A Recipe for Loveliness
By Cressida Blake Roe
I’m making risotto in Nana’s kitchen when Abigail tells me she’s pregnant. She drops the words so casually into the pan of sizzling onions and rice that I nearly miss them, nearly fish them out with the garlic skins.
“Then you shouldn’t be drinking,” is the first thing out of my mouth. A glass of white wine has been dangling from her fingertips since she walked in an hour ago, complaining about the traffic and the weekend’s heatwave. I haven’t kept track of how many times she refilled it.
“I don’t know if I want to have a baby,” she goes on, swishing around the pale liquid. I reach across her and turn on the microwave fan. I don’t want Nana to hear us.
“Is it Michael’s?” I ask, even though it wouldn’t be anyone else’s. It. I should feel bad.
“Yeah, he’s really excited about the idea,” Abigail responds, instantly defensive, suspecting my flat voice is because her kid will have a Black dad. She doesn’t know Michael isn’t the parent I’m worried about.
I turn down the heat and pour in a ladle full of chicken stock, so that a cloud of steam bursts between us, a momentary respite from the anxious line in her forehead. “And you’re not?”
“See, it’s not that I want an abortion. You know Nana’s friends at church would kill me. Or excommunicate me, whatever. I guess I wouldn’t mind if I just. You know. Miscarried. Then that’s nobody’s fault. No one can get mad.”
A doctor’s concerned face, Abigail’s mom’s reddened eyes, Michael’s hunched shoulders flashed through my mind, accepting culpability for what Abigail couldn’t admit to herself. Like an afterimage, I saw Abigail’s dad’s car skidding into the telephone pole that killed him as he grabbed his phone to answer her fifth phone call. Not her fault. But not not her fault. I stir in some more broth and watch the grains coalesce into a promise of what the dish will become.
“Is that why you finished off half a bottle of Beaujolais?” I ask.
Abigail glares. “Look, just because you’re five years sober doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t enjoy ourselves. I’ll quit tomorrow, okay? Let me have this.”
“Hi, girls, how’s everything coming along?” Nana asks, pushing open the kitchen door and breezing in. Abigail manufactures cheerfulness and sets down her wine.
“Great!” she says. “The risotto’s almost done. Maybe we should add some cream, that’s Mom’s secret ingredient.”
“Nana’s bad with lactose these days.” I pour the contents of Abigail’s glass into the pan.
“That’s a nice idea, hon, I’m sure Susan’s tastes great,” says Nana, coming over to rub the small of Abigail’s back as if already knowing she’s going to need more care. Except Abigail has always needed more care somehow, between the two of us. “Let me get you another drink, yours disappeared into thin air.”
“Into the rice!” says Abigail with her high, glittering laugh. She and Nana always got along so well. I drown the rice in what’s left of the broth, killing the boil. Silence bubbles up to take its place, broken by a car pulling into the cul-de-sac.
“That’s probably Michael,” says Abigail as Nana returns with two full glasses. She hands one to Abigail and sips from the other. Sparkling apple juice waits for me in the fridge, like for a child at a New Year’s Eve party. Only I remember it’s there.
“I’ll go get the door,” I say, checking the dial on the stovetop and tugging off my apron. I don’t think about what the others will say after I’ve left.
Outside, Michael is locking his car. He waves when he sees me, and I smile back, thinking about how nice he looks—tall and on the stocky side of muscular, so that his arms fill out his dress-shirt sleeves. I wonder what would happen if I stopped him on the driveway and kissed him, like I’ve wanted to every day for the three years since he started dating Abigail. I wonder what would happen if I drank the rest of the Beaujolais in front of Nana and all her Bible study friends who prayed for me to join AA since I couldn’t save myself from my own weakness. I wonder what would happen if I ran out into the middle of the road in front of the pickup truck rounding the corner too fast, just to prove I could take my life in my own two hands and throw it in whatever direction I wanted.
But I don’t. I shake hands discreetly with Michael, keeping my eyes on the safe zone between his soft mouth and warm eyes, and follow him inside. I pour my apple juice into a tumbler. I watch the pickup come to a slow stop outside the house across the street. The risotto has simmered down, and I smooth out the air holes before carrying the pan into the dining room.
Abigail has a hand over her stomach, a gesture that shows off the new bracelet Michael has just clasped on her wrist. Nana’s eyes are misty with tears, so I assume she’s heard the news. The acceptable news, at least: the good news, the loveliness of a new and unsullied life to celebrate.
“Dinner’s ready,” I say and wait for someone else to plunge a spoon through the risotto’s smooth, impeccable skin.
THE END
Author Bio: Cressida Blake Roe is a biracial writer of literary and speculative fiction, with work appearing or forthcoming in The Baltimore Review, Lightspeed, Tupelo Quarterly, Chestnut Review, and elsewhere. Recent stories have been selected for the Wigleaf Top 50 and nominated for the Best Small Fictions. See more at www.cblakeroe.wordpress.com.