Sweet Love (3 page)

Mom goes, “Hmph.” Though I can tell she’s pleased.

But it’s not until long after she’s in bed and I’m flipping through the packet that I smell a skunk. My dear sweet mother’s not eager to see me improve my culinary skills one bit.

For as I scan a list of fellow future classmates, I come to the bottom and stop short at the name in bold block letters.

MICHAEL SLAYTON.

The man I once loved to the depths of my soul.

The man whose career I once ruined.

Surely, this can be no coincidence.

Chapter Two

—HENRY V. ACT III, SCENE 6

On a blissfully sunny afternoon in June, which just so happens to be the day of the first dessert class, I take WBOS’s star correspondent Valerie Zidane out to lunch at an outdoor café in Davis Square to give her a pep talk.

Kirk Bledsoe, our network’s famous Washington bureau chief, is in town on a headhunting mission to snare new blood for his weary national election team. I applied and was promptly rejected in a form letter thanking me for my interest and years of service, blah, blah, blah. Valerie, however, got The Call. If she passes the interview with Kirk today, she’s on the team.

This means months of flying with either the Democratic or Republican candidate on posh planes, sleeping in four-star hotels, hobnobbing with celebrities and, best of all, appearing nightly to 7.6 million viewers on the six-thirty news. Already Valerie’s jumped the gun and bought a whole new wardrobe of St. John suits.

Sigh
.

I’m trying to be a good sport about all this, but I’m ashamed to admit it’s not easy. Valerie’s ten years younger than I am and living a life of freedom, working as long and hard as her ambition dictates. I, on the other hand, am a single mother raising a teenager who sucks up time, money, and patience like a Hoover in black eyeliner.

Not that I’m complaining. Much.

“It’s all screwed up,” Valerie says, shaking a teeny amount of vinegar over her chicken salad, no dressing or, for that matter, chicken. “You should be their number one candidate. You’ve been here for ages.”

Perhaps Valerie’s heart is in the right place. Perhaps. But as I spear a forbidden French fry and study how her perky ski-jump nose wiggles adorably when she nibbles her endive, I can’t help but suspect that like Boston Marathon cheater Rosie Ruiz, I never was in the running.

Valerie is an ideal eclectic mix of Algerian, Irish, French, and Puerto Rican descent with a thread of the British royal line.
And
she was raised in Thailand by missionary parents. Of course Kirk wants her. She’s multicultural, multilingual, Columbia University educated, and absolutely yummy in her yellow-and-cream Akris Punto jacket and matching sheath.

Me? I’m so plain with my medium-length brown hair and brown eyes and pink suit from Macy’s, strangers often mistake me for someone else. I am standard-issue middle American. Graduate of Boston University, middle of the class with a rubber-stamped degree in political science. If I were an appliance, my name would be Kenmore.

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “You and I both know how this business is, Val. After forty, the national desk doesn’t want you, unless you’re a halfway handsome man with a silver dye job. I say go for it while you have the chance.”

She puts down her fork and cocks her head. “Thanks. You’re sweet. It’s so hard for me not to be overeager, you know. Raldo told me all the reporters who were chosen to work on the election team four years ago ended up with permanent assignments in the network.”

“Is that so?” Raldo is our hypochondriac anchorman more famous for contracting imaginary deadly diseases than manning the hotline to network headquarters. His credibility on the non-disease front is generally very low.

“But I won’t forget you when I’m in Washington and New York, I promise,” Valerie says. “You’ve been a real mentor to me, Julie. I feel really fortunate to have a mature woman to turn to for advice.”

My eyes involuntarily narrow. Who you calling mature?

“Which is why I put you down as my recommendation.” Slapping her hands over her face, she says, “I know I should have asked first, but I felt awkward. What with you being here longer than me and . . . all.”

I let out a polite laugh as I envision my manicured fingers around her throat. Let it go, I tell myself as I lay down my Visa. It’s no crime to be middle-aged.

“I’d have used Arnie, but you know how he is. Sunny one day, stormy the next. Totally unpredictable. And besides, he told me I’m the best reporter here, so he has a vested interest in keeping me down on the farm. Whereas when I leave, you’ll take my place as the best reporter, which means it’s more likely you’ll give me a better recommendation. Smart, huh?”

I say, “You were doing fine up until that last line.”

“Too much?”

“You might at least try to feign some humility. Oddly enough, some people find it appealing.”

Back at work I try to forget lunch by returning a couple of phone calls concerning Amy Michak, a nineteen-year-old college student from Somerville who went missing outside the Somerville Library last November.

I’m obsessed with this story, partly because I’m fairly certain Amy’s dead and also because she is—was—the spitting image of my daughter, Em. I just can’t imagine being Amy’s mother, Rhonda. Months of waiting, hoping, fearing—I’d go insane.

Now, with the advent of summer, have come painful reports of random new sightings I’m obligated to confirm and, unfortunately, debunk. Amy spotted strolling along Revere Beach hand in hand with a tall dude sporting an army haircut. Amy fingering pink sheets at Linens’n Things at the Arsenal Mall. Bike riding by the Mystic Lakes. Standing in line to see
Indiana Jones
.

What amazes me about these reports is the assumption Amy would be so daft that she’d be out shopping and biking when across town her suffering mother creeps through life in agony, jumping at every ring of the phone, dreading every knock at the door lest it’s the police with the news her daughter’s body has been found.

Were she alive, surely this child would take a moment to put down the pink pillowcases and give her mother a ring from the Arsenal Mall pay phone, no?

After a morbid discussion with Detective Sinesky at the Somerville PD about Amy’s suspected fate, I am in desperate need of chocolate fortification. Just a little something to satisfy my cravings, renew my spirits. Perhaps a bite-sized piece of Dove dark chocolate or a handful of M&M’s. Checking the stash in my upper-right-hand drawer, I find, much to my joy, I have both! Hmm. Which to choose? Decisions, decisions.

Unwrapping the Dove, I think, cripes, I’m going to be a moose if I don’t break this chocolate habit. After eating a piece—pieces—of Dove every day like this for years, Michael Slayton’s going to wonder what happened to me. . . .

Okay, I have to stop focusing so much on Michael. Last night I spent two hours trying to choose which outfit to wear to dessert class, one that would meet Chef D’Ours’s monastic requirements—covered arms; flat, closed shoes—and yet still be provocative. It was like being back in high school and trying to thwart the Our Lady of Miracles school uniforms by rolling down my kneesocks.

Not that I’m still interested in Michael that way. Be serious. The man despises me and just the idea of him makes me want to punch a pillow. My only objective is to walk into class looking
goooood
. Make him regret the tongue-lashing he left me with six years ago.

A “ratings-grubbing ice queen with no heart or soul or principles. A picture-perfect sellout.” How dare he? What an arrogant, pompous prick of a . . .

“Here’s a sorry state of affairs. The addict and her drug,” a wiseass voice says behind me. “You know, there’s help for that. BOS does offer free twelve-step programs.”

It’s Arnie Wolff, my short, bespectacled news director with whom I have a delightfully unorthodox relationship. He teases me and I annoy him and, together, we bug the whole newsroom.

“Want one?” I say, sticking out a Dove. “No, wait, I forgot. You like your sugar in strictly maltose form.”

“Don’t knock beer. It’s the breakfast of champions. Anyway, I came to tell you that after you’re done stuffing your face, Oompa Loompa, we’re holding a meeting with you in the conference room.”

“Mwe?” I ask, mouth full.

He winces in disgust. “It’s such a pleasure to be around a true lady. Yes, you‚ Owen, me, and the Big Kahuna.”

Owen Trumbull is our general manager, a blond, mostly harmless bureaucrat whose wetted finger is forever in the wind testing the political direction of the network. But who’s the Big Kahuna?

I say, “Big Kahuna?”

Arnie glances sidewise at Valerie, who’s all ears two desks away. “Don’t make me spell it out.”

He must mean . . . I mouth, “
Kirk Bledsoe
?”

Arnie slaps his forehead and motions me to follow him.

I have no idea what the famous Kirk Bledsoe would want from me until I pass Valerie, who hisses, “I’m counting on you!” and flashes me a big thumbs-up.

Oh, right. Her recommendation, nothing more.

Licking chocolate from my lips during the short march down the hall, I wrack my brain to list three positive attributes to pin to Val that would make her worthy of joining the national election team. All I can come up with is that she gets invites to sample sales like no one else and she’s great at interior design, having done a brilliant job of choosing a couch to match my hideous flowered walls. Not exactly talents for grilling the next president of the United States, I suppose, unless the next president is Christopher Lowell.

In the conference room, Arnie and I are greeted by Owen’s secretary, Eva, and none other than Kirk Bledsoe,
the
Washington bureau chief himself. It’s positively thrilling. He’s much taller than I’d have expected and grayer, especially with the trimmed white beard. I’m afraid to say he actually looks ancient.

Being naturally gifted under pressure, I, of course, manage to insult him right off by blubbering about how when I was a kid my parents used to watch him when he was a correspondent for WBOS in “the dark ages.” Eva gives me a pointed look and Arnie whispers, “Nice move,” though Kirk doesn’t seem to mind. He says something about being loyal to WBOS ever since.

“I like to go back to my roots,” he adds, pausing. “When choosing the person who will someday replace me.”

“Like a salmon swimming home to spawn and die,” I agree. Which is when Arnie kicks me under the table and I realize what I’ve said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I meant—”

Kirk holds up his hand. “You’re exactly right and it’s a beautiful image. No need to apologize.”

“Yes, she does,” Owen quips. “I’ll make sure she writes fifty times that she must not offend the network’s most famous correspondent.”

We laugh nervously, relieved
that
disaster is over. Good thing I’m not the one up for the job. Whew.

“I’m sure you know why Kirk’s here,” Owen begins. “Especially if you went out to lunch with Valerie.”

Kirk and Owen exchange knowing grins.

“I got the gist. If you want, I can jump right in and save us all a lot of time.”

“First,” Kirk says, “let’s have a chat about you and where you’re coming from. Nothing official. Just casual.”

I’ve never been asked to give a live recommendation before, so I have no idea if this is standard operating procedure. “Okay,” I say hesitantly. “Shoot.”

“Owen tells me you’re a single mother.”

God. Is that all people talk about? Makes me sound like some blue-eye -shadowed tramp who got knocked up behind the Dairy Queen. “I’m divorced, yes. My ex-husband, Donald, lives in Newton, but I’ve mostly raised our daughter alone. He’s, uh, on to his second family.” Trophy wife, Jill, their spoiled son, Angus, piss-poor child support and zero alimony, for the record.

“Though you’ve had help from your mother, with whom you live.”

I have to shift in my chair, partly because the conference room’s high-voltage static electricity is hiking up my skirt and partly because I’m not sure I like this line of questioning. “Actually, I live above my parents in a double in Watertown. My father retired from the Watertown Public Works Department when he had a mild heart attack years and years ago. I bought the double shortly after the divorce so I could keep an eye on them and they could help out with Em, my daughter.”

“Kind of a win-win situation,” Kirk says.

“It has been. I mean, Em’s a teenager now and about to graduate from Newton South. Since Donald lives in Newton, she gets to go there. Great school, you know. She’s very lucky.”

Kirk nods, indicating I should get on with it.

“Anyway, these days it’s less of Mom helping out with Em and more of me helping out Dad. You know, shoveling the walks, mowing the lawn. Mom went through a bout of breast cancer, so . . .” For heaven’s sake, he’s not interested in my life story. “Hold on. You don’t need to know all that, do you?”

“I don’t need to, but it helps. I’ve found that taking into account people’s personal issues is the best way to ensure a happy, productive workplace, ” Kirk says.

How refreshingly progressive. “Well, Valerie’s going to fit right in since she sure does have a lot of personal issues.” And once again I catch myself too late. “Not that she has any serious personal issues, per se. I mean, not anymore.” Another kick from Arnie under the table. “Shoot. I’m supposed to give her a glowing recommendation and that kind of blew it, huh?”

Indeed, Kirk stops writing and looks to Owen, who shakes his head.

“Julie,” Owen says, leaning forward. “In case there’s been a misunderstanding, we didn’t bring you in here to discuss Valerie
.
We brought you in here to discuss . . . you.”