Page 21 of Call My Bluff
“Yeah, yeah, but you know how I am. Hungry bellies call, and I have to answer.”
Noah lifted the lid of one pot and peeked inside without comment. Yes, he did know how his mother was. Cooking was her love language. She’d probably been a chef in another life—and almost in this one, too—but fate had had other plans.
He tried not to think about that.
“What can I do?” he asked, replacing the lid.
His mother smiled broadly and pointed to a wide silver chef’s knife on the closest cutting board. “You can chop onions,” she said, and Noah stifled a groan. He always had to chop the onions.
“You just like to see me cry,” he grumbled good-naturedly. He moved to the sink and began to scrub his hands.
His mom only cackled. “It’s good for you,” she said. “A man who never sheds tears forgets how to comfort others.”
“Confucius says . . .” Noah quipped.
She bumped him with her hip as she moved to the stove. “Hush!”
“I’m sorry! You sound like a fortune cookie,” he protested. He shut off the faucet with his elbow the way his mother had taught him and reached for a roll of paper towels. Then he moved to the cutting board and picked up an already-peeled onion before chopping it neatly in half in one swift motion.
“That doesn’t mean it isn’t true,” his mother answered.
The sound of pounding feet grew louder and then faded as one of the children ran past the open back door.
“Annie! Slow down!” a woman yelled, and Noah couldn’t help but smile. Annie Hernandez had been in a hurry for every one of her seven years on this Earth. Noah remembered the night she was born; he’d been fifteen, and Mrs. Hernandez’s screams of panic had woken him from a dead sleep.
That was also the night their gloomy apartment complex had started to become a tribe.
His mother had rushed across the patio in her pajamas to bang on the frightened woman’s door. Mrs. Kiernan in 5A had called an ambulance, and her husband had waited in the parking lot to flag it down. Mr. Huxley next door had made Julian, who was about to be a big brother, a steaming cup of hot chocolate to calm his nerves.
Annie had waited for the ambulance before making her appearance, but only just. Noah had been on the patio when she’d started to cry.
From that day forward, people had begun to speak when they’d passed each other outside, as if the events of that night had forged some unseen bridge between strangers. Neighbors who had been neighbors for years finally learned each other’s names.
And Noah’s mom had started to cook.
First, of course, she’d taken care of the Hernandezes, slowly filling their fridge and freezer to prepare for the exhausting monthsahead while they tended to their newborn. Then, she’d started cooking for the others. Cookies for the kids, casseroles for the working mothers, meat pies for the old men.
And, almost like magic, the favors began to return.
Mr. Romano, after enjoying a sausage quiche, offered to fix their leaky kitchen window. Mrs. Everleen, smitten with Noah’s mother’s raspberry tarts, patched the torn knees of Noah’s school jeans. Nobody had much to spare, but little by little, one person’s talent met another person’s need—and they discovered that life was better together.
Now, doors were open as often as the weather would allow. Children from one unit could often be found in another, and meals and chores and carpools were shared whenever possible. It was a different world from the one Noah and his mother had moved into on that drizzly evening so many years before. And somehow, all it had taken was a baby.
Ironically, the same thing that had forced them there in the first place.
Noah scored half the onion in parallel lines, then curled the ends of his fingers so that the tips pressed against the vegetable’s white flesh. The knife flashed as the flat part of the blade moved against his knuckles and made a satisfying click against the wooden board beneath it. His eyes began to burn and water, but he resisted the urge to wipe them with the back of his wrist.
“Good to know you can still chop like a pro,” his mother commented from the far side of the stove.
Noah gave a half smile. “It’s hard to forget years of you yelling ‘don’t chop your fingers off!’ every fifteen seconds.”
“Well, you still have all ten of them, so I must have donesomething right,” she went on. “Besides, women like men who can cook, so I did you a favor.”
Noah grunted as an image of Olivia flashed across his mind. He wondered if he’d ever have a reason to cook for her.
“When you get done with that, go ahead and take the dishes from the oven and put them on the big table outside. I’ve got to make room for the stuffing,” his mother went on.
Noah scraped his diced onion into a smaller bowl and obediently donned a pair of thick oven mitts. One by one, the dishes, all cooked to perfection, made their way to the community table, where they waited for dinnertime under aluminum-foil tents. When all was ready, everyone sat down in long lines on either side of the feast while a dozen conversations tangled together. Then, a tinkling sound began at the far end of the table.
