The Cookbook Club

by Beth Harbison

  “Tell me he’s not really another Harvey Weinstein.”

  “Um. Well, no.”

  Margo thought of herself, how she would look to be married to someone who was a Weinstein type.

  “I can’t say if it’s worse or better, at least for your emotions.”

  “Great. Hold on one sec.” She took a knife to the Brie Trista had set out and took a massive bite before topping off her wine. Through cheese, “Go on.”

  “So he talked to me a lot. And the meaner I was, the more he liked me.”

  Margo’s gut lurched. Please, no . . . She took a gulp of wine. “Mm-hmm.”

  “And I couldn’t shake him. One time I told him he was a desperate sycophant and he sort of . . .” Trista looked embarrassed and disgusted. She took a sip of wine too. Then another. “Then he sort of, like, bit . . . his . . . lip?”

  “I’m—I’m sorry, like, how?”

  Trista sighed. “Like it was a sexual thing. I immediately freaked and asked him what was wrong with him, and I said I thought he was disgusting, and that he should be put away. I’m not pretending my insults were on point, but I was in full gross-out mode.”

  Margo felt seriously ill.

  “I finally just escaped the situation, and only later, when I was over the initial shock, did I start to put it together. Everyone who had complained about him had never quite known how to complain. And these are smart people. People who know the law inside and out. And couldn’t quite figure out what was so weird. But so many of the people who complained had said something along the lines of being shocked they didn’t get fired because they were so short with him, or they snapped at him.”

  “And . . . so, you . . .”

  “I guess the reason it escalated with me was that I was done with that fucking place as it was, he was just the last straw. So I said whatever I wanted, no holds barred. They couldn’t scare me. And I guess it sort of, like, got him off.”

  “So, hang on.”

  “Hanging. Sorry. I hate this. I’m sorry.” Trista had more wine.

  Margo had more wine. “So you’re saying he’s been, like, hitting on people via having them insult him? And by the way, I noticed you didn’t just say girls or women, so . . .”

  “I . . . did not.”

  “So.”

  “So, anyone. The part that pissed me off the most was that he made interviews weird. I saw it on Glassdoor, but again, no one could quite say what was so weird.”

  Margo made a quick mental note to find a way to talk herself out of looking that up.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Trista. “I only put it together because I met someone who I liked, I realized he had filled my old job, and wondered why Calvin hadn’t. And so, then . . . Margo, he hasn’t worked there in almost a year.”

  Margo almost spat out her wine. “O . . . kay, what now?”

  Trista shrugged. “We have— They have a location in San Francisco, but he’s definitely not working there. He got fired.”

  “I can’t believe I don’t know that.”

  “I mean, when you’re married you sort of take certain things as the truth and never even think to look into them. I imagine.”

  Margo’s gaping mouth would not close. “Huh.”

  “Huh. Yeah. Hell. I hate to tell you.”

  Margo made a sound even she could not identify, and then let her wineglass make harsh contact with the counter before she put her arms and head down on the counter. Her body started to convulse, almost, and when she sat back up to take a breath, barely conscious of Trista’s hand on her shoulder, she realized she was laughing.

  Cracking up.

  Losing it.

  Dying laughing.

  “Margo, are you . . .”

  She could barely catch her breath. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Holy. I cannot.”

  Her misery had shattered into a million pieces and had attached to her hysterical giggles. The parasites cascaded out of her at machine-gun speed.

  When she finally got it together, she lay a hand on Trista’s.

  “So you’re basically telling me I’ve spent ten years with a man who made himself the worst man on the planet only to elicit some . . . fetishy response from me?”

  “I—”

  “No, no—and the reason I didn’t, and I never, ever lost it, was because his parents yelled at him his whole life! And I made such a conscious effort not to—”

  Another eruption of laughter. Margo took another piece of Brie and smeared it across the golden surface of a crostini.

  “Wow, that’s a messed-up cycle, right there!” she guffawed. She looked at Trista, who looked stunned, a frozen smile on her face. “Oh, Trista, it’s okay to laugh. I was never going to win this one.”

  The two of them laughed and laughed until Margo finally cried before laughing again, and another bottle of wine was opened, and the decision to make cake was made.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Max

  Max thought he’d been through it all, felt it all, in his life—big highs, deep lows, and everything in between. But as he was oiling the surprisingly ornate woodwork on the stairwell, finally down to the finishing work, he realized he’d never quite felt the quiet satisfaction of working on a simple task like this. This had to be what meditation felt like for those who were able to sit through that stuff without falling asleep or peeking around.

  As he went along and watched the before turn to after, the grungy blackened lines turning to soft, burnished cherrywood with layers of life stacked in like tiger stripes, he felt a peace like he’d never felt before. Like the years of wood he was cleaning, the silence around him seemed to layer itself down, from the most recent dings and traumas back to the original structure that built him.

  The wood was easier, of course.

  But Max wasn’t a particularly complicated guy. He wasn’t that moody, he wasn’t severely damaged by childhood trauma or neglectful parents. His childhood had been fine. Almost everyone he knew would say the same about theirs. But when it had come to choosing a responsible vocation and starting to plan his retirement savings at eighteen, as his father had suggested, Max had resisted. He didn’t want a nine-to-five job. He didn’t want to have to buy the store brand instead of Kraft.

  Majoring in theater had been a no-brainer, once it was time to enter “thirteenth grade.” To those who said he was unreasonably lucky, he had to give a nod. It had come pretty easily to him. Opportunities had fallen like autumn leaves in his path.

  Now, though—now his perspective was changing. Growing, you might say. He knew he was lucky to have enough money to comfortably cover all his life expenses, but he was also smart enough to know that life liked to change itself at any given moment and the things that were most important were not the things that gave ego gratification or allowed him to buy a shiny new car whenever he wanted. Stuff was fleeting.

  Which made his time here at the farm that much more treasured. Everything about it was permanent, even if it was showing its age. In fact, the aging itself was beautiful. Comfortable. Yeah, the snakeskins over the windowsills were right out of a horror movie, but they weren’t permanent. They didn’t affect the good bones.

  In short, he was in a place that was a diamond in the rough, almost in the most literal sense, and this was a place he could see polishing and making into a perfect life for himself.

  And, sure, it could stop there. He wasn’t a kid who needed someone to keep him company.

  But, damn, he loved when Margo was there with him.

  He loved it because he loved being with her and he loved it because he knew she loved being there. He’d gone through Instagram and Facebook now, seen her pictures over the years, her gardening, her harvests, her small attempts at making the place beautiful while she was trying to maintain a McMansion for a lifestyle aesthetic her husband preferred.

  But the Margo he’d known—and he thought he knew her well—was the kind of girl who’d love to wipe away the dust, bring in a pizza, and play cards at the old barnwood
table. The Margo he knew would crank Lana Del Rey and ballet around the place, sweeping away cobwebs with every arc of her arm.

  The Margo he knew didn’t want to sell this place.

  And he didn’t want her to either, unless it was to him. That was what he really wanted. But if she wasn’t willing to do that, he was still fine with making it the place he knew she’d always longed for it to be.

  What he couldn’t see was them not being there together.

  But when the phone rang and he saw her name, he felt like a damn idiot kid with a crush who barely knew how to talk to her.

  Act, man, act! “Hey, Margo, what’s up?”

  “Hi, I just made too much chicken salad and thought maybe you could use a sandwich. It’s not quite the same as bringing steak and lobster, which you’re probably used to, but it’s what I’ve got. Well. And some leftover cake . . .”

  “I love chicken salad.” I love you. I love you for offering chicken salad. “Yes! Please! I’ve got some Spiced Sam Adams that should go perfectly with it. And yeah, let us eat cake.”

  She laughed. “Sounds right. So see you in an hour or so?”

  “Great!” He’d have to shower, he smelled like old wood grunge and oil soap. “See you then.”

  Half an hour later, he felt like an idiot because he’d showered and spent too much time picking a lumberjack-y red flannel shirt, and felt so nervous he pounded four beers and was kind of feeling it by the time she got there.

  “Wow, it looks great in here!” she said as she came in with a bowl covered with plastic wrap and a box of Costco croissants perched on top. “How did you do all of this so fast?”

  He laughed. “When I looked closer at the floors, I realized it was good wood, so I just went to the Rent-A-Center and got the stuff to sand it down. Pretty easy, since there wasn’t a lot of stuff in here that needed to be moved or covered up. It was a lot faster than putting flooring down.”

  She looked at him and shook her head. “This is so far below your pay grade. But you did an incredible job. Maybe too good. How can I possibly make this worth it for you?”

  “You have me staying here for free. That’s worth it to me.”

  She set the food down on the counter. “But the increase in the value of the house, based on this alone, is more than the cost of rent could ever be.”

  He looked at her. It was probably true. He didn’t care about that. “I want this for you.”

  “What?”

  “You seem to have spent a lot of time here, cultivating a garden, cultivating an idea, an aesthetic. Maybe I’m wrong, but it feels like you love it here but”—he splayed his arms—“it’s overwhelming for one person.”

  She looked thoughtful. “I couldn’t allocate any money to it because . . . you know. Calvin didn’t want to, and I wasn’t making enough to justify it. My parents had a joint checking account and trust. My husband and I did not.”

  Max shrugged. “Maybe for the best in this case. If you’d made it look like we’re going to make it look, he never would have let you have it in the settlement.”

  She smiled. Small at first, but it grew. “I’m not sure anyone has ever we’d me like that. Backed me up like you do.”

  “I’ve never wanted so much for someone else.” He frowned and shook his head, hoping she wouldn’t see the heat creeping into his cheeks. “I feel stupid saying that, but it’s true, you were always so true. Always. You didn’t deserve these jerks. You never deserved to be treated the way you were.”

  Something seemed to flit across her face, some sort of private amusement.

  Her eyes gleamed then, suddenly, and she swiped at them with the back of her hand. “Stop, you’re going to make me feel sorry for myself and that’s such an ugly look.”

  He took a step toward her. Finally. After all these years, he took a step toward her, into her space. “You have no ugly looks.”

  She looked up at him and sniffed. “I hate to break it to you, but this”—she gestured at her face—“is real.” She gave a slight laugh.

  He did not. He reached out and cupped her face in his hands, brushing away her tears with his thumbs. “This,” he emphasized, “is beautiful.”

  And then he kissed her.

  Finally, he kissed her.

  And she kissed him right back.

  It wasn’t as if he’d imagined this moment a million times. Sure, back in the day, he’d thought of it. Once or twice. Hoped for it. Admittedly. Wanted it. But he couldn’t have imagined, even if he’d tried, just how right this would feel. Just what a relief it would be to hold her close. The stresses of work, the pressure to constantly be something he wasn’t, all fell away and left him without doubt about where he belonged.

  This was home. There was no other way to say it.

  It felt like home.

  “Max,” she murmured against his cheek. “It’s been so long. I’ve wanted this for so long.”

  “No . . .”

  “Yes.” She drew back, suddenly looking embarrassed. “You mean no you don’t?”

  He kissed her again. “I mean you pushed me away.”

  “When?”

  He tightened his arms around her and she melted against him, running her nails gently up his back. “It doesn’t matter. Ages ago. When you went off with JB.” It was hot as hell in this kitchen.

  She drew back again with a laugh. “But you wanted me to go off with JB. Or, I suppose, anyone but you.”

  He looked into her eyes and couldn’t help but give a laugh. “That’s . . . incorrect.”

  She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “But—”

  “I was so stupidly hurt when you took up with him. But I didn’t have the nerve to tell you so. Not before or during. There wasn’t an after while I was still around.”

  She closed her eyes and leaned into him. “I . . . I tried to tell you how I felt about you. I told you there was someone I was into but I think you knew I meant you and you shoved me right at JB.” She shook her head against him. “Of course, it was my own damn fault I went.”

  “I definitely didn’t tell you to get with that clown.” He felt like there was steam rising off him like smoke, despite the chill outside.

  “You did. Though I can’t swear I was all that clear in trying to tell you it was you I wanted. I just . . . thought you’d figure it out.”

  He remembered then. The conversation where he was so sure she was asking his advice on getting the attention of a rock-headed jock. He’d thought he was doing her the favor she wanted when he’d nudged her to go take her chances.

  Could she really have been talking about him?

  He kissed the top of her head and felt her arms tighten around him. “If you’re talking about the conversation I think you’re talking about, you are the absolute worst hinter ever.”

  She looked up and pressed her lips to his for a moment before smiling and saying, “That sounds consistent.”

  “Well, this sucks.” He laughed.

  She did too. “But who knows what would have happened if we’d gotten together back then? You might have gotten derailed just long enough to not be in whatever magical place at whatever magical time that led you to everything you have. Your career, your fame, your car . . . everything you value. To say nothing of how much pleasure you’ve brought to so many people.”

  “It would have been better with you there.”

  “But then I wouldn’t have . . . Kenneth.”

  He paused. “Kenneth?”

  “My divorce attorney.” She kissed him again, and they sank into the kind of heated, urgent fumbling that had been simmering for ten years. Dormant, but never gone.

  Minutes passed. Clasped in an almost desperate embrace, awkwardly pulling at their shirts.

  “It’s cold in here,” she said.

  “My landlord hasn’t had the furnace serviced.”

  “You probably have a case for inhumane conditions.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not like I couldn’t go sit in front of the firepl
ace.”

  A light came into her eyes. “Does it work?”

  He smiled. “It does now.” He kissed her again, and she responded with even more heat than before.

  “Light a fire,” she said after a moment.

  “I hoped I just did.”

  “You’re right.”

  He winked at her and led her to the front room. In a house with four ancient fireplaces, the stone fireplace in the living room was magnificent, clean, and—now with the flip of a switch—had a roaring fire dancing within.

  She laughed. “You hooked that up yourself?”

  He nodded. “I have a lot of surprises for you.”

  She smiled and put her arms around him. “Six months ago, I wouldn’t have believed this would be the best year of my life.”

  He took her hand in his. “And this year is almost over. Wait ’til you see what I have in store for you next year.”

  * * *

  MEETING 7—DECEMBER

  The Joy of Cooking

  CLASSIC GLAZED HAM—Best I’ve had, will advertise as JOC original.

  POPOVERS—Why don’t I make these all the time? Delicious! Easy! Gorgeous! Perfect vehicle for honey butter.

  RIB EYE STEAK—Expensive but everyone’s favorite; make house béarnaise for the side, and baked potato.

  Aja looks like she’s about to pop—I can’t imagine being that tiny and that big at the same time. How does she sleep? Can’t imagine being pregnant.

  Margo has a boyfriend. Big secret??

  * * *

  January

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Aja

  As fate would have it, Aja was telling Michael about the baby when she went into labor. The contractions came on strong and fast, right from the beginning, but she insisted he sign the custody agreement before she would leave and go to the hospital. Perhaps it was unfair, but she knew she’d be sorry later if she didn’t.

  Fortunately, Margo and Trista were waiting right outside in the car, and Margo still had her notary commission, and stamp, from working for a Realtor three years ago, so as soon as Aja texted them to come in and witness the signing of the document, they were able to both sign and notarize it.