Christmas Chocolat

by Kate Defrise

Genres: Family Life; Holiday books; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

In this warm, engaging debut novel, four siblings make their way home, where their father, the memory of their mother, and long-held family secrets all collide just in time for Christmas For Maggie Arnaud and her siblings, childhood Christmases meant lavish feasts and beloved rituals. The day began with hot chocolate and cougnole de Noel —the sweet, rich bread traditional in their parents’ native Belgium. Those special holidays ended with their mother’s death, and their father has grown more distant each year. But now, he has summoned his grown children once again. And none of them is eager to expose their imperfect lives to his scrutiny… Jacqueline is an opera singer living in Brussels—outwardly successful but yearning for a deeper fulfillment. Near Philadelphia, cookbook writer Maggie’s career and marriage are in turmoil. Colette, an aspiring clothing designer in California, lost her boyfriend and her savings in one blow. And roving younger brother Art is still searching for something—or someone. Armed with their insecurities, rivalries—and their mother’s most delicious recipes—the Arnauds gather in Pennsylvania. But a good meal does more than feed the body—it awakens memories, nurtures bonds, and might even bring a family back together. Includes classic Belgian recipes

Release date: October 1, 2015

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

Some families bred horses from one generation to the next. Others were rooted in the tradition of owning and managing land. In my Belgian family, survival skills consisted of going out into the world knowing how to make a perfect omelet and an infallible vinaigrette while sipping an apéritif and choosing the perfect wine. If you fed yourself well, with elegance, the rest would follow.

Let the plates be chipped, the platters mismatched, one would leave the table not just well, but superbly, fed. And this was never truer than at Christmas. It was all about the food. It always had been. Our mother taught my sisters and me all her secrets. We mixed and basted, roasted and sautéed. And later, we preserved and deglazed, creamed butter, beat eggs until they were white, whipped fresh cream and ourselves into a froth, in a frenzy to try to keep her alive.

When she died, our family deflated like a ruined soufflé.

Coming home after dropping my girls off at school, my morning resolve melted when faced with the pile of dirty breakfast dishes. For this I needed a Grand Diplôme from the Institut Culinaire in Lyon? The dishwasher needed to be emptied and everything put away, piled dangerously in my inadequate cabinets. I drummed my fingers against my mug. My nails were too short to make any sound. If I didn’t finish that chapter on main courses for the holidays this morning, I’d never make my deadline.

As usual, Charlotte, my four-year-old, had dumped two spoonfuls of milk-soaked Rice Krispies on the floor to share with the cat, who always obliged, but she would always leave a scrap or two. Her big sister, Elly, said it was to feed her pet mouse. A fairy-tale mouse, I hoped. Bippity boppity boo . . .

Oh, fairy godmother, I don’t mind staying home from the ball. I just want someone to deal with the kitchen, laundry, cleaning. I promise, fairy godmother, that this magical cleaning person will be given meals—great ones, in fact. And he or she can turn back into a pumpkin to rest or go out on the town and get plastered on pumpkin schnapps or whatever tipple magical creatures favor these days.

So, work or dishes first? The phone rang, making the decision for me. I wedged the receiver between my ear and my shoulder—a great stretching exercise as long as I remembered to switch sides before the muscles and tendons stiffened like plaster. Then I’d have to stay that way all day, a good position for checking on the roast or appearing charmingly quizzical, a look I haven’t been able to pull off since I was eight. “Hello?”

“It’s me.”

My father. I pictured him fully dressed as always, even before breakfast. Charcoal slacks, a pressed light gray shirt, a navy blue—no make that a slate-colored pullover, V-necked. His socks would be black and his shoes a soft gray. His hair, still full, but also gray as a November sky, would be perfectly combed. Even his eyes were gray. My father was in black-and-white.

When we were younger, on the way home from school, my older sister Jacqueline and I would play What Would Daddy Be Wearing? I always endowed him with a bit more color, a splash of whimsy. Jacqueline would win practically every time. Elegant to the tip of his buffed nails and polished leather shoes. Even his breath was classy: Courvoisier VSOP Cognac mixed with minty toothpaste.

I stepped on a trail of Rice Krispies, now stuck to the green-and-yellow swirled linoleum, and pulled open the door of the new stainless steel German dishwasher I’d bought when I got a royalty check from Australia, of all places.

“Hi, Daddy.” My head felt thick with guilt.

“You are well?”

“Yeah, what about you?”

“The usual. The children?”

I laughed, “The usual too. Elly brought her baby shoes to school for show-and-tell. She swears she can remember learning to walk in them. With her memory, she just might. And Charlotte decided that her new favorite princess is Slow White, the sluggish sister of the celebrity. Hard being in somebody’s shadow.” I swallowed. Tread lightly, Gali.

“And yellow is no longer her favorite color. She only wears green. Today she went off to school looking like a Christmas elf in pigtails.” Safer ground.

He chuckled. I offered up stories of my children on a platter, hoping for wholehearted approval, but knowing that in his eyes, we never quite made the cut. Why can’t you be more like your sister? He never said this out loud, but I knew.

“Have you given thought to the holidays?”

October fifteenth, the day following Columbus Day, was his holiday kickoff date. He spent Thanksgiving in Belgium visiting Maman’s family and my sister Jacqueline—forget that they don’t have Thanksgiving over there—but Christmas was mine. So, guilt notwithstanding, I couldn’t resist the urge to let him simmer.

“I don’t know how I’m going to dress, but Elly is going as Wendy from Peter Pan and of course Charlotte will be Slow White.”

Turn on the spit a bit, oh, ever-elegant father of mine. Who hated to ask.

“Maggie.” Only my father called me Maggie. It was a time machine: I was six years old and ever lacking. It was Gali to everyone except my godmother and the DMV, who used my given name, Magali. I twirled a strand of hair around my forefinger, then dropped it.

“Okay, Daddy. Christmas. Go,” I almost barked at him, feeling very military and take-charge. Roberts, we must have that hill, cheerio and all that. I slid a pile of plates back into the cupboard.

“Are you doing something else while talking to me? If you’re busy, I can telephone later.”

Busy? Who, me? “Uh, no, Daddy, the cat knocked over her dish.”

“Humph.”

Okay, great. Now he thought even my cat was clumsy.

“I think I’d like to celebrate it here at the house this year.”

“Your house?” I stopped, a glass midway between the dishwasher rack and the shelf.

“Yes. Where I live. Don’t be dense, Maggie.”

I put down the glass and sat. “Are you sure? You know we can host it here. Or at Tante Solange’s.” My heart pounded.

“No, your godmother isn’t well. We won’t burden her.”

Right. But we couldn’t—not in our childhood home. Not since we lost Maman. “My house is open. And since we’d closed in the back porch—you haven’t even seen it yet—and put in a great fireplace, we have lots of room.” My words were coming out too fast. Breathe.

“No,” he said. Wide open to discussion as usual. How could he ask us to have Christmas in our old home?

“Will it just be us?” I wondered if his latest companion, what was her name? Leigh . . . Lee . . . no Lea pronounced with the “a” at the end, would be there. It was hard to keep track. Since Maman died there had been two wives and a companion, as he called her, between the two. Then a couple of years of serial dating, and now, a new one. He hadn’t married her. Yet.

“Just family. I expect all of my children to be home for Christmas this year.”

What? All of us? But that was impossible. “But how—”

“This is important, Maggie. Is that clear? I will rely on you to invite your sisters and your brother. You are good at that sort of thing. And naturally, you girls will help with the cooking.”

Oh crap! Here it was again. Maybe he wanted to present Lea to the family before sweeping into another round of ’til-death-do-us-part nuptial bliss. Or miss.

“Of course. Look, Daddy, I’m in the middle of something. Could I call you back?”

“In the middle of . . .”

“I have to work.”

“Work?”

“You know what I do.”

“Oh yes, the cookbooks.”

So, Daddy wasn’t proud of what I did. Nothing new. He thought they were frivolous, my chatty little cookbooks. But the Hopeless in the Kitchen series paid a lot of bills even if it didn’t earn me star billing in my father’s eyes. They were a collection of funny stories with recipes to get people away from their microwaves and play in the kitchen. Make memories, create traditions.

“I’ll call you back,” I said, hoping he couldn’t hear my voice wobble. I forced a smile, knowing from my friend Syd that a smile could be heard through a microphone or telephone. “Keep in mind, before we decide on Christmas, that it will be a huge upheaval, you know, with the kids, the mess.”

“I know fully well what a Christmas feast entails. It’s already been decided. Don’t let me keep you from your work. Good-bye, Maggie.”

Coffee, make more sparkled on the marquee of my mind. I picked up the pot.

I sat down at the desk I had built in to the corner of my kitchen, and flipped open my kitchen Mac.

How did he expect me to get my sisters—not to mention my little brother—home to Pennsylvania for Christmas? I drummed my fingers on the desk. Not that we never saw each other, but all of us, together in one place? In our old house? That hadn’t happened since . . . well, since Maman’s funeral. Never mind that Colette had been avoiding coming home altogether for years. Not enough money was her excuse. I was always the one who had to go to California. And Jacqueline? Leave Belgium for Christmas? She probably had a performance or something. And she’d never leave our grandmother alone for the holidays. I looked at the clock. No way was I going to sit here with this on my own. Who first?

I picked up the phone, then realized Colette was probably still asleep. I’d have to time my call to get her after she woke up and before she went to the beach, or jogged to yoga, or whatever you did in San Diego.

Jacqueline would be getting ready for the theater. Not a propitious time to talk to her.

A gray cloud, the exact same shade as the bulk of Daddy’s wardrobe, fell over me. I put the rest of the dishes away. There was nothing I could do right now about Daddy’s request. It was more of a command, actually. A summons. Very royal. Maybe printing out formal invitations would do the trick. Monsieur Philippe Arnaud requests your presence . . .

I sighed, then turned to the screen, losing myself in a piece on how to make friends with your butcher, bypassing counters with meat packaged in plastic—not the easiest thing to make friends with, unless you were an alien and could communicate with shrink-wrap.

The phone broke into my thoughts. Maybe Colette’s sixth sense had kicked in.

But it was Ana, my agent, calling to arrange a lunch date. I’d been wondering when she was going to get around to returning my call. I’d left several messages over the past few weeks and was feeling neglected, which I realized made me about as mature as a petulant first grader. We made plans to meet the next day.

She’d been acting strangely these past few months. I’d finally get to know what the big secret was.

Ana believed in my books. She felt people needed them because the world had become so alienating. Drive in, drive up, drive thru, pick up, and nuke.

So many grew up with moms whose idea of homemade was heating frozen lasagna in the conventional oven rather than the microwave.

Or others, whose mothers threw themselves into cooking and presenting food as if it were a life-or-death matter, tossing enough butter and cream in every dish to make even Julia Child cringe in her grave, while smiling graciously as their guests keeled over from massive coronaries, their whole identity wrapped up in what was on the plate and how it looked. No disrespect to Julia, of course. She was the queen.

Lately, a big crunchy trend had surfaced. Which was fine. I was all for farm-to-table, but it had to taste good. And be simple. Easy to make and delicious.

It was one of the reasons I’d not been unhappy to leave the restaurant. Too much effort went into presentation and finding new and interesting ways to incorporate the chic food du jour into everything from appetizers to dessert and every course in between.

I still had almost two hours before it was time to pick Charlotte up from the Jewish preschool she attended. I got down to work and finished the draft. It felt good.

So, I wasn’t about to win the Nobel Prize. They didn’t even have a Nobel Prize for cooking, though sometimes I think they should. After all, a good meal can keep, even create, the peace.

I made a mental note to write to the committee.

After a lunch of leftover ratatouille, reheated and eaten at my desk, I called my godmother to have her pick Charlotte up from school tomorrow. I hated to do it, much as I did love Tante Solange. She would unfailingly tote out the Virgin Mary medallion she’d gotten in Lourdes the year Maman got sick.

I rubbed cream into my hands. Someone could retrace the story of every meal I’d ever made just by reading the scars on my hands and forearms. I applied lipstick, then headed out. The day was too warm for a sweater.

What to say to my sisters to make sure they would both come out for the holidays? Maybe that I was having a baby? Or that I was ill? No, strike that. Bad idea.

And Art? None of us had a clue as to how to reach our baby brother. Jacqueline used to call him King Arthur, the adored, long-awaited male child. But he’d quickly morphed into the Artful Dodger. He’d disappear for months—sometimes even years—taking wildly successful photographs of wars and other disasters. Then he’d pop up as if nothing had happened. I’d gotten used to it over time. Though right now, I wished I’d secretly implanted one of those microchips under his skin so I could track him down. Forget that I didn’t have the slightest idea how to go about doing that. There had to be ways.

Why was it always up to me to deal with family matters?

Naturally, if they didn’t come, it would be my fault. If I could make this happen, I bloody well deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.

I parked in the school parking lot while visions of siblings at Christmas danced in my head.

My spirits lifted. Tomorrow I’d finally find out what Ana had been cooking up these past months. A sharp northern breeze swept over me, giving me goose bumps. I should have brought my sweater. When would I learn not to trust unseasonable weather?

I parked my car in front of Ana’s place so we could walk to the restaurant. Chestnut Hill looked like it had jumped right out of a storybook and settled itself in northwest Philadelphia.

Ana was waiting outside, her face tilted to catch the almost-warm rays of the October sun. Another one of those deceptive days that tempted you to leave the house without a coat, the sun almost too bright in a sky whose hue was normally associated with summer but belonged to autumn. The leaves dazzled, the maples red as blood, warring with the oranges, golds, and browns of the chestnuts and oaks. Touches of green from the fir trees that would soon proudly sport glistening Christmas lights, but were, for now, overshadowed by the last gasp of brilliance from the deciduous trees.

“It’s so perfect for you to live here,” I said.

“What happened to ‘Hello, Ana, how are you, what a glorious day.’ You know, what normal people say when they see each other?” She laughed.

“Of course, by all means, all you just said.”

“Hello. Fine. It is a spectacular day indeed! So, why is it perfect for me to live here?” She kissed me once on each cheek.

There were two types of people in the world: the huggers and the kissers. Ana was the latter. Me, I could go either way. A switch hitter, a bisexual of physical greetings. Or would I be considered a hermaphrodite? So, I guess there are three kinds of people in the world.

“A storybook street in a storybook village. You’re like a midwife for our books. Without you, they’d never see the light of day.”

“Nonsense! You are all wonderful writers. If it weren’t me, it would be someone else.”

“No, it’s all you. Let’s go. I’m starving.”

Ruth and John’s was about a ten-minute walk from Ana’s. I reveled in being outside on this glorious day, last year’s boots crunching in the fallen leaves.

“You look beautiful,” said Ana.

I smiled. I’d dressed a bit for the occasion, something I did only rarely. But today, my mother’s Hermès scarf was knotted around my throat, and I wore a calf-length gray knit dress in wool so soft, I wanted to cuddle up and sleep next to it whenever Leo went away on business. A supple black leather belt and a long rust-colored sweater that everyone said brought out the reddish highlights in my tangle of hair completed the ensemble. I’d even applied a bit of eye makeup in addition to my usual lipstick. I felt good. I was doing my favorite thing with one of my favorite people, and it was even a tax write-off.

“So do you, Ana.” In her black-and-white Chanel jacket and skirt, she looked a little like Grace Kelly. Only shorter.

Before this woman, agent, and friend, had taken me under her wing, I’d been adrift, starved for a mentor, my thirst unquenched by repeated stabs at becoming allies with Tante Solange, my godmother. Solange would run hot and cold like a faulty tap. Just when I would begin to bask in the glow of acceptance, she would turn around and slice me open with a remark she must have spent days sharpening.

Christmas. All of us together this year at the house. With Tante Solange. Trying to ignore the ghost of Christmas past at the table.

I pushed away the thought, couldn’t sustain it right now, didn’t want to. I zenned myself back to the postcard I was currently the star of. Well, costar. Ana was the star but in that Meryl Streep–deep way, not the Julia Roberts of-course-you-recognize-me-behind-these-glasses glam Hollywood way.

We turned onto Chestnut Hill’s main shopping street, more charming than ever with its fall festival decorations.

“I am going to miss this,” she said.

“Oh, me too. I can’t believe this weather.”

“No, I mean all of this.” She swept her arm around her in a gesture that encompassed me.

My throat closed. I felt dizzy as I grabbed her hand and whirled to face her, my eyes and mouth open like a carp. Not my best look.

“Oh no, no, no. Don’t worry. There’s nothing wrong with me. As a matter of fact, there is something right with me.” She gently pried my fingers from hers. “I’m retiring.”

I must have misunderstood. My eyes focused and there it was, that look, the one she’d had periodically all during last spring and summer. I remembered it from my annual Fourth of July party. It wasn’t just the cat-that-swallowed-the-cream look, it was more the cat who had gotten up during the night when everyone was asleep, sneaked down into the kitchen, opened the freezer, and downed a whole pint of Ben & Jerry’s Sweet Cream & Cookies. I’d thought she’d met someone, had fallen in love. Since the death of Charles, her second husband, a little over six years ago, she’d been alone. Recently she’d dated this or that eligible divorced man or widower, usually an editor or someone involved in the arts. Last year, there had been a hand surgeon. Ana was far too attractive and full of life to grow old alone. Not for the first time, I wondered how old she was. She was that timeless age that only some women reach, between forty-seven and sixty-three, when they aren’t a dewy-eyed twenty-five, but are more beautiful, the lines on their faces tell the stories of their lives, the laughter and tears, the quiet and loud.

My voice had returned. “But you can’t retire. You’re much too young!” For her to drop us like this, it had better be monumental.

She linked her arm through mine and steered me in the direction of the restaurant. The world suddenly took on a garish feel, like a carnival in an expressionist painting, or a play by Ödön von Horváth. I rummaged through my bag for my sunglasses only to realize I was already wearing them.

“I wanted to tell you under the best possible circumstances.”

“It’s a man, right?”

“Nope. A woman.”

I opened my mouth but nothing came out. Why was it that in situations that took me by surprise, I could never think of great and wonderful words. Why couldn’t I be Anna Karenina? Lady Macbeth? Even Scarlett O’Hara? I needed to hire someone to write my lines. I wondered if Amy Sherman-Palladino was busy?

“She’s a lucky woman,” I said. “When can I meet her?”

“Gali, you are funny. No, the woman I am referring to is the muse . . . my muse.”

This time I was sure I’d misunderstood. We started walking again, Ana’s arm linked through mine. Ana was the nexus for a lot us, her stable of writers, which of course made us sound like a bunch of horses that are in the race, hoping not to be retired, or worse, sent off to the writer’s equivalent of the glue factory: corporate America, with its demand for total commitment and the resulting death of the free spirit.

Ana was the cornerstone of my career, if you cared to call it that—which I did, only not in front of my father.

I’d met her through Syd—tall, blonde, stunning, brilliant Syd. I should have hated her, but she was my best friend, so that made it kind of hard. She worked in public radio as a researcher and knew everyone in the artsy crowd.

Syd was brilliant, but for one tiny detail: she couldn’t cook.

Then she met Adam, and felt that, for once in her life, the relationship was serious enough for her to learn how to make a meal that didn’t involve the excessive use of the microwave, with the preparation limited to carefully pricking plastic wrap with a fork.

“It’s terrible. One of the most basic human skills and I have no clue as to how to even start. Even my mother could cook a little,” she’d said.

I’d laughed, “Honey, I ate at your house a couple of times a month all through high school. For me it was exotic to have Dunkin’ Donuts and Coke for dinner.”

“Oh, but she cooked sometimes. Okay, so her idea of a home-cooked meal was Rice-A-Roni, at least she used an actual pot and a utensil or two.”

We’d both started to giggle.

“Can you see me serving up Mom’s specialty to Adam? The beautiful woven tablecloth I brought back from Greece, candles, soft music . . .”

“And mini-marshmallow-studded Hamburger Helper,” I’d finished.

“Could I borrow your white Limoges? You know, to set off the marshmallows.”

So, I’d e-mailed her some recipes.

I’d told her everything: where, when, and how to choose her meat, fruit, vegetables, and step by step, as if I were talking to her, “walked” her through the meal via e-mail. She’d prepared the easiest basic dinner I could think of that still said you are special: boeuf bourguignon, because it could be made the day before, and beef was an aphrodisiac of sorts, a mixed green salad with vinaigrette, spring beans, and new potatoes sprinkled with parsley and coarse sea salt. For dessert, fresh orange slices marinated in mint and Cointreau with a dollop of real crème fraîche. She nailed it and asked for more. We kept it up for about a year. Her love for cooking simple, elegant food never wavered, even if her love for Adam had, and he’d gone the way of the rest of her lovers.

“I can’t believe I actually learned to cook for that jerk,” she’d exclaimed, waving a glass of Bourgogne Aligoté in the air.

One snowy morning, a few weeks before Christmas, Syd arrived at my door, playing hooky from the station. She’d do this on a regular basis. Being a researcher she had to be out in the field quite often and would sometimes just research whatever was happening in my kitchen.

“This,” she said, pulling off her wool cap, making her blonde hair stick out like an electric halo, “is a book.”

“That is a stack of personal correspondence, much the worse for wear. This”—I held up the latest Barbara Kingsolver novel—“is a book.”

“You don’t get it. Do you think I’m the only one who never learned how to cook? You can call it, I don’t know, something like The I Wish I Knew How to Cook Cookbook.”

“Catchy.” I turned back toward the kitchen, where I’d been washing leeks for soup.

By now she had removed her woolen muffler, mittens, and faux-fur-lined jacket and followed me into the kitchen. I served her coffee with sugar, no milk. Syd, even with her nose red and slightly chapped, her eyes watering and cheeks raw from the cold, looked like a model.

“I know what you’re thinking.” She was one of the few people privy to my secret ambition to become a novelist. To write fiction. Or rather Fiction. I pictured myself winning the National Book Award or the Pulitzer and casually dropping over to my father’s house with a signed copy of my award-winning novel, rather than my usual offering of raspberry-filled genoise covered in Belgian chocolate icing or tarte tatin—never my famous spiked tiramisu, no sense in bringing coals to Newcastle. I could taste this image as strongly as the coffee I’d just brewed.

“This”—she waved the stack of papers at me—“is no impediment to that. Writing is writing.”

“They’re just silly. And kind of personal, you know?”

“Exactly. Just, you know, change the names to protect the guilty and all that.”

I shook my head. “I don’t have the time. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m with child.” I placed my hands on my belly, smoothing Leo’s old Princeton sweatshirt over my bump.

She stared at me.

“Okay, I do have the time. But . . . do you really think?”

“Would I be here in this weather if I didn’t?”

“You’d come over during a hurricane.” I returned to rinsing the grit out of the leeks.

“Point taken. Do it for me.” She leaned against the counter and took a sip of coffee.

It took me about. . .