Delicious! (21 page)

“You’ve come to collect your things?”

“All in good time. I am consumed with curiosity about the letters.” He executed one of the old-fashioned little bows that would have seemed absurd from anybody else and offered me his arm. “Will you join me in the library?”

“Aren’t we being formal,” I said as we headed for the stairs.

Sammy stood at the library door for a long moment, just taking it in. Then he moved slowly forward, refamiliarizing himself with the room. It reminded me of the first time we met and how joyfully he’d greeted his possessions after his long trip to Morocco. Then he headed for the secret room.

I stopped him.

“I want to show you something first.” I led him to the card file, and he stood staring suspiciously at the ungainly wooden cabinet. “What am I supposed to do? Say ‘abracadabra’?”

“Open any drawer. Look something up.”

“What?”

“Anything. What’s your favorite food?”

“Yorkshire pudding!” He obediently opened the “XYZ” drawer, leaning in for a closer look, sniffing the air as if this were a stove and he had to determine if a sauce was ready. He flicked through the cards, pulled one up, and began to read the bright-blue writing.

“ ‘The first recorded recipe for Yorkshire pudding appeared in 1737 in
The Whole Duty of a Woman
, where it was known as “A dripping pudding.” Ten years later, in
The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy
, Hannah Glasse renamed it Yorkshire pudding; nobody knows why. (The usually reliable Mrs. Beeton, incidentally, got the recipe wrong.) James Beard calls Yorkshire pudding “a gift from England” but remains skeptical about most American recipes, which he calls “inedible, to say nothing of being indigestible.” ’ ”

Sammy studied the card, his face suffused with a kind of wistful nostalgia. “Dear me. How could I possibly have forgotten the legend of Bertie? How the old dears used to talk about her! I always regretted not having known her, but she was already history by the time I arrived. Remarkable, is it not, how vivid the ink remains after all these years? Such flamboyance!”

“You knew about Bertie?”

“Indeed. One of the more formidable characters to have graced the halls of the Timbers Mansion.”

“We guessed that Bertie was the blue librarian. But there’s no clue on this card.”

“Clue? I fail to comprehend your meaning.” Sammy looked at me, head cocked to one side.

Explanations seemed too complicated. Instead, I pulled up the ice-cream card and handed it to him. “Bertie’s created a kind of treasure hunt. To find Lulu’s letters, you have to read the last letter in the file and look for the most unusual words. After a while you get the hang of it. Then you come out to the card catalog. If you’ve guessed right, Bertie tells you exactly where to find the next letters.”

“So.” Sammy read the ice-cream card. “ ‘What goes best with ice cream? Cookies, of course. You’ll find a very interesting note on the subject in a reader letter from 1943. Look for the file labeled “Exotica.” ’ ” He returned it to the card catalog and began to walk toward the secret room. “If I comprehend correctly, Bertie is informing us that Lulu’s subsequent missive will be found among the reader letters of 1943 in a file labeled ‘Exotica’?”

“Exactly!”

Sammy had lost weight during his exile, which made it easier for him to wriggle through the small door. He eased himself onto the floor as I went to the 1943 shelf, pulled the “Exotica” folder, and handed it to him. He read for a moment in the dense silence of the room, and when he began to read out loud, his voice was almost reverent. “ ‘You know how it is when a snowball is flying toward you on an icy-cold night? The stars are glittering, and the snow is twinkling, but you’re wrapped up in mittens and boots, so you’re toasty warm. It’s surprise and comfort, all at the same time.’ ” He looked up at me. “What a lovely child.” He replaced the letter and picked up another.

“There’s another letter in that folder?” How had I missed it?

Then I remembered the argument Richard and I’d had about the cookies. He’d taken off with the recipe card and I’d simply put the folder away. Now I leaned over Sammy’s shoulder to see what I’d missed.

“Tell me about this contest.”

“I think you need to read all the letters, right from the beginning.” I got up and began to collect folders, pulling them from the shelf in chronological order. I handed him the pile and sat down, reading over his shoulder in the dim light.

When he closed the final folder, Sammy said, “Lulu’s mother does not resemble the women with whom my mother was acquainted during the war.” He had the folders cradled in his lap, unconsciously stroking them as if a cat were curled up there. “She appears so much less sanguine. It is almost as if she herself had gone off to war, without ever leaving home.”

“I think it’s because she was in Akron.” I’d been giving this some thought. “The whole city threw itself into the war effort. Before the war, sixty people worked at Goodyear Aircraft; by the time it ended, there were almost forty thousand employed. And that was just one of the war factories; Firestone was building machine guns, Goodrich was making rubber rafts and life preservers, and a local company called Sun Rubber went into the gas-mask business. I think all those people felt that they were part of the battle, that they were saving the country.”

“I see you have been very fruitfully occupied.”

“You’re the one who told me it would make a good article, or maybe even a book. I thought you might be right. But if you really want to know the truth, being here would have driven me completely crazy if not for Lulu.”

“Ah.” Sammy looked at me, concern etched across his face. “I see that I have not been alone in my anguish. What a pity that we were unable to offer each other consolation. It is high time that changed.”

I had no idea what he meant by that. Sammy got to his feet. “Let us go in search of supper. There is a thing I want to discuss with you. And I find I have a powerful desire for Yorkshire pudding.”

YORKSHIRE PUDDING ISN
’
T EXACTLY
the food trend of the moment, and we ended up in one of the last red-velvet restaurants in New York. I hadn’t been in a place like that since my sixth birthday, when Dad took Genie and me to the House of Prime Rib. This place was even older; it looked like a Victorian brothel, complete with “serving wenches.” Sammy settled comfortably into an outsize chair as the waitress brought huge hot popovers, cold butter, and great slabs of steak. By the second bottle of wine, we had abandoned ourselves to that ridiculous room, gnawing on bones and licking our fingers as if the war had just ended and we were making up for lost time. We finished with wonderfully old-fashioned chocolate éclairs.

There was something strangely sensual about this moment, and
even though I was sharing it with a man more than twice my age who preferred members of his own sex, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a seduction scene.

When we were done, Sammy leaned back in his chair and said, “That was quite a drama your little group performed last night.”

“The drunk-in-the-kitchen act?” I thought we’d gotten away with it. “That was my idea. I figured no cook could stand watching someone bumble around his kitchen, making a mess and ruining a meal. Thursday agreed; she said if you were too depressed to do anything about it, we were going to have to take drastic measures. She even bet Richard ten bucks you’d snatch the whisk out of her hand by the fourth egg.”

“Did she prevail?”

“You barely lasted to three.”

“How foolish of Richard to wager against Thursday!” Sammy took the last sip of wine. “Her most treasured belief is that any problem can be solved with the right recipe. It is what one finds so particularly attractive about her: She will not rest until she has located it.”

He cocked his head then, searching my face. “May I speak frankly?”

I was suddenly wary. People only ask that when they’re about to tell you something you’d rather not hear. When I didn’t answer, he jumped right in. “Have you always been so slovenly?”

It was the last thing I’d expected, and the question caught me so off guard that I forgot to act offended. “Um, probably. When I was little, everybody was so busy staring at my sister that it never seemed to matter how I looked. She was born beautiful, just like our mom. I take after my father’s side. Nobody ever looked twice at me.”

“Your sister?” Sammy leaned forward. “How is it that you never speak of her? Have you quarreled?”

“Of course not!” I spoke with more vehemence than I’d intended. “It would be hard to fight with Genie; she’s kind of a perfect person, nothing at all like me. She’s good at everything: In high school she was senior-class president, on the debate team, junior tennis champion of Santa Barbara, and she always got straight A’s. She’s an artist too; she
can draw anything. She should have been the world’s most horrible big sister, but she was even good at that.”

Was that pity I saw on Sammy’s face? “Why are you looking at me like that?”

His face went slack, as if he’d drawn a curtain across his emotions. “I am going to hazard a guess”—he was speaking cautiously—“that this paragon of a sister you have kept hidden from your friends has something to do with the extremely unattractive façade that you present to the outside world. But, dear girl, it is time that this nonsense stopped.”

“You think I try to look bad?” To my horror, my voice cracked. “You think I do it on purpose? I’ve spent my whole life wishing I looked like my sister! But I don’t!”

At my outburst, Sammy’s face came alive. “You are welcome to tell yourself anything you like.” He took a deep breath. “That is your prerogative. As it is mine to disbelieve you.” He leaned across the table and took my hand. In his glasses I could see my own reflection, and for a moment I hated the drab hair, thick eyeglasses, and tattered gray sweater with its constellation of small holes.

“It seems to me,” he continued, “that this façade is a barrier you have erected to keep the world at bay. Of course, it is none of my business.”

“You’re right.” I said it as coldly as I could. “It is none of your business.”

He raised a sandy eyebrow. “And yet you considered it your business to come barging into my house in the middle of the night.… ”

He did have a point.

“I was appreciative of your efforts,” he continued, “as you should be of mine. What are friends for? Last night you forced me to face the facts.”

“And just what are those facts?” I glared across the table.

He looked unblinkingly back as he raised a closed fist and slowly unfurled his thumb. “One.
Delicious!
was an extraordinary voyage, but it has come to its conclusion. Two”—he raised his index finger—“nobody
is going to employ me; I have grown too long in the tooth. And three”—the middle finger joined the others—“I have achieved financial security, but unless I resolve the question of my future, I am very likely to achieve my own end. Last night, after your group departed, I gathered my wits and conceived a grand plan. And it involves you.”

“Me?”

“I have come to a crossroads, and I am at a loss to know which way to turn. At the moment, I require a project, and you would be doing me a great favor if you would allow me to assist you.” He offered me a tentative smile; I realized this was costing him something. “It will not be forever. The pundits are predicting that the market will change with the weather. And the instant the economy recovers, Young Arthur is sure to summon his realtors. This being January, that gives us three paltry months, which is precious little time to locate the entirety of Lulu’s letters.”

Was he kidding? I’d be thrilled to have company in that dreary old mansion. Who was helping whom here? But Sammy wasn’t finished. “We”—he reached for my hand and held on, prepared to ward off any protests—“are going to make a mutual improvement pact.”

“We are?” I thought he was joking.

“Loneliness is pernicious, and your diet sounds absurd; from what I have been told, you have been surviving on cheap Chinese takeout. We will commence by dining together on a regular basis.” He was serious! “A nourishing diet will do wonders for your disposition. And a bit of company will improve mine.”

“Have you forgotten that I don’t cook?”

“Nonsense!” He batted this away like an inconsequential fly. “This pose you affect of refusing to cook has become as tiresome as your aggressively unkempt appearance. Both verge on the offensive. You are an eminently capable young woman. But, in the meantime, it will be my pleasure to become your personal chef.”