Diane Davidson - Sticks & Scones

Arch’s insistent voice cracked next to my ear. “I have to get ready for school. Now, Mom.”

“I’m sure we’ll be going to a place where you can change in a minute,” I said quickly, feeling my irritation flare. But he was right. Sukie’s leisurely early-morning guided tour of her castle was getting on my nerves, too.

Arch glared at me. “When?”

I squared my shoulders, shot him a reproving look, and asked Sukie, who was donning heavy pot-holder mitts, “Is Michaela - Miss Kirovsky, that is - coming over here? I mean, to the kitchen?”

“Any minute, just … agh!” Sukie had pulled open her oven door, and a cloud of black smoke billowed out. Somewhere nearby a smoke alarm started shrieking. “Oh, dam-mit!” she hollered. Dropping the pot holders, she pulled out the charred coffee cake with her bare

hands. She immediately let go of the pan and screamed bloody murder.

“Eeoyow! Hilft! Mutti!”

“Cold water!” I cried. “Now! Now!”

She didn’t move. I tugged her to the sink, where I ran cold water over her hands while murmuring comforting words. Tears streamed down Sukie’s perfectly made-up cheeks. When I was sure she was going to stay put, I grabbed two folded kitchen towels and picked up the offending coffee cake pan from the floor. One of the first things I’d learned working in a professional kitchen was not to dump smoking food into the trash. I tossed the coffee cake under a second faucet, then dashed to the ovens and turned on every ventilation fan I could find. Within minutes, the smoke had abated and the alarm had mercifully quieted.

Sukie stopped crying, inspected her fingers, and wrapped a wet towel around her left hand. Arch continued to give me his I-really-need-to-talk-to-you look. I didn’t know what to say. Excuse me, Sukie, but may my son and I leave you, your burned hands, and your smoke-stinking kitchen so we can confer in your nondairy buttery?

Arch tugged my sleeve. “Ah, I need to drop my stuff somewhere before I go to school. I need to do my hair, too, and finish getting ready. Okay? Please? And I do want Miss Kirovsky to take me to school, so you, Mom, can track down that lawyer and find out where Dad is.”

“Okay,” I promised in a low voice. I pressed the power button on my cell phone. The tiny screen told me the phone was Looking for service, which is the telecommunications euphemism for You’re out of luck! “Sukie, I’m desperate for a telephone. Is there one nearby?”

She said patiently, “It is just half past six.”

“It’s okay,” I replied. It’s half past eight in New Jersey, and that’s the only time that counts right now. I said, “I really need to talk to my husband before he leaves for the airport.” After that, I would fulfill my promise to Arch and leave a message for Pat Gerber, the assistant district attorney for Furman County. Clearly, the Department of Corrections was taking its sweet time getting around to informing us of its plans for the Jerk. Pat Gerber would give me the straight scoop - if I could find her.

“There is a phone on that wall - ” Sukie began, but we were interrupted at that moment by the entrance of Eliot Hyde. He banged open the heavy wooden door, glided into the kitchen, and surveyed his wife, his caterer, and his caterer’s son. Then he sniffed the air suspiciously. The flickering chandelier turned errant strands of his hair to gold. This morning, Eliot’s movie-star features and sad brown eyes seemed even more striking than before. He wore the ubiquitous silk scarf above a long, flowing bathrobe of royal blue velvet. Tender Is the Nightgown. Arch stared at Eliot Hyde with his mouth open.

“Cheerio!” Eliot called to us, as if we numbered in the hundreds, instead of just three. “Welcome to our castle!”

“Mom!” Arch was tugging on my sleeve again. “When can we - “

“Honey,” I pleaded. “Stop! You’re driving me nuts!”

Ignoring this, Eliot Hyde sniffed the air again and looked around. “Aw, honeykins, did you burn another one?”

To my dismay, before Sukie could reply, my son turned and bolted from the kitchen. After a stunned second, I scooted after him, paddling hard through an ocean of guilt.

Eliot called plaintively after us, “What did I say?”

-5-

I caught up with Arch by the well. “Look, hon - “

“I want to leave. I want to see Dad. I want to know why our window was shot at. What if someone tried to shoot at Dad, too? Maybe that’s why he hasn’t gotten in touch with me. Did you ever think of that, Mom? Maybe somebody’s trying to get us all.”

Most of the time, Arch kept his feelings well in control. Now he was worried about his father, worried about the house, worried about me. Added up, this was too big a burden for a teenager.

“Arch, please,” I told him, “the cops are working on the bullet through the window. Once, when I was little? Somebody threw a snowball packed with gravel through our picture window. Who ever heard of such a thing happening in a nice neighborhood of a small New Jersey town? The kid who threw it said it was a prank. So that’s what I think. Whoever shot out our window was either drunk or playing a joke. Trust me, your father can take care of himself. Please, let’s go back.”

He mumbled, “If that’s true, then it’s a stupid joke,” but grudgingly returned to the kitchen. Sukie had her hands in a bowl of ice water. Eliot had moved to the counter to make tea, and Arch squinted at the back of the royal blue robe, which we could now see was embroidered with the words “His Highness.” His water-heating mission complete, Eliot flowed back to the island and cocked an aristocratic eyebrow at Arch and me. The robe swirled around his ankles.

“I understand you two had a spot of trouble.”

“We did,” I replied. I did not want to discuss the window anymore. “Thank you so much for taking us in. Now if we could just - “

Eliot treated me to a dazzling grin. “You are ready to do the lunch today, aren’t you? We should probably chat.”

My mind swam. The lunch would start in five hours. I was earlier than I’d be for a wedding reception, which required much more labor-intensive preparation. But he was my employer. And my host, I reminded myself. “I am ready,” I replied dutifully. “I brought the ingredients with me. You won’t mind if I use your kitchen?”

“Certainly not,” Eliot replied. “But … I never heard from the table people. Was the rental company supposed to call me when the tables arrived?”

My heart sank. The food might be ready, but if the notoriously unreliable folks at Party Rental had screwed up… “You don’t know if they showed up? At the chapel, I mean?”

Eliot frowned. “I don’t know. Oh, God! A glitch in our first event!”

“It’s not a glitch - “I said weakly.

“I will call the table people,” Sukie offered, soon as we get Goldy and her son up to their suites and I can bandage my hands.”

Eliot crossed his arms and stared at the ceiling, always the first sign that a client was going neurotic on me. He pleaded, “I beg you, Goldy, tell me you remembered to bring all your recipes and notes with you.”

Crap and double crap. My recipes and notes. I’d brought my laptop, but not, I suddenly realized, the disk with all my Hyde Castle recipes and the research I’d done over the past two weeks on the history of English cuisine. “No. I’m sorry. I’ll go home for them the minute we get settled.” I added apologetically, “I mean, if that’s all right, and the cops allow me in. And,” I promised with a nod to Sukie, “I’ll check on the tables at the same time.”

Eliot circumnavigated the kitchen island, tapping his left hand pensively on the wood. I could almost see the wheels in his head turning. At the Hyde Chapel luncheon, Eliot intended to pitch the audience on his plans to transform the castle into a conference center. If that didn’t go well, then the guests might think that he was just an academic who couldn’t make the move to real business… that he was a failure in this, too… .