Pish Posh

by Ellen Potter

  Clara ordered onion soup and braised lamb and roast Cornish hen and sautéed truffles and spinach quiche and asparagus spears in hollandaise sauce and chocolate mousse cake and crème brûlée and raspberry tart with vanilla ice cream, and much more—so much, in fact, that the waiter had to set up a little cart beside their table to hold it all. And the whole time, all the famous and glamorous people in the restaurant stole surreptitious glimpses at this woman who was so very important that Clara Frankofile herself had invited her to dine at her table.

  Ms. Blurt declared that she had never in her life tasted anything so delicious, and she tasted it ALL until her belly began to bulge beneath her purple pantsuit so that she looked a little like a bug. It was only when she had had a bite of every dessert on the menu (well, maybe two bites) that she asked about Caleb Fizzelli’s drawing on the wall.

  “Can I see it now, do you suppose?” Ms. Blurt asked.

  Pierre Frankofile never allowed customers into his kitchen—no exceptions. It didn’t matter if you were a movie star or a king. But Clara was feeling especially contrary tonight. She smiled, imagining the look on the other customers’ faces if she brought Ms. Blurt back there.

  “Why not,” Clara declared, and she led Ms. Blurt in through the kitchen to the astounded looks of everyone, including her mother.

  As usual, Pierre Frankofile was screaming at one of the cooks, so he didn’t notice right away that a customer was in his kitchen.

  “You ham-brained, slobbering pimple! I will stick your head in a pot of boiling pasta water if you ever do that again, you web-footed—”

  “Papa,” Clara interrupted loudly enough to make her father turn away from his victim, who was taking the abuse relatively calmly, “Papa, this is Ms. Blurt, and she is here to see that drawing on the wall. ”

  Pierre took one look at Ms. Blurt and his already pink, angry face turned a shade of dark violet. He glared at her for a moment, speechless.

  “Sacre bleu!” he screamed finally, his eyes bulging. “And how would she like it if while she was looking at that drawing, I took out my paring knife and cut off her—”

  “And I want her to see it, Papa, ” Clara said firmly, for she was not afraid of her father at all, since he was generally all hot air and nonsense and had never really cut off anybody’s appendages.

  “Victor,” Clara called to a short, burly man with a cracked front tooth. “You were the one who found that drawing on the wall, weren’t you?”

  “S’right.”

  “Please show us where it is.”

  Victor gazed questioningly at Pierre.

  “Show them where it is, Victor,” Pierre cried, “or so help me I will bite off the tip of your nose, chew it up, and spit it into the East River! ”

  “Yes, sir. ” They followed Victor through a door near the back of the kitchen and into a little side room. Lining every wall were stacks and stacks of crisp white linen tablecloths and napkins, wrapped in plastic and piled one on top of the other. The stacks were twice as tall as Clara, and not an inch of wall space could be seen between them.

  “S’round here somewhere,” Victor said. Stack by stack, he took down the fortress of linen, revealing the wall a bit at a time. Finally, toward the bottom of one wall, faint markings appeared, and once Victor had removed all the stacks, the painting could be seen clearly.

  It was a painting of a garden, with a crescent moon hanging over it, and two figures sitting on a bench. The details were shadowy, since the painting was only sketchily done, as though the artist had only just started to work on it before abandoning the project.

  Ms. Blurt knelt down and examined it, making small sounds the whole time, until she declared the drawing “most definitely a Fizzelli. Oh, my!”

  She stared at it for a good long time, until Victor began to shift his legs around impatiently. Taking the hint, Ms. Blurt stood up and brushed the linen lint off of her pantsuit.

  “He must have intended to make a fresco—a painting on plaster—and never finished it,” she said, her face flushed with excitement as they made their way out of the room and back into the kitchen.

  “Thank you, Mr. Frankofile. ” Ms. Blurt nearly curtsied to him. “And I’m sorry to disturb you all ...,” she said to the rest of the kitchen staff, but her voice trailed off when her eyes fell on Audrey, who was chopping escarole. Ms. Blurt stared at Audrey for a moment, her lips parted in surprise. Audrey looked up and squinted at her through her thick glasses, then abruptly turned her back to Ms. Blurt and dropped the escarole in a pot on the stove.

  “What’s wrong?” Clara asked.

  “Who is that?” Ms. Blurt whispered to Clara.

  “Nobody. Just the woman who makes the soup.”

  “Ask her to turn around,” Ms. Blurt said with urgency.

  “What for?”

  “Just ask her.” There was a rare tone of authority in Ms. Blurt’s voice, one that she had never used even in the classroom.

  “Audrey!” Clara called loudly to be heard above the clatter of plates and steamy roar of the dishwasher. “Audrey, turn around!” But to Clara’s great surprise, the young woman utterly and willfully ignored her.

  This act of disobedience caught Pierre’s attention, and he flung a spatula at the soup cook, hitting her on the back, and boomed, “Turn around!!”

  Slowly and reluctantly, Audrey turned around and faced Ms. Blurt. Ms. Blurt gazed at her, her eyes growing wider.

  “Oh ... but... how can it be? ...” she muttered right before her legs buckled and she passed out on the kitchen floor.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The busboy wadded up a kitchen apron and put it under Ms. Blurt’s head, and Clara dabbed at her face with a wet kitchen rag.

  “Ms. Blurt... Ms. Blurt... ,” Clara said.

  “Slap her,” suggested Pierre.

  “Ms. Blurt, open your eyes,” Clara pleaded.

  “Poke the bottoms of her feet with the meat fork,” Pierre said. He began to search in his utensil drawer for a meat fork, when Ms. Blurt’s eyes fluttered, then opened fully.

  “Are you all right, Ms. Blurt? You fainted,” Clara said.

  Ms. Blurt struggled to raise herself up. With Clara’s help, she got to her feet and adjusted her belt.

  “Much better now! Yes. Thank you,” she sputtered, her eyes nervously darting at Audrey and then away again. “I’ll be on my way. ” She headed out the kitchen door and Clara followed, perplexed, while Pierre called after her, “I still think a quick slap would do her good.”

  All the customers turned to gawp at the illustrious Ms. Blurt, but she did not appear to notice their stares. She said a hasty good-bye to Clara, thanking her for the meal and the sight of the little drawing, and hurried out the front door.

  Clara hesitated for a moment. Then she went after her, following Ms. Blurt, who was already halfway up the block, heading uptown, her reedy legs working double time. Clara had to break into an all-out run to catch up with her, and when she grabbed the velvet-clad elbow, Ms. Blurt shrieked.

  “It’s just me, Ms. Blurt.”

  “I really must be going.” She pulled out of Clara’s grasp with surprising strength and began to hurry off again.

  “What did you see back in the kitchen that startled you?” Clara pursued as she rushed to keep pace with her.

  “Nothing,” Ms. Blurt said shortly, without slowing down.

  “I don’t like secrets, Ms. Blurt. Tell me what you saw!” Clara demanded.

  Ms. Blurt stopped then, so quickly in fact that Clara suddenly found that she was walking by herself and had to turn around and walk back.

  “That woman in the kitchen..., ” Ms. Blurt said. “What do you know about her?”

  Clara shrugged. “Hardly anything. She’s worked at Pish Posh since it opened, and she lives in the apartment above the kitchen. But that’s all. Ms. Blurt, what is this about?”

  Ms. Blurt’s large blue eyes looked at Clara carefully. She seemed about to say something, but then simply shook her head
and smiled apologetically. “Pay no attention to me, Clara. My imagination sometimes gets the better of me. ”

  Clara went to bed that evening feeling strangely at odds. Though she lay still for a good hour in the silent apartment, she was unable to sleep. Her thoughts kept tumbling restlessly over the mystery of Ms. Blurt’s reaction to Audrey. Was this part of the strange and peculiar thing that Dr. Piff had talked about?

  Finally, when she could no longer stand lying there in the dark and staring up at the ceiling, she jumped out of bed. A good, strenuous climb and the night air might tire her out, she reasoned, and she headed toward the Tree Climbing Room. But once she opened the door, she realized that she had been secretly hoping to meet up with Annabelle again.

  How ridiculous! Clara thought, shaking her head. What are the chances that Annabelle will be on the roof again tonight? And why should I even care? The girl is a Nobody from head to toe.

  Angry at herself, she stepped back out of the room and slammed the door. She walked back down the hallway restlessly, finally pausing in front of a room that she hadn’t visited for a long time. It was the Neighborhood in Brooklyn Room. When she was younger, she used to visit this room quite often, but as she got older, she had simply lost interest. She hesitated a minute, then turned the doorknob and walked in.

  The room was completely dark, which made her wonder if her parents had “retired” it. They did that sometimes when they thought a room was bad for Clara in some way, like the Blueberry Picking Room, which they retired because the blueberries stained Clara’s fingers to the point where she could not be seen in public.

  But then she remembered the way that the Neighborhood in Brooklyn Room worked. You had to walk in, close the door, and wait—which she did. After a moment she began to detect the odor of bacon frying and coffee brewing. Then the streetlamps began to light up very slowly—a morning in Brooklyn—and she could make out the shapes of low buildings with stoops and tiny, fenced-in gardens in front of them, and a street sign that said AVENUE U and EAST 7TH STREET. There was the bakery with the heaps of pastries and cookies and cakes displayed in the windows. And there was a pizza shop, with its tall red-and-white-striped tables and stools for customers. None of it was real—not the pastries, which were made of glazed ceramic, and not the gardens with their silk flowers, or the shellacked slices of fake pizza. But the smells were real, even if they were pumped through an exhaust system.

  And now the sounds—the burrr of cars passing, people calling to each other in rough, loud, rude voices, dogs barking. It was all somehow delightfully soothing. She climbed the stairs to one of the houses and sat down in a lawn chair on the front porch, leaned her head back, and shut her eyes. Before long she felt herself drifting off to sleep.

  “Mais oui! There you are!” Pierre Frankofile burst into the room, still dressed in his chef’s uniform. His entrance awakened Clara, and she sat bolt upright in the lawn chair.

  “Oh,” she said, rubbing her eyes, “hi, Papa. What are you doing here?” It was very strange for her father to visit her in her apartment.

  “I just wanted to see what happened with your friend... Ms. Bloat...”

  “Blurt. She’s fine.”

  “Is she?” He rubbed his hands together. “Did you slap her?”

  “No.”

  Her father looked disappointed, and Clara realized that that was probably what he had come to find out. And, in fact, it did appear that he was about to leave, but he suddenly changed his mind, walked up the stairs to the porch, and sat beside Clara in a lawn chair. The light from the streetlamps was still dim, an early morning light, even though it was actually nearly midnight outside. But it was very convincing, and Clara really did feel like the day was just beginning, rather than ending.

  “Nice room,” her father said. “Makes one feel homesick somehow.” He turned to her and smiled. “It reminds me of the little village in France where I was born—you know, the smells, the sound of les enfants playing. One day, when I have the time, I’d like to take you there to see it, to meet your grand-mere ... He shut his eyes and seemed to drift off in his own reverie.

  “Papa,” Clara said.

  “Mmm?” he asked without opening his eyes.

  “What do you know about Audrey?”

  “Audrey Aster?” His face lost its dreaminess, and he frowned. “I know she makes a tolerable soup, when she isn’t lazing around like a bespectacled sloth.”

  “What do you know about her, though? Where does she come from? Does she have a family? Things like that.”

  “How on earth should I know?” Pierre looked at his daughter with bewilderment, as though she had asked him what he knew about earthworms.

  “Where did she work before you hired her?” Clara persisted.

  “Where, what, how?!” Pierre’s voice had reached its usual restaurant boom by now. “I have no idea! It was Dr. Piff who brought her to me.”

  “Dr. Piff?” Clara sat up.

  “Years ago, when we first opened. He said that she needed work and that she would not disappoint me—oh, what a lie! They are a lousy, putrid lot, the whole bunch of them. If I had my way, I would tie them all to a tree and...”

  Clara sank back down in the lawn chair. Once her father began on a rant, there was no stopping him. He bellowed on and on, drowning out the taped neighborhood noises, making the lawn chair squeak every time he threw up his hands to show how he would throttle the busboy or tear the pastry chef into a thousand pieces, until, finally exhausted, he wiped the sweat from his forehead with the bottom of his chef’s jacket and stood up.

  “Well, bon soir, Clara, I’m completely done in.” He gave her a quick peck on the top of her head and left her alone. Well, not quite alone. Now she had some new ideas to keep her company.

  Dr. Piff, huh? ...

  CHAPTER NINE

  That morning Clara passed the dining room, eyed the stack of waiting newspapers on the table, and decided that they could wait.

  “No breakfast today,” she called hastily to the cook as she passed the kitchen and headed directly to Pish Posh.

  Lila Frankofile was sitting at the restaurant’s bar, deep in thought. Lila wasn’t generally there that early, but she had a touchy situation to deal with: the princess of Macedonia was to be there that evening at the same time as her sister, the empress of Bulgaria. The two of them were known to detest each other, and whenever they were in the same place at the same time, a fistfight invariably erupted. Lila scratched at her head as she stared at the reservation book, trying to figure out the best way to keep the two sisters from getting within sparring distance of each other.

  When Clara walked in, Lila looked up briefly and commented, “A bit early today, aren’t you? Did you happen to see today’s edition of Hither & Thither?”

  The newspaper was on the bar, its cover featuring a large photo of several women with no eyebrows. The headline read “Jousting Match Will Benefit Medieval Costume Exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. ” Clara started to read the article out loud: “All of society’s most glamorous ladies have ripped out their eyebrows—”

  “Not that,” Lila interrupted. “Look at the article below.”

  The article below read,“Seen at Pish Posh! Who was the mystery woman who dined with the elusive and exclusive young Clara Frankofile? Miss Frankofile, who NEVER dines with anyone, even went so far as to give the mystery woman (who was dressed in an ultratrendy velvet pantsuit with a belt inscribed with ‘Sassy Lady’) a tour of the kitchen. Unheard of!! Is she foreign royalty? Is she an up-and-coming actress?

  All of New York City is dying to know!”

  “How idiotic.” Clara rolled her eyes.

  “You must bring your friend back to dine,” Lila said decisively.

  “But she’s just an art teacher.”

  “Don’t be a snob, dear. Some Somebodies are born and some Somebodies are made. If Hither & Thither has made an art teacher into a Somebody, who will know the difference? ”

  “I will!” Cla
ra was shocked that her mother could accept an imposter. She threw the newspaper down and went into the kitchen. It was empty, too early for the workers, or her father, to be there. Everything looked peaceful. The stoves were gleaming, having been scrubbed the night before by the workers. The massive dishwasher, which usually spewed out a thick wall of steam and sounded like a hundred electric pencil sharpeners all going at the same time, was now simply a quiet metal box. In just a few hours, it would be chaos here again.

  Clara opened a metal door in the back of the kitchen and went up a flight of stairs, a side entrance to the apartment on the second floor. At the landing was a short hallway, and at the end of the hallway was a door. Clara pushed the buzzer and waited. There was no answer, but she thought she could hear someone moving around inside. She pushed it again, three times in a row, and then knocked loudly.

  Finally, the door opened and Audrey the soup cook stood there in a pair of jeans, a sleeveless white tank top, and white canvas sneakers. She was wearing her glasses as usual, but her red hair, which was always pulled back into a tight ponytail at work, was loose. She squinted at Clara for a moment, as if she had trouble making out who she was.

  “Oh, hi,” she said. “Do you need something?”

  Clara did not like the way she said that, as if Clara were inconsequential, or worse, simply a child.

  “I would like to talk to you,” Clara said.

  “What?” Audrey asked, tilting her ear toward Clara.

  Clara repeated herself, something she hated to do, and Audrey replied, “I’m a little busy at the moment. Can you come back later?”

  “No.”

  Audrey sighed, and then stepped aside. “All right. Come in. ”

  The room was fairly large, but it was the only room in the apartment, besides a small bathroom off to the right. To the left, in a nook, was a teeny tiny kitchen, and it was the only modern-looking thing in the apartment. The rest of the room was furnished with what looked to be antiques. There was a tremendous bed, its wooden headboard beautifully carved with leaves and flowers, a pair of chairs whose mahogany legs were carved to look like an animal’s claws, and a mahogany vanity. Placed near the room’s one window, which faced Washington Square Park, was an elaborately carved rocking chair, its rockers terribly worn, and a sketch pad lying on its seat.