The Whole Enchilada

by Diane Mott Davidson

  The Whole Enchilada

  Diane Mott Davidson

  Dedication

  To the readers of the Goldy series,

  with much affection and many thanks

  Epigraph

  For had it been an adversary who taunted me,

  then I could have borne it;

  or had it been an enemy who vaunted himself against me,

  then I could have hidden from him.

  But it was you, a man after my own heart, my companion,

  my own familiar friend.

  —PSALM 55:12–13

  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Invitation

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Recipes from The Whole Enchilada

  About the Author

  Also by Diane Mott Davidson

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  My friend Holly Ingleby died after a party I’d organized. She collapsed while walking with her son, Drew, to her car—less than a block from the house belonging to another close friend, Marla Korman. I knew I shouldn’t have blamed myself. But I did.

  The seventeenth-birthday celebration for Drew and my own son, Arch, was not an official event put on by my business, Goldilocks’ Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right! It was a Tex-Mex potluck featuring sizzling-hot enchiladas, crunchy salted tortillas, cool guacamole, fresh-baked corn bread, and chile relleno tortas, those quivering, picante-laced custards brimming with lakes of cheddar and Jack cheeses. For dessert, there was dulce de leche ice cream accompanying a birthday cake with sparkler-style candles. The whole thing was supposed to have been carefree and fun.

  What was the opposite of carefree and fun? That party.

  Years before, Holly, Marla, and I, along with a few other women, had been in a support group, Amour Anonymous. We’d all given love to the wrong men for the wrong reasons. With a few banjos, we could have played Nashville. Ha ha, so funny I forgot to laugh.

  More important, we kept each other upright as we marched through hell.

  When I saw Holly lying inert on the pavement, an icy abyss opened in my chest. Tom, my second husband—as wonderful as the first one had been horrific—grasped my shoulders to keep me from pitching onto the concrete where Holly lay.

  Afterward, I thought, That could have been me.

  I knew people differed in their opinions of Holly. In our mountain town of Aspen Meadow, Colorado, perched at eight thousand feet above sea level, forty miles west of Denver, the charitable called Holly a loving mother who’d come from nothing, then shared her creative gifts with the world. The uncharitable called her an untalented slut who chased rich men and charged too much for her work.

  Marla and I always stuck up for her—not that it did much good.

  Still, no matter what the charitable or the uncharitable said about Holly’s personality and ability, they all would have agreed that she worked hard to maintain her slender, muscled body. At thirty-eight, she was still leggy, still blond, with a bright-eyed, surgically enhanced face and a vivacious personality. She had no history of disease and was not on medication.

  As it turned out, there were many uncharitable people around my old friend. At the time, I didn’t know who these individuals were. Nor did I have an inkling as to their motives.

  Most people were stunned by her death. Most. Not all.

  Invitation

  SEVENTEENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY

  FOR

  ARCH KORMAN AND DREW INGLEBY

  Tex-Mex Potluck Buffet

  Friday, June 15th

  Marla Korman’s new house

  Meadowview, Aspen Meadow Country Club,

  Aspen Meadow, Colorado

  We’ll provide:

  Tortilla Chips and Guacamole

  Enchiladas Suizas

  Vegetarian Chile Relleno Tortas

  Refried Beans

  Corn Bread

  Sour Cream, Sliced Black Olives, Chopped Tomatoes,

  Scallions, and Lettuce

  Birthday Cake

  Dulce de Leche Ice Cream

  Soft Drinks, Coffee, Tea

  (And if you’re over twenty-one and not driving, Beer and Wine)

  If your favorite dish isn’t here, feel free to bring it. Suggestions:

  Gazpacho

  Tamale Pie

  Tostadas

  Arroz con Pollo

  Flan

  1

  Before Holly died—before everything went south—I enjoyed the prep for the boys’ party.

  As I grated cheese for the enchiladas, I remembered meeting Holly on the maternity ward when our sons were born. She was standing very still outside the newborns’ nursery, staring through the glass as tears dropped from her high-cheekboned face. I put her despair down to postpartum blues, and hugged her. She was quite a bit taller than yours truly, so we made an odd picture.

  Within moments, Holly and I also discovered that neither of our doctor husbands had bothered to show up. She dabbed her eyes and said, “I feel so sorry for Drew. He has to know his own father doesn’t care.”

  For a change, I bit my tongue. I hadn’t been surprised that Dr. John Richard Korman had not made an appearance. Later, I dubbed him the Jerk, both for his initials and his behavior, which included breaking my right thumb in three places with a hammer.

  I set aside the shredded cheddar and veered away from that memory. I touched my thumb, which still wouldn’t move properly. Then I tore the skin off rotisserie chickens and ripped the meat from the bones. Who says cooking isn’t cathartic?

  Drew and Arch had been in the same Sunday School and attended Aspen Meadow’s Montessori preschool. There, Holly enthusiastically helped students with their clay sculptures and tempera paintings. I felt lucky to have known Holly before her artwork made her famous.

  I blinked at the pan of softened tortillas, then stacked them between paper towels to remove excess oil. Next I mixed crema—homemade sour cream—with the chicken, cheddar, and a judicious amount of salt. I began rolling the tortillas around spoonfuls of the filling and carefully placing them in buttered pans.

  Goldy and Arch; Holly and Drew. I had a sudden image of Drew, Holly’s darling son, at age five, his face splashed with freckles, his mop of strawberry-blond curls blowing in the breeze beside Cottonwood Creek. After church, Drew and Arch would hunt for garter snakes by the water. When they held one up for our inspection, we would shriek.

  When the boys finished kindergarten, I put Arch into public school. Holly enrolled Drew at Elk Park Prep, an expensive local private institution. But the boys remained church pals until they were nine. Back then, Holly swooned over the cookies I brought in for the Sunday School class; she even begged for the recipes. She gleefully admitted she never made them herself, but gave them to the cook who worked for her mother-in-law, Edith. The cook was one of the benefits of living in the red-brick plantation-style house that Edith’s deceased husband had built. George the First, as Holly called him, had made millions as a genuine oil baron. When I said it must be nice to have somebody else prepare meals, Holly replied that living with Edith wasn’t worth a dozen chefs.

  Holly also
confided that she’d discovered, too late, that her husband—George the Second—was a mama’s boy and a cheapskate. Despite Holly’s pleas, George refused to buy a house for their little family. His mother might get sick, he maintained. She might fall down the stairs. No, George wouldn’t hear of it. Worse, George and Edith put Holly, who had to look up the word profligate, on a stringent cash budget. Humiliated and furious, Holly came to hate them both. The boys were in fourth grade when she began divorce proceedings.

  As I chopped onions for the enchilada sauce, the tears filling my eyes may have come from the onion. Still, I didn’t enjoy recalling how much I’d missed my friend when she bought a house in Denver. I hated remembering how Arch had pined for Drew.

  I found a tissue, blew my nose, and washed my hands again. I heated oil in a Dutch oven, then tossed in the onion. When it was almost done, I ladled in minced garlic. I stirred and inhaled the luscious scent. Next I added chopped Italian tomatoes, chiles, and oregano to the enchilada sauce, gave it a good stir, and smiled—for this was when the memories started their trajectory back up.

  Not much more than a year after Holly left George the Second, the boys had an opportunity to get reacquainted. Holly sold the place in Denver. She purchased a fire-engine-red four-wheel-drive Audi and a house in Aspen Meadow Country Club, then called to say she was back.

  By then, Marla Korman, the Jerk’s second ex-wife, and I had become pals. I invited Holly to join Amour Anonymous. While the group met, Arch and Drew moved from remote-controlled cars to board games. In winter, the two of them sledded down nearby hills. Drew, tall and athletic like Holly, began to tower over Arch. Sometimes the boys would build a jump for their sleds and plastic saucers, and laugh themselves silly when one of them wiped out.

  At the beginning of each Amour Anonymous meeting, we would check in with a brief description of our current physical and emotional health. Then we took turns choosing discussion topics. I was the secretary. This was all before laptop computers became commonplace, so I wrote the notes by hand.

  I sighed, poured the sauce over the first pan of enchiladas, and put them in the oven. I made myself an espresso and sat down. What came next was my best memory of Holly from those dark days.

  Not long into my own years of singlehood, Marla was out of town when a sudden snowstorm postponed an Amour Anonymous meeting. Arch was spending the night with a friend, whose parents invited him to stay on. I couldn’t have picked him up anyway, because my tires had once again been slashed. I suspected the Jerk, of course, but could prove nothing.

  Holly called to check on me. I told her I’d gone back to bed. And I stayed there, as the blizzard raged on, day after whiteout day, with school canceled and Arch remaining with his friend. Holly called, and called, and called again. When I said I was too tired to talk, or even to get out of bed, she showed up on our street. She banged on the door. Cursing, I answered, still in my pajamas. Holly whirled inside and said she’d left Drew with a helpful neighbor. Looking me up and down, she tossed her long blond hair over her shoulders and ordered me to shower and dress. Meanwhile, she arranged for my car to be towed to the local tire place. Then she dragged me out of the house.

  The roads had been plowed by then, so she sped down the interstate to Denver. Along the way, she caught sight of my raggedy, torn purse, which wasn’t going to do me much good anyway, because I was low on money—the Jerk having once again “forgotten” to send the monthly check for child support.

  Holly shot me a grin and asked, “Why do elephants have trunks?” When I said I had no idea, she said, “Because they’d look silly with handbags.” I was so tired and depressed, I couldn’t even smile.

  Holly announced we were having a spa day. After our manicures and pedicures, her favorite colorist put highlights in my hair. While my hair was “processing,” a word I’d always associated with curing pork, the colorist went to work on Holly’s elegant mane. Holly, meanwhile, chatted about how she was seeing two men just then. She was skiing with one in Aspen the next week, in Vail with the other the week after. The hairdresser looked at me and winked. Afterward, Holly and I gazed in the mirror. My friend hugged me, laughed, and asked if we were having fun yet. I couldn’t help it: a grin creased my face.

  Holly then piloted the Audi through slush to Cherry Creek Mall. She insisted on buying me a new leather purse and several outfits. The clothes were much too chic for the reduced circumstances of my postdivorce life. I didn’t go out for lunch anymore; I didn’t ski in winter or play tennis in summer. Worse, my catering business had barely gotten off the ground. But that day, none of those issues mattered. Holly drove me back to my car with its new tires, which she insisted on paying for, as she had for everything else that day. She waved my thanks away.

  “I have money and you don’t,” she said. “It’s that simple.”

  For Holly, it was that simple. In our group, she flatly stated that at age twenty-one, she’d married George—ten years her senior and smitten with her—because he was loaded. With no close relatives, she had been working two jobs while attending art school on scholarship. She loved being creative, but had trouble making rent. George was a cardiologist, so even if Edith’s oil wells ran dry, they’d be set. Anyway, Holly reasoned, Edith was a sixty-seven-year-old widow, so how long could she actually live? Forever, she told us acidly, years later.

  I softened the tortillas for the next pan of enchiladas, and thought back.

  At another meeting, Holly told us that while she was with George, she’d thought she could make her own money if she established a career. That did not work out—at least, not during the marriage.

  When Holly didn’t make a fortune from her paintings, it surprised her. She was into astrology and had had her chart done. The stars had apparently predicted that she was going to be a very successful artist. I’d found this interesting. Whenever my catering business teetered on the brink of collapse, I was afraid to consult anything but a cookbook.

  By the time Drew was seven, Holly had sold only three canvases. I learned this not from Holly, but from Edith, who’d begun telling anyone who would listen that her daughter-in-law was a dilettante who couldn’t be bothered to raise her own son. Inevitably, some of this was reported back to Holly. Holly told us she confronted Edith for talking behind her back, and that the older woman loudly retorted that Holly sure had an awfully expensive hobby!

  But I had to give Holly—or her chart—credit: after divorcing George, she started over. During her year in Denver, she went back to art school, and started fashioning something she called portrait-collages. She sold so many works she developed a lengthy client waiting list.

  When the Denver Post interviewed Holly, she gleefully repeated Edith’s expensive hobby comment. Intuiting a sensational story, the Post sagely snapped photo after photo of Holly, as gorgeous as ever, posed seductively in front of her latest work. I wondered how long it had taken Edith, who now shared her mansion with George and his second wife, Lena, to tear that article into teensy-weensy pieces and burn it, maybe in a discarded oil drum.

  Unlike what I was sure Holly’s ex-mother-in-law thought, I was happy that my friend had found career success. We all seemed to be healing and moving on, and the meetings of Amour Anonymous became less frequent. Still, when we did meet, Holly would invariably confide that she was skiing, hiking, or playing squash with somebody special. She would say her latest client was making her beaucoup bucks. She would bring out photos of Drew scoring goals in soccer.

  At the time, I wasn’t seeing anybody, and Arch was giving me fits. In the career department, I found that my catering clients could be willful, demanding, or suddenly bankrupt. But I did adore my friend, and I was happy for her. The snowy day she’d pulled me out of a funk remained a high point of that painful time.

  I took the first batch of enchiladas out of the oven, set them aside to cool, and began rolling the filling inside the new batch of softened tortillas. I frowned, because this was where my story about my friend went off track. Whose f
ault was that? I had asked myself the same question repeatedly, but hadn’t yet come up with an answer.

  In January of this year, Holly had abruptly pulled Drew out of Elk Park Prep—where she’d kept him all these years—and put him into Denver’s Christian Brothers High School. CBHS was an enormous Catholic school that was not nearly as glamorous or expensive as EPP. But Arch had found a home there. He’d made friends, discovered a sport—fencing—and made the varsity. Drew tried out for the fencing team and made it. And the boys, who could drive themselves to school, began carpooling. They again became close pals.

  I phoned Holly several times after Drew transferred to CBHS. But she returned fewer than half my calls. She finally agreed to come to a reunion of Amour Anonymous. Everyone but Holly and Marla had moved away, and our conversation centered on the fact that Holly couldn’t believe I had taken notes at all our meetings. Imagine, in this day of every imaginable technological device! She said she “wasn’t really in a relationship,” whatever that meant. She drank a glass of wine, ate a cheese puff, and left.

  Maybe it was harder to resume friendships when you were older. Even though Holly came back to St. Luke’s, she rarely stayed to chat. She remained mum on why Drew had changed schools.

  So, unlike the old days, Holly didn’t talk about herself much. She didn’t want to get together. She didn’t talk about anybody special.

  I found all this very odd.

  Still, I’d been happy when Arch said he and Drew wanted a joint party. April, when their actual seventeenth birthdays occurred, was full of school commitments. If they held the party two months late, Arch worried, would that jam me up with the wedding season? Would a potluck work? Absolutely, I said. April in Aspen Meadow could be bitterly cold, extremely snowy, or both. This year, Aspen Meadow Lake had stayed frozen well into spring, delighting a small band of risk-taking skaters. May had brought snowfall, followed by rain, which brought hopeful anglers.