by Keith Weaver
Titles by Keith Weaver
An Uncompromising Place
The Recipe Cops
Copyright © 2016 Keith Weaver
Published by Iguana Books
720 Bathurst Street, Suite 303
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M5V 2R4
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise (except brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of the author or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
Publisher: Kathryn Willms
Editor: Holly Warren
Front cover image: Courtesy of unsplash.com (Lou Levit)
Front cover design: Victoria Feistner
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Weaver, Keith, 1947-, author
The recipe cops / Keith Weaver.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77180-185-0 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-77180-187-4 (epub).--ISBN 978-1-77180-186-7 (kindle)
I. Title.
PS8645.E2175R44 2016 C813’.6 C2016-903325-2
C2016-903326-0
This is an original print edition of The Recipe Cops.
For Peter Satok, Tony Finelli, and Andrew Bayley
One
Looking back, the whistle of the kettle stood out as a harbinger of the unravelling of Sanford’s life. That image, frozen in time, stayed with him: standing immobile, the telephone to his ear, and the surreal whistle of the kettle filling the air. A duplicate scene, occurring two weeks earlier, and informing him of the death of his mother, rose up once more.
The two telephone calls brought news, but the kind of news that comes at you from left field. On this occasion, as he stood there in his kitchen, the ordinary events of the previous five minutes repeated in his head on a closed loop: getting bread out of the fridge, putting a measure of instant coffee into a cup, filling the kettle, the kettle just beginning to boil. Then the telephone call, from the village doctor, announcing that Joe had died, almost a repeat of the events leading to the news of his mother’s death. Now, the phone still to his ear, the connection broken, he stood there, dumped into a grey fog, struggling to believe the denial that was already in retreat. At the same time, he found that some corner of his mind, in what he supposed later to be a sort of defence mechanism, was busily engaged in a bizarre and meaningless juggling of immediate events on the calendar. As if a few changed appointments could somehow erase such a loss.
Saturday morning. Ten thirty. Barely an hour and a half previously, according to Dr. Hanley, Joe had died of a heart attack. He had been just four months past his sixtieth birthday.
Turning off the kettle, Jim Sanford experienced an odd sense of unreality and disorientation, not really knowing what to do next. He called his boss at home and said that he would need a few days off, but at the same time was shocked at a brief jab of concern that his schedule of work would be interrupted at a critical time. A palpable flow of sympathy returned immediately from the telephone, along with the offer from Stephen Maxwell, his boss, to take as long as he needed, that he knew how close Sanford had been to Joe.
Joe.
The man Sanford had known since early boyhood. A personal icon at every stage in his life. Next to his mother, the person he had known longest and best.
His mother.
Sanford had just about come to terms with her recent death. He had found himself looking forward to spending what he had hoped would be a healing four days at Joe’s place, something that he and Joe had agreed to less than a week ago. Joe had seemed uncharacteristically cagey in making the arrangements for that visit, and that had puzzled Sanford somewhat.
What he felt at the moment was an expanding numbness, and an absurd flutter of fretting about what this would do to his schedule for the day. But Sanford knew that this also was just a defence mechanism, that the real pain lay ahead, that the two wakes of grief, for his mother and for Joe were converging.
As Sanford drove the two and a half hours from Toronto to Stanley Falls, the significance of Joe’s death that morning unfolded in stages, pushing back other concerns, and eventually banishing them altogether. Joe. Gone. The blunt monosyllables kept hammering in his mind. Sanford had visited Joe many times as an adult; they had talked about the years of Sanford’s youth, and Sanford always hoped that he had made Joe aware of what Sanford owed him, not that this was a debt that could ever be repaid. And it wasn’t something that could be acknowledged openly; it had to be approached obliquely, subtly, by recounting the past in stages, and as a shared experience. But without having it out in the open, in what would have been gauche and embarrassing bluntness, Sanford felt beset by doubt that he really had thanked Joe properly, had made it clear what gratitude and love he felt, for the breadth and strength that his years in Joe’s company had helped to build. Perhaps this was just part of the essence of generational indebtedness: that the best of the older generation regarded this stewardship and guidance as an unconditional duty delivering back its own reward, that the best of the younger generation saw it as the most noble altruism, and that in reality there was little common ground for these two to embrace. Perhaps the “pearls before swine” aspect of youth, recognized too late, if at all, by those who once had been young, was just one of those brutal facts, as in the notion that the teenager is an invention whose sole purpose is to rupture the child-parent bond, whatever the force required and whatever the hurt delivered.
Before the loss of Joe was able to crowd out everything else, Sanford fretted yet again over his own family, such as it was, or such as it had been. His marriage to Helen remained in his memory as a halo of delight, undimmed and unsullied even by the subsequent slow decline, his own increasingly panicky efforts to halt that decline, the unbelievable revelations, and then the final explosive rupture. And now, here he was, at the age of thirty-seven, his career in full bloom, but his family in tatters, and a past now devastated by two sudden deaths. In his mind, there were two strongboxes that held the brightest images from his marriage: the months of joy with Helen before and after their wedding, and the radiant gift of his daughter, Julia. But thoughts of his mother and of Joe were pushing these images aside.
His trip to Stanley Falls two weeks earlier had also been on a drop-everything basis. The details of that trip were a set of sharply etched stills that somehow blurred into one another. His overall recollection of it was one of being numbed by the blow of losing, suddenly and unexpectedly, the anchor from his boyhood and youth. The present trip brought all that back again, from its own separate alcove of pain, regret, and loss.
At that time, he had dealt with two tasks. The first of these had been to wrap up his mother’s financial affairs, something that he was able, somehow, to work through mechanically, in a state of disconnection. The paperwork that laid out his mother’s estate was simple and straightforward, but he had the strong feeling that she was there, in front of him, filling his senses every time he opened the folder of documents. Her neat and delicate handwriting, her essence that rose to him as a scent from the pages he worked through, the little notes stuck to the documents at various points, expanding on a detail, or giving a wisp of context, these all exuded her love and concern, and he could feel their touch, as gentle as a feather but as strong as a carpenter’s vise.
It had taken him four days to go through all her things. He set aside and retained all her papers and photos, and the large diary she had kept for most of the past twenty years. All her clothes he had packed into boxes, and although he would
ask her friends in Stanley Falls whether they would like any items, most of her clothes would go back to Toronto to be given to charities. She had kept a few items that she valued, and he decided to keep them all. The most important of these were the Br’er Rabbit mug and bowl from his early childhood and the several pieces of good china she had cherished. He also decided to keep most of her cooking implements, all of them old and solid, embodying a quality that was the hallmark of a bygone day. The furnishings in the house he had decided to keep, and this flowed from his decision not to sell the house, but to retain it and offer it for rent. His mother had been a neat and orderly person, and there was little that needed doing to the house. But Sanford had hired a few locals to replace some of the trim, to give a fresh face to the maple flooring, and to repaint the house, inside and out.
The second task concerned the house itself. It took little effort for Sanford to make it generally known that he wanted to rent, rather than sell, his mother’s home. This had not been an easy decision, but it was far less painful than having to live with the thought of the place being bought and gutted by a stranger. His entry onto this path was eased by the offer from Anne Ferguson, a long-time friend of Sanford’s mother, to be temporary resident in order to keep an eye on things, an offer that Sanford had accepted right away.
He entered Stanley Falls and drove straight to the office of the village doctor, Doctor Hanley, who gave him an account of what had happened. Joe had called Hanley at about ten fifteen, clearly in distress; Hanley had gone to Joe’s place straight away; he found Joe unconscious on his kitchen floor, and although he did what he could, by the time the ambulance arrived Hanley had already pronounced Joe dead. Hanley offered Sanford his condolences, and then there unfolded that awkward encounter between those bereft of the power to do anything that can help, and those for whom the only help is time and grief.
Leaving Dr. Hanley’s office, Sanford drove to Joe’s place, less than a kilometre distant, and at the sight of the house the talons of loss took their first real grip. Joe’s house was the same magical spot that had wreathed Sanford’s youth in swirls of quiet love. The wood siding of the large, rustic house was immaculate – dark green paint and a tasteful maquillage of white trim joining forces to project a welcome that was at once strong and enfolding. The three large oaks in front of the house dared any trouble even to think of entering. A closely planted row of spruces, like a line of rugby forwards, so close together that they were almost interwoven, stood to the right of the path leading to the front door. Sanford expected, and could hear even now, the indeterminate number of birds that always called this thicket their home, serenading anyone who was listening. To the left of the house, and flowing in a graceful centrifugal arc that partially encircled the small log barn tucked away about eighty metres behind the house, stood the familiar stand of pines, displaying that odd wisdom of mature trees, and uttering a quiet susurrus, calming, reassuring, and as clear as the voice of the turtle. Joe’s car was in the garage. The grass was carefully trimmed.
Sanford knew the same would be true inside. He walked up the drive, as he had done virtually every day of his boyhood. Entering the side door, he went through a small vestibule, then into the large kitchen, the place where Sanford probably had spent at least half the hours of his free time before the age of fifteen. As always, it was immaculate and inviting. Delightful patterned curtains graced all the windows. Rows of colourful china storage jars sat beneath a small choir of pale maple wall cupboards. The room exuded Joe, was the very essence of one part of Joe, and the talons clenched more tightly.
He quickly moved through the familiar rooms: the scullery where so many times he had washed his hands and gardening tools, and where the indoor pump sat, its rustic utility and old-time practicality always bringing a smile to his lips, but also its sheer permanence continually renewing a promise to deliver clear, cold, delicious water from the thick limestone beds sixty feet below; the den, where Joe spent a lot of his waking hours; and the lovely comfortable pantry off the kitchen. Sanford then took a quick tour outside, returned a smile to the trellis of roses dozing in the sun, passed through the pergola festooned by purple and yellow clematis, and then gazed at one of Joe’s great joys: the large, well-organized, exquisitely manicured vegetable garden.
And Reggie.
Reggie, a handsome Setter-Labrador cross, stood outside his kennel. The kennel sat comfortably against the back of the house like a sentry box and faced the garden, which was surrounded by high deer-proof fencing. Reggie looked like a lost soul. Dr. Hanley had said that as the gurney bearing Joe’s body was loaded into the ambulance and driven away, Reggie had raised his nose into the air and howled mournfully.
“Hello Reggie”, Sanford said softly. The tail rose and began to wag. He was grey around the muzzle now, but showed none of that bent-legged look of the pain-ridden arthritic pet. This dog had been Joe’s third Reggie – no Willie, Sam, or other interloper name even had a chance.
“I’ll come back shortly, Reggie, then you and I can have a chat.”
Climbing into his car, Sanford drove to the bank, where he knew Joe’s will and other papers would be waiting. He nodded briefly to the bank manager, Mr. Cartwright, one of Joe’s long-time friends, and he made a mental note to schedule a meeting with Cartwright soon. Picking up the package, marked and waiting for him, Sanford drove back to Joe’s place. Back at Joe’s, he fussed Reggie and fed him, made himself a cup of tea, and did a quick twenty-minute tour of the house and grounds, as the first step in an inventory of what, if anything, needed to be done. He was well aware of the size and nature of the task ahead: adjusting to the fact that he was now the owner of this country house and considering what he would be doing about that.
Based on this first quick inspection, Sanford came to a number of conclusions.
It appeared that almost nothing needed to be done, inside or outside the house. The entire property bore all the signs of being a labour of love that had responded in kind to the years of TLC lavished upon it. This made Sanford’s job as simple as it could be.
Sanford called the bank, and was just in time, before they closed for the weekend, to book an appointment to see Cartwright first thing Monday to begin dealing with all the matters relating to Joe’s will. He then unloaded his laptop from the car, since he wanted to send suggestions to his office the next morning on the projects he had left partly completed.
Starting the next day, Sanford would have to decide on the arrangements for Joe’s funeral, but he felt fairly certain that there would be some instructions on that in Joe’s will.
Finally, despite the fact that it seemed so crassly utilitarian, Sanford needed a plan, probably extending out over the next week or so. That would be about enough time to wrap up everything, package that corner of his life, and lodge it in storage. Part of that likely would involve the task of putting Joe’s place on the market and selling it, a thought that occurred to Sanford as a reflex, without thinking what it would mean.
Sanford’s thoughts were disjointed, barely formed – an odd mix of resolve and confusion. This was all emanating from two metaphorical boxes of personal freight – that fifth substance defining part of his inner life – and they had to be opened.
Two
Sanford had grown up at the house across the street. Until two weeks ago, it had been where his mother lived. Seeing the small, neat structure once again, pale blue paint and white trim, just inflamed once more the pain of recent loss. His mother’s smiling face, animated by an ever-present love and empathy, appeared again suddenly before his mind’s eye. Aileen Sanford had lived for her son, and it was only in his late twenties and early thirties that Sanford realized the extent to which his mother devoted herself to him. His eyes stinging, Sanford let his gaze wander across the scene before him. Each aspect of this house and the attractive property it sat on raised a hundred images. It took a few minutes for him to regain control, and then he walked along the path to the back door, as he had done hundreds of times
during his boyhood. A diminutive, pink-faced, spry, and cheerful woman stood just outside the back door and smiled reassuringly as he approached.
Anne Ferguson had been a long-time friend of Aileen Sanford. They had been through ups and downs together, and during Anne’s recent trials Aileen had spent a lot of time with her.
These days, Anne insisted on being called Anne by friends and acquaintances, and Ms. by anyone else. She used the title “Ms.” for want of anything better, but at the same time she very much disliked it. Ms. Ferguson was house-sitting for Sanford and for her departed friend Aileen, but while she was in the house, he regarded it as her domain, and private. So, before walking around the property, Sanford knocked on the door, explained why he was there, fended off the invitation to come in for what he felt might become a long chat, but agreed readily to spend a few minutes with her later at a garden table that held court amid a small irregular grove of apple trees to one side of and just behind the house.
Sanford took the time to stroll around the property, look again at the trees, the buildings, some favourite spots, and just remind himself of sounds and smells. These things all passed before him one at a time.
First was the Air Attic – a large, roughly cubical boulder, but a tricky place, located between a wild gooseberry bush and a nasty clump of poison ivy. Sanford had spent a lot of time there as a boy. The top of it was large and flat, large enough for him to lie down and stretch out completely without feet or hands hanging off any of the edges. Once up there, he was invisible. But there was only one way up: pull yourself up onto a narrow ledge at the back, hug the stone and work your way along the ledge until you reached a second ledge. This ledge sloped upward rather steeply, but with care you pulled yourself up onto and along that second ledge and then scrabbled up to the top, about twelve feet off the ground.
