how she adores Charlotte’s mother, what an inspiring example she is, what a great life she’s made for herself here. Ruth hopes she’ll be like Mom someday. No wonder Mom raised two such wonderful children.
Charlotte decides that Rocco hasn’t told Ruth about their childhood, about Mom’s illness, the house fire, her hospital stay. Maybe if she knew the truth, she’d realize: The wonder is that Mom’s children still talk to her. The true wonder is that they are walking and talking at all.
Oh, and Ruth admires Charlotte’s mother for being such a terrific grandmother. Daisy loves her to pieces! That’s how Ruth puts it: loves her to pieces. If there’s one thing Ruth knows about, it’s the importance of the love between grandparents and children. If it weren’t for Ruth’s grandparents, she’d be a total basket case.
Something inside Charlotte curdles and shrinks. She hates it when Ruth talks about Daisy, that sugary note of fawning admiration and . . . fandom that creeps into Ruth’s voice.
Ruth says, “I was nervous about meeting your mom. I’m so relieved that she seems to like me.”
“I’m glad too.” None of this could be further from the truth. Does Ruth not see Mom rolling her eyes every time she opens her mouth? Charlotte hopes Ruth doesn’t notice, and that she’s oblivious to how much—and how guiltily—Charlotte enjoys her mother’s response.
Ruth also doesn’t notice that Mom has been going out of her way not to be left alone with her, or talk to her for too long. Ruth prefers to think that she’s won Mom’s heart with her . . . what? With her energy, friendliness, pluckiness, with her having worked for the Baroness Frieda, with any of the qualities that Ruth thinks are her strong points.
Ruth says, “Your mom is practically the queen of Oaxaca. She can make one phone call and hook us up with the coolest chef.”
Charlotte stifles the impulse to say that the city has lots of cool Oaxacan chefs, and Mom is sending them to a gringo expat who gives lessons to tourists. What stops her is knowing how self-righteous she’d sound, how snobby and aggressive. Probably Mom is introducing them to the kind of guy she thinks Ruth deserves.
A few blocks from the zocalo, behind an unassuming facade, a Mexican woman in a bright folkloric costume admits them to a colonial palace, an urban hacienda, its walls banded with murals of white ladies in long gowns parading around the zocalo trailed by indigenous people keeping the trains of the ladies’ dresses out of the dust.
“Wow. Do you think those are hand-painted?” Ruth asks Charlotte.
Charlotte can’t trust herself to answer, and the Mexican servant either doesn’t understand or pretends not to. Charlotte can see the staff through a set of French doors. A woman, a man, and a girl around Daisy’s age sit at a table, concentrating on some sort of food prep.
Chef Basil vaults into the room and lands on both feet with a thump. His pudgy face is so shiny and pink it looks scraped. He sweeps off his chef’s toque, revealing a mesh of reddish hair pasted over his blotchy scalp. He’s wearing a white coat, navy-and-white-striped chef pants. He wipes his hands on a towel before shaking their hands—first Ruth’s, then Charlotte’s.
“My God,” he tells Ruth, “you look just like your beautiful mother.”
“I’m Ruth. Rocco’s fiancée.” Ruth looks nothing like Mom.
Rocco’s what?
“Ah, yes,” says Chef Basil. “Ruth. The cook. So you’re the beautiful daughter.”
“Charlotte. I’m Charlotte.”
“Of course. Will you ever forgive me?”
Charlotte can feel her face contorting in a frozen grin that she hopes signals forgiveness. Chef Basil ushers them out onto the patio planted with flowering vegetation. He says, “Ruth and Carla—”
“Charlotte.”
“What’s wrong with me this morning? Ruth and Charlotte, this is Lydia, Ricardo, and Marisol, who is out of school on holiday. I wouldn’t want you to think we’re using child labor here.”
The child giggles.
But this is child labor, thinks Charlotte, even if it’s a school holiday. Thank God Rocco isn’t here.
Lydia touches her daughter’s arm. The child smiles to show that spending her day off working in the gringo’s kitchen is fine with her. It’s fun! The child and her mother are shredding turkey. The man is peeling charred green chilies.
“Wow, this is so beautiful!” Ruth’s face is shining, enchanted. Charlotte can see Chef Basil deciding that she is the audience he should play to. By now Rocco would have stalked out and left Ruth to patch things up with the chef, who,