“Really? You can do that?” I’d never heard of a refurbished phone. But of course, I’d never shopped for a phone, so how would I?
“Yes!” she said proudly. “Some trendsetter gave up this BlackBerry Pearl—last year’s model—to get the one all the kiddies want now. The brand-new . . . Squeal or Burp or something. And here.” She handed me a small padded envelope. “You send your old phone in here, and they’ll recycle the parts, okay? This is not a travesty.”
I picked up my poor old frozen phone, cradling it in my palm. “Marta,” I said. “I don’t know if I can give this one up.”
“Julia—why?” Her exasperation was complete.
I grinned. “This phone is lucky, Marta! It just made us $65,000!”
Then we laughed so hard that tears rolled down our faces.
“You really had me going there,” she said, wiping her eyes carefully with a tissue, avoiding her mascara.
I held the old phone up to the bare office wall. “We’ll frame it, I think. If we’re going corporate, we’re going to need decor.”
The Post (Early Edition), Filed Friday, December 22
By Christine Flannigan
Queens Mom Trades in Food Stamps for Stock Certificates
Area single mother Marta Rodríguez used to do her grocery shopping while her son Carlos was at school. “I didn’t want him to feel bad like I did. Handing over the food stamps in the checkout aisle was never easy for me.”
Always handy in the kitchen, Rodríguez jumped at the chance to attend federally financed job training at La Cucina in Brooklyn. “I thought that just maybe the certificate would help me get a job with decent hours, so I could drop my son at school and pick him up again.”
Something even more magical happened to Rodríguez. Working after class in the Cucina kitchen, she met Julia Bailey of Julia’s Child. The company was a tiny start-up, but Bailey hired Rodríguez full time. “Starting a business is rough,” Rodríguez said. “We worked in the office during the daytime and cooked the food at Cucina by night.” Neighbors pitched in to watch Carlos in the evenings, when Rodríguez was needed in the kitchen. “But it’s so exciting, starting a business! And it felt so good to be part of something big,” says Rodríguez. Working hard, she worked her way up to an ownership stake. “I cried when Julia told me about my own share,” Rodríguez notes. “And we weren’t even chopping onions.”
Fortune smiled on the women entrepreneurs. They recently sold the company to food giant GPG for an undisclosed sum. Both women are staying on to manage the brand for the conglomerate.
“My life is still frantic,” says Rodríguez. “The big corporations have a lot more meetings. It’s different. We used to just shout everything across the room to each other. Now sometimes Julia and I call each other from twenty feet away. But they do so much for us there. I don’t have to shop at Staples for all our office supplies anymore. I have health insurance. And I can see the Empire State Building from my desk.”
Now that the company has corporate backing, Rodríguez is happy to report that new recipe development—a task she and Bailey both love—is back on the docket. Rodríguez shares a wonderful whole grain Julia’s Child recipe with us below:
Peas on Earth Bulgur Wheat Risotto
“Bulgur wheat is a whole grain, so it’s healthier than white rice,” Rodríguez reports. “There’s a lot more protein and fiber. It also cooks up faster than a traditional risotto, and you don’t have to stir constantly. So you keep more of the vitamins!”
Ingredients 1 medium onion, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup coarse (No. 3) bulgur
2 cups chicken broth
1½ cups water
¼ pound sliced bacon, chopped
2 cups frozen peas
⅓ cup freshly grated Parmesan
salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
In a 2-quart heavy saucepan cook onion in oil over moderate heat, stirring, until softened.
Add bulgur, broth, and water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, until bulgur is tender and creamy like risotto (about 20 minutes). Stir occasionally.
While bulgur is simmering, cook bacon in a skillet over moderate heat, stirring, until crisp, then drain on paper towels.
Stir peas into bulgur, then stir in Parmesan, half of the bacon, and salt and pepper to taste.
Serve sprinkled with the remaining bacon.
Three Months Later
Chapter 31
The park bench was cool to the touch, but the sun warmed my face. It was one of those early spring days that promised New York wouldn’t forever remain a howling wind tunnel. I parked myself in front of the sandbox.
It was early in the playground season, so I hadn’t thought to bring along our unruly collection of sand toys. Now Wylie and another little boy were having a cold war standoff, both vying for the same bit of wood. Wylie had found it buried in the sand, this pointed shivlike stick that was apparently essential for digging.
In order to scoop sand from the hole he’d made, Wylie put down the coveted stick for just a split second. But that was all it took. The other toddler made his move.
“Miiiiiine!” screamed Wylie, diving after it.
The other boy, blond ringlets hanging into his eyes, dropped it immediately and crumpled onto the sand, sobbing. He was obviously a first child. First children are wimps. Second children know how to go for the throat.
More than once I had wished for a T-shirt I could wear to the park that read, “My other child is sweet and well mannered.”
But there were no recriminations forthcoming from the mother of the sobbing towhead. She was arguing loudly on her cell phone. “If the track light is stainless steel,” she protested, “why on earth would you order a white track? That won’t match.” She scooped her sobbing child onto her lap, flashing Wylie and me a generic scowl. “And those pendant lights, my God! The Venetian glass has been done to death. Get them off the elevations.”
My irritation began to grow. Who was this stranger forcing me to listen to her ceiling decor woes on a fine spring day?
The little boy sobbed into his mother’s lap. She patted him absently on the head, continuing her tirade. “And I don’t want to hear the words ‘restocking fee’ from you again. How do I know if I’ll like them until they’re actually hanging in the room?”
My blood pressure surged in sympathy with the person on the other end of the call. The playground always brought out my inner sociopath. We came here because Wylie liked it. But I preferred the open spaces of Central Park, with fewer people and less drama.
But, as they say, it takes a village. So I scanned the concrete around my bench, my gaze landing on another stick. Perhaps it would be just as useful in the sandbox. I picked it up and offered it to the fair-haired toddler, who was watching me. “Here you go, honey. Try this one.”
He slid off his mother’s lap and came over for it, taking it carefully out of my hand, as if it might be some kind of trick. Then he retreated to the spot next to Wylie. The two of them dug side by side, occasionally flashing mistrustful glances at each other.
The other mom finally snapped her phone shut, the plastic clacking together with indignation. She regarded her child, and then her face filled with revulsion. “Eew! Georgie! Don’t touch the stick! That’s dirty.” She leapt up, rummaged through the diaper bag on the back of her stroller, and reemerged with a portable box of baby wipes. She extracted one and attacked her child’s pale fingers with it. The stick I’d given him went flying from his grasp, and Wylie snatched it up without even breaking the rhythm of his digging.
Georgie began to whimper, while my uncharitable thoughts multiplied. That’s it, lady. Teach your child that the natural world is icky. Did this woman understand that her food grew in the dirt?
I checked my watch. It was going on eleven thirty. I’d taken the morning off from work to hang out with Wylie. We’d made four-grain pancakes together, and I’d even let him
spoon batter onto the griddle. We’d had a blast. In spite of my major cleanup afterward, I could still detect a tinge of maple scent from somewhere on my person.
But now it was time for Bonnie to meet us; I was due at work. Now that Marta had recovered from her lumpectomy last month, I was expected to travel again. Today I’d roll my little suitcase toward the office, in preparation for a dinner tonight in Pittsburgh with a grocery chain executive. And that wasn’t as bad as it sounded. I’d been managing to keep the travel below a reasonable limit. And I’d figured out how to steal back the time during the workweek by taking the odd morning or afternoon off. The change in routine was an unexpected pleasure.
At GPG, I wasn’t a courageous entrepreneur anymore. But I was certainly less stressed out. I didn’t wake up in the night worrying about money. And now—just three months after the acquisition went through—muffets were stocked in six hundred grocery stores. GPG’s marketing prowess had proven as impressive as they’d promised. Next year we were aiming for a breathtaking six thousand stores.
Sure, there were new tensions. Sometimes I had to claw back some essential but expensive product feature from the bottom-line-driven culture. But things in corporate land weren’t as bad as I’d feared. Though I wouldn’t say it out loud, I was actually relieved not to make every single decision anymore.
It was getting late. “Wylie? If we get that sand off of you, I’ll let you call daddy with my phone.”
He looked up quickly. I think he’d forgotten I was even here. “Otay,” he said. He staggered toward me like a drunk at the beach, grains of sand pouring from the shoelace holes on his sneakers. I would have to practically shake him upside down to get it all off.
I pulled him onto my lap and turned down the cuffs of his jeans. I slapped at them to get the sand out.
“Call Daddy now?”
“Just a second, honey.” I strained to reach to the ends of his suddenly long legs, pulling off his sneakers and clapping them together. I’d forgotten how much sand the kids were capable of dragging into the apartment in nice weather. It was like living at the beach, but without the view.
“Okay,” I said finally. I extracted my pink phone, pressed Luke’s speed-dial code, and handed it to Wylie.
“Hi, Daddy! Sing the sheep song again?”
This week Wylie was on a “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” bender. Luke must have complied with his request, because Wylie’s face became serene as he listened. Eventually he said, “Mama? Yes her here. Bye.” Wylie handed me the phone.
“That was nice of you,” I said, taking it.
“Oh, him so nice,” Luke imitated our toddler. “And it’s not like anybody can hear me in here.”
I knew just what he meant. Luke had taken over my old office at the Chelsea Sunshine Suites last month, right after he finally got a pink slip from the bank.
“Hey, I forgot to tell you. Yona’s hair is purple now.”
I could easily picture that. “Tell her I say hello.”
“She said exactly the same thing.”
“Sweetie, I called just to remind you that I’m in Pittsburgh overnight.”
“How glamorous.”
“Make fun if you want to, but if anyone’s diaper leaks in the night, it’s all yours.”
“We’ll miss you, babe. Take care of yourself.”
“I promise.”
“Take a moment to look for the closest exit, bearing in mind that the nearest one may be behind you.”
“Love you too, sweetie. Bye.”
My mother always told me that 99 percent of the things I worried about wouldn’t happen. She should have told me that sometimes even when they do happen it isn’t the end of the world. Luke’s pink slip had been a huge worry, but the reality wasn’t so bad.
“I’ve got skills,” Luke had said the evening after it had happened. We were lying, naked, in our bed. We had needed to prove that life was not just about the office.
“I know you have skills,” I’d whispered teasingly.
He rolled his eyes at me. “Baby, I’ve also got dweeb skills. I can organize peer-to-peer database access like nobody’s business.”
Apparently the investment bank—Luke’s former employer—thought so too. They quickly assigned him a pile of consulting work. There was no security in it, but the pay was pretty good. We didn’t know when or if he’d decide to look for a regular job.
The happy beneficiaries of the change were Wylie and Jasper. They were a little confused to occasionally find Daddy lounging around the apartment, but they didn’t seem worried, probably because their mommy wasn’t freakishly uptight anymore.
I’d learned so much over the past year and a half that I blushed to think back on my entrepreneurial naïveté. But instead of beating myself up over it, I’d learned to appreciate just how well things had actually gone.
For example, Luke had calculated in his spare time that I—Julia Bailey—had actually outperformed Warren Buffett last year. While the rest of the nation was losing buckets of money in a tanking stock market, I withdrew ours to start Julia’s Child. Sure, I’d stayed awake nights worrying about my big “investment.” But then GPG repaid the money I borrowed from our retirement with the tiniest bit of interest. So even though our money earned nothing last year, most other 401(k)’s plunged in value. Go figure.
Then there were my real estate dealings. There’s a saying that goes, “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.” After the fertilizer debacle, my farmland could not be certified as organic for three years. So I talked to a realtor about selling it. Because the hilltop views were so terrific, she was able to find a buyer who would put only one house on the twenty acres. I sold it—deeded as non-subdividable—to a solar panel factory owner from Connecticut.
Our new neighbor showed us the blueprints. He’d specced out the greenest house I could ever imagine—bamboo floors, photovoltaic electricity, off the grid, with solar hot water. It would be a showplace of politically correct building, down to the zero-VOC interior wall paint.
We broke even on the transaction—without completely ruining the neighborhood.
Kate still isn’t speaking to me, but I’m sure she’ll get over it eventually. And I still have high hopes for her farming future. She switched her ambitions from vegetable farming to goats’ milk cheese. The goats graze on her remaining farmland and on our land too. Her mother told me that she’s entering a cheese-making contest in the fall. Maybe some day I can use it in muffets. Chèvre goes well with many flavors.
The only fly in the ointment was the truck that showed up to work on the new house across the road. I couldn’t believe what I read on the freshly painted van: “Biden Green Builders.” That slick developer had rebranded himself as an eco-home specialist. And business was booming. The man was like a cockroach—he wouldn’t die. Our hilltop would line his pockets, and there was nothing I could do about it. Still, I did manage to stop the Lincoln Lodge Condos. That was something.
I realized too late that, as I sat daydreaming about the past year’s challenges, Wylie had climbed back into the sandbox. Bonnie was now twenty minutes late, and I would have to go through the entire sand removal routine again and then drag Wylie home against his will.
I stood up to look hopefully, past the iron playground gates, toward the street. And there was Bonnie, walking toward us, unhurried.
I sat down on the bench again to enjoy my last two minutes of sunshine. Feeling very Zen, at least for me, I tried to imagine a scenario that explained Bonnie’s tardiness. Perhaps the little old lady who lived just off the lobby had staggered out, choking on a chicken bone, just at the moment Bonnie had left the elevator to meet us. Bonnie would have had to administer the hug of life and then maybe wait for the ambulance to arrive.
I was still grinning at this improbable idea when she strolled up to my bench and took a seat next to me. “Sorry,” she sighed. “The lift was out of service. I waited for hours.”
My first impulse was to ask why a fit young thing
like her couldn’t run down a few flights of stairs. But I bit it back. “Is it broken again?” I asked charitably.
“No, it was movers,” she explained. “They used the key to hold the cab on the first floor while unloading.”
“Someone’s moving out? Do you know who it is?” Bonnie was more plugged into the building gossip than I ever hoped to be.
“You didn’t know?” She eyed me sideways. “People have been talking about it for weeks.”
“Who, Bonnie?”
“Why, apartment 510, that’s who!”
It took me a second to think through the building’s layout. Then it hit me. That was Emily’s apartment! “Really?” I gasped. “I didn’t know it was for sale.” I had a moment of typical New Yorker angst. Had I missed an opportunity? Did that apartment get better light than ours?”
“Oh, it wasn’t for sale,” Bonnie said knowingly.
“What do you mean?”
“Emily isn’t moving out. Her husband is.”
“Oh!” I tried to take that in.
“Apparently, we’re not the only ones who thought she was a shrew.”
For a second I almost smiled. But then I thought of her two children—two little children.
A cloud passed over my carefree day. “My God, what a shame.” I looked at Wylie, digging busily in the sandbox, and tried to imagine what on earth my toddler would think if Daddy moved away.
“I don’t know, Julia,” Bonnie paused. “The thing is—she’s happier now.”
“Emily? Really?”
“Yep.” A few Americanisms had crept into Bonnie’s speech lately. “She even offered me a piece of coffee cake.”
“Well, that’s nice.”
“In the playroom.”
I sat up straight on the park bench. “You’re kidding! Did you slap her? Because I might have.”
Bonnie shook her head. “She’s nicer now. Seriously. She smiles at me.”
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