Georgia's Kitchen (26 page)

Georgia pored over the magazine’s slick pages, her lips moving as she read, barely breathing until she was done. Claudia was depicted as the sexy-but-saintly gourmand who was single-handedly revolutionizing Tuscan cuisine, an Italian Alice Waters with a sprinkling of Gina Lollobrigida and a dash of Mother Teresa. The recipe for sole e luna, reworked for home cooks, was featured in a sidebar under the heading “The Dish That Doesn’t Miss.” American sous-chef Georgia Gray, cocreator of Dia’s dish, merited one full sentence and one artfully blurred photo.

Georgia giggled at the image of herself traversing the kitchen holding a platter of painstakingly arranged vegetables. At least an hour had gone into choosing those veggies and then arranging, spraying, and rearranging them in all their unblemished beauty. Aside from her hair, which the shoot stylist insisted she wear down, Georgia was virtually unrecognizable. But her friends back home would know her ’do anywhere.

Exhaling loudly, she closed the magazine and said a silent thank-you to Ganesh. That one little sentence, along with the recipe credit, would help to erase the Marco debacle from the culinary world’s collective memory. Everyone knew a chef was only as good as her last review. Though not exactly a review, and not exactly about Georgia, it was close enough.

“This is amazing,” Georgia said. “Really amazing.”

“Way to go, boss,” Bruno said. Only he, Claudia, and Georgia remained in the kitchen; the others had streamed out clutching magazines, jabbering into their cell phones in rapid-fire Italian.

“Way to go is right,” Georgia said. “Congratulations, Claudia. I can’t think of anyone who deserves this more than you.”

“What about you two? I couldn’t have done it without you. Without any of you, but you two especially.” She took their hands in hers and squeezed.

“I should go find Elena. She’s going to be very excited about
this.” Bruno wiggled his eyebrows lasciviously. “There’s no telling what might happen.”

Claudia laughed. “As long as you’re in the kitchen this afternoon, I don’t care what you do.” She walked over to the massive fridge and rolled open the freezer, rummaging around before selecting a nondescript white container.

“I think I’ll look for Effie and Vanessa,” Georgia said, falling into step behind Bruno.

“Actually, Georgia, if you don’t mind sticking around, I’d like to talk to you.” She set the container on the counter and pulled a demitasse spoon from a drawer.

“Sure.”

As the squeak of Bruno’s rubber clogs receded down the hallway, Claudia turned to her protégé. “Gelato? Sergio brings it to me from Vivoli.
Stracciatella,
my favorite. I’m afraid it’s true what they say about pregnancy and gelato.”

“No, thanks. Maybe later.”

Claudia held up the miniature spoon. “I fool myself into believing that if I use a small spoon, I won’t eat as much. Of course, it doesn’t work, but who am I to point that out to myself?”

Georgia laughed.

“So how was Sicily?”

“Sicily was great. It’s so beautiful. The bougainvillea, the citrus trees, the ocean, that air—it’s the perfect mix of salty and sweet.”

“And Gianni?”

“He’s good,” Georgia said vaguely. “How was your holiday? And how’s everything with the baby?”

“Our holiday was great. Too short, of course. And the baby is wonderful. I’m convinced it’s a girl. All my dreams are pink: pink frosting on cake, pink tulips, a pink lawn mower! We did a
sonogram and saw her fingers and her toes. Sergio almost passed out.” Her shoulders shook with laughter. “Men can be such big babies.”

“Do you mind if I ask you something, Claudia?”

“Anything.”

“In the beginning of the summer, you told me you didn’t need a child or a husband, that the restaurants were your babies. What made you change your mind?”

“The restaurants are my babies. And when I didn’t think I could have one of my own, they were enough. But when I least expected it, life intervened.”

“What do you mean?”

“I gave up hope, accepted that I wasn’t meant to be a mother, really accepted it, and I moved forward with my own life.” Claudia shrugged. “At forty-two, what choice did I have? And then when I wasn’t even paying attention, somewhere between the plaster walls peeling and the HVAC system crashing, I realized I was late. Very late.”

Georgia had heard this sometimes happened with women who’d given up on fertility drugs and resigned themselves to child-free lives. They’d stop shooting the hormones and start craving pickles and bacon and milk shakes—all at the same time.

“I also realized how badly I wanted a baby. How happy I am to have the chance to become a mother. And how happy I am to do it with Sergio.” She raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “As cooks we can always depend on our
mise en place.
Our
mise
is neat, ordered, constant. But life isn’t neat and it isn’t ordered. It moves and shifts and
changes
. And just when we think we have everything in its place, it moves again. Sometimes in ways we understand, sometimes in ways we don’t.” She shrugged. “But we trust anyway.”

A chef’s
mise
—all the herbs, oils, fine dices, towels, and anything else she might need to cook her way through a shift in a professional kitchen—was at her fingertips, shift after shift, night after night. It was reliable, steadfast. Life, as Claudia said, was not. Just when you thought you had everything figured out, just when everything seemed to be in its place, something came along and turned it upside down and you had to start all over again. Sometimes it was unpleasant. And sometimes it was wonderful.

“To tell you the truth,” Claudia continued, “I would be fine without getting married. But Sergio, he’s more traditional. He thinks she deserves married parents. So I’ll do it for him… and for her too. Or him—there I go again!” She wagged a finger at herself.

The scent of lemon, fresh, clean, and faint when Georgia had first entered the kitchen, had grown stronger as they spoke, and it now filled the room. Georgia walked to the oven, flipped on the light, and peered through the glass door. A golden cake ballooned from a circle pan.

“Delizia di Sorrento,”
Claudia said. “I make it with Meyer lemons and eat it like it’s bread. Another craving.” She turned to Georgia. “Now it’s my turn to ask a question.”

“Okay.”

“I hear you’re considering working at the Palazzo Lazzaro with Gianni.”

“I am, sort of, I guess. Okay, yes, I’m considering it. It’s an incredible offer. Money, prestige, a fabulous location, a not-at-all-bad-looking guy… I’d be a fool not to consider it.”

“Sounds
fantastico,
Georgia. It really does. But is it what you want?” Claudia held her hand to her heart. “Is it what you want here?”

Georgia placed her hands on the counter and stared at
them; the ruddy skin, slightly crepey from constant washings, the short, unpolished nails. A faint scar snaked its way around her index finger, a souvenir from her first knife-skills class at the Culinary Institute. Working-girl hands, Glenn had called them, right before slipping that sparkling ring onto her finger. Grammy’s hands, she thought, clasping them together. She had her grandmother’s hair and her grandmother’s hands.

“I want my own restaurant. That’s what I want.” Though Georgia had been saying these words for years, it was the first time she believed she would make it happen. The job offer at the Palazzo Lazzaro, with all its glittering accompaniments, had given her confidence the final boost it needed. If she was good enough to run Gianni’s restaurant, she was good enough to run her own. Opening her own restaurant, in her own city, was what she needed to do for herself and for her life before she could share it with anyone else.

Claudia grabbed a pair of pot holders from a hook on the wall and slid the cake from the oven. “It almost smells better than it tastes.” She placed it on the stovetop, leaning over to inhale its aroma, a satisfied smile on her face.

She looked up at Georgia. “You’ll have that restaurant if you want it badly enough. You have the skills, you have the creativity, and if you really want it here”—Claudia touched her heart again—“and here”—she touched her head—“you’ll find the discipline to make it happen. It won’t be easy. Nothing worthwhile ever is. But you can make it work.”

“I know I can. I’m not sure how, but I’ll figure it out.” Georgia walked to the cutlery drawer and pulled out a spoon. “I think I’ll have some of that gelato now.”

Claudia handed her the container, which had been sitting out on the counter and was filled with slushy vanilla gelato laced with dark-chocolate shavings. Georgia dipped the spoon, not a
demitasse, but a tablespoon, into the ice cream, a smile spreading across her face as she took her first bite. It was worth it.

“Ciao, bella!” Wearing jeans, a checked shirt, and those black Adidas soccer shoes all the cool guys had worn in high school, Gianni strolled across the field to meet Georgia, who waited for him by the abandoned well halfway between Dia and his winery. It was the exact spot where she’d first noticed him, and like then, he had a cell phone attached to his ear. Also like then, he looked amazing.

She wished she could say the same about herself. Patting the back of her head where her hair was gathered in a sloppy bun that felt suspiciously like a robin’s nest intertwined with cotton balls, she realized that a quick glance in the mirror before dashing out of the restaurant would have been a wise idea. But she had only a sliver of time between dinner prep and the start of her shift, and she knew if she put off saying what she had to say, she could very well end up not saying it at all. Messy hair it was.

“Ciao, Gianni,” she said as he walked up. She went to kiss his cheek, but he turned her face to his and, cupping it in his hands, kissed her lips. Then he did it again. She kissed him back, a flicker of doubt jolting through her. Was she out of her mind? A part of her said yes, but it was the part she wasn’t supposed to listen to.

“How was Puglia?” she asked. “And your family?”

“It was great, but I missed you. My mama can’t wait to meet you. It’s all she talked about.” He grinned. “So, I guess you have something important to tell me.” He wiggled his eyebrows as her belly slowly sank. Despite their conversation in Sicily, he had no idea what was coming.

“I do have something important to tell you. Very important.”
She cleared her throat. “It’s really hard for me to say this, and I hate when people say that, but it’s true. So I’m just going to say it.”

His grin disappeared.

“I can’t accept the job at the Lazzaro. When I finish at Dia, I’m going back to New York to open my own restaurant.”

Crossing his arms across his chest, he stared first at the ground, then off in the distance where a brood of hens pecked at the dirt for worms. When he finally looked at her, it wasn’t sadness or hurt or disappointment that she saw. It was anger.

“That is a mistake, Georgia. A big mistake.”

“I—”

“We are offering you the opportunity of your life. You will not find a better situation ever. If you aren’t able to see that, then you don’t deserve to work at the Lazzaro.”

“I do see that, Gianni, and I really appreciate all that you’re offering. I do. But I don’t want another job. I want my own restaurant.”

“Your own restaurant? Why? So you can be one more chef feeding your own, big ego? Isn’t that—how do you call it—a cliché?”

She swallowed. “I don’t think I’m a cliché. I want to do something—”

“And what makes you think you’re qualified to run your own restaurant? Do you know how hard it is? Do you know how many fail?”

“Of course I do, Gianni. But I believe in myself. And other people do too. People like Claudia. And people like you.” She reached out for his hand, but he snatched it away.

“I’m not so sure I do anymore.” He stared at her for a second before pulling his shades from his chest pocket and sliding them on. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it
and walked off, nearly kicking an unlucky hen who crossed his path.

“Gianni!” she called out. “Please don’t leave like this.”

But if he’d heard her, he pretended not to. He was already gone.

T
here was no way Georgia would face her parents alone. Not ever if she could help it, and especially not that night. So she stood outside Collina Verde, squinting in the early-evening sun, waiting for Vanessa to pick her up. The trees were thinning, a chill was in the air. September had arrived, and summer’s shelf life was about to expire.

As far back as Georgia could remember, the end of summer had filled her with dread. Not the grown-up kind that causes sleepless nights and stomachaches, but a childlike belief that nothing held by fall’s cooler, shorter days could ever eclipse the lazy thrills of summer. Grammy closed the Silver Lake cabin, Georgia returned to her parents, and the door on summer’s carefree casualness slammed shut. But the September she went off to college, a seismic shift occurred: instead of returning home, she
left
home, in all likelihood for good. The dread lifted like a beribboned balloon disappearing into the sky. Driving the brand-new-to-her tan Toyota Camry, a combined graduation gift from her parents and Grammy, she pulled out of the driveway and waved good-bye. That year she worshipped at the altar of
autumn. Never before had the leaves beneath her feet felt so crunchy. Never had the nights felt crisper or looked more star-filled. Fall became her favorite season.