The Recipe Box

by Sandra Lee

  “Emma, Halo is OK. Let’s talk about you. You can’t keep taking off like this. I had no idea where you were. I’ve been worried out of my mind. Imagine if Halo simply disappeared? How would you feel?”

  Emma looked down, but said, “I want to stay here, with Dad. My friends are all here.”

  “Your dad isn’t set up for you to be here, Emma.”

  Emma tucked Halo under her sweater. “You’re just saying that. You just want to dump me somewhere so you can take off. You wouldn’t even go on that cruise together.”

  Grace sighed. “Oh, Emma, I wish we could just take off like that, but you have schoolwork to finish and I have work. Neither of us can just take off for the Mediterranean right now.”

  “They could have gotten a tutor on the boat.”

  “Emma, be realistic.”

  “You got a tutor in New London, why couldn’t they get one on the boat? I know they could have. Von would have done it. “

  Von? “What Von would or wouldn’t have done is not the point, Emma. You are on very thin ice with your school, and I don’t think they would have understood your phoning it in from the Mediterranean.”

  Emma set her chin defiantly. Those blue eyes, that gaze, made Grace squirm. A shiver of recognition ran down her spine. Don’t even go there, Grace.

  Marie appeared carrying a tray brimming with gigantic bread-crumb-topped, baked mushroom caps, dotted with flecks of fresh basil—another of her specialties. “Stuffed mushroom, anybody?”

  Dinner was dominated by Marie’s chatter of the latest New London gossip, updates from the nursing home where Brian’s dad was living now, and inappropriate asides from Halo.

  Marie chattered on. “I tell you, Melissa swears she can talk to plants. Who says such a thing? But there’s no arguing with her results. She brought me three huge azalea plants to bring down to the nursing home. I have never seen such blossoms. I asked her what her secret was, and you know what it is? A penny! She buries a penny in the soil next to the plant.” She spooned more pasta onto Emma’s plate as Emma tried to stop her. “Emma, you are wasting away.”

  “Grandma M!” Emma moaned in protest.

  Brian ate silently, glancing occasionally at Grace over the top of his glasses. While Marie and Emma cleared the plates, he walked her to the front of the apartment. Grace could hear faint music coming up from the café below.

  “Has she been calling her Chicago friends?” Grace asked. “Is that what’s behind this?”

  “She talked to Kimmy about the party,” said Brian. “But she’s spending a lot of time online—Skyping, Twittering. Let’s call a spade a spade, Grace.”

  “Apt metaphor,” Grace said to herself, but as snide references to Brian’s gambling—now a former habit—were off-limits, she resisted the impulse to make that particular comment. “I’m listening, Dr. Phil.”

  Brian set his jaw, in the determined way Grace knew so well. “You know, Grace, there comes a point that, no matter what we’ve had—and there’s no question it was great and we got a super kid—we’ve got to move forward. We have to put our lives back together now, but the trouble with you is you can’t be happy because you’re still distracted by problems from the past. I know it’s important for you to work things through, and for some people that can take a lifetime. God knows, I’ve got my own issues, but the point is, I’ve faced them and I’m on to the next part of my life. We both have to think about what’s best for Emma. She needs stability. You can’t drag her along while you work things out. She can’t go back to LA, with all those kids that are taking her down the wrong path, and you know it. She’s just too vulnerable. Don’t you see that?”

  GRANDMA M’S MUSHROOMS

  Serves 8 to 10

  Italian bread for crumbs and croutons

  Extra virgin olive oil

  ½ pound sweet or hot Italian sausage

  1 pound medium mushrooms

  1 cup grated parmesan

  12 basil leaves, chopped

  Salt and pepper

  Preheat the oven to 350°F.

  Slice the bread and cut out circles a little smaller than the mushrooms. You will need as many circles as you have mushrooms. Brush them lightly with olive oil and place them in one layer on a baking sheet. Put them in the oven until golden brown, turning them once. Remove and set aside. Finely chop up remaining bread for crumbs and set aside.

  Add the sausage to a skillet and cook, breaking up any clumps, until no longer pink. Remove the sausage and take out all but one tablespoon fat from the pan. Remove stems from mushrooms and chop them finely. Cook them until they are nice and brown, about 8 minutes. Add ½ cup bread crumbs and cook for a minute. Return the sausage to the pan and cook for a minute or two. Remove from heat and stir in ½ cup parmesan and basil. Taste and season with salt and pepper.

  Fill the mushrooms with the sausage mixture and sprinkle over ¼ cup of the parmesan. Bake until they are almost cooked through, about 15 to 20 minutes. Top each with a crouton and sprinkle over remaining parmesan. Bake until cheese is lightly browned and mushroom caps are cooked through, about another 5 to 10 minutes.

  Grace started to open her mouth, then shut it. Brian was right, and in a way it was a huge relief to have him share in the realization that their daughter needed help. That she, Grace, needed help. But in another way, it also felt like a crushing defeat.

  Brian knew her well. He stepped forward and put his arm around her. “My business has really taken off. The crunch is over. I have people working for me now. That means I can spend time with Emma. There’s no reason why she shouldn’t come here and be with her father, and back with her old school friends. What do you think? I’m prepared to change my life, Grace. In fact, I’m planning on it. Are you?”

  Now Grace could not remain silent. Who was he to challenge her ability as a mother? His track record as a father hardly gave him the right to judge her. She stiffened and shrugged off his arm. “Being a mother is not a state of mind, or a mood, Brian. It’s what I am. Emma is a young girl and she needs her mother. You like the idea of being Father of the Year now. Today. I’m not saying you don’t love Emma, I know you do. We both do. But what’s she going to do here? Sit in this loft and watch you program computers? She needs a healthy, active life, school, friends, activities.”

  “Like surfing?”

  That did it. Some gate in Grace’s feelings became unhinged, as if a latch blew open. She found herself snapping, “And then, Brian, how can I be sure…” She caught herself, but the words left unsaid, hanging in the air, were as clear as if she’d shouted them across the room: How can I be sure you won’t stay out late gambling and leave Emma unsupervised, or be off with some woman, or… When she looked at Brian, Grace saw many Brians, in the way that long-term relationships between two people always involve not two people, but the many things they were, are, and have been to each other. There was the shy Brian whom she and Leeza had met in eighth grade, when his family had moved to the ranch house on the outskirts of town, the little boy on the first day of school who didn’t know anybody, and they had taken him under their wing. There was the Brian who had been a math whiz in the days before geeks were cool, the kid who could solve any equation in his head, who helped Grace with her homework and was solely responsible for the fact that she even got a passing grade in algebra. Another Brian held her hand under a tree in a spring rain, pulling his jacket around her before their first, tentative kiss. The Brian who broke her heart when he ended their relationship on the eve of senior prom and the boy who she found love again with after they both realized how much they meant to each other. The Brian who was her first love, who was also the first to draw blood in the relationship, the first to hurt the other, the stranger who’d pushed her away when they’d been so close for so long.

  Fifteen years ago, only days after Brian had crushed her heart by breaking up with her, Grace had swanned down the steps to her house in her strapless prom dress, engulfed in a cloud of Calvin Klein Eternity perfume. Her long hair had be
en blown dry and pinned up in an elaborate twist at the beauty shop, and she and Leeza had given each other manicures and pedicures. She was still tender from her first heartbreak, but Grace felt beautiful, or at least Von said she was. Von looked like he’d been ripped from a fashion magazine, decked out in a tuxedo that he actually owned, daring pink socks, and shoes that were polished until they shone. Pinned to his lapel was the boutonniere that Grace had given him.

  “You look like a fashion model,” Von had said, and Grace had melted right then and there. Nobody ever complimented her on her looks, which, to her, were entirely unremarkable. She swished her skirt, gave an exaggerated take on a catwalk walk, and felt pretty. She felt a pang to have her arm looped through someone’s other than Brian, but she was determined to show everyone she was OK, and that Brian had not broken her, so she slid a steel door across her heart and blocked the thought. It was prom. She was with Von. She looked like a model. He looked great and everyone would see Brian was not the only boy who thought Grace was special. They were graduating. Next fall, she knew, she’d be at junior college in Madison, and he’d be at Oxford. But for the moment—or the night—nothing else mattered. She didn’t even know if Brian was going to the prom. Anyhow, what business was it of hers? He hadn’t asked her. She hadn’t asked him. They were broken up. Moving on.

  The giant mirror ball twirled over the gym floor, right under the banner that said CONGRATULATIONS GRADUATES! LOOKING FORWARD TO LOOKING BACK! The official class photographer snapped their pictures in front of a flower-decked backdrop as they walked in. The band was already rocking. Leeza, in a short pink dress and teetery high-heeled sandals, boogied over with Ken in tow. “You guys look great!” the photographer shouted. Ken and Leeza were co-chairs of the dance committee.

  “Isn’t she incredible?” Von had squeezed her waist.

  Suddenly Leeza had yanked Grace aside. “He’s here!” she whispered urgently.

  “Who?” Although Grace already knew.

  “Brian.”

  “He didn’t have a date.” Grace tried to appear nonchalant.

  “I know! Still, he came by himself. That’s bold. Can you believe! And I think he smuggled in a flask.” She gestured toward the refreshments table.

  Sure enough, there was Brian—in a tux jacket over a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Alone.

  The dance floor had quickly filled up, but out of the corner of her eye, Grace could see Brian. He would periodically disappear, then return, and each time his expression was more of a glower, a poorly contained storm cloud at the edge of the room.

  Von smiled and chatted on as they danced, oblivious. “Let me tell you about Monte Carlo,” he was saying as he dipped Grace, and she laughed. “Did you ever see that movie with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, who is named after you?” For a while, Grace forgot all about Brian. Brian who?

  That lasted until Brian had danced by with Claire in his arms. Huh!? Brian knew that Claire was the Enemy. What was he trying to prove, anyway? Obviously something, from the way he was holding Claire close in the slow dances. Grace tried to avoid looking at them, but somehow she couldn’t stop.

  Well, she’d show him! Grace turned on all her femme fatale wiles, flirting, laughing, tossing her hair, twirling sexily on the dance floor—like Madonna, she hoped—clinging to Von in the slow numbers, whispering in his ear. Take that, Brian.

  But he hadn’t noticed because he’d disappeared. With Claire.

  When one of the kids who had smuggled in some vodka offered to spike their punch, Von had refused—he had a bottle of champagne tucked away in the car—but Grace went for it. It seemed like the cool thing to do. And do again. The rest of the evening would remain a blur. At least the prom part.

  But Grace would never, ever forget the part after the prom, by the lake, lying on the damp early-summer grass, wrapped in a blanket with Von. He’d brought real crystal glasses for the champagne. Her head spun, and not just from the drinks.

  “To my girl,” he toasted.

  His girl.

  His kisses were like she imagined those of a man would be, not a boy, and Grace had lost herself in them as easily as she’d lost her dress, and then all common sense.

  The next morning, when she’d crept into the house at dawn, shoes in her hand, she’d felt the best and the worst she’d ever felt. Her head was pounding, her mouth was dry, her dress was askew, but she’d convinced herself that she was in love with Von, and he with her. A bouquet of flowers arrived that day, but she’d waited in vain for Von to appear.

  Instead, Leeza told her he’d left the country. His dad had had a stroke. No one knew how bad it was, but Von had to get home immediately to help his mother. According to Leeza, who’d spoken to Vanessa, everything was up in the air, including Von’s plans for Oxford. But surely, Von would be calling her any minute, from Switzerland.

  Except the days, then the weeks went by, and there had been no communication from Von.

  “Why don’t you just pick up the phone and call him?” Leeza had asked. “This is dumb.”

  “I can’t call him. He’ll think I’m chasing him across the ocean! Don’t you dare tell your mother that I even mentioned his name! And why isn’t he calling me, is the question?”

  Leeza grew quiet, and Grace knew something was up. “You’re holding out on me. What is it? I know you’re his cousin, but I’m your best friend.”

  Leeza sighed. “I think he has a girlfriend in Zurich. From school there.”

  Grace didn’t want to show how upset she was. “Oh. Who cares?” But inside, Grace was screaming at herself: I cannot believe I was so stupid! He didn’t even care! Why did I let myself fall for a total jerk? How could I have slept with him? I wish I had never met him! So I’ll never see Von again. That would be just fine. Ideal, in fact. Let him drop dead.

  When Brian showed up at her summer job at the pool, Grace looked at him and forgot why they’d broken up. He’d brought her a tiny bouquet of daisies from his mother’s garden. Those flowers meant so much more than the elaborate flower arrangement Von had sent, just before he’d vanished from her life.

  “I think I love you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I guess I had to find out the hard way. Seeing you with Von…”

  “He’s not in my life,” she said quickly. “You are.” And she meant it. She couldn’t imagine life without him.

  When she’d missed her period, Grace thought she’d just forgotten to keep track. When she’d missed it a second month, and began to feel sick at the sight of her favorite cheese, she had to admit to herself that something was off. Telling Lorraine was out of the question. Telling Leeza was an absolute necessity.

  “What about Von?” she’d said.

  “What about him? He’s not in the picture, obviously.”

  “You don’t want to tell him?”

  “I don’t even know if it’s his. It probably isn’t. It was only that one time.”

  “I think it only takes once.”

  “Do not tell Ken. Do not tell anybody! Ever!”

  “I swear it, I won’t.”

  And Leeza had kept her word, to the grave, so now Grace was alone with her secret. Even Brian didn’t know. The minute Grace told him she was pregnant, he’d proposed. They’d gotten married in Madison, just the two of them. Brian had deferred college, and his scholarship, to start his business to support them, and Grace had waitressed, with Emma in day care. The move to Chicago had been on a wing and a prayer, a plan to get Brian’s software business to catch on.

  Grace had tired of her mother’s constant “suggestions” and cut off communication with Lorraine until months after the baby was born. Grace and Brian had fallen madly in love with their perfect baby girl.

  The idyllic scenario Grace had conjured up did not quite materialize though. As a young father trying to get a business off the ground, Brian was swamped with responsibilities. This Brian was scrambling to survive, desperate to pull a trick out of a hat, sure he could outsmart the market. When that didn’t pan out, he resorte
d to gambling. He became someone Grace didn’t know, yet she didn’t know what to do to make things better.

  Very occasionally, late at night, when she was awake after Brian had not come home, her little girl sleeping in the next room, Grace had let her guard down and allowed her mind to wander. Without being able to help herself, she would think of Von, of how they had laughed, sung, and danced together. How they’d made love. She’d think of Von’s ice-blue eyes—and Emma’s—and she’d wonder.

  Now Grace had to admit to herself that in spite of the separation, the angry words, the divorce—she still cared. About Emma, of course, but she still cared about Brian, cared enough for it to still matter—still hurt. Cared enough to not be with him or let Emma be with him because she couldn’t trust what would or wouldn’t happen. There was something about your first love, Grace thought, that a woman never forgets or loses. But because she had resolved that it had to be over with Brian, over forever, she had closed that small crack in the door to her heart—firmly shut, with a reverberating click.

  Grace said nothing of her feelings to Brian. Dredging up the past would be pointless. “The best thing for Emma is having her stay with my mother,” were the words she’d said instead. Her hands were suddenly shaking, so she clasped them in front of her. They were the hands of a woman who worked with them—no manicure, short, practical nails. No jewelry—it had been two years since she’d taken off her wedding band and, one day soon after her move to LA, in a fit of resolution, Grace had thrown it over the side of Ken’s boat, into the Pacific Ocean. “You can visit her whenever you want.”

  Actually, Grace couldn’t bring Emma back to a summer of hanging out aimlessly in LA; Brian was right. This was the best option. She’d take Emma back to New London tomorrow, drop her off, and then she’d join Ken back in LA and work there until the show wrapped in June.

  Brian sighed. He knew when he’d lost. He’d lost years ago, and never regained his footing with Grace. “Fine. I intend to visit her as often as I can. But you tell her—I can’t disappoint her.”