Claire’s husband, Buddy, died in a horrible car accident several years ago, followed by my dad barely a year later from a fast-moving, devastating pancreatic cancer. So Claire sold her house in the burbs and bought the house next to the house I grew up in, and they settled into their combined widowhood together. They pulled down the fence between their respective backyards to have one large backyard where they can garden and putter and entertain together. They are both a bit hippy dippy, occasional pot smokers thanks to Claire’s convenient glaucoma diagnosis and Illinois’ burgeoning medical marijuana industry, and they both love comfort food (and junk food, when they have the munchies). I’ve occasionally wondered whether there might not be something of an untapped lesbian thing happening there, but one night when they were stoned I got up the courage to ask them, and the two of them laughed so hard that Claire literally peed her pants a little bit.
“Sweetie, trust me, if your mom and I were thusways inclined, I’d just have moved in with her, and not gone through the hassle of buying that silly, expensive money pit of an old house next door with all the maintenance problems,” she said. Claire’s turn-of-the-century brick house is in need of constant repairs and upkeep, as all old houses are.
“All right, all right.” Shelby throws her hands up in mock surrender. “Have a good night, Eloise. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’m stopping for supplies on my way in. Any special requests for the weekend?”
“You know us, we love everything you do. But make sure we are good on kid snacks. I think both Robbie and Darcy have friends sleeping over this weekend. Lean heavy on salty stuff and not too much sugar—we want them to sleep eventually . . .”
“Will do. See you tomorrow. Great job today, Ian, you’re really rocking it out. Next week we’ll do a baking challenge.”
“Thanks, Chef!” Ian always calls me Chef on the days we train, practicing for when he will hopefully need to respond to the judges respectfully. The rest of the week I’m just Eloise.
I grab my jacket off my hook in the mudroom and sling my bag over my shoulder. I peek back and see Ian scraping down the wood cutting board, to prep it for a beeswax and mineral oil treatment. Geneva is pulling Shelby down the hallway toward some adventure in the front room, yammering about something animatedly. As much as I love my little house and my little dog and my little life, for some reason I’m always the teensiest bit reluctant to leave the warm and loving chaos here.
I head out into the gangway and up the side of the long house toward the front. Just as I get to the sidewalk, I see Darcy coming up the street.
“Hey, Eloise! How did Ian do today?” she asks, breathless after jogging the last half block to come see me.
“He did great, Darce, just great. There might still be one small bit of his masterpiece left in there if you hurry. How was your lesson?”
“It was cool. I finally hit a C above the scale!” she says, waving her trumpet case at me.
“Wow, you’ve been working at that for a while. Good for you!”
“Yeah,” she says, brushing the fine hair that has escaped from her ponytail off her forehead, revealing her gray eyes with their long dark lashes. She’s at that gangly stage between kid and teenager, all long legs and knobby knees. “I just really went for it and it was there, right up there!”
“So cool. When is the first band concert?” I try to come to the occasional after-school event for the kids, a recital, a game, a decent role in a play . . . not enough to be the creepy wannabe extra mom or anything, just about once a year per kid, enough so they know I care.
“Oh, Eloise, don’t come to the first one, come to the one at the end of the year. By then my teacher thinks I might get a solo!”
“You let me know. I’ll come when you want me there.”
“Cool. And, Eloise?”
“Yes?”
“My friend Brooke is coming to sleep over this weekend.”
“Is she the peanut allergy or the vegan?”
“She’s gluten free.” Darcy rolls her eyes. “I know, gross. But she’s the real kind, the get-sick celery-something kind, not the fake ‘I think gluten makes me fat’ diet kind.”
“Celiac.”
“Yeah, that. Can you . . . ?”
“I’ll prep everything separately and label it for you guys, and pick up some packaged stuff as well just in case.”
“You’re the best. See you tomorrow!” And she jumps up the front steps two at a time, her long legs accentuated by the hot pink leggings she is wearing under her black plaid skirt, with her new floral Doc Martens boots. For all the trumpeting and concert band, she wants to present herself as a rocker chick, and having seen her perform with her School of Rock band over the summer, my money’s on rock and roll. I gave her the new Sleater-Kinney album for her last birthday, and now whenever I’m working, she steals my phone to scroll through my iTunes to see what other secret musical treasures I have. She hasn’t found the Ani DiFranco yet, but it’s coming.
I unlock my Acura MDX and slide in. The Farbers gave it to me a couple of years ago when my old Honda Accord finally gave up the ghost. Brad said it was important for me to have a vehicle for getting to and from work and schlepping all the groceries. I tried to tell them that they already overpaid me, and that I was fully capable of buying my own car, but Shelby shut me down. “This is Brad you’re talking about. If you tell him you can’t accept the Acura, tomorrow he’ll buy you a Bentley just to spite you.”
“Brad, I cannot possibly accept the Acura . . .” I said jokingly, and Shelby swatted me on the arm, and then hugged me.
“Eloise, you’re family. Besides, when Robbie gets his license he’ll need a car, so then we can trade you up and give him this one with some mileage on it, and it will be big enough for him to take over the morning drop-off for his siblings.”
I tried to say that in that case, she should take the new Acura and give me her old car, but she said with all the kids she hauled around, the endless snack crumbs and Gatorade spills and occasional unexpected vomiting, she had no intention of having a new car until Geneva left for college. I never could argue with Shelby and Brad, especially over their generosity with me. They have taken me with them on vacations and gifted me fully paid-for vacations for me to take on my own. They pay full benefits, with killer private health insurance, and insist on getting billed for all uncovered out-of-pocket. My salary is double what a live-in full-time private chef would usually command, and I work only three and a half days a week. My last Hanukkah bonus paid for me to fully remodel my master bathroom. And last year, they brought in a kitchen designer and let me work with her to do a full remodel of the kitchen, no budget, top-of-the-line everything, and I was like a kid in a candy store. A German candy store. Every Gaggenau appliance imaginable, Poggenpohl cabinetry, twin Miele dishwashers with the really cool flatware rack on top . . . those Germans are amazing with precision appliances.
Aunt Claire once asked if my work was satisfying. After all, I only have the Farbers and one other client, Lawrence Costas, the famous interior designer, now retired, for whom I cook one day a week and one dinner party every few weeks. Lawrence predates the Farbers—he was my first private client, and so he is grandfathered in for life.
“Why wouldn’t it be? I have clients that feel like family, I make far more money than I’ve got a right to, considering the workload, and I have amazing benefits. What could be bad?”