Read Recipe for a Happy Life: A Novel for Free Online Page B

realized that he really did want to be a dad, and had only stayed away for so long because of his important work. I wouldn’t hold it against him when he finally came back for me, I vowed, I would just run to him and hug him and tell him that everything was okay, since we were a real family now.
    These fantasies kept me going for much of my young life. They kept me warm at night, helped me fall asleep. I’d be on a school trip to the Bronx Zoo and I could practically see my father coming toward me from Tiger Mountain, ready to be my dad. Or I’d be with a friend at the Aquarium in Brooklyn, and I’d imagine my father surprising us and then taking us to the Coney Island boardwalk for a hot dog and a ride on the Cyclone.
    I don’t have fantasies like that anymore. Now that I’m an adult, I understand that we all make decisions in life. Some are good, some are bad, but we make the decisions. And my father made his.
    Still, I like to believe that my father feels that not knowing me was one of the bad ones.

 
    Nine
    Raoul is taking us wine tasting today, although my grandmother would probably disagree with that statement. It’s not so much that he’s taking us, which my grandmother would take to mean that he’s invited us, it’s that he’s driving so we can drink whatever we like. If you ask me, that’s even better.
    “Notes of berry and wood,” my grandmother says, swishing a glass of pinot noir around her mouth.
    My grandmother knows how to taste wine properly. You take a sip, swirl it around your mouth, then open your mouth slightly and breathe in some air, so that you can then taste the wine once it’s been aerated. Then, for your grand finale, you are to spit the contents of your mouth out into a bucket, aptly named the “spit bucket.” Since I have decided that getting drunk is the whole point of wine tasting, I refuse to spit. My grandmother, also, refuses to spit, but for altogether different reasons. She thinks it’s unladylike.
    “Berry and wood,” the sommelier says. “That’s very good.”
    The sommelier has taken a liking to my grandmother. When we first walked in, he said that he couldn’t place her trace accent. She explained that she was born in France, and he was immediately enchanted. Apparently, he studied wine in France for four years. Ever since he said that, my grandmother has been playing up her French accent. “Feminine wiles,” she will later tell me.
    “This wine is very good,” my grandmother says. “Don’t you think, Hannah?”
    “It’s very good,” I say. For a minute I consider whether I’m slurring my words, but then decide that I am not. I take another bite of aged brie on a hearty seven-grain cracker, just for good measure—and to make sure I don’t embarrass my family by falling over drunk at the Southampton Vineyard.
    I do not taste berry and wood. I just taste wine.
    “We’ll take a case of this, too, dear,” my grandmother says, and the sommelier smiles. There’s a sparkle in his eye and I’m not sure if it’s because my grandmother is flirting with him, or because he just sold another case of wine. We already have three cases in the car.
    The sommelier uncorks another bottle.
    “Dessert wine?” he asks, even though it’s not really a question. He’s just about done uncorking the wine, so even if we didn’t really want it, it seems that dessert wine is in our future.
    “I love sweet wine,” my grandmother says. “I grew up on Rieslings from Alsace.”
    “Ah”— the sommelier nods— “the Alsacian Riesling. Perfection.” And then to me: “Your grandmother has a very fine palate.”
    “Yes,” I say, downing the rest of my pinot noir. “That’s one of my favorite things about her.”
    The sommelier furrows his brow and my grandmother regards me skeptically. I wonder what she will be more annoyed about later: that I made one of my “clever quips,” or that I wasn’t flirting with the sommelier, whose age is somewhere between my