Off the Menu Read online

  “This is the most welcome sight on the planet.” I dump my bag and jacket by the door, and walk over to kiss my boys. RJ gives me a lingering smooch. Then he pours me a glass of wine from the bottle of Syrah he has open on the coffee table. I take a deep sip, letting the wine warm in my mouth, slipping smoothly down my throat. “Juicy and delicious, thank you.”

  “I thought so. How was your meeting?”

  “Interesting …” I fill him in on the unexpected job offer.

  “I’m really proud of you. That is so amazing, you must be very flattered that they would ask. And a big set of decisions you’ll have to deal with. My last job was the same sort of out-of-the-blue offer, I know that it’s a lot to process all at once. Do you think you’re leaning toward wanting to take it, or would you rather stay where you are?”

  “I have no idea. I know that it is certainly tempting on an emotional level. But I also know that it probably isn’t realistic financially.”

  “What if finances weren’t an issue?”

  “It’s always nice to say that, everyone thinks it helps in situations like these, but I don’t think it does. Finances are an issue. They always are. Sure, if I were independently wealthy, I might jump at this chance to make a difference. But I’m not. I have responsibilities to my family, to myself. I own property. I hope to retire someday. I need to have a cushion of savings for when my car breaks down or, god forbid, I have a health crisis. The economy is in the toilet and I currently work in a volatile and ever-changing industry with very little security. And I’m not a kid.” I take another sip of wine. “And to be honest, it’s not like I’m miserable in my job.”

  “Not miserable being the same as happy?” It is a genuine question and not a statement.

  I think about this for a minute. “I’d say that on the happy scale, I’m pretty happy at work. The team is a good one, and we like and trust each other. The work is as good as we can make it and no one is lazy or coasting, so there is a sense of pride. Not the same kind of pride as doing the good work of the world, but I do feel lucky to be a part of the shows and a part of the brand Patrick is creating. The hours are weird, and long, and erratic. But there is a lot of independence and my voice is heard.”

  “And the money is pretty great.”

  I laugh. “Yeah, the money is good. And as much as I do have that pull to be tempted by the do-gooder aspect of the Foundation job, I’m not ashamed to say that I like my lifestyle. I like that I can travel when I get the time away, that I don’t worry about my bills getting paid, that I can help my family. I like the comfort of being able to splurge on a spa treatment or a great pair of shoes every now and again. I’m almost forty years old, and I have made a good life that I’m proud of, and there is certainly a part of me that feels very entitled to the perks of the money I work very hard to make.”

  “But?” He smiles.

  I laugh. “Their FACES!”

  “Those young people can break your heart, huh?”

  “They are just about the coolest people I’ve ever met. And yes, I love the idea of being able to impact even more kids with this program. It makes my heart smile.”

  “C’mere.” I put down my glass, and snuggle up beside him, entwining my hand with his. Dumpling scootches over, climbing half onto RJ’s lap from the other side, and places a paw on top of our hands. “Ha! I think your boys are saying that whatever you decide, we are here for you.”

  “And I love you both for that.”

  I look up and RJ leans down to kiss me deeply. Suddenly there is a flurry of licking all over our faces.

  “Okay, okay!” I push Dumpling away. “I can only kiss one of you at a time!”

  “Me first,” RJ says.

  I take his face in my hands. “Now and always.”

  “That’s good to hear.” He kisses me again. “Now, about that almost-forty thing …”

  “Yes?”

  “How are the Alanapalooza plans going?”

  “Very well, thank you.”

  “Everything set?”

  “I think so. Patrick and I are taping Maria’s show at the crack of dawn, but then I have the rest of the day off. Bennie is flying in, and she and I are doing a spa afternoon. Gil is giving me the whole restaurant for the party, and has come up with a killer menu. Naomi at TipsyCake is doing the cake, and it should be amazing.”

  “Mmm, cake. What kind of cake?”

  “Almond cake with a layer of fresh apricot puree, white-chocolate-mousse filling, and vanilla buttercream.”

  “Oh. My.”

  “I know. Should be a killer party.” We will be just the nearest and dearest for the celebration. Mom and Dad are hosting the usual big family birthday dinner on Sunday night prior to my birthday, so they offered to take all the grandkids for a sleepover so my brothers and sisters can have a night out. This kind of party isn’t really up their alley anyway. Of course the girls and their significant others, Maria and Jefferson, Melanie and Jon, Kai and Phil. Bob and Gloria and their spouses. Barry and Bennie. RJ’s friends from New Year’s, who we have hung out with a bit, and who have become friends of mine. And Patrick, of course. The restaurant, Chalkboard, is the perfect place, a warm and intimate room, insanely great food. It will feel like a large dinner party, only I don’t have to cook or clean up. I’m bringing my uber case of wine from Patrick to be the red of choice for the evening, and RJ asked to do the bubbly and white out of his cellar. It should be very grown-up and lovely, and exactly what I want.

  “Anything else I can do to be helpful?”

  “You can be my date.”

  “Of course!”

  “You are all I need for my birthday. Everything else is just bonus.”

  “Thank you, baby.”

  Dumpling starts his sneezing and spinning routine, and RJ and I get up to take him for a walk before bed. It is a beautiful spring night, you can finally feel the winter chill breaking, and I’m out for a stroll with my favorite boy and my favorite dog. And even though I can feel that the earth is turning and that there are major changes in the offing, for the first time in my life I just know that everything is going to be okay.

  20

  I have no idea where they are coming from,” RJ says, batting the air at the huge, glossy black houseflies that are bobbing and weaving over his head. There are at least twenty of them here in his kitchen, and at least a couple in every other room in his house. “They are driving me and the cat mental. But I can’t find the source, although clearly the kitchen is their favorite hangout.” JP, who is chasing a particularly enormous fly, leaps in the air, paws akimbo, catches the fly in midair and then haplessly slams into the wall, releasing the fly again.

  “He’s very talented,” I say, as the cat gets up, shakes off, and then tears down the hallway in pursuit of his prey.

  “Well, at least he doesn’t puke into my laundry basket.” Dumpling stayed over here with me the other night and befouled a full basket of clean laundry in the worst possible way. Strangely, he and JP seemed to get along fine. After a few hours of looking at each other warily and walking in circles around each other, they finally settled in, Dumpling in his usual place between me and RJ, and JP on RJ’s shoulder, and in the morning we found them happily snuggled up on the couch together.

  “Can’t argue with that. I’ll pick up some fly traps and see if we can’t get this place cleared out by the time you get back. If they don’t work, I’ll call Terminix. Consider me your personal fly-removal manager.” RJ is heading out this afternoon for a longish business trip, three stops on two coasts and not back for five days. I offered to keep an eye on the mail and feed JP in his absence. Made especially convenient as last week I was ceremoniously presented with my own set of keys to RJ’s house. I immediately returned the favor, and we have been spending about every other night together since, mostly sleeping at my house since RJ’s bed is the single most uncomfortable thing I have ever attempted to sleep upon. Hard as a rock. I’m a squishy girl. I need a squishy bed.

 
RJ leans over and kisses me. “You are the most amazing woman on the planet.”

  “True enough.” I kiss him back.

  “What are you going to do in my absence?”

  “Miss you. Take Patrick to do his Master Class with the kids and hope he doesn’t pollute their impressionable minds. Miss you more. Spend some more time thinking about this job offer. And it is Girls’ Night In tonight. Plus, you know, missing you.”

  “Sounds very busy. You’ll barely have time to miss me. What are you thinking about the job offer?”

  “I change my mind every ten minutes. I think, this is the perfect thing, the absolute best thing I could do with my life, the most exciting rewarding thing I could have as the final act of my professional life. And then I think, I’m almost forty years old, and it is a huge step backward financially, and would mean an enormous change in my lifestyle, and am I really ready to make that kind of sacrifice?”

  “Good. That means that your mind is open, and you are asking yourself all the right questions. And it’s still very new; you’ve barely gotten through all of the materials. Keep reading and keep letting the idea wash over you and just see how you respond organically. Ultimately, the decision may be easier than you think.”

  “I keep waiting for a lightbulb moment.”

  “It will come. And whatever you decide, you have my full and unconditional support.”

  “Thank you, my love.” I walk over and give him a huge kiss.

  “Ask the girls tonight for their thoughts. And keep them away from EDestiny.”

  I look at him and grin. “I will. Besides, I completely erased my EDestiny profile ages ago. Permanently and irreparably.”

  “That’s what I like to hear.”

  “C’mon, we should hit the road in case there’s traffic.”

  “You know you don’t have to take me to the airport, I could take a cab. Fully reimbursable.”

  “I want to take you. I’m not going to see you for almost a week, I need as much time as I can get.” And the thing is, I really do want to take him. In spite of the fact that doing the airport run is the single most annoying thing on the planet. And regardless of the fact that his company would happily pay for his taxi. I don’t want to lose any minutes with him.

  “Well, I’m not going to argue with that. Let’s do it!”

  Luckily there is minimal traffic between his place and the airport and back, so the whole trip is under an hour. I stop at Home Depot on my way back and pick up some hanging fly traps, and a special nontoxic trap that says it’s safe for the kitchen. I’ll get them set up tomorrow on my way to work when I go to feed JP, and hopefully fix this new fly problem. I’m not a fan of bugs. I have Terminix on a monthly check-in program out at the cabin, and one sign of anything more major than the occasional spider or creepy thousand-legged bugs that are part of living in an older building, and I’m off to the basement cabinet where I keep cans of deadly for every possible crawler that could invade. But I’ve never had a fly problem. And I hate the way they careen around so randomly, never in a straight line. They could bump into you at any moment. Ick. My phone goes off. I hit the hands-free.

  “Hey, bro, whassup?”

  “We’ve got some not great news on the parent financials front.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “You know how they have been talking about trying to do the Florida thing six months a year instead of two weeks?”

  “Yeah, they said when they were ready that they would sell the house and get a small condo here and one there.”

  “Right. Well, they got a call from the people they’ve been renting from down there, and they have been thinking that they probably want to sell in the next six months or so. They like Mama and Papa, so they wanted to give them a heads-up on buying the place.”

  “What’s the issue?”

  “The issue is that there have been six foreclosures and three short-sales in a two-block radius of the house. The fact is, their place is worth about half of what it was worth four years ago, and the chances of it selling at all in this market are slim.”

  My stomach sinks. “How much are we talking about?”

  “To buy the Florida place? It’s not exactly South Beach. I think we can get it for 150, 170 max based on the info I got from the Florida real estate agent about the comps for that area.”

  “That’s a lot more than I have ready access to, Alex.”

  “I know, kiddo, and I hate to even dump this on you, but we are all on tightened belts right now, our investments and savings all took a huge hit in the crash, you know. …”

  “Okay. Don’t say anything to them; just let me think about things and I’ll get back to you.”

  “Sorry, Lana.”

  “I know.”

  “How’s RJ? Joshie hasn’t stopped talking about that tour at the Art Institute. He now wants to go to Art School like Uncle RJ!”

  “That’s awesome. Give Sara and the boys a kiss from me.”

  “Will do. And, Lana, if it doesn’t work it doesn’t work. Don’t do anything insane just to try to fix this for Mom and Dad. They’ll be fine whatever happens.”

  “I know. I won’t.”

  I get home, and take Dumpling for a quick piddle before settling in to write up the new recipes I tested over the weekend while I wait for the girls to arrive. But first, I shoot an e-mail to the guy who manages my finances, and ask how bad it would be for me and my future to try and make 150K liquid in the next six months. Can’t wait to see how that goes over. It isn’t like I haven’t taken a hit myself in this crazy economy. I make a very good living, but it isn’t millions. I’ve got two mortgages, two sets of taxes, two sets of housing upkeep, and only one income. I’m good about putting the maximum away every year in my retirement accounts, and not being overly aggressive or risky with my investments. I have trusts set up for each of the nieces and nephews, fifty dollars a month goes into each one automatically, to be handed over when they graduate from college. Plus the money for Mama and Papa. I try to put something from every check into short-term savings for vacations and unexpected expenses, and yes, the occasional spa treatment or household splurge. With the extra two hundred dollars a month I’ll need to send to them now, that will pretty much wipe out the extra savings options.

  The manila envelope from At Our Core is sitting on the table next to my laptop, and I look at it with a feeling of dread. I open it again. The offer letter is right on top. The salary is very generous by not-for-profit standards, and I know it is the limit they can offer, but it is still about half of what I currently make. It would put me in a lower tax bracket, so I would take home a greater percentage than I do now, and if I reduced my level of savings, my level of annual charitable giving, and significantly tightened my belt in terms of my lifestyle, cut the kids’ trust deposits in half, I could just barely make my monthly nut. But there wouldn’t be money for Mama and Papa. Not the way I currently handle things. I could sell the cabin, but that idea makes my heart break.

  I think about the kids and how much I have grown to adore them in such a short time and how deeply rewarding the work has been. How much fun, how personally fulfilling. And Rachel’s discussion of what is to come, to be able to leave a legacy. Something that is actually mine, as opposed to a bunch of television shows and cookbooks with someone else’s picture on the cover. I seem to have forgotten along the way that just because I don’t want to be scrutinized in the public eye doesn’t mean it isn’t nice to have public recognition of accomplishments.

  But first, you sort of have to have accomplishments.

  When I lay it all out for the girls, they are quick to jump on me.

  “You have loads of accomplishments!” Emily says, smacking me playfully in the back of the head. “Dumbass.”

  “Great, thanks, that is very helpful,” I say, wincing dramatically and rubbing my head.

  “She didn’t hurt you,” Lacey says. “And she’s right, you are a dumbass. You have your name on six New York Times bests
elling cookbooks. In the credits of more than three hundred hours of pretty damn good television programming. You have helped to create a new program that has already changed eight lives, and you will be a part of it moving forward even if it isn’t as the director. You have a family that loves you, one of the best dogs on the planet, and pretty spectacular friends.”

  “And a majorly dreamy boyfriend,” Mina says.

  “EXACTLY! Thank you, AND a majorly dreamy boyfriend.” Lacey is triumphant.

  “I get it, you guys, I do, but you know what I mean. This job would be a chance to really do something amazing with the next part of my life. Not just the career part. Regular hours. Dinner before nine. No middle-of-the-night drop-ins, no vacation-interrupting phone harassment, no having to leave parties to bail someone out of jail …”

  “But still, you do love your job. And Patrick is endearing in his way. You wouldn’t have stayed this long if you hated it. And since when is not-for-profit anything but overworked and underpaid?” Emily pipes in. “Maybe it would be regular hours to begin with, but as the program grows, my guess is you’ll be right back to long hours. And without the compensation to cushion things.”

  “Oh, that is true. A woman who left us to take over marketing for a nonprofit now works at least twenty percent more hours than she did with us. AND no free chocolate.” Lacey shudders at the very thought of losing her Willy Wonka pipeline of delicious, and passes over the box of caramels and marshmallows they’ve been testing. “Personally, I think you thank them for the offer and keep the job you have and keep volunteering. There is no shame in wanting to keep a lifestyle you worked really hard to achieve.”

  “I dunno,” Mina says. “Alana has seemed extra happy since this program came along, and I’ve never heard her this excited to tell us about a show they were shooting or some cookbook as she has been to tell us about the kids and their progress. Money isn’t everything. Besides, she isn’t going to be a single-income household for much longer!”