Aftertaste (15 page)

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Authors: Meredith Mileti

BOOK: Aftertaste
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“Since when does your father decorate?” Richard says, standing up and brushing away a line of flour from his trousers. “This I'll have to see. And what does he think of his divine granddaughter?”
“He thinks she's great. You know, he's acting silly and talking to her in this cute little voice. And he bought her a ton of toys. She's going to get spoiled.” I pause. I suddenly feel tired, and my eyes begin to sting. “Really, he's been wonderful.”
Richard passes behind me and gives my arm a gentle squeeze. Then, he reaches around me and absently rattles the lid of the sugar bowl, trying to fit the cover back on. “What we really could use is something to nibble.” He gets up and begins randomly opening cupboards, in search of a distraction. “I can't believe I'm sitting here with a chef so incredible that
Gourmet
has written about her and there's nothing to dip in my coffee.” He opens the refrigerator door and turns to look at me with an expression of mock horror on his face. “Starvation rations in here! I don't know that I've ever seen this refrigerator so empty,” he says, leaning in and pulling out one of the white, butcher-wrapped packages.
“Hey, go easy on that. It's for the pizza,” I say, which earns me a scowl from Richard. “Take some biscotti from that bag on the counter. But while you're in there, check out that red nail polish in the door of the fridge.”
“In the door, eh?” he repeats.
“Uh-huh. In the butter compartment.” Richard opens the compartment, takes out the polish, and, reaching into the breast pocket of his shirt, pulls out his half-moon glasses in order to inspect the bottle more closely.
“Christian Dior, Flame. Expensive stuff.” He unscrews the cap and pulls out the brush, holding it up to the light. “On the right person, a great color. Not for everyone, a red like this.” When I don't say anything, he continues with his analysis. “She's neat, too. The bottle is half-empty, but there's no clumpy, dried gunk on the rim,” he says, showing me. Richard screws the cap back on and looks over his glasses at me.
“A scintillating analysis, Richard. If the antique business ever goes bust, I think you could make a go of it in the field of nail polish forensics.”
“This,” he says, as if taking my comment seriously, “this is the choice of a confident woman. And one who has lots of experience with makeup. Only the most sophisticated of cosmetics consumers know that you extend the life of your polish by keeping it in the fridge.” He sits down, takes off his glasses, and places the bottle on the table between us.
At that moment, as if on cue, we hear the front door open and seconds later voices in the front hall: my father's deep baritone and another—softer, higher. My father enters the kitchen, and on his heels is a small, neat woman with blond, tightly permed hair. She's wearing an aquamarine pantsuit with a plunging décolletage, revealing a large expanse of artificially tanned skin.
“Richard,” my father exclaims, with an air of forced joviality, as if he had rehearsed a certain script but has suddenly found himself forced to ad-lib. “How nice to see you!” He strides a couple of steps toward him and offers his hand, which Richard takes and shakes. The woman, now standing behind him, softly clears her throat.
“Oh, forgive me. I've brought someone along, a fan of pizza rustica and well, in fact, of all things Italian. Mira, Richard, I'd like you to meet a friend of mine, Miss Fiona O'Hare.”
Fiona smiles sweetly. “Richard, I've had the pleasure of shopping in your lovely store, but we've never been formally introduced.” As she extends her hand, first to me and then to Richard, we can't help but notice that her two-inch nails are painted, what else? Flame.
chapter 14
Fiona, it turns out, is a picky eater, making my father's comment about her being a lover of things Italian either inaccurate or, given my father's Tuscan ancestry, vaguely creepy. Take your pick. She pokes around at the pizza rustica, saying that she thought we were having pizza. When I bring out the salad, she asks for more dressing and seems totally flummoxed when I bring out the oil and vinegar—surprised, I imagine, to find that it didn't come out of a prepackaged bottle made by Kraft and featuring the word
zesty
.
Richard, bless him, makes it easier.
“So,” he asks, “how did you two meet?” Fiona looks to my father, who is busy pouring himself another glass of wine, leaving Fiona to field the question.
“Well,” she says demurely, “we've known each other for years, but it wasn't until I signed up for an Italian conversation course that we actually got to know each other socially.” She looks over and smiles at my father, whose lips twitch in response.
“Fiona's a secretary in the chemistry department,” he says, without looking at her. “We have been passing each other in the Science Hall for years.”
“Che bello! Che interessante! Ci sei mai andata?”
I ask.
“What, dear?” she asks, leaning toward me and brushing aside a lacquered curl.
“To Italy,” I repeat, this time in English. “Have you ever been there?”
“Me? Oh, my goodness, no.” She laughs as if I've just said something incredibly amusing. “But last year for my birthday, my sons sent me to the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, and ever since then I've wanted to go and ride a real gondola. Came home and signed up for Italian lessons with the money I won playing keno. Have you ever been there?”
I look at her and then at my father. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I lived in Italy for several years,” I say, thinking it funny that my father wouldn't have mentioned it.
“Oh, I know you lived in Italy, but have you ever been to Las Vegas?”
When I tell her no, she says, “Too bad. If you had you could tell me how the Grand Canal in the Venetian compares to the one in Italy. In case I never get there,” she sighs.
After lunch, Fiona offers to help clean up. I make the espresso while I watch Fiona empty the dishwasher. I can't help but notice that she seems to know where everything goes. While we work, Fiona chatters on about the various trips she has taken. “Isn't it terrible what has happened to the airline industry since 9/11?” she asks, pausing before adjusting the Cling Wrap over the leftover salad. “When I flew to Las Vegas, they confiscated my knitting needles right out of my purse! What a nuisance. Speaking of knitting, maybe I'll knit that precious Chloe a little something. It will be fun to have someone to knit for. I have only one grandchild, who I hardly ever see,” she says, her mouth set in a hard line. I'm about to ask her why, but perhaps anticipating my question she says, “Families are complicated.” This strikes me as the most insightful thing anyone has said all afternoon.
Later, after Dad leaves to take Fiona home, Richard tells me I should be ashamed of myself.
“For what?” I ask him.
“For rolling your eyes when she mentioned her Vegas trip, for one thing. Your disdain was palpable.”
Richard continues on, suggesting that I've underestimated Fiona's intelligence. “Not everyone is good at languages,” he explains, and I think for a minute he's going to remind me of the
D
I got in high school French. “You,” he says in a supercilious tone, “are a snob.”
This, from a man who wears Prada sneakers and has his shirts hand tailored, facts I lose no time in pointing out. “Listen, what makes you sure she's so smart? What did you do, give her an IQ test while I was changing Chloe?”
Richard snorts.
“Well, maybe she's an idiot savant,” I say, thinking about her insightful comment about families, which I don't mention to Richard, so as not to concede the point.
I really don't know what bothers me about Fiona. Yes, she's different from my own mother, but there was a time when that was the chief criterion necessary to secure my friendship. Chloe had warmed to Fiona right away, fascinated by her dangling plastic earrings and bangle bracelets, which Fiona quite generously allowed her to gnaw upon.
And why should I care who my father dates? I know it's selfish, but part of what bothers me is that I'd rather not have to deal with anyone else's relationship at the moment. Also, it's difficult when your father, who has been a widower for the last eighteen years, suddenly starts strutting his stuff like some randy peacock.
The real problem, I finally decide, is that I've come back to a place I thought I knew, only to find it different. I'd visited, of course, but I haven't lived here for almost twenty years, and the last time I did, my mother had been alive. I've felt her pull all these years, as if some vestige of the woman she was, a woman who had filled our lives for better or worse, still lingered in these walls, in the fabric of the curtains, or in the chipped china teacups in the kitchen cabinets. But now her presence has gone cold, just like that. And if I'm disconcerted to find that her ghost has dissipated, it's due as much as anything to the fact that it has been chased away by someone as banal and mild-mannered as Fiona O'Hare.
 
Fiona and my father spend most evenings together, but fewer nights. Sometimes he calls on his way home and invites Chloe and me to meet the two of them for dinner out, and sometimes they come here for dinner. When my father drives her home, he returns late. Once I saw him coming home early in the morning, just in time to shower, change, and go to work. It's nice that he seems to want to include us, but most of the time when he calls to invite us out, I decline. I feel guilty having disrupted the only social life I can ever remember my father having.
And what do I do to fill the hours and days? I cook. I cook until my father's entire refrigerator and downstairs freezer are stocked with restaurant-quality food. I've made several cheesecakes, some sweet, some savory, at least five different kinds of lasagna, and ten different types of soup, enough for a whole chapter in a cookbook. In fact, that's exactly what I tell my father and Fiona I'm doing—writing a cookbook—and that I need to try out the recipes.
“Well, then I think we should have a party,” Fiona says when, while helping me clean up after dinner one night, she's forced to put the leftovers in the bin of the automatic ice maker because there's no room anywhere in the fridge. “We certainly have enough food!”
At which point I burst into tears.
“Mira,” Fiona says, coming around to the table, where I've slumped, head in my hands. Teetering on her high-heeled sandals, Fiona bends over me and envelops me in a hug, pressing me so close to her that I can smell her perfume, a sweet, musky scent. This makes me cry even harder as now, on top of everything else, I feel guilty that I don't like her more.
“Bunko, next Thursday night,” she whispers into my hair. “It's my turn to host, and I think you should come. Meet some of the girls. We could make it a dinner party. Put some of this wonderful food to good use. Come on, say you'll come.” I have no idea what Bunko is, but somehow doubt that it's my cup of tea.
And then, pulling away slightly, Fiona prods my scalp with her fingernails. “Hmm, you've got a few little, gray nasties you might want to take care of. You're back on the market now. And you have such pretty hair. I have a great girl up the street on Murray Avenue who can take care of that in no time.”
In the end, I'm not able to face it, either Bunko or, appealing as it sounded, having my nasties chemically treated. I call Fiona the following Thursday afternoon, pleading a headache, an excuse I know she doesn't buy. When she comes over to pick up the food for the party, she slips me a piece of paper with a name and a telephone number on it. With a knowing look, she tells me that everyone needs help now and again and that even she on occasion has found it helpful to seek advice and counsel. Notwithstanding the permed hair and surgically altered breasts, she instantly conjures the specter of Mary Ann. Not wanting to risk losing another chance at mental health, I tape the scrap of paper to my bathroom mirror where it remains, the edges curling from the damp and the numbers fading into an inky stream where I manage to splash it nearly every time I brush my teeth.
For so many years Grappa took up the better part of my life, and I'm now missing it like a severed appendage, the wound still fresh and deep. Often, I lie awake wondering what's on the menu or remembering how it felt to roll out the pasta dough on the marble surface of the workstation, or how it smelled to open an entire crate of fresh lemons that had been sitting in some warm delivery truck all morning, their skins sweating lemon oil.
Finally, in desperation, I register Chloe and myself for a mom and baby Gymboree class that meets weekly at the Jewish Community Center on Forbes Avenue. It's the kind of thing I'd always wished I had time to do when I was working. Maybe I could even make friends with some other mothers. Of course, most of the other mothers are still married to the fathers of their babies, and they all seem to know each other already. In New York, at least I could count on several single parents and a few same-sex couples, which might have made me not feel so different, but this is Pittsburgh, not New York. Chloe enjoys it, though. There are all sorts of slides and swings, things to feel and crawl upon, and I take delight in watching what she can now do. She's pulling herself up and, last week, reaching for a bubble, she even let go for a couple of seconds before falling.
The following week when we arrive, I notice an older woman with a Latino child. She probably is the grandmother or, judging from her graying hair and lack of Latino coloring, the nanny. Her charge, a little boy a bit older than Chloe, fusses and strains in her arms. I'm pushing Chloe on the pony swing when they sidle up to us. “How old?” she asks me with an anxious smile.
“Almost eleven months. And yours?” I ask her.
“Carlos is about fourteen months. We think, anyway. I found him in a private orphanage in Guatemala. They didn't keep particularly good records.” She smiles and shrugs. “Obviously, he's adopted.” She seems nervous. “I've only had him for two weeks.” She tries to put him in the swing next to Chloe, but he seems to be glued to her hip, handfuls of her hair clenched in his tiny fists. She gives up quickly, then reaches up and swipes away a wisp of hair that Carlos has pulled loose from her ponytail. She looks exhausted.
“He doesn't seem to want to do anything. He clings to me, but I can't seem to soothe him.” She's swaying rhythmically to the cheerful music, but Carlos is buying none of it. He reaches beyond her to the large, brightly colored yoga balls behind us on the gym mats and shrieks.
“Maybe we'll give those a try,” she says with a sigh.
At the end of class we all assemble in a circle. Carlos and his mother look around, not really knowing what to do. I catch her eye and pat the gym mat next to us.
“It's ‘The Bubble Song,' I tell her, when she and Carlos settle in beside us. “At the end of the class we all sit in a circle and sing ‘The Bubble Song.' The leaders make all these bubbles, and the kids try to catch them. It's cute,” I tell her when she gives me a doubtful look. Carlos, however, is already enchanted and sits quietly on his mother's lap, eagerly reaching for the bubbles, which he takes great delight in popping.
“By the way, I'm Mira, and this is Chloe,” I tell her later in the coatroom, as we are attempting to stuff our children into their respective snowsuits.
“I'm Ruth, and, well, you've already met Carlos.” She gives us a fleeting look and a weak smile as she struggles to put Carlos's kicking feet into his snowsuit. “Jeez, it's like trying to hit a moving target! We'll be here all day.” I sit down next to her on the bench and pull out the small jar of bubbles that we picked up on the way out. I start blowing some in Carlos's direction. Almost immediately he relaxes, concentrating on the bubbles and allowing his mother to maneuver his feet into his snowsuit.
“Thanks. I've got to get some of those.”
“Here, take these,” I say, handing them to her. “We've got plenty more at home. They put them out each week. It's the least they can do for sixty dollars a month, put out some gym equipment and give us a couple of ounces of soapy water.”
On the walk to our cars, Ruth and I exchange phone numbers and addresses. As it turns out, they live on Murray Hill Avenue, just a few blocks from us.
“I would suggest we go somewhere for coffee or something, but Carlos and I don't have the whole public place thing down quite yet and besides, he has a pediatrician appointment. Maybe next week?” Ruth asks eagerly, and I readily agree.
That afternoon, while Chloe is napping, I take inventory of the freezer and begin assembling a care package, thinking that Ruth and her husband might need a few frozen meals to help them through the next few weeks. When Chloe wakes up, I throw together a salad and call Ruth's number. Eventually, a machine picks up, with no personal greeting, just one of those automated voices telling me to leave a message.

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