Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakthrough (31 page)

"I didn't kill Ed." The words come out so mangled, we

almost don't catch what she's said. Then she relaxes, sits back down, and looks us straight in our deeply seductive eyes. "I didn't kill him."

  She says it louder that time, and clearly, and we have the odd feeling she believes she's telling the truth. Then she tosses that thick, dark, luscious hair and smiles as if she won the lottery, and we get another feeling—that she's been wanting to say that in public for a long, long time. Immediately we are beside ourselves with confusion. What fun would it be if she really didn't kill Ed as everyone with half a brain knew she did?

  Nothing bores us more than purity of conscience, so we move on.

  "Back to Erin, kind of a mousy little thing. A strange friend for someone like you."

  She laughs, and the sound is beautiful and relaxed, and we realize for all we know about this woman—more than we know about people we've lived next door to for over a decade—we've never heard her laugh.

  "Erin has strength I don't. She left her husband. I didn't have the guts to leave Ed."

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you mean?"

"A suicide, an accident, we don't know."

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"Killing yourself by electrocution? How often does that

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happen?"

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"He was a disturbed person, not a statistic."

"How many people dry their hair while they're still in the

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bath?"

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The brow comes up again. The almond eyes turn hard. We brace ourselves. "How many people refer to themselves in the plural and wear heavy black boots with pink capris?" Ouch. Oh ouch. We are so flattened we actually respect her. A jab worthy of ours truly. Truth be told, we had no idea June could still feel like winter. The boots were a necessity. "What about the house in Kettle, will you sell?"

UTHOR INSIGHT

"Yes. Erin and her fiancé, Jordan, are going to buy it from me."

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Our fabulously accurate instinct perks up. "Or they're going

to get it as a wedding present."

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Bingo. She looks startled. We smile our victorious smile

and move on, because sometimes that's what we do.

"Back to you. Any little Mikes and Vivians on the

horizon?"

"Would I tell you?"

"No." We smile and inhale another few clams, terribly

disappointed that they're nearly gone, and we find that we are

actually enjoying ourselves, and what a surprise that is.

"Are you working? Tell me about a day in the life of

Vivian."

"I keep the books for Mike's business and help him some

times on site. I also teach aerobics three days a week through

the recreation department. They had an opening a month or so

after we moved here."

"What kind of adjustments did you need to make? To Port

land and to being a Mrs."
Mrs
. being a title we have sworn to

avoid for all eternity, we can't help uttering the word kissed

with scorn.

  "And to being Mrs. Curtis?" Oh dear. We asked, didn't we. Let the goo flow, like a mighty river.

"That's been a pleasure."

"Care to elaborate?"

"No." Said with soft tone and glowing eyes and, oh God,

bring us a bucket, except we can't bear the thought of parting with any bit of these clams.

  For the rest of the lunch we are lazy and sinful enough to avoid difficult topics and chat. We are reduced to hysterics a few times by episodes from her life, and yet notice we have not included them even though they could cause her all sorts of delicious complications and embarrassment. In short, we bond. And the lovely M bonds only with those most worthy of us.

  We come back to our hardly sumptuous - enough hotel room and type up the interview and are startled to find that even during the earlier part of the meal, we weren't as hard on Vivian as we were so sure we were going to be. More than that, we are in serious danger of reversing our utter certainty that she killed Ed Branson.

  Even worse, we have lost ourselves—temporarily, you understand—enough to think that were circumstances vastly different—like for one that she did not live anywhere as nonexistent as Portland—we might want to hang with our girl Vivian once in a while.

Lorelei Taylor is dead. Long live Mrs. Michael Curtis.

This is the always fabulous M signing off for another day.

Home Page of Sarah's Website

Hello, and welcome to
www.SarahCooks.com
,
the companion website to my cable cooking show. This week I'll be sharing recipes I'm making for a friend's upcoming wedding. The first is a truly lovely appetizer that has many possible

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cocktail hour.

Some people believe crostini make a suitable appetizer

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for a seated dinner, and I have seen it on many restaurant

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menus, but really, if you want toast with a topping, have it for

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breakfast.

I'm leaving the amounts up to you since you know how

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many guests you have and how hungry you'll be. The boursin

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and arugula are also excellent spread on slices of grilled eggplant and rolled up, or on prosciutto. You can substitute herbed goat cheese, or gussy up plain goat cheese with herbs snipped from your own garden. For the recipe below, please don't use deli roast beef! Roast your own tenderloin medium rare and slice it thin.
Sarah Says
: Life is too short to eat indifferent food.

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Sarah's Crostini

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One baguette Boursin cheese Arugula Thinly sliced rare beef

Slice the baguette and brush the slices with olive oil. Bake or broil until golden brown. Spread thinly with boursin and arrange beef and arugula attractively on top. Drizzle with oil if you'd like—olive, walnut, or grapeseed. Don't waste your truffle oil here. The arugula and cheese are too strongly fl avored.

My next recipe this week is for cookies. These are what I'd call once - in - a - while cookies since they're involved and very rich. I'm making them since my friend doesn't want a cake. She's been married before, and wants absolutely everything to be different about this wedding. So I'll be making these cook

My daughter, Amber, will be making a guest appearance

on the cookie show. When she was little, she'd insist I make the brownies at least twice a month. She's grown into such a lovely young lady, though of course she'd be mortified to hear me say that.

  Back to the cookies—I don't need to tell you a
gain
not to use shortening, do I? Not only is it loaded with trans fats, I swear it actually subtracts flavor from your baking.

Sarah Says
: Use butter or don't bother making it at all.

Sablé

2½ cups sifted fl our

¼ teaspoon baking powder
1 dash salt

1 cup b
utter
, softened 2 teaspoons vanilla

½ cup sifted confectioner's sugar 2 tablespoons milk Seedless raspberry jam

Sift flour, baking powder, and salt. In the bowl of a standing mixer, beat butter, sugar, and vanilla until light and fl uffy. Add flour and milk and stir gently until mixed. Refrigerate dough until easy to handle.

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll dough to one - eighth of an inch or slightly less. Cut out the same number of 2½ - inch circles and 2½ - inch donut shapes. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet 12–15 minutes, until just beginning to brown. Let cool.

  Stir jam to loosen. Spread onto circles and top with donut shapes.

This week's new ingredient
: pomegranate molasses. The pomegranate has become the darling of chefs, have you

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with powerful antioxidants. Our friends in the Middle East

have long known about this wonderful fruit, and of course the

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seeds nearly brought about the doom of Persephone, daughter

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of Mother Earth. But you should look that up if you've forgot

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ten all your Greek mythology.

At any rate, pomegranate molasses, look for it in specialty

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stores or online. It's wonderful stuff, thick and fruity and sour

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sweet. Use it to glaze poultry or lamb (Google for a fabulous Persian recipe using it with lamb and ground almonds), or stir a bit into your chicken broth when making rice.
Sarah Says
:
Please
make your rice with chicken broth. Plain water makes it taste like library paste. Another suggestion: Stir a few tablespoons into your pecan or walnut pie batter, then scatter fresh pomegranate seeds on

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top after it cools from the oven. Superb.

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Finally this week, if you haven't bought yourself several

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silicone baking mats, for heaven's sake run right out and do it

now. I use mine for everything from cookies to bread to pizza

to anything that would make a baked - on or sticky mess of my

pans.

  As always,
e - mail me
with food - related items that catch your fancy, new ingredients or restaurants using them in creative ways, kitchen gadgets or shortcuts, or let me know how you liked any particular program! I'm always happy to hear how well I'm doing.

Love and kisses, Sarah

I was going to marry Joe. I was so excited then to be getting out of my father's clutches. Yeah, well, we all know how that turned out. I'm excited now, and nervous about being a good wife to Jordan, but I'm not at all worried he'll be a bad husband to me. I tease him that he could lie in bed all day belching, and still be wonderful compared to Joe.

  I think about Joe sometimes still, though less than I used to. Definitely on his birthday, on our anniversary, and on the day he died. But there's distance now, and strange as it sounds, it doesn't seem as if he ever really was my husband.

Overall, I'm happy. It actually is possible for me to be

happy, though I have to fight off the panic a lot of times that I don't deserve this. Or that something horrible will happen and I'll be back to being miserable. Dr. Dodson says that's normal. It helps me to think that at least something about me is normal. I'm kidding, really. I'm normal in a lot of ways now; a lot of things don't scare me as much as they used to. But it's nice to know this fear is an irrational fear and not a premonition. I guess you get used to being crapped on by the world to the point where you keep expecting more crap. And I still keep expecting to be punished for what I did to Joe. I guess I'll have to make friends with that guilt. I can't see it going away completely.

  Vivian is coming to my wedding. She warned me there might be media there, too, like that awful M person from
Sleaze
magazine—ha ha, I mean
Squeal
. No one in America really cares that I'm getting married. They'll just want to dig up the story of Joe again.

  Sarah is coming to the wedding, too. She's bringing some guy she's been dating for a while, though mostly she'll fuss around making sure the food is perfect. She insisted on donating everything, which is so amazingly sweet, but means I couldn't stop her making all this fancy stuff that isn't really Jordan and me at all. Anyway, it cracks me up that in her pub

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I decided not. Weddings should be a new, clean beginning,

not a reminder of past messes. She probably wouldn't come,

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anyway. We send Christmas cards every year; that's plenty. I

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have a harder time forgiving her than Joe.

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Letitia will be our ring bearer. She will look adorable. How

she acts will be up to the fates. Her tantrums are spectacular,

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but I even love those. Jordan laughed at me when I videotaped

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one, but I said someday she'll be having them again, at age fourteen, and we'll need to watch this one to remind ourselves we've been through it already and lived. Being her mom is the most amazing gift I've ever gotten except maybe meeting her father. He and I have already decided to adopt a baby boy when the dust settles from getting married. For our honeymoon, Jordan is taking Letitia and me to Dis