Steamed (17 page)
Authors: Jessica Conant-Park,Susan Conant
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Mystery Fiction, #Women Sleuths, #Boston (Mass.), #Cooks, #Women Graduate Students
One cold Saturday morning in February, I drove to Zach’s place with my car full of fresh produce and two beautiful cod fillets. I slaved in the kitchen finely slicing red peppers, onions, zucchini, tomatoes, garlic, and cilantro. I laid the fillets in foil packets, slathered them with the veggies, and doused the fish in white wine and butter pats. Zach looked on in bewilderment, having probably never even seen a piece of fresh fish before. When his virgin kitchen was filled with the heavenly aroma of the bubbling cod purses and audible sizzling was erupting from the oven, Zach curiously went over to the radiator to see if the pipes were hissing again. I explained that the unusual noises were the result of
actual food
cooking. As proof, I had to crack the oven to show him. I served the fish packets with plain couscous and French bread. Zach diligently tasted his fish and, surprised, pronounced it “not bad.” He then devoured the whole dish in seconds, leaned back in his chair, and reached for the remote to check in on Sports Center, which he’d grudgingly turned off when dinner was ready.
actual food
cooking. As proof, I had to crack the oven to show him. I served the fish packets with plain couscous and French bread. Zach diligently tasted his fish and, surprised, pronounced it “not bad.” He then devoured the whole dish in seconds, leaned back in his chair, and reached for the remote to check in on Sports Center, which he’d grudgingly turned off when dinner was ready.
I was about to give up on Zach but went to see him the following weekend after he’d called me to say that he wanted to make me dinner since I’d done so for him. I made the tiresome trek to his place that Friday night with the hope that some sort of miraculous transformation had occurred following his first fish dinner. Much to my dismay, Zach had gone to the local grocery store and bought some frozen haddock fillets that he bravely slapped onto a dry skillet while I sat frightened in the living room. I mustered all the graciousness I could and bit into the miserable fish, which was accompanied by a side of canned green beans. Zach, who didn’t seem to notice much difference between his fish and mine, once again pronounced the meal “not bad.” The declaration marked the demise of our relationship. I fled after dinner, pausing outside his building to vomit in the privet hedge before speeding back to Brighton.
Josh was clearly on a whole new culinary level. I went to bed that Saturday night feeling like Christmas was coming.
On Sunday morning I decided I’d better go retrieve my car from the funeral home in Cambridge, where I’d probably amassed nine hundred dollars in parking tickets. I called Heather, hoping she’d take pity on me and drive me to collect my Saturn.
“Well, where have you been, my long lost sister? Huh?” Heather said as she picked up the phone.
“Come get me, and I’ll tell you. You won’t even believe the week I’ve had. Drive me to my car in Cambridge, and you’ll hear all about it,” I said, knowing Heather would do anything for a good story.
“Fine. I’m heading over to Mom and Dad’s with Walker and Lucy. Let me just get them ready, and I’ll come over. Meet me outside your house.”
Twenty-five minutes later I was comfortably seated in Heather’s Mazda minivan tickling my adorable niece and nephew. “All right,” Heather demanded, “spill it. What the hell is your car doing in Cambridge?”
“Hell! Hell!” Walker chirped from the backseat.
“Dammit, I have to stop swearing in front of the kids. Walker, don’t say that word, please. Mommy shouldn’t have said that. And, Jesus, don’t say it in front of your grandparents.”
“Jesus! Jesus!” Walker echoed.
“I’ll just have to tell Mom and Dad he’s an extremely religious child,” Heather sighed. “Okay, Chloe. Go.”
I caught my cursing sister up on Eric and Josh and the whole murder investigation. With the kids in the car, however, I had to spell out a lot of the story to avoid having Walker scream “dead body” or “sexy kisser” in front of my parents.
When we reached my car, I’d finished feeding Heather most of the story. With an exasperated look, she warned, “We’re not done talking about this. I don’t like the idea of you hanging out with this Josh character.” Heather’s bad attitude and the two orange parking tickets on my car couldn’t kill my giddy mood. I started the engine and followed Heather to Newton.
Heather and I had grown up in a white Spanish-style house on Farlow Road. Both of my parents, Bethany and Jack Carter, were professional landscapers and had created an incredible outdoor utopia with raised garden beds, cobbled pathways, and stucco walls. Vegetables, flowers, shrubs, and berry bushes and vines left little room for a lawn, and each year the few patches of grass that remained became smaller and smaller, overtaken by new plantings. My parents had published a successful series of books for the home gardener and spent much of their time testing out new ideas in their own yard.
Heather pulled out her key and let us all in the front door. Heather and I had been out of the house for so many years that our bedrooms had been taken over and turned into greenhouses. The outside of my parents’ house was a shrine to taste and style, but the inside was a ghastly display of my mother’s obsession with hideous craft projects.
“Lord, what has she done now?” Heather wondered aloud as we entered the living room. “Well, Chloe, at least we know where you got your warped decorating sense.”
A series of wreaths made of yarn and silk flowers adorned the main wall. I stared at a particularly garish wreath constructed entirely of fake sunflowers. “Why couldn’t Mom have discovered a less obtrusive hobby, like jewelry making or scrapbooking?
Why
has she become obsessed with objects that have to be displayed?”
Why
has she become obsessed with objects that have to be displayed?”
“Just be happy she hadn’t discovered wreaths when we lived here. Could you imagine bringing your friends over to see this garbage?”
“There are my babies!” Mom shrieked as she ran into the room, followed by our father, who was busy rolling his eyes and pointing to the new wall hangings. “I’ve missed my girls so much!” Tanned and fresh looking from their vacation in Acadia National Park, my parents showered us with hugs and kisses and immediately whipped out presents for the two kids.
In typical sister-ratting-out-sister style, Heather proceeded to announce, “Guess what Chloe’s done? She’s going out with the man suspected of murdering the blind date she had last week!”
“Jesus!” Walker said.
“Thank you, Heather,” I said. “
And
Walker.”
And
Walker.”
“What in the world are you talking about?” Mom said.
How many times am I going to have to retell this? Can’t we all just focus on the news that I may have just met my future husband?
“Heather left out a few details. Josh, the guy I’m going out with, is a very unlikely suspect,” I said.
After I had yet again given the short version of the date-and-murder debacle, my father asked, “So the food stinks? Bethany, cancel the reservations we made at Essence for next week with the Morrisons.”
“Definitely,” my mother agreed. “But you’re going to Magellan on Friday?”
“I know! Can you believe it?” I squealed.
“Have you all lost it?” Heather said. “This Josh person shouldn’t be at the top of Chloe’s dating list right now. He shouldn’t be on it at all. He could be a murderer!”
“Oh, please, Heather. You’re so paranoid. Chloe wouldn’t go out with a murderer—she has excellent judgment. Besides, chefs hack up food, not people,” Mom said. “And you’re the one who sent her on this Back Bay Dates date with this poor Eric. You’re the one who started the ball rolling.”
Heather defended herself. “Are we all supposed to
ignore
the fact that Chloe has been through a traumatic event? She saw a dead body, for Pete’s sake. All bloody. And now she’s behaving irrationally, eating food cooked by a murder suspect!”
ignore
the fact that Chloe has been through a traumatic event? She saw a dead body, for Pete’s sake. All bloody. And now she’s behaving irrationally, eating food cooked by a murder suspect!”
“She looks fine to me. In fact,” Mom continued, smiling at me, “I think she looks happy and excited about this boy. And he sounds better than that Daniel. I didn’t like the sound of him when I thought he was a platonic friend of yours, Chloe, and then Heather called him your ‘fun buddy.’ Do I have that right? What a horrible expression.”
Even though Daniel had refused to come to my aid by fooling around with me in front of my building during the Noah crisis, I felt some loyalty to him. Mostly, though, I was furious at Heather for passing on private information about me to our parents.
I hoped to God that my mother was right about Josh and that Heather was wrong. “Finding Eric was upsetting,” I admitted. “So was his murder. It was awful, but I’m dealing with it. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but I’d just met Eric, so there’s a limit to how devastated I’m going to be, okay? But fortunately for me, Josh is alive and well, and I want to go out with him.”
“Not alone, I hope,” Heather said. “I don’t think it’s one bit safe for you to be alone with him.”
I sighed. “Adrianna and Owen are coming with me.” They hadn’t yet accepted the invitation I’d left on Adrianna’s voice mail, but I didn’t say so.
“Why don’t we all go?” Dad piped in. “I’d love to eat at Magellan.”
“Oh, wonderful!” Mom said, delighted. “The whole family will go!”
“No!” I said incredulously. “The whole family will
not
go. I’m not into sicko family group dates. I will be fine with Ade and Owen.”
not
go. I’m not into sicko family group dates. I will be fine with Ade and Owen.”
Looking hurt, Dad said, “If that’s what you want. But we expect a full report on your meal. Okay, now come help us taste-test the tomatoes.”
It was that time of year again. When all my father’s tomato plants had produced their bounty, he whipped up a chart, and as a family, we meticulously rated each variety according to overall appearance, skin thickness, flavor, texture, color—a tomato beauty pageant, if you will, only without the obligatory swimsuit competition.
Baby Lucy had the good sense to sleep through most of the tomato tasting, which lasted an hour. At the end, Dad’s chart was filled in, with a yellow pear variety deemed this year’s winner. Walker’s face and hands were stained with tomato juice, and Heather sent him off to play in the sprinkler while I told my parents about the exciting world of social work and workplace harassment.
“Sounds boring,” Dad declared. “On a happier note, I’d like to announce the official end of this season’s Soft Shell Crabfest.” Each year my father set himself the goal of eating one hundred soft shell crabs during crab season, and Fresh Pond Seafood was so thrilled with his attempts that they created a chart for him, hung it on the store’s wall, and x-ed off one box for each of his purchases. They also gave him the last three crabs for free. Yesterday, when he’d bought his hundredth crab of the year, the shop’s owners had framed his crabfest chart and presented it to him.
Dad proudly raised the trophy above his head, declaring, “I am the crab king!”
“The fact that you’ve eaten a hundred crabs over the past few months is revolting. You should be embarrassed,” Heather scolded.
“Heather, leave him alone,” I said. “I think it’s admirable. I love soft shell crabs, but I can only eat a few a season. But Dad has really proven himself.”
“Yeah, proven himself to have a few loose screws,” Heather said, but went over and hugged Dad.
“Okay, family,” I said. “I’m goin’ home. I’ve got about a zillion pages of reading for school.”
“Lock your doors when you get home,” instructed Heather.
I nodded in mock seriousness, kissed her kids, and headed home—with every intention of locking my doors.
ELEVEN
I spent Monday and Tuesday incarcerated in the horrible Boston Organization Against Sexual and Other Harassment in the Workplace. Naomi had left me a note to remind me that she was attending a two-day rally for some worthy cause outside the State House and that I should familiarize myself with the monstrous folder she’d left out for me. I was welcome to come find her later that afternoon.
If she thought I was going to sit in this room reading from nine to five, she was nuts. After two hours of trying to digest harassment facts, I decided to start on a social work school assignment I’d been putting off. Our General Practice professor had assigned us the task of detailing our field placement experiences in a journal in which we were free to write about whatever we wanted.
“Day 1,” I wrote. “Am forced to read lurid stories of workplace harassment while confined to poorly decorated minioffice. Management has opted not to include windows in decor so as to keep staff (me and Naomi) diligently focused on work at hand. Have avoided answering calls all morning since cannot recall exact name of organization. Every time the phone rings I must pretend to be so engrossed in literature that have not even heard incessant ringing. Naomi has encouraged me to take on projects on my own and am considering painting office and creating new filing and storage space. (May not be traditional social work per se, but would contribute to staff morale and psychological well-being). Will order tons of stuff from Hold Everything catalogue and write off for tax deduction. Will discuss with Naomi next week. Am pleased that am not forced to work in community mental health center or hospital psych ward, like some peers, and do not have to deal with those with schizophrenia or other pathological disorders. Although, may go cuckoo in this office come May. Naomi seems to be a hands-off supervisor since is not here today or tomorrow—very nice. Looking forward to stimulating field placement this year.”
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