Immaculate Reception (2 page)

“Not happiness. Freedom.”

“Yes, and now we're free to feed the
pope
. Wow. This is a great way to kick off Mad Bean Events.”

“Now there are a few hundred details they need to settle. And the pope's schedule is not nailed down. But assuming there are no pressing miracles, come hell or high water, we're feeding His Holiness.”

“Madeline, I'm actually feeling a lot more conciliatory toward this ex-boyfriend of yours. I may not beat him up.”

That got a laugh out of me. Wes is the last one you'd
ever imagine fighting anyone. It's me who likes to punch it out, when I'm at the gym, anyway. But his loyalty to our friendship is awesome.

“Your enemies are my enemies.” He smiled back at me.

“Xavier Jones is not my enemy.” I sighed.

“He broke your heart, didn't he?” Wes was suddenly serious.

“Everyone gets their heart broken. Besides, that was years ago.”

“Yeah. But hearts take a long time to heal.” He looked me over and then asked, “Despite everything that happened and all those years, when you saw him again, you must have felt…something?”

“What are you talking about? He's taken a vow of celibacy. He's practically a priest.”

“Hey, watch out. You dropped a page.”

Down at my feet, a thin sheet of paper must have escaped the old book of recipes I'd been examining. I retrieved it and laid it flat on the butcher-block table. It was written in Latin. I picked up a word here and there. Wes bent over it and started reading aloud. It was just like Wes to be fluent in a dead language.

“‘…with grave suspicions that the purpose was to eliminate our most Reverend Father…' Hey, Mad, this isn't a recipe. It seems to be…” he read on quickly to himself and then looked up, startled.

“What? What is it?”

“It's signed by a Brother Ugo. And I believe he's
confessing
.”

“Like confessing his sins to a priest?” I asked.

“No. Like confessing to
murdering
a priest.”

I stared at Wesley. “Could this be a joke?”

“This is not Catholic humor.”

“Does he happen to mention which priest?”

Wes read it through again. “It's only one page from what looks like a personal diary. It goes on, but we don't have…”

As Wes spoke, I quickly turned the old cookbook upside
down and shook it gently. No other pages slipped out. I put the heavy leather binder on the counter and flipped through the recipes. All were bound in place. There were no other loose diary pages.

I looked at the paper again.

“Well, it can't be
that
old. Look. It's written on plain paper, not parchment.”

Wes turned the document over. “I believe it's acid-free paper,” he said, feeling the surface, “but that doesn't mean it's contemporary. The Jesuit order observes the Rule of Economy and hasn't used parchment, which is much more expensive, in their casual documents since, I'd hazard a guess…the fourteenth century.”

“You mean this confession might be seven hundred years old?”

I looked at the neat black ink and the even rows across the sheet.

“It's so odd,” I said, puzzled. “A confession…”

“Yes.”

“Of murder.”

“Yes.”

“I wonder what it's all about?”

“Just when things were looking up,” Wesley muttered. “Just when we were about to launch Mad Bean Events with the hippest party the pope has ever been thrown, you have to go finding a little old confession to murder.”

“It's probably nothing,” I said, tucking the page into a drawer. “It's so old anyway, it can't have anything to do with us.”

“Oh, baby,” Wes said, smiling despite himself, “from your lips to God's ears.”

“Y
ou mean the
pope
pope, or some other pope?” Holly asked, her mind apparently blown senseless.

“You know the one,” I said. “Rome, big hat, loved by millions.”

“Is this cool or what?” Holly asked.

“Cold,” I said.

“Freezing,” agreed Wes.

Holly giggled as she pulled her sweater tight around her long thin arms. As our first and only full-time employee, Holly has been with us almost from the start. She assists at parties, helps keep the administration details of our business in order, and brings her own creative zing to our close-knit little team.

“Do you think the pope likes Mexican?” Holly asked, deep in thought.

“He loves all people,” admonished Wesley. “And, my word, Mexico is predominantly Catholic.”

“No, junior!” Holly snorted. “Mexican as in
food
. Honestly!” She stood up and stretched. Holly is a tall one, nearly six feet without benefit of heels, and she seems to keep her astonishingly thin figure intact despite eating like a mastodon. Today she wore a pair of faded bell-bottom blue jeans with a cropped white T-shirt that came well short of covering her navel. Over that she wore a thin black sweater, because despite her devotion to her own wacky sense of fashion, this girl was always cold.

“Oh,
Mexican
,” Wes said, thinking. “I like that. What do you think, Madeline?”

“Interesting,” I agreed.

“I'll start gathering recipes,” Wes volunteered, heading upstairs where I have a library of cookbooks and files of menus.

“And I'll get my notes about the requirements,” I offered as I walked to my downstairs office.

“Maybe we should pack a basket of baked goodies for the Popemobile,” Holly suggested, as she followed me through the house. “Papal food to go.”

My old white stucco Spanish hugs the Hollywood Hills. Modest in size, it mixes graceful strokes of wrought iron with Art Deco flourishes and is topped with its original red tiles, typical of the homes built in the twenties in Southern California.

But lovely as I find my house to be, you'd never mistake it for the suburbs. My nearest neighbor is a retaining wall that separates my backyard from the full blast of the Hollywood Freeway, eight lanes of congestion built in the fifties smack through the center of historic Whitley Heights.

I've lived here for the past five years and converted the lower level of the house for work. The remodeled kitchen has been outfitted for commercial-size food preparation, while I use the former dining room, complete with chandelier and French doors that open onto a back courtyard, as my office. On my desk, I found the notes Xavier had written out with the requirements for the pope's event. Across the room, on the wall over Wesley's desk, a black and white photo of my home's original owner stands guard.

The house had been built by a silent film star, huge at the time, a comic famous for his “googley” eyes. Down from his silver frame, old Ben Turpin gave me his trademark “look” as I checked the notes.

Standing there, on the polished hardwood floor, I felt the creative vibrations of my home's former inhabitant. And, despite the urban snarl and freeway noise so nearby, the atmosphere around Whitley Heights was downright roman
tic. Throughout the years, it attracted the cross-eyed, oddest and spunkiest to reside in these hills.

Wesley joined Holly and me in the office. We hunkered down in comfortable chairs, me behind my desk with Wesley and Hol opposite. A few hours blurred by as we came up with and rejected dozens of breakfast extravaganza scenarios. The sun was setting and we devised a plan to get creative and cook up some of our more interesting ideas right then and there.

We turned on lights as we moved through the darkening hallways on our way to the kitchen. After hours of talking about morning food, we had worked up major cravings for eggs and cured meats and pastries. As each of us found a spot of counter space upon which to work, we fell into a companionable silence and began gathering our ingredients.

When I'd been baking earlier, I did up several lovely fresh whole wheat loaves. There was something about their humble farmhouse simplicity that started me thinking. I was inspired to create an equally rustic dish in which the bread could star. I began by cutting each loaf into thick slices, which I planned to toast. As I prepared the grill, I shot a look over at the others.

Wesley was elbow-deep in the flour bin while Holly was chopping tomatoes. They had their heads together.

“What are you two talking about?” I asked.

“You,” Holly answered promptly. “I just asked Wes who you had to sleep with to get us this pope gig.” She was baiting me, of course. And her approach was so shameless that even Wes stopped the Cuisinart to hear how I'd answer her.

I shook my head at them sternly. I gave off a “Hey, this time you've gone too far!” scowl. They weren't fooled for a minute.

“So tell me all about this Xavier character,” Holly asked, not to be deterred. “Were you really going to marry him?”

“First of all, I haven't even seen the man for over eight
years.” I turned the bread slices over and brushed them with melted butter.

“And…?”

“It's strange, you know. I was afraid that I'd see him again and maybe I wouldn't even know him. Maybe he would look too different from my memories, like a stranger.”

“Did he?”

“He was exactly the same. Cute and sweet and really talented. He always had this genius about food and he still does. But even so, everything was different. And I'm pretty sure it's me.”

“Life goes on. One changes,” Wes said.

“Isn't that sad?” I looked at my friends. “I just felt this melancholy kind of whoosh. He'd meant so much to me. And now, I'm not sure if I remember who I used to be back then.” I had never been keen on talking over the past.

“End of innocence. Growing up. Reality. It's hell,” Wes said.

“Why did he, you know, go south on you?” Holly asked as she continued her work preparing what looked like salsa, and if she didn't pay closer attention, it was going to get really hot.

“Who knows?”

“How awful. Here you are one minute going to marry the boy of your dreams and then next minute he's, like, adios.”

“Holly, enough jalapeños,” Wes suggested from his position near the deep fryer.

“Oops.” Holly stopped mincing and paid closer attention to her work.

“So how did it end? What did he say?” Wes asked.

“He made dinner for me. I was sitting there, chatting on about our restaurant plans or something. And then he told me to stop for a minute.”

“What did he make?” Wes asked with interest.

“Who cares?” Holly scowled at him. “Mad, go on.”

 

I never saw it coming, of course. Simply a stupid twenty-one-year-old idiot. Xav had been experimenting with recipes for
mouclade
, a succulent dish of plump mussels in their shells swimming in garlic-and shallot-scented broth. I remember he used these small Prince Edward Island mussels. Odd what one remembers.

The little kitchen of my apartment smelled wonderful. The windows were steamy from cooking. I was sipping a white wine we'd just studied at the institute and talking about the merits of leasing a small store in Healdsburg. I'd gotten it into my head that a smart way for us to start out would be to open a gourmet market with a tiny dining room on the side.

Xav came over to where I was sitting and bent down. He kissed my forehead and said, “Madeline, stop for a minute. I have something to tell you. We need to talk.”

The moment crystallized. Air became solid. My simple, presumptuous happiness was for that last moment intact.

“We always talk,” I teased him. I was still the same girl, with but seconds left of that self before the end came neat and sharp and cruelly swift.

“I've made a decision, Madeline. It's time I tell you.”

“What?” I asked, and then was momentarily distracted by the unmistakable sound of a guillotine blade as it silently descended.

Xav sat down on a kitchen chair across from me and took my hand. He was smiling.

“What's going on, Xav?”

“You know about my feelings for you, of course.”

“You love me.” I couldn't imagine what was going on, as the guillotine blade, now a whisper, kept coming.

“I'm going to finish up at the Culinary Institute next month. And then I am going to study at the seminary. Maddie, please see how important this is. If I don't listen to this voice inside of me, I might regret it. Can you understand?”

“I'm lost. What are you saying? When are we getting married?” I was struck by how reasonable and normal his
voice sounded, deep and reassuring. What was he going on about?

“We have to postpone the wedding.”

“Postpone it? Why?”

“Didn't you hear what I said? I'm joining the Society of Jesus, Madeline. I'm going to enter the novitiate of St. Isaac Jogues in Pennsylvania.”

“But our wedding…”

Xav brought my hand up to his lips and kissed it gently. “I will be taking vows. You understand, don't you? This has nothing to do with you.”

“We're breaking up?” I finally heard that horrible blade hit the block. “You don't want…”

“I love you, Madeline. Please believe me. But this is the way it has to be.”

Tears collected along my lower lids. “This can't be happening. We love each other. I don't believe you want to leave me.”

“I don't. I don't.” He looked at me and seemed to run out of things to say.

 

Holly and Wes were staring at me. I flashed them a grin. “He never said why. I was pretty young. I mean, I thought I knew him. That's a laugh right there. But I learned. You never know people. Not even the ones you are closest to.”

“You know me,” Wes said with assurance.

“You know me,” Holly echoed.

“Maybe I do,” I conceded. I'd made it my business to study people and their behavior. I looked closely now, and scrutinized the signs and signals that sometimes go counter to the words. My clients were startled at how well I was able to interpret their wishes, even when they'd failed to fully articulate them. It was my hypervigilance. Let's just say I was now on guard, more or less permanently.

Wesley kept a sharp eye on the frying basket he'd dunked, sputtering and hissing, into the hot oil. Holly was expertly working a skillet, flipping freshly made flour tor
tillas, while I turned to peel a paper-thin slice of
prosciutto di Parma
. I placed the delectable Italian cured ham upon the toast and kept my eye on the eggs I was poaching.

I caught Holly looking at me. She had such a googley expression, she actually reminded me of my home's comic ancestor, Ben Turpin.

“What, Hol? What are you thinking in that twisted head of yours?”

“Just hear me out. I know he killed you back then, Mad. But this Brother Xavier isn't back in your life by accident. He's been brooding for a decade about the decision he made. He had to see you again,” Holly insisted. “And you look gorgeous. You're successful. You're doing what you always said you'd do, making it in the food world. I don't know what you were like way back then, but today you are devastating. I bet he came back here to see if you and he still had a chance.”

“Get out!” I had to laugh. “It's not like he left me for another woman, you moron. He picked God. You've been watching the soaps again, haven't you?”

“Scoff if you want. Someday ‘General Hospital' is going to get the respect it deserves. It's Dickens for the nineties.”

I checked my watch. It had somehow gotten to be eight-thirty in the evening.

“Breakfast's ready,” Wes hollered.

We each brought our creations to the pine farm table and set out our dishes. Wes had a flair for pastry, and tonight he made tender sourdough doughnuts laced with cherries, which he had piled high on a lovely yellow platter. Holly was pouring freshly squeezed orange juice, spiked with vodka, along with her dish: creamy scrambled eggs, tucked into rolled fresh tortillas, served with a lively tomato and cilantro salsa. I finished my offering by topping the prosciutto-covered toast with the poached eggs and then drizzling them with scallion oil.

We served ourselves with generous portions of everything. As I cut into my poached egg, the green of the scallion oil swirled against the molten gold of the yolks and I
sighed with pleasure. For a few minutes, the tasting and critiquing and eating took over a hundred percent of our attention. The respite from analyzing my sorry past, however, did not last long.

“But Brother Xavier's come back to you,” Holly said, after thinking things over. “I find that significant in the extreme.”

“Hello? Is anyone besides me on Planet Earth?”

“You guys are so trusting,” Holly said. “I swear, if you watched daytime T.V. more, you would not be so out of it.”

“Is there any way we could change the subject?” I asked.

“Like what's more interesting than a man of the cloth visiting his former fiancée?”

“How about the confession note?” Wes suggested, catching my eye. He was saving me. I love that guy.

“What confession?”

“We found an old document that appears to be a confession to murder written by someone calling himself Brother Ugo.”

“No kidding? Who's Ugo?”

“We don't know,” Wes said, picking up the tale. “But the note was written in Latin and sounded persuasively real.” Wes pulled it out of his folder and smoothed the old paper on the pine table. Both of us came to look at it more closely.

“It starts in the middle of a sentence, like it's the last page of a longer document.” Wes was finding his place, mumbling a few words in Latin until he found the right place. “Here. He says, ‘…I have sinned. I now know I am the one responsible but I am not allowed to talk. There are crimes so enormous that no one may ever hear them spoken of. I have taken a life. This I never intended. I am now filled with grave suspicions that the purpose was to eliminate our Reverend Father. I have forsaken my training. I should have followed Rule Six. Had I but kept the Rule, I should not be guilty of this foulest sin against our very
Father. There can be no forgiveness for such a fool as I have been.' That's it. Then it's signed ‘Fra. Ugo.' Brother Ugo.”