The Cookbook Club - Beth Harbison

Chapter One

Margo

Margo Brinker always thought summer would never end. It always felt like an annual celebration that thankfully stayed alive long day after long day, and warm night after warm night. And DC was the best place for it. Every year, spring would vanish with an explosion of cherry blossoms that let forth the confetti of silky little pink petals, giving way to the joys of summer.

Farmer’s markets popped up on every roadside. Vendors sold fresh, shining fruits, vegetables and herbs, wine from family vineyards, and handed over warm loaves of bread. Anyone with enough money and nothing to do on a Sunday morning would peruse the tents, trying slices of crisp peaches and bites of juicy smoked sausage, and fill their fisherman net bags with weekly wares.

Of all the summer months, Margo liked June the best. The sun-drunk beginning, when the days were long, long, long with the promise that summer would last forever. Sleeping late, waking only to catch the best tanning hours. It was the time when the last school year felt like a lifetime ago, and there were ages to go until the next one. Weekend cookouts smelled like the backyard—basil, tomatoes on the vine, and freshly cut grass. That familiar backyard scent was then smoked by the rich addition of burgers, hot dogs, and buttered buns sizzling over charcoal.

So there was nothing to complain about on this June 11, when it was unseasonably mild enough to have the kitchen windows cast open. No need for the air conditioner.

She was playing housewife. No matter how legit she tried to feel, she always felt like she was playing house. No matter that she’d been married for ten years—which she googled and found out was the tin anniversary. It felt like someone else’s life when she stood in her kitchen, surrounded by her own appliances, and made dinner for her husband. The dog was in the living room, the fence had finally been repaired, and she had an opinion on air-filter brand. The dishwasher was running, the sound of the washer and dryer rumbled from the laundry room (at the corner of the yard it smelled like dryer sheets under the vent), and she was dicing farmer’s market veggies for a salad for Calvin.

Calvin was having a weight crisis.

It was impossible to count how many times in the last decade that Calvin had had what he perceived to be a weight emergency. But then, if it wasn’t weight, it was the fear that his higher-end-of-normal cholesterol levels were dangerous. Or that sugars were going to age him prematurely. He’d just read an article about activated charcoal and how it could save your life. He’d just read an article about activated charcoal and how it might kill you.

There was a twenty-gallon Rubbermaid in the garage filled with Calvin’s retired, preemptive lifesavers. Things that, if they worked, would presumably give him the gift of immortality. Ergonomic keyboards. Ridiculous-looking orthopedically correct shoes (Margo said they were high heels designed by Dr. Seuss; Calvin said she didn’t understand the human body). Running suits to increase sweat but that made him look like a stand-in for Mister Fantastic. This Rubbermaid stood beside a personal sauna and a machine that vibrated the fat away—this one Margo had genuinely thought was a joke. “Wasn’t that the same machine used for comic relief in Mad Men?”

She used to think it was cute. When they’d first gotten together, little more than kids themselves, they’d run together, tried meditating together, then hung it all up and eaten together, enjoying a lot of wine before toppling into bed.

Maybe it was the wine that had made him so pleasant. He didn’t drink it much anymore. Something about clear liquors being less fattening.

They hadn’t had a real meal together in years. Those late, boozy nights with sloppy cheeseburgers and too many appetizers were long gone. No longer would they get pasta and wine by the bottle, telling their Sicilian server not to judge them for how much cheese they wanted ground over their gnocchi and carbonara. They would drink beer and share those plasticky nachos and watch awful bands cover extremely good bands.

Their indulgence might kill them one day, but wasn’t it worth it? That had been her opinion. She’d never really considered what would happen once the indulgence was gone.

Margo, luckily, was always up for whatever challenge made her days more interesting. She was constantly trying to make dupes for whatever she—or he—was really in the mood for. Egg white huevos