiness (21 page)

“Ohhhhh!” she said suddenly, and put her hand to her mouth. She dropped her clothes and ran for the toilet. She threw up impressively, then sank to the floor with a whimper.

“Probably doesn’t seem like it, but that’s a good thing.” Elena took a washcloth from the cupboard and ran cold water over it. Bending down, she handed the cloth to Portia. “If you’ve had too much to drink, it’s never bad to throw up and get rid of the excess alcohol.”

Portia put the cloth to her mouth. “That’s…like…bulimia.”

“Yeah, well, better throwing up than dying of alcohol poisoning.”

With a sick nod, Portia swayed. “I might need help putting on my pajamas.”

“Okay.” Gently, she helped Portia shed the expensive dress, and into her pants and shirt, helping preserve her modesty as much as possible. Elena pulled the bobby pins out of her hair, and gave her a toothbrush with toothpaste on it, and while it wasn’t the brushing job of the century, at least her mouth would feel better in the morning. Finally, she helped Portia into bed and covered her with the duvet. “I’ll bring you some water. Do you need anything else?”

Portia shook her head. “Don’t tell my dad, okay?”

Elena sat down on the side of the bed. “I can’t promise you that, Portia, but let’s talk for a second. If you are in trouble if they test your urine, you’ve been in trouble with drinking before, right?”

“No,” she said with a long sigh. “My friend was in trouble. Not me. I was just with her.”

“But you still knew you’d get in trouble.”

Portia snorted and opened her eyes. “In case you didn’t notice, nobody cares what their kids do in this world.”

“I think your dad cares what you do.”

“Oh,
so
how is it that he didn’t even
notice
me drinking when I was sitting righ’ at tha’ table?” Her words were slurry, but the emotion was earnest.

Elena didn’t know what the rules were in talking to a teenager, especially a “troubled” girl. But she knew how to be honest. “He had a lot going on tonight. It seemed to be a business meeting that mattered quite a lot to him, and he wanted to present something and show off his new restaurant food.”

“Yeah. So?”

“So, maybe the thing to do would be to support him when he needs you.”

“Oh, like they always are there for me?” The purple of her mascara had smeared around her eyelids and made her look like a tired child prostitute. So much anger in those eyes. Too much knowledge.

Elena lifted a shoulder, patted the bed next to Portia to give Alvin permission to come up beside her. If ever a child needed a dog, it was this one. “I don’t know what happened before, Portia. Maybe they’ve never been there for you the way parents are supposed to, but what I see now is that your dad really loves you and he’s gone to a lot of trouble to create a safe and stable environment for you here in Aspen.”

The girl’s eyes closed and tears leaked out, tinged faintly blue with mascara. Alvin leaned in and licked her face, and she laughed.

Elena stood up. “You can keep him overnight,” she said, “but I want him home first thing in the morning, understood?”

“Are you sure?”

As if pleading to spend the night, Alvin sighed and put his head down on Portia’s belly. “I’m sure. Good night.”

“Where is your family, Elena?”

“New Mexico.”

“Is your mom there?”

“My grandmother is.”

“Is your mom dead?”

“Who knows.” Elena leaned on the threshold. “I haven’t seen her since I was eight. My mother was a little party girl who dropped me off at my dad’s mom’s house when I was eight and never came back.”

“Wow, that sucks.”

“It did, at the time. But
mi abuela
was good to me.”

“Abuela,”
Portia repeated with soft breathlessness. “Tha’s a good word.”

“It is,” Elena agreed, and turned off the light. She waited, but within seconds, dog and child were snoring in unison.

It pained her to leave Alvin, but there it was. It would cause more pain to take him home. He was happy there. Portia needed him. And a dog of her own. She’d talk to Julian about that.

But for now, she went to see if she could find him, or perhaps leave a note somewhere, appraising him of the situation. He should know what was going on.

Ricki Alsatian, Portia’s mother, was in the kitchen, pouring a new glass of wine when Elena came into the room. “Oh!” she said, smiling, perhaps in embarrassment, though the wine had been left out just so the guests could help themselves. “I thought you’d gone!”

“I’m on my way. Just a few details to finish up. Is Julian wrapped up in his presentation?”

The woman inclined her head, the blonde hair tumbling down her tiny, toned arm. She was exquisite in the way of the very well tended. “You call him Julian?”

Which, for some reason, reminded her that Julian had once been married to this ethereal being. Twice, as a matter of fact. “I tried to call him Mr. Liswood, but he’s not that formal.”

She smiled faintly. “I see.”

“Have you seen him?”

Ricki sipped her wine. “No.”

For a minute, Elena wondered if she knew that her daughter had gone to bed very drunk. She wondered what Ricki was doing here, actually.

None of her business.

“Well, it was nice to meet you,” Elena said politely. Her coat was hanging in an anteroom off the kitchen, and she headed there to get it, halting when she heard Julian’s voice drifting down from the mezzanine. “That’s it, gentlemen. I’m weary of slasher pics, but I’ll do another one if you let me do this one first.”

She stopped, hands in her pocket. He must be in his office, and the conversation carried into this quiet spot.

Another man said, “Ghosts, Julian? The market for horror is teenagers. How can we get them with ghosts?”

“I’m not sure this
is
a teenager movie. Adults like ghost stories, not kids.”

“Kids spend more money at the movies.”

As if it were a liquid seeping through the floor, Elena felt Julian’s frustration. “And I’ll make another slasher picture. After this one.”

Obviously, he was busy. Where could she leave him a message? She went back to the kitchen, found a piece of paper and wrote:

Julian,

Alvin asked if he could spend the night and I let him. Give me a call and I’ll come get him in the morning.

She hesitated, then added:

Hope you got what you wanted with the meeting. We were pretty pleased from our end.

Elena

She carried the note upstairs, past the hallway she had used the night she stayed here, and down another hallway. Wrong way. This led to guest rooms. She headed back the other way, almost landed on the mezzanine to his office, and steered around again. Finally, she found Julian’s bedroom and halted, suddenly shy, on the threshold. It was a vast room, well appointed but not terribly personal, as if a decorator had done it all.

But the air smelled intensely of Julian, that particular apple-and-sunlight fragrance she had come to associate with him. It assaulted her, soaked into her body through her skin, through her nose, made her breasts feel heavy. Her neck prickled. She stood there for long, long moments, breathing it in, feeling it calm even as it aroused, as if his flesh would be the ultimate aromatherapy, curing everything, but especially her loneliness.

A sharp trill of laughter shattered the moment. Blinking, Elena hurried forward and put the note on his bed, hoping suddenly that no other woman would be lying there with him, that his head alone would be on those pillows. Then, shaking her head at the strangeness, she hurried out.

No wonder he was so powerful, she thought, starting Patrick’s car. He must have the pheromones of a tiger. A lion, an elephant. Something huge, anyway.

Yet another reason to steer clear of Julian Liswood.

TWENTY-FIVE

P
AN DE
M
UERTO
(B
READ OF THE
D
EAD
)

1 cup milk

1 tsp salt

¹
/
₂
cup (one stick) butter

¹
/
₄
cup water, just warmer than body temperature

1 T flour

1 tsp sugar

2 packages dry yeast

5 cups flour

1 T whole anise seed

¹
/
₂
cup sugar

4 eggs

GLAZE

¹
/
₂
cup sugar

¹
/
₃
cup fresh squeezed orange juice

2 T orange zest

Measure the milk and salt into a large glass measuring cup and drop in a stick of butter, cut into chunks. Heat in the microwave until milk is scalded, stir until butter melts, and let stand for about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, measure warm water into a small bowl and stir 1 tablespoon flour and 1 teaspoon sugar into it. Sprinkle yeast on top and let it dissolve for a few minutes.

While those are resting, measure 1
¹
/
₂
cups of flour into a bowl and set the rest aside. Mix in the anise seed and sugar, then add the milk/butter mixture and the yeast mixture, and stir vigorously until well mixed. Beat in the eggs, then stir in the remaining flour 1 cup at a time until the dough is soft and not sticky. Turn out the dough on a counter and knead well for 10 minutes or so, until the texture is as cool and smooth as a young breast or a baby’s bottom. Lightly grease a bowl and put the dough in it, turning it so the entire loaf is coated lightly with oil, and then cover with a thin, damp cloth and put it in a warm, draft-free spot to rise until doubled, about 1–2 hours.

Punch the dough down and shape into loaves that look like skulls, skeletons, bones. Let the loaves rise for 1 hour. Bake 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Paint with glaze.

Glaze: mix sugar, orange juice, and zest together, and boil for 2 minutes, then use it as a paint for the loaves. Sprinkle with colored sugar in pink, orange, green, and blue. Serve to the dead.

Or to the living, who tend to eat more of it.

TWENTY-SIX

J
ulian was in a deep sleep when something blew over his face. He slid one eye open and found himself staring into the face of a very big nose. When Alvin saw he was awake, he woofed softly, putting his paws on the bed.

“Need to get outside, do you?”

Alvin woofed again. Julian put on his robe and padded downstairs to let the dog out. Standing there on the deck, he thought of Elena with a sucking sense of guilt.

The movie was a go. He had not said a word.

He didn’t know, now, how he would.

Tell her, man.

But how could he?

On the Day of the Dead, Elena took the morning off from work, as was her annual habit. It was strange not to have Alvin with her, but she’d loaned him out in the service of a good cause. She arose early, smiling at the rustling, the soft whispers in the rooms of her apartment, ghosts gathering in happy anticipation.

It was Isobel’s birthday, and Elena cooked all of her favorites—chicken enchiladas and chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Strawberry soda. She brought in Edwin’s favorites, too. Hamburgers from a fast-food joint, and french fries, and Coke in a paper cup. He loved fast food. For Albert, her youngest brother, only fourteen when he died, she cooked chorizo and scrambled eggs and fluffy white tortillas, because he could eat breakfast for days and days.

When the food was ready, she went to the living room to prepare the altar on top of the southwestern-style buffet. First, she spread out a striped serape she used every year, one of the only things she carried with her, place to place to place. It had once covered her bed at the house in Espanola, and now was worn thin and soft, the colors faded. On top of it, she set up the framed photographs—one of Edwin and herself at a wedding dance the year before the accident, one of Isobel at her sixteenth birthday party, wearing a tiara and hamming it up for the camera. There was one of her cousin Penny at seven, which was the only one she could find, and one, always the hardest, of her brother Albert at twelve, grinning with zest into the camera from his prized bicycle, which to Elena’s eyes now looked rickety and rusted and old, the tire fat and sturdy. It was painted blue.

When it was all ready, she put out a vase of red roses, and scattered some marigolds around it. The plates of food were there for the taking, the eggs still steaming, the cake neatly sliced, beer poured into a glass for Edwin.

Today, Maria Elena would go down to the crosses she’d made at the side of the road where the accident had happened. She would take down the worn-out, tattered flowers from the year before, and repaint the names of her dead children, and freshen up the items placed there twenty-one years ago. For a moment, Elena let herself be a ghost with her mother, dusting away the grime of a year, the tangles of tumbleweeds speared with dead leaves, the bits of paper blown in, the odd beer lid or milk bottle cap.

One day, perhaps, she would go to the site again. She had been there only once, the second year after it happened. By then, she’d been walking well again, and had got through rehab and worked as a prep girl in a Santa Fe restaurant. She went home for Easter and her eldest brother Ricardo took her to the
descansos.

Elena got out of the car and threw up. It was nothing she could remember exactly, because really, it was all such a blur. But she couldn’t stay. Not even long enough to put flowers down. Ricky drove her back home, silently. Mama clucked over her, washed her face, cried a little. “Oh,
m’ija, m’ija,”
she said, over and over, her hands cold and gnarled on Elena’s forehead. “You shouldn’t go there. Never, never.
La Santisima Muerte
let you go.”

In her Aspen living room, Elena bowed her head as was her habit, and prayed the rosary on carved ivory beads she’d owned since her confirmation. Around her, the rustling intensified and the temperature in the room dropped, and still she prayed quietly, letting them come and taste the offerings, and touch her face and hair and pat her back. She prayed decade after decade, and there was a little sound of laughter at her back, and a joke she didn’t quite catch, and a kiss on her cheek and a whispered
thank you
and she let a few tears fall, but not very many. This altar was not for her, but for them, those who were ahead on the road all would one day walk. A gift to them, a way to honor them.

A knock on the door in her fourth decade startled her, but knowing it was Alvin, she rushed over and opened the door. Julian stood there, looking oddly winded, his hands at his sides. Alvin wiggled happily, and she let him by, patting his head as she put her body squarely in the doorway.

Thinking of his formality with her last night, Elena said, “Thank you for bringing my dog.”

“You’re welcome.” A tangle of sunlight fell through the curls by his temples, edged the line of his dark glasses. The little goatee, artful and self-conscious, surrounded his red lips and drew attention to their lushness. Cherries, she thought. Or plums. She rubbed the inside of her own lip with her tongue.

He simply stood there, and finally Elena said, “Is there something wrong?”

“No,” he said, and took off his sunglasses. “May I come in?”

A car drove into the parking lot, taking the turn too fast, tires spitting gravel laid down by snow crews last week. Someone laughed, loudly. Elena swore, shaking her head. “It’s a wonder someone doesn’t flip a car there every weekend. The kids in this place!”

“It’s a dangerous curve,” he agreed, looking at the retreating car.

Stepping back to make room, she gestured. “Come in.”

With an air of careful reserve, he stepped into her living room, and Elena was, once again, enveloped by his aura. Everything about him stirred her up. The extravagance of his glossy hair, the long, ropy leanness of his arms and legs, the white skin at the opening of his shirt. His deep brown eyes and skillful tongue and the timbre of his voice. She was trying to maintain her aloofness, and yet, there was that scent of apples and sunlight, the echoing vastness of longing she sensed in him.

Isobel was there, solidly, startlingly, because she did not come when other people were around. She said, “His mother is here with us. Tell him.”

Elena glanced at the table where her celebration was laid out. He stood in the middle of the room, looking at the candles and flowers and food, the photographs and shimmering air of festivity. She said, “El Día de Los Muertos.”

He nodded. “I’ve seen the altars before.”

“You can go closer.”

“I…uh…” He stared at the photos, looking flummoxed. “Is it today? Day of the Dead?”

Elena nodded. The air was the color of tornado clouds around his shoulders, his head, as if he generated a tremendous storm by his presence. She paused for a moment, suddenly afraid.

“My mother was murdered,” he said.

She wanted to do as Isobel instructed, tell him that his mother was there, with them, but emotion suddenly welled up in her and made her want to cry. “I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t think about it very often.” He pointed to a photo. “Who is that?”

She picked it up and put it in his hand. “My cousin Penny.”

Julian swallowed, looked at the photo with something like dread. “Pretty.”

Elena shrugged. “But fat. That was the thing, why she always went with us everywhere. She was fat, so no boys liked her. She hated me.” Looking down at the picture, Elena smiled sadly. “I took it personally, you know. Kids do.” She touched the face, always young. “In the accident, she was torn in half. They couldn’t identify her.”

“Elena, don’t tell me. I’ll use it. Maybe not directly, but in some way or another, it will feed the work.” He held up his hand, palm out, revealing the life line and heart line and white pads of flesh to her. “I could pretend I wasn’t going to, even mean it, but the story calls me anyway.”

She looked at him. Nodded. “It’s like cooking for me, right? If I eat something, I can’t help trying to figure out how to make it.”

A little of the tortured look left the skin around his eyes.

“There are a hundred, two hundred—I don’t know how many—car accidents like this every year, Julian. This one belongs to me.” Elena picked up the picture of her brother. “Albert was fourteen. He always wanted to tag along everywhere. He was flung out of the car, too, like me, but he landed against a tree.” She shook her head. “Died instantly.”

He nodded.

She put the photo back and picked up the next one. “This was my boyfriend, Edwin. We met when I was twelve years old, and stayed together all that time. I was thinking last night, in your kitchen, that if he had lived, my life would be very different.”

“Jesus!” Julian exclaimed, taking the photo. “Juan looks like him quite a bit, doesn’t he?”

She nodded but didn’t say that Julian had his eyes.

“Does it bother you?” he asked.

“No.” She looked back at the picture. “Edwin was more like Ivan in nature, tortured, not very well treated when he was a boy. Juan is as cheerful as the day is long. A good man.”

“How did you meet him?” He still held the photo of Edwin. “What did you love about him?”

“He was smart.” A sense of tension eased out of her neck. “He had hair like licorice, very straight and shiny. He was part Indian and very proud of it, and it showed in his cheekbones and his eyes. His eyes were black as coal.” She paused.
Like yours.

“Go on.”

“We grew up discovering things about each other. He was going to go into an apprenticeship with an electrician out of Santa Fe, building all these fancy houses. He was supposed to start the week after the accident.” Her chest ached faintly. “He and my sister Isobel were on the left side of the car. They were both decapitated.” She thought of the ditch, of Isobel’s hand in hers. Of Edwin cracking jokes in the dark. “They say it takes twelve seconds for your brain to die when your head is cut off. That’s what I can’t think about very much. I hate to think of them having any consciousness of that.”

He blanched, handing back the photo. “Is that Isobel?” he asked, pointing to the picture of Isobel wearing the tiara.

She nodded. “Yep. When I came to live with the family, she was the one who made room for me. She shared her bed. She shared her mother. She was just happy to have a sister so close in age to her. It was like finding my twin. Like we should have known each other from birth.”

“Mischievous,” he said.

“Very.” Elena took the photo. “I laid in the ditch for almost two hours. I thought Isobel was with me. I thought she was holding my hand. So, when I woke up in the hospital, weeks and weeks later, I didn’t believe them that she was dead.”

“Elena, I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

She nodded. “Me too. But I’m alive. I have to believe there’s a reason.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“No,” she said simply, and put the picture back on the altar. A ghostly hand nipped a piece of cake. She wondered if Julian noticed.

But he was stricken and airless, and Elena thought of his mother. “Now you, Julian.” She sat down on the couch and patted the spot beside her. “Tell me about your mother.”

He stood in the middle of the room, looking at her. “What should I say?”

“How old were you when she was murdered?”

He looked as if the light bled from his body, leaving him gray. “Twelve.”

Elena said, “Come sit down, Julian, and tell me about your mother. Then we’ll make something for her and put it on the altar.”

He seemed suddenly to lose all supports in his body, and slumped to sit on the couch, his limbs falling forward, his head with the thickness of black glossy hair tumbling forward around his brow. “I was twelve,” he said again. “She went to the grocery store and never came back. Two men saw her in a parking lot and grabbed her as she headed for her car. She had groceries in the cart, you know. Eggs, milk, flour, apples. Just stuff. Capt’n Crunch.”

Elena folded her hands in her lap. Waited.

“They raped her and killed her, and then dumped her body in a field.” He raised a face wiped clean of expression. “Some boys on bikes found her naked and dead. They were close to my age.” His voice was hushed as he added, “I hated that, so much, that those boys saw her naked. It bothered me for months.”

She thought of his movies, the slasher images. Knives. Broken glass. “How terrible, Julian. I’m so sorry.”

He took her hand and clasped it between both of his, pulled her arm across his lap. “My dad never got over it.”

“Well, how could you, really?”

“I guess. But how does it help to stop living?” He spread her palm open, touched the heart of it with his fingers, brushing and brushing, touching the pads beneath each finger, the little marks and scars and dried-open wounds at the tips of nearly every finger. “Don’t these hurt?” he asked.

“Sometimes.”

He lightly stroked the open spot on her index finger then raised her hand without looking at her, and pressed his mouth to her palm. For a moment, Elena hardly knew how to respond. The wet clasp of his tongue, his lips, jolted right up her arm, blistered through her body.

This.