Page 15 of Under the Stars

Look, I can understand the archaic cabinetry and what we’ll call the venerable patina to the Garland range.

The wheezing refrigerator, the sink that might have started out life as a bathtub.

When David and I were looking for a place to live in the Bay Area that could accommodate two people and a dog without requiring us to sell our spare kidneys for a down payment, a real estate agent showed us a place that had last been renovated during the Reagan administration.

I remember how she ran her finger along the wall of glass blocks in the bathroom and (in her careful, cheerful real estate agent voice) observed, It’s of an era .

This kitchen is definitely of an era . Several eras, if I had to guess.

But look, fair enough. Professional-grade appliances are expensive.

When we were outfitting our kitchen in Palo Alto—from a secondhand dealer, I might add—the price of the commercial dishwasher alone nearly made me pass out.

I can see why Mike wouldn’t make that kind of investment in the Mohegan Inn on Winthrop Island, where the peak summer population numbers in the very low four figures and the winter population—according to Meredith—consists largely of lobsters crawling in from the cold.

No, it’s not the age of the fixtures that sends a shudder across my chest, or even their state of obvious disrepair. It’s the mess.

I pick my way around the boxes of abandoned produce and the cobwebbed mop that sits in its dusty bucket, leaning against the wall.

A jumble of cans and jars and boxes overwhelms the sagging shelves.

Towers of dirty dishes colonize the sink.

A piece of yellowed paper curls from the wall above the faucet— WASH YOUR FUCKING HANDS!

!! —while the smell of industrial bleach attacks the reek of rancid fryer oil and battles to a stalemate.

By the time I arrive in front of the refrigerator, I’ve given up my dream of a basic Mediterranean salad—pile of spinach, handful of chickpeas, crumble of feta, drizzle of tahini dressing.

A bowl of vegetable soup advances and retreats in my imagination.

I read the stained note taped to the surface— CLOSE THE FUCKING DOOR!

!! —and wrap my fingers around the handle and yank it open.

—

Mike sets a crate on the last available rectangle of counter space and frowns at the plate in front of him. “What the fuck is this?” he wants to know.

“An omelet.”

“For me ?”

“I felt it was the safest option in that biology experiment you call a kitchen. I’m sorry about the cheese. So-called. It was all I could find.”

Mike lifts his fork and pokes the omelet open at the seam. “Where are the mushrooms?”

“Just eat it, okay? Compliments of the chef.”

“ Chef, ” he says, the way you might say drug dealer .

He kicks out a stool next to mine and plops down.

There’s something a little juvenile about him, despite the reluctant retreat of his hair and the lines around his eyes and mouth and the hint of a dad paunch under his old barn-red T-shirt that proclaims THE MO in the same serif lettering you would see on a college sweatshirt.

It’s in the loose-jointed way he moves, the heft of his shoulders, like he could still crack open your head like a coconut if you made a drunken pass at a waitress.

The way his voice swings from word to word in this convivial baritone.

I sit primly with my plate in my lap atop a slice of paper towel for a napkin. “What do you think? Should we open a bottle of wine?”

“Holy shit.” He looks up from his fork. “This is an omelet ?”

“Maybe champagne? It’s kind of a celebration, in a way.” I rise from the stool and set my plate on top of it. “Pretty sure I spotted a few bottles of Pol Roger in here somewhere. Not chilled, obviously, but it’s been sitting in a cold cellar for forever, so…”

“Audrey?”

“Oh, here we go . Look at you, my beauty. Holy crap, it’s the seventy-eight. I mean, it’s probably vinegar by now, but you never know. You don’t have any wineglasses, do you?”

“Audrey.”

“I guess a highball works. If I can find a clean pair.”

“I’m sorry, kid.”

I turn around, bottle in hand. Mike’s clenched fingers bolt his plate to his lap. He looks at me with the flushed, tragic expression of a man whose team just lost the annual grudge match against the crosstown rival.

“I should have tried harder,” he says.

“Yeah, me too.”

“It’s just—the way your mother—”

“I know.” I peel back the foil. “I knew. Even as a little kid, I knew I had to choose, and it wasn’t your fault.”

“It wasn’t her fault, either. It’s just the way it was. She couldn’t stay here on Winthrop, and I wouldn’t leave, and…” He stares at his plate. The tip of his nose resembles a raspberry. “This is a hell of an omelet. Where did you learn to make an omelet like this?”

“The CIA.”

“You’re a fucking spy ?”

“Not that CIA. The Culinary Institute of America.”

The cork pops out with a deep, vaporous sigh.

I wipe a couple of highball glasses with a bar towel and tilt one to receive the champagne.

It’s a beautiful color, straw pale, and the foam is as light and delicate as meringue.

A creamy bouquet tickles the hairs of my nose.

Cellaring conditions at Greyfriars must be remarkable.

Mike watches me critically. “You pour pretty good. For a girl.”

“Chip off the old block?”

“You don’t happen to be looking for any summer bartending work, do you?”

“What, here ? You mean before the health inspector shuts you down?”

“Nah, he don’t bother us. I give him a case of Wild Turkey every year and call it even. Danny Donohue. Used to go to school together. Good guy.”

I hand Mike a glass. “All fun and games until someone dies of listeria.”

“What the fuck is listeria?”

“Exactly.” We clink. “Fingers crossed.”

—

By the time I roll up at the front door at Greyfriars, while I’m not what you’d call drunk, I’m not exactly one hundred percent sober, either.

I shut off the engine and ponder whether the smell of champagne on my breath will set back Meredith’s recovery.

The bushes lining the driveway are, in fact, rhododendrons, of a monstrous size that will shortly turn the world purple for a couple of weeks.

Above me, the sun tries to find its way through the mist that clings to the cold sea around us.

I roll down the window to breathe it in.

Before I left, Mike disappeared into what he called his office and came out bearing a couple of T-shirts, the same faded barn red as the one he wore.

THE MO sprawls across the chest; on the back, a map of Winthrop Island nestles between the shoulder blades, bearing a small star near the western end.

You can give one to your mother, Mike said, in a scratchy approximation of his usual drawl. Bring her by the bar sometime.

I stare at the wadded-up shirts on the black leather seat beside me and think of my first stepfather.

He was the studio executive, as you might remember from the tabloids, though you probably don’t remember his name.

It was Steve. Steve Leibowitz. Big, shambling, dark-haired guy, not bad for a bean counter.

He’d grown up in the Bronx, I think, or maybe it was Staten Island.

Not Manhattan, anyway. He and Meredith used to have the kind of sex that sounds like a pair of stags fighting to the death, although I was only seven or eight at the time, so I didn’t know what the hell was going on in there, just that someone might not come out alive.

In the morning, Steve would emerge from the bedroom with his hair still damp, smelling of masculine shower gel, and close the door carefully behind him.

He always looked a little startled when he saw me in the kitchen, fixing myself some scrambled eggs with avocado on thickly buttered toast, as if he didn’t understand how early kids wake up before the puberty truck hits them.

How long have you been up, pumpkin? he would ask, pushing his glasses up his nose, and I would say, Oh, an hour or so, and he would sniff the air and say, Is that coffee?

to which I replied, Brewing right now, care for some eggs?

We would eat our eggs in silence while he read the newspaper and drank his coffee; then I would fill a cup for Meredith and carry it to her in bed, pretending not to notice that she was naked under the covers.

She would take a sip and say, My God, Audrey, couldn’t you at least have added a splash of whiskey?

It was our little joke—at least, I think it was.

Anyway, after about a year of domesticity Meredith went off on location to reprise her role as Pepper in Along the Infinite Sea, and Steve and I occupied the marital home in Santa Monica like an old couple, reading the newspaper in silent parallel over a breakfast of scrambled eggs and avocado, or maybe some chilaquiles for variety, until the morning Steve came across what they call a blind item about a certain up-and-coming blond actress who was having a torrid affair with her co-star in Palm Beach while her studio executive husband played housedad back in Los Angeles.

I remember how his face turned pale and then red (the exact same faded barn red as these T-shirts lying on the passenger seat of Meredith’s Mercedes, as a matter of fact, which is probably why the memory returns to me now) and the next thing I knew, I was speaking to the 911 dispatcher, phone braced between my ear and shoulder while I performed CPR with all my might on Steve’s gigantic chest. I’m afraid he didn’t make it, sadly.

Neither did the affair between Meredith and her co-star, although the scandal—as you might recall—propelled the movie into one of the biggest box office hits of the year.

Meredith, racked with guilt, refused to attend any of the premieres.

Instead, she stayed at home watching true crime reality shows to the refreshment of a bottle and a half of wine every night.

Bring her by the bar sometime.

Whatever, Mike.

—

Sans climate control, the air in the Mercedes turns stuffy. I gather my thoughts and the T-shirts and climb out onto the weedy gravel. Meredith appears around the corner of the house, waving her cellphone above her head.

“What’s the matter?” I call out.

She turns to me in surprise. “Oh, there you are, honeybee. Just trying to get some reception around here. You really need to get the Wi-Fi going.”

“Sure thing, Meredith. I’ll get right on it.” I hold out one of the T-shirts. “Mike sends his regards.”

Meredith sniffs. “Have you been drinking ?”

“We opened a bottle of Pol Roger to celebrate our reunion. Come on, take this.”

She holds each sleeve between her fingertips and unfurls the shirt. “I don’t understand. Am I supposed to wear this?”

“Hey, it’s the bar where you got knocked up. Show a little pride.”

“Audrey, are you drunk ?”

I hold up my thumb and forefinger. “A tiny bit.”

“And you don’t think that’s problematic ?”

“It’s only problematic for you, Meredith. Aren’t you going to ask how everything went?”

Meredith folds up the shirt and tucks it under her arm. “How did everything go, Audrey?”

I ball up my own shirt in one hand and cross my arms. Tilt my head to squint speculatively at the sky—will that surprisingly warm April afternoon sun, or will it not, burn away all this chill mist before the evening sets in?

“It was a little weird, Meredith, to be honest. There he stood, my own blood father, and I haven’t seen him in about a quarter of a century. ”

“You could have visited on your own, honeybee. You’re a big girl. No one was stopping you.”

“Nope, that’s true. No one was stopping me.” I uncross my arms and spread out the shirt in the air before me. “It was okay, though. He was like a stranger but also familiar, you know? We were adults about it all. Shared a bottle of champagne and got all caught up. Also, he offered me a job.”

“A what ?”

“A job. Someone’s got to earn a little grocery money around here, right?

His fry cook called in sick. I’m due back in an hour to start the dinner service.

” I toss the shirt over my shoulder and start toward the kitchen door.

“Just have to load up the rest of the booze while it’s still inside the bottles. ”