Read Online Cooking for Picasso by Camille Aubray - Free Book Online
Authors: Camille Aubray
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presentation. She purred with pleasure, stroking my cheek and then patting my back.
“Pas du tout,”
she said modestly with an airy wave of her hand. And suddenly I realized what was different about Mom today; she possessed the calm, confident demeanor of someone who’d been home alone peacefully cooking all week while Dad was in the hospital recuperating. Even though she loved catering to him, I could see that not having Dad at home had somehow released her, making her both relaxed and buoyant; and it looked as if she’d been secretly enjoying her newfound independence.
“Leave your suitcase in the front hall, we’ll get you settled in later,” she said, eagerly taking my hand and leading me to the kitchen table. She sat me down there and then poured us some hot chocolate, which she’d timed perfectly for my arrival, along with a plate of fresh apricot butter biscuits.
“Mmm, so good,” I said, sipping gratefully. “Now it really
tastes
like Christmas.”
She’d been beaming with the instinctive physical delight that mothers have when their children are near, but now as Mom sat beside me, her expression became more sober. “Céline,” she began rather tentatively, “your father has healed from his prostate surgery, but the doctors are saying that he’s still got a lot of other serious health problems with his heart and his lungs. So this got him to thinking, and he decided that we ought to update our wills. There was so much paperwork to sign! You know I’m no good with such business and legal things. But thank heavens it’s all taken care of now.”
This conversation was highly unusual; my mother rarely talked about money. She left the family finances entirely up to Dad and his accountants. She shopped, she had credit cards of course, but as far as I knew, she’d never in her life had to balance a checkbook, pay a bill or do her taxes.
Now she took a deep breath. And then she lowered the boom. “Your brother has been helping Dad with all the complicated insurance paperwork, so they’ve put everything in trust to Danny, because he understands what Dad wants and can continue taking care of it all when your father isn’t around to do so anymore. Is that okay with you?” I detected a guilty tinge to her voice as she said all this in a rush, as if to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible.
Still, it took me a moment to grasp the significance of what she was saying. “Danny’s going to get
all
the money? Even what you inherited from your mom?” I said. She nodded with such a stricken look that I saw it had not been an easy thing for her to agree to, yet she hastily tried to reassure me.
“But Danny won’t keep the money all for himself. He’ll manage it for me and then when I’m gone, he’ll take care of
all
of you; it will be divided up equally. Daddy says men have more access to information for making better business and investment decisions. ‘Men trust men’, he says.”
My hot chocolate had gone cold right there in my cup. I’d stopped sipping it. “And what do
you
say, Mom?” I asked quietly. I knew that nobody else in the family was going to ask her this.
She looked relieved and grateful, as if I’d given her permission to voice her own opinion, and I found this painfully touching. “I thought all three of you should be in charge—with the trust split three ways. I told your father that,” she admitted. “But he kept saying, ‘Too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth.’ Deirdre says she’s fine with Danny being in charge, so I thought it must be all right, don’t you think?” she said pleadingly. Her self-doubt was so pitiful to see but I had to answer her truthfully.
“No, I don’t agree. Deirdre
would
say it’s fine; the twins are always thick as thieves.” In fact as a kid Danny
had
been a thief, utterly unrepentant when caught cheating in school or stealing from his own family. What bothered me most was the sneaky way he did it, skulking
“Pas du tout,”
she said modestly with an airy wave of her hand. And suddenly I realized what was different about Mom today; she possessed the calm, confident demeanor of someone who’d been home alone peacefully cooking all week while Dad was in the hospital recuperating. Even though she loved catering to him, I could see that not having Dad at home had somehow released her, making her both relaxed and buoyant; and it looked as if she’d been secretly enjoying her newfound independence.
“Leave your suitcase in the front hall, we’ll get you settled in later,” she said, eagerly taking my hand and leading me to the kitchen table. She sat me down there and then poured us some hot chocolate, which she’d timed perfectly for my arrival, along with a plate of fresh apricot butter biscuits.
“Mmm, so good,” I said, sipping gratefully. “Now it really
tastes
like Christmas.”
She’d been beaming with the instinctive physical delight that mothers have when their children are near, but now as Mom sat beside me, her expression became more sober. “Céline,” she began rather tentatively, “your father has healed from his prostate surgery, but the doctors are saying that he’s still got a lot of other serious health problems with his heart and his lungs. So this got him to thinking, and he decided that we ought to update our wills. There was so much paperwork to sign! You know I’m no good with such business and legal things. But thank heavens it’s all taken care of now.”
This conversation was highly unusual; my mother rarely talked about money. She left the family finances entirely up to Dad and his accountants. She shopped, she had credit cards of course, but as far as I knew, she’d never in her life had to balance a checkbook, pay a bill or do her taxes.
Now she took a deep breath. And then she lowered the boom. “Your brother has been helping Dad with all the complicated insurance paperwork, so they’ve put everything in trust to Danny, because he understands what Dad wants and can continue taking care of it all when your father isn’t around to do so anymore. Is that okay with you?” I detected a guilty tinge to her voice as she said all this in a rush, as if to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible.
Still, it took me a moment to grasp the significance of what she was saying. “Danny’s going to get
all
the money? Even what you inherited from your mom?” I said. She nodded with such a stricken look that I saw it had not been an easy thing for her to agree to, yet she hastily tried to reassure me.
“But Danny won’t keep the money all for himself. He’ll manage it for me and then when I’m gone, he’ll take care of
all
of you; it will be divided up equally. Daddy says men have more access to information for making better business and investment decisions. ‘Men trust men’, he says.”
My hot chocolate had gone cold right there in my cup. I’d stopped sipping it. “And what do
you
say, Mom?” I asked quietly. I knew that nobody else in the family was going to ask her this.
She looked relieved and grateful, as if I’d given her permission to voice her own opinion, and I found this painfully touching. “I thought all three of you should be in charge—with the trust split three ways. I told your father that,” she admitted. “But he kept saying, ‘Too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth.’ Deirdre says she’s fine with Danny being in charge, so I thought it must be all right, don’t you think?” she said pleadingly. Her self-doubt was so pitiful to see but I had to answer her truthfully.
“No, I don’t agree. Deirdre
would
say it’s fine; the twins are always thick as thieves.” In fact as a kid Danny
had
been a thief, utterly unrepentant when caught cheating in school or stealing from his own family. What bothered me most was the sneaky way he did it, skulking
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