The Secret French Recipes of Sophie Valroux Read online

  “Walter?”

  He popped up from the couch like a surprised prairie dog, his head darting around in every direction. He wore a pair of silk boxer shorts with whales on them, nothing more. “Sophie? What are you doing here?”

  “I live here, remember?” I said, dropping my bag to the marble floor in the entry.

  “Yes, but you’re never home this early,” he said.

  “And you’re never this naked at seven p.m.,” I said, eyeing the clock in the kitchen, realizing I’d just walked more than an hour and forty-five minutes in pouring rain.

  A man with nutmeg-colored freckles peered over the couch and waved. “My fault,” he said, his nose scrunching.

  It was Robert, Walter’s longtime friend from Stanford Law. He was also Walter’s boyfriend. And he was also half-naked in his Calvin Kleins. After a long hiatus, they’d gotten back together a few months ago. They scrambled around the living room, throwing on their pants and buttoning the buttons on their matching—yes, matching—Façonnable blue-and-white-checked dress shirts with stiff white collars.

  As they dressed, I walked over to the kitchen and ran the water to clean the cut with soap. Thankfully, the knick wasn’t too deep. I wrapped a piece of gauze—a staple in our cabinets—around my hand.

  “Did you hurt yourself?” asked Walter.

  “Just another one of my klutzy moments.”

  “With a knife?” he asked, and I shrugged. “Let me have a look.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “You’re not a doctor, you’re a lawyer.”

  “You’re going to be more than fine in a minute,” said Walter, grinning like a fool. “Robert and I have some exciting news to share.”

  “Oh, I think it might take more than a minute for me to be fine.”

  Robert clapped his hands together and grinned with childish glee. “The charade is up! You don’t have to be Walter’s beard anymore. He finally came out to Nicole tonight!”

  “Your mother? Wow. How did she take it?” I asked, gobsmacked.

  “As well as can be expected,” said Walter. “She’s pretty disappointed I’m not marrying a beautiful French-born chef, and won’t be able to entertain her ladies who lunch. You know how Nicole is, she’s all about appearances.” He threw up his hands. “Let’s face it. Deep down, she always knew I was queer, but she didn’t want to come to terms with it. Thankfully, having a gay son is de rigueur now. She’ll snap back. I’m pretty sure she’s already planning our wedding. It’ll be a huge event.”

  “That’s great,” I said, my throat constricting. His beautiful French-born chef was in total ruin. Walter didn’t need me anymore. My culinary career was in the crapper. I didn’t have a job. I didn’t have a fake fiancé. I really had nothing. They were probably buttering me up before they kicked me out. “Just swell.”

  Walter smiled, which drew attention to the adorable dimples in his cheeks. His thick black hair brought out the brightness in his clear blue eyes.

  “Here’s to my Sunday gal,” said Walter.

  He and Robert raised their champagne glasses and clinked the bottle that I had picked up. Suddenly, the cut throbbed with a shooting pain. Instead of reaching for a glass, I chugged the Dom Pérignon straight from the bottle. Robert eyed me with a bit of disgust, but didn’t say anything.

  “Here’s to Sunday,” I said.

  “Do you remember the first day we met? Robert and I were talking about it earlier.”

  “I do,” I said.

  “Grab one of the gorgeous Baccarat crystal glasses you bought me for Christmas last year, Sophie,” said Walter. “Didn’t your grandmother tell you it’s the only way champagne should be served?”

  Robert smirked and pointed to the buffet. “We certainly don’t drink Dom straight from the bottle.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said. “How crass of me.”

  I meandered over to grab a glass—a coupe de champagne, the oldest design, preceding flute and tulip glasses. Legend had it that the bowl of the glass was modeled after the breast of Marie Antoinette. I settled back on the couch and Walter poured.

  “Cheers to our Sophie,” he said. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

  Lone moviegoers, Walter and I had struck up a friendly conversation at a French film—Manon des sources—at one of the local theaters two years prior. That night, we ended up back at his $3 million loft, where we drank wine and listened to Edith Piaf and Nina Simone. He was kind, sensitive, and liked the same things I did. As a chef working long hours, I didn’t have time to meet anybody, let alone date. And, other than a few chefs from the CIA—not operatives for the government, but students at the Culinary Institute of America—who were scattered across the country, I didn’t have any friends. I gave up going out with the brigade for nightcaps at Blue Ribbon Brasserie, a late-night hangout for chefs in the city and open until four a.m. Eric always lurked around, trying to convince me he was a “changed” man. His pleas to get me back in his bed got old real quick and bordered on extreme sexual harassment. Sometimes he’d corner me, placing his hands all over my body. I thought I’d just deal with it by keeping silent. That was probably a big mistake. I figured I had thick skin and if I worked hard, I’d be fine. Regardless, I thought I held my own, demanded respect. But that wasn’t the case. Eric never respected me.

  With Walter things were calm, different. A new friendship developed. For one month we spent our Sundays together, talking and laughing. I knew he was gay from the get-go and we weren’t going to have a steamy romance, but I needed a friend I could actually talk openly to. Walter needed the same from me.

  It wasn’t long before Walter offered me a very tempting proposition. A rich trust-fund kid from Greenwich, Connecticut, he was terrified of coming out to his old-money family, especially to his mother, Nicole, who wanted nothing more than for him to have grandkids she could tote around. He’d felt pressure—too much pressure—to live up to her expectations. While he gathered up his courage, he decided to live a small lie. I’d receive an amazing apartment to live in and pretend to be his fiancée. It was as if the universe had thrown Walter right into my lap. Eric and I had recently broken up and I’d been staying in a modestly priced hotel while looking for an apartment of my own. I really liked and trusted Walter, so I agreed to his plan. Plus, since I was his fake fiancée, he provided an excuse I could use to fend off Eric’s advances.

  But now the jig was up. I sank onto the couch, wondering what I was going to do. Where would I go? Why would Walter want me to stick around? What did I have to offer him anymore?

  “Walter,” I said. “Honestly, I don’t know what I would do without you.”

  I was hoping he’d say, “I still need you” or “you still have me.” Instead, Walter continued, “So I bit the bullet today and I did it.” He grabbed Robert’s hand. “We actually did it. I picked up Robert and we went to see my mother. You should have seen her face when I told her Robert was my lover.”

  “With all the Botox, I thought she was a tad expressionless,” said Robert. “But her mouth did drop a little bit.”

  “You don’t know how amazing I feel,” said Walter with a laugh. “It’s like I’m free. Free to be me.”

  As Robert tied his ascot around his neck, I let out a wicked laugh and jumped up from the couch. “I guess we should call off our engagement,” I said, fingering the five-carat diamond ring hanging from my necklace. Walter hadn’t given it to me. We’d found it in my mother’s affairs and thought it would be a great prop for our charade. The diamond was probably fake, but it served its purpose. Now it was useless—like me. I chugged more Dom Pérignon too quickly, choking on the bubbles.

  “Sophie, what’s wrong?” asked Walter. “You should be happy, thrilled even. You’re my best friend. You don’t need to play along with this charade anymore. Isn’t it great? We can live the lives we want to live. No more hiding—”


  “In the closet,” said Robert.

  I held up a finger. “I get it, and I’m happy for you two. I am. But I’m having a really bad day—a momentous, life-crushing day.”

  “What’s going on?” asked Walter, deep concern flashing in his eyes. “Sit down, Sophie. Stop pacing. Tell me what happened.”

  “Oh, it’s really bad. Worse than bad. Epic,” I said. Gripping the bottle of champagne, I slumped on the couch and stared at the ceiling, the devastation of what had happened rolling in like ten-foot waves and pulling me under. My voice shook as I recounted what went down at Cendrillon.

  Walter sat quietly in thought. He tapped his fingers on his thigh. “Maybe you should take a vacation. When was the last time you took one?”

  “That would be never,” I said.

  “Go somewhere. You’re always working so hard. Everybody needs a break,” said Walter. “What about Monica? Your chef friend in Los Angeles. Give her a call. Maybe a change of scenery is what you need. Until things cool down.”

  He’d said exactly what I feared; he didn’t want me to stick around. “Now that I’m fired as your fake fiancée, are you booting me out, too?” I asked.

  “No, never, not in a million years. You can stay with us for as long as you want. Forever even. We owe the world to you—”

  “We do,” said Robert. “Tonight, we’re having cocktails at the Boom Boom Room and a celebratory dinner at Le Coucou.” He paused, giving me the once-over. “Go get yourself cleaned up and come along.”

  “Thanks,” I said, feeling more cuckoo than “hey you” or “peekaboo,” the French translation of coucou, and pronounced the same way. “But I’m not in the shape, form, or mood to go anywhere. I’m going to make myself something to eat, watch a movie, and go to bed. Go have fun. I’ll be fine.”

  But I wasn’t fine. I just wanted to forget everything.

  4

  flat champagne bubbles and broken dreams

  After the door shut behind Walter and Robert, I polished off the bottle of champagne and shuffled over to the freezer to retrieve a half pack of old cigarettes. I’d given up the social habit two years ago, considering I was never social, but I figured my life was already in the crapper. One or two, maybe three, cigarettes wouldn’t hurt me.

  The cigarettes were the long English brand—Sobranie Cocktails—with colorful pastel encasings and a gold band around the filter, the same kind my mother, Céleste, had smoked. I lit one up, thinking of her. Sometimes she’d used a long black holder, a vision conjuring up glamorous movie stars from the golden age of film. Her lips would purse and she’d inhale, finally blowing out the smoke from her raspberry-red lips in a whoosh, her posture always straight. When she smoked, she was graceful, even elegant, whereas I was not. With each inhale, I coughed and hacked. I snuffed out the butt in an ashtray.

  I kept the only photo I had of her tucked away in my top drawer underneath my socks. I fumbled my way to my room, pulled it out, and made my way back to the couch. A few people had said I look like her. Similar in appearance to me, she had large green almond-shaped eyes, high cheekbones, a defined jawline, full lips, and long black hair, but people had also said that I was rougher around the edges. Perhaps it’s because I rarely wore makeup, my hair was usually in a messy braid, and, for the most part, I was always dressed in chef’s threads. Not exactly the epitome of glamour. I stared at the picture, gripping the corner between my thumb and forefinger.

  We were holding hands and skipping down a path in Central Park. In the background, there were a couple of ducks in a pond. She was twenty-four at the time, wearing a black flowered sundress that tied at the neck; I was around five, wearing a pinafore dress, a white shirt, and black Mary Janes with lacy white socks. She looked down at me with a grin; I looked up at her with awe. Even in this picture, Céleste carried herself with the kind of grace only Frenchwomen know how to pull off.

  We’d moved from France to New York when I was six months old. I didn’t recall much of those early years, too young to remember, obviously. But I do remember the days when I was older, like in this picture. My mother had just gotten a bit part in a movie, playing the role of the clichéd sexy French maid. A method actress, she was scrubbing down the kitchen when she sat me down and asked, “Do you know what dreams are, ma petite?”

  “A big ice cream sundae,” was my answer.

  She shook her long black hair and giggled. “My darling girl, dreams are much bigger than that. I’m going to be a star.”

  I was entranced, wondering if I could swing from the stars or carry moonbeams home in a jar, the tune my mother hummed. My eyes widened like saucers. “A star? Like one in the sky?”

  “No, not like a star in the sky, something bigger and brighter. I’m going to be famous one day. Mark my words.” She winked. “Ma petite, we come from noble blood. Your great-great-grand-père was a comte and now your grand-mère has the world at her feet. It’s my turn to shine.”

  “Ma grand-mère?” I’d asked. “Where is she?”

  “Oh, don’t you worry your little mind over her. You wouldn’t like her. She abandoned us. Just as if we were stray cats prowling on the streets.” She held up her manicured fingernails and made a clawing motion. “She’s like that witch, the mean one, in the movie you love so much, the Wicked Witch of the West.”

  “The Wizard of Oz?”

  “Yes, that’s the one.” She looked out the window, humming.

  At five years old, I didn’t think much about this grandmother I’d never met. Thanks to my mother comparing her to the Wicked Witch of the West, I’d envisioned her as old and decrepit with a green face and skeleton-like hands. I didn’t want to come face-to-face with her. My dreams were comprised of sweet treats and swinging on the swings. I was seven years old when I finally met her. To my delight, she didn’t have a green face or long decrepit fingers with curled nails.

  I tried to remember my mother’s smile, the days when she was happy, the memories hard to come by. I slammed the photo onto the coffee table facedown.

  This photo was a lie. Her dreams never came to fruition and my life was filled with broken promises. When my mother was up, she lit up the room. But when she was down, spiraling into depression, the days and nights were hard. I always thought it was my fault, something I did. But I knew now that wasn’t the case. My mother was never happy. She was good at being a faker, at pretending, especially when she smiled her closed-lip smile. I could see her eyes were dead.

  I wanted to shake off the memories of her that were invading my mind. I got up, made my way to my room, stuffed the photo into its drawer, and jumped into the shower, needing to be proactive, not reactive. I ran the water cold to offset the fire searing my chest.

  Clean, but not exactly refreshed, I threw on a pair of flannel pajamas, turned the gas fireplace in the living room to a blaze, and picked up the phone to call Monica, my closest friend from the CIA. A dynamo in the kitchen, she was elevating Mexican cuisine to new gastronomic levels. She had opened her restaurant, El Colibrí, two short years ago. At first people thought she was nuts—then they tasted her dishes. Billing her cuisine as “not your mother’s tacos,” she’d introduced gourmet Mexican food to Los Angeles, and you didn’t eat her creations—like the lobster tail served with the pomegranate mango salsa, served on a blue corn tortillas—with your hands, especially with her secret version of a chimichurri sauce. A hint: truffle oil along with olive oil. The girl genius was an alchemist in the kitchen, creating elixirs and blending ingredients like a mad culinary scientist.

  “Hola, babe,” she said. “It’s a bit nuts here. I only have a few minutes.”

  “Are you looking for a sous chef?” I asked.

  She went silent for a moment. “Jesus Christ. I’m so sorry, Sophie. I just heard the news.”

  My throat constricted. “Already?”

  “What can I say? News travels fast in the culinary circles.
Everybody knows everybody’s business.”

  “Eric was behind it.” Once again, I repeated my sad, pathetic story.

  “I always hated that skinny, diabolical bastard. Never knew what you saw in him.”

  “You and me both,” I said. “So, back to my question. I’m thinking a change of scenery and a new job would do wonders for my psyche—”

  “Babe, you know I love you. I do. But I simply can’t take the risk right now. What were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t thinking. It was Eric,” I cried. “I’ve screwed myself, haven’t I?”

  “It’s not the best of scenarios.” Monica sighed. “I hate to drop this on you on a day like today, but you’re going to find out anyway. El Colibrí is on the rising star list.”

  “Oh,” I said, gripping the phone. My voice shook. “Congratulations. You must be thrilled. You’re part of the one percent.”

  “I’m sorry. I know it’s been your dream, too. A dream that would have come to fruition if Eric the skinny rat weasel hadn’t—”

  “Don’t apologize. I’m happy for you.” I gulped, even though jealousy tweaked my heart. She’d done it; I hadn’t. I was ruined. “I’m thrilled. Really. You deserve this.”

  “Well, I was jumping over the moon until I heard what happened. Really kind of flattens the champagne bubbles, if you know what I mean.” Monica paused. “If you’re serious about a change of scenery, you’re more than welcome to come stay with Esteban and me for as long as you want. I can put you in contact with some chefs I know—chefs doing exciting things.”

  “Nobody is going to touch me with a ten-foot pole. Eric has turned me into a liability, an outcast. I’m so screwed.”

  “Things will simmer down soon. As they say, time heals all wounds. Believe me, the truth always has a way of rising to the surface. I’m just so sorry I can’t offer you a position here.”