Goldy Schulz 01 Catering to Nobody (2 page)

I said, "How'd it go today?" He groaned. "Terrible. As usual." He turned his small, earnest eleven-year-old face full of freckles and brown hair and tortoise-shell glasses to me.

He said, "Larry and Sean attacked me. They said I was stupid for still going around on Halloween. They say I'm stupid about everything, and they're the stupid ones. Halloween isn't even here yet!" He shook his head, disgusted. "They said it was like believing in Santa Claus. Look, they tore my shirt." He fingered a rip in the blue-and-red flannel.

"Hmm."

He gave me a grim look. "And don't tell me all that stuff about turning the other cheek because I already tried that and it doesn't work. I'm going to have to think of something else."

I said, "Sorry. Want a hot biscuit in two minutes?" "Can't." His voice wrapped around the open refrigerator door. "Todd's calling as soon as he gets home. We're doing a role- playing game and then TV trivia. I've been reading a book about the old shows all week." He emerged clutching a pitcher of peppermint tea, his favorite. "Don't worry. I'll use the other phone line in case any clients call in.

He smiled, and I wanted to hug him, ripped plaid shirt and all. But he was at the age where this made him uncomfortable, so I just lifted one eyebrow at the tea.

"You use the last of my sugar in that?" "I had to use something," he said in defense. "I needed it."

I shook my head and began to mince scallions for my Wild Man's Wild Rice Salad, so named because men usually turn the other cheek to rice. The rich scent of baking scones filled the kitchen. Arch loaded a plate with oatmeal cookies, a sure sign he was not going to stay and chat.

"Listen up," I said. "You remember I need you to help tomorrow?" He nodded. "Your job now, please," I went on as I handed him two dollar bills, "is to pop on down to the convenience store and get me another bag of sugar. And don't open it for a sweet fix on the way home. I have to have it for the muffins and strawberries and lemonade."

He groaned dramatically and clomped out, yelling something over his shoulder about Todd calling back in half an hour.

GOLDY'S MARVELOUS MAYONNAISE

1 large egg, purchased from salmonella- free source 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 cup safflower oil

Put the egg, juice, vinegar, mustard, and salt in a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Process until well blended, about 30 to 40 seconds.

Place the oil in a small pitcher and, with the machine running, dribble it into the egg mixture in a thin stream. When all the oil has been added, turn off the processor and scrape the mayonnaise from the bowl and the blade into a small bowl that can be tightly covered. Keep the mixture chilled. It is best to use homemade mayonnaise within 24 hours.

Makes 1 cup

WILD MAN'S WILD RICE SALAD

1/2 cup raw wild rice 2 cups chicken or vegetable broth 2 tablespoons mayonnaise 1 tablespoon tarragon vinegar ½ teaspoon Dijon mustard (or more, if desired) 1 tablespoon olive oil 2 scallions, finely chopped 3 radishes, diced 1 small tomato, drained, seeded, and diced 1/3 cup jicama, peeled and diced 1 cup baby spinach leaves, well washed and drained, plus extra for lining platter Salt and pepper to taste

The night before you are to serve the salad, thoroughly rinse the rice, place it in a glass bowl, and completely cover the kernels with water. Allow the rice to soak overnight. The next morning, carefully strain the rice and discard the water. In a large pan, bring the broth to a boil and add the rice. Cover the pan and immediately lower the heat to the lowest setting. Allow the rice to cook, covered, about 1 hour to 1 ¼ hours, or until the kernels have puffed and taste done (i.e., they are not chewy or hard). Drain the rice and measure it. You should have 1 ¾ and 2 cups cooked rice. Spread the kernels out on two plates to cool completely. For the salad, the kernels must be dry and cool. Pat the kernels dry with paper towels, if necessary.

In a small bowl, combine the mayonnaise, vinegar, and mustard, and whisk well. Add the oil in a thin stream, whisking all the while, until you have a smooth, blended dressing. In a medium-sized bowl, gently combine the cool rice kernels with the scallions, radishes, tomato, jicama, and spinach. Pour the dressing over this mixture and mix very gently. Taste and correct the seasoning. Chill at least 2 hours before serving. Turn out onto a small platter that you ma line with spinach leaves, if desired. The salad must be consumed the day it is made; it does not keep well.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

I washed the food processor and started on Goldy's Marvelous Mayonnaise. When Todd rang I gave him the message. Halfway through drizzling in the safflower oil for the mayo, Alicia banged through the front door. With all the interruptions I'd be lucky not to end up mixing vinegar into the whipped cream.

"Let's put it on the counter," I yelled over the buzzing and gulping of the processor.

We heaved a Styrofoam box up next to the mountain of chopped vegetables for the salad. Inside would be the salmon, wrapped in plastic and packed in ice. I planned to poach it that night and slice the strawberries, whip the cream, and make the lemonade all in the morning. Laura's aunt was providing the Vouvray and dishes. I was bringing the cups. Arch and Patty Sue, who had lived with us for two months, would help serve, and we would get through this.

"That's it," said Alicia after she'd downed the scone I'd offered. "How's your love life?"

"No news that's fit to print."

She eyed me. "Something you're not telling me?"

I said, "Maybe." In a gossipy small town one does not discuss one's social hopes. "Don't worry," I said. "I'll get out eventually." She sighed and left.

The silvery salmon slapped my hands as I rinsed it and wrapped it in muslin. It too had been dedicated to mating and spawning and look at how far it had gotten.

Arch marched in and lobbed a two- pound bag of sugar onto a chair before heading for the phone in his room. The opened bag snowed part of its contents onto the kitchen floor.

"The Television Trivia Championship is at hand," Arch, ignorant of his mess, hollered over his shoulder.

The rolls enveloped the kitchen with the smell of dill. In a large ceramic bowl I sloshed oil and egg and sugar for the muffins and was about to add the flour when my business line rang again.

"Goldilocks' Catering-" "Stop."

Marla again. I began to measure the flour into the bowl, but some blew up my nose and onto the floor on top of the sugar. New powder on top of packed powder. Soon we could ski in the kitchen.

"What now?" I said.

"Don't tell me you haven't heard the latest."

"How could I? I just talked to you within

the last hour."

"He is marrying this girl." I set the bowl down.

"Goldy, did you hear me?"

I reached for the mushrooms. "Goldy, do you believe this?"

I said, "Hmm."

"Well, my dear," she demanded shrilly, "what are we going to do?"

"Feel sorry for her. Not give tomatoes to him," I answered as I began to mince.

“Anyyway," continued Marla, "the thought of a third daughter-in-law was too much for Vonette. She got drunk, I mean really gone, and Fritz called the cops and had her hauled down to Furman County detox."

"Not again," I said as bits of mushroom fell from the side of my knife. "Did someone go get her?"

"Yes, she's home, doing better. She'll be at the wake tomorrow. Fritz, for all that silver fox routine, isn't exactly what you'd call compassionate. Must run in the family."

I said, "Should I try to keep Vonette away from the Vouvray?"

"No way," said Marla with a snort. "I can't believe that in your eight years with John Richard, you never saw Vonette's flask. She keeps it in her purse. You must be blind."

"I am not blind," I replied before hanging up, "but I will be broke if I can't finish the food for this party."

With the mushrooms minced and wrapped and the muffins steaming in the oven, I headed down the hall toward Arch's room, sugar bag in hand.

"Do you realize the mess you made by tearing into this?" I demanded after knocking and entering and offering the bag as evidence. He told Todd to hang on and cupped his hand over the phone.

"Please, Mom," he said as he held up a book, something about TV facts. "Let me talk. Besides, I didn't do that. See," he said as he tongued forward a wet pink mass, "I had bubble gum."

I cocked my head at him. "Arch, alibis are like food service. They have to do more than look good and hold up. They have to be palatable. And yours," I added, "doesn't even look good."

"Sorry, Mom," he said. "Really. I'll clean it up."

I wanted to open his head and look in, to see what he was really thinking, how he was dealing with everything. I wanted to say, Are you okay? And have him say, Yeah, Mom.

"Don't bother." I said. "I swept it. Just be more careful, all right?"

He nodded solemnly and said nothing. And then I turned away. I did not know what the right grieving behavior should be from a boy whose favorite teacher ever,

Laura Smiley, had only six days before slashed her wrists and bled to death.

-2- I'm starving," said Patty Sue as she tiptoed into the kitchen in a ruffled pink housecoat the next morning. I finished slicing the strawberries and offered her a bowl. A lanky twenty-year-old who had a twig-like figure and the metabolism of an athlete, Patty Sue Williams had been my roommate since August tenth at Vonette Korman's request.

"She just doesn't have anywhere to live while she's here, Goldy honey," my ex- mother-in-law had said, "and she needs Fritz to treat her medical problems. Take her in for a while. Give her a job. She's never done anything out there in eastern Colorado except live with her folks. This gal wants to learn, Goldy. You can teach her."

This I had come to doubt, I reflected as I pushed down on lemon halves to ream out their juice for the lemonade. Patty Sue had been so sheltered by her parents that her approach to any new endeavor was timidity, confusion, or both. She had attended a local community college "for a while," she said vaguely, as if that, like everything else in her life, had not quite panned out. When she first arrived she had told me all about herself, including the fact that she was a virgin. Dr. Fritz Korman, John Richard's father and the other half of Korman and Korman Ob-Gyn, was treating Patty Sue for amenorrhea. Which meant she hadn't had a menstrual cycle for the last year.

"This is a bad thing?" Marla had asked at the last meeting of Amour Anonymous, our women's group.

"It needs to be treated," I replied. "Her doctor out in Fort Morgan sent her to Fritz, who claims to be some kind of specialist with it. It's serious enough that Patty Sue's mother let her come out and live with me, although she calls once a week to make sure I'm not corrupting her."

"Not a chance of that, I'm afraid," Marla said. "Maybe we could bring her into the group as a special assignment." I doubted if Patty Sue would have recognized herself in any of the literature about love-addicted women, which the Amour Anonymous group reads religiously. Sometimes I wondered if she recognized herself as anything. She was I tall, lovely, and unsophisticated to the point of never having operated a dishwasher. She wanted to learn to drive a car but was intimidated by crown roast of pork. At first she had been quite eager to learn the catering business. She had made cementlike loaves of bread and overcooked hamburgers with the brightest of smiles. But just when she started mastering the skills, she had detoured into a state of distraction.

In September she'd started avoiding my eyes and my questions. Perhaps she was thinking about her sickness. It was strange because she didn't look sick. In fact, physical fitness was her one obsession. She had even asked that her first wages as a caterer's helper go to adding her to my athletic club membership. Despite the mood shift, which she unfortunately could not blame on PMS, she still worked out at the gym. But her energy had become feverish instead of enthusiastic. And her cooking abilities, such as they were, had gone to hell.

"That was great," Patty Sue said now as she licked her fingers from the strawberries. "This kitchen always smells super."

I set the bowl aside and broke three eggs into an iron skillet, then went back to squeezing lemons until it was time for the over-easy part. These days, nothing was easy for Patty Sue until it was over. My attempts in the last two weeks to teach her to cook anything more complicated than toast, much less eggs, had not gone well. Words like marinate and braise were beyond her. I had asked if she was homesick. She'd said no, and gone on to leave the top off the food processor when she worked with flour, generating small blizzards.

So I had put her to work serving to pay for her rent, food, and right to exercise indoors. For Laura Smiley's wake she was in charge of the strawberry shortcake buffet. This would mean little beyond keeping a platter stacked with scones and replenishing bowls with sliced strawberries and whipped cream.

"Where's Arch?" I asked as I placed little glasses of orange juice next to each placemat.

Patty Sue said, "On the phone, I think."

Since she obviously was not going to get him, I started down the hall to his room. On the way I glanced at the drawings of mountain flowers he had done last spring. Laura had encouraged his artwork after he'd produced the sketches of high-country animals. These delicate pen-and-ink works were of bluebell, fireweed, daisy, lady's slipper - all part of a project on nectar producers. Arch had chewed his tongue and furrowed his brow

while drawing the details of tendrils and stamens.

Arch was the other problem-in- residence. Never gregarious, he had seemed even more isolated since the beginning of school. Twice he had come home with a black eye and a note from the

principal saying he had been in a fight. I knew better than to pry. Or worse, rescue. I just wanted to understand what was going on.

Since Laura's death he had become even more withdrawn. Whenever I was near he spoke on the phone in a hushed

tone. His eyes glazed more and more in indifference, as if he were taking lessons from Patty Sue. Our days of counting spoons, of telling stories, of loitering next to the hill of pumpkins at the grocery store to choose just the right one for a jack-o'- lantern - these were over. Immersed in fantasy role-playing games, he prepared and embarked on elaborate paper adventures, the purpose of which eluded me. As I edged away from the drawings and approached his room I could hear the authoritative voice he invariably used when directing one of these adventures. I slid his door open.