Diane Davidson - Catering to Nobody (Goldy Schulz Series)

In a small bowl, combine the mayonnaise, vinegar, and mustard, and whisk well. Add the oil in a thin stream, whisking all the while, until you have a smooth, blended dressing. In a medium-sized bowl, gently combine the cool rice kernels with the scallions, radishes, tomato, jicama, and spinach. Pour the dressing over this mixture and mix very gently. Taste and correct the seasoning. Chill at least 2 hours before serving. Turn out onto a small platter that you may line with spinach leaves, if desired. The salad must be consumed the day it is made; it does not keep well.

Makes 4 to 6 servings

interruptions I’d be lucky not to end up mixing vinegar into the whipped cream.

“Let’s put it on the counter,” I yelled over the buzzing and gulping of the processor.

We heaved a Styrofoam box up next to the mountain of chopped vegetables for the salad. Inside would be the salmon, wrapped in plastic and packed in ice. I planned to poach it that night and slice the strawberries, whip the cream, and make the lemonade all in the morning. Laura’s aunt was providing the Vouvray and dishes. I was bringing the cups. Arch and Patty Sue, who had lived with us for two months, would help serve, and we would get through this.

“That’s it,” said Alicia after she’d downed the scone I’d offered. “How’s your love life?”

“No news that’s fit to print.”

She eyed me. “Something you’re not telling me?”

I said, “Maybe.” In a gossipy small town one does not discuss one’s social hopes. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll get out eventually.” She sighed and left.

The silvery salmon slapped my hands as I rinsed it and wrapped it in muslin. It too had been dedicated to mating and spawning and look at how far it had gotten.

Arch marched in and lobbed a two-pound bag of sugar onto a chair before heading for the phone in his room. The opened bag snowed part of its contents onto the kitchen floor.

“The Television Trivia Championship is at hand,” Arch, ignorant of his mess, hollered over his shoulder.

The rolls enveloped the kitchen with the smell of dill. In a large ceramic bowl I sloshed oil and egg and sugar for the muffins and was about to add the flour when my business line rang again.

“Goldilocks’ Catering—”

“Stop.”

Marla again. I began to measure the flour into the bowl, but some blew up my nose and onto the floor on top of the sugar. New powder on top of packed powder. Soon we could ski in the kitchen.

“What now?” I said.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t heard the latest .”

“How could I? I just talked to you within the last hour.”

“ He is marrying this girl.”

I set the bowl down.

“Goldy, did you hear me?”

I reached for the mushrooms.

“Goldy, do you believe this?”

I said, “Hmm.”

“Well, my dear,” she demanded shrilly, “what are we going to do?”

“Feel sorry for her. Not give tomatoes to him,” I answered as I began to mince.

“Anyway,” continued Marla, “the thought of a third daughter-in-law was too much for Vonette. She got drunk, I mean really gone, and Fritz called the cops and had her hauled down to Furman County detox.”

“Not again,” I said as bits of mushroom fell from the side of my knife. “Did someone go get her?”

“Yes, she’s home, doing better. She’ll be at the wake tomorrow. Fritz, for all that silver fox routine, isn’t exactly what you’d call compassionate. Must run in the family.”

I said, “Should I try to keep Vonette away from the Vouvray?”

“No way,” said Marla with a snort. “I can’t believe that in your eight years with John Richard, you never saw Vonette’s flask. She keeps it in her purse. You must be blind.”

“I am not blind,” I replied before hanging up, “but I will be broke if I can’t finish the food for this party.”

With the mushrooms minced and wrapped and the muffins steaming in the oven, I headed down the hall toward Arch’s room, sugar bag in hand.

“Do you realize the mess you made by tearing into this?” I demanded after knocking and entering and offering the bag as evidence. He told Todd to hang on and cupped his hand over the phone.

“Please, Mom,” he said as he held up a book, something about TV facts. “Let me talk. Besides, I didn’t do that. See,” he said as he tongued forward a wet pink mass, “I had bubble gum.”

I cocked my head at him. “Arch, alibis are like food service. They have to do more than look good and hold up. They have to be palatable. And yours,” I added, “doesn’t even look good.”

“Sorry, Mom,” he said. “Really. I’ll clean it up.”

I wanted to open his head and look in, to see what he was really thinking, how he was dealing with everything. I wanted to say, Are you okay? And have him say, Yeah, Mom.

“Don’t bother,” I said. “I swept it. Just be more careful, all right?”

He nodded solemnly and said nothing. And then I turned away. I did not know what the right grieving behavior should be from a boy whose favorite teacher ever, Laura Smiley, had only six days before slashed her wrists and bled to death.

CHAPTER 2

I’m starving,” said Patty Sue as she tiptoed into the kitchen in a ruffled pink housecoat the next morning. I finished slicing the strawberries and offered her a bowl. A lanky twenty-year-old who had a twig-like figure and the metabolism of an athlete, Patty Sue Williams had been my roommate since August tenth at Vonette Korman’s request.

“She just doesn’t have anywhere to live while she’s here, Goldy honey,” my ex-mother-in-law had said, “and she needs Fritz to treat her medical problems. Take her in for a while. Give her a job. She’s never done anything out there in eastern Colorado except live with her folks. This gal wants to learn, Goldy. You can teach her.”

This I had come to doubt, I reflected as I pushed down on lemon halves to ream out their juice for the lemonade. Patty Sue had been so sheltered by her parents that her approach to any new endeavor was timidity, confusion, or both. She had attended a local community college “for a while,” she said vaguely, as if that, like everything else in her life, had not quite panned out. When she first arrived she had told me all about herself, including the fact that she was a virgin. Dr. Fritz Korman, John Richard’s father and the other half of Korman and Korman Ob-Gyn, was treating Patty Sue for amenorrhea. Which meant she hadn’t had a menstrual cycle for the last year.

“This is a bad thing?” Marla had asked at the last meeting of Amour Anonymous, our women’s group.

“It needs to be treated,” I replied. “Her doctor out in Fort Morgan sent her to Fritz, who claims to be some kind of specialist with it. It’s serious enough that Patty Sue’s mother let her come out and live with me, although she calls once a week to make sure I’m not corrupting her.”

“Not a chance of that, I’m afraid,” Marla said. “Maybe we could bring her into the group as a special assignment.”

I doubted if Patty Sue would have recognized herself in any of the literature about love-addicted women, which the Amour Anonymous group reads religiously. Sometimes I wondered if she recognized herself as anything. She was tall, lovely, and unsophisticated to the point of never having operated a dishwasher. She wanted to learn to drive a car but was intimidated by crown roast of pork. At first she had been quite eager to learn the catering business. She had made cementlike loaves of bread and overcooked hamburgers with the brightest of smiles. But just when she started mastering the skills, she had detoured into a state of distraction.