Too Many Cooks

by Dana Bate

  The guard hunches over and peers through Hugh’s window, laying his eyes on me. “I see.”

  “This is Kelly,” Hugh says. “She’s helping my wife with her cookbook.” He says this as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have me in the car with him, as if any normal man would hang out with his wife’s ghostwriter.

  “Ah, lovely,” the guard says. “It’s a bit quiet today. You’ll have to come back when there’s a match on. The England–India Test starts next week. Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Ballantine can bring you back then.”

  “Perhaps,” I say, trying to seem as natural as Hugh.

  “Anyway, enjoy,” he says as he opens the gate. “It’s a lovely day.”

  Hugh puts the car into gear and waves as he pulls into a small parking lot behind a sign for the William Clarke Stand. We make our way around the outside of the grounds toward the pavilion, and once we’re inside, Hugh leads me down a hallway that empties outside, where a cluster of seats looks onto an enormous field. The manicured lawn is striped with alternating bands of dark and light green grass, with a few rectangular sandy patches in the middle, and is surrounded by bright white bleachers and a large scoreboard.

  “Wow—the playing field is huge,” I say. “It looks bigger than a baseball field.”

  “I think it is. More like an oval than a diamond, though.”

  “How many people can come here at once?”

  “About seventeen thousand.”

  “Really? Wrigley Field can seat like forty thousand.”

  “The seats don’t go very high here. Not nearly as high as in a baseball stadium.”

  I scan the seats around us and then look back at Hugh. “Where would you sit with your dad when you were a kid? Here?”

  “God, no. We sit here now because I’m a club member, but when I was young, we sat far away from the pavilion—usually over there.” He points to the stands across the field. Then he waves at another set of stands with a modernistic overhang that looks a little like an airplane wing. “Occasionally for a treat we’d sit over there, but of course it looked much different then. Not nearly as nice.”

  I walk closer to the green and breathe in the summer air. “Did you come for the England–India Test matches?”

  He snickers. “As a child? I wish. No, we mostly went to crap matches that were really cheap—the Nottingham reserve team versus the Sussex reserves or something like that. But I didn’t care. I still loved it.”

  “So what does one eat at a cricket match?”

  “The English equivalent to what you’d eat at a baseball game—fish and chips, burgers, pasties, ice cream.” His lips curl to the side. “You really do have food on the brain constantly, don’t you?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Whose influence is that? Your mum’s?”

  I snort. “Hardly.”

  “Was her cooking dreadful?”

  “Not dreadful. Just . . . limited. It mostly involved processed food. Her most famous dish was a spaghetti salad.”

  “What’s wrong with spaghetti salad? Sounds okay to me.”

  “It was. But it wasn’t exactly gourmet.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Let’s see . . . Spaghetti. Ham. Cheese. Miracle Whip.”

  “Miracle what?”

  “Whip. It’s sort of like mayonnaise . . . but not.”

  “Sounds a bit like salad cream.”

  “The recipe also has something in it called ‘Accent,’ which is basically straight-up MSG.” I give Hugh a sideways glance to see if he looks appalled. To my surprise, he doesn’t. “Like I said, it isn’t gourmet, but it’s one of my top comfort foods, probably because it reminds me of my mom.”

  “I have a few things like that,” Hugh says. “My grandmother used to make the most brilliant bubble and squeak. There’s no science to it—it’s just leftover mash and veg—but hers always tasted better than everyone else’s. Never mind that it was one of the only edible things she could cook. Any time I eat it I think of her.”

  “It’s funny how food can do that, isn’t it? Remind you so strongly of a person? Ironically, I think it must happen more often with people who don’t cook much. I cook so many different things all the time that I can’t imagine any one dish reminding my kids of me someday.”

  “Then all food will remind them of you. Which will be even better.” He scratches his jaw. “So you want children, then?”

  “I do. At least one.”

  “One? Oh, no. I want at least three.”

  “Three? I don’t know. . . .That sounds like a lot of work. . . .”

  “Nonsense. It’ll be wonderful.”

  “If you say so. I’d rather see what one is like and make up my mind then.” I jokingly glance down at my watch. “You’d better get a move on, sir. You aren’t getting any younger.”

  He hip checks me. “Thanks for reminding me.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  He gently brushes his fingers against mine. “You’ll make a lovely mother one day.”

  “I guess if our moms could do it, anyone can.”

  “I mean it. You’re thoughtful and kind and self-assured. You have patience and empathy. You’re the whole package, really.”

  “You’re not so bad yourself.”

  He smiles and rubs his hands together. “Right. Shall we head to the fair, then?”

  “Sure. Lead the way.”

  He turns around and goes back into the pavilion, and as I follow after him, I glance over my shoulder and take one more look at the cricket pitch before walking through the exit.

  The fair is almost exactly like the ones I’ve been to in America—rides, games, face painting, music, food—with a few exceptions. For one, there are fewer fried things. The festivals I went to as a kid relied heavily on fried Oreos and corn dogs, both of which my mom ate with relish. I remember going to the Ypsilanti Heritage Festival one summer with her and Stevie when I was seven, and she introduced me to my first elephant ear.

  “They fry elephants’ EARS?” Stevie said in horror.

  “No, no—it’s just fried dough,” my mom said. “But it’s big and flat and kind of looks like an elephant ear, so that’s what they call it.”

  She ordered three—overkill, given that each was the size of a dinner plate—but we demolished them, scarfing down the pillowy, cinnamon-sugar-topped dough with relish.

  “Pretty good, huh?” she said, winking. Then she bought us each a corndog and a Pepsi (a “pop,” as she called it), followed by funnel cake for Stevie. I knew Stevie had already eaten too much—he was only four—but he kept whining for a funnel cake, and she wanted to play bingo, so she bought it for him anyway. He wolfed it down and then proceeded to barf all over himself, but Mom was one number away from having BINGO and didn’t want to leave. So I took Stevie to the bathroom and cleaned him up, and when I got back, she was waiting for us, her hands on her hips.

  “All I needed was seventeen. That’s all! But that damn Irene O’Malley got twenty-six and BINGO!” She groaned. “Anyway. Everyone ready to go?”

  We piled into the back of the Buick station wagon and headed home, Stevie’s soiled shirt stinking up the car for the whole ride.

  The memory of that afternoon floats away as a gentle breeze blows across the Nottingham fairground, the sun beating down on my bare shoulders. I breathe in the fresh summer air as I pass a table covered with all sorts of cakes—Victoria sponge, Madeira, Battenberg, lemon drizzle. Again my mind drifts to my childhood, this time to the Michigan State Fair, which my family would visit at the end of every summer. It had all sorts of contests—pie eating, hog calling, watermelon seed spitting (Stevie’s favorite)—but the cake competition was my favorite challenge of all. Every year I’d eye the confections longingly: the fluffy coconut cakes, the fudgy chocolate towers filled with gooey caramel or silky buttercream, the cinnamon-laced Bundts topped with buttery streusel. The competition was divided into adult and youth categories, and when I turned twelve, I decided to en
ter a recipe for chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter buttercream and peanut brittle.

  My mom was a little befuddled by my participation (her idea of baking involved Duncan Hines and canned, shelf-stable frosting, preferably in a blinding shade of neon), but she rode along with my dad, Stevie, and me as we carted two-dozen cupcakes to the fairgrounds in Novi. The competition was steep—pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, German chocolate cupcakes, zucchini cupcakes with lemon buttercream—but my entry outshone them all, and I ended up taking home the blue ribbon, along with a gift certificate to King Arthur Flour.

  “Cash would be a little handier, wouldn’t it?” my mom said as I stroked the silky tails of the blue ribbon. Then she bent down and kissed the top of my head. “Proud of you,” she said, her breath bearing its signature ketonic sweetness. “You’re my superstar. You know that, right?”

  Hugh’s gentle laugh shakes me out of my daydream, my mom’s face evaporating into the air. I spot him across the fairground, chatting with a bunch of locals. He looks so relaxed, so self-assured, his smile taking up his whole face as he shakes their hands. I’m learning that Hugh is comfortable around everyone, or even if he isn’t, he certainly makes everyone feel comfortable around him. There is an easiness to his smile, something that takes the edge off, like a glass of good wine. Part of me wonders if I’m just another sucker for his charm, another sycophant who wants a piece of the Hugh Ballantine pie. But when he catches my stare and gives me a subtle wink, I tell myself, No, I’m different, because even if I’m not, I have to believe that I am.

  Otherwise, what am I doing?

  While Hugh glad-hands with his constituents, I continue strolling around the fair, on a quest for clotted cream fudge. I find some at a small stand next to the Ferris wheel, and, with the little cash I have left, I buy three flavors: traditional, peanut butter, and chocolate. The traditional, I discover, is not traditional American fudge, which would be milk chocolate, perhaps studded with toasted walnuts. Instead, this version is blond in color, with a milky, burnt-sugar flavor, like a square of caramel, only less sticky and with a soft, velvety texture. It’s almost too sweet, but only almost, and part of me wonders how much I could reasonably eat without making myself sick.

  Once I’ve wolfed down the clotted cream fudge and sampled my fair share of cakes and clotted cream ice cream, I wander back to the area beside the bouncy castle, where I last saw Hugh chatting to some locals. Despite his assurance that my presence isn’t unwelcome or inappropriate, I’ve kept my distance, but now that we’ve been here for an hour and a half, I’m running out of distractions that don’t involve eating clotted cream. I’m also pretty sure I’m sunburned because my cheeks sting and the back of my neck is suspiciously itchy.

  Hugh waves to me as I approach, continuing his conversation with a woman whose back is to me. Her long, strawberry-blond hair spills down her back, and she wears a gauzy jade sundress that comes to her ankles. I slow my step when I realize I might be interrupting their conversation, but Hugh waves again, nodding for me to join them.

  As I get close, the woman spins around, tempering her smile as she gives me a quick once-over.

  “Having fun?” Hugh asks, when I finally join them.

  “I am,” I say cautiously. “I think I’ve eaten pretty much everything here.”

  “I’m not sure where you put it,” the woman says, scanning me up and down.

  I smile politely, trying to figure out who she is, when Hugh speaks up, as if he has read my mind. “Forgive me—Kelly, this is Cleona.”

  “Oh, Cleona—of course.” My shoulders relax. “So nice to meet you.”

  She slowly shakes my hand. “And who are you?”

  Hugh jumps in. “This is Kelly, Natasha’s ghostwriter.”

  “Oh! Right.” Her smile warms. “Sorry, I hadn’t realized Natasha mentioned me.”

  I am about to say it was actually Hugh who mentioned her, but before I can speak, Hugh interrupts. “Cleona and Natasha are friendly,” he says.

  “Ah.” Perfect.

  “We don’t talk every day or anything,” Cleona says, as if she’s embarrassed to be friendly with Hugh’s wife.

  “Maybe not, but she likes you better than anyone else in my family—including me.”

  They laugh, and I wonder how much Cleona knows about the terms of Hugh and Natasha’s marriage.

  “Anyway,” Hugh continues, “Natasha is in LA for a friend’s movie premiere and some meetings, so Kelly was at a loose end for the weekend—especially since, in her country, it was Independence Day yesterday.”

  “Oh, right, of course,” Cleona says. “So you decided to get pissed with your oppressors?”

  “That was the idea, anyway,” Hugh says. “I told her about the festival, so she took the train up today to get a slice of English culture.”

  Cleona offers a mock frown. “Oh, dear. I hope you haven’t been thoroughly traumatized.”

  “Not yet. All of the clotted cream is definitely working in your favor.”

  Hugh’s eyes light up. “Brilliant—you tried the fudge.”

  “And the ice cream. On top of a few cakes. And a pie or two.”

  Cleona’s eyes widen, and she cranes her neck as she peers behind me. “Are you carrying an extra stomach somewhere, or do you have a hole in your leg?” Hugh elbows her in the side. “Well, I mean, honestly. Where does she put it? If I ate that much I’d be mammoth.”

  “You would not be mammoth,” Hugh says. “Henry, on the other hand . . .”

  “Oh, please. Henry has the Ballantine metabolism. Thin as a rail, no matter what.”

  “That’s not what Natasha says.”

  “About Henry?”

  “About me,” Hugh says. “Apparently I’m getting ‘soft.’ ”

  “Perhaps she is talking about your politics. You let the education secretary walk all over you last week. You didn’t pin him down on anything. What happened?”

  “I was a bit distracted.”

  “By what? His hideous tie?”

  He laughs. “Well, yes, there was that. . . .”

  “The man is an idiot,” Cleona says. “We’d all be a lot better off if you were running the department. Don’t you think, Kelly?”

  I smile politely. “Yes,” I say. “I do.”

  “See? Even an American thinks you’d be better.”

  “Natasha is American,” he says.

  “I suppose so. But she’s a woman of the world, really. Born in America, living in London, jetting off to Paris and Tokyo, appearing in films around the globe. She sort of belongs to everyone, doesn’t she?”

  “Or no one,” Hugh says.

  Cleona clicks her tongue and then glances at her phone, which trills in her purse with a text message. “Oh, dear. Must go. Apparently Freddie is in tears because they’ve run out of green balloons. Disaster.”

  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,” Hugh says.

  “Pay for his therapy one day. That’ll do.” She leans in and kisses Hugh on the cheek. “Drop in later. We’re having a barbecue—just us and another couple with a two-year-old. Your parents were coming, but apparently your father is having problems with his toe.”

  “Oh, God. He’s told you about that too?”

  “In more detail than I care to know. Anyway, come if you can. We’d love to see you.”

  “I’ll try,” he says. “I have a bit of other business.”

  “I understand. The life of a politician and all that.” She extends her arm in my direction. “Lovely meeting you, Kelly. I can tell Natasha is in good hands.”

  Her phone rings, and she waves good-bye as she picks up and heads toward the ring toss. When she is out of sight, I fill my lungs with the sweet summer air, thankful I can breathe again.

  Hugh does not go to the barbecue at Cleona and Henry’s. Instead, after a long day at the fair, he takes me back to his house and cooks me dinner, a simple meal of grilled steak, baked potatoes, and red wine.

  Over dinner,
we talk more about his childhood in Nottingham and my childhood in Ypsilanti, and I tell him about the elephant ears and bingo and my award-winning cupcakes. He tells me about his first crush, a girl in primary school named Samantha Humphrey, who wore her blond hair in braided pigtails that he’d pull to get her attention. We talk about losing our virginity: for him, in a field house by his school’s cricket pitch when he was fifteen, with a girl named Lucy Pitts; for me, in Pete Giovanni’s twin bed the summer before senior year of high school. We talk about other past relationships—which ones were mistakes; which ones we were too young and foolish to appreciate.

  When we’ve cleaned our plates, I help him clear the table, and as I dump the dirty dishes in the sink, he presses against me from behind, wrapping his arms around my waist. Whatever hesitation I felt before has vanished, and I lean into him, wanting this moment to last forever, for him to keep holding me and never let go. Everything about this feels like a fantasy, but as we peel off each other’s clothes and stumble upstairs, a trail of shirts and pants in our wake, I decide I don’t care if it’s real or not. I just don’t want it to end.

  As we lie in his bed, the sweat drying on our skin, Hugh rolls over and grabs a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He pulls out a cigarette and sticks it in his mouth, but I yank it out before he can light it.

  “I thought you were trying to quit.”

  “Trying being the operative word.”

  “Not very hard, apparently.”

  “Oh, come on. Just one. There’s nothing like a cigarette after a good shag.”

  “You’re such a cliché.”

  “But an endearing one, no?” He goes for another cigarette.

  I grab that one, too, along with the entire pack. “I don’t care how endearing you are. Smoking is gross.”

  He groans. “You’re no fun.”

  “I don’t know.... You seemed to be having fun a few minutes ago. . . .”

  He flicks me in the side.

  I dump the smoking paraphernalia on the floor and roll back over to face him. “You never told me you had a nephew.”

  He smiles. “Freddie. He’s three.”