* * *
The first thing that happened at Onions involved Mrs. Norman’s penny-pinching ways.
As usual, while Kady tried to prepare dinner, Mrs. Norman hovered at her elbow. “Do you have to use that expensive extra virgin olive oil? Why do you have to use vanilla beans? Isn’t extract good enough for you? It’s much cheaper, you know. No, no don’t start wrapping fish in paper. If they wanted fish wrapped in paper, they’d go to a fish-and-chips shop.”
It was an exceptionally busy night, and customers were lined up three deep outside the door, and Kady knew that tonight was not the time for any emotional hysterics, but she had reached her limit. “Out, out!” she yelled at Mrs. Norman. “Get out of my kitchen
!”
For several moments Mrs. Norman looked at Kady in shock, started to say something, but when Kady’s face didn’t soften, she turned on her heel and left the kitchen in an enraged huff.
The silence that permeated the kitchen after the little woman’s retreat was deafening. Then, one of Kady’s assistants said, “Three cheers for Kady,” and three times they all let out a loud “Hip hip hooray.” Then someone started singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” (it was Virginia, after all), and two staff cooks grabbed each other’s arms and started dancing, while another banged pot lids and beat a rhythm on the stainless countertops.
For a moment Kady was too stunned to move; then she started laughing, and someone grabbed her arm to do-si-do her around the kitchen. When a champagne cork popped and someone produced full glasses, it only added to the hilarity.
It was the first time Kady had really laughed since she’d left Legend.
“What the hell is going on in here?” Gregory bellowed above the noise as he entered the kitchen with a powerful swing at the door. Instantly all fun stopped, and everyone except Kady skulked back to his workstation. She was left alone in the middle of the room, holding a full champagne flute. Gregory’s dark eyebrows drew together into one black bar across his forehead. “My mother is in my office crying,” he said, his voice low and almost menacing. “We have a full house and a line two blocks long of people waiting, and you, Kady, are in here drinking the customers’ champagne and . . . and dancing.”
Lifting her glass, Kady looked at the bubbles of the wine. “I tell you what, Gregory dear, if anyone complains, shoot him. Not much, just a little. Just enough to teach him to mind his manners.”
At that Gregory was speechless, and the other cooks froze at their tasks. It was one thing to yell at dreadful little Mrs. Norman but quite another to defy the owner’s son. The staff was well aware that Kady was an employee just like them, and from the look on Gregory’s face, right now the couple’s engagement didn’t count for much.
Gregory’s face did not lose its hardness. “Are you going to cook or drink?” he asked coldly. “I’d like to know so I can inform our guests.” He made it sound as though Kady had a drinking problem and he was begging her to lay off the booze just for tonight.
Kady didn’t flinch. After one had faced a hanging party, an angry fiancé didn’t seem too dangerous. “Perhaps I shall do both,” she said, her eyes never leaving Gregory’s.
At that he backed down, his face softening as he took a step toward her, but Kady turned her back on him. “Perhaps you should join your mother in the office and leave my kitchen to me,” she said over her shoulder.
For a moment Gregory looked as though he was going to go into a rage, but, with a glance at the employees, who were now openly staring, he gave a little shrug. “Sure, honey, whatever you say.” Then he winked in conspiracy at a couple of the men, as though to say, Women! and left the kitchen.
* * *
For a few moments after Gregory left, Kady felt shaky and frightened. She had an almost overwhelming urge to run after him and apologize, but then the feeling began to be replaced with a sort of buoyancy she’d never felt before.
“Someone want to slice me three potatoes?” she said into the silence in the kitchen.
“Me!” one of the men said loudly.
“No! Me!” another yelled; then all four men, in an excellent imitation of the Three Stooges, ran smack into each other, and Kady laughed until she had tears in her eyes. After that the feeding of the customers went faster and more smoothly and certainly more pleasantly than she had ever before experienced at Onions. During the evening, one of her assistants kissed her cheek and whispered, “Thank you.” He didn’t have to say what he was thanking her for. The absence of Mrs. Norman’s constant complaining was like hearing the music of heaven.
After the last meal was served, one of the waiters called out that “the boss” was waiting to see Kady.
“By ‘the boss’ do you mean Mr. Norman?” one of the cooks asked. “I think that the guard may have changed tonight. You are looking at ‘the boss,’ right here,” he said, pointing both hands at Kady.
The waiter guffawed. “Yeah, right,” he said, then went back to the dining room.
Does everyone see me as a wimp? Kady wondered. Does no one think I can stand up to anyone? No one had thought that of her in Legend.
“And I was the same woman then as I am now,” she whispered to herself as she headed for Gregory’s office.
One look at his face and she knew that he was not going to let her off with a few sentences. As she sat down on the chair he silently pointed to, she knew she was in for a Serious Lecture.
“Kady,” he said in a voice heavy with disappointment and “duty.” “I found your behavior tonight intolerable. I can bear the way you humiliated me in front of the help, but I cannot allow you to talk to my mother in the way you did. Right now she is upstairs lying down. I had to give her a sedative to calm her.”
He was standing, his hands clasped behind his back, then he leaned over the desk toward Kady. “She was crying.”
Kady knew this was her cue to say she was sorry, but for the life of her, her mouth would not open. She just sat there looking up at Gregory, waiting for him to continue.