Good Enough to Eat (9 page)

Strangely, I’m not at all resentful of the store. I don’t blame it, even though I know now that the reason Andrew’s good buddy Jeff told him to keep everything in my name was because he knew that Andrew was sleeping with Charlene, and that if he left me, half ownership of the store could have made him liable for half of the store’s expenses or debts in a divorce settlement. That the only reason he was so supportive of my buying a fixer-upper and spending endless hours on-site stripping floors and restoring the tin ceiling and supervising installation was that it kept me distracted and exhausted, the perfect combo for a guy who was stepping out on his clueless wife. It would have been so easy to place all the blame, at least for my cluelessness, if not for the ruination of my marriage, on this place and the time I invested here. But I’m proud of what I have accomplished, proud that we are here, and hopeful for the future.

“Hey, Skinny, should we get the rest of the food out?” Kai comes over and places a delicate hand on my shoulder.

“You go,” Carey says. “We’ll hang later.”

Kai and I head back into the kitchen, where the platters and trays are set up. Grilled vegetable skewers with a lemon dressing. Beef tenderloin, roasted medium rare, sliced thin, with a grainy mustard sauce. Orzo salad with spinach, red onion, and feta. Dilled cucumbers and pickled carrots. White beans with sage. Saffron risotto with artichokes and chicken. Mini pavlovas and poached pears and poppy-seed cookies.

“It’s a great party, Mellie Mel,” Kai says, sprinkling chopped parsley on anything that he can reach.

“I really couldn’t have done any of this without you, Kai, you know that. I have no words to properly thank you.”

“I’ll tell you a secret, Melanie. You saved my life. I owe you, not the other way around. I was a silly little twink at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago, was only there because I couldn’t get into a decent college, and at least had some skills from hanging out at my grandmother’s restaurant as a kid. And then my folks disowned me when I came out first quarter. I was living with Phil, who hadn’t anticipated that the boy toy he picked up at Sidetrack would show up with a suitcase two months into the relationship. I knew I didn’t just want to be a little housewife. I was so scared and defensive, but you looked at me like I was something, like I was a force to be reckoned with, and you made me see that part of myself. You were so good that you made me want to be even better than you so that you would still look at me like that. When we graduated, I was stuck. Phil and I were so great, and had fallen into a nice routine that neither of us wanted to let go of, but the only places that had the fine dining sensibility I like all wanted someone full-time, a million hours a week and home at two in the morning. This job is everything I want, and the fact that I get to do it with one of my best friends is a daily gift. Don’t ever forget that.”

The tears swim in my eyes as I look at this young man, young enough almost to be my son, and I see the respect and love in his face.

“Don’t streak your mascara!” he yelps, throwing me a side towel.

“I love you, Kai. Always.”

“I love you too, Ittie Bittie. Let’s feed the people.”

We take the platters out to the crowd, setting up the buffet, milling around, refilling glasses and accepting compliments and well wishes. People wander in and out, the platters slowly emptying, the glasses filling the wash sink. Before I know it, most of the guests have straggled out, and I am sitting with Kai, Phil, Delia, and Nadia, surrounded by the detritus of a good party.

Kai goes into the back and gets a bottle of Krug he and Phil brought, and pops it open. He fills our glasses.

“A great party!” Phil says.

“A great year!” Kai adds.

“Cheers to that,” Delia pipes in.

“To new friends,” Nadia offers.

“To lots of life in our living.” I raise my glass and clink around the table. We all drink, savoring the light sparkle on our tongues, and I completely understand what that famous monk said upon drinking his first-ever glass of champagne, “I’m drinking stars!”

“Nadia, will you escort our fearless leader home?” Kai says. “Our gift to you, we are cleaning up!”

“No way.” I shake my head. “This place is a wreck, I can’t let you do that!”

Phil laughs, running a hand through his short dark hair. “Way!” he says. “You go home and relax, and let the three of us take care of it. We want to. Besides, with this whirling dervish at home wreaking havoc in the kitchen, I’ve become a really good dishwasher.”

I was so prepared to hate Phil, way back when. I was so protective of Kai, and wondered what this man eleven years older than Kai was thinking, and worried that he was using my young friend. When Kai came rolling into knife skills class five minutes late, clearly still wearing the clothes he had been wearing the day before, and regaled me with the tale of the handsome man who had wooed him with frothy frozen drinks and hearty, if somewhat off-key, renditions of show tunes, I laughed at the easy fun of his hookup. But a few short weeks later, when Kai came out to his family and was summarily dumped on the street and chose to land on Phil’s doorstep, I was worried. A one-night stand, no big deal if everyone is safe and in it for fun. A couple months of fun, also no big deal. But a boy of twenty, just out of his parents’ house for the first time, adrift without family, is easy prey for an older Svengali type, especially a Svengali with money. And then what happens if things go south? I was fiercely protective, tried to get Kai to come stay with me and Andrew, cautioned him against being overly reliant, emotionally and financially.

And then I met Phil.

Phil is so kind and wonderful, and so clearly in love with Kai, not in a desperate or possessive way, but loving him with an amazing openness. He credits Kai with bringing depth and joy into a life that was already full and rich. He has never tried to change Kai, but revels in who his lover is; the manic energy, quirky voices, club fashion, and frenetic activity level. Despite the age difference and financial discrepancy, they feel to me at all times like equal partners, perfectly balanced, and at ease in each other’s love. He is a dear man, and I can see that he and Kai and Delia have been planning this for a while. So, even though it goes against every control-freak cell in my body, I acquiesce.

“You guys are the best. Thank you so much for everything.”

“C’mon, roomie. Let’s go home!” Nadia says, handing me my coat and purse.

“Get out of here, gal, or it will be time to come back and open up in the morning already!” Delia swats my butt. I hug her, and Kai and Phil, and Nadia and I head out to my car.

“That was so amazing, Melanie, really. All those great people. Are you happy?”

“Yeah. It’s kind of overwhelming, you know? So much has happened in this year, good and bad and great and awful, I’m just trying to get my head around it all. Thank you, for your help these past few weeks. I know it has been crazy.”

“It’s the best job I’ve ever had,” she says, playing with a pink strand of hair. “And the best roommate too!”

I laugh. “Well, that is a dubious honor considering your history, but I’ll take it.”

She laughs, and we sit in companionable silence on the short drive home. I park the car, and we head into the building, stopping to get the mail. Bills, junk mail, the ubiquitous 20 percent off coupon from Bed Bath & Beyond, which never fails to excite me, despite the fact that one seems to arrive every other day. And something from the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Jewish United Fund, forwarded from my old address. Nadia heads straight for her room, always desperate to check her e-mail the second she gets home. I drop my bag on the table and open the JUF letter.

Holy shit. Over two grand for one weekend. It would be so great to have a little bit of a cushion back since the great condo assessment debacle. Twenty-five hundred dollars would pay off a quarter of the loan I took from the association, meaning I could pay that off in just under eight months instead of a year, and nearly halve the amount of interest I would have to pay on what I borrowed. But it would also mean four days away from the store. I haven’t missed a single day since we opened, and can’t imagine what it would be like to be gone, or how I would manage it. But I also haven’t had a vacation since I started culinary school, and the idea of a few days in D.C., especially on someone else’s dime, is enormously tempting.

“Whassup? You look funny,” Nadia says, floating back into the living room, having changed into a pair of shorts made out of vintage men’s pajamas and a T-shirt with a picture of Cookie Monster on the front. Her calico hair is pulled up in a messy bun, and she looks about sixteen.

I hand her the letter. She reads carefully, chewing the inside of her lip and swaying from foot to foot. Then her face breaks out into a grin, her dancing eyebrows jumping straight into the air.

“That is AWESOME!!! Holy fuck-balls, that is like ridonculous money! You must be so psyched.” She throws her wiry arms around my neck, and hops up and down. Then she stops. “Why are you not whooping? This is hugetastic. You should be whooping! Whoop, my elderly roomie, whoop!!!” She grabs my hands and starts to swing me around.

I have no idea what to do with this girl, but her energy is infectious, and before I can even think that I look completely stupid, or that it is totally unbecoming of a woman my age, I start, indeed, to whoop.

 

 

It’s a miracle I made the plane. All my travel instincts seem to have left me, so by the time I finished giving Kai and Delia all the instructions for the store, and Nadia every possible piece of information about the condo, Wilbur had been waiting for me for nearly a half an hour.

“Melanie, if we don’t get a move on, you’re going to miss this flight. I can’t fly over the traffic you know!” Wilbur has been taking me to and from the airport for more than twenty years. He was recommended to my mom by a friend, and he used to come pick me up at the airport when I came home from college. When I moved back, Andrew and I would hire him for both business travel and vacations. He is ageless, except for the white that has infiltrated his tight curls, has a voice made for radio, and an amazing laugh. He’s always either just returned from Vegas, or planning his next visit, and nothing makes you feel more home after a long trip than seeing his smiling face as the town car pulls up.