The Secret Ingredient

by Stewart Lewis

  CHAPTER 11

  Now that I’m a working girl, the laundry has piled up, but I have some time before I have to go to FOOD to make my Saturday special. I can barely lift the bag on my way down our street. Two cars slow and offer me a ride. The drivers are both older guys, so I immediately decline, wishing I’d asked Lola to pick me up at my house when we spoke last night, rather than meet me at the Laundromat.

  Lola is already there when I arrive and helps me sort the colors from the whites. She notices that I’m still wearing my necklace.

  “Are you going to see him again?” she asks coyly.

  “Yes.” I smile sheepishly. “He called me this morning to say he’s back from Oregon. We’re going out tomorrow.”

  “Well, well, wasting no time, I see. You’re glowing, by the way.”

  First Jeremy, now her. Why is everyone saying that?

  “Well, I know it’s been a year and I hardly know him, but I do feel a connection with Theo.”

  “That’s so great, Livie.”

  Lola points to a pair of Enrique’s tightie-whities and says, “Aren’t these a bit boyish?”

  “That’s Enrique for you.”

  I show her a pair of Bell’s boxers, and she says, “Now, those are classy.”

  I realize she’s just described my dads by their underwear. As we get the loads into the washers, I imagine Rose doing laundry for Kurt. I like having Rose all to myself, but I can’t hold her world in any longer. I decide to tell Lola everything. I tell her about Rose’s book, and the note about Matthew. Then I tell her about seeing Julie Andrews on the TV in the gallery, and the key, how it all seems like some sort of sign, or a bunch of little signs leading to something bigger.

  “Wow! This psychic woman must have been the real thing.”

  “It’s weird, Hank led me to the bookstore. I’ve never even taken him on that route before. I also was forced to cross the street on the gallery side because the sidewalk was closed. And I found the key, like, twenty minutes after she told me there would be a sign.”

  “What do you think it all means?”

  “Not sure, but I do know one thing. I want to find my mother. And I want you to help me.”

  “Of course, Livie. But come, let’s go next door, this place stinks.”

  I look around. There’s just a goth-looking girl and an old lady folding her sheets. “Okay.”

  As we walk outside I hear this strange sound, like a dying music box. I look across the street and see the ice cream truck.

  “Oh my God, it’s Jeremy!”

  “No. Don’t tell me.…”

  Lola is skeptical but follows me as I jaywalk the boulevard. There are four kids crouched around and Jeremy is handing them treats. He has a funny hat on and is oversmiling like a maniac.

  After the kids leave, he sees me and yells, “Ol! Check it!”

  I look inside the truck. It’s pretty barren save for an old silver cooler. He hands me and Lola each an ice cream sandwich, and Lola hands him a five-dollar bill, saying, “Keep the change, babe.”

  “I only have ice cream sandwiches and MoonPies, but ladies, they are moving fast. I’ve sold a hundred in three hours!”

  Lola and I look at each other.

  “I know what you’re thinking. I applied for a license. It takes six weeks. So right now I’m on the down-low.”

  “On Sunset and Western?” I ask.

  “You’re right. I am headed over to Los Feliz. Apparently it’s untapped territory.”

  I allow myself a smile. As crazy as he is, Jeremy does make stuff happen. The remixed jingle stops and starts again. He looks around for any more potential customers, then starts to shut the side counter.

  “Well, ladies, it’s been real. I’ve got to go spread some more ice cream love.”

  After he pulls away, Lola and I sit on a bench and eat our ice cream sandwiches.

  “I hope there’s not, like, razor blades in these or something,” Lola says.

  “No, just cyanide,” I reply.

  We cross the street and switch the laundry to the dryers. The goth girl is painting her fingernails black and the old lady is talking to herself. While the clothes dry we walk to the farmers’ market and I try to figure out what to buy for my Saturday-night special. The yellow tomatoes look so amazing I decide on bruschetta. I pick up some elephant garlic, several loaves of french bread, and a bunch of fresh basil.

  We head back to the Laundromat, and Lola helps me fold the laundry and bring it back to my house. When we get there I see a postcard stuck in the screen door. It’s a black-and-white picture of a street in Paris. I turn it over.

  Liv the Dream

  —Theo

  Lola looks over my shoulder and gasps. “So romantic!”

  “I guess so,” I say, but I’m biting my lip to hold back an enormous grin.

  After I put the laundry away and Lola leaves, I find myself sitting quietly in the living room, staring at the postcard, almost believing in things previously unimaginable. I’m going to see Theo again tomorrow. And then maybe I’ll see what I can find out at the bank.

  FOOD is pretty empty when I get there, just a few prep chefs and Bell, who’s on his knees scrubbing the baseboards. Not a good sign. He stands up and wipes his brow.

  “What are you making tonight?”

  I hold up the yellow tomatoes. “Bruschetta.”

  He smiles, a real Bell smile, and for a moment I look around the restaurant, the space that contains so many memories for all of us, and try not to think about how it all could be taken away.

  “Ollie, I have some news!” Bell says excitedly. “Enrique is coming in with some movie executives. He may have caught a break! A consulting gig for a film. Can you believe it?”

  “Really? That’s huge. How did that happen?”

  “Well, when he took off”—there’s only a slight edge to Bell’s voice when he says this—“apparently he went sailing with a client, and they had lunch with a studio head, and he worked his magic.”

  “That’s so great, Dad!”

  I give Bell a hopeful smile, then let him get back to scrubbing—not a bad sign, after all—and go to set up my ingredients and cooking utensils. I begin by chopping the tomatoes super small and marinating them in fresh lemon juice. The key to bruschetta is to rub the bread with garlic. It’s a subtle touch that makes all the difference. I let myself relax as my fingers peel the silky cloves. I wonder if Enrique is trying to do his part too. Without every flavor of our family working together, there is no dish.

  There’s a window from the kitchen that looks into the main dining room. I can see some of the waiters setting up, and toward the front door Bell is talking to two guys in suits. I assume they’re from the bank. They hand Bell a piece of paper, and he smiles at them and shakes their hands. Even in the direst of circumstances, Bell is a gracious person. Like Rose. I bet after she lost the baby, she made Kurt dinners that were laced with kindness and sprinkled with hope.

  The dinner rush happens late, but we are all thankful for the business. Enrique comes in with people from New Line Cinema, and toward the end of their meal, he waves me over. The men are middle-aged and have that moneyed, powerful look. Enrique introduces them to me, and I realize the second one, Len, is the head of the studio—I’ve called his office for Janice and spoken to his secretary many times. He’s wearing diamond cuff links and glasses that are so thin they’re almost invisible. He gives me a smile that seems sincere, and I try to return it.

  “Len here is in love with your bruschetta,” Enrique says, beaming proudly. I hope this is all for real for Enrique, and not a onetime thing like last time.

  “It’s nothing,” I say, trying to play it down.

  “Not only beautiful and a good cook,” Len says, “but humble, too. You’re batting a thousand.”

  “Len is from Tuscany, and he claims it’s better than his mother’s,” Enrique says.

  “Well, I’m sure your mother can make a killer meatball,” I say, not sure what I’m
even talking about.

  “In fact, that’s her specialty. Perhaps you two can exchange recipes sometime.”

  “Yeah, I get to Tuscany a lot.”

  The whole table laughs.

  “Well, it was great to meet you,” I say. “Try the chocolate torte if you’re not too full.”

  As I walk away, I realize Bell is within earshot and heard my little spiel.

  “Since when are you a comedian?” he whispers to me as we head toward the kitchen.

  “Well, he’s the head of New Line. And we need all the help we can get.”

  He stops and turns to me, looking right into my eyes.

  “Ollie, you are turning into quite a woman, you know that?”

  I can feel myself blush a little. “Well, I learned from the best.”

  He opens the door to the kitchen, and as we go in, the sous chef yells, “Fire four more bruschetta!”

  Bell turns and heads back toward his office, but not before I hear him whisper, “That’s my girl.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Theo takes me to this place where you can paint your own dishware. It’s really cute. He must have put some real thought into where our date should be. He chooses a giant bowl, and I opt for a mug. We sit down at a large circular table where there are two young girls across from us. The first thing I do, of course, is spill the red paint. The girls giggle, and a large woman in a shapeless dress comes over to help me clean it up and says, “Don’t worry, it happens all the time.”

  “Can’t take her anywhere,” Theo says, winking at me. Then he gets this adorable, embarrassed look on his face. He spills a little of his blue paint on purpose, and the last bit of hurt and anger that I’ve been holding on to this past year evaporates.

  “I’m not a good painter,” I say.

  “Don’t worry. I drew a lobster once in fifth grade and everyone thought it was a dog.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t ask. But I’m making this for you, so you’re just gonna have to live with it.”

  Theo reaches for the yellow paint, and his hand brushes my arm. The touch feels electric.

  “So, is this a weird date or what?” he asks.

  “No, it’s great.”

  “I mean, I could have taken you to, like, a movie or something, but I guess I’m sick of doing the same old things over and over, you know?”

  “I do. It’s like these girls in my school. They go to the same mall every Friday and buy the same trendy bags and put on too much makeup. You’d think they’d get tired of it—doing the same things, being the same people.”

  “Yeah, there are kids at my school, guys who do that too. Like having the same pair of Nikes that everyone else has makes you the coolest kid in school. Please. Those people, you know, I hang out with them, but I always feel like there’s something missing.”

  “Yes!” I say a little too enthusiastically.

  “That’s one of the things I like about you. Your clothes, your style … you’re different in a good way, if that makes sense.”

  I shrug. “It just seems like such a waste of time to always try to be someone I’m not. Like trying to be some perfect version of the American teenager.”

  “No one’s perfect. And neither is this bowl, I’m afraid.” Theo shows me some paint dripping where he put on too much.

  I think about imperfections, and how we’re all basically made up of them. But sometimes on the right day, or in the right light, things can feel perfect. Like now.

  My mug for Bell looks a little strange, but I’m sure he’ll like it. He always says homemade presents are the best.

  Even with the drips, Theo’s bowl for me turns out really pretty, with washes of blue and yellow.

  “It’s beautiful,” I tell him. “You work better as an abstract artist.”

  He laughs. “Yeah. Well, the next time you’re whipping something up in the kitchen, you can think of me.” He gives me a kiss, quick but soft.

  “I don’t think that will be a problem, bowl or no bowl,” I say, grinning.

  We take our masterpieces to the diner across the street, and the waitress almost pours coffee in my mug. Theo orders a grilled cheese and I get the chicken caesar. I realize halfway through that I probably shouldn’t be eating garlic. Thankfully, I remember I have Altoids in my bag.

  “This cheese is good, but strange. Want to try it and tell me what it is? I have no idea,” Theo says, holding out half of his sandwich. I take a bite, and before I even swallow I know the answer.

  “Gouda,” I say.

  He waves the waitress down and confirms it.

  “That’s awesome,” he says. “You’re like a food psychic.”

  “No, I just know my cheese.”

  “You know your food. And I can’t wait to taste more of it. I’m supposed to eat a ton of carbs the nights before I train. Will you cook for me sometime?”

  I blush a little. Pasta is kind of boring to make, but I’ll do it every night if it’s for Theo.

  “Sure,” I say, trying not to seem too excited.

  Theo pays the check while I’m in the bathroom and opens the door for me when we leave. Then, even though it’s way out of the way for him, he walks me all the way home.

  When we get to my door, he kisses me again and says, “Liv, this has been so cool.”

  “Yes, it has. And thanks again for the bowl.”

  “It was made with … care.”

  I thought he was going to say love, almost saw his mouth forming the word, but then he just smiles, and so do I, and he turns to walk back down the hill. I watch him for a minute, taking deep breaths to try to calm my rapidly beating heart.

  When I walk into the kitchen, I see Davida, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  “Hank,” she says, and I can tell it’s something really bad.

  “What?”

  She takes in a few quick breaths in succession, as if she’s catching them.

  “In his sleep, last night. I guess it’s sort of like a brain aneurysm.”

  A hundred thoughts crowd my brain. Who will she sing to? Did he know he was going to die? One of the last things he did in life was lead me into that bookstore.…

  “Oh, Chef, he was my one and only.”

  I have been walking Hank for almost five years, since he was just a puppy. It’s so hard to imagine him gone.

  I sit down next to her, and the two of us cry silently.

  After a minute, I get up and pour us each a glass of water. Davida clears her throat and says, “It’s strange. When I found him, he was smiling.”

  “So at least it was peaceful, right?”

  Davida gulps the water and stands up. “I’m going back to North Carolina for a while. It’s time I visited my folks anyway, before they die on me too.”

  We both laugh a little, because sometimes it’s the only way to see through the cloud of such a tragedy. Hank was the sweetest dog I’ve ever known. I don’t tell her that, but I do give her a long hug and three slices of the banana bread I made yesterday.

  The next morning, Lola drives me to work. Immediately, she knows something is wrong with me, so I tell her about Hank dying, and something releases inside my chest, and I start to sob. It makes me feel like a total idiot. When I finally calm down, Lola says, “When I was seven, my hamster died and I didn’t go to school for a week.”

  I don’t tell her that it’s hard to compare a hamster to a dog, partly because of the look on her face—like she’s still mourning the loss—and partly because someone like Rose, who lost a child, might say the same thing to me about a dog. Maybe a pet and a person are one and the same, and it’s really about how much love you have for the creature that suddenly leaves you for good.

  Before I go to the casting office, I linger a little on the twelfth floor and think about finding the psychic again, but I don’t. After what she said during our last encounter, I don’t think I’d be able to find her anyway. When I get to my desk, I sit down and throw my bag on the floor. I notice the spine of the cookbook
spilling out. I turn to the inside cover and look at Rose’s signature again. I picture her in a swirly, bright dress, over which she wears an apron passed down from her grandmother. Her face has that open, healthy look that somewhat homely young wives had in the sixties. Maybe it was easy for her, though, having everything laid out at such a young age. Until, of course, Matthew slipped through her fingers. But I also see her as a walking contradiction. Maybe from the outside you couldn’t see all the way in to where the edge lived: a daring, wild soul that sometimes showed its color. I flip to another page and there’s a cute drawing of a boy sitting against a small tree. The heading reads CALMING CUCUMBER SOUP.

  In the margin, there’s a note:

  4/19/68

  Made this for Kurt. He leaves tomorrow.

  There is no food in the world that could calm the storm inside me. When I married him, I could never have imagined him leaving me, especially not for a war.

  Wow. Kurt went to war? I tell myself to breathe, that these people and their troubles have nothing to do with me, they are merely remnants in a book. Yet I can’t believe this. What else can happen to this girl?

  When I dropped Hank off after that walk, I never would have imagined that the end was so close. Hank was a wonderful dog. He had deep brown fur and an energetic gait. Everyone loved him, including me. I have never really had to deal with loss, besides not having a mother, but she was never there to begin with, and you can’t lose something that was never there. But it’s almost worse, never knowing.

  Why did Kurt have to go? For how long? Couldn’t he have just moved to Canada or something to avoid the draft?

  Below Rose’s note, I write:

  Hope he came back.

  I do my duties on autopilot, and Janice is really busy and hardly notices me. When Lola picks me up, I fill her in on my date with Theo and my whole Rose fantasy, and how I think it’s somehow connected to me finding my mother, and my hunch that there’s a bigger reason Theo suddenly reappeared. I tingle just mentioning his name, and I’m surprised I have room to think about anything else after our date. Even though she loves to talk, Lola has an inherent talent for listening.