33
I was planning to tell Ruth that Mr. Greene was coming to dinner.
I really was. But then she would want to cook because she didn’t think I could pull off a decent meal.
I wondered if that year of boiled cabbage she talked about had permanently damaged her taste buds, but if I wanted this to work, the element of surprise was my best option.
So when the two of us returned from the hospital on Wednesday, I asked Ruth if she wanted to pick the kids up from school.
She looked at me warily. “Why?”
“I just thought you might like to.”
“What are you trying to get me out of the house for?”
I threw up my hands. “Fine, I’ll go get them. I just thought you might like to for once.”
Ruth picked up Pepper’s leash and slipped it onto her collar. “No,” she said. “I’ll go.”
“Enjoy,” I told her. “It’s a beautiful day.”
She shot me one more look of distrust, then left with the dog. I watched from the window as she went up the street, and then I put on an apron and got to work.
By the time she got home with the kids, the brisket was already browned and had just gone into the oven, and I was peeling potatoes.
“Ooh, Mommy’s cooking,” Bobby said, running into the kitchen to hug me.
Then he looked at the potatoes. “How are you cooking those?” he asked, eyeing me with suspicion.
Ruth’s “french fries” that were basically quartered baked potatoes, still cold in the center and sprinkled with a dash of salt, hadn’t gone over well, nor apparently been forgotten.
“Chopped up in the frying pan,” I promised. “The exact way that you like them.”
“No onions?” he asked. Ruth had been on a mission to get him to appreciate onions and was slipping them into everything from chicken dishes to one disastrous batch of pancakes.
“Not in yours,” I promised, ruffling his hair.
“What’s the occasion?” Ruth asked.
“No occasion,” I lied with a shrug.
“That’s too many potatoes for the four of us,” she pointed out, then opened the oven door. “And much too large a brisket.”
“Leftovers,” I said, refusing to make eye contact.
“Barbara,” Ruth said.
I turned to her and crossed my arms. “Okay, when I went to the grocery store yesterday, Mr. Greene was there building the world’s largest canned food pyramid.
And it turns out, he was there hoping to see you.
And I know you said not to invite him to dinner, but he looked so sad that you hadn’t come with me, and it just slipped out.
Eddie is coming too. It’s fine. Just a friendly dinner.
Among friends. A normal thing that friends do. ”
“Why are you saying friends so much?” Susie asked. “It sounds weird when you keep saying it.”
“Your mother is a terrible liar,” Ruth said, pursing her lips.
“Who’s lying?” I asked. But it came out shrill, and everyone could hear it. “I didn’t lie . I just didn’t tell you.”
“You said that’s still lying when I do it,” Bobby pointed out, ever so helpfully.
I sighed. “Like I said, Eddie is coming too. There’s nothing sinister going on. I promise.”
Ruth shook her head, then opened the oven door and sniffed at the cooking meat. “You should have let me cook,” she said.
“And spoil the surprise?”
The look she shot me could have cut glass. But she was worried about the meal being impressive and I took that as a small victory.
At six on the dot, there was a rap at the door. Pepper started barking immediately, trusting strangers less since the intrusions of Mr. Moskowitz and Sam Goldberg. “Hush,” I said, scooping her up. “You love Eddie.”
I opened the door and at first saw no people because of the gigantic floral arrangement that threatened not to fit through my front door.
“Um ...,” I said, craning my neck to make sure the Greene men were behind it and this wasn’t a variation of the plant from The Little Shop of Horrors come to feast on my family.
Eddie emerged from behind the display first. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “He couldn’t be talked out of it.”
He attempted to take the flowers from his father to get them into the house as Ruth came down the stairs.
“What on earth?”
“For you,” Mr. Greene’s voice floated through the pungent arrangement.
“Did I die?” Ruth asked, and I smothered a laugh. This was definitely a funeral spray—and a massive one at that—not a bouquet for a date.
Eddie succeeded in wrestling them away, revealing a bewildered Mr. Greene. “Are they too much?”
Ruth looked to me for help.
“They’re lovely,” I said firmly. “Eddie, will you bring them into ...” There were no discernable stems for a vase, and they were going to take over the entire kitchen, but I had no better answers. “The ... kitchen ... and I’ll find something to put them ... on?”
Eddie shook his head but took the colossal arrangement, which dragged on the floor behind him like a pungent train, and followed me into the kitchen.
“You don’t have anything that will fit these,” he said.
“I have a bathtub,” I volunteered. Then I realized inviting Eddie up to my bathtub wasn’t quite where I intended this evening to go.
“I mean ... let’s ...” I looked around the room.
The kitchen table had the food that was ready to go on the dining room table on it and the counters weren’t big enough.
“Let’s just put them in the corner for now,” I said, gesturing toward an open area. “And I’ll deal with them later.”
Eddie wrangled them over there, then came back to me. “His last date was in 1928,” Eddie said. “He has no idea what he’s doing.”
“Honestly, hers—if you don’t count my neighbor who she kicked for being fresh—was earlier than that. They’re likely on the same page.” I glanced at the pile of flowers that came up to my waist. “Though he may be a little more ... enthusiastic ... about it than she is.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Eddie said, his face twisted in concern. “He’s just gotten more like himself in the last year or so. I don’t want him getting his heart broken again.”
It hadn’t actually occurred to me that there were two invested parties here. In my mind, if I found Ruth someone she liked, that was that.
What if this didn’t work? Janet would recover. But could I lose Eddie over this? Would he forgive me if Ruth wasn’t up for finding someone new? Or worse, if she was, and Mr. Greene just wasn’t him?
I put a hand on Eddie’s arm. “Eddie—”
He looked at me, and I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. But Eddie gave me a tight smile. “We’ll figure this out somehow.”
I nodded, reassured by his use of we . “Drinks,” I said. “Let’s start with drinks. What does your father like?”
“Besides Manischewitz?”
I laughed. “I think I could dig out a bottle if that’s his poison of choice.”
“Where do you keep the liquor?” he asked, and I directed him to the cabinet.
“Not a great selection,” I said. “I don’t really drink—well, I do more with Ruth here. The night she started a fire, I poured myself a big glass of bourbon.”
Eddie finally smiled for real, and I felt the knot in my chest dissipate. “That one was earned.” He turned back to the cabinet and pulled out the bourbon bottle. “If this worked for you, it’ll work for him.”
“Can you get the sherry for Ruth too?” Eddie obliged, and I got glasses that he poured into. “Anything for you?”
He shook his head, and I put the glasses onto a serving tray and brought it into the living room, where Susie was showing off a picture she had painted at school.
“This is the cardinal that lives in our backyard,” she said, pointing to the red bird in the center of the page.
“Grandma says they’re a message from someone who’s gone. ”
“That’s what my Gertrude always said too,” Mr. Greene said.
I passed the drinks to Ruth and Mr. Greene, stopping to admire Susie’s picture. “That’s really good,” I told her. “We should frame it.” She beamed up at me, and I said dinner would be ready shortly.
“I would have cooked,” Ruth said to Mr. Greene. “But my daughter-in-law didn’t tell me you were coming until she had already begun.”
He smiled at her. “I don’t care at all what we eat. I’m glad you didn’t have to work harder on my behalf.”
“Wait until you taste it to say that,” she murmured. I shook my head. Maybe if I served her boiled cabbage for a week or so it would reset her taste buds.
I returned to the kitchen and may have sawed into the brisket with a little more force than I normally would have used. But soon enough, everything was ready, and I started transferring food to the dining room table.
“Can I help?” Eddie asked, jumping up from the love seat.
“Sure,” I said, gesturing over my shoulder toward the kitchen. “Grab the potatoes and put them on that trivet by the head of the table?”
I put the brisket on its trivet, and then returned to the kitchen to find Eddie running a finger under the faucet.
“Oh no,” I said, rushing to his side. “I should have warned you. It’s hot.”
“I do know that now.”
I took his hand and examined the red spot on his index finger. “Not too bad,” I said. “It likely won’t blister. But hang on. Butter is better than cold water according to Heloise.”
“Of course—I forgot that,” Eddie said as I went to the refrigerator and grabbed the real butter, not the margarine that I had on the table to go with the meat-based dinner.
I cut a pat of it and placed it on Eddie’s finger. “You know Hints from Heloise?”
Eddie smiled wryly. “She has useful tips for bachelors too. I don’t have anyone to get stains out for me.”
“I’m sure Janet would.”
He shrugged. “She’s got her own family to worry about. I don’t want to bother her when it’s something I can do myself.”
“Well, then bother me next time. It’s the least I can do after everything you’ve done for me.”