by Jane Heller
“Apple cart, Pat.” I always tried to restrain myself from correcting her, but, despite her privileged upbringing and Ivy League education, she was hopelessly susceptible to malapropisms and often spoke in sentences you’d expect to hear from a foreign exchange student. “I’m sure apple tarts will figure into our week here though.”
I polished off my glass of Whitley Farm’s Merlot-Petit Syrah. It was pretty decent for a blend produced in Connecticut, which was not, after all, California. In California, we’d be blathering about how a wine’s structure, balance, and aroma were a religious experience. Not that I was a wine connoisseur. I drank red mostly because it was packed with life-saving antioxidants, allegedly. Women my age—I’m on the diminished-estrogen-level side of forty-five and a borderline hypochondriac—need all the help we can get.
“Now that you’re all sufficiently lubricated, are you ready for our Whitley Mystery Challenge?” asked Rebecca, our fearless leader, as servers clad in yellow aprons that matched the walls stood at attention over by the table where our tote bags awaited us.
“Mystery Challenge?” I rolled my eyes. “I hate mysteries. They’re in the same category as surprises, and you know how I feel about those.”
“Elaine,” Jackie groaned. “Try to just go with the flow for a change.”
“Your servers are going to blindfold you,” Rebecca explained, “and then you’ll taste several of Chef Hill’s offerings that showcase Whitley’s commitment to sustainable food systems. You’ll smell and touch each bite, savor it, and explore the culinary experience. Afterwards, you’ll remove your blindfolds, and we’ll discuss what you were eating, and you can assess your palate’s ability to identify flavor profiles. This is how you’ll begin to cultivate your bounty and learn where it comes from.”
“Give me a break. Do we really need to know where our bounty comes from?” I said. “Personally, I think people who obsess about whether their salmon is sockeye or chinook are schnooks. It’s a piece of fish, not a priceless diamond, and all it does is swim through my intestinal tract and land in my toilet bowl. And foraging? Seriously? What if we get Lyme disease from traipsing through the woods, not to mention poison ivy? Oh, and The Huffington Post had an article the other day about a man who drank raw milk from a farm like Whitley and came down with Guillain-Barré syndrome.”
“Elaine.” Jackie groaned again, while Pat giggled.
Okay, I admit I was risk-averse and paranoid, anticipating danger, disaster, and death when no possibility of these things existed. Such traits could be amusing if you were a friend and irritating if you weren’t.
“You’ll end up liking this trip,” said Jackie, as a rosy-cheeked male server with a mullet headed our way carrying something that wasn’t food. “You’re just being your usual neurotic self.”
She was probably right. She and Pat knew me better than almost anyone. We’d met at a New York courthouse the day we’d all shown up to divorce our worthless spouses. Twenty minutes after our chance encounter in that musty, charmless lobby, we’d moved from consoling each other about our exes to celebrating our shared courage in shedding them, and then we’d ditched our lawyers and gone out for lunch—a long lunch involving a piano player who sang “Hey Jude” and kept extorting everybody to join in, which nobody did. Many more get-togethers followed, and the Three Blonde Mice became as close as sisters. It didn’t matter that we were very different in terms of personality and background. We genuinely cared about the friendship, and nurtured it.
“And while you may not want to learn all this farm stuff, I do,” Jackie went on. “A lot of my customers are installing vegetable and herb gardens on their properties, and I need to be knowledgeable about it. Besides, Chef Hill is kind of hot from what I’ve seen of him on TV.” She wiggled her hips. “Maybe I’ll get lucky.”
Ever since Peter had traded my tomboy, whiskey-voiced friend for a simpering girly girl named Trish who probably wore her pearls to bed, Jackie had been on the prowl for men who would validate her sex appeal, and her quest only intensified after their divorce. She talked incessantly about getting laid or wishing she could.
“And I’ll learn how to cook healthier meals for Bill and the children,” said Pat.
Pat’s husband was a gastroenterologist named Bill or, as I’d dubbed him, the God of Gastroenterology. He was a celebrity doctor, the guardian of the country’s collective digestive system, and he popped up on Good Morning America whenever there was a national outbreak of E. Coli. After a few years of letting his big, know-it-all personality overshadow her gentle, supportive one, Pat had decided enough was enough and divorced him. Eventually, he realized what a dope he’d been—it’s not every day you find a woman of Pat’s devotion and utter goodness—and came crawling back. They re-married, to the delight of their five teenagers—four boys, and a girl who had Pat’s squat, pear-shaped body and round, full face along with her sweet nature and shining blue eyes.
“I get that you both have your agendas for this week,” I said, “but being educated about the lifespan of a zucchini blossom isn’t my idea of a good time.”
Our server arrived, interrupting our back-and-forth. “Good evening. I’m Oliver, and I’ll be working with you for the Mystery Challenge.” He held up three black eye masks of the type used for either a good night’s sleep or a date with the guy from Fifty Shades of Grey, and slipped a blindfold over our eyes. “Now I’ll fetch your challenge items. Be back in a few.”
Suddenly, I was in total darkness, and I did not enjoy the feeling. Nor did I appreciate having my eye makeup smudged.
“It’s Oliver again,” said our server after we had stood silently for a few minutes, awaiting his return. It was as if losing our sight had infantilized us, rendering us mute as well as blind. “I’ve got a tray of food here—three different bites for each of you ladies. I’ll guide your hands to the bites and you can sample them. After your blindfolds come off, you’ll tell Rebecca what you ate. Ready?”
“Yup, me first, Ollie,” said Jackie. “I’m starving.”
“Okay, I’m picking up your right hand now and directing it to one of the bites,” he said.
“Hm. Slippery,” said Jackie. “The hors d’oeuvre, not you, Ollie.”
“Take your time with it,” he said. “Really savor it.”
I could hear Jackie chewing. She was a loud chewer even when she wasn’t savoring. “Very tasty,” she said. “I could wolf down a dozen more of these, whatever they are.”
“I’ll go next,” chirped Pat.
While my friends were playing Whitley’s little mystery game with Oliver, I lifted my blindfold just enough to sneak a peek at the tray of Chef Hill’s tidbits. Call me a cheater if you must, but I wasn’t about to eat just anything. My blood pressure was ninety over seventy for good reason. My cholesterol level was an impressive 160. And I weighed 130 pounds, which, for a middle-aged woman of my nearly six-foot height, made me a giantess with a model’s figure—if not the staggeringly beautiful face. Why was I such a healthy specimen? Because I was in control at all times. I mean what if something on that tray was a cow testicle or an octopus heart, one of those “chef’s specialty” items you see on restaurant menus nowadays, and I spent the rest of the week with my head over the porcelain throne?
Whew. Jackie’s slippery thing is just a deviled egg, I thought with relief when I had my 20/20 vision back. It didn’t look like the mayonnaise-and-mustard-with-paprika kind my mother used to make for company, but an egg was an egg. The second item was a piece of fruit—a peach maybe—with a dollop of cheese and some sort of herb or other. And mystery bite number three was meat—chicken, probably—sandwiched between two potato—
“Your turn, Elaine,” said Pat, interrupting my stealth mission.
I fake coughed, covering my mouth with both hands so no one would notice that I was reaching up and surreptitiously sliding the blindfold down over my eyes. And then I made a performance out of letting Oliver help me navigate the bites into my mouth, smacking my lips oste
ntatiously and emitting “ah” and “hmm” noises as if I gave a shit what I was eating and whether it was grown at Whitley or bought at the nearest Stop & Shop. “Wow, that was intense,” I said when I was done.
Oliver gave us permission to remove our blindfolds and thanked us for our participation.
“Now comes the test,” said Rebecca once all the guests had finished the exercise. She was still in the center of the room but was now holding a clipboard and pen. “Let’s find out who was able to identify the bounty. Anybody?”
My hand shot up. Why not have a little fun with these people, I figured.
“Yes,” said Rebecca, nodding at me. “The woman in the beige sweater. Your name?”
Obviously she had no fashion sense, as my sweater was not beige. It was lightweight summer cashmere I’d gotten at last year’s Labor Day sale at Bloomie’s and its color was oatmeal. “Elaine Zimmerman,” I said. “I believe I ate an egg stuffed with beets, apples, and bleu cheese, a wine-soaked peach with a smear of herbed goat cheese and a sprig of mint, and braised chicken served between potato crisps and topped with a lemon aioli.” I smiled and waited to be told that I had just aced the class, the week, the trip.
“You fucking peeked,” Jackie hissed. She pretended to look mad, but she was laughing. “You’re such a fucking baby.”
“I am not,” I hissed back. Jackie loved using the f-word in all its iterations. She was so earthy. “I was only ‘going with the flow’ like you wanted me to.”
“Not now,” Pat scolded. “You two can hatch this out later.”
“There’s nothing to hash out,” I said, compelled yet again to correct her.
“I appreciate your contribution, Elaine,” said Rebecca, scribbling my answers on her clipboard as the other guests murmured among themselves, no doubt astonished to have such a gastronome in their midst. “I think you’ll benefit greatly from your week here.”
“See that?” I whispered to my friends. “Willie Nelson thinks I’m good at cultivating my bounty.”
“Unfortunately, you didn’t identify any of the foods correctly except the hard-boiled egg,” said Rebecca, sending me into a state of sheer mortification. “And before I let the others give us their answers, let me boast about our eggs here at Whitley. They’re a product of our Rhode Island Red laying hens, which are fed our organic, certified soy-free meals so they’ll lay beautiful big brown eggs. During the summer, when there’s lots of sunlight, they lay about six per week per hen.”
“Fascinating,” I muttered. “Just riveting.”
I sulked while the other guests threw out their answers. I went into a complete snit when one of them, a young woman who looked like a walking juice cleanse, got every ingredient right.
“Don’t feel bad,” said Jackie, slinging an arm around my waist and squelching another laugh. “So the egg was stuffed with radishes, not beets. They’re both red.”
“And your peach turned out to be a pear, but they both start with p,” said Pat, with a not-very-straight face.
“You couldn’t even cheat your way through,” Jackie said. She and Pat could no longer contain themselves and were now doubled over, cackling.
I was about to point out that my friends didn’t try to guess what the mystery foods were when an extremely attractive man tapped me on the shoulder.
“Sorry to intrude, but I just wanted to say that I admire your courage for being the first to raise your hand,” he said as I took a quick inventory of his refined, almost patrician appearance. Those soulful brown eyes! That lustrous brown hair curling under his ears! That Cartier tank watch that cost way more than the knockoff I’d bought off a street vendor! The rest of his wardrobe wasn’t cheap either; his shirt, slacks, and loafers were straight out of an Armani ad. And—most appealing of all—there was no wedding ring. “Your braised chicken idea wasn’t that far off the mark. Quail can be hard to identify.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate that.” He had a jovial air about him, a good-natured, nonjudgmental demeanor. “I’m Elaine Zimmerman, and these are my friends Jackie Gault and Pat Kovecky.”
“Jonathan Birnbaum,” he said during our round of handshakes. “Nice to meet you all.”
“Do you work at Whitley or are you an agritourist like us?” asked Jackie.
“The latter,” said this Jonathan Birnbaum person, who, although Jackie had posed the question, continued to concentrate on me, which was both unnerving and flattering. “I came primarily for the cooking classes. How about you, Elaine? What brought you to Whitley?”
“The bounty,” I said without missing a beat. “Cultivating it, I mean. I have so much to learn, as you can tell from the Mystery Challenge. And I’m looking forward to the cooking, of course.”
“Perfect,” he said with a gleam in those brown eyes. “We’ll be in the trenches together all week, Elaine.”
Suddenly, things were looking up. Maybe Jonathan Birnbaum and I would embark on a torrid affair during Cultivate Our Bounty week. Maybe that affair would evolve into a meaningful relationship, one with stimulating conversations and stimulating sex and safety deposit boxes stuffed with Cartier jewelry. Maybe being dragged to Whitley was the best thing that would ever happen to me.
Of course, there was a slight complication. I already had a boyfriend.
2
“Home sweet home,” I said out loud upon entering my cottage. After depositing the tote bag of Whitley handouts in the corner near my emptied luggage, I sank into the armchair to the right of the king-size four-poster bed. Other amenities of my accommodations included a marble bathroom with a soaking tub and rainfall shower, a desk area that offered Wi-Fi, an iPod dock and a fifty-inch flat-screen TV—pretty swanky for a farm.
I was tired and therefore grateful for the early night, particularly since we’d be forced to get up at the crack of dawn the next morning to shovel cow dung or something. Still, the evening had ended on a high note. Jonathan Birnbaum and I had chatted for a few more minutes while Jackie scurried off to the bar and Pat scurried off to the restroom. (Before departing, Jackie had mouthed, “He’s hot,” the same thing she said about most men, although in this case she was spot-on.) Jonathan told me he was a partner at his late father’s law firm in Palm Beach, specializing in estates, wills and trusts; I told him I was a VP and senior account executive at Pearson & Strulley, the international PR firm where I’d worked for nine years. He told me he lived in a Mediterranean-style house with a pool and a tennis court across the street from the Intracoastal Waterway; I told him I lived in a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in a doorman building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side across the street from Madonna. He told me he was an accomplished home cook. I told him I was an accomplished orderer from restaurants that delivered, which made him laugh, which made me laugh, and before I knew it we were chuckling like fools. He said he wasn’t expecting to “click with anyone” at Whitley and he was looking forward to the week. I said, “Me too,” and then we said goodnight. He was definitely hitting on me, my friends confirmed later, and I have to say I didn’t hate it.
I heaved a contented sigh, reached into the pocket of my white linen pants, and pulled out my cellphone to turn it back on since electronic devices were a no-no while the week’s activities were in progress. I had no desire to post selfies or food porn on my Instagram page, but it was torture for me not to be able to get e-mails and texts. I liked to feel needed.
I checked the phone. Nothing. Bah.
I was about to connect it to its charger and put it and myself to bed when it rang.
My heart did a little dance when I saw that the caller was Simon, the boyfriend I mentioned. He and I had broken up shortly before the trip, so he was not, technically, my boyfriend, but that didn’t stop my pulse from quickening every time I heard his damn voice,
“What?” I said in a not-very-cordial greeting.
“Hey, Slim. How’s it going in Farmaggedon?” said Simon, clearly trying to be charming in that way he had of turning everything into a joke. �
��Were you out tilling the soil or picking berries for that pie you’ll be baking for me?”
“I was at a party,” I said, determined to sound chilly yet irresistible, like a heroine from a classic movie, say Lauren Bacall.
“Look, I know you hate me right now, but I love you and I’ll prove it,” he said. “You’ll see.”
“I won’t hold my breath.” How dare he try to reel me back in? We were done. I’d ended it. And, trust me, it hadn’t been easy.
“Don’t you remember how good it was between us, Slim?”
Of course I remembered. That was the problem. I’d met Simon Purdys on the Princess Charming and, after a lifetime of mistrusting men, I’d allowed myself to trust Simon. We’d entered into a passionate romance after our shipboard fling, a serious, sappy romance of the type where you can’t bear to be without the other person for more than an hour and even an hour is a stretch. For a year it was miraculous and unexpected and beyond my wildest dreams, but not anymore. “What’s the point of this call, Simon?”
“To cheer you up,” he said. “You seemed pretty miserable the last time I saw you.”
“Yeah, because I was angry. People aren’t jumping for joy when they’re ending a relationship.”
I had shared the details of the breakup with Jackie and Pat, of course, and they both thought it was my fault. Some friends.
“Don’t be a fucking idiot. He’s a keeper,” Jackie had said.
“I wouldn’t give him up if I were you,” Pat had advised. “He’s a special, special man, Elaine.”
He’d certainly seemed to be. He’d been a well-regarded travel writer at Away from It All magazine when we met on the ship. He’d been thinking of resigning; he’d said he was tired of traveling so much. Then shortly after we got back from the cruise, his publisher offered him the editor-in-chief position, and he grabbed it, thinking a desk job would mean less time on a plane and more time for a life. Wrong. He was in nonstop meetings, buried under an executive’s workload. I could handle that, no problem, since I was a workaholic myself.
