Free Recipe for a Happy Life: A Novel by Brenda Janowitz Page A

residence in any of the buildings, that the toilets get flushed once a week. For the months when my grandmother is out here full time, he concentrates on the landscaping and does small repairs on an as-needed basis.
    Each staff member has been around for years, but I can’t say that I know any one of them all that well. They do a very good job at remaining invisible—doing large amounts of their work when my grandmother and I are out shopping or strolling on the beach, remaining mostly in the kitchen when we are around.
    My grandmother has decided to cook tonight. Which means that we have the kitchen to ourselves today. In fact, we have the whole house to ourselves, because she’s given the staff the day off. Raoul and Martine are spending the morning relaxing in their apartment, but mostly everyone else has gone to the beach.
    We don’t spend a lot of time in the kitchen, my grandmother and I. Generally, breakfast is set out on the enormous butcher block that serves as the centerpiece to the kitchen, and my grandmother and I eat our breakfast in the adjoining sunroom. But today, after breakfast, we get ready quickly, and meet back at the butcher block to discuss our plan for dinner.
    She’s making coq au vin. I’ve been informed that it takes the entire day to cook, so I’m prepared. We sit on stools at the butcher block, and make a list of the ingredients we will need. I check the pantry as my grandmother calls out various ingredients that we may already have in the house, as she compiles a list of the things we will need to pick up in town.
    I see a newspaper clipping taped to the back of the pantry door. It’s old, the edges are so yellow that I’m almost afraid to touch it. The clipping reads:
    ----
    RECIPE FOR A HAPPY LIFE
    INGREDIENTS:
    One cup of love
    Two cups of friends and family
    One tablespoon of understanding
    Two tablespoons of compassion
    Three teaspoons of generosity
     
    Mix together and serve with a dash of humility. The recipe won’t work out the same each time, but the important part is that you try your best and enjoy yourself.
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    “What is this?” I ask.
    “Oh, that silly thing?” she says. “I’d almost forgotten all about it. My mother clipped it out of a newspaper when we first got to America.”
    “But you saved it,” I say. “It must have been important.”
    “It reminds me of my mother,” she says. “She wanted so badly to be American. For all of us to be American. So she would clip things like this out of the paper all the time.”
    “You say it to me,” I say.
    “What’s that?”
    “You say, ‘That’s not the recipe for a happy life.’”
    “My mother used to say that to me when I was a girl,” she says with a smile on her lips.
    “Your mother said it to you and now you say it to me,” I say.
    “I used to say it to your mother, too, you know,” she says.
    “So, then, what is the recipe for a happy life?”
    “I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe you and I will discover it this summer.”
    *   *   *
    It’s a beautiful day. I’m surprised she doesn’t want to spend it outdoors as she normally does, but I’m thrilled that she’s teaching me to cook. I really don’t know my way around a kitchen, but even though my grandmother seldom prepares her own meals anymore, she’s still an amazing chef. It’s one of the things my mother recalls most fondly from her childhood, and I do, too. In between all of the jet-setting, my grandmother and I had lots of days like this, when we would stay in and she would cook for me. She used to make a truly amazing cheese sauce that I loved when I was younger. She’d pour it over pasta, cauliflower, really anything she had in the house. A nice contrast to the room service meals I was accustomed to.
    We get to the market and stroll the aisles. I’m glad that she insisted we dress to go to the market—it seems everyone here is dressed to impress. I know my grandmother would have been disappointed if I’d come in