The Lost Recipe for Happiness - By Barbara O'Neal Page 0,88
round yellow package. “Shall we try this kind?”
“Sure. You need the spinner thing, though.”
He raised his eyebrows in question. Portia pulled open a drawer and pulled out a whip. “This. And it takes milk, not water.”
“Ah.” He clicked the kettle off and opened the fridge and took out the milk. “The happiness thing, with your mother?” He found a heavy saucepan and put it on the burner, measured milk into it. “That’s why I keep nagging you to find other things to think about than how you look. If you use your body for skiing, and it makes you feel good to be in your body, then you’re not so miserable when you think somebody else is prettier than you or thinner or whatever.”
She swung a foot, her head braced on her hand, a spill of glittery hair falling on the counter. “That’s easy for a man to say. No offense or anything.”
“You won’t offend me, Portia. Speak your mind.”
“Well, men can be ordinary looking and it doesn’t hurt them. They can be really smart or talented and they don’t have to also be skinny and really handsome and all that stuff. I mean, look at you.”
He grinned.
She rolled her eyes. “I mean, you’re handsome enough, but you’re kind of a geek. You always have been. You’re skinny. You have a big nose.”
He chuckled. “Don’t mince words, kid.”
Portia grinned back. “Don’t be vain, Dad. You are not Brad Pitt, exactly, and yet you’ve had really beautiful wives and you have women throwing themselves at you all the time, and your career is going fine.”
“I’m not an actor, though. I’m behind the camera.”
She made a face. “You know it’s different for men.”
“It is,” he agreed, stirring the milk. “But that seems like all the more reason for you to concentrate on things that are not about how you look.”
“That’s just the point, though. A woman can be smart and talented and all that stuff, but she also has to be good-looking and thin.”
“Not always.”
She inclined her head. “Name a successful woman who is really fat.”
He seriously tried and couldn’t come up with a name off the top of his head. Oprah had been pretty round at one time, but she wasn’t these days. “But not that many fat men are successful either.”
“What about James Gandolfini? Gérard Depardieu?”
“You’re right.” He could think of a bunch of rap stars, too. Including a few women, but that wasn’t the point. He didn’t want to convince her to be heavy, but to be healthy and in her body. And ski, for God’s sake. “What about women who are not fat but are not thin. What about Elena? She’s curvy.”
“She’s also beautiful and she’s a cook, so there’s room to negotiate.”
“You think she’s beautiful?”
“Don’t you?” She narrowed her eyes. “Please don’t play me, Dad. I notice things, okay? I can see that you have a thing for her.”
He pursed his lips, didn’t look at her. The milk started to steam. “I just want you to be in your body, kiddo, and love it. Stop worrying so much about what everybody else thinks.”
She unwrapped the chocolate and broke it by slamming it on the side of the counter. “Says my dad the director who casts beautiful women in his movies.”
Julian glanced at her. “Sometimes you’re a little too grown up for your own good.”
“I know,” she said.
And he realized that he didn’t really want to leave her alone, looking so shadowy and wan. He’d been thinking of Elena’s lusciousness all afternoon, watching the clock until he could take off and see her after her shift. But he didn’t want to leave his daughter tonight. “I’m going to have to take Alvin down to Elena when she gets off work, but in the meantime, you want to watch a movie?”
“What’s on?”
“I don’t know. We have 147 channels, so there must be something.”
“Sure,” she said. “You know what else I would like, Dad? Can we get a smaller table so we could eat dinner together? Maybe, like, a pretty tablecloth and stuff like that?”
A memory rose of his family dinner table, a square melamine with vinyl-covered chairs. His mother’s pasta in a big bowl, glasses of red Kool-Aid all around. In comparison, the table in the great room looked like something from a medieval banquet hall. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s a really good idea. We can go shopping this week.” He raised his eyebrows. “We do have one problem. Who is going to cook?”