The Whole Enchilada

Prologue My friend Holly Ingleby died after a party I’d organized. She collapsed while walking with her son, Drew, to her car—less than a block from the house belonging to another close friend, Marla Korman. I knew I shouldn’t have blamed myself. But I did. The seventeenth-birthday celebration for Drew and my own son, Arch, was not an official event put on by my business, Goldilocks’ Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right! It was a Tex-Mex potluck featuring sizzling-hot enchiladas, crunchy salted tortillas, cool guacamole, fresh-baked corn bread, and chile relleno tortas, those quivering, picante-laced custards brimming with lakes of cheddar and Jack cheeses. For dessert, there was dulce de leche ice cream accompanying a birthday cake with sparkler-style candles. The whole thing was supposed to have been carefree and fun. What was the opposite of carefree and fun? That party. Years before, Holly, Marla, and I, along with a few other women, had been in a support group, Amour Anonymous. We’d all given love to the wrong men for the wrong reasons. With a few banjos, we could have played Nashville. Ha ha, so funny I forgot to laugh. More important, we kept each other upright as we marched through hell. When I saw Holly lying inert on the pavement, an icy abyss opened in my chest. Tom, my second husband—as wonderful as the first one had been horrific—grasped my shoulders to keep me from pitching onto the concrete where Holly lay. Afterward, I thought, That could have been me. I knew people differed in their opinions of Holly. In our mountain town of Aspen Meadow, Colorado, perched at eight thousand feet above sea level, forty miles west of Denver, the charitable called Holly a loving mother who’d come from nothing, then shared her creative gifts with the world. The uncharitable called her an untalented slut who chased rich men and charged too much for her work. Marla and I always stuck up for her—not that it did much good. Still, no matter what the charitable or the uncharitable said about Holly’s personality and ability, they all would have agreed that she worked hard to maintain her slender, muscled body. At thirty-eight, she was still leggy, still blond, with a bright-eyed, surgically enhanced face and a vivacious personality. She had no history of disease and was not on medication. As it turned out, there were many uncharitable people around my old friend. At the time, I didn’t know who these individuals were. Nor did I have an inkling as to their motives. Most people were stunned by her death. Most. Not all. 17th BIRTHDAY PARTY ARCH KORMAN & DREW INGLEBY Tex-Mex Potluck Buffet Friday, June 15th Marla Korman’s new house Meadowview, Aspen Meadow Country Club, Aspen Meadow, Colorado We’ll provide: Tortilla Chips and Guacamole Enchiladas Suizas Vegetarian Chile Relleno Tortas Refried Beans Corn Bread Sour Cream, Sliced Black Olives, Chopped Tomatoes, Scallions, and Lettuce Birthday Cake Dulce de Leche Ice Cream Soft Drinks, Coffee, Tea (And if you’re over twenty-one and not driving, Beer and Wine) If your favorite dish isn’t here, feel free to bring it. Suggestions: Gazpacho Tamale Pie Tostadas Arroz con Pollo Flan 1 Before Holly died—before everything went south—I enjoyed the prep for the boys’ party. As I grated cheese for the enchiladas, I remembered meeting Holly on the maternity ward when our sons were born. She was standing very still outside the newborns’ nursery, staring through the glass as tears dropped from her high-cheekboned face. I put her despair down to postpartum blues, and hugged her. She was quite a bit taller than yours truly, so we made an odd picture. Within moments, Holly and I also discovered that neither of our doctor husbands had bothered to show up. She dabbed her eyes and said, “I feel so sorry for Drew. He has to know his own father doesn’t care.” For a change, I bit my tongue. I hadn’t been surprised that Dr. John Richard Korman had not made an appearance. Later, I dubbed him the Jerk, both for his initials and his behavior, which included breaking my right thumb in three places with a hammer. I set aside the shredded cheddar and veered away from that memory. I touched my thumb, which still wouldn’t move properly. Then I tore the skin off rotisserie chickens and ripped the meat from the bones. Who says cooking isn’t cathartic? Drew and Arch had been in the same Sunday School and attended Aspen Meadow’s Montessori preschool. There, Holly enthusiastically helped students with their clay sculptures and tempera paintings. I felt lucky to have known Holly before her artwork made her famous. I blinked at the pan of softened tortillas, then stacked them between paper towels to remove excess oil. Next I mixed crema—homemade sour cream—with the chicken, cheddar, and a judicious amount of salt. I began rolling the tortillas around spoonfuls of the filling and carefully placing them in buttered pans. Goldy and Arch; Holly and Drew. I had a sudden image of Drew, Holly’s darling son, at age five, his face splashed with freckles, his mop of strawberry-blond curls blowing in the breeze beside Cottonwood Creek. After church, Drew and Arch would hunt for garter snakes by the water. When they held one up for our inspection, we would shriek. When the boys finished kindergarten, I put Arch into public school. Holly enrolled Drew at Elk Park Prep, an expensive local private institution. But the boys remained church pals until they were nine. Back then, Holly swooned over the cookies I brought in for the Sunday School class; she even begged for the recipes. She gleefully admitted she never made them herself, but gave them to the cook who worked for her mother-in-law, Edith. The cook was one of the benefits of living in the red-brick plantation-style house that Edith’s deceased husband had built. George the First, as Holly called him, had made millions as a genuine oil baron. When I said it must be nice to have somebody else prepare meals, Holly replied that living with Edith wasn’t worth a dozen chefs. Holly also confided that she’d discovered, too late, that her husband—George the Second—was a mama’s boy and a cheapskate. Despite Holly’s pleas, George refused to buy a house for their little family. His mother might get sick, he maintained. She might fall down the stairs. No, George wouldn’t hear of it. Worse, George and Edith put Holly, who had to look up the word profligate, on a stringent cash budget. Humiliated and furious, Holly came to hate them both. The boys were in fourth grade when she began divorce proceedings. As I chopped onions for the enchilada sauce, the tears filling my eyes may have come from the onion. Still, I didn’t enjoy recalling how much I’d missed my friend when she bought a house in Denver. I hated remembering how Arch had pined for Drew. I found a tissue, blew my nose, and washed my hands again. I heated oil in a Dutch oven, then tossed in the onion. When it was almost done, I ladled in minced garlic. I stirred and inhaled the luscious scent. Next I added chopped Italian tomatoes, chiles, and oregano to the enchilada sauce, gave it a good stir, and smiled—for this was when the memories started their trajectory back up. Not much more than a year after Holly left George the Second, the boys had an opportunity to get reacquainted. Holly sold the place in Denver. She purchased a fire-engine-red four-wheel-drive Audi and a house in Aspen Meadow Country Club, then called to say she was back. By then, Marla Korman, the Jerk’s second ex-wife, and I had become pals. I invited Holly to join Amour Anonymous. While the group met, Arch and Drew moved from remote-controlled cars to board games. In winter, the two of them sledded down nearby hills. Drew, tall and athletic like Holly, began to tower over Arch. Sometimes the boys would build a jump for their sleds and plastic saucers, and laugh themselves silly when one of them wiped out. At the beginning of each Amour Anonymous meeting, we would check in with a brief description of our current physical and emotional health. Then we took turns choosing discussion topics. I was the secretary. This was all before laptop computers became commonplace, so I wrote the notes by hand. I sighed, poured the sauce over the first pan of enchiladas, and put them in the oven. I made myself an espresso and sat down. What came next was my best memory of Holly from those dark days. Not long into my own years of singlehood, Marla was out of town when a sudden snowstorm postponed an Amour Anonymous meeting. Arch was spending the night with a friend, whose parents invited him to stay on. I couldn’t have picked him up anyway, because my tires had once again been slashed. I suspected the Jerk, of course, but could prove nothing. Holly called to check on me. I told her I’d gone back to bed. And I stayed there, as the blizzard raged on, day after whiteout day, with school canceled and Arch remaining with his friend. Holly called, and called, and called again. When I said I was too tired to talk, or even to get out of bed, she showed up on our street. She banged on the door. Cursing, I answered, still in my pajamas. Holly whirled inside and said she’d left Drew with a helpful neighbor. Looking me up and down, she tossed her long blond hair over her shoulders and ordered me to shower and dress. Meanwhile, she arranged for my car to be towed to the local tire place. Then she dragged me out of the house. The roads had been plowed by then, so she sped down the interstate to Denver. Along the way, she caught sight of my raggedy, torn purse, which wasn’t going to do me much good anyway, because I was low on money—the Jerk having once again “forgotten” to send the monthly check for child support. Holly shot me a grin and asked, “Why do elephants have trunks?” When I said I had no idea, she said, “Because they’d look silly with handbags.” I was so tired and depressed, I couldn’t even smile. Holly announced we were having a spa day. After our manicures and pedicures, her favorite colorist put highlights in my hair. While my hair was “processing,” a word I’d always associated with curing pork, the colorist went to work on Holly’s elegant mane. Holly, meanwhile, chatted about how she was seeing two men just then. She was skiing with one in Aspen the next week, in Vail with the other the week after. The hairdresser looked at me and winked. Afterward, Holly and I gazed in the mirror. My friend hugged me, laughed, and asked if we were having fun yet. I couldn’t help it: a grin creased my face. Holly then piloted the Audi through slush to Cherry Creek Mall. She insisted on buying me a new leather purse and several outfits. The clothes were much too chic for the reduced circumstances of my post-divorce life. I didn’t go out for lunch anymore; I didn’t ski in winter or play tennis in summer. Worse, my catering business had barely gotten off the ground. But that day, none of those issues mattered. Holly drove me back to my car with its new tires, which she insisted on paying for, as she had for everything else that day. She waved my thanks away. “I have money and you don’t,” she said. “It’s that simple.” For Holly, it was that simple. In our group, she flatly stated that at age twenty-one, she’d married George—ten years her senior and smitten with her—because he was loaded. With no close relatives, she had been working two jobs while attending art school on scholarship. She loved being creative, but had trouble making rent. George was a cardiologist, so even if Edith’s oil wells ran dry, they’d be set. Anyway, Holly reasoned, Edith was a sixty-seven-year-old widow, so how long could she actually live? Forever, she told us acidly, years later. I softened the tortillas for the next pan of enchiladas, and thought back.