Addled Read online

  Arietta watched as Madeline emptied the cabinet of moldering stacks of National Geographics and then struggled with the false back. The metal releases were rusting. It would fall on Madeline to install new ones.

  “Hit it hard, with the palm of your hand,” said Arietta. “It always worked for me.”

  “It’s coming.”

  “I won’t always be here to help you with these things, Madeline. You’ve got to start thinking of your own apprentice. Soon.”

  “There.” Madeline pulled the back out and leaned it against the magazines. She retrieved a small flashlight from her pants pocket and aimed the beam at the minuscule keyhole of the hidden compartment. The key turned easily and the door popped open. She reached for the leathery book with both hands to lift it from its dark space, as if she were delivering a baby. Arietta took it in her lap while Madeline put everything back to rights.

  “Did you hear what I said?” Arietta watched Madeline close the cabinet. “I’ll be eighty next year.”

  “I heard.” Madeline stood up and brushed loose crumbs of leather from her pants. “You don’t look likely to drop off your perch today. I’ll pick someone in due time.”

  “What time is it?” Arietta knew the answer to her question, but she wanted to distract Madeline while she tested the cabinet door.

  Madeline looked at her watch. “Ellen should be here soon. I’ll call the kitchen for the tray to be sent up.”

  “Think carefully whom you pick,” said Arietta. “There’s no going back.” Arietta had passed over her own two daughters, either of whom might have served, being docile enough, but neither, to her great disappointment, had ever become mothers themselves. They’d married too late, willfully so it seemed to her, to produce issue. Not that this fact in itself disqualified them as caretakers of the book—it just seemed too much to have them in charge of the Club’s reproductive history. It would be as affected as having eunuchs for caddies.

  Arietta had also passed over the next logical choice, Linzee Gibbons, a Club baby herself. But Linzee was too quick to speculate how even the most casual acquaintance might be brought into her purposes, so she would have too much leverage with the information to be had in the book. Not that she would use it in outright blackmail, but Linzee was keen on organizing events, charitable and uncharitable alike, and was always soliciting help or money. What, shuddered Arietta, would those requests mean to the women who had revealed indiscretions in her presence? They might feel an unspoken pressure to do what Linzee asked. And that would not do. Arietta would not have mistrust of any kind tarnish the hallowedness of the book’s purity. The women had to believe that no one would read the entries until it was absolutely necessary, and then only for the highest of purposes. She had never regretted choosing Madeline, even though she had only married into a Club family. Madeline was easy and went about her duty without a manipulative bone in her body.

  “Have you thought of Phoebe?” asked Arietta as she tapped back to her seat by the fire. “It’s in her blood, after all.”

  Madeline almost laughed, except she knew it would make her head hurt. Her daughter. Last year, while Phoebe was home for a few weeks after college graduation, Madeline had to listen to a constant harangue about vegetables, cars, and cleaning fluids. Madeline couldn’t make a right choice about anything. Then Phoebe started in on the Club, launching a crusade in the name of organic food and turf. Not that anything she proposed was wrong; it could even be called noble, if unrealistic—it was her stridency that was such a bother. Where had that insistence of hers come from? It had seemed sort of cute when she was a teenager, but now, at twenty-three, excuses could no longer be made for youthful exuberance. Madeline realized with a start that when she was Phoebe’s age she was already a mother.

  She shook the thought out of her head. “For one thing, Arietta, she’s determined to stay in Seattle. And two, if she even suspected what went on here, she’d organize a class action suit against us.”

  Madeline picked up the phone and sharply clicked the kitchen button. While she talked with Vita, reminding her to include herbal tea packets on the tray, Arietta leafed through the book’s brittle pages with care. She looked up and mouthed the words “lemon squares” to Madeline, who repeated them to Vita, who assured her they were already on the tray. After Madeline hung up, she turned and leaned against the Puritan oak library table.

  “I saw Nina at the pool the other day.” Madeline gazed out the diamond panes of the casement window. She’d watched Nina grow up at the Club and was fond of her, even though you could have fit her brain in a teacup. She was fairly pretty too, but her one flaw, an elongated chin, was now exaggerated by her sadness. What a shame her engagement had to end the way it did. “I hope we did the right thing.. . .”

  Arietta pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at her face, causing a few flakes of foundation to flutter to her blouse. “Don’t be silly. The dust is settling nicely. Eliot’s been hustled off to an archaeological dig in Ghana for the summer, where he will surely forget about everything. As for Nina, she goes on a restorative trip to Europe next week with her aunt Tessa. That will put the color back in her cheeks.” She inspected the yellowed pages. “Now, what do we know about Ellen’s family? What sort of stock do they come from?”

  “New people,” said Madeline, thinking that Nina needed more than just a bit of color. “They moved here a while ago to set up practice and did Jim Hudson’s first divorce. He was so impressed, he put them up for membership. They’re from New York.”

  Arietta’s shoulders gave an automatic shudder. “Fine, so we only have to get her to register, for the future. There’s no possibility that either of them have ever had relatives in the Club that we’d have to cross-check.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Madeline. “Even if they were related, it would be too late now.”

  “Never say never,” said Arietta. “Better to have the facts.”

  There was a knock on the door. Arietta, with some difficulty due to a hip that she refused to have replaced (“I’m going out with all the parts God gave me”), went to answer it and, as she had done for more than half a century, pushed aside the deadbolt and opened the door to the most recently pregnant Club member.

  Ellen Bruner stood there and looked at the two women. She was forty-three years old, but she looked younger than Madeline remembered, and less severe. She was dressed like a Catholic schoolgirl: blue cotton cardigan, red plaid skirt, cabled kneesocks, penny loafers, white shirt with Peter Pan collar, and a face that showed a history of battling acne. The tip of her nose glowed pink, and then she smiled. Arietta kissed her on the cheek, and Madeline breathed with relief. Ellen didn’t look like she was going to be difficult at all. In fact, she looked as if she welcomed the occasion.

  Chapter Four

  The Easy Birdie

  A COUPLE of hours later, the disheveled tea tray was back in the kitchen, where Vita stood attached to the wall by a long, umbilical phone cord. She wore no-nonsense kitchen whites but still managed to look as lush as a harem girl in a painting. She had fat, but was not fat. Her black hair was pulled back, but the unruly ends were poorly restrained by her toque and hung in her face, whose color was that of crème brûlée. Her mouth, normally red and expansive, was drawn tight. “Don’t wait up for me, Momma.”

  “Evita,” her mother pleaded, “I scrub floors so you go to good schools, have future, never to slave in the Anglo’s kitchen. Now look! Almost thirty-five and working fourteen-hour shifts like you never got degree!” She choked back a sob.

  Vita sullenly picked at a crumb of lemon square on the tray in front of her. She had nothing to say. She used to tell her mother that working at the Club was only practice for a bistro she was going to open someday with Utah. Third generation and she still had an immigrant’s dream of owning her own restaurant. But she had dreamed too much too fast and had made the critical mistake of moving back home to save money for a down payment. She had risked it all because she was stupid enou
gh to think he’d loved her. But why wouldn’t she, the way he had lavished praise on her body in their own little language of food? Butternut squash for the soft curve of her back. Parsley for the short, curly hairs. Ripe figs for her. . . Now she had no man and no dream, and was living with her mother on the top floor of a Roxbury triple-decker.

  “Get job where you wear smart suit, have briefcase, meet nice businessman, not some potato peddler,” her mother continued to wail. “What was education for?”

  Her mother was still not over the fact that after graduating from Wellesley, Vita had chosen the Culinary Institute instead of an office, which was, in her mother’s eyes, the pinnacle of American success. And yet, for all her mother’s scorn of the food industry, she was taking the breakup with Utah hard, for there went another possibility of grandchildren. The woman wanted everything.

  Vita licked confectioners’ sugar off her fingers. “Leave the hall light on for me, okay, Momma?”

  Her mother sniffed good-bye, and Vita stood for a moment listening to the dial tone and contemplating her lie. She didn’t have to work that night—they’d had a late brunch buffet at the Club instead of Sunday dinner—but she just couldn’t bear the thought of sitting in that apartment with her mother armed with a fresh batch of photos from the cousins. All those babies, and none of them hers. How could Vita tell her that it was okay, that this was where she wanted to be, in the kitchen, where she could begin again, day after day, with every new meal? How could a baby ever compare with that? She wanted to stay in her kitchen alone, in peace, and play with some oxheart tomatoes, perfecting her chutney. It was Utah who’d introduced her to oxhearts. He’d taught her so much. She remembered the first time they met, him kneeling on the floor of her kitchen, lifting two eggplants from the crate, one in each hand to show her the difference between the sexes. The heavier ones were female, full of seed. “Go ahead,” he’d said. “Touch one.”

  She wiped a tear from her eye, then wheeled the tea cart over to Pedrosa so he could clear it and go home.

  “Pedrosa, tomar este pasteleria a casa, por su esposa.”

  Pedrosa put the lemon squares aside to be wrapped up. “Gracias, Vita.”

  Then again, maybe she shouldn’t send the pastry home to his wife. Every time Jordan, her pastry chef, baked them for Mrs. Wingate’s teas, a baby shower always seemed to follow on its heels. Pedrosa could hardly afford to feed another mouth.

  She reached behind him and washed her hands thoroughly, removing all traces of the pastry, just in case, and wishing everyone would finish up work and leave her to her tomatoes. Scott, who worked the snack bar, was taking his sweet time with the receipts, lingering while he waited for a ride from Merle, one of the caddies. Luisa, her all-around helper, slumped at the stainless-steel counter, exhausted. No longer a teenager but still not much bigger than a twelve-year-old, Luisa had tended the steam tables all afternoon, a physically demanding job since the heavy pans had to be lugged up the narrow steps to the dining room. There was a dumbwaiter, but there never seemed to be enough time to wait for its ancient gears to turn. Luisa flipped her single long braid behind her back and unwrapped the foil package she’d brought from home. Vita was a little miffed. Luisa had worked for her for two years now and still would not eat her food. Blando, was all Luisa had to say about it. She pulled out a poultry leg and chomped.

  Vita sniffed the air. “What is that?”

  Luisa hesitated. “El ganso,” she said, and took another bite.

  Vita pulled up a stool and sat very near. “Goose?”

  “Those nasty fairway birds?” Scott’s voice was so nasal that his words seemed to come out of his nose rather than his mouth. He scratched his stomach, tipping the balance of wrinkled khakis on his hips, revealing the elastic band of his boxers. He might have stepped out of an Abercrombie & Fitch ad, except that his long elfin locks were tucked up in a blue sanitary cap.

  “Scott,” said Vita. “Pull those up. You’re obscene.”

  He absently yanked at his pants but could not take his eyes off Luisa’s drumstick. “Dude, how can you eat that?”

  Vita was wondering the same thing. After Charles Lambert had accidentally killed a goose, Pole had ridden out to the fairway to scare away the flock. But there were so many geese and they were so unafraid of humans and their little carts that he had backed over one, killing it, much to the alarm of the players. One of those was Humphrey Clendenning, president of the Board of Governors, who was, for all intents and purposes, the boss. Poor Gerard had been dining on humble pie ever since. The two dead geese should have been tossed in the Dumpster, but Luisa found Barry in the employee lot, unable to complete the act. Understandably. Vita knew all about Barry’s secret gosling. After examining the birds, Luisa had pried them from his grasp and stuffed them into waxy Chiquita banana boxes, storing them in the walk-in until it was time to go home. Vita thought she was crazy for thinking her mother could make them edible, but said nothing. She’d only warned her not to let the members see her leave with the boxes, or else they’d think she was stealing food.

  Luisa took another bite and sighed with pleasure. “Momma, she work magic. Special recipe.”

  Vita snorted and adjusted her toque. “I have a recipe for Canada goose too,” she said. “Put a stone in a pot of water, add the goose, and boil for three hours. Then throw the goose away and eat the stone. Even rat tastes better than those greasy, stringy beasts.”

  Merle, who bore a strong resemblance to Tiger Woods, arrived to pick up Scott. The Club kept a squadron of caddies for those members who wanted to walk the four miles of a game with someone who cared passionately about their stroke, and Merle’s education at UMass was being financed by the profit to be gained in this walk. “Sounds like you, Scott,” Merle said as they watched Luisa eat. “Greasy and stringy.”

  The two young men play-punched each other until Vita raised her hand and stopped them cold.

  “This food scene is getting way too weird, dude,” said Scott, taking off his blue cap and tossing it in the trash. “Can’t wait to get my certification next week so I can work at the pool. Then all I have to do is wear a bathing suit and look hot.”

  “For that rich girl of yours, eh?” said Merle, holding the door open to the outside steps. “Scotty’s moving up in the world. Maybe Mr. Quilpe’ll give you a job at his bank, huh?”

  Merle laughed, but Scott put his finger to his mouth. He didn’t want Vita to know he’d been hooking up with Sarah Quilpe, daughter of the Food Committee chairman. Fraternizing with members was strictly taboo.

  But Vita was too fascinated by the bird in Luisa’s hand to care about who Scott was diddling with this week. “Which goose is this?” Vita asked her. “The one that got run over or the one that got hit in the head?”

  “Run over, hit, what matter?” said Luisa. “You see bruises? No. Momma an artist.” Luisa held out the meat in a tantalizing gesture. “Bite?”

  Vita snatched it from her and gave the flesh a professional squeeze. It was firm and not at all slick. The skin was an excellent bronze color and not too puckered for having been refrigerated. She held it under her nose like a fine brandy, and oh, the smell! Woodsy and dark, with unidentifiable herbal undertones. She took a small bite, moving the piece around her tongue so she would not miss a single sensation. As she chewed, she felt herself filling with primal images, misty landscapes of smoldering volcanoes and giant ferns where small mammalian creatures scavenged and pawed on the floor of a neolithic jungle. A waterfall released a sweet subterranean scent, and from her own core rose an elemental gasp of pleasure. To taste this meat was to begin again at Genesis.

  She opened her eyes and looked at Luisa, who was smiling but, all the same, watching the leg. “How did your mother do this?”

  Luisa tapped her wrist. “Time. Birds hang all week on our back porch, they mature. Then special rub under the skin.” She leaned in close. “Releases fat. We should sell in gift shop.”

  Vita used the leg to point at Luisa. “Bri
ng me to your mother.”

  Luisa removed it from Vita’s hand. Her long lashes closed softly on her high cheeks as she took a slow, deliberate bite. “Momma won’t talk to you,” she said with a full mouth. “She not think it right I lose my chance at big money because you must oil the food. She says food must stand on its own. No cheating.”

  Vita darkened with guilt. Earlier that summer, Luisa had finally gotten a chance to wait tables, but a plate of halibut had slipped from her grasp and onto Mr. Clendenning’s lap. He was, of course, gracious about it. Insufferably so. But Gerard took Luisa off the floor, permanently, in spite of Vita’s pleading on her behalf. Of course, Vita knew full well that Gerard had never wanted Luisa waiting tables to begin with because of her accent, but it was Vita’s fault for supplying him with an excuse: a slippery plate. The halibut had lost its first youth from sitting under the heat lamp, so she had sprayed a little oil on it. A small cheat that made food attractive again, since appetite was as much in the eyes as in the tongue.

  She knew better, but sometimes it was just so much easier to embellish on real life, just a little, especially if it was getting dry. But from now on, if the food started looking tired before it went out, she would do the dish over. “Tell her I’m sorry, Luisa,” said Vita, reaching unsuccessfully for the leg. “Tell her I’ll make sure you get another chance at waitressing.”

  “No oil?”

  Vita raised her right hand. “No more oil. But I want to know everything, do you understand? I want to see how it’s done. Step by step.”