Julia's Child (9781101559741) (6 page)

Marta made a face. She and I didn't agree about Mr. Pastucci, or the Sons of Sicily Social Club. I found them to be harmless relics of Brooklyn's storied past, while Marta said she found old Mr. Pastucci and his establishment creepy.

“I don't know what they're up to at these social clubs, but it isn't good,” she'd said, the first time we visited the space. “Old men, sitting around together in the dark.”

It was only a three-minute drive with my cargo over to his low-slung Court Street storefront. Mr. Pastucci's was the last of the Italian men's clubs that used to line the street, or so I was told. That was back when the Italians ruled Brooklyn, before four-dollar lattes and pricy bistros came to the neighborhood. As far as I could tell, the Sons of Sicily Social Club was nothing more than a dim box of a room with a little old bar, a smattering of folding chairs, and a pool table. I pulled my Subaru into the dark alleyway between the club and a dry cleaner. The back door was in reach, but as per my arrangement with the proprietor, I went around to the front door, a scraped-up metal model with a peephole. I banged the knocker against the door four times, as Mr. Pastucci requested. And then I waited.

After a few moments, the old man opened the door a couple of inches. Behind him I could see the dim lighting and wisps of smoke from the members' cigars. Piano music played softly on tinny speakers.

I smiled at him. “Open . . . saddle soap?” I asked. We always did a bit of a shtick from an old Bugs Bunny cartoon before he let me in the back door with my goods. “Open sarsaparilla?”

Mr. Pastucci's glance floated over my head, as he checked the spaces behind me, like a movie mobster. Then he nodded.

If any of his paranoia was genuine, I assumed it was because he operated the little place without a liquor license. I pulled my coolers containing “da merchandise,” as Mr. Pastucci called it, into his small back room. There was nothing there save for a utility sink, a mop bucket, and two enormous chest freezers that I rented for a hundred dollars a month.

Zia Maria's rates were usurious by comparison. And the location was perfect, since we produced the food in Brooklyn and our only retailers were in Brooklyn.

It took me just a few minutes to fit all the muffets into the two freezers while Mr. Pastucci watched.

“How's business?” he asked.

“Okay,” I answered as cheerfully as I could at so late an hour. “I met some potential customers in Park Slope yesterday, and it went really well. So I made a lot of product tonight. Sales might pick up this week. Speaking of which . . .” I closed the top of the freezer and reached for my purse. I fished out two fifties, still crisp from the ATM machine, and handed them to him.

He smiled. For another month, I was helping him keep the light on over the pool table and beer in the cooler.

“Any of the stores give you trouble?” he asked. I bit back a smile. He sounded like the Godfather checking up on his
famiglia
.

“Only the stores I'm
not
in are trouble,” I said with a smile. “That makes approximately eighty thousand grocery stores around the country that give me trouble!”

“But Brooklyn has been good to you,” he said, his voice low and gravely. Mr. Pastucci loved Brooklyn. I wondered if he'd ever been anyplace else.

“Of course!” I said quickly. “Brooklyn is my savior. I wish Julia's Child was stocked at Entrefina in the Heights, but really I can't complain.” It was time for me to leave. “Take care of yourself, Mr. Pastucci.” Then, happy to have the night finally reach its exhausting conclusion, I gave him a quick peck on the cheek and went for the door.

“Good night, sweetie,” he said.

Chapter 4

“G
et this. The new toothpaste I bought you has a childproof top.”

“Groovy,” Luke answered. He hit the car's turn signal and steered us toward the exit off the interstate.

“I also bought you a different shampoo,” I told Luke. “This one is organic and not tested on animals.”

“I'm fine with that,” Luke said. “Just as long as you don't make me smell like a woman.”

“I promise if anyone at work asks to borrow your perfume, you can switch back to your old one.”

“But seriously—just don't switch the toilet paper,” he warned. “First of all, I don't like the idea of recycled toilet paper.”

“They don't mean recycled
from
toilet paper.”

He just shook his head. “Even so. I try to be ‘green' too, Julia. I'll plant some extra trees in Vermont if you want. But I'm not using sandpaper in the bathroom.”

I shifted in my seat. It was such a puzzle. Why were men, who by all accounts were less frequent users of toilet paper, so much more opinionated about it? Could their skin really be that much more sensitive?

We'd been in the car too long, all four of us. But the Green Mountains were finally coming into view, and I felt my spirits lift. Very shortly we'd be there. “Back on the farm,” I said. “Back on the farm.”

“Who is?”

“Me! I've always wanted to say that. Now that I have a farm, I can say it whenever I want to.”

Luke smiled. “Okay, honey. But you don't exactly have a farm. You have a very nice barn, a pretty meadow, and a patch of dirt, where you hope that two college dropouts will figure out how to grow some better vegetables.”

He had a point. Our neighbor's grown children had produced for me a crop of organic eggplant and zucchini that wasn't exactly worthy of photography, let alone praise. But it had only been their first try.

“I
still
think the great vegetable venture might work out.” I hoped it would. Otherwise the project would become yet another entry in the list of things that cost me more money than they made. But we'd come to Vermont to relax, and so I would try not to worry about it. “Don't rain on my parade.”

“I couldn't, even if I wanted to,” he said. “Look at that sky! Not a cloud in sight.”

Dutifully, I lifted my eyes to the impossibly blue sky, where it met the rounded peaks of the Green Mountains. We'd been coming here together, to our little house, since before the boys were born. Luke and I were in perfect agreement that Vermont was the most beautiful place on earth. And my farming project amused him, even if he didn't really understand why I wanted to try producing some of the ingredients for Julia's Child.

A shriek from the backseat broke through my reverie.

“
Where Elmo go?
” Wylie was showing the strain of three hours strapped into his car seat. At the moment he was watching a video.

“I'm sure he'll be right back, honey,” I sighed. At home we had a strict no-TV policy for the boys. I hated the zombie faces they wore while staring at the screen. But in the car, I'd made an uneasy truce with Elmo. For the last third of the trip, when I'd run out of stories and songs and snacks, I always put in some
Sesame Street
videos to keep the kids entertained.

Videos in the car were something that belonged on my list of Things I Thought I'd Never Do
.

I wanted my boys to have the experience of coming to the country—not just a suburban stand-in, but the real thing. Vermont was the genuine article. I was thrilled to share with them the hilly terrain, the unspoiled farmland, and the only state capital in the union without a McDonald's.

But it was more than three hours from New York.

So Wylie had taken to Elmo like an addict. As many times as I'd thought I might kill myself if I ever heard the Elmo theme again, I needed the little red menace with the squeaky voice more than I dared admit.

“Where Elmo
go
?” he yelled again.

“Mama, the screen really is black,” Jasper explained.

I craned my neck uncomfortably to retrieve the DVD player from where it hung between the seats. The battery was dead. And the car charger we had for it wasn't very reliable.

“Sorry buddy,” I said to Wylie. “Elmo is taking a break.”

“Where him
go
?”

“Him is . . .” I shook my head to clear it. “Is anybody hungry? How about a muffet? I have Apple and Cheddar.” I swiveled uncomfortably around again just in time to see Jasper shaking his head violently. “Jasper! A simple ‘no thank you,' will do.”

“
No thank you.
”

Lately, Jasper won't eat muffets. If I put them in his lunchbox, they come home untouched. I understand that the poor kid is probably just sick of them. All the same, I was trying not to let it bother me. If I couldn't even please my own child, it didn't bode well for me as a businessperson.

“
Where Elmo?
”

“Oh, Wylie. Let's sing a song, okay?” With Elmo on break, I was back on duty. “How about the ABCs?” I suggested. “You start.”

“We do dat already.
Want Elmo!
”

“I know—I'll sing the ABCs backwards.” I'd once tried this, on another car trip, and found it spectacularly difficult. But that was fine, because I'd also discovered that making a fool of myself was something for which Wylie and Jasper had a boundless appetite. In order to enter the town of Gannett with both eardrums still intact, I was willing to take one for the team.

I sang. “
Z, Y, X
. . . uh,
W, V, T!”
I took a breath. “
U
. . . Crap!”

Wylie giggled.

“No, Mama. Like this.” Jasper took a deep breath and began to sing. “
Z, Y, X, W, V, U, Teeeeee
.” He took another breath. “
S, R, Q, P, O, N, M, L, Kayyyy
.” Not only was he in tune, but he didn't seem to have to think about the letters.

“Jasper!” I gasped. “That's amazing.”

He beamed.

“Jasper,” Luke asked, taking a quick peek over his shoulder into the backseat, “where did you learn that?”

I thumped Luke's leg. “He's a
prodigy
.” I'd always known it.

Jasper gave me a funny look. “I learned it in the playroom. With Sadie and Bryan.”

Our neighbors' names made me frown. “Emily's kids? But Sadie is just a baby.”

Jasper shrugged. “She can mostly sing it. Forward and backward. Also in Spanish. Only, she thinks its all one word.”

Luke burst out laughing so violently that I checked to make sure that the road wasn't about to make any hairpin turns. “Really? Sadie and Bryan can do the alphabet forward and backward? In Spanish?”

Jasper had already lost interest in the subject. He looked out the window. “It isn't that hard. Sadie's mama has these cards she holds up if you get stuck. And then Sadie and Bryan get fruit punch if they do it right.”

“It's because Sadie has an
extra-special
mommy,” Luke snickered.

“Luke!”

He was still laughing. I felt a prick of irritation. “Hey—fruit punch? In the playroom? Isn't that against the rules?”

“Bonnie said so,” Jasper replied. “But Emily said the rule is no
eating
. And fruit punch is a drink.”

Luke's phone rang just then. He took it out of his shirt pocket and flicked his eyes at its digital display. “Speaking of mommies,” he said, flipping open the phone. “Hi, Gayle! You've caught us in the car on the way to the house.”

“Why's she calling
you
?” I whispered. It was bad enough that my mother left messages on my own phone every other day.

“You say she's avoiding you?” Luke snuck a glance at me.

I shook my head vigorously. I wasn't in the mood to be quizzed by my mother.

“Oh, I'm sure she isn't. But her phone doesn't always ring when it's supposed to. Would you like to ask her yourself?”

I took the phone from my husband. At least my own quirky phone knew not to throw me under the bus with my mother. “Mom, I'm not avoiding you. I've been busy.”

“Honey, busy is your permanent condition. That's no reason not to call your mother.”

I let it slide by. I would not become ensnared in our usual pointless discussions. This time I would try to be very Zen and hold my tongue and get off the phone as quickly as possible. “What's going on?”

Before she could answer, Wylie howled again for Elmo.

“One second, Mom.” I fished in the glove compartment for the car charger. I handed the DVD player back to Jasper and plugged it in. It worked as long as I remained leaning forward, jamming the plug into the car's lighter socket.

“Your father and I have decided to accept your invitation to come up for Thanksgiving,” my mother said. “And I'd better make those airplane reservations now. It's almost October.”

“Oh . . .” My mind whirled like a disc drive as I attempted to recall any previous conversation about the holiday. It took me a minute to realize that the invitation was just one more of my mother's machinations. I opened my mouth to argue but managed just in time to bite back the words “but I didn't invite you.”

During the pause, my mother added, “Unless you'd like to bring the family here instead.”

I hesitated again, sensing a trap. But there was my own distaste for the South Carolina golf community where my parents had retired. And flying with Wylie was still a bit like dog years—the flight segment seemed to last approximately seven times longer than it should. “No,” I said through gritted teeth. “You should come here.”

“That's what I thought you'd say. I'll call the airline next week. I should probably get going now—the potluck is in an hour, and I'm not ready.”

A snarky question leapt onto the tip of my tongue, and this time I didn't hold back. “What are you
bringing
to the potluck?” I'd seen her contributions before, and it wasn't pretty. She made “pizza” out of refrigerator crescent rolls with cream cheese spread on top. She also made a casserole with canned beans, canned cream of mushroom soup, and freeze-dried onion rings on top.