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Beauties

Raul Neves is one of the most famous chefs in the world. Born in the Portuguese coastal city of Aveiro, Raul is the ruggedly handsome son of a fisherman named Goncalo and a waitress named Beatrice. Goncalo was lost at sea when Raul was seven. A year later Beatrice married the owner of the restaurant where she worked, and Raul gravitated to the restaurant kitchen where he proved to be a culinary prodigy.

At fifteen Raul went to work in the kitchen of a fine restaurant in Lisbon, and at seventeen became sous chef in an excellent Paris restaurant. His rise to culinary stardom was only impeded by his uncontrollable temper, and when he was twenty-three his fight with two men in a bar was judged a felonious assault and resulted in Raul serving two years in a French prison.

Upon his release, he returned to Lisbon and underwent a year of intensive psychotherapy, the fruits of which were the cessation of his violent outbursts and a new way of thinking about life. He moved to London, established himself as a premiere chef, and then moved to San Francisco where his spectacular cuisine and his appealing persona made the restaurant estuaire famous and launched Raul’s second career as the paramour of movie actresses.

When Raul was fifty-two his mother died and he became severely depressed. He decided he had to get out of the city, any city, and accepted the offer of a wealthy couple to create a restaurant in the remote northern California coastal town of Mercy, the restaurant to be housed in an exquisitely restored two-story Victorian perched on the headlands overlooking Mercy Bay. That restaurant is the peerless Ocelot, the name coming to Raul in a dream.

*

On a fine spring day in the middle of May, Raul and the movie star Kristen Carlyle cruise two miles inland in Raul’s new red Tesla up a winding road to Ziggurat Farm, home of Philip and Lisa and Marcel and Andrea. Marcel and Philip are both part-time waiters at Ocelot, and Andrea and Lisa are masters of the Ziggurat Farm organic vegetable and flower garden, source of much of the produce and flowers used by Raul at his restaurant.

Raul and Kristen are going to lunch at the farm—Philip a superb cook, Marcel a maker of exquisite wine, Andrea also a fine cook, Lisa a charming hostess—forty people expected for Nathan’s eighty-fifth birthday party, Nathan’s life deeply entangled with the lives of those who live on the farm.

“What a beauty,” says Kristen, as they turn off the highway onto the farm drive. “Must be worth a fortune.”

Kristen, twenty-eight, a busty brunette known for her steamy sex scenes in violent thrillers, has enjoyed her brief affair with Raul but has no illusions about their liaison lasting much longer.

Raul, who is twice Kristen’s age, has never seen any of Kristen’s seventeen movies because he prefers books to movies, particularly the classics, his current endeavor A Tale of Two Cities.

“This is a farm of beauties,” says Raul, parking amidst the other vehicles. “Beautiful women, beautiful men, beautiful children, beautiful dogs, beautiful cats, beautiful flowers, and incomparable vegetables. I would live here if they’d let me, but I’m afraid to ask for fear they might say No.”

“Are you serious?” asks Kristen, wrinkling her famous nose.

“Always,” says Raul, tired of Kristen after their few days together, their intellects and senses of humor severely mismatched.

“I didn’t know that about you,” she says, thinking she’ll end things with Raul tomorrow or the next day so she can get home to Los Angeles and rest for a couple weeks before a long shoot in New York. “You seem so easy going.”

“I am seriously easygoing,” he says, smiling at her. “Come. Let us go consort with the beauties.”

*

Raul and Kristen are greeted at their car by a mellow old hound named Jung and a friendly Golden Retriever named Alexandra, the dogs followed by two girls in summery dresses: Vivienne, a darling nine-year-old with shoulder-length brown hair, and Irenia, twelve, her long black hair in a braid festooned with white carnations, her face so lovely to Raul he has to take a deep breath to calm himself every time he sees her.

“Bon jour Raul,” says Vivienne, avidly studying Kristen. “You remember Irenia, don’t you?”

“Of course,” says Raul, bowing to Irenia. “How are you?”

“Very well, thank you,” says Irenia, who is learning to speak in the manner of the children of Ziggurat Farm, their vocabulary and conversational style influenced by years of tutelage from two verbally flamboyant upper crust Brits. “May we perchance know the name of your most attractive companion?”

“This is Kristen,” says Raul, turning to Kristen. “Kristen this is Vivienne and Irenia.”

“Are you British?” asks Kristen, easily fooled.

“Alas, no,” says Vivienne, sighing dramatically as she thinks of Constance and Joseph who moved back to England several months ago. “We are but pale facsimiles.”

“We have come to inform you that hors d’oeuvres and wine and grape juice are being served in the garden,” says Irenia, admiring Kristen’s dangly diamond earrings. “Lunch to follow in the farmhouse.”

So the quartet of humans and the two dogs make their way along the path bordered by lilacs and lavender and rose bushes to the magnificent terraced vegetable and flower garden where the guests are gathered around two picnic tables in the dappled shade of a live oak, most of the women in dresses, most of the men wearing colorful shirts, Marcel and his ten-year-old son Henri playing accordions at a distance from the gathering to add ambience but not interfere with the myriad conversations.

Raul seeks out Andrea, the boss of the garden, and gives her a hug and a kiss before he gestures expansively to the burgeoning vegetables. “I cannot wait to pilfer from this magnificence. My God how things have grown since just last week.”

“I’ve got employees now,” says Andrea, pleased Raul came to her first. “The children all want to work in the garden now that Irenia works for me on weekends.”

“Raul,” says Philip, approaching with Irenia’s father and mother—Boris tall and big-bellied, Maria plump and a foot shorter than he. “I want you to meet Boris and Maria, Irenia’s parents.”

“A pleasure,” says Raul, shaking Boris’s hand, both men large and strong. “I recognize you from the garage. You revived my dying Mercedes and then I sold it and bought a Tesla.”

“Tesla,” says Boris, with a thick Russian accent. “I am just now learning to fix these electric cars. I am trained mechanic not electrician.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” says Raul, bowing to Maria. “May I present to all of you my dear friend Kristen.”

“Hi,” says Kristen, giving everyone a little wave. “This place is amazing.”

“You are movie star,” says Maria, gazing open-mouthed at Kristen. “We just see you in movie with Dylan James.” She looks at Boris. “What was name of movie?”

Madness?” guesses Kristen, having made three movies with Dylan, Madness their latest.

“Yes,” says Boris, emphatically. “Madness. You were… you were…” He frowns, his English vocabulary failing him.

“A psychotic prostitute,” says Kristen, matter-of-factly. “And it wasn’t the first time.”

“Yes, you are crazy person,” says Boris, growing uncomfortable. “Very crazy.”

“Wine?” says Philip, coming to the rescue. “Grape juice? Yummy nibbles, as we call hors d’oeuvres around here? Follow me.”

At the picnic table, Raul kisses Daisy on her forehead, Daisy a curvaceous gal with reddish brown hair in a summery yellow dress holding her two-month-old baby girl Jenna.

“May I?” asks Raul, miming rocking a baby.

“Of course,” says Daisy, carefully placing her baby girl in Raul’s big hands—Raul the reason Daisy and her husband Michael came to Mercy eight months ago, to dine at Ocelot, and now they own the house and property contiguous with the farm and hope to live here for the rest of their lives.

Raul gazes into the eyes of the infant and feels his life turn upside down.

*

As the fabulous luncheon draws to a close—the revelers seated at four large tables filling the farmhouse dining room and much of the living room—Nathan and Celia’s daughter Calypso stands up and clinks her wine glass with a spoon to ask for silence.

“Now is the time to say whatever you’d like to say to Nathan,” says Calypso, a nurse at Mercy Hospital where she helped deliver the farm children Arturo, Henri, Vivienne, and the new baby Jenna. “I’ll start.”

She turns to Nathan who is sitting at the head of a table with a view of all the guests. “Papa. When I was thinking about what to say today, I remembered when I was sixteen and you got angry with me for taking the car without asking permission. And I realized that was the only time you ever got angry with me. In fifty-two years.” She starts to cry. “You are the kindest person I’ve ever known. Right after Mama.”

When the applause dies down, Celia’s brother Juan, a portly fellow in his seventies, stands up. “Amigo. I want to tell everyone how you hired me to prune trees with you fifty years ago when I really needed a job. We had two little kids and no money and the rent was due. After my first day of work you gave me four hundred dollars and said, ‘This is your signing bonus. I’ll want you to play shortstop and third base.’ So… after you saved us, what could I do? I had to introduce you to my sister.”

When the laughter dies down, Henri stands up.

“Every week,” says Henri, who is ten and not the least flustered by speaking in front of forty people, “the thing Arturo and Vivienne and I look forward to most is going to your house after school to write with you and have piano lessons with Delilah.” He looks at Arturo, who is eleven, and Vivienne, nine. “Now we’d like to recite a poem we wrote for you.”

Vivienne and Arturo join Henri, the trio standing shoulder to shoulder.

Arturo: One day Henri asked you ‘What exactly is a poem?’ and you said exactly is a tricky word, and asked us the question, only without exactly and ending with to you.

Henri: ‘A poem,’ said Arturo, ‘is words telling stories or describing something.’ And you replied, ‘How is that not prose?’

Vivienne: ‘A poem is poetic,’ said Henri. ‘You know. More musical than plain prose and less concerned with punctuation.’

Arturo: Then Vivienne said, ‘Though lines of poems don’t have to rhyme with each other, they usually do inside themselves.’

Vivienne: ‘So maybe,’ you said, smiling your biggest smile, ‘a poem is lines of words sounding sweetly to the poet.’

The children sit down to loud applause, after which Delilah, one of Mercy’s great beauties, her brown hair very short, her green Ziggurat Farm T-shirt tucked into baggy brown trousers, goes to the upright piano at the far end of the living room and says before playing, “Dear Nathan, I could never put into words what you and Celia mean to me, so I thought I’d play the story of meeting you and coming to live with you twelve years ago.”

A virtuoso pianist, Delilah plays three minor chords to begin, expresses the chords again with their separate notes played in quick succession, plays those separate notes again and again until they begin to vary and grow into a rapturous melody supported by an intricate rhythmic pattern of bass notes, the song resolving into single notes and ending with three comically major chords.

Amidst shouts of Bravo, Delilah hurries back to her seat next to Celia who is sitting next to Nathan, and when the applause subsides, Philip stands up and says, “An impossible act to follow, but someone must, so…” He gazes at Nathan and takes a moment to quell his rising tears. “As of today we’ve gotten seventeen good reviews of my cookbook, and nearly all of them use the words poetic and lyrical when speaking of the writing, which is entirely due to your helping me rewrite my original text. You will deny this and say you merely helped me see what was already there, to which I say, ‘No, Nathan, you breathed magic into my words just as you breathe magic into our lives every day.’”

*

After the many accolades for Nathan, the party continues and Raul leaves Kristen speaking to Delilah and sits down beside Nathan at the dining table.

“I would like to give you a birthday gift of supper at Ocelot for you and Celia and Delilah,” says Raul, who had no idea Nathan was so important to so many people in the community.

“I won’t say no to that,” says Nathan, who is greatly relieved to just be one of the partygoers again and no longer the center of attention. “Philip tells us the food is quite good, and he’s no slouch of a cook.”

“He’s brilliant,” says Raul, enjoying Nathan’s jest. “I can assure you I will steal several things I learned from eating his food today.”

“My wife Celia is quite the cook, too,” says Nathan, his eyes twinkling. “We’ll have you over for chicken enchiladas and fish tacos some time.”

“Nothing would make me happier,” says Raul, taking a deep breath. “May I tell you something that happened to me today?”

“Yeah,” says Nathan, who hears the beginning of a poem that goes something changed him today, something he never expected.

“When I took Daisy’s baby in my hands,” says Raul, feeling he might cry, though he hasn’t cried since he was a young man, “and I looked at her face, she wasn’t seeing me at first, you know, but then she focused on me and our eyes met, and I felt certain I was holding the container of a soul who lived before. And whether this is true or not, in that moment I realized the folly of living alone as I do, save for sexual liaisons that never last, and I felt desperate to find a wife and have a child and live with them until I die.” He laughs incredulously. “Or maybe I’m just losing my mind.”

“Or maybe the universe was showing you what love is,” says Nathan, liking the sound of that.

“And what is love?” asks Raul, his heart pounding in anticipation of Nathan’s reply.

“Love is devotion to the miraculous nature of the other, whether the other is a baby or a tree or a woman or a wave breaking on the shore.”

*

Three weeks later, on a sunny day in early June, Raul and his assistant Maurice, a large man with a shaved head, are in the vegetable garden at Ziggurat Farm with Andrea seeing what they might harvest for the restaurant today and what will soon be ready to harvest. As they consider the burgeoning broccoli, a small blue pickup truck pulls up to the barn and a woman jumps out and strides to the garden gate.

“Hello,” she calls, her voice deep and confident. “I’m Caroline Darling, Michael’s sister. Daisy said if I missed their driveway, which I apparently did, I should come here and someone would help me find my way to their house.”

“Oh Caroline. Welcome,” says Andrea, turning to Raul and Maurice. “Excuse me a moment. I’ll be right back.”

Raul guesses Caroline is in her thirties, though she is forty, and he finds her enchanting. Tall and athletic with short brown hair, she’s wearing a sleeveless blue T-shirt showing off muscular arms, khaki shorts revealing long muscular legs, and leather sandals—an amazon with only a spear missing from her ensemble.

*

A few mornings later, Raul comes alone to Ziggurat Farm to get lettuce and eggs and cases of wine for his restaurant. But before he loads his truck with produce, he walks the path to Daisy and Michael’s house to visit baby Jenna as he does every week now in his newly acquired role as Jenna’s godfather.

On the path, he meets Caroline walking with Daisy and Michael’s new Golden Retriever pup on a leash, on their way to the farmhouse where the pup—Figaro—will play with the farm dogs while Caroline has tea with Lisa and Philip.

“Bon jour Caroline,” says Raul, bowing to her before kneeling to receive the puppy’s kisses. “How nice to see you again. Have you joined the collective?”

“At least for the summer,” she says, finding him formidably attractive.

He stands up and looks at her, finding her surpassingly lovely. “And after the summer?”

“Not sure,” she says, wondering if they might have a fling. “Did Daisy tell you I’m on sabbatical from the University of New Hampshire? I’m a botanist. We’re a family of scientists, Michael and I and our brother Thom, our parents entomologists.”

“Insects?” he says, hoping he’s guessing right.

“My mother butterflies,” she says, nodding. “My father beetles.”

“My father was a fisherman, my mother a waitress,” he says, liking everything about her. “Scientists, too, in their own way, and I suppose I am a scientist of food.”

“So I’ve heard,” she says, feeling pleasantly dizzy.

They part ways saying they hope to see each other again, both feeling hopeful of sex with the other.

*

In the many-windowed living room of Daisy and Michael’s house, Raul sits in a rocking chair holding baby Jenna and listening to Daisy talk about her novel she’s planning to rewrite.

“I wrote three novels before this one,” says Daisy, taking yet another picture of Raul with her baby. “I know the first three were practice and nothing anyone would want to publish, but this one… I think the story is so compelling and…” She frowns. “I don’t know. Something’s missing, something I can’t figure out.”

“Have you shown your book to Nathan?” says Raul, making a goofy face at Jenna and waggling his head to make her gurgle in delight.

“What a good idea,” says Daisy, feeling daft she didn’t think of that.

“I would be happy to read your book, but I know nothing about writing,” says Raul, looking up from the baby. “I dictated my memoir to a writer who concocted the book, and I pay people to write my recipes from my scribbles and then I polish them before they go to the publisher. But you’d better hurry. Nathan is eighty-five. Time does not go backwards.”

“I can’t tell you how happy we are that you’re our friend,” says Daisy, gazing in wonder at Raul. “We came here to eat at Ocelot, and now…”

“Now I am your daughter’s doting godfather,” says Raul, feeling he has finally arrived, to paraphrase Stevie Wonder, exactly where God wanted him to be placed.   

fin

Here Somewhere

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Life in the Country

On a cold morning in March, Lisa is giving Tamara a massage in Hilda’s cottage, a stone’s throw from the farmhouse on Ziggurat Farm, two miles inland from the town of Mercy on the far north coast of California.

A dense fog hangs over the farm, the massage room toasty. Lisa, fifty-one, lives in the farmhouse with her husband Philip, fifty-eight, and their two young children, Arturo and Vivienne. Their farm mates, Marcel and Andrea and their young son Henri live in the other house on the property, and Hilda, Tamara’s eighty-four-year-old mother, lives in the cottage. Tamara and her longtime partner Celine are renting a beach house in Mercy in anticipation of buying a house hereabouts in the next year or so.

“Only now we’re having second thoughts,” says Tamara, who lies on her back for the second half of the massage, Lisa’s tender ministrations never failing to loosen Tamara’s tongue as well as the muscles in her shoulders and neck. “Not because we don’t love it here, we do, but because we seem to have lost all ambition since coming here. We didn’t come here to retire, but to be near my mother and to just write rather than squeezing our writing in between fusillades of bureaucratic nonsense and the well-meaning efforts of college children, as Celine calls them, and they are incredibly infantile these days, raised by phones instead of humans, poor dears.”

“You’ve only been here six months,” says Lisa, gently manipulating the now familiar knots in Tamara’s neck. “Takes time to adjust to country living.”

“Was that true for you?” asks Tamara, about to fall sleep as she always does as the end of her massage approaches.

“For all of us, yes,” says Lisa, remembering their first few years on the farm, refugees from city living. “Andrea and I were both pregnant and then we had our babies, so that was a huge adjustment, too, but we knew we didn’t want to go back to the city, so we forged ahead.”

“You were brave to have babies so late,” says Tamara, falling asleep.

Lisa covers Tamara with a light blanket and leaves her snoozing on the table.

*

In the living room of the cottage, Lisa does some stretching to loosen up from the two long massages she gave this morning, her thoughts turning to Philip and Marcel who have both recently gone back to being full-time waiters after a three-year hiatus, their place of work Ocelot, a new restaurant in Mercy, the plaything of a fabulously wealthy couple and the world-class chef they’ve bankrolled to run the restaurant for them.

Tamara emerges from the massage room rosy-cheeked and languid. “You’re a magician,” she says, handing Lisa six fifty-dollar bills. “I feel thirty-five, no longer fifty.”

“Oh Tamara,” says Lisa, frowning at the money. “This is three hundred. Did you mean…”

“Well-deserved,” says Tamara, giving Lisa a hug. “I don’t think I’ll do a soak today. I’m already so relaxed. But I’m staying for lunch, so you’re not rid of me yet.”

*

Over lentil and mushroom soup and freshly made bread, Tamara and Hilda and Lisa and Philip and Andrea talk about this and that, and Tamara asks Philip how he’s feeling about being a waiter again.

“I feel my age,” says Philip, who looks considerably younger than fifty-eight. “And I have yet to find a rhythm in the work. We haven’t been terribly busy except on weekends, though they recently got raves in the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle, so we’re expecting an onslaught soon. It certainly helps to have Marcel there with me, and Raul’s food is extraordinary. So… I can’t complain.”

“Raul must be thrilled to have you and Marcel,” says Tamara, who first met Philip when he was the star waiter at Le Scélérat in Berkeley.

“Raul is certainly glad to have us,” says Philip, nodding. “He was not happy with the first several waiters he engaged.”

“This is only temporary,” says Andrea, hating that Philip and Marcel have to wait tables again—the cost of running the farm and supporting seven people and four dogs demanding more income than vegetables and apples and wine and Lisa’s massages bring in. “We almost have enough to publish Philip’s cookbook, and when that starts to sell we will re-publish the first one. Nathan’s son-in-law says he’ll make us a web site for half his usual fee, and this year we’re going to buy eight tons of grapes. So two years from now, at the latest, Philip and Marcel can leave the tables for good.”

“From your lips to God’s ears,” says Philip, ever amazed by Andrea’s faith in him and his recipes.

“In the meantime,” says Lisa, smiling at Hilda, “thank goodness for the generous rent you pay and Delilah helping with the children.”

“I wish I could contribute more,” says Hilda, sighing. “But my future is uncertain, so…” She shrugs. “Life is long.”

“And life is good,” says Philip, getting up to put another log on the fire. “We are luckier than most of humanity.”

“I think your cookbooks will take the culinary world by storm,” says Tamara, watching Philip place the log atop the pyre. “The world awaits you.”

*

Philip, the handsome son of a French mother and an Italian-American father, and Marcel, the handsome son of a couple from Lyon, first worked together twenty-two years ago at Le Vagabond in San Francisco and became fast friends before Philip moved across the bay to Berkeley to work at Le Scélérat. Then for their first seven years in Mercy, they both worked part-time as waiters at Jessica’s Seafood & Mexican. But this is the first time since moving away from the big city either of them has worked in a supremely exclusive restaurant, and Marcel, unlike Philip, is enjoying his return to the tables.

At 4:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, Philip at the wheel of the farm pickup truck, the two waiters roll down the curving road through the forest to Mercy.

“Week number five begins,” says Marcel, wearing a blue down jacket over his brown suit, his peach-colored shirt crowned by a burgundy tie. “I miss supper with the kids and being in bed by ten and not having to shave every day, but otherwise this is not a bad gig, the money is good, and soon it could be very good.”

“Oui,” says Philip, though he finds waiting tables arduous. “I do miss the less affluent folks we served at Jessica’s, the locals, the families, the children.”

“Yes, but we make five times as much in tips at Ocelot,” says Marcel, who found Jessica’s a painful comedown from his days at the esteemed Le Vagabond. “And the imperative now is to make as much money as we can. Imagine when business picks up. We’ll make good money, Philip. Big city money.”

“May it be so,” says Philip, nodding.

“Our suits are loose on us,” says Marcel, laughing. “We’ve grown skinny being farmhands.”

*

Philip and Marcel park a block away from the restaurant and stroll in the dusk to the stately two-story Victorian in which Ocelot occupies the ground floor.

Two well-dressed women and two men in suits are standing at the small sidewalk kiosk in front of the pale blue Victorian, studying the evening’s menu.

“Excuse me?” says one of the men to Philip and Marcel. “Do you work here?”

“We do,” says Marcel, bowing politely to the man. “How may we help you?”

“Are these the real prices?” asks the man, frowning at the menu.

“I believe so,” says Marcel, going to the kiosk and glancing at the menu. “Oui.”

“A hundred and sixty dollars for steak and potatoes with a fancy name?” says the man, grimacing. “You have got to be kidding.”

“The chef is world-famous,” says Marcel, matter-of-factly. “People come from all over the world to dine here. We don’t set the prices. We are merely servers.”

“You might enjoy Jessica’s Seafood & Mexican,” says Philip, gesturing to the east. “Excellent food for a tenth the price. Just a couple blocks from here.”

“These prices are insane,” says one of the women, clearly distressed.

“The world is insane,” says Marcel, nodding. “I cannot argue with you.”

*

Entering the back door of the beautifully restored old house, Marcel and Philip take off their coats in the changing room, check their hair and faces in the mirror, straighten each other’s ties, gaze at each other and intone in French, “For our family and farm.”

They emerge from the changing room, greet the sous chef and cooks, traverse the kitchen, and go through the swinging doors to the dining room where Raul, a large man from Portugal with a great tangle of graying brown hair dressed in chef whites is in conversation with the hostess Miranda, a stunningly beautiful woman wearing a form-fitting purple gown with spaghetti straps, her black hair piled high on her head, large diamond earrings belonging to the owner of Ocelot dangling from her ears.

“Ah Philip, Marcel,” says Raul, who knew them both when he was making his name in San Francisco at estuaire and would dine at Le Scélérat and Le Vagabond on his nights off, more often at Le Scélérat where Philip attended him. “Jennifer Morris is shooting some exteriors around here and she and her entourage will be coming for the first seating. They may be as many as ten and I’ll want you both attending her. What do you think? One large table or a six and a four? In the south room.”

“We can serve more gracefully there with a six and a four,” says Marcel, winking at Miranda. “But of course it depends on what Jennifer prefers, if she wants all her people at her table.”

“I agree with Marcel,” says Philip, nodding. “Start with a six and a four, and connect them if she wishes to.”

“Yes, yes,” says Raul, nodding to Miranda. “And Frank and Darlene are coming at eight and requested you, Philip.”

“Of course,” says Philip, bowing to Raul.

“Other than that,” says Raul, smiling at Philip and Marcel, both of whom came from humble beginnings, as did Raul, “we have lots of sole tonight, not so much veal, the shrimp is good, not great, and the steak is excellent but not superb. I am told those reviews are already paying dividends. Be strong.”

With that, Raul returns to the kitchen and Philip and Marcel go with Miranda to arrange the tables in the south room, the view of Mercy Bay at twilight as stunning as Miranda.

When Miranda leaves them, Philip says in French to Marcel, “Remind me who Jennifer Morris is?”

Big movie star,” says Marcel, putting his hands out in front of him, palms facing his chest to indicate large breasts. “Sex bomb.”

“Don’t know her,” says Philip, shaking his head. “What was she in?”

“I don’t know,” says Marcel, shrugging. “But I see her picture all the time on the tabloids at the grocery store, her hair style changing with her boyfriends, her beautiful breasts always leading the charge.”

“Shall we check the tables,” says Philip, knowing the time is near for Miranda to open the front door and greet the first diners of the evening.

“Oui,” says Marcel, putting his arm around Philip. “And you know I’m not offended the owners request you.”

“I know,” says Philip, smiling at Marcel. “What’s mine is yours.”

*

As Jennifer Morris and her entourage of thirteen depart after three hours of revelry, Jennifer declares for all to hear, “Heaven on earth. We’ll be back tomorrow night.”

“Bravo,” says Frank, as Philip approaches the owners’ table where Frank and his wife Darlene applaud him—Frank a burly fellow in his sixties with wispy gray hair, Darlene a buxom strawberry blonde in her forties. “I think Jennifer likes you, buddy. Play your cards right, you never know what might happen.”

Frank is a billionaire real estate developer, Darlene a former model for whom Ocelot is proof of her sophistication and savvy. They live most of the time in their palace in Montecito and have a mansion on a private beach south of Mercy where they come several times a year to partake of Ocelot and entertain guests.

“How are we this evening?” says Philip, bowing to them.

 “Stellar,” says Frank, grinning at Philip. “What’s good tonight?”

“The sole,” says Philip, looking at Darlene to see if she wants to add anything to Frank’s stellar.

“Did Raul tell you about the party Saturday night?” says Darlene, making big eyes at Philip. “My birthday.”

“He did not,” says Philip, smiling to mask his sorrow.

Twelve of us,” she says, her tone conveying how special she feels those twelve are. “Just us. Restaurant closed otherwise.”

“What time will you want us here?” asks Philip, his neck aching.

“Six-thirty,” she says, arching her eyebrow. “Fun starts at seven and we’ll go to ten. I’ll be forty-four. Can you believe it?”

Philip politely shakes his head. “And for tonight? Will you be having a bottle of wine or would you like to sample the current offerings by glass?”

“Get me a vodka tonic,” says Frank, watching Miranda go by. “God is she gorgeous, or what?”

“And for you, Madame?” says Philip, looking at Darlene but not seeing her.

“Something white and just a little sweet,” she says, looking at him in a way he knows is another of her invitations to pursue an involvement with her. “You know what I like, Philip.”

He bows and moves away, signaling Teresa, one of the pretty young bussers, to bring bread and butter to the owners’ table.

Now he goes to check on a table of six gregarious millionaires from St. Louis, and as he approaches the table of corpulent men and their slender wives, something awakens in him that has been dormant since his last night at Le Scélérat a decade ago—his impeccable waiter persona.

I can do this if I have to for another few years. But after that I will never wait tables again.

*

The next morning, Philip wakes early to make sandwiches for Vivienne and Arturo and Henri’s lunches, after which he cooks an omelet for Arturo and Vivienne’s breakfast.

While the kids are eating, Lisa, still in her nightgown, makes coffee and reminds the kids they have piano lessons at Delilah’s after school.

When breakfast is over, Henri arrives with his school things and his accordion, and before Philip drives the kids to school, Henri gets out his accordion, Arturo gets his guitar, Vivienne gets her violin and they perform the song they’ve been practicing for several days, Stevie Wonder’s You Are the Sunshine of My Life, their rendition awful, and Philip and Lisa love it.

*

On his way home from dropping the kids at Mercy Montessori, Philip stops at the food co-op to buy groceries, and from there goes to Nathan and Celia and Delilah’s as he often does these days, something about spending time with the elderly couple and their young housemate soothing to Philip as he struggles with returning to the tables.

He arrives at the little house just as Celia and Delilah are leaving on a walk with the young mutts Chico and Gypsy, so Philip is alone with Nathan for a time, a fire crackling in the hearth.

“I found my groove again last night,” says Philip, sitting at the kitchen table with Nathan. “Which is to say, my alter ego returned.”

“Does your alter ego have a name?” asks Nathan, who loves talking to Philip.

“Philip,” says Philip, pronouncing his name with a distinct emphasis on the first syllable.

“Were you glad to see him again?”

“In a way,” says Philip, shrugging. “He makes the work easier.”

“Because?”

“Because he does the work and I can save my real self for the life I love.”

“You’re an actor coming out of retirement,” says Nathan, nodding in understanding. “Resuming your role in a long-running play on a new stage.”

“I know I’m not a failure,” says Philip, his eyes brimming with tears. “But sometimes I succumb to doubt.”

“You’re not a failure, my friend,” says Nathan, remembering when his writing career came crashing down and he became a pruner of fruit trees again. “Quite the opposite. Everything we do, everything that happens to us, is the path. And the path, it turns out, is the destination. So now you’re an actor again, and I’ll bet you’re a great one.”

“I wish the people I serve were not so… I don’t know,” says Philip, allowing himself to really cry for the first time since returning to the tables. “Selfish and greedy.”

“Yeah, but they’re on the path, too,” says Nathan, nodding. “No matter how different their gaudy costumes make them seem.”

fin

Return To Go

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Philip’s Kitchen

Philip’s first cookbook Delicious Meals for the Somewhat Ambitious Cook sold twenty thousand copies and was not reprinted after the third printing sold out. The tome has since become a hot commodity and used copies are hard to find.

And now, ten years after Tantamount Press published Delicious Meals for the Somewhat Ambitious Cook, Philip is a few months away from publishing his second cookbook with Tantamount, the promotional budget the same as for the first cookbook: nothing.

*

On a sunny Friday morning in May at Ziggurat Farm on the outskirts of the northern California coastal town of Mercy, Philip, fifty-eight, having just ferried Arturo, nine, Henri, eight, and Vivienne, seven, to Mercy Montessori, is gathering his wits and gazing around his glorious new kitchen when his editor at Tantamount calls.

“Hey Philip,” says Tiffany, who is twenty-seven and sounds fourteen to Philip. “Yucky news. Sales is not happy with your title and subtitle. Me, personally, I like Good Eats From Ziggurat Farm, and Ziggy actually really likes it, and the cover drawing your friend did of the dogs drinking wine is so cute. But Sales says the whole package is a retro yawner and they want something punchier, sexier, and they need it yesterday? Tomorrow morning at the latest? If not, they might delay publication for like six months? Possibly a year? Can you get me something sexier and punchier by tomorrow morning? Ooh I have to take this call. Talk soon.”

Before leaving for the vegetable garden to share this weighty news with his wife Lisa and comrades Andrea and Marcel who are hard at work planting out seedlings from the greenhouse, Philip calls Sandra Messer, the chef and owner of the legendary restaurant Le Scélérat in Berkeley where Philip was a waiter for ten years before moving with Lisa and Marcel and Andrea to Mercy. Sandra, who was entirely responsible for Tantamount publishing Good Eats From Ziggurat Farm, wrote the praise-filled Introduction and has now written a rave blurb for the new cookbook.

“Titles are a bitch,” says Sandra, who is from Chicago and in her seventies. “Everybody calls your first one Delicious Ambitious, why not call this one Delicious Ambitious Two, with the Two spelled T-O-O? And use Ziggurat Farm in the sub?”

Philip thanks Sandra for her suggestion and is about to call Tiffany back when he thinks I hate Delicious Ambitious Too, and goes out to join his wife and friends in the garden.

*

Taking a break from sowing chard seeds, Philip watches Marcel, who is a few years younger than Philip and very French, digging well-aged chicken manure into a nearby bed soon to be filled with broccoli seedlings.

“These are the same geniuses who wouldn’t reprint your first book?” says Marcel, resting for a moment. “After you sold twenty thousand copies with no promotion?”

“Same geniuses,” says Philip, who hopes the new book succeeds well enough so he and Marcel don’t have to go back to being waiters any time soon. “But geniuses or no, if they aren’t enthusiastic about the package, as they call it, they may only do one small printing, which defeats the purpose of making the book in the first place.”

“Why would they publish a book if they’re just going to kill it before it can develop a following?” asks Marcel, frowning and shaking his head. “Makes no sense.”

“I don’t know,” says Philip, resuming his seeding of the bed. “I’m not a publisher.”

“Sexier and punchier?” says Andrea on her way to the upper beds of the terraced garden with a flat of seedlings. “How about Fucking Food? That’s punchier and sexier.”

“Much,” says Philip, who knows Sales delaying publication is often prelude to a publisher dropping a book and demanding the return of the author’s advance.

“I’m kidding,” says Andrea, aching in sympathy with Philip.

“I know you are,” says Philip, smiling at her, “but I’m afraid they would prefer Fucking Food to Good Eats From Ziggurat Farm.”

“If this year’s wine is as good as last year’s,” says Marcel, speaking of the wine they make on the farm, “and we have another good year with the garden, we can publish your book ourselves.”

“Two very big ifs,” says Andrea, who is boss of the garden and keeps the books and knows better than anyone how precarious the farm’s finances.

*

Over lunch at the picnic table near the farmhouse, Lisa says, “Why not ask Nathan? He’s such a wonderful poet.”

“They don’t want poetry,” says Philip, despondently. “They want punchier and sexier.”

“You don’t need them,” says Andrea, who has enormous faith in Philip. “Marcel is right. We can publish your book ourselves and sell it at farmers markets and in local bookstores and online. If they won’t use your title, tell them to go to hell.”

“Are you serious?” asks Philip, who has never imagined self-publishing his cookbook. “I’d have to return the advance. Ten thousand dollars. We can’t really spare that, can we?”

“It’s fine,” says Andrea, on the verge of tears. “We don’t need them.”

“You and Andrea worked on those recipes for seven years,” says Lisa, nodding in agreement with Andrea. “It’s a magnificent book. You can’t allow them to debase your creation.”

“I’ll talk to Nathan,” says Philip, buoyed by their support. “On my way home with the kids.”

*

Nathan Grayson, a poet of some renown in his youth, is eighty-two and has a blog on which he posts his poems and stories when he has new ones to share. He has no idea how many people read his blog. Seven? Three hundred? He doesn’t care. The act of sharing is what he loves.

Philip and Nathan sit at a small table on the south-facing deck of Nathan’s little house on the edge of Mercy drinking nettle tea. Henri and Arturo are in the kitchen helping Celia, Nathan’s wife, prepare avocado and cheese quesadillas for their after-school snacks, and Vivienne is in the garden with the resident mongrel puppies Chico and Gypsy, picking flowers for a table bouquet.

“Way back when,” says Nathan, loving the sight of Vivienne with the pups, “I knew a poet named Larry Henderson who was hot stuff for a couple years and then vanished as most poets do. His poems were stacks of very short same-sounding sentences. ‘The man went to the store. The man bought some bread. The man went home. The man made a sandwich. The man watched television.’ Listening to him was torture. He spoke in a monotone tenor with a long pause after each sentence. Every time I heard him read I wanted to strangle him. But he sold lots of books because his covers were photographs of near-naked women with half-open mouths apparently wanting sex, with titles like Her Outrageous Orgasm and His Mighty Erection.” Nathan laughs. “People snapped them up, for gag gifts maybe. And that’s all I know about sexier and punchier.”

“I can’t think of anything but the title I have,” says Philip, watching Vivienne confer with the pups about which flowers to pick. “Good Eats From Ziggurat Farm: more recipes for the somewhat ambitious cook, which is a reference to my first cookbook.”

“To be honest, Philip,” says Nathan, clearing his throat, “for my taste that’s not a very good title or subtitle. Not because they aren’t true, but because they came from your intellect and not from the divine source.”

“What do you mean?” asks Philip, taken aback Nathan doesn’t like the title.

“I mean there are two kinds of creating, whether it’s writing or composing music or painting or creating a recipe or anything.” Nathan waits a moment for Philip to consider what those two kinds of creating might be. “One kind is the intellectual organizing of things we already know. That’s 99.9 percent of what gets published and performed and presented to the world, and that’s why everything the mainstream gives us is stuff we’ve seen thousands of times before.”

“The intellectual organizing of things we already know,” says Philip, nodding in understanding of Nathan’s idea.

“The other kind of creating,” says Nathan, gesturing to the sky, “is unconscious spontaneous outpouring that comes from nobody-knows-where. And that, as we used to say in the Sixties, is the boss stuff.”

“I’m reaching for the paprika,” says Philip, laughing, “before I think paprika.”

“Exactly,” says Nathan, smiling at the approach of Vivienne with her bouquet. “Delilah sitting down at the piano and ripping off ten minutes of sheer genius and then shouting, ‘Oh my God, did you hear that?’ And Celia and I high as kites because we did hear it. Lucky us.”

“But words are not my art,” says Philip, humbly.

“Sure they are. You write eloquent recipes. With different line breaks they’d make great poems.”

Henri comes out on the deck and bows to Nathan and Philip. “Celia’s quesadillas await you.”

“Speaking of Celia,” says Nathan, as he and Philip go inside, “she informs me we’re having supper at your place tonight with the usual suspects. Perhaps the gang will come up with something you like.”

*

The usual suspects are:

Those Who Live At Ziggurat Farm: Philip, Lisa, Andrea, Marcel, Arturo, Henri, Vivienne, and Hilda who is eighty-four and lives in the cottage next to the bathhouse a stone’s throw from the farmhouse.

The Very British Richardsons: Constance and Joseph, both in their seventies, Constance a successful murder mystery writer nearly done with her twenty-seventh thriller, Joseph a painter of landscapes and portraits working on the last big painting he’ll make in Mercy before he and Constance move back to England for the remainder of their lives.

Tamara and Celine: A successful playwright in her fifties, Tamara is Hilda’s only child, and Celine is Tamara’s partner of thirty years and the author of Remembering Black, an acclaimed book about her experiences as an African American woman in American academia.    

Nathan, Celia, and Delilah: Nathan eighty-two, Celia seventy-six, both longtime residents of Mercy and married for more than fifty years, Delilah their delightful twenty-two-year-old housemate, a musician, artist, and frequent visitor to Ziggurat Farm.

*

Andrea and Philip prepare a sumptuous supper, much wine is drunk, laughter is frequent, and after dessert everyone retires to the spacious living room where a fire is crackling in the hearth and the four farm dogs and Delilah’s two new pups are sprawled about and several cats are snoozing where humans want to sit.

When the humans have situated themselves among the animals and everyone is possessed of wine or tea or cocoa, Nathan says, “Philip needs a new title for his cookbook, and a subtitle, too. His publisher is threatening to delay publication if he can’t come up with something they like by tomorrow morning. I suggested to him the consortium gathered here tonight might be of assistance.”

“And if they don’t like our title,” says Andrea, defiantly, “we will publish his cookbook ourselves.”

“Every time we eat here,” says Tamara, each of her seven plays a resounding success, “Celine and I come away saying exquisite. Every time. Tonight no exception. Something about that word. Exquisite.”

“Marvelous word,” says Constance, who has so far in her life, with Joseph’s help, come up with twenty-seven titles for her murder mysteries. “We used exquisite in the title of my seventeenth book, the ninth in my Grady Pillsbury series. A Most Exquisite Murder.”

“I haven’t read any of your books yet,” says Arturo, who is currently reading Robinson Crusoe for the second time, but your titles intrigue me no end.”

“Shall we write down exquisite?” asks Vivienne, who is very sleepy. “In case we don’t forget?”

“Let’s not write anything down yet,” says Nathan, grinning at Vivienne. “First let’s say whatever pops into our heads.”

“Exquisite exquisiteness,” says Celine, laughing a sparkling laugh.

“The well-cooked ox,” says Joseph, happily drunk. “The bafflement of barbecues.”

“The Magic Kitchen!” shouts Henri, giggling.

“Exquisite comestibles,” says Delilah, shivering with excitement. “For voracious eaters who can’t stop eating.”

“Eyes bigger than my stomach,” says Celia, blushing.  

“The magic cook,” says Vivienne, smiling sleepily at her father.

“The cook of magic,” says Arturo, laughing.

“Melted cheesery,” says Constance, tittering. “Scrumptious foodstuffs for esurient nibblers.”

“Food of the gods,” says Marcel, shaking his head. “No. Too grandiose.”

“Nothing is too grandiose,” says Nathan, grinning at Philip. “Speak chef.”

“Kitchen of love,” says Philip, thinking of his kitchen. “Place of quiet miracles.”

“Of knives and mincing,” says Andrea, recalling her previous life as a sous chef. “Timing the fish.”

“The onion eclipsed,” says Hilda, dramatically. “Garlic triumphant.”

“Philip’s kitchen,” says Lisa, getting up to fetch more wine.

Profound silence.

“I got chills,” says Celine, gazing wide-eyed at Tamara.

“So did I,” says Tamara, nodding. “Philip’s Kitchen.”

“I, too, got chills,” says Constance, looking at Delilah. “Did you?”

Delilah nods. “That must be the title.”

“Must be,” says Joseph, aghast. “Remarkable how deep that went.”

“But why?” asks Philip, who gasped when Lisa said Philip’s Kitchen. “I mean… who is Philip? No one will know who Philip refers to. They’ll hate it at Tantamount.”

“They might not,” says Hilda, gazing fondly at Philip. “It’s lovely.”

“All the recipes did come from your kitchen,” says Arturo, nodding assuredly. “So no wonder Philip’s Kitchen sounds right.”

*

At ten the next morning, Philip calls Tiffany at Tantamount, she puts him on hold, and he doesn’t mind at all.

“Sorry about that,” says Tiffany, coming on the line a few minutes later. “Saturdays are usually pretty mellow around here, but my phone won’t stop ringing. What have you got for me?”

“May I ask you not to take another call while we talk?” says Philip, who has wanted to ask that of Tiffany for the last two years.

“Um… of course. Unless it’s Arno. We’re crashing a couple books and I have to take his calls. Sorry.”

“What does that mean? Crashing a book?”

“Rushing it out because the author or the subject is currently hot, so we crash the book to capitalize on the buzz.”

“I see. Thanks for explaining.”

“No worries. What have you got for me?”

“I’m going to put my daughter Vivienne on the line to tell you,” says Philip, winking at Vivienne who is standing buy.

“Your daughter?” says Tiffany, annoyed. “Oh no, why…”

“Here she is,” says Philip, handing the phone to Vivienne.

“Hi Tiffany,” says Vivienne, her little girl’s voice softening Tiffany. “The title of Papa’s new cookbook is Philip’s Kitchen.” She pauses for a moment before adding, “Exquisite Meals from Ziggurat Farm.”

“Would you say that again?” says Tiffany, hitting the Record button on her phone.

Philip’s Kitchen,” says Vivienne, taking care with her pronunciation. “Exquisite Meals from Ziggurat Farm. Here’s Papa.”

Philip comes on the line and Tiffany says, “I love it. Made me cry. I’ll run it by Sales and let you know what they say.”

“Regardless of what they say,” Philip replies, his voice full of kindness, “that’s the title and subtitle. If Sales says No, I will return my advance and pursue other options.”

“Okay,” says Tiffany, breathlessly. “I’ll get back to you.”

*

Philip and Vivienne walk from the farmhouse to the one-acre deer-fenced vegetable garden where Andrea and Lisa and Delilah and Henri and Hilda are planting out seedlings, and Marcel and Arturo are busy preparing another bed for planting.

“Where is Tiffany?” asks Vivienne, holding her father’s hand. “How old is she?”

“In San Francisco,” says Philip, smiling curiously at his daughter. “She’s twenty-seven. Why do you ask?”

“I want to visualize her,” says Vivienne, letting go of Philip’s hand at the approach of Mimi and Alexandra, the farm’s two Golden Retrievers who are especially fond of Vivienne.

“She’s quite tall,” says Philip, who has only met Tiffany once. “As tall as Delilah. With short reddish brown hair and four small gold rings in one of her eyebrows, I can’t remember which one, and her eyes are dark blue. Her office is on the fourth floor of a modern building looking out on San Francisco Bay. When I met with her she was wearing a blue T-shirt and brown trousers and glossy red lipstick and hoop earrings.”

“Is she nice?” asks Vivienne, petting Alexandra.

“I think so,” says Philip, imagining Tiffany walking down the hall to Arno’s office to tell him the new title—Arno head of Sales. “Though I don’t really know her very well.”

And try as he might, Philip cannot imagine how Arno will respond to what Tiffany tells him.

fin

Tenderly

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The Great Transformation

In March, with the completion of the five-room cottage and bathhouse, Lisa and Philip and their children Arturo and Vivienne, move all their furniture and possessions from the farmhouse into the new cottage so the Ramirez brothers and their crew can begin what Philip calls The Great Transformation of the farmhouse

The south-facing walls are removed and the entire house is made sixteen feet wider, thereby doubling the size of the living room and kitchen, with a big bedroom and second bathroom being added to the east end of the house, a big deck to grace the south side, and a new roof for the entirety when the interior work is completed.

*

In April, with The Great Transformation well underway, Grandma Hilda moves from Berkeley to a small house in the village of Mercy where she will live until Philip and Lisa and kids move back into the farmhouse, after which she will move into their cottage.

Hilda’s daughter Tamara and Tamara’s partner Celine are planning a July move to a beach house a mile south of Mercy with the intention of buying the Richardson’s place a year or so from now when Joseph and Constance return to England for what Joseph frequently refers to as Our Final Chapter, to which Constance routinely responds, “Now don’t be morbid, dear.”

*

On a Wednesday afternoon in May, twenty-year-old Delilah, tall and beautiful, her long brown hair in a ponytail, is giving Vivienne, five-and-a-half and cute as a button, a piano lesson on the new upright in the cottage living room, Arturo having had the first piano lesson today, Henri’s lesson to follow.

Henri, six-and-a-half, and Arturo, “not quite eight” as he tells people when asked his age, though he is exactly seven-and-a-half, are kicking the soccer ball around in front of the barn, and inside the barn, Marcel, Henri’s father, is tasting the eight-month-old pinot noir from Barrel #7 and thinking in French This needs at least another six months, but my God it could be excellent.

In the large terraced vegetable and flower garden, Andrea, Henri’s mother, and Lisa, Vivienne and Arturo’s mother, are planting out lettuce starts from the greenhouse, both wearing wide-brimmed sunhats though the day is overcast and cool.

Philip, Vivienne and Arturo’s father, is in the farmhouse consulting with Oscar and Mario Ramirez about the long counter that will separate the kitchen from the dining area and living room, while five carpenters take a break on the half-finished deck and enjoy delicious oat bran and raisin muffins Philip made for them—muffins from one of the recipes in Philip’s nearly completed cookbook, working title Good Eats from Ziggurat Farm, working subtitle, more recipes for the somewhat ambitious cook.

And en route to the farm from their house a couple miles down the road, their old pickup laboring on the grade, are Nathan, who just celebrated his eightieth birthday, and Celia, seventy-four, and their little old dog Tennyson, bringing news they didn’t want to give Delilah on the phone.

“Can you tell her,” says Nathan as he parks near the cottage—the farm dogs coming to greet them. “I don’t think I can.”

“Si,” says Celia, nodding.

They get out of the old truck and Nathan sets Tennyson down on the ground so he can exchange sniffs with Jung the giant hound, Mimi the Golden Retriever, Alexandra the fast-growing Golden Retriever pup, and Goliath, who is not much bigger than Tennyson.

Hearing Henri and Arturo shout Hello to Nathan and Celia, Delilah concludes her duet with Vivienne and goes out on the front porch to greet Nathan and Celia, and seeing them upset, she hurries down the stairs asking, “What happened?”

Celia nods and cannot speak, and Delilah knows her mother is dead.

*

Delilah does not attend the lavish memorial service in Los Angeles for her famous movie star mother Margot Cunningham, and in June, Margot’s longtime personal assistant Joan and two of Margot’s lawyers come to Mercy and meet with Delilah and Nathan and Philip and Constance in a small meeting room at Mercy Savings, the only bank in town.

The lawyers inform Delilah that her mother’s trust leaves ten million dollars to Joan, two hundred million dollars to Planned Parenthood, and fifty million dollars to Delilah, with any remaining monies and future residuals from Margot’s many movies to go to Planned Parenthood.

When Joan and the lawyers offer to invest Delilah’s inheritance for her, Delilah says, “No thank you. I would like the money deposited in my account here at Mercy Savings.”

Delilah then signs a few documents that Constance and Philip first look over to make sure all is well, and Joan says, “I’m so sorry for your loss, Delilah. Your mother was a great person. If there’s anything I can do for you, please let me know.”

“Should anyone inquire of my whereabouts,” says Delilah, eager to be done with the meeting, “please tell them I’m living abroad.”

*

Delilah is sitting on the floor with her back against the sofa in the living room of the little house Hilda is renting on a quiet street in Mercy, and Hilda, eighty-three, her long silvery hair in a braid, is sitting in a cushioned rocking chair a few feet from Delilah, the town cloaked in fog as is often the case on mornings in July.

“The truth is,” says Delilah, pausing mid-sentence. “Well… who knows what the truth is, but the thing is, I stopped caring about her except in a mythic way after just a few weeks of knowing Nathan and Celia.”

“Can you explain what you mean by mythic?” asks Hilda, who was a psychotherapist for fifty years and still occasionally offers sessions to friends.

“Yes, but first I need to tell you who I was at thirteen when my mother brought me here,” says Delilah, remembering virtually every detail of her life these last seven years. “I was terrified of other people, yet desperate to know other people. I was especially afraid of men, though they fascinated me. I stuttered constantly and thought I might want to be male instead of female. My mother was almost never home and I had no one I could talk to about anything that really mattered to me. And until we escaped from our townhouse in New York, I wanted to kill myself because I was so lonely and miserable.”

“But your mother was not yet mythic to you.”

“I haven’t forgotten your question,” says Delilah, smiling at Hilda. “I just want you to know from whence I came.”

“Of course,” says Hilda, smiling at Delilah’s choice of words. “Take your time.”

“So we flew to San Francisco, my mother and Wanda and I, Wanda my caretaker who didn’t really like me and certainly didn’t understand me, and then we made that crazy long drive here in the dark to the house my mother bought over the phone, the Richardson’s place, and after two cold rainy days of feeling completely lost, my mother and I went to Nathan and Celia’s house because the realtor said Nathan could help us learn how to live in the country, and I’ll never forget their front door opening and Nathan looking out at us with his welcoming smile and the fire going behind him and Celia coming to see who we were, and Tennyson coming to me, and my heart just broke open, and I don’t mean metaphorically broke open, I mean I actually felt the cage of muscles and sinews around my heart give way and I took the deepest breath I had ever taken and looked into Tennyson’s eyes and heard a voice I thought must be God saying Welcome home, Delilah. You found your people. And when I experienced love from Nathan and Celia, real love for the first time in my life, my mother ceased to be important to me except as a mythic figure, or maybe I should say historic, and after that I rarely thought about her because I had real parents now, real love, and not just a bunch of people I hardly knew being paid to be nice to me in my luxurious prisons where my mother came to visit me a few times a year and was wholly incapable of loving me or even liking me.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“My eighteenth birthday. She always made a point of seeing me in-person on my birthday. Not on Christmas or Thanksgiving or Easter, but always on my birthday. When I was still a prisoner, she’d come home to Malibu or Manhattan and spend a few days there and give me piles of presents, and once, when I was eight, she flew me to Paris where she was filming. Then she skipped my fourteenth birthday, and for my fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth she got a suite at the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco, and Celia and Nathan and I went there for lunch and I’d play the piano for her.”

“But not for your nineteenth or twentieth?”

“No,” says Delilah, feeling some anger about that.

“Why did she stop, I wonder.”

“I think because after I turned eighteen she was no longer legally responsible for me, so why bother? And maybe because I reminded her too much of what she looked like when she was young. She hated not being young anymore.”

“Do you know your father?”

“Don’t even know who he is. Or was. When I was a child, my mother and her people told me he was a certain movie star, but the day she left here and never came back, when I was thirteen, she told Nathan she had no idea who my father was.”

“So Nathan told you. When was that?”

“On my eighteenth birthday when I got back from seeing my mother. I’d gone with my friends Josh and Beverly because they wanted to meet my famous mother, and when I was alone with her I asked her to please tell me who my father was and she said, ‘I told Nathan. I’d rather he tell you.’ So I asked him and he told me.”

“Your mother was closed emotionally.”

“I don’t think she had access to her emotions.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I never saw her express delight or fear or sorrow, never heard emotion in her voice. She was monotone. And when she pretended to be enthusiastic about my music and drawings, it was painfully obvious how little she cared, and not because she didn’t want to care but because she was incapable of caring about anyone but herself.”

“You never saw her angry?”

“Peevish a few times, and always muted. I would have loved to see her angry. I did see her cry one time when I was fifteen and Celia and Nathan came with me to the Mark Hopkins for the first time. Celia hugged her when we got there and she burst into tears and then immediately stifled them and left the room to redo her makeup. And she never let Celia hug her again.”

“Do you know much about her childhood?”

“I know she was put up for adoption at birth, lived in several foster homes, and ran away from the last one when she was fifteen.” Delilah grimaces. “I think she must have been sexually abused.”

Hilda waits a moment and asks, “And your sexual confusion? Would you like to talk about that?”

“Not really. I ceased to be confused when Celia and Nathan became my parents.”

“Immediately?”

“Within a month. And my stuttering vanished, too, after seven years and hundreds of hours working with speech therapists to no avail. I woke one morning in my wonderful bedroom at Nathan and Celia’s, gorgeous purple fuchsias dangling outside my window—this was a month after I’d moved in—and I got up and went into the kitchen where Celia was making coffee and she embraced me as she does every morning, and I said without stuttering, ‘I’m a woman like you. I love how it feels to be a woman.’ In fact, my confusion about everything disappeared once I was living with them. Like waking from a horrible murky dream into spectacular clarity and joy.”

“I believe you, dear. But please say a little more about thinking you might be male. I’m curious how this may relate to your mother.”

“The only males in my life before I moved here,” says Delilah, recalling her strange cloistered life in Manhattan and Malibu, “were bodyguards and chauffeurs. Men in uniforms. And only a few of them were even a little friendly with me. So I lived in a world exclusively populated by women. My nannies, the cooks, the maids, mother’s assistants, most of my tutors and music teachers, and I was never left alone with any of the few male tutors I had. My few acquaintances were other daughters of celebrities, and they were all obsessed with their sexual identities and everybody else’s sexual identities, so when I started to develop breasts and got my period, I didn’t know what I should feel. I felt female, but wasn’t sure I should. And my mother kept saying, ‘Whatever you choose to be,’ wink wink, ‘is fine with me,’ which made things even more confusing because I wanted to be like her, a strong athletic feminine woman, but she didn’t seem to want me to be like her. And then I said something to someone, I don’t remember who, about wondering if I might be trans, and the next day it was all over the media that I was trans, and my mother called from Paris and said ‘Whatever you choose to be is fine with me’ and ‘Do you want to see a therapist?’ And that’s when I told her if she didn’t find another place for me to live faraway from the insanity I would choose to kill myself. And she flew home the next day.”

“And brought you here.”

Delilah nods. “We chose Mercy together with some input from Joan, her personal assistant, and then we came here absolutely desperate, she to find a solution to my unhappiness, I to experience life outside my prisons.”

“She acted out of love for you.”

“I want that to be true, but I think it was more she didn’t want me to kill myself or otherwise embarrass her in the media.”

“I think she acted out of love for you,” says Hilda, gazing at Delilah. “And though her love didn’t look or feel like Celia and Nathan’s love for you, or my love for you, or anyone else’s love for you, she loved you and wanted you to be free of those terrible confines. And I’ll tell you something else. Regardless of how you feel about her, she must have provided you with nannies who gave you ample love, or else you wouldn’t be the healthy happy person you are today.”

“My first nanny,” says Delilah, surprising herself with tears. “Portia. I thought she was my mother until I was three, though she was Nigerian and I was a little white princess. She was sweet and funny and strong and wonderful, and I cried for weeks and weeks after she left when I was six.”

“Your mother chose her for you. Chose for you a good loving mother.”

“Oh I’d like to mourn my mother, Hilda, but she was so cold to me. Dismissive really. I know it sounds crass, but her being gone is more a relief than a loss.”

“Do you believe her death was an accident?”

“An accidental overdose? My meticulous mother?” Delilah shakes her head. “One of the last things she said to me was, ‘I see in you how beautiful I used to be. It’s all done with smoke and mirrors now, and even that won’t help in another year or two.’ And two years later she turned fifty-one and ended things.”

“And you would like some closure.”

“In lieu of mourning, something, yes. We did a farewell ceremony at the beach for her, Nathan and Celia and I, but it felt false to me.”

“Why false?”

“I felt no sorrow, no joy, just the same painful emptiness I always felt with her, even when she would hug me, which she only did in greeting or parting. I never felt any warmth or energy from her. Nothing.”

“Let’s close our eyes and imagine something together,” says Hilda, closing her eyes. “Shall we?”

“Okay,” says Delilah, closing her eyes.

“We are walking, you and I and Lisa and Vivienne, on a path in the forest on a lovely day, the sun shining down through the trees. Are you with me?”

“I am,” says Delilah, relaxing into the vision.

“Now the forest ends and we cross a meadow full of wild iris and our path ends at a wide deep fast-flowing river with no apparent way to get across. But now a boat comes from the far shore, and rowing the boat is your mother, strong and skillful at her task. When she reaches our side of the river, we get in the boat with her, and with her marvelous strength and skill, she rows us across the river. When we reach the other side and get out of the boat, she raises her hand to you and says, “Farewell, my child. Farewell.”

*

In early November, The Great Transformation complete, Philip and Lisa and Vivienne and Arturo move from the cottage back into the farmhouse, and a few days later Hilda moves into the cottage and engages Delilah to help her arrange her furniture and put her things away.

On the evening of Hilda’s second day of living on the farm, no longer a visitor but a resident, she walks with Delilah from the cottage to the farmhouse where Philip and Andrea have prepared a feast in Hilda’s honor, the farmhouse feeling almost too spacious now until the kids and dogs come in from playing outside, and Marcel rushes in and says, “We are close. Very close. Another few days, I think, for the pinot noir, perhaps another month for the cabernet,” and now Nathan and Celia and Tennyson arrive, and Constance and Joseph and Tamara and Celine; and the house and kitchen feel just the right size.

Vivienne, who turned six in October, insists on sitting next to Delilah, and Delilah, who turned twenty-one in October, is in heaven with Vivienne on her right and Lisa on her left.

Mid-feast, Joseph, for whom Ziggurat Farm is a favorite place to make his paintings, announces in his loud British way, “I visited your orchard when we arrived today and had a vision of a very large painting, perhaps my biggest ever, six-feet-high and eight-feet-wide, in which all of you are in the orchard, the branches barren as they are now, and all of you in fancy dress playing croquet.” He raises his glass of good red wine. “What say you?”

“I wondered why we all incarnated together,” says Nathan, raising his glass. “Now I know it was to pose in the orchard for you.”

“There’s only one problem,” says Henri, who is seven and nearly as practical as his very practical mother. “We don’t have even one croquet set, and if all of us are playing in the painting, we will need four sets because each set only has four mallets and four colors of balls. I know because we have a set at school.”

“Another problem is Mimi and Alexandra will chase the balls when we hit them,” says Vivienne, her mouth full of mashed potatoes. “So they’ll have to be on leashes and they’ll make quite a fuss.”

“The dogs could be playing croquet, too,” says Arturo, laughing. “Like the dogs drinking wine in Delilah’s picture for Papa’s cookbook.”

“No,” says Joseph, shaking his head. “In my vision the dogs are not playing croquet, but they are among you, watching the game with great interest.”

fin

Broke My Heart