Read An Extract On Too Many Cooks Book Tour

As I rearrange the dining-room table to make room for a bowl of macaroni tuna salad, I feel a tap on my shoulder and whirl around to find Meg, my best friend for the past twenty years, holding a large glass casserole dish covered with aluminium foil.

‘Another casserole,’ she says. ‘This one from the McCrays.’

‘Let me guess: chicken, broccoli and rice?’

She peeks beneath the foil. ‘Yep. Although I think this one has carrots in it, too.’ She takes another look. ‘Or maybe that’s just cheese. I can’t tell. Where do you want it?’

I scan the table, which, in the two minutes I’ve spent talking to Meg, has given birth to three more creamy white salads. ‘In the kitchen, I guess. With the others.’

‘You got it.’ She re-covers the dish. ‘How are you holding up?’

‘Okay. Not great. It’s been a rough week.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘I’m just exhausted, you know? Physically, emotionally – I’m drained.’

She glances over my shoulder. ‘How’s Sam?’

‘My rock, as usual.’

‘What a trouper. Most guys I know would have been on a plane back to Chicago after one night on your dad’s pull-out couch. How old is that thing, anyway?’

‘Ancient. And filled with equally ancient crumbs.’

‘Gross.’
‘Very. But we’ve been together six years now. If he were offended by my family or my humble roots, he would have been out the door a long time ago.’

‘Rest assured, there’s still plenty of honky-tonk Michigan he hasn’t seen.’ She looks down at her watch. ‘If he isn’t busy later, I’d be happy to give him a tour . . .’

I chuckle for the first time in a week. ‘Thanks but no thanks. Dealing with my dad for three days has been pain­ful enough.’

‘Speaking of which . . .’ Her eyes drift over my other shoulder.

I turn around and spot my dad charging towards me, his floppy greying hair falling into his puffy eyes. He’s dressed in a faded black suit and tie, the only suit he has owned in the twenty-eight years I’ve known him. He buried both his parents in that suit, his brother, and now, after thirty-three years of marriage, his wife.

‘I’d better put this in the kitchen . . .’ Meg says, backing away slowly to avoid having to converse with my dad. He’s a loose cannon on a good day, and the past three have been worse than most.

‘Dammit, Kelly,’ he says, adjusting his tie, which looks as uncomfortable at being around his neck as he looks wearing it. ‘Where the hell is your mother’s spaghetti salad?’

It seems weird calling it her spaghetti salad, as if she might walk out of the kitchen at any moment, dressed in her over­sized powder-blue sweatshirt with a big bowl of spaghetti salad resting on her arms. My mom was never much of a cook – her style of cookery mostly involved cream-based canned soup and processed cheese – but her spaghetti salad was something of a delicacy in my town when I was growing up. The combination of spaghetti, ham, shredded cheese and Miracle Whip doesn’t sound as if it should go together, but somehow, when combined, the result is downright delicious. Maybe it’s the fact that every bite reminds me of my mom, but when I crave something comforting and familiar, it’s the first thing that comes to mind. Just thinking about it causes a lump to form in my throat.

‘Crap! I made it last night and forgot to put it out,’ I say. ‘It’s in the fridge.’

‘Well, could you go get it? Everyone is asking.’

‘Sure. Of course.’

‘Good.’ He runs his fingers through his hair and looks as if he might say something more, but instead he stares at me. ‘Today, please?’

‘Sorry – I’m on it.’

‘Thirty minutes too late . . .’

I hurry into the kitchen, telling myself through deep breaths that my father isn’t a jerk: it’s just his grief talking. Realistically, he is a bit of a jerk, but not a mean spirited one. Expressing emotion has never been one of his strengths, and since my mom’s heart attack, his feelings have come bursting out in fits and starts, like water from a punctured hose. Last night he kicked his couch and yelled at it for being ‘lazy’.

I push past a few old neighbours and head for the refrigerator, where I find the bowl of spaghetti salad I made last night. Preparing it seemed like a fitting tribute to my mom, using my professional cooking skills to recre­ate the one dish for which she was known. While I’d boiled the spaghetti and diced the ham, I’d blasted ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’, my mom’s personal anthem, which she’d play on repeat as she danced around the house, often after a Rum Runner or two. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to hear that song again without picturing her twirling in the family room, her feathered blonde waves bouncing off her shoulders, a boozy grin on her face.

‘Need help?’

Sam is standing behind the refrigerator door, looking handsome and decidedly out of place in his tailored Hugo Boss suit. His honey-coloured hair is styled with a bit of pomade and his deep dimples make him seem as if he’s smiling, even though he’s not. When Meg first met him during my senior year at University of Michigan, she called him ‘Ken’ behind his back because he bears such a striking resemblance to a Ken doll. By extension, I guess that would make me Barbie, which, given my long flaxen hair, might work if I weren’t a slight and flat-chested five foot three. I’m also pretty sure there was never a ‘Cookbook Ghostwriter Barbie’ or an ‘Art History Major Barbie’ or, at least, if there was, she certainly never made it to Ypsilanti, Michigan.

‘No, I’m okay. Just need to put this on the table.’

Sam glances down at the bowl. ‘So that’s the infamous spaghetti salad?’

‘The one and only.’

‘Ever try making that for François?’ he asks, referring to François Bardon, one of Chicago’s most famous chefs, whose cookbook I’ve just finished ghostwriting.

‘I don’t think he’d know what to do with it. I can hear him now: “What ees zees . . . spa-gay-tee salade?” ’

Sam laughs. ‘His wife would probably assume it was some sort of Midwestern aphrodisiac.’

‘The way people fight over it, maybe it is . . .’

Sam raises his eyebrows suggestively, then catches him­self. ‘Sorry – bad timing.’

‘It’s okay. My mom wouldn’t have wanted a big weepy scene.’

‘No?’

‘Are you kidding? She hated being around sad people. She’d want us to be laughing. Laughing and drinking.’

Even though my mom never told me this explicitly, I know it’s true. At my grandpa’s funeral, when I was ten, she’d started singing the theme song to Cheers while some old guy played piano, so that she could, in her words, ‘lighten the mood’. Granted, she was on her third rum and Coke and had a long history of breaking into song at inappropriate times, including at several of my birthday parties, but I know she’d have preferred a veiled sex joke to tears at her own funeral. Part of me is surprised she didn’t demand an ABBA-themed graveside song-and-dance in her will.

I’m about to ask Sam to restock the bar when my dad bursts into the kitchen, his face flushed.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ he says. ‘Where is the damn spaghetti salad?’

‘I was just bringing it out,’ I say, lifting the bowl in my hands.

‘Oh, really? Looks to me like you were talking to Dr Cock.’

I let out a protracted sigh. ‘Dad, we’ve been over this a zillion times. It’s pronounced “Coke”. And you don’t have to keep calling him “Doctor”.’

‘Well, he is a doctor, isn’t he?’

‘I am. But, please, call me Sam.’

My dad clenches his jaw as his eyes shoot from me to Sam and back to me again. ‘I just buried my wife. I can call him whatever I want.’