When in Doubt, Add Butter (10 page)

“You had your name legally changed from Lutz to Klutz?”

“From Lutz to Klutz? No.”

I bit my tongue, regretting that we were both sounding like a Dr. Seuss rhyme.

He looked at me as if
I
were the one who was crazy. “From Rosenfeld.”

“Wow. Okay.” Honestly, if I could have been sure he wasn’t about to whip out a bowie knife and call it a mitten before slicing my throat with it, I would have stayed just to see where else this conversation would go. “Anyway, Mr. Rosenfeld, it was very nice to meet you.” I started for the door.

“You can call me Klutz.”

I let out a noisy breath. “Right.”

“You have the number, right?”

This was why I used a disposable phone when interviewing potential new clients. So
they
didn’t have
my
number, or any way to find me, if they turned out to be nuts.

“Yes, I do,” I said calmly. “My husband’s waiting downstairs, so I wish you luck with … whatever it is you’re looking for.”

“Geraniums. I’m looking for geraniums.”

I nodded, looking wide-eyed and wishing anyone else were around me to hear the conversation. “Perfect.”

I took the stairs. I did
not
want to take a chance on getting stuck on the elevator in this whack job’s building. But even as I ran down the stairwell, I had to laugh. I had run into some oddballs in my time—it wasn’t all that rare—but that one was up there.

Most
people were normal, or normal-ish. We all have our peculiarities. And just because a potential client falls under the umbrella of
normal,
that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a good fit. A lot of times, it’s clear to both parties that it won’t be.

But I have to say, those oddballs really are the spice of life sometimes.

*   *   *

The next appointment was more promising.

They were a middle-aged couple in southern Chevy Chase, right on the D.C. border. They’d lived there for all their thirty-odd-year marriage and had a solid reputation in the community.

“Can I get you some tea?” Reva, the wife, asked me. “It’s fresh raspberry and basil.”

We were sitting in their huge country kitchen. Every upgrade imaginable had been made, from the professional Wolf stove to the wide Sub-Zero fridge (an oldie but goodie) to the slightly angled cement counter with a movable stainless steel hose over it in order to make cleanup a breeze.

I was
dying
to cook in there.

And if great ingredients and combos, like raspberry and basil, were in the pipeline, it was going to be all that much better. “Wow. Sounds amazing. Thanks.”

“She’s into her witchy concoctions,” her husband, Tom, told me. “Loves to make teas and those smelly sachet things, but I can’t get her to make a salad.” He smiled. “I assume you know your way around a salad?”

“Not a problem.”

“We have an herb garden out back,” Reva said from across the room.

“Of course,” Tom added.

“As well as a very nice selection of lettuces, although I find they grow so slowly that it’s not really an economical choice in a back garden like ours.”

I nodded. “But at least it’s organic.”

“Oh, yes, we try to stick to all organic ingredients.” Reva set a steaming mug in front of me. “Not that I want you to knock yourself out if you’re finding it difficult to procure everything you need without going conventional. It must be difficult to act as a part-time wife in a household where personalities can be so divergent.”

This was so refreshing, I could have cried.

Under the best circumstances, my clients were like family to me. Really, in many ways, they replaced the family I had never had myself. So it was unbelievably lucky to find a perfect fit like Tom and Reva seemed to be. They were kind, sensible, realistic, and having lived here—and with each other—for thirty years, they were arguably creatures of habit, which meant a good shot at job security for me.

Penny always joked that I was a wife-for-hire. She was going to love this story. “Yes,” I agreed. “You just can’t please everyone all the time.” I thought of Peter and Angela and their wildly different diet tastes. “Very often, one person ends up feeling left out and that can create a lot of tension. For
all
of us.”

“I think you’ll find we’re pretty easygoing,” Tom said, and I believed him.

“Speaking of
not
easygoing, we were at one of Marie Lemurra’s parties one time when you cooked,” Reva said, sitting down at the table next to me.

I froze. Marie Lemurra. This had the possibility of turning very bad, very fast. “Were you?”

“Oh, not the stupid
True Wife
one,” Reva said with a laugh that immediately put me at ease. “Don’t worry. She did kick up a storm about you for a couple of days after that, but everyone knew she was trying to save face.”

“I hope that went okay for her,” I said, trying to sound sincere.

“Went better for you,” Tom said.

“She didn’t deserve you,” Reva went on. “Marie liked to take credit for the success of those parties, but everyone knew it was your delicious food that made everyone want to keep coming back.”

My face flushed with pride. “Thank you,” I said, meaning it. “That is so kind of you to say.”

“Kindness has nothing to do with it—it’s the truth. We wanted to steal you and bring you home the first time we saw you. But I bet you hear that all the time.”

“Not really, but it’s very flattering.”

“Tom’s tastes actually tend to run toward the more exotic usually, but…” She shrugged. “What can I say? You completely won him over.”

“So what do you say?” Tom asked. “Are you interested?”

I looked around the kitchen and just knew I had to be as wide-eyed as a kid on Christmas morning. “Very. I think we could be a really good fit.”

They beamed at each other. “I told you she would be perfect,” Reva said.

He chuckled indulgently. “You’re always right about these things.” Then he turned to me. “I suppose you’ll be wanting to see the rest of the package.”

“Is there
more
?” What next? Their very own Whole Foods right in the basement? A full-time barista to serve me coffee and tea while I cooked?

“Honey, there’s
always
more,” he said.

Reva nodded. “He’s not kidding.”

Tom began to work at the buckle of his pants. “Sorry, these are new and they’re a little stiff.”

“Oh!” Reva clapped her hand to her mouth and laughed.

“No pun intended,” he added, wrestling the button free and unzipping the zipper.

What the hell was
happening
?

I know you
think
in a situation like that, you’d just get up immediately and get out of there, but it was so surreal, so
completely
unexpected and inappropriate that my thought process couldn’t keep up with what my eyes were actually seeing.

Until he actually stood up and dropped his trousers.

“We do prefer you don’t stay overnight most of the time,” Reva was saying. “The bed is a king, but three makes for a tight fit when you’re trying to get some rest.”

“I’m sorry.” With surprising calm, I picked up my purse and stood, backing carefully away from the table. “I don’t understand what you’re thinking I’m going to do for you, and I’m really not sure I want to, but—I—” There was just no room for misinterpretation, even though the logical part of my brain told me to search for one. I mean, they could have taken it into a hundred even weirder directions from here, but this—
this
—was clear enough.

This was
never
going to happen.

“I thought you understood we wanted you to take over as a part-time wife,” Reva said, looking genuinely confused. “You just said it yourself.”

“Well. Yeah. I mean.” What
had
I said? Hadn’t I just agreed with their joke reference to my job as being a part-time wife? Yes, Tom had said it must be difficult sometimes. And
I’d
said … Oh, dear God.
I’d
said that it was hard to please everyone and that all too often one person ends up feeling left out.

Oh, gross.

“I think we’ve been at cross-purposes here tonight,” Tom said, very sensibly.

“Yes.” I nodded spastically. “Yes, we have.”

“Oh, dear, I
am
sorry,” Reva said. “So you
don’t
go from the kitchen to the bedroom? Professionally, I mean.”

“No!” Jesus, is
that
what Marie had been saying about me? Where else could they have gotten that impression? I scanned my memory, trying to recall if there had
ever
been an event or party where my role as cook had been open to
any
sort of interpretation.

“This is awkward,” Tom observed.

“Yes.” I clutched my bag closer to me. “I’m going to go now.”

“So sorry for the misunderstanding,” Reva said, walking me to the door, though I would have been
so
much happier if she’d just stayed in the kitchen and I could have run away and never looked back.

“It’s…” What? Okay? No, it wasn’t. On top of everything else, they thought I would cook for them
and
have sex with them for what I had believed had been our agreed-upon price for cooking? Incredibly I managed to feel both shocked that they thought I’d do it at all and insulted that they didn’t think I was worth more. But they were nice people, and it had clearly been an honest mistake. “Don’t … don’t give it another thought.” I smiled pitifully. “I’m going.” I increased my stride and threw the door open.

“Give it some thought, won’t you?” Reva called behind me as I raced down the wooden front steps and toward my car in the darkness. “We’d love to have you!”

I said nothing and pushed the key fob, and my car lights flared to life. Unfortunately, they weren’t bright enough to light up the large divot in the gravel driveway, which I managed to turn my ankle in. No matter, I was like a racehorse, sprinting for the finish line, regardless of the pain of injury. I had to get out of there, and get out fast.

*   *   *

“That’s not how
I
meant it,” Penny said when she finally stopped laughing long enough to spit out a coherent sentence.

This is the kind of mockery you can take only from family, huh?

I shifted the bag of frozen peas I’d gotten from her freezer to put on my bruised ankle. “You probably
caused
this. You put
wife-for-hire
out into the universe and—boom!—suddenly that’s what people expect me to do.”

“The most degrading part of all this is the money.”

“Tell me about it.”

She reached for her water on the coffee table, but her nine months of pregnancy blocked her way. I nudged it closer so she could reach. “Thanks. So do you think Marie Lemurra told everyone that’s what you do?”

“I thought of that, but it doesn’t make her look so great, does it? Anyone who says they hire someone to come in and cook
and
sleep with her husband looks pretty sketchy.”

“She didn’t want to sleep with you, too, huh?”

“Ew, gah, I don’t know. Just—ew.” I shuddered. “Stop talking about it!”

“Oh, honey, I don’t know how we can
ever
stop talking about this!”

“Stop talking about what?” Her husband, Dell, walked into the room with two bottles, one of beer and one of ginger ale. He handed me the beer and handed her the ginger ale. “This sounds like something I want to be in on.”

“Gem just went to interview with some people about cooking for them, and it turns out they thought the price included sex.”

“But not sleeping over,” I added. “Don’t forget that part of it. They wanted to make
really sure
I wasn’t planning on staying over and cramping their style.”

“Huh.” Dell nodded thoughtfully. “How much extra do you usually charge for the sex?”

“Two hundred.”

“That’s the package price, right?”

“Of course.”

He shrugged. “Seems reasonable to me.”

“Oh,
stop.
” Penny playfully batted at him with a decorative pillow. “What if Charlotte overhears?” Charlotte was their seven-year-old daughter.

“She is sound asleep,” he said, sinking down onto the sofa next to Penny and draping an arm around her. “
Knocked out.
That swim party did her in today.”

Penny relaxed under his touch. “Thank goodness.”

I watched them, thinking that, if marriage had seemed to me the way it
looked like
it felt to them, I would have been the happiest girl in the world. In fact, Penny kind of
was
the happiest girl in the world. Her relationship with Dell seemed easy, the companionship undeniable. I could only imagine what it was like to go to sleep with someone I adored so much every night and wake up with him in the morning.

The babies were probably the icing on that cake for them. Butter cream, of course.

They were lucky.

“What’s the matter?” Penny asked, looking at me, concerned.

“What do you mean? Nothing.”

“You just looked upset. Dell didn’t offend you by joking around about your price, did he?”

“No!” I said quickly, just as the idea seemed to take hold in him as well. “God no,” I assured him quickly. “I totally know you were joking. We both were. I was actually thinking about something else.”

“What?” Penny wanted to know.

How jealous I am of your happiness and how alone it sometimes makes me feel
.

How incredibly different my life would be if I’d turned left instead of right all those years ago.

How I wonder if I’ll ever be sure I made the right decision.

“I was thinking,” I said, “that this would be a really good time for you to hurry up and go into labor because of all the unexpected days off I have.”

Penny sighed. “I have tried
everything.
Every single thing I could find that might send me into labor without killing me. Nothing works!”

“Time, my love.” Dell touched his knuckle to her cheek. “Time will work.”