The Glass Kitchen (2 page)

One day Portia whipped up a mixed-up mess of sweet potatoes and asparagus, two items that never went together. But somehow, the way she made it, had people ordering more. Just as she served up the last portion, in walked the young lawyer and up-and-coming Texas state senator Robert Baleau, and her world shifted. Despite being born and raised in Willow Creek, he was as foreign to Portia as if he’d moved there from Greece. He was from the opposite side of town, from a world of debutante balls and heirloom pearls. With his sandy blond hair and laughing blue eyes, he charmed her, moved her with his devotion to serving the people, not to mention her.

Soon he began taking her with him as he traveled around the county to political functions. People all over the region loved Portia and said that she made a pretty boy more real. All she cared about was that she adored Robert.

The day he proposed, she threw her arms around him before she could think twice. “Yes, yes, yes!” she said as he laughed and twirled her around.

Surprisingly, Robert’s wealthy parents approved. It was Gram who didn’t.

“They’ll hurt you,” Gram said, scowling. “You’re not part of their world, and you never will be.”

But with every day that passed, more and more of Robert’s world embraced Portia Cuthcart, the girl who grew up in a double-wide—even if the fancier people weren’t particularly comfortable talking about The Glass Kitchen or the legendary Gram.

As the wedding grew near, another shift began, as slow as thyme breaking through the earth in spring. Robert began to notice that Portia knew things. At first, he laughed them off. But soon he began to tense every time she knew she needed to bake or cook something—like his mother’s favorite lemon bars just before she invited Portia over for tea. Or tuna casserole in a tinfoil pan, the kind perfect for freezing and giving to someone in need—just before a neighbor’s wife died.

One morning Portia woke knowing she had to make long, thick strands of pulled taffy that she wove into thin lengths of rope. Robert walked into the kitchen and came to a surprised stop when he saw the braided candy spread across the kitchen counter along with everything else she had known she needed. “This is unnatural,” he said quietly.

Confused, Portia blinked. “What’s unnatural about whipped cream, Saran Wrap, and ropes of taffy?”

She was almost certain Robert blushed and looked uncomfortable. “Portia, sweet, normal women don’t know things that other people are thinking.”

“My grandmother knows.” Portia kept her hands moving, twisting the taffy before it could stiffen.

“I rest my case. If anyone isn’t normal, it’s your grandmother.”

Her hands stilled. “Robert. There is nothing wrong with Gram. And there is nothing wrong with me.”

He blinked, then blurted, “You’re telling me that after I had sexual thoughts this afternoon, and you went out and put together the very things I fantasized about, that that’s normal?”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, his eyes widened. Portia was shocked, too, but then she laughed. “You were fantasizing about me? Me and ropes of taffy and whipped cream?”

She let her laughter turn into a sexy smile; then she wiped her hands and walked over to him. For half a second, the good Christian politician started to succumb, but then he took her hands and gave them a reassuring little squeeze, placing them against his heart. “I want to marry you, Portia. But I need you to be like other women. I need you to … not bake pies before the church announces a bake sale. I need you to be
normal.
Can you do that for me?”

Portia was stunned into silence.

Robert kissed her on the brow and refused to discuss it any further. She knew to his mind it was a simple yes-or-no question.

Since it was Monday, The Glass Kitchen was closed. As soon as Robert left, Portia went in search of her grandmother, needing to talk. Something had been off with Gram recently. Great-aunt Evie had died only a month before, leaving the town house to the girls. They all missed her, but with Gram it was as if a piece of her had died along with her sister.

Portia walked into the kitchen and realized that Gram wasn’t there in the same second that another bout of knowing buckled her over at the waist.

Heart pounding, she started to prepare the meal that hit her so hard. Her famous cherry tomatoes stuffed with chile, cheese, and bacon, along with pulled pork, endive slaw, and potato pancakes with homemade catsup. She cooked, knowing she could do nothing else, though she was surprised when she realized she needed to set the table for only one.

Gram must have gone out for the day without telling her. But ten minutes after Portia sat down to eat, Gram walked into the kitchen from the back parking lot. At the sight of the meal and single place setting, Gram had to steady herself on the counter’s edge.

Portia leaped up and started gathering another plate and silverware.

“No need,” Gram said, setting her handbag down, then headed out of the kitchen.

Portia raced after her, but at the doorway to her grandmother’s bedroom, Gram turned and pressed her dry hand to Portia’s cheek. “It’s time. I should have known you’d learn the knowing whether I taught you or not.”

“What are you talking about?”

Gram smiled then, a resigned smile. But she didn’t answer. She shut the bedroom door.

Portia returned to the kitchen and paced, hating that she didn’t know what the meal meant. An eerie sense of dread rushed through her. She decided that if Gram wanted to go somewhere, she wouldn’t let her take the car. She wouldn’t allow her near the stove or the knives. She would keep her safe from whatever might be coming, anything that could have been predicted by the single place setting.

It was summer and hot, the painfully blue afternoon sky parched by heat and humidity. Gram didn’t return to the kitchen until nearly four o’clock.

Portia jumped and ran across the hard-tile floor. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s time for you to take over The Glass Kitchen for good.”

“What? No!”

Portia kept trying to solve whatever was wrong. But that ended when Gram stepped around her and headed for the back door of The Glass Kitchen.

“Where are you going?”

Gram didn’t retrieve her handbag or keys. There was nothing Portia could take away to keep her from leaving.

“Gram, you can’t leave!”

Gram didn’t listen. She walked out the door, Portia following, pleading, “Gram, where are you going?”

But what Portia hadn’t expected was that her grandmother would stop abruptly underneath the suddenly stormy Texas sky and raise her hands high. Lightning came down like the crack of God’s hand, quick and reaching, striking Gram.

Shock, along with electricity, surged through Portia, knocking her off her feet like a rag doll thrown to the dirt by an angry child. Her blouse ripped at the shoulder, blood marking the white material like a brand.

The rest was a blur—people hurrying to them, the ambulance screaming into the yard. What stood out was that Portia knew she was responsible. If only she hadn’t cooked the meal. If only she had set the table for two instead of one. If only she hadn’t allowed her grandmother to walk out the door. If only she had never had even a glimpse of the knowing.

But
if onlys
didn’t change anything. Gram was gone, all because of a meal Portia hadn’t even begun to understand but had prepared.

Standing in the dirt lot, The Glass Kitchen behind her, Portia promised herself she wouldn’t cook again.

A month later, she married Robert, then began shaping herself into the perfect Texas politician’s wife, erasing everything she could of herself until she was a blank slate of polite smiles and innocuous conversation. She slammed the lid shut on the knowing.

And became normal.

Second Course

Soup

Crab and Sweet Corn Chowder

Two

T
HE SOUND OF TRAFFIC
woke Portia.

Minutes ticked by before she realized where she was. New York City, on the Upper West Side, in the garden apartment of Great-aunt Evie’s old town house, three years after her wedding, a month after her divorce from Robert Baleau.

Portia rolled over, covering her head with the pillow.

For the last three years, she had closed the door on visions of food until she had practically forgotten her unnerving ability was there. She’d worked hard to be like everyone else.

To be normal.

She groaned into the pillow. The only way she could be called normal was if normal meant stupid, not to mention naive. Why hadn’t she realized that her husband didn’t want her anymore? Why hadn’t she figured out that the only real reason he wanted her at all was to make him seem more appealing to voters? More than that, why hadn’t she known he would be so callous in getting rid of her after he’d come home and told her he wanted a divorce?

Not long after Robert had secured his place in politics, the supposedly good Christian politican developed a wandering eye, or maybe just gave in to it. Naturally, she had been the last to hear the whispers. But what she definitely hadn’t heard until after the divorce papers were set in front of her was that the real reason he needed a divorce was because he had gotten one of his aides pregnant.

When the surprisingly quick divorce came through, she had fled Texas in a storm of devastation and betrayal, finding herself shipwrecked on the island of Manhattan, with nothing more than the two hastily packed suitcases and her grandmother’s cherished Glass Kitchen cookbooks—thrown in even though she didn’t want them.

Rolling back over, she tossed the pillow aside. She had arrived in New York City a month ago, but she had been in Great-aunt Evie’s town house only since late last night, using an old key she had kept on her key chain. Before Evie had died, she had divided the town house up into three apartments, two of which she had rented out for income. Upon her death, one apartment had gone to each of the sisters.

Cordelia and Olivia had sold their floors. Before the divorce, Robert had wanted to sell her floor, too, with the garden out back, but she had never signed the contract. Thank God. While she was having a hard time imagining herself living in New York City, she wasn’t crazy. Staying in Texas, where Robert and his pregnant new wife had already started to rule her world, was an awful thought. Here in New York, she had something of her own. Everything was going as well as could be expected, given that her bank account was nearly as bare as Great-aunt Evie’s kitchen cupboards.

The early morning air in New York was far cooler than it would have been in Texas, especially in the ancient bathroom, where the windows barely shut out the chilly gusts. Portia braced her hands on the old-fashioned sink, looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were still a deep violet blue, but the circles beneath them hinted at the stress that kept her awake at night. A year ago, she’d had sensibly cut, shoulder-length blond hair—perfect for a Texas politician’s wife—tamed by a blow-dryer, hair spray, and a velvet headband. She scoffed. She’d been a cliché of big hair, sure, but what was she now? An even bigger cliché of the wronged wife kicked out of her own bed by her husband and the ex–best friend whom she herself had convinced Robert to hire as an aide. As her life spiraled out of control, so had her hair, growing and curling as it had when she was a child.

She turned on the old-fashioned spigot, the pipes clanging before spitting out a gush of water that she splashed on her face. Then she froze when her head filled with images of cake, thick swirls of buttercream frosting between chocolate layers. Her breath caught, her fingers curling around the sink edge. It had been three whole years since she’d been hit by images of food. But she knew the images were real—or would be if she allowed the
knowing
to take over.

She shook her head hard. She was normal now. The knowing was in the past. She hadn’t done so much as toast a slice of bread in the last three years.

But the feeling wouldn’t leave her alone, and with a groan she realized that the knowing was back, as if her move to New York, to this town house, had chiseled away every inch of normalcy she had cobbled together.

The images swirled through her. She needed to bake. Cake. A layered chocolate cake. With vanilla buttercream frosting.

The images were as clear as four-color photos from a coffee table book on baking. She could taste the mix of vanilla, butter, and cream whipped into a sugar frosting as if she had spooned it into her mouth. The chocolate smelled so real that a chill of awareness ran along her skin, pooling in her fingertips. She itched to bake.

But the last thing she needed in her life right now was to contend with something else she couldn’t control.

She fought harder, but another bit of knowing hit. It wasn’t just baking. She needed to cook, too. A roast.

She pressed one of her great-aunt’s threadbare white towels to her face, resisting the urge. She had devoted the last three years to being the perfect wife. She had let her grandmother’s Glass Kitchen go, closing the doors for good and selling the property for next to nothing to a developer who only wanted the land, splitting the money with her sisters. Her job had been to be at her husband’s side at any function. Given that she had signed a prenuptial agreement, and with the meager settlement Robert had yet to pay her, she barely had two pennies to rub together. The last thing she needed to do was to waste money preparing a big meal. But the need wouldn’t let go, and with a shudder gasp she gave in completely, the last of her crumbling walls coming down. Flowers, she realized. She needed flowers, too.

The knowing was rusty, coming at her in fits and starts, much like the water sluicing unevenly out of the faucet. Groaning, Portia dressed in jeans instead of a conservative skirt, and a big sweater instead of a silk blouse. She found flowered Keds in her great-aunt’s closet, which she dusted off to wear rather than sensible heels. She wasn’t Mrs. Robert Baleau anymore. She was Portia Cuthcart again, having taken back her maiden name.

The goal, her grandmother always said in the few times she actually said anything about the knowing, was to give in to the simple act of doing and have faith that eventually everything would make sense.