Page 19 of The Spirit of Love

Chapter Eleven

“I’m sorry, Fen, I’ve got nothing,” my sister says the next morning from her sunny Silver Lake breakfast nook.

Edie’s wearing her pink bathrobe that should probably be washed, and the same goes for her hair, but she still looks like an empress, nursing her seven-month-old son Jarvis with one arm and using the other to internet sleuth on my behalf.

“That’s impossible,” I say, whisking almond extract, my secret ingredient, into the batter I’m making in Edie’s kitchen.

It’s six a.m. on a Tuesday, an uncivilized hour to descend on anyone, unless they happen to have three children under three who can’t get enough of their Aunt Fenny’s pancakes.

“You’re the best online detective I know. Your gift for key words is unmatched—”

“Well, you’ve finally found a weirdo who can stump me,” Edie says, in a cooing baby voice, grinning down at Jarvis. “Yes, she has. Yes. Why did Auntie do that? I don’t know either.”

I halve and then spoon the pulp from three passion fruits I plucked from Edie’s vines on my way into her house.

Left to simmer in a saucepan with a bit of sugar, the fruit will reduce to a decadent tropical syrup just in time to serve over the pancakes.

I preheat the griddle, add a healthy pat of butter, and think about Sam’s cozy cabin kitchen on the two mornings I’d spent there.

The smell of burnt toast…the clove and hickory scent of him when he wrapped his arms around me.

“He was my kind of weirdo. That’s what made the weekend so—”

“Magical? So you’ve said a few times.” Edie looks at her laptop screen. “All I’m seeing about Search and Rescue on Catalina Island is a hiking accident from like ten years ago. Right around the time your young cowboy would have been going through puberty, right? So I don’t think it’s him.”

I frown, dolloping batter onto the sizzling pan. A heavenly aroma fills the air, and I hear Edie’s twin two-year-olds Teddy and Frank squeal “Pancakes!” from the living room couch, where they’re watching SpongeBob . Which means time is running out before this conversation goes from adult to feral.

“What dirt are you hoping to find about Sam anyway?” Edie asks me. “You know he lives off the grid. You’re not going to unearth some illuminating TikTok account, or even, like, LinkedIn.”

“I need to know if he has a brother…or a cousin or another close relative who is male—”

“Why? Can’t we just assume those odds are good?

” Edie sidles by me in the kitchen on her way to refill her coffee.

In her arms, Jarvis grabs hold of my hair, tucking it in a vice grip between his gums. That the three of us can hold this pose gracefully for as long as it takes for Edie to re-caffeinate, me to flip a pancake, and Jarv to get his fix of my hair feels like a testament to our bond.

This was the right place to come to solidify my on-set warpath.

“Because I know there’s some connection between Sam and JDS.”

“Other than both of them screwing you in the past week?”

“Other than that. In addition to that.” I reach into Edie’s cupboard for the chocolate chips, because what better way to send twin toddler boys into a day of preschool than with a battering ram of sugar in their stomachs?

“If I’m going to declare war on Jude de Silva, and he ends up being the first cousin of the love of my life—”

“Whoa,” Edie says. “Love of your life?”

“I just think I should go into battle with as much knowledge as possible,” I say.

“I like the advice Lorena gave you last night,” Edie says. “It’s far more likely that your brain erotically conflated these two men than that they’re close blood relatives. She should patent that term.”

“PANCAAAAAKES!” Teddy and Frank dive-bomb into the kitchen to the tune of the SpongeBob closing credits.

Each twin wraps himself around one of my legs as I frog-walk their steaming plates to the table.

Now they clamor up to the breakfast nook, pressing in either side of their mother like Edie is a human pillow. Jarvis, usually chill, begins to wail.

“I didn’t forget you, Jarv,” I sing, passing Edie a bowl of torn-up pancake bites for the red-faced baby, who tucks into them as his hiccups and sniffles subside.

“You hungry, Ede?” I ask her, making an adult plate, which I’ll top with the passion fruit syrup.

My sister closes her eyes. “My sustenance is silence,” she says as her children chew.

“I’ll leave a plate in the oven for you,” I offer. “It’ll still be warm when the boys leave for school.”

“Morning, Fenny,” says my brother-in-law, coming into the kitchen smelling like aftershave and the cedar shoe-stuffers I got him for Christmas.

Todd works the sports desk on the same news channel where Edie works as a meteorologist. He looks at the plate in my hands. “That for me? Looks incredible.”

Edie and I roll our identical eyes, but I hand the plate to Todd and make a second one to save for Edie. Todd sits like an island across the table from his wife and three kids. He tries to mime a kiss at Edie, but she’s pulling pancake out of Teddy’s hair.

“So what’s wrong today?” Todd asks me.

“Why do you always assume something is wrong with me?” I ask.

He answers through a huge mouthful of pancakes. “Because you cook when you’re angry.”

“I do not cook when I’m angry,” I say, defensive, and then, turning to my sister, “Do I cook when I’m angry? Are we even talking to him today?”

“No,” Edie says, as if just remembering. She levels a gaze at her husband. “Because someone thinks it’s perfectly appropriate to show his mother our credit card bills.”

“For the twelfth time, babe,” Todd says with remarkable patience, “I didn’t show her. She happened to glance. She’s a glancer. We know this about her.”

“She keeps a letter opener in her purse,” Edie says, and I swallow back a laugh.

“Completely unrelated! She’s just too nervous to carry mace in case one of her dogs get into her purse, and she once had a thing in a parking lot—”

“Whatever,” Edie says through gritted teeth. “I don’t want her judging my skin care purchases anymore. Once was enough. And Fenny doesn’t cook when she’s angry!”

“What’s skin cawe ?” Frank lisps, sliding down from the table.

“It’s Mommy’s version of SpongeBob ,” I say. “It makes her happy.”

I watch as Todd slides into the seat Frank vacated so he, too, can be next to my sister. I wonder how it feels having so many male bodies pressed against you all the time. Does Edie ever want to scream? Build a moat around her body? Run out the door and never come back?

But then I watch as Todd gently lifts the baby from her arms—Jarv has dozed off with a piece of pancake between his lips.

Todd removes the pancake morsel, pops it in his own mouth, and with his spare hand, gives my sister’s neck a massage, which I can see she deeply needs.

She closes her eyes and lets her head drop forward, onto the table.

“Breathe, baby,” he says. “I’ll have a word with Mom about snooping, okay? It doesn’t mean we need to forbid her from entering the house, right?”

My sister huffs as if she’ll think about it. Todd kneads her shoulder tenderly. He kisses the side of her head.

“Because Grandma also loves to babysit,” he reminds Edie softly. “And iron.”

“She does like to iron,” Edie says on an inhale.

“Just breathe, love. Let it out.”

My sister, now a human puddle, exhales deeply. I realize she might not want that invisible fence after all.

She looks up at me and nods. “You know what? Todd’s right. You do cook when you’re angry.”

“That’s cheating, Todd!” I scoff. “The massage?”

“Last Christmas,” Edie says to me, “when you were breaking up with Eric because you were convinced he was a conspiracy theorist on 4chan, you made the whole Feast of the Seven Fishes.”

“I still think about that cioppino,” Todd says, rising from the breakfast table and bouncing the sleeping baby.

“I’m simply observing a pattern in which you come over here before sunrise, reduce tropical fruits into syrups, let Edie supportively fuel your rage-fire, and then drive off, tires screeching, on a warpath. ”

“What,” I demand, “is so threatening to men about a little feminine rage?” I turn to Teddy. “You’re not scared of it, are you?”

“I like it!” my nephew says, raising his plate to his face to lick it.

“I agree,” Todd says, “I wasn’t being critical. Your problems deserve a Michelin star.”

“Mommy needs more problems,” Frank says, and Todd, laughing, puts a finger to the boy’s lips.

“Mommy’s cooking is perfect, got it?”

I lift Frank in my arms. “Maybe you should start learning to make dinner. See, cooking is like directing a TV show. You ever directed a TV show, Frank?”

“I don’t think so,” Franks says, grabbing the whisk from my hands.

“Yeah, me neither, but it’s all about the vision. You’ve got to know where you want to go, while keeping your eye out for the secret paths that take you there. You want pancakes with crispy, salty exteriors and fluffy, sweet interiors?”

“Yes!”

“That’s your vision. Be ready to do a thousand takes before you get there.”

“I’m tired,” Frank says with a yawn.

“Yeah. That’s okay. You’ll build up stamina,” I say, setting him down to go with Todd to gather his things for school.

When I straighten up, Edie and I are suddenly alone in the kitchen, and she’s watching me with those fifteen-months-older sister eyes.

“What?” I ask, not sure I want to know.

“I found him online.”

“Sam?!”

“SJD.”

“JDS,” I correct her. “You’re on TV, and you have no idea about anyone who works in the industry.”

“Three kids under three, beyatch,” Edie says. “You’re lucky I brushed my teeth.”

“Anyway, I will puke if you mention Martin Scorsese. And don’t you dare utter the word genius .”

“So you’ve already googled him.” Edie’s fingers are flying. A second later she cocks her head. “Oh. This is interesting.”

“Not to me,” I warn her, even though I am curious.

“This is from an interview he did with GQ last year—”

I plug my ears, but she just talks louder.

“?‘Every film generates a world.’?”

“What the hell? That’s what I think! Have you not heard me say that?!”

“I have, many times!” Edie laughs. “Seems like you two have a lot in common. Maybe you could learn something from this experience?”

“What, like, be his protégée? No way! What happened to the Edie who supportively fuels my rage-fire?”

“Does he even know he took this job from you?” Edie asks.

“What difference does that make?” I reply.

“A sizeable one.”

I don’t want to tell my sister that Jude seems to have no idea, or she’ll snuff out Project Sabotage JDS like a candle, and then what will I do with the excess energy I should have been putting into directing?

“Is Jude really the bad guy here?” she asks. “Or is it, more obviously, Rich?”

“They’re both bad guys! Obviously.”

“ Two bad guys?” Teddy calls from the living room, putting on his backpack. “Oh, no!”

“Kill all the bad guys!” Frank chants.

“That’s right, Frank!” I point at my nephew. “I love you. I love your brother. I love the third one who’s asleep. I’m late for war. I mean work. I mean war.”

“It’s WAR!” the twins shout.

“Beware advice from toddlers—” Edie calls, but I’m already out the door, tires screeching.