Good Enough to Eat (23 page)

“That sounds lovely,” Delia says. “I bet people will really take to it.”

“I’m glad everyone likes the idea! I’m meeting with my accountant tomorrow to find out about what the whole project will entail financially, what adjustments we may need to make in terms of insurance and such, but I’m pretty excited!”

“Good for you, little dreamer Mel!” Kai says, jumping off the counter and patting me on the back. “And clever Nadia, the idea gal. Aren’t you a surprise! But we now have to open the front door or all the hungry hordes are going to head up the block to McDonald’s, yes?”

Kai heads into the front of the store to unlock the doors, Delia stands up and goes back to loading the case, and Nadia and I grin at each other, and then go back to work.

 

 

Nadia wanders into the living room just as I am getting my coat on.

“Going over to Nathan’s?”

“Yep. Haven’t seen him all week, he’s in the final push to get his film finished, so he’s editing around the clock. But I suppose getting him from ten p.m. to five a.m. is better than nothing!”

“Yeah. That’s the great thing about Daniel’s job, no late nights. He works till six or six thirty, but then he’s off the clock. And all mine!” She blushes prettily when she says this.

“So it’s still good with you guys?” I’m a little worried about her, to be honest. Daniel is perfectly benign, but frankly, I feel like she could do so much better, and I hate to see her get involved so deeply with him.

Nadia flops down on the couch and twiddles her feet in the air. “Oh, Mel. It’s so great. He’s the best boyfriend I’ve ever had.”

“Well, that’s not exactly saying much.” This comes out slightly snarkier than I mean it to be, and Nadia’s face falls a bit as she sits up.

“Well, it says a lot to me. You don’t have the best track record yourself, as I recall.” She gets off the couch and starts to head back to her room. “Have a good night with Nate, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Nadia, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . .”

“Yeah. Actually, I think you did. Relationships are hard, you know that. Our hearts make choices that we can’t understand and aren’t always good for us. It’s hard to be smart all the time, Mel. And you should know better than anyone that choosing the wrong man isn’t a personal character flaw.”

“But, sweetie, choosing ten wrong men in a row might be an unhealthy pattern.” Her eyebrows fly straight up into the air. Crap, nothing I’m saying tonight is coming out right.

Her eyes narrow. “Goodness, you are self-righteous for someone whose marriage was a façade and who has a boyfriend with obvious commitment problems.”

“Wait, wait, let’s just take a breath. Neither of us meant to get into a disagreement over this. I’m sorry what I said hurt your feelings.”

“You know what, Mel, in my experience, people who say things that are hurtful mean to hurt, and the ability to apologize for it after just makes them think they have permission to do it.”

“I don’t know what I can do besides apologize.”

“You can not say things to begin with. Is it that you think I don’t know that I’ve made bad choices for boyfriends? Did you think perhaps that I need the sage wisdom of your years to tell me that the guys I have dated have been abusive and cruel and taken advantage of me? Is it that you think somehow I don’t KNOW that I’m all fucked up? I’m smarter than you give me credit for, Mel, and all I can say is that considering my life, it makes more sense than you could ever understand.”

“How can I consider your life when you don’t share your life with me? All I know about your life consists of leaving Minneapolis with Barry to come here and then getting dumped. Where is the life before that? What have you given me to use as a basis for understanding? If you want someone to be sensitive to you, to take your history into consideration when looking at your behavior, you have to give them that history to consider. You want to be the mystery girl, hatched into the world at twenty-three, raised by no one, growing up nowhere, with no family and no past and no stories to share, fine. But then don’t ask someone to understand what you’ve been through, because I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’ve been through, and my ESP isn’t fine-tuned enough to figure it out on my own.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Mel. I get that you didn’t mean to pick a fight. Let’s just leave it at that. Say hi to Nate for me.” She turns and heads down the hall to her room and closes the door. And unsure of what else to do, I grab my bag and leave.

 

 

“So how are things at home?” Nate asks. We are luxuriating in postcoital bliss, entangled in his bed, sheets askew. I’m snuggled up against him, head on his chest, as his hand travels up my hip, across my back and shoulder and down my arm back to my hip again.

“Sort of excruciatingly polite. Friendly, but it feels like it is a little forced. Not that we aren’t friends. I just think we both have very different ideas about how to communicate and what forgiveness means, and so it feels like the trust that was built is now diminished and we’re working our way back to even.”

“Well, you’ll forgive me saying, but something is just not right about that kid. This whole having-no-past thing, it’s sort of creepy. I mean, I know you like her and I know she hasn’t given you any cause to be concerned about her, but something is off. I can’t put my finger on it.”

For some reason, despite my own frustrations with Nadia, I immediately feel the need to defend her. “She’s not creepy, Nate. She’s obviously been through some sort of difficult past that she doesn’t want to talk about, and she’s a little bit damaged. But she’s been great. She’s been very respectful and easy-going around the house, and terrific at the store and . . .”

“Darling, don’t get overly mama lioness on me. I’m not saying I think she’s dangerous in some way, I just think she’s troubled, probably in deeper ways than you are even aware of.”

“Probably you’re right. The silly thing is, while it’s none of my business, her past, I want to know, not just because I’m curious, but because I feel like it would help me be a better friend to her.”

Nate kisses the top of my head. “No one could be a better friend than you.”

“That is very sweet of you to say.”

Nate rolls over and kisses my mouth. “I’m a very sweet guy.”

“And so you are.” Nate begins kissing down the length of my body, and all thoughts of Nadia are quickly extinguished.

 

 

Delia and I get the last of the food into my car with more than an hour to spare. We’ve spent the day cooking in exactly the opposite way of what we do every day: liberal with fat and sugar and butter. We’ve got a carload of food that is a nearly identical spread of what I ate at Billie’s house back in law school, made with the same sense of pride and history, the same connection to family and tradition. Delia told me about her grandmother’s bread dressing and her auntie Jeanine’s macaroni and cheese. I learned about Daddy’s corn bread, and Uncle Jimmy’s pulled pork. We made her sister Ella’s sweet potato pie, and her mom’s greens with salt pork, and her own fried chicken. Her secret to keeping the meat moist and the outside crisp?

“Oh, honey, I never mastered actually cooking that chicken in the oil. I poach it in milk so that it’s cooked through, and then pat it dry, bread it, and fry it just to heat it up and make that crust.”

It’s ingenious, a perfect solution to dried-out meat or burnt skin and raw meat, and I tell her so.

“Shucks, I just got tired of making shitty chicken. My grandmother used to make a milk-poached chicken for ladies’ luncheons, and that meat was always so tender, the idea just came to me.”

“You have the mind of a chef.”

“I have the mind of a cook. All that chef business is too fancy for me.”

We get in the car and head out to the shelter.

“Can I ask you something?” Delia says quietly.

“Of course, D, what is it?”

“What would you do if something you needed and wanted, something good came to you, but came from a place that was evil. Would it be bad juju to keep it?”

I think about this for a moment. “I think that if something good comes to you, and the source is bad, but you haven’t done anything bad to get it, or asked someone else to do something bad to get it for you, then you can put it back in the world as something good.”

“Yeah. That’s sort of what I was thinking.”

“D?”

“Yeah?”

“You want to fill me in?”

Delia takes a deep breath. “Lawyer called my sister up in Louisville, looking for me. Seems that asshole I was married to is dead.”

“Wow. I can’t even imagine what you must be feeling.”

“Honey, I don’t even know what I’m feeling from minute to minute. I ain’t exactly sorry he is dead, but I didn’t wish it on him. He was my husband, and I did love him for a time, and he was the father of my baby boy, and I wouldn’t have traded knowing that child for that brief time for anything, so I can’t hate him for that. But what he did to me was the lowest thing a person can do to another person, and I surely can’t forgive him for that.”

“So, what did the lawyer say?”

“The lawyer said that apparently he never filed divorce papers or separation or anything, and that he didn’t even tell most people I was gone. So his life insurance and his pension come to me. The house was in his family, and goes to his sister and her kids, but the money comes to me. The lawyer is sending the paperwork.” Her voice is soft and steady.

“Oh, D! I think that’s wonderful. Something good has come of this, and lord knows you deserve it. Is it enough money to get you out of the shelter?”

“The pension money is enough to get me out of the shelter and be able to afford my own space. The insurance is something I’m going to have to figure out, it’s a large-ish chunk of money for someone like me, and I’ll need to find a way to invest it for my future. Maybe I could talk to your financial guy?”

“I’ll give you his number tomorrow; I know he’d be delighted to work with you.” I’m so excited for her windfall, for the independence it will afford her, for that cruel bastard doing one right thing in his life. But then my heart sinks. “I would guess it’s probably enough that you won’t need to work with me anymore, huh?”

“Child, I don’t rightly know. Nothing is going to change in the short term. It’s going to take a couple of months to get the money in my hands, and I have a lot of decisions I have to make before I do anything. Frankly, my first thought is to get out of that shelter and free up the space for someone else who needs it. Having a real home to call my own again, that is my priority. What I decide to do about the job, I can’t think about that part yet. But I promise I won’t leave you high and dry.”

“Oh, sweetie, I’m not worried. I always knew you were a gift with an expiration date. It’ll be hard to see you go, but I’m so thrilled that you will have the choice! If you want to stay, you will always have a place with me, but you don’t owe me anything other than your friendship, and when it is time for you to do something else, I hope you won’t hesitate to go after your dreams.”

“Thank you for that. For all of it.”

“Thank you. Do you know, is Nadia coming tonight?”

“I think so. Are you guys okay?”

“I think so. It was a bad fight and she and I both sort of hid from each other the last couple days. She’s been staying at Daniel’s, and I’ve been staying at Nate’s so we’ve only seen each other at work. But yesterday it seemed pretty normal, so I think we’re over it. I hate that all I seemed to do was push her more toward Daniel.”

“What exactly is it you got against that boy?”

I think about this for a moment. “Nadia isn’t much older than I was when I met Andrew. You think you are smart and mature and a little invincible, but you’re not. You think you’re making great choices, but you aren’t formed enough to do it. You know when you meet those couples where the woman is this amazing creature, and she’s with some little nothing guy, and you wonder why on earth she would settle for him when it is clear to everyone in the world that she could do so much better? I don’t want Nadia to be that girl. I don’t want her to pick him just because he isn’t the same kind of shithead that she’s used to. Someone just treating you like a human being isn’t enough, and she’s amazing and she could have someone amazing in her life, and I want her to have amazing and not just safe.”

“Sometimes, honey, safe is amazing.”

This is something I never considered.

I pull up in front of the shelter and park the car. “Shall we feed the people?”

“Oh, yes, honey, let’s get this party started!” It is the most jubilant I’ve ever seen her. We get out of the car, and walk around to the trunk. Delia puts her arm around me and squeezes. I squeeze back, and we each grab a tray as some people pour out of the shelter to help, and we start getting the food inside.

“Okay, so I have to say this out loud, especially because I am so ashamed for feeling it, but I have to name it and claim it.”