Virtually Perfect Read online

  But gradually Lizzie realized everyone else was growing up, while she was being left behind. She didn’t even have a boyfriend, much less a baby. Right now she barely had a job. At least if she were still hosting Healthy U she could point to her high-flying career and fast-paced lifestyle. But instead, she was hawking cottage cheese with some guy named Emilio and had just lost yet another source of income.

  “Good guess,” Lizzie said as Emilio sealed up the truck. “For a minute there you had me worried.”

  “I was right? You’re thirty?”

  “Yep,” Lizzie said, and as she did she sounded almost as surprised as he did.

  * * *

  As soon as Lizzie reached her apartment building, her phone rang. It was her mom.

  “Mom, hey—sorry, I’m only just getting back from this job.”

  “I guess that answers my question, then.”

  “Which was?”

  “Whether or not you were on a train.”

  “Oh. No. Sorry.”

  “No need to apologize. I wasn’t expecting it. Just hoping.”

  Lizzie opened the front door to her building. It was a three-story walk-up, sandwiched between brick row houses of varying shades of red, beige, and cream, all of which seemed to bear tin awnings over their front doors.

  “I didn’t expect the day to last this long. What time is it now? Five something?”

  “Almost six.”

  “Seriously? I swear, no matter how long I’ve lived here, I can’t get over how big this city is. It took me almost two hours to get home from the Bronx.”

  Emilio had been kind enough to drop Lizzie at the subway on his way to the truck depot, but the D train ride lasted a good hour and when she factored in the time to and from the subway stops the journey seemed downright Odyssean.

  “How’d the event go?”

  “Okay,” Lizzie said, trying to sound upbeat. She wasn’t lying. The event was okay—not brilliant, not disastrous, just . . . okay—but she didn’t want to belabor the “just okay–ness” of the day because she didn’t want to alarm out her mom. Lizzie knew how anxious she was about her daughter living alone in a so-so neighborhood in Brooklyn, and she didn’t want to add to her angst. For as long as Lizzie could remember, she had tried to ease her mother’s worries. That was partly down to Lizzie’s guilt over her parents’ divorce and partly down to her eternal desire to fix things, and also, she supposed, partly down to a lifelong attempt to make up for the death of her brother, Ryan, when he was a baby.

  “So I guess there’s no chance you’ll make it to Philly tonight, huh?”

  “I don’t think so,” Lizzie said as she let herself into her apartment.

  Her mom sighed. “Ah, well. Maybe next Mother’s Day.”

  “Hold on a sec’; I didn’t say I wasn’t coming at all. I said not tonight.”

  “Oh!” Her mom’s voice brightened. “You might come this week? When?”

  “Well . . . I wanted to run an idea by you first.”

  Lizzie took a deep breath. She’d thought about this the entire journey back from the Botanical Garden. At first, she’d started crunching the numbers, trying to figure out how many new clients she’d need to pick up for her personal chef work to make up for the lost magazine column and dwindling cookbook royalties. But when she started factoring in transportation costs and travel time, she wasn’t sure she could accommodate as many clients as she’d need.

  And then she started wondering: Why the hell am I doing this? For years she’d convinced herself she needed to be in New York, and for many of those years that was true. She’d shot her show in New York, and her agent, editor, and publisher were all there, too. And the food and restaurant scene in New York couldn’t be beat. Why would she live anywhere else?

  But numbers weren’t adding up anymore. She wasn’t shooting a show, and her agent barely returned her e-mails, much less invited her for lunch or drinks. For a while, she got by on her former fame, but the Queensridge Dairy gig was the first promotional opportunity she’d had in a long, long time (and from what she heard, she only got it after a long list of other talent said no first). The fact that someone recognized her today had actually come as a surprise. Most people had figured she was simply another millennial looking to pick up extra cash on the weekend. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had asked for her autograph. Certainly not in the last two years.

  And so she had made a decision.

  “What if I moved home?”

  “Home? With me?”

  “Just for a bit, until I figure out what I’m doing.”

  “What you’re doing with what?”

  “My career.”

  “But . . . I thought things were going well. Queensridge Dairy hired you to make cottage cheese seem hip! And you have that client with the Fabergé egg collection and gold wallpaper. . . .”

  “Mrs. Sokolov? Yeah, she’s crazy. Nightmare client. And the other stuff isn’t . . . well, as regular as I’d like.”

  “But for someone like you, who has such a strong background, who went to Penn.” She stopped abruptly. They both knew why.

  “I’m not planning on sleeping until noon and sponging off you for months. I just think it’s time for me to pull the plug on New York, at least temporarily. I feel like I’m paying for the privilege of living here and not getting much in return.”

  “Oh, believe me, I hear you. Why do you think your father and I decided to stay in Philly? It’s just . . . I worry about you.”

  “I know. But you shouldn’t. I’m fine. And I think this is the right decision.”

  “Well, if you’re sure, then I’m sure. I guess you can write from anywhere. And there are plenty of people in Philadelphia and the surrounding area looking for a personal chef.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’ll need to get your room in order . . . and the pantry is an embarrassment.. . .”

  “Mom, all of that can wait until I arrive. I’ll help you.”

  “Oh! And I’ll have to stock up on oatmeal and yogurts. And eggs! And those honey-almond granola bars you used to buy all the time. You still eat those, right?” Her voice was brighter now.

  “Sure.”

  “Oh, good.” She hummed into the receiver. “My baby is coming home. I can’t believe it.”

  Lizzie smiled to herself and held her breath, not wanting to admit out loud that as much as she stood by her decision, she couldn’t believe it either.

  CHAPTER 3

  Linda,

  Are you sitting down? Because I’ve got some pretty big news—Lizzie is moving home! I know. I was shocked. Apparently NYC isn’t going as well as I thought, so she’s decided to stay with me while she figures things out. I’m trying not to worry too much, but you know me. She has a good head on her shoulders, so I’m sure she’ll work everything out, but sometimes I wonder. . . . She gave me the same reassurances when she left Penn to move to New York for Healthy U, and look how that turned out. But I do understand how hard it can be in the city. I told her, why do you think your dad and I stayed in Philly? I can’t believe I brought Frank into it—what I should have said was, why do you think your aunt Linda and I both ended up here?

  Anyway, I’m sure she’ll work it all out, but I thought I’d check with you to see if you knew of anyone at CC Media who might need a personal or private chef. I realize it’s a huge company (did you see that article about how it’s the biggest cable company in the country now?!), but since you have the ear of the number two over there, I figured you’d be more likely to find someone needing a personal chef than I would. Even just a summer job would be a big help. Doesn’t your boss go down the shore every weekend to that ridiculous house he built? I’m still dying to see pictures. It sounded obscene. From what you’ve told me about his family, I’m not at all surprised.

  In other news . . . I saw Gary again last night. I think I really like him. He’s so different from anyone I’ve ever dated, especially Frank. But then Jessica and I are polar opposites, so
maybe that’s what Frank and I needed to move on after Ryan (never mind that Frank got there a few decades before I did . . . ). Gary and I are getting together again this week, so we’ll see. He wants to take me to some talk on “cleaning up your lifestyle.” Sounds a little New Agey for me, but I’m trying to keep an open mind.

  Okay, gotta run. I meant this to be a three-line e-mail, but you know me—when I get going, there’s no stopping me, especially when it comes to Lizzie! Let me know if you hear of any potential job leads. I’ll try not to hold my breath, but honestly, who am I kidding?

  xxoo

  Susan

  CHAPTER 4

  Lizzie turned onto Waverly Road, feeling more confident than she’d expected. When her aunt Linda called her with a potential summer job—a private chef gig at the beach house of CC Media’s chief operating officer—Lizzie wasn’t sure she wanted it. She’d heard strange stories about Jim Silvester and his family over the years, mostly from her aunt, who’d been his executive assistant for more than a decade. And Lizzie knew that working as a hired hand for extremely wealthy families came with a surfeit of potential hazards: esoteric requests, inflated expectations, complete lack of personal time.

  But as Lizzie drove down the road in her mother’s Honda Accord she sighed in relief as she surveyed the houses around her. These weren’t the twenty-thousand-square-foot manses she’d imagined when she heard the Silvesters lived in Gladwyne, the crème de la crème of Philadelphia’s Main Line. She’d once read an article that listed Gladwyne’s residents as some of the wealthiest in the country, along with those of Beverly Hills and Greenwich, Connecticut. But from what she could see, the houses around her looked . . . well, normal. Bigger than her mother’s quaint redbrick colonial in Glenside, a thirty-minute drive from here, but not gargantuan. Not obscene.

  “You will reach your destination in two hundred yards,” the GPS told her. “Your destination is on the left.”

  Lizzie looked to her left. Okay, so the homes were beginning to look a bit more . . . stately. In fact, for a minute she thought the one she just passed was a hotel. But it wasn’t the Silvesters’ home. Theirs might be like the others she’d seen earlier—big but reasonable. That’s what she was hoping for in general: a family that had a big income and a big personality but that was also reasonable. After so many years cobbling together a living from different sources, Lizzie was ready for a summer of steady income and predictability, with an employer who didn’t shout at her in Russian while dressed in a gold lamé duster jacket.

  “You have reached your destination,” the GPS said.

  “Oh,” Lizzie said as she looked to her left. “Oh.”

  She gulped as she took in the tall wrought-iron gate that stretched across a cobblestone driveway, both sides framed by tall stone-and-brick pillars. The lip of the driveway was framed by two flower beds, each of which was filled with perfectly pruned boxwoods and white and violet impatiens. The black mulch looked as if it had just been laid that morning, and the plantings were all spaced with scientific exactitude.

  She turned in and stopped in front of the gate. There was a small call box to the left, so she lowered the car window and pressed the button.

  “Hello?” said a woman with a slight foreign accent of indeterminate origin.

  “Hi . . . yes . . . it’s Lizzie Glass. About the summer job? I’m . . . here.”

  Obviously, you idiot, she thought. Where else would you be? Hong Kong? She hadn’t been for a job interview in ages, and she was suddenly very nervous.

  “Yes. Okay. Please come in.” Lizzie thought the accent sounded Spanish, but she couldn’t be sure.

  The gates juddered open, and Lizzie pulled through them and continued along the driveway until she reached a large parking area in front of the house.

  “Holy stromboli,” Lizzie whispered as her eyes crawled up the building’s gray stone façade. The house rose four stories to a gabled roof, whose points and peaks were lined with limestone bricks. The footprint seemed to stretch on forever—for miles, it seemed—and she couldn’t believe only one family lived here. She was terrible when it came to estimating distances or square footages by sight, but she knew her mom’s house was about two thousand square feet, and, from the outside at least, she guessed she could fit about eight of her mom’s houses in this one. Eight. She shook her head in disbelief.

  She grabbed her knife case and bag of ingredients and made for the front door. When she’d talked to Mrs. Silvester on the phone earlier in the week, they’d discussed the interview format. Mrs. Silvester would ask Lizzie a series of questions, and then Lizzie would cook a sample meal in the Silvesters’ kitchen to showcase her skills and style.

  Lizzie pressed the buzzer beside the elegant walnut door and peered into one of the small windows that lined either side. Before she could glimpse more than the twinkle of the crystal chandelier in the foyer, her view was blocked by a demurely dressed Hispanic woman with a narrow face, dark hair, and striking dark, round eyes.

  The door swung open. “Hello,” the woman said, ushering Lizzie into the foyer. “Mrs. Silvester will be down in one minute. You can wait here.”

  “Great,” said Lizzie. “Thanks.”

  The woman smiled and disappeared into the next room, and Lizzie took a moment to size up her surroundings. The foyer was vast, surrounded by white paneled walls and thick white columns that lined the doorways to the rooms on either side, as if she were about to enter a Greek temple. Above her hung a crystal chandelier that Lizzie thought was big enough to constitute its own solar system. It was matched by another of the same size fifty feet away, which dangled beside a stately turned staircase with bright white spindles and a dark cherry banister, which matched the shiny Brazilian cherry hardwood floors. Lizzie had never seen a house like this before, except maybe in the pages of Architectural Digest or on TV. It was so big. And so clean. She could hardly believe someone actually lived here. Where was all of the stuff? The sneakers and the jackets and all the little signs that real people ate and slept here and that this wasn’t just a museum of good taste?

  As Lizzie studied the thick Persian rug beneath her, she heard footsteps on the broad staircase. She looked up and saw a petite woman coming toward her, her shoulder-length blond hair shimmering in the light of the chandelier. Everything about the woman screamed wealth: the highlights, the haircut, the nickel-size diamond on her hand, the impeccably tailored clothes and red-soled shoes. She had that well-maintained look Lizzie had encountered so often in New York, when she found herself on the Upper East Side or at an event for prominent Wall Street executives. Not a hair out of place, not a frown line in sight.

  “You must be Lizzie,” the woman said with a smile. Her voice was high and bubbly, just as it had been on the phone. “Kathryn Silvester.”

  She extended a hand, and Lizzie tucked her knife kit under her arm so that she could shake it.

  “So nice to meet in person,” Lizzie said. “You have a beautiful home.”

  “Thank you,” Kathryn said in a way that indicated she was used to this sort of compliment. And why wouldn’t she be? The house was amazing. “So, I was thinking we could talk for a bit in the kitchen, and once we’ve gotten through the basics, you can start cooking. Work for you?”

  Lizzie smiled, trying to seem as friendly and can-do as possible. “Works for me.”

  Kathryn led Lizzie from the foyer into the dining room, whose walls were lined in purply-gray grass cloth and whose ceiling featured two more crystal chandeliers, of smaller proportion than those in the foyer but of equal grandeur and sparkle. From there, they walked through a broad doorway flanked by open French doors into the kitchen.

  The kitchen was decorated in a French country style, with whitewashed cabinetry, cream granite countertops, and ornate wrought-iron pulls and knobs on the drawers and doors. Lizzie counted not one but two refrigerators, each more than three feet wide, the exteriors bearing the same painted wood as the cabinets around them. Like the rest of the house Lizzie
had seen so far, everything in the kitchen was perfectly arranged, as if it had never been used: a massive bowl in the middle of the triangular island filled with just the right amount and variety of fruit; vintage glass candy jars filled with a rainbow assortment of jelly beans, striped taffy, and gourmet lollipops; and crystal vases brimming with fluffy pink peonies. What struck Lizzie most of all was how tasteful everything was. Clearly the Silvesters had spent a fortune decorating this house, but they hadn’t gone crazy with chinz and gold leaf and marble statues. They’d done it the way Lizzie might have done herself, if she’d had many millions of dollars to spare.

  Kathryn pulled out one of the upholstered chairs around the kitchen island. “Why don’t you sit here, and I’ll sit next to you, and we can talk a bit about your past clients. You don’t have to name names—although I won’t stop you, if you feel like dishing! No pun intended.” She winked as Lizzie climbed onto the chair and rested her bags on the counter. “Anyway, I’m most interested in what sort of special diet experience you have. Can you talk a little about that?”

  Lizzie sat up tall. Aunt Linda had mentioned that Lizzie’s background in healthy cuisine had helped land her the interview, so she was prepared for this question.

  “My last client couldn’t eat gluten, soy, or dairy, so I created menus that omitted those ingredients but were still exciting and innovative and met with her tastes. And other clients have ranged from vegan to kosher, so I’m able to accommodate any dietary restrictions you might have.”

  “What about a range of restrictions? For example, I am currently experimenting with the Paleo diet—which, by the way, has been amazing so far—but my husband, Jim, shouldn’t eat red meat and doesn’t love most vegetables. He’s also allergic to garlic. And then, of course, there’s Zoe. . . .”

  “Zoe?”

  “My daughter. She’s been traveling in Europe since she graduated from GW last June, but she’ll be joining us for the summer. Or at least most of it.”