Julia's Child (9781101559741) (9 page)

“For a magazine—a ‘famous mother and adorable infant' kind of spread. And the kid was hungry . . .”

“And you walked in with your delivery of muffets! Did they buy some? That's great, Marta!”

“
Chica
, this story ain't even half over. Lizzie was looking at the bananas, asking Luigi if they were organic . . .”

“She was
not
!” I laughed. Luigi's Convenience Store was about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. It didn't smack of gourmet choice.

“She was! And I latched right on to that mama like white on
arroz
,” she said. “ ‘Here's your organic snack!' I told her. ‘They're called muffets, and I'm delivering them from our company, Julia's Child, which makes healthy things for cute little girls like Ava.' And then, because I'd recognized her, she dropped Luigi like a hot potato. And here's the kicker, Julia. I had a fresh muffet in my purse. It wasn't frozen—I was gonna eat it with my
café con leche
when the delivery was done. So I gave it to little Ava. And I told Lizzie that it was black beans and carrots, all organic, and she said, ‘Oh, I don't know if she'll eat it,' and you know what happened, right?”

I smiled. Because I did know what happened. “She chowed it.”

“She did! And what do you think happened next?” Marta squealed.

“She bought a whole box of them?” I guessed.

“No
way
honey. I
gave
her a couple of boxes of them. And she was just so chirpy about everything. She loved the flyer with you and Wylie, ‘Oh, it's so cute,' and what a neat little company, and then she said the magic words.”

“ ‘Marry me'?”

Marta sighed. “No! She said, ‘I think we should have these on our show.' ”

Fresh out of wisecracks, I finally shut up and listened.

“So her personal assistant, this twenty-year-old intern or whatever, is standing outside on the phone, trying to get her a table at Per Se or something, and Lizzie, like, snaps her fingers and the girl comes rushing into the store. Lizzie throws the boxes of muffets at her and tells her to make a note that ‘We want this product on the show.' So the girl is jamming that into her BlackBerry. And I make a real gushy good-bye to Lizzie, tell her how much you'd love to be on her show.
And
I get the personal assistant's name as I'm leaving. So I can follow up on Monday, right?”

“
You
are a rock star, Marta.” And I meant it. I wondered if I would have had the wherewithal to throw myself at the celebrity the way she had. I probably wouldn't have even recognized her.

“Damned straight. But my story's
still
not over. I made it back to the office after the deliveries, by two thirty. Almost nothing happened all afternoon, by the way, and I was thinking of heading out a few minutes early. But at quarter to five the phone rings. It's a producer from
The Scene
. Some musical guest canceled for Tuesday, and they want to know if we can be there.”

“Oh, shit!
This
Tuesday?”

“That's right. So of course I told them yes.”

“Oh, shit!” sang Wylie from the kitchen.

“Jeez!” I said, still in shock. “Are we ready for national television?”

“You will be,” Marta said, cutting to the chase. “Leave it to me.”

“
Oh, shit!
” yelled Wylie again. “Wet!”

I dropped the phone on the sofa and ran into the kitchen. Lettuce and water were flowing in a green stream over the edge of the sink and down the front of the cabinet. Wylie had somehow wedged the salad spinner over the drain and overflowed the sink. I shut off the water, unwedged the spinner bowl, and ran back to the phone.

“. . . hair and makeup. We're called for 9:00 A.M. The first segment starts at 10:00, but you're slotted for 10:45,” Marta was saying. “We have all day Monday to get ready.”

One whole day. “Yikes. I guess I'll be in early,” I said, the enormity of the situation just starting to sink in.

“See you then!” Marta said cheerfully. “I gotta call my sister now,” she said. “She's still bragging about the time she saw Justin Timberlake walking down Broadway.”

Chapter 7

“S
he'll be there at 2:00,” Marta said, wrapping up her fifth call before 9:00 A.M. “Thank you!” She hung up the phone with a definitive click.

I didn't have the faintest idea who Marta had been speaking to or where she'd promised I'd be. She had taken over, turning our office into Mission Control, and I'd sunk into a terrified haze. After hanging up the phone, she disappeared into the bull pen outside our private closet and then reappeared a minute later rolling a piece of equipment on a cart. It wouldn't have surprised me if it were a NASA-style countdown clock.
T
minus twenty-five hours. And counting.

Instead, it was a rather ancient-looking television and VCR.

Marta folded her hands across her chest and turned to where I sat, cowering, in my chair. “Listen. Since we can't get a media expert in here to help us, we're going to have to wing it. I'm just going to tell you everything I know about the program, and then we're going to watch an episode.”

“Okay,” I said helplessly.

“
The Scene
airs from ten to eleven in the morning, in several segments. The first part is just a discussion among the five cohosts.”

“About what?” I asked. I'd never seen the show.

“About . . . whatever,” she said, as if it were obvious. “About politics. About Beyoncé. About whatever is, you know,
out there
. But they do it in a personal way. They sympathize with the victim. They tell their own stories. It's very confessional. Then, in the next segment, they do the stars, on the sofa.”

“Stars?”

“There are one or two interviews of famous people. Like an actress with a new movie coming out or someone who's getting married. Whoever's hot. Then finally they have either a musical guest or someone who shows them a new product or a recipe. That's where you come in.”

“Because I'm a product? Or a recipe? Will they have me cook on the show?” That didn't sound so bad.

“Yes, but only for pretend,” Marta said.

“Pretend?” I thought of Wylie stirring up pancakes on his wooden play stove.

“See, we'll have the ingredients for a batch of muffets. You'll stir them together, and then the hosts will taste the finished product.”

“Okay. So we have to bring those ingredients.” I wrote that down in my notebook. “What else?”

“Well . . .” Marta hesitated. “They always give the studio audience a gift from each segment of the show,” she said.

“A gift?”

“The guest's latest book or a copy of their CD. Since you don't have a book . . .”

“And I haven't cut a CD lately.” I shivered with discomfort.

Marta ignored my sarcasm. “I told them we'd give away muffets to every audience member.”

“How many . . .”

“Two hundred and fifty,” Marta said, before I could finish.

“Two hundred and fifty!” I yelped. “Where are we going to get that many extra packages of muffets by tomorrow? Zia Maria is probably booked tonight.”

“Calm down, Julia, because I have a plan. First of all, we're going to make up a package of two muffets for each person, not twelve.”

“But still . . .”

“
And,”
she continued, one long finger in the air to shut me up, “the reason we do our cooking at La Cucina is because . . .”

“Because it's illegal to make the product at home.”

“It would be illegal to
sell
it from a home kitchen. The muffets for the show are to give away, not to sell,” Marta said carefully. “We can make them anywhere we want.”

I blinked at her. “Oh.”

“So I'm going to make them at home tonight,” Marta said decisively. “And this afternoon I'm going to work on the packaging, since we don't have anything the right size. And I want to do something a little more promotional . . .”

“But what about freezer space?” I asked. I hadn't seen Marta's freezer, but I doubted it would hold five hundred muffets.

“I don't have to freeze them. They'll taste even better fresh.”

“Oh.” Of course they would. “But still, Marta, I can make them today in my own kitchen.”

“No, you can't.”

“Why not?”

“Because you're getting your hair cut and colored at two o'clock. At Frédéric Fekkai. Then after that I need you to go and get a manicure and a pedicure.”

I was really out of my element now. “Did you say ‘colored'?” Tree huggers like me try to avoid harsh chemicals.

“
Sí, señora
. We can't have those gray hairs glinting on high-def.”

I put a self-conscious hand to the top of my head. Last time I'd checked, there were only a few gray hairs there. Let's not get crazy.

“And right before your haircut, we're going shopping.”

You'd think, after the hair color, I would have seen that coming. “Oh,” I said stupidly again. “Where?”

“Barneys,” was her answer. “Or Bergdorf. You can choose.”

“Thanks,” I said, with a hint of indignation, though it had been years since I'd bought any garment that could not withstand jam-smearing and machine washing.

“So, moving on.” Marta crossed a couple of things off her list. “Let's talk more about the show and about your segment. To really make it on
The Scene
, you have to be confessional,” she said with an air of authority.

“But . . .” It was hard enough to picture myself cooking for a bunch of chirpy millionaire talk-show hosts. It was nearly impossible to imagine dishing dirt with them. “How? I'm not a soap opera star with a secret boyfriend. We're tasting muffets here.”

She shrugged. “They sit around and dish. That's the show. So you've got to give them something to dish about. That's what we should work on now.”

I took a deep, Lamaze-worthy breath. Then I capped the paper cup of coffee I'd been drinking and tossed it into the garbage can. The combination of caffeine and swelling terror was proving to be a bad one. “I don't know about ‘confessional,'” I told Marta. “But I know I can romanticize the story. I'll tell them about how I started the business almost accidentally because I wanted the very best for my little boys, but also to save the world.”

Marta chewed her gum thoughtfully. “You do that role well. But I'm telling you they really want to hear about how your husband left you for his secretary and how you've sold a kidney to finance the business. And how the titans at the big grocery chain stores want you to sleep with them before they'll stock your product, but you won't do it—”

“But none of that is true!” I cried. “Although I'd keep an open mind about that last part.”

Marta rolled her eyes. Apparently I wasn't very credible as a slut. “Look, I'll show you what I mean.”

Marta pulled a videotape out of her purse and stuck it into the VCR, which was part of the rental suite's communal hardware. “My neighbor had this, and it's only a week old.”

Snowy static on the screen became an ad for allergy medication. And then, to bouncy theme music, a group of five shiny talk-show hostesses sashayed out from behind a red curtain and onto a warmly lit stage. To whoops of appreciation and massive applause from the studio audience, they took seats at a half-moon-shaped maple dining table.

Marta pointed at the skinniest, blondest hostess. “That's Lizzie Hefflespeck, our savior.” The young woman had layers of silk for hair. She was blonde and as slim as an haricot vert, not at all the mommy figure I had pictured. She wore a stylish little wrap dress, size zero. Ten perfect fuchsia fingernails clutched her coffee mug.

In fact, all five hostesses clutched matching mugs, in perfectly manicured hands. It was probably as an attempt to make the whole production feel like a casual sit-down among friends. But I was not even a little bit fooled.

“My dear friend Gwyneth has a new film,” Lizzie cooed on screen.

Marta muted the show. “Background information,” she said. “Lizzie's married to an Olympic athlete who was her personal trainer. He's the Ken to her Barbie. Their little daughter is a year old, and it's like Lizzie's the first person to ever have a child, you know what I'm saying? When she was trying to get pregnant, they interviewed Lizzie's fertility specialist. I'm surprised she didn't have the in vitro on camera. When she was preggo, they interviewed her OBGYN. These days, she's obsessed with the health and nutrition of her miracle child. That's why you're getting your big break.”

Lucky me.

“Moving on,” Marta said, pointing at the next host in the coffee klatch. “That's Wanda. She's the
new
smart-assed one who spars with everyone. You want to stay on her good side. Then there's Charity, who used to be a serious journalist, but then she won a season on
Survivor
and her career really took off.”

“Marta?” I gasped. “How is it you
know
all about this show? And these people? We're here at work every day when this show is on.”

Marta fixed her gaze on me. The look was affectionate but also hinted at how much my failings amused her. “Because I
read
.”

Chapter 8

I
t is true what they say about television lights—they are surprisingly hot. I feel like I'm melting, and I haven't stepped onto the actual stage yet. Everything is happening too fast. I can't see into the studio audience, where I'd hoped to spot Marta. Then I hear my name called, and I feel short of breath. I plaster a smile onto my face and I start to move forward.