Too Many Cooks (2 page)

Stevie hunches his shoulders. “Do I have an explanation for half the things Mom did? Maybe this was her way of saying good-bye, on her own terms.”

I concede his point once again. For a guy who, at twenty-five, technically still hasn't finished college, Stevie often surprises me with his perspicacity. I sometimes wonder where he'd be if he'd been born into a different family, with parents who took a genuine interest in his intellectual development and didn't delegate most parental duties to his big sister. Maybe he would have made more of himself.

“So what did it say?”

“That's between me and Mom.”

“Stevie, I'm your sister. You can tell me.”

“Go read your own letter.”

“Stevie . . .”

“Kelly . . .” he whines back.

I let out a huff. “Fine.”

I march across the hall to my old bedroom, which like Stevie's looks almost exactly as it did nearly twenty years ago: hot pink comforter with brown and green polka dots, a two-foot-tall piggy bank shaped like a crayon in the corner of the room, and a small white desk and chair below the window. I creep toward the desk, on top of which sits an old blotter studded with hot pink hearts. A white envelope rests to the left of the blotter:
To Kelly. From Mom.

My hands shake as I tear open the envelope and read the letter inside, which is written in my mom's swooping cursive, the slanted lines indicating the involvement of a blackberry brandy or two:

 

“You ready?”

I jump as I look up and see Sam standing in the doorway. “Sorry,” I say, clutching my chest. “You scared me.”

His eyes land on the letter in my hand. “What's that?”

I glance down at the piece of paper, the words inside still spinning in my head. I consider telling him about my mom's laundry list of dying wishes, about Irene O'Malley and the Tupperware and my mom's desire for me to see the world. About the shock I feel that she actually wrote a letter. That she was worried about my brother and my dad. That she had the gall to call Sam
boring
. But instead I fold the letter into a small square, hold it tightly in my hand, and rise from the bed.

“Nothing,” I say. “Just my mother, torturing me from beyond the grave.”

Because, as both of us know, there is nothing shocking about that.

CHAPTER 2

I should probably clarify something: Sam
is
boring.

He is. But that's part of what I fell in love with—his boringness. After twenty-two years of dealing with an eccentric and unreliable mother and an inept and crotchety father, I felt blessed to have found someone so normal. Someone who didn't break into “Dancing Queen” randomly and without warning. Someone who actually kept stamps and lightbulbs in the house. Someone who showed up.

We met during my senior year at the University of Michigan, while I was working an afternoon shift at Zingerman's, a gourmet deli in Ann Arbor. I was running the sandwich counter that day, and he came in wearing a big U of M sweatshirt and blue scrubs, his honey-blond hair sticking up in every direction. He sauntered over to the counter and ordered the Zingerman's Reuben—a sandwich consisting of house-made corned beef, nutty Swiss cheese, pungent sauerkraut, and Russian dressing, all piled together on fluffy slices of house-made rye and grilled—except he asked me to hold the sauerkraut.

“Then you don't want a Reuben,” I said.

He furrowed his brow. “Yes, I do.”

“If you don't have sauerkraut, then it isn't a Reuben. It's a perfectly fine sandwich, but it isn't a Reuben.”

“Okay, then I want a grilled corned beef sandwich with Swiss cheese and Russian dressing on rye.”

“Do you have something against sauerkraut?”

“And what if I do?”

“Have you tried our sauerkraut?”

He blushed. “No.”

“Then how do you know you don't like it?”

“Because I've never liked sauerkraut. Our cafeteria used to serve it with hot dogs on Wednesdays when I was a kid, and it smelled terrible.”

“Did you ever try it?”

He blushed again. “No.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Okay, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to make you a Zingerman's Reuben—
with
sauerkraut—and you're going to try it, and if you don't like it, the sandwich is on me. Sound like a plan?”

He smirked, his eyes sparkling. “Sounds like a plan.”

Long story short: He liked the sandwich.

But more than the sandwich, he liked me. And I liked him. He had a gentle touch and an easy smile, and he was studying to become a doctor. Some of my friends heard the word “doctor” and saw dollar signs, but that wasn't the main attraction for me. What I saw was someone with discipline, diligence, and drive, three attributes neither of my parents had ever had. Anyone who could study hard enough to get into medical school and then survive four years of exams and overnight shifts—not to mention cut open a living person and sew her back up—was probably someone who wouldn't flake out and leave me standing on the side of the road.

And I was right. Sam is as steady as a metronome. He pays his bills on time. He never runs out of toilet paper. He does his own laundry and stacks his T-shirts with the folded side facing out. I never have to worry that I'll come home like I did in the fifth grade and find a lake-size puddle in the middle of the living room because there was a thunderstorm and he left all of the windows open. He is dependable. Consistent. Predictable.

That also means he has never booked a last-minute trip to Barbados or played hooky from work so that we could catch a movie or have a picnic in the park. We've never dropped everything because we were suddenly craving tacos from a Mexican joint on Chicago's South Side or bought a new TV on a whim. We never have sex on a Tuesday. Everything in our lives is planned and steady and.. . well, after six years, a little boring. Boring, just like my mother said, which is why her words gnaw at me the entire three-and-a-half-hour drive back to Chicago, stirring up doubts I've tried to silence.

I shake off those doubts as I park the car beneath our apartment building, a twenty-six-story tower of glass and steel perched on Chicago's famed Lake Shore Drive. The building was designed by Mies van der Rohe, which had appealed to my inner art history nerd when Sam showed me the apartment two summers ago. We'd been living in Chicago since he started his residency at Northwestern four years earlier, but now that he was doing his fellowship there as well, he wanted something closer to the hospital. I couldn't believe I was seeing the work of one of the architects I'd studied in college and, improbably, might also call that building my home. The lease was only for two years, but Sam said that was fine because in two years we might be ready to buy a place of our own. The idea scared me a little, but I told myself I had more than 730 days to get comfortable with it. Well, here we are, two years later, and I still haven't set up a time to meet with a realtor. Buying seems so . . . permanent. Technically we have until July to find a place, but given that it's already mid-April, I'm not sure how much longer I can stall.

I take the elevator to the eighth floor, and when the elevator doors open, I toddle with my suitcase toward our apartment at the end of the hallway and let myself inside, knowing Sam will still be at work until at least eight tonight.

As soon as I open the door, I take a whiff: Pine-Sol. Sam must have cleaned the apartment last night before going to bed. Because he knew I would be emotionally drained when I got home and wouldn't want to do it myself. Because he thinks of things like that. Because he's perfect.

I dump my suitcase in our bedroom and make my way to the kitchen, a small galley lined with gray-and-white granite countertops, espresso-colored cabinets, and stainless-steel appliances. As much as I was attracted to a building designed by a famous architect, the kitchen is what sold me on the apartment. It isn't big—with only one bedroom and a small living room, neither is the apartment—but all of the appliances are new, meaning I can test recipes at home and not worry my efforts will be foiled by a forty-year-old oven.

As I open the refrigerator to deposit some containers of macaroni tuna salad, my cell phone rings. It's Sam.

“Welcome back,” he says. “How was the drive?”

“Not bad. How was your flight last night?”

“Mercifully brief. Which is less than I can say for this day.”

“Bad?”

“Bad. Don't expect me home before nine.”

“Ugh, I'm sorry. Will you have a chance to eat? I could bring you something.”

“Nah, I'll be fine. Thanks, though. Speaking of food, I left some for you in the fridge—for dinner or a snack or whatever.”

My eyes land on the middle shelf, where he has left a container of chicken noodle soup, an apple, and two chocolate cupcakes. “Aw, thank you,” I say, wedging the macaroni tuna salad between the soup and the cupcakes. “That was sweet of you.”

“My pleasure. After everything you've gone through the past week, I figured you might not feel like cooking.”

I twitch. Cooking is
exactly
what I feel like doing, what I always feel like doing when I'm overrun with emotions I don't know how to process. I'm not sure Sam fully understands that or if he ever will. In his efforts to be supportive and helpful, he often overlooks my need to “do” and instead does for me. Part of that is probably my own fault. After taking care of everyone else for so many years, I liked having someone take care of me. But some days I feel as if I've created a monster—though if I ever said that to Meg, she'd probably punch me in the face.

“Thanks,” I say. “I brought back some leftover macaroni tuna salad, so you're welcome to have some when you get home, if you have any interest. Which, I realize, you very well may not.”

“Are you kidding? That stuff was delicious. Consider me a convert. Did you bring some leftover spaghetti salad as well?”

“Sorry, no. Everything went the day of the funeral, except a little ham salad. The macaroni tuna came from an old neighbor who dropped it off this morning.”

“Ah, well. Another time, then.” He clears his throat. “So, I e-mailed a realtor today about potentially seeing some properties. I'm on call this weekend, but she said she could take us to see a few places next Saturday.”

My chest tightens. “Oh. Wow. So soon?”

“Soon? Our lease runs out June 30. It's the middle of April.”

“I know, I just . . . After everything that's happened with my mom, it feels sort of sudden.”

“We've been talking about this for almost two years.”

I gulp. “I know.”

“Do you not want to live with me or something?”

“Don't be ridiculous—of course I want to live with you. I'm living with you now.”

“I mean live with me . . . permanently. As in, forever.”

The word lands with a thud, sitting in the empty space between his phone and my ear like a steaming hot turd.
Forever
. Forever? As in... “this is a proposal” forever? No. No, proposals involve rings and romance and face-to-face interaction. Proposals don't happen over the phone, at least not proposals from guys like Sam. He is a planner. He is not the kind of guy who, while watching TV in his pajama pants, would say, “Hey, could you pass the remote, and by the way I think we should get married.” Everything involves planning. Everything is a production. When I mentioned wanting a new couch, we had a “house meeting” to discuss whether that fit into the budget.

So, no. This can't be a proposal. And even if it is, I refuse to accept it.

“Fine, we can meet with a realtor Saturday,” I say. “Set it up.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I say. I just hope he can't hear the hesitation in my voice.

I should want to marry Sam. And part of me does. But another part of me thinks back to the letter my mom wrote and the way she articulated the fears and doubts that have been nagging at me for the past year or so, and that part wonders if marrying him would be a huge mistake. And then I hate myself for being so selfish and stupid and proceed to eat the two chocolate cupcakes Sam left in the refrigerator.

After licking the buttercream from my fingers and scraping every last chocolaty crumb from the cupcake liner, I flip open my laptop and check my e-mail, something I haven't done in a record-breaking twenty-four hours. I scan and delete the usual junk—flash sales on at least a dozen Web sites, news alerts from CNN, recipe digests from Serious Eats and Food52—until my eyes land on an e-mail from someone named Poppy Tricklebank with the subject “Setting up a call.” I open the e-mail, which is a mere two sentences long:

I scroll down to see if the e-mail bears a signature or any indication of whom her employer might be, but I find nothing. I pull up Google and run a search for “Poppy Tricklebank.” I find a profile for a twenty-six-year-old woman living in London, who works as a personal assistant. But a personal assistant to whom? I scroll through a few more entries, and then I come across an article mentioning Poppy's name: “. . . TMZ reached out to Poppy Tricklebank, Natasha Spencer's assistant. . . .”

I freeze. Natasha Spencer? THE Natasha Spencer? The raven-haired American actress who won an Oscar three years ago and now lives in London with her husband, a well-known British politician? Why would that Natasha Spencer want to work with
me?

Before I can contemplate what this means and what I should write to Poppy, my phone buzzes on the table next to me. Meg's name appears on the screen.

“Hey,” she says when I pick up. “Made it back in one piece?”

“Yep. . . .” I say, my attention still focused on my computer.

“Are you okay? I know the past week has been really hard on you.”

“Sorry—yeah. I'm okay. Or, you know, trying to be. I just got a weird e-mail, that's all.”

“From whom?”

“Someone named Poppy Tricklebank.”

Meg snickers. “Poppy
what?
Who is she?”

“I'm not sure. I think . . . I think she might be Natasha Spencer's personal assistant.”

“Natasha
Spencer?
As in the actress?”

“I think so.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on a sec. Why is Natasha Spencer's assistant e-mailing you?”

“She says her employer is interested in collaborating with me.”

“Natasha wants to write a cookbook?”

“I guess. Poppy didn't elaborate in the e-mail. She wants to set up a call.”

Meg squeals excitedly into the phone. I should have known not to tell Meg about anything possibly involving movie stars or pop culture unless it was a sure thing. She works in public radio, covering the wonkiest news imaginable, but in her free time, she reads celebrity Web sites obsessively and never lets a week pass without buying
Us Weekly
or
People,
usually both. The prospect of my working for a Hollywood superstar is like catnip.