Georgia's Kitchen by Jenny Nelson Read Free Book Online Page B

the farm. All four of us. You said you were coming.”
    Georgia put down the Chubby Chippie and tried to remember when Dorothy had mentioned the luncheon. Paul was her dad’s younger, only, and extremely successful brother. He owned a co-op on Sutton Place and a horse farm upstate and had recently gotten engaged—for the third time.
    “Georgia, you said you and Glenn would come, and we’ve already told Paul to expect us all. It’s an easy train ride from Grand Central, and Dad will pick you up at the station in Dover Plains.”
    Now Georgia remembered. She had accepted the invite in the hopes that a yes to Millbrook would get her off the hook with Dorothy for the duration of her city stay. As general counsel of a small environmental nonprofit, Dorothy had been attending the summit for years. It ran for three days, and with her mother a mere cab ride away, this was three days too many.
    “Of course I didn’t forget,” said Georgia. “I’ll be there.”
    “What about Glenn?”
    “I mean we’ll be there.” Explaining Glenn’s absence would be easy, and she already knew what she’d say: working on an important case, couldn’t get away. Dorothy would be suitably impressed and wouldn’t ask more.
    She hung up the phone and went back to the couch. The Chubby Chippie was almost gone; conversations with her mother had a funny way of driving her to eat. If Grammy hadn’t been around during her childhood, she’d be big as a house. And without Grammy’s intervention, she might not have become a chef.
    At the tail end of Georgia’s college graduation dinner, a mediocre meal at the second-best restaurant in town, Grammy announced that she had something to say. Georgia closed her eyes, praying Grammy wasn’t about to reveal that she had some horrible, fatal disease. Instead, she said she’d set up a trust that would allow Georgia to go to any grad school she pleased, plus have a little something left over for a rainy day. The way Grammy saw it, Georgia would either get the money when Grammy was dead, her ashes sprinkled over Silver Lake, or while she was still kicking and could watch her enjoy it. A stunned Dorothy dropped her spoon into her lemon Pavlova, where it quickly sank into a cloud of meringue, while Hal launched into a fit of throat clearing.
    She’d paid for Dorothy’s schooling, Grammy explained, so of course she’d do it for Georgia—after all, she was practically her daughter. Sniffling a little, Georgia told her family exactly what she wanted to do: go to culinary school and become a chef. Grammy was pleased, Georgia’s parents—having just lost any influence they’d hoped to exert over her choice of grad school or career—dead silent.
    Top Hat
’s final credits started rolling, and Georgia headed into the bathroom for a shower. A day in the country soundedgrand; a day in the country with Dorothy and Hal, less so. But at least her uncle Paul was cool and could usually be relied on to pull some fairly impressive bottles from his wine cellar.
    She sloughed off the dead skin on her arms, legs, and back with a sea sponge and grainy body wash that smelled like mint. After, she stood in front of the bathroom mirror, her mouth fixed into a discerning
o
. Could everyone see those little hairs above her upper lip, or was it just the lighting? She searched the medicine cabinet for the facial mask Lo had given her, the one that erased pimples, though not, sadly, girlstaches. A pill canister rolled out from behind a tub of Glenn’s shaving foam and she picked it up from the sink. Affixed to the side was a yellow-and-black warning label: “Do not operate heavy machinery or drive a car after taking this medication. Do not drink alcohol with this medication.” She flipped the canister over in her hand. It was a well-known sleeping pill, prescribed to Glenn by his family doctor. Frowning, she shook the canister. A handful of pink pills rattled at the bottom, and she poured them into her palm. She paused for