Julia's Child (9781101559741)

by Pinneo, Sarah

  Marta was silent, maneuvering a hay bale down half a flight of stairs. Watching her, I remembered that Marta’s own mother had left more comfortable quarters in Puerto Rico to share a tiny apartment with her daughter and little Carlos for a year—all so that Marta could start the classes at Zia Maria’s and get off welfare. And then, right before I met her, Marta’s mom had died.

  Perhaps my own mother would make the same sacrifices for me, under those circumstances. But I never asked for her help because I didn’t want to hear what she thought of my choices. I feared she’d view Julia’s Child, not as a real job, to put food on the table, but as a kind of luxury to which I treated myself.

  I didn’t like to admit that her viewpoint had merit.

  Either way, it was easier to go without help than to tease apart my own motivations, which tonight led me to sweat over bales of hay when I could have been enjoying a quiet night at home with my family.

  It took us half an hour to manhandle our display materials into the entranceway of the office building. I was grateful to see Lugo’s truck idling outside. When he spotted us, he came out of the cab to unlock the back, where a pallet of fresh muffets waited inside. Marta had slaved for the last two days, baking them on the eve of the show for maximum appeal.

  We stacked our things carefully in the back of the truck. Then I opened the door to the cab and climbed in. “Evening, Lugo.”

  “Hi, missy.”

  There was only one passenger seat, but Lugo had placed an overturned milk crate on the floor behind the gearshift. So I maneuvered my way onto the crate and sat. I left the proper seat for Marta.

  She climbed in and then did her best to align her bottom in a way that only part of the seat was used. “There’s room,” she said.

  “I’m fine down here,” I said brightly.

  “Next stop, Atlantic City.” Lugo rumbled with laughter at his own joke. The laugh turned into a coughing fit so violent that I feared for him. But the truck lurched forward anyway, forcing me to search for an object to steady myself should the truck stop fast. Marta gripped the back of her seat with the same idea.

  Lugo’s coughing died down. “You ladies gonna work all night?” he asked.

  “God, I hope not,” I told him. “Tomorrow will be another long day.”

  “So, Marta,” Lugo asked. “You want a lift home?”

  She frowned. “Lugo, I live way out in Queens. You live in Brooklyn. Why would you want to wait around to drive me an hour out of your way?” She gave him the fish eye.

  He shrugged. “Can’t blame an old man for trying.”

  I could feel Marta cringe in the darkness.

  The Javits Center was less than a mile from our office, which was just about the only truly convenient thing about the trade show. The loading dock was three deep with trucks like ours, so we idled for twenty minutes, waiting to get near the door, or at least the sidewalk. Lugo lit up a cigar, causing Marta to hastily roll down the window. The smoke began to waft down toward me, and I pulled myself up to maximum height on my milk crate, hoping to catch a fresh breeze.

  Outside, the commotion of the exhibitors on the darkened sidewalk reminded me of the leaf-cutter ants on exhibit at the Central Park Zoo. A swarm of busy bodies dragged enormous objects toward the gaping nest hole. “That can’t all be . . . for the trade show,” I wondered aloud. One group of movers carried an old-style diner counter into the building. Behind it followed a team of men with the cutest little retro stools I’d ever seen. The last person in the group staggered in with a sign reading “Leah’s All-Natural Foods, Lennox, MA.”

  “Jesooz,” Marta whispered. We watched as the next group of movers lugged a faux-brick hearth toward the door. A sofa and matching chairs followed it. “At least I haven’t seen anyone else with hay bales,” she said.

  I moaned. “That’s because they’ve all brought entire suites with them.” I’d booked only the ten-by-ten-foot booth, the cheapest one. Surely there would be other modest displays? Or would Julia’s Child, New York City, be the only country bumpkin?

  Suddenly Marta leaped from the truck. By the time I extracted myself from behind the gearshift, she was walking back toward us, pushing an enormous mover’s dolly along the sidewalk.

  “Nice work, Marta. This will save our backs.”

  “Those other guys were done with it.”

  From the driver’s seat came a loud creak—hopefully from the door and not Lugo’s aging body. He got out, opened the back of the truck, and then retreated to the cab with his cigar. Marta and I hefted the hay bales onto the dolly, stacking our cases of muffets and then our meager-looking posters on top of our wooden door. Our only prize for being the least outfitted exhibitor in sight was that Marta and I could roll all our props and merchandise forward at once.

  Through the driver’s side window, I passed Lugo the fifty-dollar bill I’d been holding for him.

  “Thank you, missy,” he said, pocketing the money.

  “Thank you, Lugo. See you tomorrow night.”

  We pushed our hay island slowly through the loading bay, into the cavernous expanse of the convention center. The ceiling was perhaps forty feet above our heads. I stopped to take in the hive of activity around us. The worker ants swarmed everywhere, building a temporary city. Walls were raised, furniture moved into place. Rugs were unrolled. If I hadn’t been so appalled at the contrast to our own humble furnishings, I would have been impressed.

  The most surprising thing was the bright sheen on every exhibit. I’d been expecting something more in keeping with the all-natural theme—like booths in a giant and very upscale farmers’ market. Instead, the displays were as flashy as Las Vegas. There were acres of slick surfaces, bright signage, and gleaming kiosks.

  The exhibits made only the occasional nod to the all-natural theme. The sides of a booth for Nature’s Toothpaste were embedded with smooth river stones, like you’d find in a Zen garden. And the wooden hangers for a perky children’s clothing line hung from bamboo clothing racks.

  “We’re screwed,” I said. “Look at all this.”

  Marta pressed on. “Let’s just find booth number 307.”

  When we found it, booth 307 was nothing but a ten-by-ten section of concrete floor. I looked around. Things were only marginally more modest in our row. The neighboring booths, though smaller, continued to amaze. Most vendors had brought their own floor coverings, giving their areas a unified, streamlined look. Marta and I would be standing on the cement floor. And the lighting! Many of the custom-built displays incorporated their own little spotlights. I tilted my head toward the soaring ceiling and understood why. We would have to rely on the filtered ambient light from up high. It was fine for conversation, but it wouldn’t add any dazzle to our product.

  “If there’s a prize for the most all-natural display, we’ll take home the trophy,” I grumbled.

  “It will be fine, Julia. Don’t worry.” Marta had already begun hauling our stuff off the rolling platform, piling it in one corner of our vacant plot. Together we arranged our bales of hay just so, our rustic wooden door stretching between them to make a table.

  I had to admit that it did look rather cute. Cute but small. “Okay, so tomorrow I’ll bring the platters down in a taxi, and—”

  “Evening, ladies.” An older man with a clipboard had stopped in front of our booth. He peered through wire-rimmed glasses at the list in front of him. “Booth number 307. Julia’s Child?” he asked.

  “That’s right,” I told him. “I’m Julia.”

  “Great to have you here. You’ve found the correct spot. But I’m afraid we’re going to have to change your setup.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Hay is flammable,” he said. “Have those bales been fireproofed?”

  “Yes,” Marta said, at the exact moment that I answered no.

  He squinted over his wire rims at us. “Carlos!” he called over his shoulder.

  A sweaty young man, with a dark fringe of hair, bounded over. “Yeah?�
�

  “Please help these ladies remove their hay bales. You will take them to the disposal room.”

  “Wait!” I gasped. I’d paid a hundred dollars for that hay. And after it was gone, my booth would consist of a wooden door, lying flat on the bare floor.

  “The door too,” the man said. “Unless the ladies would like to take it with them.”

  “Hey!” I put both hands defensively on my door.

  “Hay is for horses,” said Mr. Glasses. Then he burst out laughing at his own joke.

  My blood pressure went up several points. My pulse rang loudly in my ears. I opened my mouth to argue.

  But Marta stepped closer to Mr. Glasses, placing her hand sweetly on his wrist. “You know, my own mother used to say that joke?” She looked up at him. “Perhaps we could figure something out,” she purred. “Tell me what we could do to make it okay. It’s the only display we have.”

  He smiled down at her. “I’m sorry, dear, but the convention packet states clearly that all structural items must be made of a nonflammable substance.”

  I pressed my fingertips into my temples. “We didn’t receive the packet until two days ago, because the trade show rejected our application and then changed its mind and accepted it. I never got a chance to read—”

  “Be that as it may,” he sighed, “the hay has to go. I can’t get a two-thousand-dollar citation from the fire marshal over this. Carlos!” He gestured toward our hapless bales.

  A few minutes later, Marta and I were left with a nearly empty booth. We had muffets, and we had posters. And those were looking skimpier by the minute.

  “Even if we had a way of getting it here, we couldn’t use my dining table,” I said. “It’s wood.”

  “We’re going to end up with a card table or something.” Marta sighed. “If only I’d accepted that ride home from Lugo, at least we’d have him to help us.”

  “Ugh! A card table. Covered with a plastic birthday-party tablecloth. Shoot me. It’s going to look awful.”

  Marta looked wistfully around at the shiny displays going up on either side of us. For once, even she was out of ideas.

  Even cadging a card table at ten o’clock on a Thursday night was not going to be easy. I didn’t own one. Maybe a neighbor had one, but knocking on doors an hour from now was out of the question.

  “What about our metal office furniture?” Marta suggested. “It’s kind of ugly. But what other choice do we have?”

  I tried to picture the booth filled with our Chelsea Sunshine Suites desks, with their gray metal tops. But then I snapped my fingers. “Not our office furniture! But in the big room, that tall drawing table. In the corner? Whose is that?”

  “Sí!” Marta said. “The girl with the blue hair—her name is Yona. And I think there are also stools.”

  “That’s the one. Let’s go!” I had no idea when the Chelsea Sunshine Suites emptied out for the night, but we needed to get there before it did.

  Now, as we trotted past them on our way out, I understood why so few of the All-Natural Kid Stuff Tradeshow booths looked natural. All that gleaming plastic was nonflammable. Of course, in the event of an actual fire it would emit noxious gasses that might kill us anyway. But it was abundantly clear by now that nobody cared what I thought.

  When we arrived back at our offices, the room was still packed with twenty-something-year-olds staring into screens. Yona stared into hers, twisting a lock of cobalt-colored hair. The blue light from her terminal compounded the effect, making her look for all the world like a manga character.

  “Hi,” I said, pulling up a chair. “Yona?” She looked up, surprised. I hoped she even knew my name.

  “Julia, right?”

  “Right,” I said. “I apologize, but I have a favor to ask you. I’m doing a trade show at the Javits Center, and they just threw out my setup.”

  “Oh, no! That’s so whack. The hay bales? I thought they were cute!”

  “I thought so too, but the fire marshal did not. Is there any way I could borrow your drawing table for a day? And the stools? I could rent them from you.”

  Yona swiveled around in her seat and appraised the furniture behind her. Then she faced me. “Take it,” she said. “No charge. Somebody might as well use them. These days, the only jobs I get are dopey logo designs. I should never have bought that furniture. I had such big plans.”

  The sound of her lament was familiar enough. “You know, if this trade show works out for me, I might need a dopey logo too.”

  Yona smiled. “Take the furniture. But how are you going to get it there?”

  “It’s, uh, only a dozen blocks away. Or so.” I said. Marta and I would just have to carry the table there, and then come back and cram the stools into a taxi.

  Yona’s partner, Mack, spun around in his seat. “I’m just about ready to head out of here. I could give you a hand.” He made a self-mocking display of his biceps for our inspection.

  It was the second nice offer in as many minutes, and my eyes grew moist with gratitude. “Tell you what. I’ll buy lunch tomorrow. From Pastis. For everyone who helped us tonight,” I said.

  “Yikes,” Marta breathed behind me, probably thinking of the budget. Pastis was an expensive celebrity hangout ten blocks downtown. But I didn’t care. We were down-and-out, and strangers were willing to help.

  “I’m in too!” Derrick said, standing. “I’ll carry something.” He jabbed his sidekick, another aggressively pierced fellow. And suddenly there were six of us.

  “You also had signs,” Yona said. “They didn’t throw those away too, did they?”

  “We’ve still got them. They’ll have to be propped up on the floor,” I said.

  Yona put her hands on her hips, scrutinizing me in the same way my mother used to when she appraised my outfit. “That will look terrible, and they’ll fall down all day. How about taking the chalkboard?” She pointed to it.

  The big green board had probably always been there, but I saw it for the first time. It had the same sort of retro, classroom styling as Yona’s table. “Is it yours?” I asked her.

  She shrugged. “No, but you’ll bring it back. What’s the harm?”

  And so the chalkboard came along too. And by midnight, my hundred square feet looked much better than an empty concrete bin. Mack even made an extra trip back to the office for a couple of clip-on lamps, which now shone from the corners of the blackboard, like spotlights, onto our posters.

  Yona’s table also had a light inside. “Yeah, I sprang for the light-box top,” she’d explained. “Stupid idea, it cost me a thousand dollars. But hey, your stuff will look great on it.”

  I gave Mack my credit card. “Have a lunch party, and cross your fingers for us.”

  “It will be killer,” he said. I took that as a good sign.

  Chapter 17

  It had been years since I was up until two in the morning for any reason other than puking children. But our booth looked so much better by the time I left the Javits Center that I didn’t care how late it had gotten.

  I happily woke at seven the next morning, because this was the day we would make it happen. My company would finally share airspace with some of the biggest buyers in the land.

  I took a speedy shower and threw on pants and a sweater. Marta had ordered two matching Julia’s Child aprons for us to wear at the trade show. They cost thirty-nine dollars, plus shipping. God bless Marta, I thought, as I blew my hair dry before dashing out the door.

  The subway ride from my apartment to the convention center took only twenty minutes. The energy of New York City coursed through my veins. There were plenty of seats in the car, but I stood up, watching the stations come and go. Not only was my booth in decent shape, but I had a home-team advantage. The biggest organic trade show in the nation was in my own backyard. Getting off the train at Thirty-fourth Street, I rode the escalator back toward street level, an anthem playing in my head. Today would be my day.

  I flashed my participant pass to the security guards
at the door of Javits Center and trotted, through the glittering trade-show city, in the direction of our booth. It was a sleepy city, just waking up for the day. Plastic sheeting still covered the wares on many of the tables.

  Turning into our aisle, I slowed down to take in the neighboring displays. They were just as beautiful and intimidating as they’d seemed the night before. But at least the shock had worn off. I passed an enormous display for Samba Smoothies, which appeared to be one of those whole-meal-blended-into-a-drink products. An enormous faux smoothie in an enormous faux glass towered overhead. The red-and-white striped straw, probably seven feet tall, was particularly cheerful. Jasper and Wylie would have loved it.

  But the world was already full of smoothies, wasn’t it? And that sort of product was often chock-full of sugar. I strode on. I passed Organic T, which proudly displayed a whole lot of shirts. I passed Herbal Cure, some kind of cold remedy. Its booth sported a giant-beanstalk-size box of tissues.

  I had made it to the middle of the row without finding our booth. Could it have been on my left while I passed by, gazing at the products on my right? I spun around, scanning the other side of the aisle. And that’s when I saw them.

  It was the photograph that grabbed me. It must have been five square feet—a high-resolution shot of a baked good with a strong resemblance to a muffet. The photography was obviously professional: the crumb appearing moist and tender, bits of carrot emerging from the crust.

  I tore my eyes from the image to read the gigantic gold lettering above: “Melissa’s Munchers, Philadelphia, PA.” On the left panel, clippings were stylishly arranged to highlight media attention the company had received. The right-hand panel showed, in giant type, the ingredients list and nutritional information for each muncher. It was a gorgeous booth, telling Melissa’s whole story in a couple of easy-to-read images. And it seemed to be standing in the very spot where my own things had been the night before. I began to wonder if I was dreaming.

  “Julia!”

  I spun around. Marta was waving both arms at me from the next aisle. I could just barely see her behind part of a display. I ran toward her, ducking under a rack of hemp dresses to reach the next aisle.