The Recipe Box

by Sandra Lee

  “Fire! There was a fire!” It was lunch break, and Ken ran up, breathless.

  “What fire?” said Grace, her heart suddenly racing at the tone of Ken’s voice. “On the set?”

  “No…”

  Was Emma all right? “My house? Emma’s there, working on her book!”

  “The Book Nook! A major fire! Tim called this morning. Oh my God! It’s horrible, Grace. Some electrical thing shorted out in the middle of the night. You know how prehistoric the wiring was in that place. Anyhow, thank God nobody was there or hurt, and the smoke alarm kicked in, but it almost burned down.”

  “Oh my God!”

  Ken flipped through pictures on his phone. “Look at these shots Tim took.”

  The pictures were heartbreaking. The place was a charred wreck. “Here you can see the entire front porch is toast. The windows are broken out. Tim said the fire department had to go in with hoses and foam. If it hadn’t been for Mike changing those smoke alarm batteries, can you imagine? They used the hook and ladder, and Mike had to get Tim out through his second floor bedroom window. There was too much smoke on the stairwells.” Ken looked like he might cry.

  He clicked on a video taken from across the street, in the park. The building was partly obscured by the numerous fire and police trucks, but an orange-yellow blaze could clearly be seen licking skyward, ravenously devouring the building.

  “The only thing that escaped fairly unscathed was the basement. It’s like a bomb shelter down there. But still there was some water and smoke damage. Tim could have died! Mike is an absolute hero. Tim said Mike saved the back stock downstairs by telling them to foam the basement entrance, so the fire didn’t get there. This is terrible. Poor Tim.” Ken’s voice trailed off and they stood silently looking at the picture. Grace hadn’t seen Ken so sad since Leeza’s funeral. Then he snapped to. “We’re going back. Right away. We have to help Tim. We have to save the Book Nook. We’ll file for insurance and we’ll rebuild.”

  “Well, of course we have to help. This is a tragedy. But what do you mean—right away?”

  “I mean, you see that man over there, that mean, nasty creature in disguise as a person who calls himself our director?”

  “Yes. You’re talking about Artie. Who employs us.”

  “Employed, past tense. We are quitting. Resigning. Now.”

  “W-wait, Ken, we can’t just quit!”

  “I’ll tell Roberto. Roberto!” he called into his headset.

  Grace put her arm around Ken. He was hysterical. She knew he was more concerned about Tim than the Book Nook, but resigning…

  “Emma is going to be so upset, I have to talk to her.”

  “She knows. Tim e-mailed us all. There’s an e-mail waiting for you, too,” Ken said grimly.

  “Ken! You can’t just quit!”

  “Grace, I’ve been thinking about this since we got back. Think about what we left behind in New London.”

  Grace did: She’d left her mother, Mike, Jonathan, and Sara, and new friends. From New London, Brian was just a drive away. She had no job in New London, but without Ken, what would happen to their production design business? It was just the two of them, Roberto, and an assistant.

  “Grace, sometimes it’s just not worth it. The revenue is great, but being in New London, working on the Book Nook, meeting Tim—Leeza dying. Coming back here, I realize—it changed how I look at things. Who knows how long any of us has left? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with people who don’t care about me, much less abusive drama queens. Look, you don’t have to go with me, Gracie. But I have to go. Tim needs me. Do you know how good that feels?”

  “I need you, too,” Grace said softly.

  Ken hugged her close. “No you don’t. Not anymore. You created a money-making program. You know the business from all sides. I’ve trained you well. You’re fully capable. The only one who doesn’t know it is you. If you stay here, I’m absolutely certain you’ll do me, and yourself, proud.”

  “Don’t you want to make this temporary? See how it works out?”

  “Grace.” He flashed her the screen shot of the Book Nook. “We know how it’s going to work out.” He handed her his clipboard. “You have my passwords. I’ll e-mail you the rest of my files. I’ll call a Malibu Realtor from New London. Meanwhile, you can use the house and the boat; just don’t take the boat out. I’ll keep the boat for vacations. Tim will need a break.”

  Grace was incredulous. “The fire is terrible, but I can’t believe you’re just walking away like this and going back to Wisconsin.”

  “You know what they say—life is what happens when you’re making other plans.”

  “Are you going back because of the fire, or is that just an excuse?”

  “Neither. I’m going back to have a real life. I love Tim. I’ve been thinking about how to make it work, and the fire just solidified everything. You’d have to be selfish not to see I have to go back, and I don’t like to think that about you, but…”

  But you are. What was he saying? Ken had always supported her. “Selfish? I don’t do much of anything for myself, you know that.”

  “I’d reconsider that statement, Miss Non-Transparency. I always feel like you have a hidden agenda. At least I tell it like it is. Maybe Emma senses the same things I do. Maybe that’s been part of the problem with her. You have a hidden agenda, Grace, and it’s your agenda and nobody else’s. Which is fine, for you. But other people need things, too. Look at these pictures. Tim’s life is in ashes. Ashes! If you’d be honest with yourself, you’d admit this is more important. This is where I should be, and it’s where you should be too.”

  Grace felt as if Ken had slapped her in the face. The only thing missing was the handprint on her cheek. Of course, he was right. She had always had a hidden agenda. Yes, she’d been busy protecting her secrets. She was like the recipe box—a hard, weathered shell hiding a heart-shattering truth in plain sight.

  “Tim and the Book Nook aren’t Hollywood, but they’re real life,” Ken said. “You have Emma. I don’t have anyone.”

  In that moment, Grace realized that Ken had a secret, too—at heart he was still the same insecure, lonely teenage boy she and Leeza had known. “You’d better go, then,” she said softly. And she nodded. They each had something to protect.

  Grace watched the resignation from across the room. It was anticlimactic. For once, Artie was calm and professional. He simply signaled the line producer, who stepped in immediately. “We hired your company,” he said to Grace. “As long as the company delivers on the specifics, the contract is fulfilled. Your staffing at this point is not a material issue. Everyone has turnover in this business. Now let’s not lose time. We have a love scene to shoot.”

  Grace couldn’t believe Ken had actually done it, but he had, and now she had to make an instant gear-shift to focus on the business at hand. For a minute, she was torn. She sent Mike a quick text: OMG! But she’d have to deal with the fire later. Mike was a wonderful man, but it was good that she didn’t have a relationship to deal with right now. Ken had left the set, and now Roberto was waiting for direction. Right now, there was a job to do. She’d always thought of herself as more of a trainee, a wing-person, a professional and personal number two, following the lead of her mother, then Leeza, then Brian, and then Ken. Now there was nobody in front of her. The internship was over. In life and in work. Grace had just received a battlefield promotion.

  Grace knew that some women would be exhilarated, empowered, by this kind of opportunity. She wished she could be a woman like that. But she realized she had never felt more alone. Ken, Leeza, Lorraine, Brian—none of them could prop her up now, in any way. There was nobody to turn to.

  Breathe. Yes, that was the first step. That she could do. She took a deep breath. “Roberto!” she ordered into her headset. “Change of plans!”

  The next weeks turned into a blur. After leaving the set, Ken tied up what he could in LA and flew back to New London. The talk Grace had promised her
self she’d have with Emma didn’t materialize, as she had more to do than ever at work and the time was never right. At night, Mike would call, and she barely had the energy to talk to him. In addition to The Lost Ones, the producers had been given the green light to develop a spin-off for the spring season. Grace couldn’t afford to turn that down, so she was working overtime on the proposal. Ken was pretty wrapped up with the Book Nook, but thank God Grace had still managed to reach him for a pointer or two. Emma hung out on the edge of the preproduction activities, protectively managing Halo, who now had his own Facebook page and blog. She was working on her Halo story and tagging along with her new buddy, Sophie. Artie pretended not to notice Emma’s presence on the set, but Grace knew he noticed everything.

  Brian still wanted Emma to come to Chicago, but the first day of high school, with Emma’s celebrity chauffeur, loomed large as she and Sophie went into overdrive figuring out the appropriate outfit. Sophie had come by the house and done a complete wardrobe makeover for Emma. A pile of black Goth clothing had been whisked off to the local Goodwill, and Sophie and Emma had spent a Saturday scouring the vintage shops for some blazers. They cut the sleeves off the blazers and belted them to create what Sophie called “blazer swagger.” Grace snapped a photo for Ken so he could see his goddaughter in her new outfit, and sent it to him. He absolutely loved her new look.

  There were school supplies and reading-list books to buy. It was just overwhelming. Whoever told women they could “have it all” was delusional, Grace decided. Her mother hadn’t had it all, she didn’t have it all, and if there was any shot for living a fairy tale, Emma would make it, but she was pretty sure Emma wasn’t going to ever have it all, either.

  Grace knew she couldn’t put it off any longer. For once, Artie hadn’t scheduled a postproduction crisis meeting, so she was able to leave the set on time. On the drive home, inching south on the 405 through the inevitable parking lot traffic, she rehearsed what she’d say, a rehearsal she’d been through dozens of times before. The script was never the same. She’d started writing it when Emma was born, holding the small, perfect rosebud-child in the pink blanket, whispering the words she knew she’d one day have to say. That first time had been the most complete, most honest explanation, from Grace’s heart—and the one she wondered if she’d ever have the guts to say when her daughter was old enough to understand and, hopefully, forgive. There had been another script when Emma was seven, another when she was ten, and then the variation composed when Emma was thirteen, and finally the one she recited to herself and then stored in her mental filing cabinet when she decided to leave Brian. Now, so much had happened. She was different, Emma was different. Emma had met Von, was even friends with him. By the time Grace reached the cutoff for the 90 toward Marina del Rey, she had perfected her speech.

  Grace parked under the little portico next to their house, slung her bag over her shoulder, and put her key in the front door lock. At that minute, she knew she was going to pull an Artie and tear up the script.

  “Emma?” Halo was in his cage. A sure sign Emma was not home. This was not good. Emma was supposed to get permission, or at least inform Grace, whenever she went anywhere. She was supposed to be at home. “No reason to worry,” thought Grace. A package with a FedEx label, addressed to her, sat inside the door. Emma must have accepted and signed for it. Under the plastic label protector, the return address was the New London house, in Lorraine’s handwriting. “I must have left something at the house,” Grace thought. Distracted as she scanned the room for clues to Emma’s whereabouts, she pulled off the tape and opened the box. Inside were layers of newspaper, and inside that, wrapped in bubble pack, was something else. Digging under the packing, her fingers touched worn, weathered wood. Grace knew what it was immediately. She didn’t even have to see it.

  The recipe box.

  Well, there it was. The object of so much shock, sadness, and confusion in her life sitting on her own kitchen counter. Grace thumbed through a few cards. Yes, they were all there—the recipes that had taken on personalities of their own in her mind through the years.

  A small envelope was tucked inside, on top of the yellowed cards with their frayed edges. She recognized Lorraine’s handwriting: Grace. Inside were two pieces of paper. One was Grace’s birth certificate—obviously Lorraine had removed it from the safety deposit box. The other was a note:

  Secrets are not good things. Even if held with the best intentions. This recipe box has given up its secrets. The secrets are yours now. Will these recipes someday be Emma’s? That is up to you. Finding yourself is like the best recipes. The ingredients are there, but what you do with them is up to you. You still have time to refine the recipe. Your mother, who loves you.

  Grace had never had a letter from her mother before. Beyond scribbled notes left on the counter or the hall table, Lorraine was not a writer, but the words in the note were honest and heartfelt.

  Leeza’s death had reminded everyone how short and fragile life was. After all these years, Lorraine had sent her the recipe box, and she’d pulled Grace’s birth certificate out of the safety deposit box. These two things had done so much to shape both their lives, and now, here they were. Grace understood that this was a passing of the baton, of sorts. And it wasn’t just her mother sending her a message, it was the universe itself, it seemed.

  As she held the recipe box, Grace realized it no longer held her hostage. She would not stuff it into the back of a closet, burn it, or send it back. She would not hide her birth certificate any longer. All the things the box contained were simply ingredients. It was up to Grace to decide how much or how little of them she’d use to define who she would become. She would tell Emma what she’d learned.

  But where was Emma?

  “Where’s Emma, Halo?”

  “You cannot be serious!” the bird said, his black eyes peering out from his cage.

  “That was helpful,” Grace muttered as she texted Emma. Then she dialed her cell phone number. The toneless no-answer ring. Then Grace noticed a yellow Post-it stuck to the side of Halo’s cage.

  Suki

  End of Summer Blow-Out

  Oh no. Suki was the older surfer kid who had been driving the car and broken his collarbone in the Malibu accident, with marijuana in the car. Suki was trouble. There was an address on Fifth Street, and Grace checked the map online: Skid Row, in downtown LA. Skid Row! Where the LA homeless congregated! Suki! The prospects were absolutely terrifying. Grace sent a text to Emma: I am coming. Stay where you are.

  Amazingly, Emma answered. I am with Suki. Fifth and Main.

  Who knew, Grace thought, what she would find there.

  Arriving at Fifth Street in the Central City East area of downtown LA an hour later, Grace was confused. There was no place to park; in fact, she couldn’t even get close to Fifth and Main. It was as if a riot were going on. Wasn’t this supposed to be Skid Row? The area was known to be a homeless community enclave, where people with transient addresses lived in state-provided housing in cheap hotels, but what she saw after she finally found a parking garage was a street full of tents and stands and colorful tables and booths, a party full of hope. Huge bunches of multicolored balloons festooned an area several blocks long, and music and the smell of grilled food permeated the air. Laughing kids with painted faces and dripping snow cones skipped along, beaming, among play areas. Signs proclaimed: END OF SUMMER BLOCK PARTY! WELCOME!

  Grace was wandering through the crowd—probably, she thought, with a dazed look on her face—when she was pushed aside by a trampling mob of shrieking young girls. Edging her way down the street, she saw Jaxon Kerrig, the teenage heartthrob from The Lost Ones, flipping burgers in a blue apron, a backward baseball cap covering his trademark curls, surrounded by squealing fans. Standing next to him, in an identical blue apron, under a big, floppy red hat with the brim turned up and caught in a vintage pin, was Emma, handing out juice boxes.

  “Emma, what’s going on? How did you get here?” Grace asked as
Emma thrust a juice box at her.

  “Oops, sorry, Mom. We’re very busy.”

  “Who is ‘we’? And why are you here?”

  Emma dropped her eyes. “Mom. I just wanted to help. It’s the end-of-summer block party for the homeless kids who are going back to school. We served over six hundred sandwiches, can you believe it?” Her face glowed. “The kids all get free backpacks full of school supplies.”

  “Hey, Grace!” yelled Jaxon, with a wave. “We have an opening at the mustard station!”

  “So—this is a fund-raiser?” she asked Emma.

  “Yeah. They do it every year. The LA Mission sponsors it. They used to have a soup kitchen. Now there’s this cool party.” She pointed to her apron, which had the Mission’s logo on it. “Suki’s D.J.-ing pro bono, so he brought me along.”

  “Suki?”

  “He’s a D.J. now. We had a big orientation here yesterday. I know I should have told you I was volunteering, but you’ve been so busy, and I thought you were working late anyhow. And…” She beamed, as excited as any of the fans, “Jaxon’s here! A lot of stars volunteer today. Check it out. So many people are into this! I’ll send you the Twitter feed. Did you know, Mom, that almost seventy-four thousand people are homeless in LA? We have to help!”

  It was hard to criticize Emma for trying to do good, but there were still boundaries to be set. “Well, this is great, but don’t go off without telling me where, OK? We agreed.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Em, toss a juice box!” yelled somebody, and Emma was back to work.

  It was like the Cupcake Brigade at the Book Nook, Grace thought, only on a major scale. New London had been a training ground for Emma, small opportunities to learn things that she would then take and make her own. Before, she’d had to express herself in crazy hairstyles, clothes, and piercings, as if her ideas and ambitions were trapped inside her and unable to get out beyond her appearance. Grace realized now that Emma deserved—needed—a larger stage. She’d thought that by being strict and keeping her precious daughter close she was protecting her. But she now could see that she’d been stifling her. Emma was just entering the critical high school years, and she would need her mother’s guidance, but she was also ready to take those heady first steps to independence in her own way. Grace stood aside, marveling at her daughter’s ease. This was a girl who could handle whatever life threw at her, including a confession from her mother. Grace resolved that it was finally time to tell Emma the truth. Tomorrow.