She looped a wiry arm through mine and towed me to the kitchen.
“Come, Marcus,” she summoned, “we’ll need someone to do the grunt labor.”
I flashed a helpless look behind me but he only smiled. He must not have such a strongly developed sense of tragedy as I did. My shoulders fell with a little sigh but I turned back forward with a look of steely determination.
In for a penny, in for a pound right? She wanted to bond? I’d bond her fucking socks off.
Chapter 13
“It says it right here, Marcus, I’m literally reading it off.” The spectacles had come out, and Augustina was holding a giant cookbook four inches from her face. “The professionals often use up to a pound of oregano—”
“Oysters, grandma,” he cut her off, seizing the recipe, “oysters. Not oregano. If we ate that much, we’d die.”
“Rebecca,” she called, “make him return my book at once!”
I shook my head, literally up to my ears in flour. “I’m not getting in the middle of it—you two are both nuts.”
“Excuse me—”
“See, oysters, right here.” He jabbed his finger on the page in front of her. “There’s a little picture and everything.”
I’m not one to live crippled by pride—I’ll just come right out and say it: I was completely wrong about this being a terrible bonding experience.
It had started out exactly how I was afraid it would. Augustina sat back and took up a managerial position—delighting in waving about her cane and ordering Marcus and me in frantic circles around the kitchen. The cooking staff was perplexed, and I dare say a little upset that we’d effectively commandeered the holiday, but after peeking inside at the madness, I think they collectively decided they’d actually not like to venture any closer. The little room kept getting hotter and hotter as tempers and temperatures rose, but then—and I have to credit Marcus with this—he snapped her out of it.
I guess you could say he kind of conned her: he started doing things badly. A dropped onion here, some uneven slicing there. It drew out the perfectionist in her, and she watched with increasing agitation. By the time he twice salted the same potatoes, she’d had enough.
“Out of the way, you incompetent fool! You’re on stirring detail until further notice.”
With a great deal of pomp and ceremony, she leaped into the fray.
The same kind of hands-on bonding seemed to warm her to me. The second she saw me fearlessly shove my hands up the ass of a turkey, Augustina seemed to decide that I was someone worth getting to know after all. After that initial barrier came down, I felt like we were back on familiar ground. I was just an endlessly patient nursing assistant, and she was just an overly-excited, overly-entitled patient.
“Jimmy!” she summoned the master chef for the third time in the space of twenty minutes. Mr. James Collings appeared a moment later with a look of scarcely contained exasperation. “Keep an eye on Marcus, will you?” She barely glanced up. “I don’t want him to burn anything.” Both Marcus and I cast him an apologetic look, and he was silently dismissed the second her back was turned.
“So, grandma,” Marcus’ spoon whipped quickly through a pot of orange glaze, “are you going to be staying with us during the rest of your trip?”
“Heavens no, boy!” She dropped her fifth egg on the ground but resolutely ignored it, reaching automatically for another. “With all of us here it would get unbearably cramped. I’ll be heading to my estate farther up the coast for the rest of the season.”
Marcus nodded casually, but a look of intense relief flashed across his face. I stifled a giggle and pounded my fists once more into the mound of dough in front of me. In my opinion, I’d gotten the fun job—it even required a basic understanding of martial arts. I was to repeatedly squash the raw ingredients for five minutes, then immediately stop to let them ‘rest.’ At first, I thought the chef was just being sentimental, but after looking it up, he might be on to something.
“Rebecca,” Augustina peered over the top of her glasses, “you seem to have a lot of pent-up aggression.”
I nodded sagely, sinking my hands once more into the dough. “In my family, we were taught to bottle everything up until it came bursting out in a passive-aggressive explosion.”
She nodded approvingly. “That’s very sensible advice. No use raging around like a lunatic all the time—it should be saved for special occasions.”
“Like holidays?” I teased.
She actually chuckled. “When I was growing up, it was more ‘like Wednesdays’ but you ca
n space it out however you prefer. And on that note,” she took a step back, gingerly avoiding the graveyard of broken eggshells beneath her, “we should get dressed for dinner. Your family will be arriving soon.” With that, she swept out of the kitchen, nearly flattening the poor chef as he hovered just outside the door. “Oh, good—there you are. Jimmy, do us a favor and finish up, will you? I’m sure you can manage.”
He looked past her into his beloved kitchen, dripping from floor to ceiling with the messy fruits of our efforts. His face tightened but he managed a respectful, “Yes, ma’am” before she disappeared. Marcus was at his side a moment later.
“I apologize,” he said, glancing guiltily back at the kitchen. “It’ll be a hell of a holiday bonus, I swear.”
With that, he grabbed my hand and we hurried back up the stairs to rinse off the flour and grease before the rest of the guests arrived. But before we went back down, we met, once more, in my bedroom for a little pre-gathering conference.