That Summer by Jennifer Weiner (free e reader txt) 📗

for dinner. Chicken, rice, a green salad with vinaigrette. Basic stuff.”

“It doesn’t sound basic to me!” Diana said, and Daisy felt herself flush with pleasure. “How do you do it?”

“Well, you start with chicken breasts. And you have to pound them thin.” She remembered how they didn’t have a mallet, and how they’d wrapped a can of soup in tinfoil and used that instead, taking turns, thumping the cutlets to the beat of ABBA. Pretend it’s your ex! Louisa had said.

“Then you dredge the cutlets in flour, sauté them in butter, and deglaze the pan—that just means you put in some broth or some wine, and scrape up the browned bits. And then you add mushrooms, a little cream, whatever herbs you like. There’s really not much to it.”

Diana shook her head, and Daisy repeated that it was easy, that anyone could do it. But she could still picture her roommates, hovering around the pan wide-eyed as Daisy touched a match to the liquor and sent flames jumping out of the pan; how they’d watched the sauce come together like it was a miracle. How it felt to have their attention and approval, when usually she felt herself overlooked, the least pretty of the roommates, the one boys’ eyes skipped past. This is better than anything I’ve had in a restaurant, Louisa had said, and Marisol had said, Daisy, you’re a genius!

“And vinaigrette? How do you make that happen?”

“Oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and a whisk. It emulsifies.”

Diana raised her hands. “Taking your word for it.” From her expression, Daisy could tell that the word “emulsify” meant as much to Diana as the word “consultant” meant to her.

“It means the two liquids combine to become something different.” In her mind, she was back in the apartment’s tiny galley kitchen, remembering they’d sung along with “Waterloo,” and done rock, paper, scissors to determine who’d have to find her fake ID and make a trip to the liquor store. That year, cooking had gone from being a lonely, solo activity to being communal, loud and a little slapdash in the crowded kitchen, and a lot more fun. Each girl would pour herself a glass of wine while they cooked. Marisol had taught them her grandmother’s recipes for pernil, and arroz con pollo, and Louisa had made her mother’s rosti, and Gretchen had mostly watched and washed the dishes because her parents had both worked, and most of their food had come from cans and boxes. It had felt so good, Daisy remembered, having people who appreciated what she made, after years of watching her mother pick at her cooking, indifferent and unappreciative, pushing whatever Daisy had prepared into her mouth like it was Soylent Green and not a gourmet meal.

“So, fast-forward a few weeks, and Gretchen’s in a panic, because her boyfriend’s bringing his parents down to meet her, and he wants her to make, quote, ‘that chicken thing’ for all of them.” Daisy could still remember the terror on her roommate’s face as she’d racewalked through the library to find Daisy. He gave me a hundred bucks to buy groceries, she’d whispered as other students had glared and tried to shush them, and he swears he told me that his parents were coming to town, only I don’t remember him saying anything about it, and I can’t tell him I was lying, please, Diana, you have to help me. I’ll do anything!

“I took Gretchen to the grocery store and we bought everything we needed. Then we went home, and I showed her how to do it.”

“She didn’t want you to cook it yourself?” Diana asked. “You know, Cyrano the dinner?”

“Oh, she absolutely wanted that.” Daisy remembered how Gretchen had begged. But Daisy hadn’t wavered.

“I told her, ‘Give a man a fish, he eats for one meal; teach a man to fish, and he’ll never go hungry.’ I made her do the whole thing.” Daisy could still see it: Destiny’s Child on the stereo, Gretchen, with her hair in hot rollers, scooping textbooks and magazines and discarded sweatshirts off the floor; Marisol following after her with the vacuum cleaner.

“Gretchen paid me to give her mother a lesson for Mother’s Day, and her mom referred me to some of her friends, so I did it that way for a while. Word of mouth. And then one of my brother’s friends hired me to help his dad.” She could still remember Danny’s voice on the phone, asking if she remembered him mentioning Hal Shoemaker, an Emlen classmate, the stroke of the men’s eight. “I gave him your number. I hope it’s okay.” Hal had called, not ten minutes later. Daisy remembered how he’d sounded, his voice clipped and terse. My mother died six months ago and I think my dad’s going to starve or get scurvy.

“And I married him. The guy who’d hired me, not his father,” she explained.

“So, like, right out of college?” Diana looked startled.

“It was actually in the middle of my senior year,” Daisy said, feeling the familiar twinge of embarrassment she got when confessing that her only diploma was from high school.

“Wow. You must have been a child bride.”

Daisy swallowed hard, again hearing echoes of her friend. Hannah had teased her, calling her kiddo sometimes, or teen mom. “I was almost twenty-one. That’s actually kind of average for lots of the country, but, yeah, it’s young for around here.”

Diana was looking at her with an expression that Daisy couldn’t decipher. “You must have been sure of him.”

“I guess I was.” Daisy sipped the watery dregs of her drink. “Although sometimes I think that all I was sure about was marrying someone, and Hal was just the first one who asked.” The words were out of her mouth before she’d thought about them, and, as soon as she heard them, she felt her cheeks get hot. This wasn’t something she’d ever said out loud. Not even to Hannah. “God, that sounds horrible. I mean, I wouldn’t have married just anyone.”

“Of course not,”