The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D Read Free

channeled her efforts into more practical recipes. Chicken pot pies for dinner and sugar cookies with the children, using her elaborate collection of shaped cutters. Crepes on weekends, flipped from the pan with more bravado than she’d ever dare among colleagues, for the entertainment of the kids. Every so often she’d get a call to cover for apastry chef who’d quit or been fired, and they’d always request that crème brûlée that got her nominated for the James Beard Award. From time to time there’d be a promising job offer, like the one currently on the table. Each time the call came she’d pause before saying
No thanks, not yet
. But with this latest one, she hadn’t yet made the call to decline.
    Dave knew what she was capable of creating when she took the time. For Elizabeth’s thirty-sixth birthday, she’d made a three-tiered work of chocolate excess that had taken her all day. That night after the third bottle of wine the two couples had broken out Scrabble, but Kate and Elizabeth sabotaged the game with giddiness, stealing letters and rearranging words into obscenities. They’d picked at that chocolate cake until they had felt ill, and vowed to do the same thing each year.
    But Kate thought it best not to remind Dave. Last week, Elizabeth would have turned thirty-nine.

    Dusk came on with the chirping of crickets. Dave drained his second beer and got up to take the empty plates inside. Kate followed with bowls of picked-over salad and salsa. The kitchen looked much as it always had, only more cluttered. The counters were scattered with Tupperware, the shelves piled with kid art and old catalogs. The same two paintings hung on the wall: a portrait of a young girl eating ice cream, and an exterior view of two city brownstones. In one bright window a mother combed out a girl’s long wet hair, and in a window a few feet away, people attended a party in a dimly lit room, a women’s head thrown back in decadent laughter. Kate had never been fond of it. The juxtaposition of scenes was unnerving; even the oils seemed thick and angry.
    On the refrigerator, the same Martin family photos were held to the door with alphabet magnets. Shots from last summer’s vacation in the Hamptons, Elizabeth’s shoulder-length hair gone platinumin the sun. Photos of Anna’s birthday two years ago, and Christmas with Dave’s parents sometime before that. In the center was a photograph from Emily’s birth; Elizabeth cradled the puffy-eyed newborn against the breast of her hospital gown with a Mona Lisa smile, captured in the peak of a motherhood that would never go gray.
    Kate’s throat clenched with the effort to swallow emotion. The photo blurred, fading Elizabeth and her pale gown into the bland sheetscape of maternity ward bed. Kate blinked and exhaled, keeping her breath smooth. She opened the refrigerator and put away the milk, then slowly dumped the nachos and salsa in the garbage can, chip by chip, buying herself a moment to swipe at her eyes.
    Dave hadn’t seen. He stood with his back to her, scraping the plates at the sink and loading the dishwasher. Then he mumbled something over his shoulder, words half lost in the running water. She caught
workshop
.
    “Sorry?”
    “There’s something you should know about her painting workshop.” His voice was nonchalant, but the set of his shoulders was high and tight. He shut off the water and turned to face her, wiping his hands on a towel. “She was meeting some guy in L.A. You might as well know it right off.”
    She looked at him, trying to recall any previous thread of conversation, but there was none. She had to assume he was talking about Elizabeth. “What do you mean?”
    “She wrote in her journal just before she left about traveling with some guy named Michael. The workshop painter guy wasn’t named Michael.” He turned and began wiping dishes from the drying rack.
    His words and bearing were too casual. Kate did not know what to say—denial or sympathy