Chapter 2: The Taste of Austerity
Thursday morning dawned with the brutal reality of consequence.
I was already dressed and answering emails when Daniel padded downstairs in his silk pajama pants, halting abruptly in front of the espresso machine.
“Where are the beans?” he called out, confusion lacing his morning gravel.
I didn’t look up from my screen. “Those were part of the comfort.”
He opened the pantry cabinet, his eyes scanning the empty space where his artisan bags usually resided. “We have to have coffee, Esme.”
I pointed a perfectly manicured finger at a massive, plastic cylinder of generic, pre-ground coffee sitting on the counter. “We do.”
He stared at the red plastic lid as if I had just presented him with a jar of hazardous medical waste. “What is that?”
“That is coffee.”
“That is not the coffee we drink.”
“It is starting today.”
He shot me a look of pure betrayal, scooped a tragic amount into the machine, and brewed a cup. He took one sip, his face contorting into a grimace of profound sorrow. “This tastes like… a neglected conference room.”
“Conference room coffee has successfully kept millions of corporate employees alive,” I replied mildly, typing out a response to a frantic head chef. “You’ll adapt.”
The deprivation escalated rapidly. On Friday afternoon, my phone buzzed on the conference table.
Daniel: Did you cancel the cleaners?
Me: Yes.
Daniel: Why???
Me: Comfort.
He didn’t reply for twenty agonizing minutes. When he finally did, the panic was palpable through the text bubbles.
Daniel: So who’s cleaning the house?
Me: We are. 50/50.
When I arrived home that evening, the scene was worthy of a renaissance painting. Daniel was standing frozen in the middle of the hallway corridor, holding the vacuum cleaner by its neck as though someone had handed him an unexploded mortar shell.
“Where do the brush attachments go?” he asked, his voice tight with stress.
“You have lived in this house for four years, Daniel.”
“I don’t vacuum!”
“I am aware.”
Saturday morning delivered an even sharper sting. Daniel descended the staircase holding two wrinkled, tragically crumpled blue dress shirts. “My dry cleaning wasn’t picked up on Thursday. I need these for a client meeting on Monday.”
“Dry cleaning courier service was comfort,” I reminded him, flipping a page in my financial magazine. “There is an ironing board in the utility room.”
He stared at me, his eyes wide and uncomprehending. “Do we own an iron?”
That was the exact metric of how insulated he had been. But the minor inconveniences of household chores were merely the tremors before the earthquake. The true test of his new financial philosophy arrived at two o’clock on Saturday afternoon, when my cell phone rang. The caller ID flashed: Patricia.
“Esme, darling!” Patricia trilled. She only ever deployed ‘darling’ when she was about to demand culinary excellence. “What magical tapestry are we weaving for lunch tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” I said evenly.
Silence. It wasn’t her usual theatrical pause to build suspense. It was a deep, frightened, abyssal silence.
“What on earth do you mean, you don’t know?”
“Daniel is handling lunch tomorrow.”
Another silence, followed by a sharp, barking laugh. “Oh, darling, good one. Very droll.”
“I am completely serious.”
“Daniel?”
“Yes.”
“My Daniel?”
“Yes, Patricia. Your Daniel.”
Her voice dropped an octave, morphing into a hushed, conspiratorial whisper. “Has something happened to you? Are you ill? Did your restaurant group lose its coastal seafood supplier? Is this about the hepatitis rumor at the downtown location?”
“There is no hepatitis rumor, Patricia. Daniel is simply cooking.”
She breathed heavily into the receiver. “All right. I just… wanted to make sure.” A long pause stretched. “Should I bring my own European butter?”
“That might be wise.”
Sunday morning arrived with the grim inevitability of an execution. I awoke at eight to find Daniel standing in the center of the kitchen, clad in sweatpants, furiously scrolling through his phone.
“Mom texted,” he announced, his voice carrying a tremor.
“Okay.”
“She says she’s ‘palpitating with excitement’ about lunch.”
“That’s lovely.”
“She asked if we were doing a seafood narrative.”
“Also lovely.”
Daniel turned to face me slowly, the phone drooping in his hand. “Esme… what do you normally make?”
I poured myself a mug of the conference-room sludge. “Depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“What I purchase.”
He frowned, his brow furrowing in a desperate attempt to manifest culinary intuition. “So, what should I purchase?”
“Food, Daniel. Edible matter.”
He shadowed me around the island, his panic thickening the air. “But what does Mom like?”
I leaned against the counter, savoring the cheap coffee. “She is your mother.”
“I know she’s my mother! But you’re the food person! You speak her language!”
“Your mother,” I said carefully, “likes attention arranged on a porcelain plate.”
That diagnostic truth did absolutely nothing to soothe him. At nine-thirty, he sprinted to his SUV and drove to the supermarket.
At ten-fifteen, my phone rang. “Why is wild-caught salmon twenty-two dollars a pound?” he hissed from the aisles.
“Because it is salmon.”
“Do we usually pay that?”
“Often more.”
“What about the frozen blocks in the freezer aisle?”
“Buy the frozen blocks, Daniel.”
“Will Mom know?”
“She will absolutely know.” I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing aloud. He had become completely infected by Patricia’s neurotic pretension.
At ten-forty, he called again, sounding breathless. “They don’t have the little potatoes.”
“What little potatoes?”
“The fancy ones! The ones that look like pebbles!”
“Buy normal potatoes, Daniel. Russets. Idahos.”
“But what makes a potato fancy?” he pleaded.
“Apparently, fear,” I replied, and hung up.
At eleven-twenty, he crashed through the front door, his arms overloaded with plastic grocery bags that rustled with the frantic energy of a man who had panic-bought half the store. I retreated to the living room, opening a novel, determined to remain an impartial observer.
For the next hour, the kitchen sounded like an active war zone. Every few minutes brought a new auditory horror: the deafening clatter of a heavy pan hitting the tile, the violent slamming of cabinet doors, the aggressive whine of a blender, followed predictably by the shrill, piercing shriek of the smoke alarm.
Through the chaos, I heard Daniel roar a profanity I hadn’t heard him use since college.
I took pity and strolled to the kitchen threshold. A fine mist of white flour coated the dark hardwood floors, the countertops, and the front of Daniel’s shirt.
“Why is it snowing in here?” I asked.
“I’m making bread!” he panted, aggressively kneading a sticky, gray mass on the cutting board.
“You have never baked bread in your life.”
“There is a first time for everything, Esme!” he snapped, waving his arm. A heavy lump of wet dough clung tenaciously to his wrist hair.
I nodded slowly, turned on my heel, and left him to his fate.
At exactly noon, Patricia called. “We are departing the compound now,” she announced, sounding uncharacteristically giddy.
“Great.”
“Oh, and I hope you don’t mind,” she added, her tone laced with venomous triumph, “but I happened to mention to Beverly Watkins that we were dining at your estate today.”
I sat up straight, my pulse quickening. “Why on earth would you do that?”
Beverly Watkins was Patricia’s neighbor and mortal adversary. They had been locked in a psychological Cold War for fifteen years, competing over trivialities no sane human noticed. They waged brutal campaigns over the circumference of Christmas wreaths, the vibrancy of front-yard hydrangeas, and the academic achievements of their respective grandchildren. Three years ago, Patricia had hired contractors to install a towering brick mailbox solely because Beverly’s new wrought-iron mailbox possessed “too much structural confidence.”
“Beverly has been absolutely insufferable lately,” Patricia hissed. “Bragging incessantly about a Michelin-star tasting menu her daughter financed. I simply had to casually interject that I regularly enjoy private-chef-level gastronomy.”
“You casually interjected that?”
“Yes. At my own home.”
“Yes. Prepared by me.”
A fraught pause crackled over the line. “I… may not have used those exact syllables.”
“What exact syllables did you use, Patricia?”
Another agonizing pause. “I may have heavily implied that my daughter-in-law, the luxury dining executive, personally curates our Sunday experiences.”
I closed my eyes, massaging my temples. “Patricia. She is going to be unbearable.”
“So, is Beverly actually coming inside?” I demanded.
“Heavens, no! I would never invite that viper into your sanctuary without prior authorization.” She let out a haughty sniff. “She is merely chauffeuring us. Dropping us at the curb.”
Of course she was. Beverly wanted visual confirmation of the luxury she was missing.
At twelve-thirty, Daniel stumbled into the living room, his forehead glistening with a thick layer of nervous sweat. “Do we have fresh parsley?”
“I have no idea.”
“Mom requires parsley for the aesthetic!”
“Then I sincerely hope you purchased parsley.”
He stared at me, his chest heaving, his eyes narrowing as he detected my amusement. “You are enjoying this. Just a little bit.”
I didn’t answer.
At twelve-fifty, a sound erupted from the kitchen that chilled my blood.
“No! No, no, no, no, NO!”
I abandoned my book and practically jogged into the kitchen. Daniel was backed against the island, clutching a wooden spatula like a broadsword. Sitting on the granite counter beside the stainless-steel sink were six massive, dark-green, entirely alive lobsters.
I looked at him. I looked at the counter.
One of the lobsters, seemingly annoyed by the ambient lighting, slowly raised a banded, crushing claw.
What will he do now that his imported luxury has grown legs and an attitude?
