When in Doubt, Add Butter Read online

  To Jami Nasi, Melody Winnig, and Jill Jacobs Stilwell, who kept me sane(ish) during the writing of this book in a way bigger than they will ever know. I honestly don’t know how to thank you enough.

  Jamie Taylor, what can I even say? And what could I say that wouldn’t make you say, “Shut up, Mouthy”? You’re the best!

  Finally, Mr. Bigosi … you’re the bomb. Like it or not, I love you. And you don’t know it but you saved me.

  Acknowledgments

  The past couple of years have brought a lot of good and some not-so-good, but the greatest blessing of all was having the support of my friends no matter what. There were nights when I would write to you guys and send my thoughts out into the darkness hoping you wouldn’t think I was nuts, and, wow, you stepped up so much I am humbled. So, in no particular order, thank you: Annelise Robey, Cinda O’Brien, Jen Enderlin, Al Dobrenchuk, Meg Ruley, Connie Jo Gernhofer, Sara Poska, Carolyn Clemens, John Obrien, Steffi Alexander, Mimi Elias, Shannon Perry, Sean Osborn, Pips Harbison, Chandler Schwede, Stef Moreno, Nicki Singer, Lucinda Denton, Helen Carrese, Annie Sacasa, Martina Chaconas, Russell Nuce, Robyn Dunlap, Maureen Quinn, Kristin Reakoff, Patrice Luneski, Chris McLean, Kate Genovese, Jenna Novotni, Kristin Murphy, Brian Hazel, Mary Kay McComas, Anita Arnold, Basia K. Atkins, Jacquelyn Taylor, Elaine Fox, and Connie Atkins. Wow, that’s a big list. How lucky I am to have such friends and family!

  Ideally, life is made of moments, not speculation about the possibilities of the future or memories of a past that can’t be changed. Thank you all for the wonderful moments. I will always be grateful.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  Also by Beth Harbison

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  When I was twelve, a fortune-teller at the Herbert Hoover Junior High School carnival said to me: “Gemma Craig, you listen to me. Do not get married. Ever. If you do, you’ll end up cooking for a man who’d rather eat at McDonald’s; doing laundry for a man who sweats like a rabid pig, then criticizes you for not turning his T-shirts right side out; and cleaning the bathroom floor after a man whose aim is so bad, he can’t hit a hole the size of a watermelon—”

  This man sounded disgusting.

  “—make your own money and be independent. Having kids is fine, but get married and you will be miserable for the rest of your life. I promise you, the rest of your life.”

  This chilling prediction stayed with me long after I realized that the fortune-teller was, in fact, Mrs. Rooks, the PTA president and neighbor who always gave out full-sized 3 Musketeers bars on Halloween, and that her husband had left her that very morning for a cliché: a young, vapid, blond bombshell. Mrs. Rooks had four kids, and at the time, I thought of her as really old, and I didn’t quite get why she cared so much if she was married anymore or not.

  She was thirty-seven.

  I was thirty-seven last year.

  But for the most part, I have followed that sage wisdom she imparted, whether it came from a place of deep inspiration or, maybe, from a place of bitter day drunkenness. It had an impact on me either way.

  Dating was fine. I love men. I love sex. I love having someone to banter with, flirt with, play romantic tag with, and finally yield to. Many, many times I have thought, in the beginning of a relationship, that maybe this guy could be different and the relationship might last against the odds my young brain had laid out.

  But inevitably things soured for me, usually in the form of boredom, and always within two months. Seriously. This was consistent enough for my friends to refer to it as two months too long.

  The good thing about a breakup at two months is that there usually isn’t a lot of acrimony or anguish involved. The bad thing is that it gets tiresome after a while. Honestly, I’m a normal woman, I’d love to be in love. I’d love to have a family to take care of and to surround me as I navigate the years.

  But once I hit thirty-seven, I had to wonder if that was really in the cards for me.

  And if that was the case, I was okay with it because I had a career I loved that allowed me some of the better parts of June Cleaver–dom, along with the ability to hang up the apron at the end of the day and be my own, single self.

  I am a private chef.

  Being hired to cook for people is really different from standing around a kitchen with friends, drinking wine and making snacks. It’s different from making a whole Thanksgiving dinner for family. It’s vastly different, even, from cooking for strangers at the soup kitchen, where the pride of creating something delicious is just as compelling but somehow … easier. Less judgmental.

  Cooking for people in their homes can be like cooking for friends, but more often than that, it’s like cooking for the meanest teacher in elementary school: someone you want to shrink away from, hide from. Someone you hope to God won’t call on you or make you speak in front of everyone else. Someone you’re pretty sure will yell and scream at you if you do one little thing wrong.

  The many scenarios include—but are not limited to—taking the fall for a failed party (“the food wasn’t good enough”), taking the blame for a neglected hostess (“you shouldn’t speak with the guests even if they talk to you first”), shouldering the blame for the burden of unused ingredients (“I have to do something with the rest of these onions now, thanks a lot”), and other failures of life in general (“my husband doesn’t want to come home on time for dinner, but if you made something he couldn’t resist, then he would!”).

  Fortunately, most of the time I’m treated as if I’m invisible. Which is okay with me, except the dodging out of the way of people and not making eye contact can sometimes be challenging.

  Still, I prefer that to being faced with accusations.

  At first, I didn’t see this coming. I always loved to cook, and got pretty good at it early on—though a few major mishaps come to mind (root beer extract in cupcakes was … a mistake)—but it never occurred to me that I could make a living this way. I guess that seemed too domestic for me at the time.

  When I was working in Manhattan right after college, my mother tried to convince me, time and again, to meet a nice man and settle down. She wanted me to open a retirement account, and my legs, and start a future and family.

  Not me. After what I’d been through, I think I was seeking some form of anonymity. What I would have said at the time was that I simply wanted to be free to go wherever the wind blew me. Like I was just a whimsical spirit, blowing through life and open to everything.

  The problem was, the wind wasn’t a reliable headhunter, so I moved from one go-nowhere job to another, proving my mother’s fears more correct every day. Every time I found a job I liked, something happened to ruin it: like when I temped in the props department for a local morning show in the city, and I mistakenly got a Cat in the Hat costume out for a celebrity guest who was supposed to be Uncle Sam for a special Fourth of July segment, but in my defense, the electricity w
as out and it was very hard to see in the storeroom. (And who would have thought they’d have a Cat in the Hat costume at all? Seriously, how often could that have come in handy?)

  When I hit twenty-six, I started to question if I was being irresponsible and immature by continuing my “free-spirited” ways. To my mother’s delight, I settled into some good corporate jobs with excellent benefits. Three years in the research department at the local CBS affiliate led to two years at the Discovery Channel—and a routine rut that would have bored even the most patient yogi in Tibet.

  But as I settled into a routine life and watched the years fly by like the calendar pages in a movie, I started to feel old. That was all. Not pious, correct, responsible, or anything else, just old. Suddenly I realized that actors and actresses and singers and even pro football players were younger than me.

  Ten years ago, my life was I have plenty of time to figure out what I want to do.

  Five years ago, I reached Hmmmmm.

  Two years ago, I found myself teetering on the edge of Uh-oh, and looking straight down the barrel of Oh, shit.

  I quit my tedious job, got myself a place that was tiny and modest but it was my own, and I followed my passion into a cooking career. I loved it. I love it. I’m my own boss, I meet interesting people all the time, I’m never bored, and whatever small part of me has a maternal instinct to take care of people is satisfied by nourishing them.

  Then leaving.

  Monday nights, I cooked for the Van Houghtens. The pluses included: the location (Chevy Chase), beautiful kitchen (the marble counters, stainless steel everything, and one of those fridges that blend into the cabinetry), and the stability of the job. I’d been doing it for a year now. Minuses included Angela’s attitude, and the fact that they had the ugliest pantry you’ve ever seen in your life.

  Not cosmetically; it was the stuff inside it. Angela had very specific and spare tastes. Think of the fussiest eater you’ve ever known, and Angela made them look like a glutton. Honestly. There was so much she couldn’t—or, more appropriately, wouldn’t—eat that it was astonishing that the woman even had functional bones, much less any flesh on them. And really, there was very little of that.

  No dairy. In fact, no “moo food” of any sort: no steaks, milk, sour cream, cheese, and check every package of bread for signs of whey, casein, and so forth.

  No onions. Not dried, not powdered, not within three feet of anything she eats because “the essence will permeate it” and it will have to be thrown away.

  No soy. Including soy lecithin, mono-diglyceride, guar gum, even citric acid.

  No nuts. No nut derivatives. Nothing that was processed in a plant anywhere near nuts, even if the plant was in Georgia and Jimmy Carter lived five hundred miles away.

  No honey. Nothing even vaguely connected with bees, including certain plants. So, yes, it was easy to avoid honey, less so to avoid anything Angela considered “honey related,” but I did it.

  No cinnamon or “warm” spice.

  No garlic.

  No fun.

  Every time I looked at Peter and Stephen, her unfortunate and emaciated husband and son, I just felt an overwhelming urge to make them a pot roast with caramelized onions and a big ol’ coconut cream pie.

  “Peter,” Angela would coo, narrowing her eyes and scrunching up her nose at him as he reached for another meager portion of romaine lettuce (beets were too sugary, radishes too “hot on the stomach,” whatever that meant, and onions already established to be out of the question), “do you really think you need more?”

  It was as if she were talking to her son and not her husband. Yet it didn’t hold any maternal kindness. Just bossiness.

  Once in a while he’d say yes, and eat it anyway, but for the most part, he’d set the bowl down with a dull thud and level a burning look at her once she looked back down at the bowl she was slowly working her way through. I like to think that was only when he had a witness—me—and that normally he’d tell her exactly where to stuff it. It’s hard to understand why a smart, hot, successful man would spend his life being whipped by a switch like her.

  Perhaps it was because of Stephen. How he had gestated in Angela’s slight body, I cannot imagine. Maybe that was before she adopted her radical diet. But at six years old now, he’d never known any other diet, I’m pretty sure.

  In fact, maybe the post-pregnancy weight was the reason she adopted her radical diet. I don’t know. All I know is that in their pantry, where any normal American kid might find Oreos (or Newman-O’s—I can be flexible about hydrogenated oils and organic ingredients), there was some kind of faux melba toast, made from spelt, and unseasoned almond butter. That was his after-school snack.

  You just know if that kid ever went to a birthday party and got a bite of the manna that is sheet cake from Costco, he’d never want to come home. I can picture him there, in a wild-eyed eating frenzy, face smeared in icing, wondering why on earth his parents never told him of this bliss before.

  It’s like those people who grow up without TV. Move them into the real world and plop them in front of Wheel of Fortune, and they’re not getting up until the national anthem is playing. If it’s on cable, the only hope of having them move is if nature calls.

  Believe me, I had a roommate like that once. I don’t know how he managed to avoid TV into his thirties, but when I was watching The O.C., I’d feel him creeping up behind me, and he’d just stand there, eyes glued to the set, like he was a caveman wondering at the magic box with the tiny people in it.

  “Want to sit down, Darryl?” I’d ask, because there’s nothing creepier than someone standing behind you, rasping their breath through their perennially stuffy nose. Especially if you’re eating a bowl of popcorn, as I usually was.

  “No, no,” he’d say vaguely, eyes dilating like something out of a 1950s alien movie.

  And there he’d stay.

  “Seriously, Darryl. Since you’re gonna watch, anyway, why don’t you just sit?” Elsewhere. Anywhere. Not there.

  “I’m on my way to the kitchen.”

  And forty-five minutes later, he’d finally make it the other three yards to the kitchen, where he would prepare some vile midnight snack along the lines of a bologna and onion sandwich. I’d like to think his distraction by the show was what caused this revolting food choice, but alas, it was just one more slightly off thing about him.

  Anyway, Mondays at the Van Houghtens’ were challenging. To say the least.

  But Angela Van Houghten was also the events coordinator for the country club where my most profitable work was—usually one banquet every other week, though sometimes it was more—and that made the pressure of working for Angela that much greater. I needed to keep her happy so she’d keep recommending me to people who were having parties.

  Tuesday was a lot more pleasant.

  Tuesday was Paul McMann, a lawyer I never, ever even caught a glimpse of, but for a long time I imagined him to look a lot like Fred Flintstone, based on his culinary tastes.

  Paul—or Mr. Tuesday, as I like to think of him—is a big fan of June Cleaver–style comfort food. Pure back-of-the-box stuff: noodleburger casserole, onion soup mix meat loaf, beef pot pie, chicken ’n’ biscuits, Philadelphia cheesecake, and so on. He probably would have been perfectly happy if I made him Hamburger Helper every week.

  Butter, sour cream, white flour, cheddar cheese, canned Campbell’s tomato soup, macaroni noodles … all that stuff that was missing on Mondays, I got to make up for with Mr. Tuesday. Even iceberg lettuce, which is nutritionally dull, but culinarily fun to slice and embellish, was A-OK with him.

  I loved cooking for Mr. Tuesday.

  He worked late all the time, it seemed. I never saw him, though I did arrive between five and six, and I suppose it was possible his workday started at noon. Nevertheless, he was a mystery to me.

  For example, he was clearly a man’s man: no frills, no fuss. It showed in his food tastes, his books, and especially in his choice of very spare décor
. It works for me. I really kind of enjoy the clean wood and leather feel of his apartment. Decidedly masculine, but for some reason I find it reassuring. It’s like sitting in an executive office, waiting for a big inheritance check from an elderly and unknown relative to be cut and cashed.

  So, whereas I usually do most of the prep work for my people at home and take the food to their places to heat and serve it (no, this isn’t strictly legal, since I don’t have a commercially licensed kitchen, but no one really cares), I usually take all the raw ingredients to Mr. Tuesday’s place in Friendship Heights and spend hours relishing in the glorious peace of it. Sometimes I’d take the remote from its usual spot and blast some Wham! through his mounted Bose speakers, and sometimes I’d just crack open a window and listen to the nothing outside.

  Always—always—I would look forward to the notes he’d leave for me.

  After I’d noted my disdain for peas, which I regard as fake vegetables since they are green but almost as starchy and sugary as Skittles, he wrote:

  All I’m saying is give peas a chance.

  His response to the appetizers I’d left for a party he was having for his office staff:

  Everything was great, but I especially loved the things that I know weren’t Snausages but looked just like them. Is it unreasonable to ask for them with dinner sometime?

  They were chicken and sage sausagettes that I got from a local butcher and wrapped in homemade pretzel dough, minus the salt but painted with butter. They are incredible, so I gave him points for good taste and I gave him Chickens in Throws, as he later jokingly referred to them, in a freezer bag the next week so he could have them whenever he wanted them.

  And on one memorable occasion, he taped a hundred-dollar bill to a broken Corningware casserole dish I’d left with him and wrote on a Post-it:

  I hope this wasn’t your grandmother’s or some other sentimental antique. I also hope you’re wearing shoes because the vacuum cleaner hasn’t worked the same since I accidentally sucked up a toupee. Not mine. I’ll explain over a beer if we ever meet.