The Nearest Heart

The thing about cooking for Gerald is that Gerald has eaten Juliet's food. Not in the sense that Juliet cooks elaborate meals — she doesn't, the Chemex is her primary culinary contribution, aside from the occasional baking, and everyone understands this — but in the sense that Gerald has had the Hartwell family cooking for thirty years, and David Hartwell, from what Emmy Hartwell-Calloway has gathered over time in learning about that half of her surname, was someone who cooked with the same quality of attention he brought to everything: completely and without particular skill.

"Your father was a terrible cook," Emmy says, on Saturday morning, reorganizing the countertop with the particular energy of someone who has decided today is the day.

"He was adventurous," Juliet says, from behind the Chemex. "He tried things. Those things tried… my mother's and my patience."

"He tried things in a house that didn't own a thermometer."

"He believed in instinct. And luck."

"I have an instant-read probe thermometer," Emmy says. "I have three. Gerald is going to have a beautiful meal and none of it is going to be based on instinct. I am a scientist by training, Mrs. Hartwell-Calloway, and I shall not be messing this up on unknown variables."

The leprechaun, on the wall, maintains his position. He has been here since March. He will apparently be here for Christmas. Emmy glances at him briefly as she passes.

"He looks festive," she says.

Juliet looks up. "He's wearing a green hat. He looked festive in March."

"He has more gravitas now. He's earned it."

Juliet returns to the Chemex with the expression of someone who does not have time for this and is also, somewhere underneath that, faintly amused.

#

Emmy's plan for the dinner is the roast — specifically, an evolved version of the roast, the one that has been getting better since the Calloway visit in June. Not the public version; not quite the private version she made for Juliet's birthday. A third version, calibrated for Gerald, who she has come to understand over the past year and a half in the specific way you come to understand people who are beloved by people you love. Gerald is precise in his preferences and does not perform enthusiasm. He will appreciate something done correctly by his niece-in-law more than something done adventurously. The thermometer is non-negotiable.

Juliet has decided to bake.

This is not, Juliet clarifies, a comment on Emmy's cooking. This is simply the recognition that a roast requires a dessert and that she has research on the subject. Emmy, who has now seen Juliet approach every project in her life with preliminary research, does not find this surprising.

"What are you making?" Emmy asks.

"Tarte tatin," Juliet says. "It's structurally elegant. Caramelised apples, inverted pastry. The technique is not complicated once understood."

"Have you made one before?"

"I have read about making one."

Emmy sets down the thermometer. "Juliet."

"The literature is very clear."

"The literature—"

"Emmy. I have made pastry before. I have made caramel before. The combination is a matter of correct sequencing."

Emmy looks at her. Juliet looks back with the expression of someone who has done the research and is not going to be undermined by reasonable doubt. Emmy picks up the thermometer again.

"I'll be here," Emmy says. "With the thermometer."

"The thermometer is for the roast," Juliet says. "The tarte tatin does not require a thermometer."

"Everything requires a thermometer."

Juliet sticks her tongue out at Emmy.

#

The caramel happens three times.

The first time: correct temperature, wrong pan, it seizes. Juliet looks at it with the expression of someone receiving data. She notes something in her notebook. She starts again.

The second time: correct pan, correct temperature, she turns away for approximately forty-five seconds to answer a question Emmy asks — specifically, a question Emmy asks because she has been watching the caramel and has correctly intuited that forty-five seconds of distraction is roughly how long it takes to go wrong — and it goes wrong. Juliet turns back and she is quiet for a moment.

"You asked me that on purpose," she says.

"I asked you where the good salt was," Emmy says.

"We have one kind of salt."

"I know that now. We should have good salt."

Juliet looks at her. There is a long pause. "You're enjoying this."

"I have no idea what you mean," Emmy says, from the doorway, where she has been standing for the last two minutes. "I'm going to go check on the roast."

She is absolutely not checking on the roast. She is laughing in the hallway.

The third caramel: correct. Juliet completes it with the systematic precision she brings to things she has done twice wrong and is not going to do wrong a third time. Emmy comes back into the kitchen to find the caramel exactly right and Juliet with the expression of someone who has proven a point she was not in any doubt about.

"Beautiful," Emmy says, entirely sincerely.

"I know," Juliet says. "Leave it to set."

#

By five o'clock on Saturday, the roast is marinading for tomorrow and the tarte tatin is cooling and the kitchen smells like December should smell. Emmy sets the table in the dining room — three places, the good glasses, the candles she found in the back of the cupboard that she is fairly certain are from a Box That Moved In In June. They are white candles. They suit the table. They've prepared a day in advance in order to ensure perfection (and in case they accidentally eat the tarte early).

Juliet comes to stand in the dining room doorway.

"It looks right," she says.

"It's a good table," Emmy says. She looks at it. Three places. Gerald's place. "Does he know about the height marks?"

A pause. "He made some of them," Juliet says. "He was here often when I was young."

Emmy nods. She straightens one of the glasses, which was already straight. "I'll make sure there's good wine," she says.

"I've already selected the wine," Juliet says.

Of course she has.

#

Gerald arrives on Sunday at exactly six o'clock, which is when he was invited, because Gerald arrives when he says he will arrive. He is wearing a suit that is slightly too formal for a Sunday December dinner and entirely right for Gerald. He looks at the house the way he always looks at the house — with the particular quality of someone who is seeing it and also remembering it — and he comes in.

He shakes Emmy's hand. In time, Emmy hopes this will become a hug or kiss on the cheek. But for now a handshake will do. He says something to Juliet that is private and brief and Emmy doesn't hear it, but Juliet's expression when she turns back into the hallway has the settled quality it sometimes has after Gerald says something.

The dinner begins.

#

The roast is exactly right. Emmy knows this when Gerald has a second portion without being asked, which is the highest available compliment from a man who does not perform enthusiasm. The tarte tatin, when it arrives warmed, produces a specific silence from Gerald that is the tarte tatin version of the same compliment.

"Juliet made it," Emmy says.

Gerald looks at Juliet. "You probably won't believe this, but your father used to attempt tarte tatin," he says. "He never mastered the caramel."

"I know," Juliet says. "It took me three attempts."

"He would have declared the first one finished," Gerald says, and something in his voice carries the particular quality of someone who is being very accurate about a person they miss. "That was David. The first version was always the version."

The table is warm. The candles are lit. Outside, the December dark and the garden that spent the year not being tended.

#

It is after dinner — the good glasses half-empty, the plates cleared — that the conversation finds the particular register it sometimes finds with Gerald: the register of someone who is remembering things with the specific quality of someone who does not often have the occasion to say them. In many ways it must be tough for Gerald. David was his only sibling. Their parents passed long ago, and Gerald never married or seriously dated. Julian was a constant in Gerald's life for 18 years, and then Julian left. Juliet and Emmy are his family, but they're 'new' family in a sense. Sometimes Gerald enjoys remembering 'old' family.

Emmy has been watching for this quality. She has been learning it since June of last year, in the way she has been learning things: carefully, through proximity, without announcing the learning.

Juliet says something about the house — about a specific memory of the kitchen, a Sunday when David had attempted something — and Gerald is quiet for a moment in a way that is not absence. He is, Emmy can see, locating something.

She does not fill the quiet. She wants Gerald to locate the memory of his brother.

She picks up her glass. She looks at the candle. She gives the room to Gerald.

He takes it.

"They loved everything," Gerald says. Not to Juliet specifically — to the table, perhaps, or to the memory of David and Marie that lives in this house. "That was the problem." He pauses. "You can't love everything and also be careful enough about the things that can hurt you. Your father was the most welcoming person I ever knew. The world walked through his door and he never thought to check who was coming in." Another pause. "I miss him every day."

The candlelight does what candlelight does in December — it holds the room in a specific warmth that has no artificial quality.

Emmy does not look at Juliet.

She waits.

After a moment she feels, rather than sees, the particular quality of Juliet receiving something. Not resolving it — receiving it. The shape of what she has been carrying is not changed by what Gerald said. But the shape has a different context now. Love and insufficient guardedness not as failures of love. Love so full it had nowhere to put the guardedness. A man who let the world through the door because that was the quality of his welcome.

The thing in the waiting area has not been named. But the waiting area has a different light in it.

Emmy sets down her glass. "Tell me about him," she says to Gerald. "Something I don't know."

Gerald looks at her with a very specific expression — the one she has come to recognize as Gerald receiving something he didn't expect and finding it precisely right.

And Gerald tells her something she doesn't know. It takes twenty minutes, and it is about David, and it is funny and specific and real, and by the end of it Juliet's expression is the expression of someone who has been given something they hadn't known to ask for. The missing pieces.

#

Gerald leaves at nine, with the specific tidiness of Gerald departures: coat, thank-you, the handshake for Emmy that means more than it looks like, the brief word to Juliet in the hallway.

The door closes. The house exhales.

Emmy stands in the hallway for a moment. She can hear Juliet in the kitchen starting the dishes, which is what Juliet does when she needs to do something with her hands while she processes. Emmy goes to help.

They do the dishes the way they do most things — without coordination, simply in the same place at the same pace. Juliet washes. Emmy dries. The December evening outside the kitchen window, the garden in the dark, the leprechaun on the wall in his nine-month residency.

"The caramel was right," Emmy says, eventually.

"The third time," Juliet says.

"Still right. Would have been right the second time if I hadn't… ya know... been salty."

A pause. Juliet hands her another plate, with a smile.

"He was good tonight," Juliet says. Which means: Gerald was Gerald, and Gerald said something important, and she received it. Emmy does not press for more. She dries the plate and sets it where it goes.

"He always is," she says.

They finish the dishes. Emmy makes tea — the late-night quiet version, not the Chemex, just the kettle and the two mugs. They take it to the living room and they sit in front of the fire in the December evening, Juliet with her feet up because it is Sunday and she has cooked a tarte tatin and she has earned it, Emmy beside her with the specific warmth of a Sunday that has been full and is now at rest.

"Same time next year?" Emmy says.

"Earlier," Juliet says.

She means the dinner. She might mean something else as well.

Emmy puts her head on Juliet's shoulder. The fire does its December work. The house holds the evening quietly, the way it holds everything — without comment, without urgency, for as long as it takes.

* * *