Aftertaste Read online

  Advance Praise for Meredith Mileti’s

  AFTERTASTE

  “I loved this unflinchingly honest portrayal of a woman’s fresh start—in life, in love, and in her very special kitchens.”

  —Melissa Senate, author of The Love Goddess’ Cooking School

  “Simply scrumptious! In Aftertaste, Meredith Mileti dishes up a smart, gripping novel rich with the right ingredients—an honest telling of love, anger, forgiveness and the binding power of food. I finished this book wonderfully satisfied and yet still wanting more, the perfect meal!”

  —Susan Gregg Gilmore, author of Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen and The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove

  “Meredith Mileti not only understands food in all its contexts, she also understands stories and she’s given us a ripping good one in Aftertaste. I was hooked from Antipasti right down to the last crumb of Dolce on the plate.”

  —Judith Ryan Hendricks, author of Bread Alone

  “Meredith Mileti’s Aftertaste is as honest, hearty, and deeply satisfying as the Italian peasant fare cooked by her heroine. A delightful debut novel about the important things in life: food, family, and love.”

  —Ann Mah, author of Kitchen Chinese

  “The perfect recipe for a deeply satisfying read—a wonderfully flawed narrator with an ax (and an ex) to grind, a fast-paced story set in the fascinating world of top chefs and restaurants told with an insider’s knife-edge precision, an utterly believable and sympathetic cast of characters—all served up with delectable prose and refreshing insights into work, family, and love that linger long after the last page has been turned.”

  —Liza Gyllenhaal, author of So Near

  “To say that Aftertaste is a story about food and love and resilience is like calling Anthony Bourdain a “cook.” Readers are going to fall in love with Mira and Meredith Mileti. It’s always a thrill to read a debut novel, but to discover a writer as great as this is pure treasure.”

  —Jo-Ann Mapson, author of Solomon’s Oak and The Owl & Moon Café

  “Serving up not only delectable cuisine but magnificent prose, Meredith Mileti’s Aftertaste lingered on my tongue long after devouring the last page. Surely she is a writer destined for greatness!”

  —Lisa Patton, author of Whistlin’ Dixie in a Nor’easter

  “A delicious debut.”

  —Jamie Cat Callan, author of French Women Don’t Sleep Alone and Bonjour, Happiness!

  aftertaste

  {a novel in five courses}

  Meredith Mileti

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Advance Praise for Meredith Mileti’s - AFTERTASTE

  Title Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Antipasti

  chapter 1

  chapter 2

  Primi

  chapter 3

  chapter 4

  chapter 5

  chapter 6

  chapter 7

  chapter 8

  chapter 9

  chapter 10

  chapter 11

  chapter 12

  Secondi

  chapter 13

  chapter 14

  chapter 15

  chapter 16

  chapter 17

  chapter 18

  chapter 19

  chapter 20

  chapter 21

  chapter 22

  chapter 23

  chapter 24

  chapter 25

  chapter 26

  chapter 27

  Contorni

  chapter 28

  chapter 29

  chapter 30

  Dolce

  chapter 31

  chapter 32

  chapter 33

  chapter 34

  chapter 35

  A READING GROUP GUIDE - AFTERTASTE

  Discussion Questions

  Copyright Page

  For my father, Robert Mileti

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Julia Child once observed that great gourmands are marked by warm and generous natures and that the people who love to eat are always the best people. My thanks are due to so many individuals who helped bring this book to the table—friends, readers, and great gourmands all . . .

  My agents, Alexandra Machinist and Linda Chester, for zealously championing Mira and her story; Amy Pyle, my insightful and supportive editor, whose gentle hand and expert assistance helped guide Aftertaste to fruition; Debra Roth Kane, copy editor extraordinaire, for her careful attention to detail; and last, but not least, the team at Kensington, for giving this first-time novelist such a wonderful welcome.

  Thanks are due as well to my earliest readers, Grant, Sonja, Holly, and Clara Schutte, Kathy Cienciala and John Lingley, for laughing in all the right places and for the inspiration of so many good meals shared around your tables. And to Betsy Levine-Brown and Patty Levine, Joan Vondra, Val Mittl, Debi and Bobbi Fox, Chanelle Bokelberg, and Mike Lynch, generous readers and wonderful friends. To Melissa Tea, Mercedes Goldcamp, Carol Fryday, Debra Schneider, and Sue Martin, my heartfelt thanks for their careful reading and helpful comments on later drafts of the novel.

  A debt of gratitude is owed to Jennifer McDowell, equal parts coach, cheerleader, and dear friend.

  To Sharon Oddson, owner of Trattoria Garga, in Firenze, grazie mille for teaching me to roll pasta with a rolling pin and for showing me what it takes to make a successful woman chef.

  To my children, Stephanie, Amanda, and Mark, for loving good stories and allowing me my obsessions and who every day make me proud to be their mother.

  To my father, Robert Mileti, the greatest gourmand I know, who took me to Italy and taught me to cook.

  And, finally, to David, who makes all my dreams come true.

  Antipasti

  Cooking is a troublesome sprite.

  —Pellegrino Artusi

  chapter 1

  The best thing about the location of the Manhattan County Courthouse is its proximity to Nelly’s. Nelly’s is a take-out stand that serves the best lamb burger this side of Auckland. Cooked rare, and topped with goat cheese and a fried egg so fresh its yolk oozes orange, it’s the last meal I will ask for if ever I find myself on death row.

  Climbing the steps to the courthouse, I imagine I am one of New Zealand’s intrepid settlers, a nefarious wanderer let loose on the shores of a place new and dangerous, armed with the fortitude only a good meal can provide. I stuff the last delicious morsel into my mouth, savoring the finale, the unctuous tang of the cheese, the bracing bite of the lamb, wishing I’d ordered a beer to go with it. Maybe two.

  The criminal division is on the second floor, and stepping off the elevator, I pass through security, where I’m checked for weapons before being let loose to wander freely among the drug addicts, street criminals, and those poor souls wrongly accused of being criminals (of whom, looking around, I suspect there are few). Everyone has a hunted look. They huddle in doorways and dimly lit hallways; some are handcuffed or shackled. The air is thick with the smell of unwashed bodies, of anger and despair. Police officers in various stages of disenchantment with humanity mill around officially, sipping burnt coffee provided free of charge by the grateful taxpayers of Manhattan.

  The probation department is located in a slightly more hopeful annex, seven steps up and to the left of the criminal courtrooms. It is the third time I have found myself here, and I know it will not be my last. I have been court-ordered to attend a series of anger-management classes. We meet on Tuesday afternoons, a half a floor removed from the felons, but the smell of anger and despair is here as well. Although it is the third class of six, I think I’v
e regressed. My anger is closer to the surface this time; I can feel it hot and palpable under the collar of my shirt, in the pulse in my neck, and in the palms of my clenched fists. Six of us sit in a circle on the green linoleum floor that looks and feels as if it hasn’t been washed in years. The instructor, Mary Ann, is a licensed clinical social worker. She walks slowly behind us, repeating what are supposed to be soothing phrases. “Breathe in the clean, white air. When you exhale, picture your breath as black and hot. It is your anger. Release it, and let it go.” It is how we began the last two classes, and it is, I assume, how we will begin them all. When she gets to me, she places a light hand on my shoulder and says softly, “Mira, you’re very tense. Try to unclench your fists. Exhale that black, hot anger.” She gives my shoulder an encouraging squeeze and moves on.

  “Think of what makes you angry,” she continues, in a hushed, singsongy voice. “When you feel your body begin to tense, take a cleansing breath, let out that black smoke, and repeat, ‘I will not lose control.’ ”

  So here I am, a person who’s never so much as gotten a speeding ticket, a person with nary a youthful transgression to speak of, now a regular in the probation department, where I have been ordered to be by Judge Celia Wilcox, who one would have thought would have been more sympathetic to me—a woman scorned. I repeat, “I will not lose control,” mantra-like, as if by some wild stretch of the imagination a mere verbal affirmation could make it so.

  The truth is, I’m out of control and I know it. I’m out of control and justifiably so. I have just lost everything.

  Mary Ann tells us to slowly open our eyes. Amazingly, the air around us is not cloudy with the black smoke of our exhaled anger, which can mean only one of two things: We have all kept it corked up inside to be released later when no longer under Mary Ann’s watchful eye or, two, Mary Ann is full of shit. I know what I think and, looking around the room at my fellow miscreants, I know what they think, too. We are doing our time, all of us, thankful to be here and not downstairs, shackled in those orange jumpsuits.

  We get up and stretch a bit, then move to chairs that are placed in a circle behind us. We do this more or less silently. The other people in the class, four men and one woman, do not seem to be given to lighthearted banter. They probably do not have good social skills, which might help to explain why they are in this class.

  I, on the other hand, am a person with excellent social skills, a gifted conversationalist, a person used to lighthearted banter. A person who occasionally used to smile before rage and disappointment took up permanent residence, lagging in the pit of my stomach like an indigestible meal. I’m angry, and who wouldn’t be? I’m forced to be here because the woman who screwed my husband is now trying to steal my restaurant. All I was trying to do was to protect hearth, home, and business, which in simpler times would have been a perfectly permissible and legally defensible option.

  In fact, if I’d been a cave woman or even some medieval wench, I would have been considered the victor when I emerged, only slightly bloodied, and holding in my hands great clumps of Nicola’s black hair—hair I pulled out by its roots while she sat naked, helpless, and sobbing, hands pressed to her bald and bleeding scalp. I would have won Jake back by a show of sheer physical dominance, and I, not Nicola, would now be presiding over the dining room at Grappa. That I am here, and she is in my restaurant and in Jake’s bed is beyond anathema, and a testament to the decline of modern civilization.

  A snort escapes me, and I look around, embarrassed. Mary Ann begins. “How did this week go for you all? Let’s talk about triggers and what we did to address them. Larry, how about beginning for us?” She gestures to a large man wearing a New York Rangers jersey over white carpenter’s pants who, we learned last week, beats his wife.

  “I dunno. She got mad and left. So, since she wasn’t there, there was nothin’ to piss me off.”

  “Do you know what made her angry?” Mary Ann asks.

  I squirm in my chair. I want to say, How about being married to a guy who beats you? Isn’t that enough for you, Mary Ann?

  “Who the hell knows,” says Larry. Mary Ann doesn’t say anything. After thirty seconds or so, the uncomfortable silence forces Larry to continue. “Might be because I didn’t come home one night.”

  And I think, great, another adulterer, and because I have no impulse control where infidelity is concerned, I glare daggers at him, then wonder fleetingly if he is likely to turn his rage on me. He looks at me and then at Keisha, a large African American woman, an ex-professional boxer with a cauliflower ear and the only other female in the group besides me and Mary Ann (who, I guess, doesn’t really count). Keisha is also glaring at him.

  As if sensing our mutual disgust, he proceeds. “I had too much to drink, and I get mean when I’m drunk, so I thought I’d better not go home, just in case.”

  Mary Ann is all over that one. “Well, Larry, that is an important step. You recognized drinking is a trigger for you, and you were trying to keep yourself from doing some harm. I think you can see that as progress.” She smoothes her limp, gray pageboy hair behind both ears, adjusts her cardigan sweater, and gives him a milquetoast smile.

  Keisha, who may have even less impulse control than I do, says to Larry, “Hell, she’s mad because she don’t know where you been sleeping. I’d be mad. Miss Priss and Miss Chef over there”—she gestures to Mary Ann and me—“we’d be mad if our man don’t come home, and we don’t know where he is or who he’s been sleepin’ with.”

  Before I can jump in with a “Right on, sister!,” Shawn, a middle-aged man in an expensive suit, waves his hand in a dismissive manner and says in a clipped and condescending tone, “Oh, come on, that really isn’t the issue. It is not about what makes her mad. The point is, this guy, Larry here, is trying to get his act together. He knows there are probably a hundred little things his wife does that annoy the crap out of him, and when he’s drunk those hundred things become a thousand.

  “He’s taking one step at a time, and if his wife doesn’t see that, to hell with her. This isn’t freaking marriage counseling. Larry’s got other things on his mind besides other women. Why is it you can’t understand it isn’t always about you?”

  Shawn’s tone is full of disdain and thinly concealed misogyny. He hasn’t spoken before, and I wonder what he has done and why he is here. One thing I’m sure about, it somehow involves a woman.

  Mary Ann, a traitor to her sex, replies, “Thanks for sharing that thought, Shawn. Would you like to say some more about that?”

  Shawn puts his forearms on his knees, buries his head in his open palms, and says in a tight voice, “No, that will do it.”

  Mary Ann turns her attention to Keisha and me and opens her mouth, poised to deliver a lecture, but before she can begin, before I even know it myself, I’m off and running. “Do you want to know what my trigger is, Mary Ann, Shawn, Larry?” I say, louder than I had intended. “Lying, cheating, scumbag husbands and their whores!”

  I hear Mary Ann say “Mira,” and I know she’s about to tell me I’m smothering in the thick, black smoke of my anger. But I don’t care, and I don’t stop.

  I blurt out my story, how I had hired Nicola to be the maîtress d’hôtel at our restaurant, Grappa, when I was seven months pregnant. How I suspected Jake and Nicola had begun having an affair when Chloe was just hours old; and how one night, when Chloe woke up and Jake still wasn’t home at two-thirty in the morning, I bundled her up and strapped her into the portable infant carrier, walked the three blocks to the restaurant, and snuck in the side door.

  The door was locked, but the alarm wasn’t on, the first odd thing, because Jake always locks up and sets the alarm before leaving the restaurant. Chloe had fallen back to sleep in her infant seat on the way over, so I carefully nestled the carrier into one of the leather banquettes.

  I crept through the dining room and into the darkened kitchen, where I could see the office at the far end was aglow with candlelight. As I moved closer I could hear
music. “Nessun dorma,” from Turandot, Jake’s favorite. How fitting. On the marble pastry station I found an open bottle of wine and two empty glasses. It was, to add insult to what was about to be serious injury, a 1999 Tenuta dell’Ornellaia Masseto Toscano—the most expensive wine in our cellar. Three hundred and eighty dollar foreplay.

  I picked up the bottle and followed the trail of clothes to the office. Jake’s checkered chef’s pants and tunic, Nicola’s slinky black dress, which I hated her for being able to wear, and a Victoria’s Secret, lacy, black bra. They were on the leather couch, Nicola on top, her wild, black hair spilling over Jake’s chest, humping away like wild dogs. Carried away by their passion, they were oblivious to my approach. I drained the last of the wine from the bottle and hurled it over their backsides where it smashed against the wall, announcing my arrival.

  Before Jake could completely extricate himself, I jumped on Nicola’s back and grabbed hold of her hair and pulled with all the strength of my hot-blooded Mediterranean ancestors. Nicola screamed, and clawed the air, her flailing hands accidentally swiping Jake squarely on the chin. He squirmed out from under her and tried to tackle me, but I’m not a small woman. Armed with my humiliation and anger, I was a force in motion.

  In desperation, Jake butted his head into the middle of my back, wrapped his hands around my waist, and pulled with all his might. He succeeded, pulling so hard that Nicola’s hair, which I had resolutely refused to yield, came away in great clumps in my hands. Nicola’s screams turned to pathetic whimpers as she reached to cover her burning scalp. She then curled herself into a fetal position, naked and bleeding, and began to keen.