The Glass Kitchen

by Linda Francis Lee

  Her hands trembled, a trickle of sweat forming beneath her fancy suit as she pulled out her credit card and handed it over. Not more than a few minutes later, the waitress returned. “Ma’am, I’m afraid your card was rejected.”

  She cringed. “You’re sure?”

  “Sometimes the machine just doesn’t like the card. Do you have another?”

  “Well, no.” Part of Portia’s alimony deal with Robert was that he would pay her expenses for six months while she got settled—but she had only the one credit card, which he obviously wasn’t paying. Why was she surprised?

  “Then it’ll have to be cash.”

  Portia rummaged through her wallet again, but no wad of bills miraculously appeared. She started counting out what she had, but didn’t come close to the $150 bill.

  All she could do was call Cordelia. But Cordelia still didn’t answer. Neither did Olivia. Not that Olivia had more money than she did.

  Portia counted her money again.

  In the end, she left her driver’s license with the manager and ran across the street to the ATM.

  As soon as she paid, she went straight home. With every step she took, her anger grew. I can’t believe Cordelia did this to me, she raged as she took the steps to the town house. I am absolutely, positively going to kill Cordelia, she promised herself as she slammed into her apartment.

  She came to a dead stop when she heard the noise, and a smell biting at her nose.

  “Portia, is that you?”

  “Cordelia?”

  Portia marched into the kitchen to find Cordelia there, an apron tied over her perfect clothes. The counters and stove were covered with pots and pans. Fingerprints and swipes marked the thin coating of flour that covered the surfaces like a child’s watercolor painting project.

  “What in the world are you doing?” she gasped.

  Cordelia laughed, delighted, though there was something off about the look in her eyes. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “Making a mess! And where were you at lunch?”

  Cordelia paused mid-stir. “Oh my Lord! Lunch! Sorry. But just look at this. I’m cooking and baking! I woke up this morning,” she rushed on, “thinking of food. Just like how it happens to you. I have the knowing!”

  “What?” Portia tried to make sense of the scene. After a second, she noticed that Cordelia’s clothes weren’t so perfect, after all. In fact, for the first time she could remember, her sister wore wrinkled pants, the blouse not coordinating with the rest of the outfit. And her hair. Cordelia usually spent a great deal of time at the salon having her tresses professionally done. Portia speculated that Cordelia hadn’t been to the hairdresser in a while.

  “Cord, are you okay?”

  Cordelia whipped around, spoon in hand, some sort of liquid flying across the room. “I’m fine! Don’t I look fine? Of course I look fine. You’re just saying that because I forgot about lunch. I am sorry, Portia.”

  “Okay, sweetie,” Portia said carefully, coming closer. “Not to worry about the lunch.”

  Behind her, she heard the front door open and close.

  “Hey!” Olivia called out, then stopped in the kitchen doorway. Her long, curly blond hair was pulled up in a messy twist, her full lips shiny with a nude gloss, her standard yoga attire fitting like a second skin. “What happened in here?”

  Portia and Olivia exchanged a glance. Portia shrugged carefully. “I came home to this.”

  “Why isn’t she cooking at her own place?”

  “I wondered the same thing.”

  “She looks off.”

  “Don’t mention it to her. She’s sensitive.”

  “I’m standing right here, and I am not one bit sensitive. I’m cooking! It’s perfect. And it’s a sign that opening a Glass Kitchen in New York is going to be even more perfect! I’ll be able to cook, too!”

  Portia and Olivia exchanged another glance. “Everything is burned,” Olivia mouthed.

  “I know,” Portia mouthed in return, picking up a bowl filled with wilted lettuce swimming in dressing. She sniffed and tasted. Butter lettuce with, perhaps, a raspberry vinaigrette.

  Olivia walked up to Cordelia, as if approaching a wild animal. “Sweetie, give me the spoon. I’ll keep stirring, then you can tell us all about waking up with the knowing.”

  It looked like Cordelia would protest, but then her fake cheer and shoulders sank, like a rock in water. She relinquished the spoon, then walked over to one of the stools and sat.

  Olivia set the utensil aside, then sat next to her.

  Cordelia looked around, seeming to notice the mess for the first time. “I don’t have the knowing, do I?”

  Olivia took her hands and squeezed. “Probably not.” She leaned forward and pressed her forehead to Cordelia’s. “Which you didn’t want anyway, remember?”

  Portia turned away from them, wishing not for the first time that she had the same confidence with people that seemed to come to Olivia as easily as breathing. Portia focused on the pot on the stove and tasted whatever it was in the pot. She grimaced. “It’s not the worst stew I’ve ever tasted.”

  “It’s supposed to be cream sauce. I was going to make creamed beef on toast.”

  Portia turned off the heat, set the spoon aside, and walked over to sit next to her sisters. “Creamed beef?”

  “Daddy’s favorite,” Cordelia said, the words quiet.

  “Oh my God!” Olivia laughed. “That awful stuff?”

  “You didn’t love it?” Cordelia asked.

  “Seriously? Toasted bread slathered in creamed beef? No one loved that meal. Not even Daddy.”

  Portia joined in, smiling as she remembered. “No, Daddy didn’t love anything about creamed beef on toast. But he loved Mama, and I swear she never knew that he barely choked every bite down.” She looked at the scratched linoleum. “What I’d give to have even half the love that Daddy felt for Mama.”

  The sisters were quiet then. Portia knew they were lost in their own thoughts, their own memories of their parents. Then all of a sudden, Olivia leaped up.

  “No dancing!” Portia said automatically. “And no singing!”

  “Ha! Do I look that predictable? No. Let’s play Spit!”

  Another of Daddy’s favorites.

  Olivia raced into living room, and Portia heard her rummaging around in one of Aunt Evie’s cabinets.

  “I am not playing Spit,” Cordelia stated.

  Portia felt a trickle of relief. Cordelia was sounding more like her normal self again.

  “Don’t be a stick in the mud,” Olivia teased with a wry twist of lips when she returned with a deck of ancient playing cards.

  When they were growing up, their father had loved teaching his girls the rough-and-oh-so-impolite game called Spit, a game completely at odds with their mother’s book on manners. How many times had Daddy teased Mama about turning his girls into sissies, making Mama laugh until they ended up in the back of the trailer, the laughter shifting into something that pushed the girls out the door into the hardscrabble yard?

  “You only want to play because you always won,” Portia said, smiling, grabbing up cards the minute Olivia handed her a pack.

  Olivia and Portia played a quick hand, Cordelia looking on with a jaundiced eye.

  “I win! And I’m starving!” Olivia said, as she started separating the cards.

  Portia whipped up a quick meal for her sisters to eat from the few things left in the refrigerator. Sandwiches and a grapefruit and avocado salad topped with poppy seed dressing. The two sisters played and ate, while Cordelia only ate.

  “You might win,” Cordelia said, finally picking up her deck of cards “but only because you always cheat.” With a put-upon sigh, she set up to play without having to be reminded how.

  “I did not cheat,” Olivia said, then cried out, “Spit!” to start the game just before Cordelia was ready.

  “See! Cheating,” Cordelia yelped, her fingers stumbling as Portia and Olivia started working their
cards.

  Portia lost herself in the game, worry fading away, laughing, as she slid a 2 onto a 3 just before Olivia got her own card there.

  “Rats!” Olivia cried, slapping down a King, Queen, Jack, and a 10 with rapid-fire quickness, then threw up her hands. “I win!”

  Portia was just a few cards behind. But Olivia leaped up and cheered. “I won! I won! You guys are turtles!”

  Cordelia took a deep breath, then set her cards down. “Sorry about the mess, Portia. And sorry about lunch. But I better get home.” She ate her last bite of poppy seed–covered avocado, took off the apron, and smoothed back her hair before gathering her handbag. She walked to the kitchen doorway, then abruptly turned back. “Oh, and I probably should mention, it looks like James is going to be indicted.”

  Fifteen

  THE NEXT DAY, Ariel walked into the town house after school.

  She loved asking questions, though she wasn’t big on answering them, as the Shrink had learned. But what was weird was that the Shrink didn’t even seem to know what the right questions were, much less know to ask them. Her mom died over a year ago now, but he kept asking her to tell him what she felt. Hello, lousy.

  She wanted him to tell her something massively smart that would make her feel better, like: “Given the trajectory of matter over time, the miasma of your mind will not stay stagnant, therefore your sorrow will morph and change, making you feel more hopeful soon.” Or: “Given how incredibly smart you are, Ariel—a genius, really—your astounding brain is sifting through the data and soon it will make sense out of the senseless occasion of your mother’s death, and then you’ll start feeling better.” Even a lame: “Everything is going to be okay” would do in a pinch. But nope, he never spoke a word that made her feel anything other than that he really was a quack.

  Whatever. Plus, what did it matter? Her mom was dead. Dead. She wasn’t coming back. How did that ever get better?

  It didn’t.

  But right then, Ariel had other problems. The report on her dysfunctional family, or what was left of it.

  Yesterday she had roughed out a few pages, mainly in her journal. But that just made her realize she didn’t know anything about her family. It was like some sort of twisted nursery rhyme. Her mom was dead. Her dad made money. Her uncle was sort of sleazy. And her grandmother … Ariel hardly knew what to say about her. Nana was bizarre. The woman didn’t seem anything like a grandmother, or even a mother.

  And then there was Miranda, who could be summed up as completely nuts. Or, maybe, nympho.

  Just that morning she was muttering in her cell phone the way she always did, but Ariel managed to overhear her anyway. She was talking about a dare. With a boy.

  Which meant it was time to raid the journal again, because someone had to look out for the family, now that Mom was gone. And poor Dad was just too clueless when it came to Miranda.

  Ariel dropped her bag in the foyer, checked around the house, then snuck into Miranda’s room and found her journal.

  A big, boldly written DARE blazed on top of a new page.

  “Bingo,” Ariel whispered.

  Tuesday, October 1

  I don’t totally hate school anymore. I met some girls who are pretty nice. Not as nice as my old friends back in Jersey, but they’ll have to do. One way or another, I am going to get back to NJ. God, I miss our old house and Kasey just down the block. My new friend Becky lives on the Upper East Side, and her mom is a total stay-at-home type who is always there, or at least someone is always there. I’m the only girl I’ve met so far who doesn’t go home to someone. Actually, though, I’m lucky because I can do stuff and they can’t. Becky dared me to ask Dustin Bradford over after school. DARE. No question Dad would go Dark Side if he found out.

  The sound of the front door opening took a second to register. Ariel slapped the journal shut and shoved it under the mattress. She was just shutting the door when Miranda rounded the bend in the staircase.

  Her sister stopped short. “Were you in my room?”

  Ariel scoffed. “No.”

  “Then why are you standing in front of my door?”

  “I heard you coming up the stairs.”

  Miranda’s eyes narrowed; then she waved Ariel away like she wasn’t important enough to spend another second dealing with. “You are never allowed in my room.”

  “Like there is anything in there that I’d want.” Nympho, she added silently.

  She ran down the stairs and surprised Portia in the kitchen, unpacking groceries. “Hey, Ariel.”

  “Hey? Is that a Texas thing, too?”

  Portia laughed. “I take it you don’t say hey.”

  “Nah. I pretty much stick to hi or the occasional how do you do—you know, when I want to throw off an adult.”

  “Throw off an adult, huh?” Portia pulled a chicken from the bag. Next came onions and celery, carrots and brown rice.

  “Most adults are clueless.”

  “I’m an adult.”

  “The jury’s still out on you.”

  Portia laughed. “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

  The woman definitely wasn’t easy to peg.

  Ariel stood there a bit longer until Portia glanced over at her. “What?”

  “I’ve been at school. All day. I’m a kid.”

  “And?”

  “Aren’t you going to ask me whether I have homework to do? Or whether I was bullied in gym? Or whether I threw up?”

  “You don’t really look like the throw-up type.”

  She had her there.

  Miranda practically danced into the kitchen.

  Portia glanced over her shoulder. “Hey, you.”

  Miranda didn’t say a word. She walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of VitaminWater, then circled back to lean against the stainless-steel door and sighed, a weird smile on her face.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Ariel asked.

  “Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s great.”

  Portia turned back to the sink. “She’s in love.”

  Miranda’s eyes went wide. Then she did an even bigger sigh, tons of dreamy slathered on. It made Ariel want to gag.

  “Maybe a little.” She giggled.

  Portia kept working on dinner, washing the chicken, putting it in a pot.

  “So who is it?” Ariel asked.

  “Like you’d know him,” Miranda scoffed.

  Portia still didn’t say a word, but then Miranda went off like a racehorse.

  “His name is Dustin. He’s the cutest boy in school. Becky says so.”

  Uh-oh. Dustin was coming to fruition.

  “He’s in my algebra class.” Miranda said. “I hate algebra. Sooooo, I asked him to come over and help me! Not that he’s any better at it than I am, but he’s going to come over.” She glared at Ariel just as Portia walked into the pantry. “No telling Dad,” she hissed. “I told an adult I have someone coming over. I told her.” She nodded toward the pantry.

  Who would have guessed Miranda was smart enough to come up with a way to win a dare without breaking the letter of the law? Dad’s law, that is.

  “Me? Do I look like a snitch?”

  Of course Ariel had already thought of several ways she could use this information to her advantage. But she really didn’t tattle.

  Portia returned to the sink, and Miranda walked over to stand next to her.

  “What are you making?”

  What? The girl who hardly ever came out of her room except to barely eat and fight with Dad was making conversation?

  “A cross between chicken and rice and chicken soup,” Portia said.

  “Cool.”

  Cool? Who was this girl? First, a non-adult adult, now a non-glowering teenager?

  “My mom never cooked,” Miranda said. “But she loved my dad. And he loved her. A lot.” Miranda’s smiled shifted and changed. “In fact, just because you cook for us doesn’t mean you can take her place.”

  “Miranda!” Ariel gasped.


  Portia turned her head, didn’t look one bit ruffled. More like she looked determined, like she had been reminded of something totally true.

  “Not to worry, Miranda,” she said. “I’m not trying to take her place. I’m just working for your dad. Your mom is your mom, and always will be.”

  Hello, our mom.

  But Ariel didn’t say that, either. She didn’t care to go into Miranda’s story about how their mom and dad brought home the wrong baby when they picked up Ariel, but then the hospital wouldn’t take her back. Sure, Ariel was smart enough to know that this was in no way possible. But Miranda said it with such authority that Ariel was half convinced there was some truth to the story. Maybe just that her parents hadn’t believed someone who looked like Ariel could be their child. Thank God Ariel had their mom’s weird green eyes, so no one could pretend she wasn’t their kid.

  Miranda took a carrot and chomped down on it, turning away from Portia so she could glower at Ariel. “She might not have cooked, but she was fun.”

  “Mom? Fun?”

  The words were out of Ariel’s mouth before she could swallow them back.

  Miranda glanced at her. “Of course.” Like Ariel was a moron. “You heard what Uncle Anthony said. She was the life of the party. And she was totally fun when…”

  The words trailed off.

  Portia glanced over at Miranda, but still didn’t say a word.

  “Mom wasn’t fun,” Ariel said, “she was, like, beautiful. Always the perfect clothes and hair, always had her nails done. Totally beautiful.”

  Miranda eyed Ariel, seemed on the verge of rolling her eyes, but relented. “She was all that. But she was fun, too. At least she was totally fun before you landed on our doorstep looking like a troll.”

  Ariel felt the blood rise in her face. As always in circumstances like this, words eluded her. Her quick brain slowed; her heart hurt.

  “Miranda.” This from Portia.

  “What?” Miranda snapped back.

  “You know what.”

  Now Portia was being an adult. She had that steady gaze thing down pat. And Miranda backed down.

  “Whatever. Mom was fun even after you arr—”

  Another look.

  “Fine. After you came home and weren’t a total troll.” She drew a breath. “She really was fun. When you were a baby, she could make you laugh and laugh.”