The Secret Ingredient (6 page)

“You returned,” she says, with a smile so penetrating I have to glance away for a second. She walks toward the elevator, and I follow her inside. Now the two of us are
back where we met, except this time the elevator’s moving and I only have twelve floors to pick her brain.

“Listen, I know I was skeptical, but I think you’re right. Something happened today—”

“I
am
a professional,” she says, glaring at me with those clear eyes.

“Yes, obviously. But after I saw you, I got the job, and this boy Theo just showed up at my work, and yesterday I found this. It’s from the past, like you said.” I take out the cookbook, which I’ve had with me ever since I got it but for some reason have been wary of opening again, and show it to her. She grabs it and slowly closes her eyes. Then she says, “Where did you get this?” as if it could be a bomb that’s about to go off.

“At a used bookstore. It was strange, this dog I walk, Hank—”

She holds up her hand as if the details are beneath her and have no relevance to what’s really going on. She opens the front cover and we both see an indecipherable name, crossed out, and underneath, written in cursive:
Rose Lane, 18, 1966
. She closes the cover as well as her eyes and says, “This will be important to you, but something else will happen. Today. You will be given a sign, or shown a piece of something larger.”

“Theo?”

“No, this hasn’t happened yet.” She opens her eyes, and her sincerity is gone. “You know, I really should be charging you,” she says as she hands the cookbook back to me.

The elevator lets us out into the lobby, and I follow her, like she’s got my future in her hands. She turns to me with a hint of pity but also maybe envy—I can’t imagine why.

“I’m sorry, I can’t give you all the answers.” She starts to walk away, then turns back and says, “We won’t meet again—not for some time. You will know what to do. Trust yourself.”

The whole way home I look for signs. The old woman on the bus with mysterious eyes, the nervous man with the briefcase. Is she looking at me? What’s inside the briefcase? Is the bus going to get hijacked? I look out the window and smile at my paranoia. I look again at the name inside the cookbook. I see that it was published in 1960. I wonder what it would have been like to be a teenager back then.

When I get home, the phone is ringing. It’s Bell calling from the bank, and he needs me to read him some information from his closing documents on the house. He tells me to go into his room, to the little desk by the window. When we were kids, Jeremy and I were never allowed near this desk. It still feels a bit off-limits.

I find the documents, read Bell the information he needs, and hang up. As I put the folder back in the drawer, I notice the corner of a wooden box at the bottom. Bell’s handwriting is on the top, spelling out my full name:
Olivia Anne Reese
. I pull out the box and place it on my lap, contemplating. What could this be?

I open it slowly, half expecting to see a small dead animal or something scary. But it’s just some pictures of me as a baby, and a silver rattle. There are some adoption papers from the agency. None of them mention my mother’s name. But the information must be somewhere in the world, right? Maybe in a dusty cabinet at the adoption agency in the Valley.

Just as I’m about to close the box, I notice a tiny manila envelope tied shut with red string. On the back it says
NORTH HOLLYWOOD BANK AND TRUST
. I open the envelope. Inside is a small key with 74C on it. It must be a safe-deposit box. At a bank right near my adoption agency. I take the key out and turn it around in my hand a few times. I can feel my heart speed up. Suddenly I hear the downstairs door open, and I scramble to put everything back, except for the key, which I put in my pocket.

I go downstairs and sit on the couch. I try to figure out what to make for Lola, who is coming over for dinner. But the key is like this small vortex of heat in my pocket.
A sign, a piece of something larger
.

As soon as he sees me, Bell can tell something’s up. He’s just here to change and leave for the restaurant, but he keeps stopping to stare at me, as if he’s trying to figure something out. I decide to tell him about the job, now that I have it for sure. He gives me a proud smile and a hug. Then he picks up one of my feet and cradles it in his palm—a tender gesture he’s always made—and says, “Working girl.”

“Not that kind, Dad.”

He smiles, puts my foot back down, and says, “Bravo.”

After he leaves, I take the cookbook out of my bag. I open it to a random page. Next to a drawing of a woman singing on a mountaintop, there’s a heading that reads
CONFIDENT CARROT CAKE
. The note scrawled in the margin was probably once in black ink but has faded to brown:

11/9/66

Made this for you, Matthew, as it would have been your second birthday. For those few minutes I held you, before the doctors took you away, I thought I could finally give Mother what she needed. Little did I know, it would only make things worse. I still carry you in my heart
.

I look again at the inside cover.
Rose Lane, 18, 1966
. So she got pregnant at my age? I know people got married early back then, but was teen pregnancy normal? I try to picture a girl, maybe in a dress with a bold print, cooking carrot cake for the child she lost. Did her mother blame her? Hold it against her? How could you not love and support your own daughter? But I guess mine didn’t even have a chance. Does she still think about me?

My thoughts are harshly interrupted by the door squeaking open, and for some reason I instinctively hide the book.

In comes Lola with the scent of chlorine in her hair. She’s been swimming at her parents’ club pool.

“You okay, Livie? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“I’m fine. Just going to throw together a salad from what’s in the fridge, okay?”

“Coming from you, Livie, it will most likely win some salad award regardless.”

I go over to the fridge, grab a cucumber, and toss it to Lola. “Thin, like dimes.”

“Right. You must tell me, though, how was your first day?”

I start washing the lettuce and tell her about the little people. Then, trying to play it down as an afterthought, I fill her in on the return of Dish Boy.

Lola stops chopping and says, “No!”

I start to fry up slices of prosciutto while mincing some garlic for the dressing.

“Yes. Crazy, right? We didn’t have time to do the screen test ’cause he had to go help his brother, Timothy, who has some problems, but we made a plan to go to the Griffith Park tomorrow.”

“How frightfully romantic!”

“I’m trying not to get too excited.”

“Why did he disappear?”

“He’s going to fill me in tomorrow. He acted like it all could be explained easily. Like, ‘I just took off for a year, pass the butter.’ ”

I finish the salad—field greens, garbanzo beans, and feta
cheese, topped with cucumber, shallots, and crispy prosciutto. It’s a weird combination, but it works. It’s like this entrepreneur who spoke at our school said—you must always keep your mind open; half of the world’s great ideas were born out of unlikely pairings. Dressings are the key to making salads sing, and usually all it takes is a really good olive oil, fresh black pepper, and high-end mustard. As we begin to eat, Lola is quiet, so I know it’s doing the trick. A quiet dinner table equals a good cook.

When we’re almost finished, Enrique comes home smelling of whiskey. I can tell he’s buzzed ’cause his eyes, which are normally over-alert, aren’t focusing very well. Enrique isn’t the type to get drunk often, and the fact that he starts asking Lola about her earrings is beyond awkward. I tell Lola we should go and she quickly obliges.

On our way down the hill to where Lola parked, she expresses what we’re both thinking. “Well, that was a bit strange.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You know, it’s funny, when I first came to the States I didn’t know that expression, so when people said ‘Tell me about it,’ I used to take it literally, blabbing away.…”

In spite of everything, we start laughing. Some little kids who clearly shouldn’t be out this late run by with sno-cones in their hands. Lola hugs me goodbye and gets into her black Mini Cooper. She tells me to call her the minute my date with Theo is over.

When I get back inside, I lie down on the couch and think through the whole Theo thing, and how maybe it’s a sign, that he’s back in my life. There is also the key, still burning a hole in my jeans. I can hear the psychic in my head.
Trust yourself
.

When Bell gets home, he doesn’t see me and goes straight into the kitchen. He grabs a tumbler and fills it with scotch. The sight of him sitting alone in the dark dampens my mood. I get up from the couch and go sit next to him. He jumps in surprise, then offers me an apple. I decline.

He takes a long, slow sip and swallows.

“Dad, do you remember when you let me have a sip of that ’ninety-one Bordeaux?” I ask.

“Vaguely.”

“It was your birthday. Jeremy had just graduated, and he had that really nice girl with him … Bridget? Anyway, I screwed up the skirt steak and was kind of mortified. You said it would be okay and let me take a sip of your drink. Papá showed up late but brought sparkling cider, and we all toasted, and I remember thinking, this isn’t about overdone skirt steak or ’ninety-one Bordeaux. It’s what we all are—together. We’re kind of like a machine of mismatched parts.” I’m not sure what to do for someone who has sacrificed so much for me, and I have no idea how to help him, but I’m improvising. “Remember, I have a job. And Jeremy’s getting an ice cream truck.”

Bell looks at me like I’m a five-year-old telling him that my stuffed-animal army will protect him.

“We’ll figure it out,” I say.

He offers me the apple again, and this time I take it.

When he hugs me, I hear something strange. A cough or some kind of whimper. I don’t care to admit it, but it’s most likely the latter. Bell is the architecture that holds our family up, and we can’t afford for him to crumble.

When I was in fifth grade they had Bring Your Mom to School Day. Bell or Enrique could’ve come, but it didn’t feel right and I didn’t push the issue. In our classroom, we all had to play this game with our mothers, and the teacher pretended she was mine. It was the first time that I really
felt
not having a mother. I don’t remember the details of the game, but I know that it didn’t work. The mother had to know certain details about the child, and my teacher tried desperately to fill in, but it clearly wasn’t happening. When I got home that day, Bell was trimming the bushes in front of our bungalow. He dropped his shears and ran up to hug me, but I dodged his arms.

“I had to have a mother, right, Dad?” I asked him.

He gave me that look of concern that sometimes makes me warm inside but right then made me queasy.

“Yes, of course, Ollie. You didn’t fall from the sky.”

I wasn’t stupid. I had seen
Annie
. I knew that some kids
were given up for adoption and that was just the way it was. But I felt hatred for Bell, like somehow it was all his fault, which of course it wasn’t.

“What did they say? They must have told you something about her.”

Bell ran his hands through his hair, which was even thicker then and completely black. “I wish there was something I could tell you, Ollie, but I’m in the same boat as you. I know nothing.”

“What about her name?”

He paused for a moment and looked up at the clouds. Then he kneeled down to my level and gave me that look of concern again.

“She requested to remain nameless.”

“Figures,” I said, walking past him and into the house.

I went up to my room and cried until it was time for dinner. When Jeremy came up to get me, he sat on the edge of my bed and scratched my back.

“So it was mom day or whatever?”

“Yeah.”

“Look at it this way, sis. We kind of get to run our own show, you know? The Dads are on top of it, but we don’t have a mother breathing down our necks.”

He was right, but it still didn’t make me feel better. I loved my family, but it wasn’t fair.

“I just hate how they always say ‘Get your mother’s permission’ or ‘Call your mother.’ It’s like I’m constantly reminded, you know?”

“I know,” Jeremy said. “But maybe one day you can have a kid and be your own mother.”

His logic didn’t really make sense, but it satisfied me for the moment.

After dinner that night, we all played charades. It was so funny watching Enrique try to give clues to American shows he barely knew. And Bell and Jeremy would get so competitive. Mostly, though, we laughed.

Now, lying on my bed at the end of a very long day, I listen to the empty house and realize that’s what we’ve been missing. Laughter. For as long as I can remember, Enrique and Bell would always laugh together. They would play tricks on each other, and do impressions, and to me it seemed like they were such a perfect pair. But how well do we really know our parents? With everything going on with my family now, would finding my mother help or hinder the situation?

I think about Rose Lane, from the cookbook, how she and her mother must not have been close. I get it, the love between her and her mother was complicated, but there must have been something else. Did Rose betray her in some way? I can’t imagine the loss Rose must have felt. Still, she found inspiration to cook, and to write. She held her son for a few minutes, just like my mother must have done. Was that a blessing or a curse? Are they one and the same?

I take out the old cookbook and hold it like the psychic did, as if she could never pretend to know its power. I flip to another random page. Next to a drawing of a woman
jumping off a diving board, there’s a recipe called
JOYFUL JAMBALAYA
, and another handwritten note in the margin:

1/14/67

Kurt seemed to like it, but there is something as thick as the jambalaya between us. It used to be so easy, now it’s all so complicated. We never say his name. How could we?