The Secret Ingredient

by Stewart Lewis

  Lola is a morning person and is already awake when I sit up. She comes out of the bathroom wearing a hotel robe, putting moisturizer on her face.

  “This is the day,” I tell her. “I’m going to meet her for real.”

  “Bravo, Livie. You want me to come?”

  I look into the mirror and try to see Jane looking back. I will myself to have the courage that Rose had.

  “No, thanks.”

  “You fine walking there?”

  “Yes, it’s only like a mile, if that.”

  Lola sprays her hair with some product that makes it shine and says, “Okay, Livie, then I’m off for some shopping. It’s going to be fine, either way. If she’s nice, then great, but if not, at least you found out. And let us not forget that you have two awesome dads. Nothing is going to change that.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Call my cell when you’re back at the hotel and I’ll come meet you. Good luck, dear. I’ll be rooting for you while I try on sundresses.”

  After Lola leaves, I call Bell again. He sounds a little down.

  “The storm has been like an apocalypse. So much damage. Luckily the restaurant is okay. What about down there?”

  “Just wind last night. I can’t believe the palm trees are gone.”

  “You’ve always loved them, even when you were a toddler.”

  “I know. Anyway, what’s the latest?”

  “Well, Ross has booked the restaurant for filming again. Another movie.”

  “Yay! So that will buy you more time then?”

  “More than that. I think this could change everything.” I hear him sigh. “I think we’re going to be okay. So, how’s your trip going?”

  “Great.”

  Before I blurt out anything about my mother, I change the subject and ask about Jeremy.

  “He’s doing really well. There’s been more talk about a manager.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “I know. Well, I miss you, Ollie. It’s so weird that you’re becoming an adult. I’m not ready to let you go.”

  “I’m still Ollie, Dad. I always will be,” I tell him. But I’m not sure it’s the whole truth.

  I peek in the window of Jane Armont’s restaurant, and it’s completely empty. I walk slowly up the stairs to the right of the main entrance, which lead to a small porch. I stand there for a while telling myself to just do it, remembering what Lola said, trying to summon the bravery in Rose’s heart. Despite my finding a way to focus more on myself this summer, I still believe that we are a patchwork of the people around us—the ones we choose to learn from.

  This is the moment. I raise my hand and knock twice. At first I don’t hear anything, but then a voice says something I can’t make out, and the door opens just a crack. When she sees me, she opens it up all the way.

  “Hi, Jane.”

  “Hello there.… Can I help you with something?”

  Where do I start? I can feel my right leg shake a little.

  “Yes. Could I … could I talk to you about something?”

  “Well, I suppose so. Would you like to come in?”

  “That would be great.”

  Her living room is quaint and cozy, and there are fresh-cut flowers in a large vase on the table. I was right—I got the neat gene from her. She offers me a seat. She doesn’t have the cane but still walks funny. It takes all the strength I have to quell the trembling inside me as I look her in the eye. She is beautiful.

  “You used to live in L.A., right?”

  “Years and years ago, yes. How do you know that?”

  I will myself to just say it.

  “And you gave a child up for adoption?”

  The bomb has dropped. The words linger in the air. Her hand goes to her mouth, her eyes widen, and her face pales. For a second she looks like an ice sculpture.

  “It’s me.”

  I swear she stops breathing. Then she clears her throat and says, “Would you excuse me for a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  She goes into the bathroom for what seems like a lifetime. Is she going to come out and tell me to leave?

  When she finally returns, she looks visibly shaken, as if her body is crumbling in on itself. Her lower lip quivers, and a teardrop slips from her left eye and lands on her gray T-shirt, making a small blotch. Then she walks over to me and places her hands on my shoulders and all I can think is My mother is touching me.

  “Come, come.”

  She leads me through her bright kitchen and out the back door, down the stairs that lead to a small garden.

  “I’m going to need a drink. How old …”

  “Almost seventeen.”

  She’s doing the math in her head.

  “Yes, of course. How did you find …”

  “I saw your name on the birth certificate. I Googled you and not much came up, but as it turned out, my boss knew you. Janice Tucker, the casting director …”

  “Well … I honestly don’t know what to say.”

  I see what looks like anger in her face, then confusion, then a strange peace as she says, “When I saw you last night, I felt something.” She puts her arms around herself and leans her head back. Then she stands up and says, “I’ll be right back. I want to hear your story, and I want to tell you mine. I just have to get someone to take a meeting for me. Wine sellers.”

  I start to protest and she says, “No. Sit. This is … well, extraordinary.”

  She has a little trouble getting up the stairs, and I wonder once again what the cane is for. I guess it will all come out soon. I’m left in her garden, stunned, tears drying on my face. I think she may be right. Today is extraordinary.

  CHAPTER 28

  Jane Armont, the woman who carried me inside her for nine months and gave birth to me, is wearing a black sweater and a tangerine-colored scarf. We walk slowly along the beach near her restaurant, looking out at the sprawl of the Pacific, with its frothy edges and scattered whitecaps flashing in irregular patterns.

  “I went in, yesterday,” I say. “Sort of.”

  “Ah. Isn’t it great?”

  “Well, yes. Only I just realized that yesterday.”

  “How so?”

  “Since I was really young I’ve been afraid of the ocean. I stepped on a stingray.”

  Jane pauses and gently massages the brass dome at the top of her cane. “Those stingrays will do it to you every time.”

  I smile. I feel comfortable and awkward at the same time. It’s kind of like a blind date with someone you feel like you already know. “Well, I think I may be over it.”

  “Good for you.” We look at each other, and she can sense what I’m about to ask, so she just starts talking.

  “Why don’t I go first? Your birth father was in the navy. He was stationed in Orange County and we met at a museum opening. I was looking at a painting of an old man at sea. He came up behind me and said, ‘You complete the picture.’ I remember at the time thinking it was a silly pickup line, but when I looked at his face, he wasn’t wearing a mask. He was just being himself. On our first date he took me to meet his mother.”

  “Wow.” I kick off my flip-flops and we sit on a large piece of driftwood.

  “His mother was a potter, and kind of a hippie. Over the next few weeks, we went bowling, watched trains, did all these things I never expected to be doing with him. You see, he looked really mainstream, yet he was anything but. It’s a lesson, really.”

  I nod, already knowing that.

  “So about three weeks after we met, well, you happened. We had used protection, but …”

  I remember that in sex ed they told us condoms are 98 percent effective.

  “Two percent,” I say.

  She sips her iced tea, swallows, and says, “Exactly.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “He got transferred to Delaware. I found out that I was pregnant too late for an abortion. Well, not exactly too late, but I didn’t want to risk complications. So I carried you �
�” She dabs at her forehead with the small handkerchief she’s holding. “I carried you to term, as they say.”

  I feel my face get hot. “So I was supposed to be aborted?”

  “Well, you do believe in a woman’s choice, right?”

  “Of course, but didn’t you even consider keeping me?”

  She gathers her hair to the left side of her head with her elegant fingers. “No. I was way too young. I was only twenty-one. I’m sorry if that sounds callous. But I needed to live, you know? I had dreams, and they did not involve diapers and day care. It was hard, maybe even the hardest thing I’ve done, because I got used to you being inside me. For the first few years I felt a lot of guilt, but then I had faith that you were in a better place, with parents who wanted to be parents. But I never stopped wondering. There’s an older man who washes my floors at the restaurant. He was the only person I told. I figured it was safe to tell someone like him, a person who wasn’t very visible in my life. You know what’s strange? Recently, this woman came into the restaurant, a psychic. She loved the food and told me she would read me for free. She actually told me that someday you would walk through the door.”

  My jaw drops.

  “That is so weird. I wonder if it was the same woman who read me. Did she have a streak of gray in her hair?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  My mother looks at me in a way that would normally embarrass me, but I don’t feel myself blushing.

  Three towheaded kids plop down right next to us and start throwing sand at one another. The mother catches up with them and says, “Stop it,” but they pretend not to hear.

  “This may sound odd,” I say, “but I just wanted to know that a piece of me was out there, living and breathing. In the beginning I never cared. But after school got out this year everything changed—I mean, everything. I started to really feel your absence. And I felt like there was more and more possibility in the world. I became more curious as each day passed.”

  “So you haven’t always been this proactive?”

  I look past her at the large expanse of sea. “Not exactly. I was pretty shy growing up.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “It’s true. One more question, though. Did you ever tell him?”

  My mother looks down at her hands, takes a deep breath. “Olivia, this is one of my biggest regrets in life. I traveled to Delaware to do just that, and it all backfired. There was another woman living with him; she was caustic. And he wasn’t the same. I was too proud, or selfish, or whatever you want to call it, so I never told him.”

  “So where is he now?”

  “I haven’t been in contact with him since that day, about five months before you were born.”

  At this moment, I can’t even think about who my father is. I already have two of those. I don’t have room in my head for another one.

  “But I want to hear about you,” she says, adjusting her scarf. “I want to hear about your parents. What’s your mother like?”

  A memory of Enrique picking me up from school on his Vespa flashes in my mind. “I have two dads.”

  “Oh. Do they know you’re here?”

  “No. I mean, they know I’m in Laguna, but not the whole story.”

  “I want the whole story,” she says, her eyes warm and disarming.

  I just start talking, and the more I do, the more normal I feel. I tell her all about Silver Lake, about Jeremy and Bell and Enrique, and about my specials at FOOD. Then I recount the day I met the psychic in the elevator, and Hank leading me to Rose’s book (which I show her), the safe-deposit box, reuniting with Theo only to have him betray me, the journey that brought me here. I remember teachers always telling me that I’m a good listener, and I realize I must have gotten that from my mother, who seems to take in deeply everything I’m saying. Then I tell her about my dream of studying at Le Cordon Bleu, and I see a flash of light in her eyes, her mouth forming an oval shape.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Nothing, that’s wonderful.”

  A family of four passes us by and smiles at us. Maybe they can sense the heavy reunion vibes in the air.

  “I tell you what. Why don’t you come by the restaurant tomorrow? We’ll cook something together. Would you like that?”

  This time I look at her as if she dropped from the sky.

  “Yes, I would.”

  “Great. I have … an appointment in the morning, so I’ll meet you there at noon?”

  “Sounds great.”

  For the next few moments, before we part ways, we just smile at each other, and I feel light-headed but strangely calm.

  I lie on the hotel bed, thoughts and questions buzzing around my brain like trapped insects. Will my dads be mad? Why did her face fall when she mentioned her appointment? Does that have to do with the cane? What are we going to cook?

  I phone Janice to ask if I can have Monday off. She sounds annoyed until I tell her I’m in Laguna. Then I call Lola and tell her about the plan to cook with my mother, and ask if we can leave tomorrow instead of today. She’s thrilled and says, “Of course!”

  The phone rings, and it’s Jeremy. “How’s the Orange Curtain?”

  “Great, but I never got to tell you congrats!”

  “It’s not a deal yet, but thanks, sis.”

  “Well, when you’re a big star, I can be your personal chef.”

  “Gazpacho every day!”

  I hear him shut a door; then he says softly, “Ol, with the money from the movie companies, the Dads had enough to deal with the restaurant and some of the back mortgage for the house, but not all of it. I guess things haven’t been great for a while. But I took half of my advance on the development deal and paid the rest of the mortgage payments for the last few months plus the next two, so everything should be cool now.”

  “Jeremy, that’s unbelievable.” After all the times our dads and I have helped Jeremy out of his messes, it’s so nice to hear this. Maybe he has really grown up. I can feel my eyes sting with emotion. “That’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time, besides …”

  “Besides what?”

  “Well, I can’t get into it now. But we’ll catch up when I get back. I should go. Lola’s still out, but she’ll be back any minute.”

  Jeremy takes a deep breath and sighs.

  “Okay, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  I hang up and lie back, thinking that actually leaves me a lot of options.

  CHAPTER 29

  I show up at the restaurant exactly at noon, and though she smiles and hugs me, I can tell Jane’s a little tired.

  We sit down at one of the empty tables while the older man mops the floor around us. When he weaves by, he pats me on the shoulder and gives my mother a knowing look. She puts her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands.

  “I know the consensus is that French is the be-all and end-all of cooking, but let me tell you a secret. The best food to cook is Italian.” She flashes me a girlish grin and more color comes back into her face. “So today, you and I are going to make artichoke lasagna.”

  “Sounds great.”

  The next hour unfolds like a dream. We work together almost seamlessly, as if we have done this a million times before. Even though I don’t really know my way around her kitchen and don’t want to cramp her style, the blind date feelings have diminished considerably.

  After we steam the artichokes and they’re cooling, I notice my mother grab her leg and wince.

  “Are you okay?”

  She looks at me with a blank expression, and then says, “There’s something you should know. I don’t know if Janice mentioned it to you.”

  “No.”

  “No, she wouldn’t have. I have MS. Do you know what that is?”

  Boom. Two letters that make my heartbeat skip. “Kind of.”

  “Have for years. It’s a neurological thing, and my case, well, it’s not a big deal, or at least I tell myself that.”

  I want to scream �
��No!” but instead I say, “Does it get worse?”

  “Should, but maybe not. There’s no way of knowing.”

  As we start rolling the dough I realize that this was all too good to be true. That this not-so-little glitch was as destined to occur as everything else. I suddenly feel unbearable amounts of gratitude for even being in the same room with her right now, mixed with a tinge of anger, knowing it may not last.

  As we lay all the ingredients in the pans, she asks me what it was like growing up with two dads.

  “Well, you learn pretty early on how ignorant some people are. I remember the day I kind of figured out that we weren’t a normal family, and I got really mad at my dads. I had gotten teased by some girls at school. But L.A. is pretty liberal. I mean, I had a lesbian teacher, and another classmate of mine had two moms. I’m just lucky I didn’t grow up in Kansas or something. But to me, the expression of love between two people of the same sex has always been just as natural as with a guy and a girl.”

  “If only everyone could have that attitude. I suppose what Bell and …”

  “Enrique.”

  “… Enrique were doing was changing the world in their own little way. I’ve always wondered where you ended up, but I have to say I never thought with two dads. How nice to contribute in an indirect way to the life of a non-traditional family,” she muses.

  We put the lasagna in the oven and start to clean up.

  “You know, I wasn’t much of a cook when I was your age,” Jane says. “But after I had you, I wanted to get away, so I traveled all over the world. I didn’t have much money, so I would stop and work until I could move again. Always in restaurants. And everywhere I went I was interested in the food, until finally in Thailand I worked as a cook. The first thing I learned to make was lemongrass soup.”

  “Cool. So how did you end up here?”

  “Well, I spent a few years in New York and dated a man who was a food critic. I met a lot of chefs during that time. One of them introduced me to Andre, a hotelier based out of Montreal. He’s the one who owns the hotel you guys are staying in. We connected on a lot of levels, but never romantically. We built this place together, and we have a relationship—I cater some of his meetings, and his concierge sends a built-in crowd so I never have an empty seat. It works out well. You will notice, if you haven’t already, that the good fortune that comes your way in life is always related to who you know. It’s important to operate in an open way, and never close yourself off to possible connections. Light shines from unexpected places.”