The Glass Kitchen Page 24

  The bell rang, and Cordelia walked in, dressed in a casual way that wasn’t Cordelia at all.

  “Why didn’t you answer my e-mail?” Cordelia said. Then, like Olivia, she took in Portia’s attire. “What’s going on?”

  Cordelia glanced back into the living room and saw the table settings. The two older sisters exchanged a wary glance.

  “You had to make a meal,” Olivia said, her voice hard.

  “I hate this!” Cordelia said.

  Olivia scoffed. “How is it possible that you, who pushed Portia back into the knowing, are acting like this is a surprise? You know the weird meals you get with the knowing. It’s not her fault.”

  “Look at me!” Cordelia exclaimed, gesturing to her clothes. “Based on that table, this is a dinner for more than just the three of us. I look like a bag lady.” She glared at Portia. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “You should have known,” Olivia said. “The e-mail said ‘Dear Friends and Family.’ When was the last time Portia had us over for dinner with that kind of an invitation? I should have known.”

  Portia’s smile flatlined, her heart leaping into her throat.

  The bell rang again and Ariel burst in. “Miranda can’t come. She got Dad to let her stay with a friend.”

  More bad news. Miranda was supposed to be there.

  Ariel didn’t look any happier than Portia felt. But before Portia could ask about Miranda, the smell of burning potatoes hit her.

  “Oh, no!”

  She was barely aware that Helen Kane and Anthony were at the door before she dashed into the kitchen. She couldn’t think of anything right then, other than saving the meal.

  Thirty-one

  ARIEL SLIPPED OUT of Portia’s living room, escaping the suddenly crowded apartment, the smell of weird, burned potatoes stinging her nose. She snuck out the back door, then up three brick steps leading to the town house’s garden. She curled up in an oversized sweater she’d found up on the storage floor, one that must have been her dad’s. She tucked herself out of sight, huddling against the growing cold, her thick wool, multicolored socks with toes shoved into a wild pair of boots that she had been certain Portia would love. Except Portia had been too worried about her cooking to notice.

  She tucked her chin against her knees. She was starting to feel as if she was really losing it. Sure, she had beaten back the Shrink’s questions and not spilled her guts. But it didn’t mean she’d stopped thinking. In fact, she couldn’t stop thinking, and all her thoughts were weird. Like why was her sister being so awful.

  “Miranda,” she said to the empty garden, “why can’t you just give Dad a break?”

  Like that would work. Miranda would just slam the bedroom door in her face.

  Plus, she didn’t even feel like talking to Miranda, because she felt a little guilty about reading her journal. Which she was now mostly doing to learn anything she could about her family. The problem with that was that every time she dug Miranda’s diary out from underneath the mattress, she found out that her sister was getting deeper and deeper into trouble. Miranda was determined to be friends with the popular kids, and that meant doing whatever the creep Dustin wanted her to do. But it wasn’t as if Ariel could do anything with that information. She wasn’t a snitch. She wasn’t a spy.

  But, seriously, how was it possible Miranda could be so stupid?

  Voices coming from inside Portia’s apartment caught her attention.

  “Mother, just tell Gabriel to give me the money!”

  “What, so you can leave?”

  Ariel peeked back in through the door and saw her uncle and grandmother standing not two feet inside the living room. No one else was in sight. The sisters had have been in the kitchen. Ugh. The last person Ariel wanted to talk to was her uncle, but still, her grandmother’s question made her curious. Uncle Anthony wanted to leave? Already?

  “You’ve been gone for over a year, Anthony. Why can’t you stay and get a job here in the city?”

  “I don’t need my mother or brother to take care of me, or make decisions for me. I’m a grown man!”

  “Then act like one!”

  Ariel couldn’t see Uncle Anthony’s face because his back was to her, but he must have been really mad, because suddenly Nana was hanging on his arm in a massively pathetic way.

  “I’m sorry, Anthony. I didn’t mean it. I just wish you wouldn’t stay away so long.”

  Nana made a sad weepy sound that almost—almost—made Ariel feel sorry for her, except the woman was so completely awful to Dad and not to Anthony. It wasn’t fair.

  “I feel that the only reason you come back is to get money from Gabriel.”

  “He owes me!”

  Nana sighed. “Fine. Then sign his papers and he’ll pay you.”

  “A pittance. No thanks. I’m not leaving until he pays up, big-time. And not until he hands this apartment over to me. That was the deal. The money and the apartment. It was supposed to be mine! I saw the papers, for God’s sake. He’s already bought the damned place. All he has to do is sign it over to me!”

  “Keep your voice down! You promised to stay quiet until he got it worked out with Portia.”

  Ariel frowned. The apartment was supposed to be Anthony’s?

  “What are you talking about?”

  But it wasn’t Nana or Uncle Anthony who spoke this time. Ariel practically fell into the apartment as she swung her head toward the kitchen. Portia stood there, frozen, holding a smoking pan of burned chicken with two oven mitts, her brow furrowed as she looked back and forth between Nana and Anthony.

  “What are you talking about?” Portia repeated. “The apartment is mine, not Gabriel’s, and certainly not yours, Anthony.”

  Only then did Ariel notice that Portia wasn’t the only person who had shown up unexpectedly in the living room. Her dad stood just inside the front door, looking totally like he was going to kill someone.

  Thirty-two

  THE MEAL was ruined.

  The chicken had burned; the mashed potatoes were a sea of soupy lumps; the biscuits were charred rocks of hardened dough.

  Portia held the pan of burned chicken and tried to understand what Anthony was saying. She took in the fury on Gabriel’s face and the guilty delight on his brother’s as they both looked at her.

  “That’s right, Portia,” Anthony said, swiveling his head to smile at his older brother. “When Gabriel bought the apartment, he promised it to me.”

  “Damn it, Anthony,” Gabriel bit out.

  Portia blinked as she tried to make sense of it. She looked at Gabriel. “But the apartment isn’t yours. I didn’t go through with the sale.”

  Gabriel dragged a hand through his hair, and suddenly the pieces came together like a Rubik’s Cube settling into place.

  Her mouth fell open. “That’s impossible! I never signed the documents.”

  He stared at her, and she could see the way he willed things to be different. “The papers were signed, Portia. And notarized.”

  Her knees went weak, recognizing the truth. Suddenly, a lot of things made sense. Gabriel demanding to know what she was doing in the apartment. All the times he had started to say something, only to cut himself off.

  Robert must have gone through with the sale by forging her signature.

  Portia felt sick, angry, and betrayed. What’s more, with each piece of the puzzle that fell into place, this meal made more and more sense.

  Burned chicken for betrayal by Robert, who had not only sold the only thing she owned, but had also kept the money.

  Soupy potatoes for a relationship with Gabriel that had no true bond.

  Coleslaw she had mixed with dressing that went bad for a Glass Kitchen in New York, a sour idea from the start.

  Rock-hard rolls for a stubborn woman who had repeatedly refused to make a meal that would have led her much earlier to a greater truth—the reality that when she had seen Gabriel, and the shimmering images of fried chicken and sweet jalapeño mustard had come to her
, it had foretold disaster between her and Gabriel Kane.

  “Welcome to my world, babe,” Anthony said with a laugh. “My brother does what he wants, when he wants, regardless of how many people he hurts in the process.”

  “Fuck,” Gabriel ground out.

  “Is that why you let her stay here, big brother? So you could fuck her?”

  Portia’s head jerked up just in time to see Gabriel fly across the room. Anthony’s eyes went wide.

  “Gabriel, no!” their mother shouted.

  Gabriel ignored her, jerking Anthony up and throwing him against the wall. “Damn you!” he roared.

  Anthony lunged back at Gabriel, screaming. But he was no match for the bigger man. Gabriel had him pinned to the wall in a moment. “You leave Portia out of this.”

  “What in the world is going on here?”

  Portia jerked around. A man she had never seen before stood at the open front door.

  The newcomer’s face was wrinkled with distaste. “I’m a New York City inspector conducting an unannounced property visit. Our office was notified that someone is illegally running a retail establishment out of a ground-floor residential building.” He glanced around. “Based on the sign in the window and the posted hours, I’d say the report is correct.” His mouth twisted. “A restaurant and, what, a fight club?”

  The inspector walked straight in and began snapping photos—of The Glass Kitchen sign, the daily menu. He also snapped the shocked faces and Anthony’s bloody nose. He had an unobstructed view straight into the kitchen, the pots and pans lined up on the counter like shipwrecks on a worn linoleum sea.

  “I can explain,” Portia said hurriedly, stumbling over to the table and dropping the pan of chicken down.

  “Don’t bother. Save your explanations for zoning court.”

  Thirty-three

  ARIEL SAT ON the edge of her bed, shoes hooked over the side bedrail, her feet jiggling as she tried her hardest to calm down. After the disaster downstairs, she had flown to her room to get away. She hadn’t left since.

  Things were getting worse. Anthony and Dad fighting. Some inspector guy showing up. Portia getting in trouble.

  But the worst was seeing the look on Portia’s face when she learned that she didn’t own her apartment. Talk about surprise. Ariel had been as surprised as Portia. How come none of them had known? And why hadn’t her dad said something sooner?

  Just then there was a strange noise outside her bedroom door. Miranda giggled, tiptoeing down the hallway toward her own bedroom, even though she was supposed to be spending the night with a friend. Ariel started to confront her, but then she heard someone else laugh, the sound deeper, and she knew it was a boy.

  “Shhh!” Miranda whispered, with another giggle.

  “I’m being quiet. You’re the one making all the noise.”

  Dustin. Ariel realized that Miranda was giving in to the guy. She was going to have sex, right there in their house, their dad somewhere downstairs, probably in his study.

  Her legs started jiggling again as she heard Miranda’s door click shut, then louder, muffled giggling. She fell back on the mattress and planted the pillow over her head.

  Minutes ticked by. A muffled quiet. Slowly, Ariel started to breathe again and she pulled the pillow away. She hated to think what the silence meant.

  But then something worse happened.

  “Miranda?”

  Ariel gasped, and leaped off the bed and raced to her door, flinging it open. But it was too late.

  Her dad stood in front of her sister’s closed door. “Miranda, open this door right now.”

  “Go away!”

  Dad grabbed the door handle, but it was locked. He pounded on the hard wood. “Open this door,” he demanded, banging on the door.

  “No! I hate you! You ruin everything!”

  Dad didn’t wait another second. He was a big guy, strong. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when he rammed his shoulder into the door and it crashed open.

  It looked like the movies, the sound awful, like a huge, splintering crack that went straight to Ariel’s gut. She could hardly believe what she was watching. What had happened to her normal family?

  “What in the hell is going on here?”

  “Whoa, dude!”

  “Don’t you fucking ‘dude’ me, you degenerate. Get the hell away from my daughter.”

  “Dad! This is my room! You can’t just barge in here!”

  “I am your father. You will do what I say!”

  Ariel figured her dad must be looking way scary, because the next thing she knew, Dustin was dashing down the hall, pulling on his shirt, his belt unbuckled. She felt even sicker now.

  “I hate you!” Miranda shouted the words so loud that Ariel could practically hear her spit.

  “So you said!” Dad bellowed back.

  Then he pulled a deep breath. “Damn it, Miranda. What do you think you’re doing? You’re barely sixteen years old.”

  “Dustin loves me! And I love him!”

  “Dustin is a hormonal asshole who just wants to get laid!”

  Ariel squeezed her eyes shut. Who was the man shouting like that? How could that guy be her dad?

  “Oh, really?” Miranda spat. “You know that from experience?”

  “I am trying,” their father stated, his voice cold and angry. “I have put up with your antics. I have put up with your sarcasm. I have put up with you talking back. But I’ve had it.”

  “Have you?” Miranda sneered. “Well, guess what? I’ve had it, too! If Mom were here, she’d want me to have a boyfriend.”

  “Your mother isn’t here! And you sneaking a boy into this house to … to … do—”

  “Do what, Dad?” Miranda scoffed. “Fuck? Like you and Portia?”

  Silence. A great big painful silence.

  Dad and Portia? Ariel felt light-headed. She remembered what Uncle Anthony had said. She didn’t know why, but she thought she was going to throw up.

  “Like I didn’t know,” Miranda spat.

  It seemed like forever before her dad said, “You are grounded.”

  “Great, there’s an original response, Dad. But I’d think you’d have a bigger bag of tricks than that. You think grounding me will keep me away from Dustin? I love him! You wouldn’t understand love. I know more than you think about you and love!”

  Ariel jumped back as their dad slammed out of the room, then hammered his way downstairs.

  The only thing left in the hall was part of the door panel and the shiny brass doorknob that had rolled out of Miranda’s room like Humpty Dumpty after the fall.

  Thirty-four

  PORTIA WAS VAGUELY AWARE that morning had finally come. She had spent the whole night cleaning up the disarray of pots and pans. The city inspector was long gone. But he’d left her with a general citation. Plus, he reeled off the list of things he could and would cite her for if she didn’t cease and desist immediately—everything from improper sanitation to a ten-thousand-dollar fine for illegal posting of a sign. After her head stopped reeling, with tears streaming down her face, she had ripped The Glass Kitchen sign out of the window.

  No matter how she looked at it, the testing version of The Glass Kitchen was over.

  Portia dropped into one of the ancient living room chairs and thought of the last meal she had made for her grandmother, a meal for just one person. When Gram had seen it, she’d been shocked. But after long minutes she had pulled a deep breath.

  “It’s your time now, Portia,” Gram had said. “It’s your legacy.”

  “Gram, I just cook! You’re the one people come to see. You give them advice. You tell them the kinds of food that will restore them. You are The Glass Kitchen.”

  Gram had looked at her for an eternity, seeming to consider. Then finally: “My sweet Portia. I lost the knowing years ago. I woke up one morning and it was gone. I didn’t want to believe it, and I kept cooking, trying to pretend it wasn’t true. But the Kitchen began to fail. Nothing I cooked was right.
When I still had the knowing, no one gave a thought as to why they were drawn here, because they always left sated, with answers, with calm.

  “Even after the food started to fail, they continued to come since by then I was famous. But once they started leaving unsatisfied, they had to find a way to explain why they were drawn to me, to my food, in the first place. Suddenly answers mattered. As people do, they found excuses. That’s when people started calling me crazy.

  “Ever since the day your knowing found Olivia, the day your mother brought you to me, I told myself I needed to teach you the ways. But,” she hesitated, “I couldn’t do it. I told myself that it was because I wanted you to have a normal life. Truth to tell, I didn’t want to share the spotlight. That’s why I didn’t help you develop the knowing. Only when I realized that I had lost mine did I accept that I needed you to save The Glass Kitchen. To save me. If you knew what to cook and bake, I’d know what the people needed to be told to find their calm. So I brought you into the kitchen in earnest then, but to cook, only to cook. Still not teaching you. But you developed the knowing anyway, more powerfully even than me.

  “But none of that matters now. It’s your time to do it all, Portia. I know you’re tired of not being set free to explore. And you’ve shown me by making this meal. Making it for one.”

  “Gram, I don’t want to do this without you! That’s not why I made the meal for one.”

  Then why had she made the meal for one? Why had she known what to prepare, how to set the table? Deep down, she had wanted to fly.

  “Hush, child,” Gram had said.

  Then she had walked out into that Texas storm, shocking Portia.

  She had married Robert and suppressed the knowing, as if that could keep her guilt at bay.

  But marriage to Robert had failed. If she was truthful, deep down she had wanted more. She had wanted a Glass Kitchen. She had wanted passion. She had wanted to fly, just as Gram had said.

  Portia’s head fell back, and a word escaped her mouth that was, frankly, blasphemous. After her failed marriage, she had thought she had found passion and a Glass Kitchen in New York. But that had all been a lie as well.