Seeing Me Naked

  “And your father?” the woman blurts. The entire room gasps.

  “I don’t know . . . Dad? Who are your influences?” Rascal casually takes a drink from his water bottle as the entire room shifts in their chairs to get an official look at the great Ben Page. The woman tries to correct the misunderstanding. She tries to spit out that what she meant to ask was whether Rascal was influenced by his father, not who inspired Ben to write. “It’s a misunderstanding,” she yells. Rascal slowly sips. Dad doesn’t move from his languid, leaning position—his arms crossed across his wide chest, his black hair swooping effortlessly over his eyes. His lower lip is forever contorted into a relaxed curl that, when not cradling his beloved pipe, looks like an ominous snarl. How many times have I seen this look? I take a long breath. Finished batting the woman around like a trapped mouse, Rascal has offered the woman up for sacrifice. Dad goes in for the kill.

  “Come to the party, Lady. I named my own kid Raskolnikov. You do the math.” Dad’s voice is smooth as he finishes with a benign smile. Rascal is nodding and laughing to himself. The crowd goes wild. Rascal looks up from the podium. There is the sweetest moment between them. Nothing like the evisceration of an overzealous fan to bring father and son together.

  Our family: bonding through blood sport.

  Chapter Two

  While my father is a literary god, and his son is hailed as the second coming, the only place people read my name is on a menu—and that’s only if they read the asterisk: *pastry chef, Elisabeth Page. I am a pastry chef. And while that might lead one to conjure up visions of chocolate éclairs and cheesecake, I like to think that my creations are a bit less run-of-the-mill.

  I didn’t learn to cook at anyone’s side. I didn’t stand on a child-sized chair and watch the enchantment of a dash of this and a smidgen of that. When I was a kid, we used to go to a little hole-in-the-wall French restaurant on special occasions. The owner would roll out this massive dessert cart at the end of each meal. He wouldn’t even look at Mom and Dad. He’d just turn to Rascal and me and tell us to choose whatever we wanted. When the check came, our desserts were never included in the bill. I thought this man was as close to magic as there was. He made us all feel so enveloped, so loved. My dream was born then.

  One day I asked Mom if I could make my own lunches. I’d come down to the kitchen the night before and stare into the pantry, with its endless possibilities. I loved the snapshot I’d get as I closed the lid over the lunch I’d composed—something that was finished and flawless. The next day at school I’d serve my creations to my friends—little measured offerings of love and acceptance. Envelopment. I knew, even at that young age, that making these beautiful gems every day allowed me to bring comfort and show my love for someone. I could communicate anything I was feeling through food and never have to muddy my hands in the mess of emotion.

  I applied to the Culinary Institute after only one week at Columbia University. I was accepted for the following year and giddily told Columbia I wouldn’t be coming back for my sophomore year. I got confused phone calls from my mom, my dad, my academic adviser, and my high school guidance counselor. Rascal finally called two weeks later to ask if he could crash on my couch for a few weeks while he got his head together. Some things never change.

  I decided to go into pastry when a visiting chef used the phrase “to taste” in reference to the amount of salt required for the complicated soufflé he was making. It was my second week at culinary school.

  “Is it a tablespoon? Teaspoon? Quarter of a tablespoon?” I asked, pencil at the ready. I noticed that the other students were becoming uncomfortable. Well, I thought, a little discomfort now at my expense will certainly pay off when our soufflés don’t taste like a fucking salt lick during exams.

  “Chef Page, cooking is about taste—it’s not an exact science. That’s really the beauty of it, don’t you think?” He smiled smugly, certain he’d just given me the nugget of brilliance that would fuel my entire culinary career. I immediately made plans to go into another branch of the culinary arts that didn’t condone such reckless abandon.

  Chef Canet recruited me as head pastry chef for Beverly after he tasted my creations at a tiny bouchon in Lyon, France, where I apprenticed after graduating from the institute. In France, “apprentice” meant I was lucky to do anything in the kitchen during the day and extremely fortunate to scour copper pots with lemon and salt late into the night. My culinary instruction consisted of hurried moments when I was herded into the tiniest of kitchens and shouted at in French to slice this, garnish that, or clean that up. I’d never felt so invigorated or alive. I was paid next to nothing. I slept in a closet-sized room in the pastry chef’s house when I wasn’t working and saw very little of Lyon outside of that closet and the kitchen of the bouchon. After close to two years as a kitchen slave, I was allowed to assist the pastry chef on rare occasions. I learned French as quickly as I could, and kept my head down and my hands busy.

  Always the trendsetter, Chef Canet opened his first restaurant in Los Angeles. He felt there was an untapped clientele just waiting for him there. That, and his ex-wives and lovers pretty much littered the streets of New York, Las Vegas, and France. L.A. would be a clean slate for him. For me, it meant going home.

  I back into the restaurant, balancing the flat of peaches I purchased on the way in this morning at the local farmer’s market, along with another embarrassingly complicated coffee drink containing far too much espresso. My BlackBerry is pressed against my ear as I try to listen to Mom’s message. This could take days.

  “Elisabeth? Where are you? Well, give me a call back. It was lovely seeing you the other week at the reading, sweetie. I’m so glad you could make it. We’ve arrived at the Montecito house. I need to know when we can expect you. Will you be joining us for lunch or dinner, darling? Sweetheart, pick up. Okay, well . . . be sure to call so I can have Iris set a place for you. Your brother is already here. He’s brought a girl. This one’s name is Sarah or something. Samantha. Doesn’t matter, I suppose—we won’t have to remember it for long. Dear, are you there? Okay, well, see you soon, darling.” Mom still believes I have one of those old-timey answering machines somehow hooked up to my BlackBerry and that I can listen to it like a speakerphone.

  I beep the BlackBerry off and refocus. Saturday night at Beverly, one of the hottest restaurants in Los Angeles. A night of satisfying the bland yet pompous palates of out-of-towners, playing host to birthday or anniversary dinners, and trying not to upset any already awkward first dates. What this means for me: Everyone wants dessert. When the locals come into the restaurant during the week, they don’t usually order dessert. This is L.A., after all.

  “Chef Page, come here. Now.” Chef Canet doesn’t look up—his demands are always heeded, his words always heard. I hurry over to him, still trying to balance the flat of peaches, my coffee, and the BlackBerry. When he’s not on a book tour or in a photo shoot or on a morning news show—this breaks down to about once a month—Chef Canet swans into the kitchen, announcing that he must improve the quality of the food in his restaurant. This announcement always leads to a night of displaced chefs, melodramatic (and spectacularly explosive) faux firings, and an amped-up tension that rivals the front lines of battle. Tonight Chef has taken over the fish specialist’s station. He is slicing the feature with the precision of a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. He has never ventured over to the pastry corner—not his thing, he says.

  “Put that down,” Chef says. I set the flat of peaches in the walk-in refrigerator. I throw my purse, phone, and coffee down at my station and nod a quick hello to Samuel, my first assistant. He is buttoned up tight in his chef’s jacket. His coffee-colored skin matches his tight curls perfectly. Julie, my second assistant, whizzes past me on her way to the employee lockers. She nods hello, and I can smell the sharp after-waft of the patchouli oil she insists on slathering on every morning. Julie is far enough away from Chef Canet that her signature scent is allowed. Truth be told, Chef Canet
could use a signature scent besides the one he seems so fond of: all-night bender and poor dental hygiene. Nonetheless, I’ve trained myself to exhale as Julie passes.

  “Yes, Chef?” I straighten my chef’s jacket as I approach him. Physically, he has a softness that’s quite misleading. At first glance he seems young, wide-eyed, naive, even. But upon closer inspection, his stark blue eyes are bloodshot and his bitten-down fingernails are raw and scraggly. His lean six-foot frame never betrays his love of food; the two heart attacks he’s had in his thirty-seven years weren’t due to overconsumption of food. Overconsumption of something, but not food.

  “We will do salmon tonight. I could not pass it up, yes? It was fresh. What do you have, then, for the dessert feature?” The beautiful cadence of his French accent makes his request sound almost melodic. Saturdays we usually do a veal feature. But no problem. I can understand not being able to pass up the fresh salmon.

  “I could do an almond cake with some of the mission figs from yesterday,” I think out loud.

  “Good. Now go,” he says from behind his greasy strands of dark hair, never taking his eyes off the luscious fish. Pleasantries are the first victim in a streamlined kitchen.

  “Thank you, Chef,” I say, quickly retreating to my corner of the kitchen. Ten thousand thoughts are blurring together in my brain. The presence of Chef Canet in the kitchen tonight has thrown me off my game. I’ve been formulating this peach feature for weeks, and now I have to all but scrap it. Balancing taste profiles is an art. Peach and salmon together are a bit too Bobby Flay for my taste. I haven’t packed for my trip up north to Montecito. I’m not even sure I even want to go up north first thing in the morning. I make an executive decision to do the almond and fig cake and keep the peach feature as well. The fallout from this decision and the stress that it will cause will help me avoid thinking about tomorrow. A silver lining, if you will. I breathe deeply and welcome the calm that will come once I get my hands deep in a dessert.

  George, the sommelier, catches up with me and asks if I could try the wine he’s chosen to pair with the peach feature. As we approach, Julie immediately straightens up, then whips her long strawberry-blond hair wildly over her head in a bizarre heavy-metal video move straight out of 1986.

  “Bonjour, George, comment ça va?” Julie spouts her newly acquired Berlitz French like a freshman psychology major telling everyone they’re “projecting.” I’m not quite sure why Julie feels the need to speak French to the very American George. It just doesn’t pack the same punch as if French were his native language. Trifles, I’m sure. I toy with the idea of speaking Latin to shake things up a bit for the old girl. Not much of a plan when all I’d be able to say would be e pluribus unum and carpe diem.

  “Not bad, Julie. Chef Page? The wine?” George says in perfect English as he presents me with a pristine glass containing just the correct amount of wine. I announce that another dessert feature has been added. Samuel and Julie take note of the changes and scurry away in search of the items needed for one more dish than was expected. George writes down the new feature as he anxiously awaits the verdict on his wine, obviously realizing he has yet another pairing to figure out.

  I swirl the wine around and give it a delicate sip. Julie is back and prepping the bread pudding, a mainstay of our menu. She has put her hair back into a ponytail and has tucked it under a gingham handkerchief. Samuel returns and switches on the large mixer, beginning our almond cake. I’ve never seen him show this kind of enthusiasm or flair anywhere else. Samuel’s passion for life is funneled into each and every dessert he makes. I swish the wine. It needs something.

  “It’s a little . . . No. Julie? Grab me . . . No, those . . . the peaches. I just took them from the . . . No, fresh from the walk-in.” Julie starts and stops with each one of my demands. Her obnoxious air of being the perpetual hall monitor and resident toady is almost as bad as the patchouli oil. “Stop. I’ll just do it myself,” I say, not looking up.

  While this is going on, Samuel, unbidden, goes back to the walk-in and brings a succulent ripe peach to our station. He quickly washes and slices the peach and sets it in front of me.

  “There, Chef.” He wipes his knife, swipes off the cutting board with a cloth, and resumes his attentions to the almond cake. Julie stands there with her mouth slightly open, her eyes narrowed. A kitchen at this level is always highly competitive. Julie just lost that round to Samuel, and she knows it. She will do one of two things—try to best him later on tonight or sabotage something of his in the very near future. Samuel better gird his loins. But if I know Samuel, he’s already donned an athletic supporter.

  I stagger home to my apartment around two in the morning. The phone is ringing as I fumble for my keys. I’m officially exhausted and still have to pack for the two days I’ll be spending at my parents’ Montecito house.

  At this hour, my first thought is that someone (read: Rascal) is dead and the faceless caller would like me to come down to the station to identify the body. But then I remember that there is one other person who calls this late. I finally get the door unlocked and walk over to my desk where the phone is. I knock over an empty water bottle and somehow manage to turn on my printer as I scramble for the phone in the dark. “Hello?”

  “Do you know what the answer to any question you ask me is going to be from now on? It’s ingenious, really.”

  If I didn’t know it was Will, the voice on the other end would be disturbing. Will’s full name is William Dryden Houghton III. As a child, he tried to convince the other kids at school that his middle name was actually Dragon—William Dragon Houghton III. But since the gymnasium was dedicated to the first William Dryden Houghton, the game was up before it began.

  Will’s vowels are drawn out, and the deep layers in that velvety smooth voice are just sufficient to paint the picture of the man behind this late-night phone call. The last time I saw him, his yellow-y blond hair was cut short, as it usually is. The blue of his eyes is comparable to a painter’s appreciation of the color, true and bright, unlike the dull versions one usually finds in real life. The All-American Boy.

  “Take some penicillin and call me in the morning?” I say, my shoulders loosening up. Our witty banter is a studied match that always borders on a bad Tom Stoppard play. I walk over to the lamp at the foot of my bed and turn it on. I run my finger along the stark white shade. I’ll have to dust tomorrow before my run.

  “Twelve beers,” Will says. I walk over to the kitchen, bend down, and locate the feather duster under the sink. I can’t help myself.

  “As in . . .” I tuck the cordless phone into the nook between my shoulder and jaw. I quickly dust the lamp shade. Better now than later. “Why, Will Houghton, how have you passed the time between connecting flights?”

  Will pauses and, with perfect comic timing, intones, “Twelve beers.” I can hear the announcement of a plane departing in the background as I put the feather duster back under the kitchen sink.

  “Where are you?” I walk into the bathroom and flip on the light, catching sight of my reflection. Dark circles under my eyes. My hair is up in some attempt at a ponytail. I can still smell the kitchen on me.

  “Twelve beers,” Will answers.

  “Funny,” I dismiss.

  “I’m at JFK, on a layover from Heathrow. It’s fucking freezing here.” As usual, I have no idea where Will was or where he’s going. He could be on his way to the farthest corners of the earth or my apartment, I never know. He continues, “But I’ll be home in time to drive up for your parents’ thing.” My breath catches. His mom, Anne, has a house minutes from my parents’ place. This trip just got a lot more interesting.

  “How did you even know about that?” I ask. The autumn chill has crept into my apartment. I love every warm blankety moment of it.

  “Twelve beers.” Will is very pleased with himself. I hear him exhale.

  “You’re smoking again?” I ask, quickly taking off my chef’s whites and putting them into the washer. I found th
is great European stacked washer/dryer that takes up no space at all. I pull my running gear out of the dryer and set it out on the chair for tomorrow morning.

  “Smoking still. I’m smoking still.”

  “Didn’t you try to quit? Why did you take it up again?” Actually, I can’t remember ever seeing Will without a cigarette. At twelve years old, he stole Marlboro Reds from the tennis pro’s gym bag. Will has since graduated to the far more elite Gauloises brand, pronouncing that Marlboro Reds are for fake cowboys and strippers. I guess stealing cigarettes from your mother’s lover might be construed as rebellious. But for Will, it was another attempt to get some kind of attention other than the long depositions, meetings with lawyers, and hearings to decide custody of a child whom each parent seemed to want only because the other one did.

  “Twelve beers,” he says again. This little game is becoming tiresome.

  “You know, I have a question for you,” I ask.

  “Oh yeah?” Will bites.

  “You want to know what makes someone wholly unfunny?” I ask.

  “Twelve beers?” Will answers.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Come by my parents’ place tomorrow before you go to your parents’. We’ll . . . talk,” Will invites.