Chez Cordelia (28 page)

Crystal brought the wine, and we clasped hands again as we drank. “What else?” I asked him. I wanted to know again—everything—because I knew it no longer mattered.

“Well,” he said, and stopped—wondering, I suppose, what to tell out of the welter of detail he'd left behind. “Well, Martha went to cooking school in Paris, at Le Cercle de Cuisine.” I'd never heard of it, but I realized I should have, so when he looked sharply at me as he pronounced the French words, I tried to look impressed. I'd ask Humph about it. “She's a fantastic cook,” Paul said. “It used to be one of her passions, but she's gotten tired of it lately.” How odd, to master these housewifely arts—cooking, weaving—to no purpose, I thought, my distaste for the princessy Martha growing. The pointless, aristocratic life she led seemed wrong to me, as I saw it did to Paul. “She really likes the idea of teaching, though,” Paul said, with a kind of dogged, dutiful loyalty. “So when you said you wanted to learn, she said a bell rang in her head. It all fit together.”

“Then why didn't
she
come and offer me the job?”

Because I'm in love with you, Delia dearest, I wanted him to say. “We didn't know how to reach you,” he said instead. I hated the word
we
. He used it sparingly, but every time he did I felt stabbed. “And I had business in New Haven today, so I said I'd stop in here.” He looked down into his wineglass. “No,” he said after a minute of silence. “I wanted to ask you myself. I thought you'd probably say no and I wanted to persuade you. I thought I could present the case better than she could.”

“Yes,” I said without comment, and the current passed through our hands.

“I should say the pay will be pretty good,” he went on evenly. “Martha suggested a hundred fifty a week. As I said, she has plenty of money of her own.” I sensed bitterness in his voice, but also a kind of pride, or satisfaction. “Plus room and board, of course. And I forgot to say you'd have one day a week completely to yourself.”

“Where would I sleep?” I was wavering, of course; I was halfway there. Was it the money? I could save most of it. In a year I'd have several thousand in the bank, plus what I already had. And I wouldn't have to dip into my savings, after all, to support myself while I learned to cook. If only Martha was really good, would really teach me, wouldn't get sick of it …

“There are two rooms over the bookshop,” Paul was saying. “There's a bathroom there, sort of antiquated. And it's not insulated very well, so it's cold in the winter. We'd fix that, of course.” Hope made his voice boyish, again on the verge of laughter. “We don't use the rooms at the moment, I store things up there, but they'd be all fixed up by the time you came—”

“All right,” I said abruptly. What decided me—the lure of the yellow house? of two cozy rooms in it, over Paul's shop, where I'd sleep buoyed up by his books? a vision of Paul's arms around me through the cold winter? Maybe it was the practicality of the scheme: I would learn to cook, I would save money, I wouldn't be alone, and I needn't stay forever. I don't think it was the mere fact of Paul's pleading. I don't think it was only that I loved him. I hope I'm too hardheaded to take a crummy menial job to be near the man I love. Well, I don't know, but after a glass of wine and all those words, the thrill of excitement I'd felt in my talks with Nina about my limitless future began to race through me, and I saw that the job had its virtues.

“All right,” I said. “Let me come and talk to Martha about it. I want to find out more about the cooking part. But it might be okay. It sounds better than it did at first.”

He didn't smile or look pleased or do anything but stare at me, and I stared back. I had never seen a face I liked so well, a face I wanted so much to know. He squeezed my hand tight, tighter. Our knees met under the table, and we each slid one foot forward to link ankles. The closer we became, the more it seemed to me that we were joining ourselves together for the start of a great journey. “That day before the firing squad, Delia,” he said. “I didn't want to die because I realized I'd never even lived.” He spoke passionately, in a tone I'd hardly ever heard in any man but my father, and then he did smile again, his brilliant smile.

“I've fallen in love with you, Cordelia,” he whispered, and Crystal came to take our order.

We had cold broccoli soup and
tournedos
of beef Ebbets and sorbet (lemon for me, raspberry for him) and coffee and a couple of brandies. I was glad Paul could still eat under the influence of strong emotion. I've never had any sympathy with people who are too much in love to eat. We talked about how miraculous it was that we'd fallen in love in the sunset like that, simultaneously. We kept laughing, happily, as little kids laugh when they're having fun. We didn't talk at all about Martha or Danny, though I told Paul I was separated from my husband. He looked just slightly relieved, and I knew without his saying so that this fact subtracted some of the falseness of his own position with Martha—and I think it made me seem older. He was forty-two.

“You could be my daughter,” he said with chagrin.

“I'm awfully glad I'm not,” I said, taking his hand again.

I wanted to ask him why he didn't leave Martha, but—this will sound odd—I felt I didn't know him well enough, and it wasn't yet any of my business. We had a long road to go down, I saw—a lot of words would have to pass between us.

Our talk, over dinner, was sparse. We ordered more wine. I kept remembering the eating scene in the movie
Tom Jones
. We held hands from time to time, our knees rubbed together under the table, and when we traded bits of our fruit sorbets, licking from each other's spoons, I thought I might slide off my chair from the ecstasy of it.

We did talk some, if only for appearances. I was vividly aware that I was under the surveillance of the entire Grand'mère staff. I told Paul about Juliet and Alan and my mother's return, and the fact of the empty apartment sat before us like dessert. When we finished eating, he said he'd drive me home.

“You could come up and see my coin collection,” I said, indicating the bag on the floor.

“I'd like that very much,” he said seriously.

I told Crystal to tell Humphrey I'd see him in the morning—there was his bald head, peeping out through the pane in the kitchen door, and I waved tipsily. Paul and I left with his astonished eyes upon us. We drove out Whalley Avenue, my coin albums separating us on the seat, and we didn't talk any more, except that Paul swore softly at each red light. When we got to Juliet's, we lugged my stuff up the four flights to the strangely silent, empty, clean 5-B and, once inside, dropped everything and rushed panting into each other's arms. We kissed frantically. I felt we had waited years to kiss each other instead of exactly one day, and until the moment I die—probably on my deathbed it will be my last impression of this wonderful world—I will remember the way it was, kissing Paul.

“I want to make love to you,” he said after a while, but at that point I made us stop. We sat on the sofa, holding hands. The speed of it all had exhilarated me; now it scared me a little. “I'm not ready,” I said. I had put clean sheets on Juliet and Alan's double bed, intending to move myself into their room for as long as I stayed on. (Since Danny's invasion of my bed, my own room had lost its appeal.) Now the big bed awaited us, clean and cool and ready, but I held on to Paul's hands tightly as if to keep us fastened down together, decorously, on the sofa. “I'm a slow sort of person,” I told him, wishing I weren't. “I need to digest this much first.”

He accepted it, though I don't think he understood. It was one of the great differences between us, that his instinct was to grab fast and hard and impulsively, while I was cautious, looking ahead. Part of the reason I wouldn't take him to bed was that I didn't want to reminisce someday about the start of our love affair and remember that we made love before we ever got to know each other. I don't know why—it made the feeling between us less like love, I suppose. When he put his glasses back on and left, later than he plausibly should have, I was glad that the bed was still clean and cool and neatly tucked—and yet I lay there sleepless for hours, wanting him. Maybe it was twelve years at St. Agatha's School that gave logic to such behavior.

Paul picked me up the next day after work
(SALAD PERSON WANTED,
Humph's sign read once again) and drove me out to the yellow house to have dinner and talk to Martha. We held hands all the way and kissed at stoplights. We were very carefree. I knew I would take the job, and we loved each other. Wives, husbands, children—none of it mattered.

I was daunted, though, by Martha. I had forgotten, totally, that she was daunting. She was in a silk dress, and she exclaimed, “Delia, dear, you're like the answer to a prayer!”

There it all was, the gleaming house, the dogs, the antiques, the same bowl of apples, even the low sun—just the same, but completely, indescribably changed. I was no longer a casual visitor: I was a hired domestic fooling around with the master of the house.

Martha had set the table on a screened-in porch off the big old kitchen, and the table setting—which was arty, with a centerpiece of exotic seashells and flowers, and the napkins folded into birds—daunted me almost as thoroughly as Martha had.

Then there was the kitchen itself. It was nothing like the kitchen I had reveled in at Colonial Towers, where I used to thaw and heat up and blend the goodies Danny and I loved. That had been a tiny place, all Formica and chrome and plastic with everything within reach. This was all brick and wood and copper, bigger than the kitchen at Grand'mère, but very obviously done by a decorator. A stage set, I thought.

Martha showed me the gadgets; she had more, many more, than even Humphrey had. I felt defeated already, looking around that room. It was too big, too complicated, too elaborate and classy. I began to doubt my ability to learn to cook in a place like that.

The two rooms over the bookshop were promising, though. Martha and I took our glasses of sherry there—up a stairway off the laundry room, near the back door and handy to the kitchen. There was a large room and a smaller one and a toilet and a sink.

“We'll enclose the bathroom part and put in a fiberglass shower stall,” Martha said, kicking aside some empty cartons and not seeming to notice that a visible layer of dust settled over one of her elegant shoes. “We're having insulation blown in—been meaning to do that for years, actually. We also have a little heater for you to use in cold weather. You could have a hot plate, too, if you wanted. To make coffee on? And here—do you like this wallpaper?” She showed me a sample, flower-sprigged and old-fashioned. “I thought paper on the walls would be cozy. You'll have a bedroom, you see, and this would be a sitting room. We have a nice old spool bed up in the attic, I'll have Paul bring it down …”

These details cheered me. They made it real, for one thing. The last few days of my life had been dreamlike in their swiftness and fullness. The rooms over the bookshop gave me a stopping place, an anchor to attach my thoughts to. But when Paul's name came up in that casual, wifely way, I saw that it was going to be difficult, too, living in those rooms—living at Lamb House Books. It would be better to be in love with Paul at a distance. “Something different”—that's what I'd giddily decided I wanted. Well, I would have it. I couldn't imagine how it would end, and I kept myself from trying. I thought instead of the pretty wallpaper and the nice old spool bed and coffee made on the hot plate, and I smiled as hard as I could at Martha.

“Chez Cordelia!” she cried, looking inspired. She gestured around the dusty space. “That's what it'll be—your own place, off limits to the rest of us. By invitation only!”

She spoke gaily, and I nodded with approval.
Chez Cordelia:
I liked it, it sounded like a restaurant.

We went back to the main house and sat down to eat, Martha and I flanking Paul at the square table. I wondered, humbly, if I would eat with them, or alone in the kitchen, or with the kids. When I asked, Martha said, looking hurt, “Why, we'll all eat together, Delia! Good Lord, you don't think we'd let you eat
alone!
Sweetie, you're not a
servant
here!” She shot a distressed look at Paul, who was hunched over his plate and didn't notice, but the look was meant for me, anyway, to underline her words.

Martha had prepared, for dinner, a veal pâté, and sole grenobloise, and marinated cauliflower, and a very light mousse. The meal compared favorably with Humphrey's best, except for the pate: hers was better—though I said to myself, critically, that hers
should
be better, all she had to do all day was jog and weave, while Humph had to run a business and get out over a hundred dinners a night. But I decided that was a petty, prejudiced way to think, and I gave Martha my honest opinion of her pâté.

She was pleased. The meal had been designed to win me over, but the guilty thought that what I liked best about it was Paul's knee comfortably against mine under the tablecloth made the food, delicious as it was, go down tastelessly, over a lump of dismay. Each bite was one more knot binding me there where I shouldn't be: sitting at their table, eating their food, giggling at the antics of their dogs out in the yard, listening to Martha's tales of her cooking-school days in Paris. The elaborate, beautifully arranged and garnished food, the careful mix of tastes and textures, the pale-green wine in old, etched glasses—it all seemed silly, frivolous.

“We do look forward to having you here, Delia,” Martha said to me over espresso—just as I'd been trying to come up with a plausible reason for backing out. She patted my arm as she spoke. I have trouble resisting these affectionate physical gestures, however casual, and I gushed out something appropriate. Martha announced that I'd better meet the children, and Paul went to hunt them up. They were obviously well trained, and had, I gathered, eaten early and been sent up to their playroom—the usual procedure when the Lambertis had guests, I was to discover, though in the future I'd be up there with them. (Martha's democratic ideals didn't include inviting the cook to her dinner parties.)