Melinda Wells: The Proof is in the Pudding

Quinn’s voice in my ear told me it was time for another series of commercials.

I said to the camera, “I’ve got to take a little break, but I’ll keep working on the salad, and when we come back we’ll mix up the dressing. Then we’ll finish off this meal by making the world’s easiest dessert: a fresh fruit and store-bought sherbet parfait.” I held up a tall crystal parfait glass. “Isn’t this pretty? I bought a set of them for six dollars at a yard sale. Anyway, after you have a main dish with a creamy sauce like Alfredo, I don’t think anything tastes better than fresh fruit sherbet. And it looks so pretty, too.

“Now if the phone rings and it’s someone you can’t get off the line for half an hour, or if the plumber finally shows up to fix that leak, don’t worry about missing these instructions. If you’re just tuning into the show today, this is a reminder that they’re all on the Web site: www.DellaCooks.com.”

The show went off without technical problems, and I didn’t drop anything, or cut myself while chopping. In a new personal best, we finished ten minutes ahead of schedule.

As soon as Quinn called, “That’s it,” I thanked the crew and performed the usual ritual of setting out plates, paper napkins, and cutlery, and invited them to help themselves to what I’d made.

I didn’t stay to eat with them this time because I was eager to get home to talk to Eileen.

During weekdays, six PM is rush hour. If I were coming from my home in Santa Monica across Beverly Glen Canyon and going into North Hollywood where the Better Living Channel’s studio was located, it would have taken me at least an hour and a half-unless there’d been a car crash somewhere in the narrow cut in the mountain that separated Los Angeles and its west side suburbs from the San Fernando Valley. In that event, I’d be stuck in “gridlock hell” for anywhere from an extra half hour to the start of the next millennium.

But I was lucky this evening because I was going in the opposite direction from the seemingly endless line of cars inching their way into the valley. Traveling south from Ventura Boulevard toward Sunset Boulevard, I found my side of the road was virtually empty. I zipped along at a speed drivers on the other side of the road I imagined could only watch with longing.

Normally, I didn’t speed through the canyon, but tonight I wanted to get home to see Eileen. We’d both been so busy lately that we hadn’t spent much time together, even though she had lived in my house most of the time for the last fifteen of her twenty-one years. When my husband, Mack, was alive, we called her our “spiritual daughter.” We’d not managed to have children of our own. Eileen called us by the honoraria “ Aunt Del ” and “Uncle Mack.”

John O’Hara, Eileen’s father, had been Mack’s LAPD partner until Mack died. (I hated the phrase “passed away”; to me, it diminished the enormity of the loss.) John, who had risen to the rank of lieutenant, was still there, still dedicated, if increasingly disillusioned with the politicians and their meddling with the force.

Eileen’s mother, Shannon, one of my two closest female friends, had struggled with paranoid schizophrenia for the past twenty years. She’d had to be hospitalized when medications stopped working, or when she’d ceased taking them because, she said, they made her gain weight. Her current psychiatrist had devised a combination of medications without that side effect and so she was taking them as scheduled. For the past few months Shannon had been more like the woman I first knew than she had been for years. That made all of us who loved her happy.

I was thinking about Shannon as I drove, because I wondered if Eileen had told her mother about her relationship with Keith Ingram. It seemed strange that my unofficial daughter hadn’t told me. She’d confided when she lost her virginity during her freshman year at UCLA, and I’d held her hand through her various romantic ups and downs since then. But I didn’t know anything about her involvement with Ingram-assuming that Phil had the right information. I had to admit that he usually did.

When I reached my little two-bedroom cottage in the 500 block of Ninth Street in Santa Monica and steered my Jeep into the driveway, I saw that Eileen’s slightly battered, old red VW wasn’t there.

I unhooked Tuffy from his safety harness, let him out of the vehicle, and took him for a short stroll before we went into the house. He’d had a major walk around the studio lot before we’d left North Hollywood and he’d relieved himself thoroughly. This little jaunt was just a stretch-of-the-legs for both of us.

My small gray and gold calico cat, Emma, met Tuffy and me at the front door. After the two four-footed friends touched noses, Emma looked up at me and meowed a greeting. Or perhaps it was a rebuke-I’d been away longer today than usual.

On the hall table, which was our traditional message center, I found a note from Eileen, telling me that she’d gone out to dinner with friends and not to wait up for her.

Friends? I wondered. Or with one special friend?

In the kitchen, as I fed Tuffy and Emma and washed out and refilled their water dishes, I thought about Eileen. I couldn’t love her more if she really were my daughter, but did that give me the right to pry into her private life? She was twenty-one years old; in a few weeks she’d be graduating from UCLA. She had taken the fact that I used to make fudge to give as Christmas presents when I was in college and too poor to buy gifts and translated that into the concept for our mail-order and on-site fudge business. She was there at our Della’s Sweet Dreams store and factory in Hollywood every day, overseeing the project that she’d talked Mickey Jordan, owner of the Better Living Channel, into financing for us. Eileen O’Hara was an intelligent, responsible grown-up.

But I still worried about her as though she were ten years old.

The ringing of the phone jarred me out of my thoughts. I picked up the receiver and heard the voice of Liddy Marshall, my other closest female friend.

She was speaking in a rush of excitement. “I bought five tickets!”

“Tickets to what?”

“To the Celebrity Cook-Off, of course! You’re going to be a judge.”

“Liddy, I just found out about that a couple of hours ago. How in the world did you know?”

“It was in the entertainment report on the four o’clock news. I phoned for the tickets right away. Thank heavens they still had some left.”

“But they cost five hundred dollars apiece.”

“It’s deductible,” she said. “And it’s for a good cause. The Healthy Life Fund does research into children’s diseases.”

Liddy Marshall and her husband, Bill, a successful Beverly Hills dentist, were well-off financially, and very generous, but I couldn’t understand why she’d buy five tickets to watch a bunch of celebrities cook their favorite dishes in the middle of a hotel ballroom. I asked her about that.

“I told you-it’s because you’re one of the judges. And it’s black tie. People don’t dress up enough anymore. If you look at those wonderful old movies on TV-everybody wore evening gowns and tuxedos just to go out to a nice restaurant for dinner. Oh, Shannon and John are going with us. Eileen, too. Won’t this be fun?”

I wondered… But then I told myself I was being silly. Liddy and Bill Marshall were delightful company. So was Shannon, now that she was on the right medication. It probably would be an enjoyable evening.

But one thing surprised me. “Did John actually agree to put on black tie to watch celebrities cook?”

“He tried to refuse, but Shannon persuaded him.” Liddy laughed. “He’s probably hoping he’ll get called into work on a murder case.”