Nell Read Online Free Page B

basement. The children played in it often during the long cold winter days when they were trapped indoors, and over the months things accumulated. Nell knew they would discover lost socks and underpants, books and jewelry, batteries and Lego blocks. She was eager to get to work.
    But first she wanted to finish the cassoulet. Nell loved cooking and having people to dinner, but since her divorce, she had learned to serve only those dishes that could be prepared beforehand. Otherwise she would end up in a frustrated snit, feeling like Cinderella, stirring away like an old drudge alone over the stove while far away in theliving room her guests laughed and gossiped and she felt like an outcast at her own party.
    Or even worse, she would invite the guests into her kitchen while she finished a dish and, incapable of being sociable and efficient at the same time, ruin the food. There was the night when she was so enthralled with a friend’s description of his ex-wife’s anger that she had measured tablespoons rather than teaspoons of curry into a sauce: What a party that had turned out to be! Everyone had sat around the dining room table with flushed faces and tears in their eyes, blowing their noses into handkerchiefs or, in sheer desperation, the cloth napkins, and finally drinking too much in order to drown the terrible heat of the curry sauce. God, they had gotten drunk and silly. It had turned out after all to be a wonderful time, but the next day they had all had vicious hangovers.
    And there had been the time when a friend had confided a sorrow to Nell at the very moment she opened the oven to take out a loaf of bread.
    “Oh no, I’m so sorry,” Nell had said to her friend, and at the same time had reached her hand in to pull out the rack. But she had forgotten to put an oven mitt on and grabbed the rack with her bare hand.
    “Oh dear ,” Nell had said earnestly, when she had longed to yell, “Oh holy shit !” Fortunately, she had been only heating the bread, so the burn was not bad, and she had been able to soothe it with ice water and first-aid cream, and her guest, so overwhelmed with her own problem, had not even noticed. But Nell didn’t want to do that again.
    So now she did most of the cooking for a party beforehand. And it worked out well, for this allowed her to make huge casseroles and stews, which were not only delicious, but inexpensive. For tonight’s party she was making a cassoulet—full of all those wonderful cheap fat white beans. Peasant food. She did like peasant food best. And this dish made her feel so thrifty and prudent, for she could sneak in the leftovers: chunks of roast lamb and roast pork, chicken wings and duck legs, all cooked for other meals and left over and frozen and now appearing from her freezer so that she could turn out this elaborate and time-consuming dish in very little time at all.
    Now she stood at the sink peeling a spicy sausage and cutting it into small slices. She brought out her huge white ironstone casserole dish and layered it with the cooked beans and meat, then poured the thick garlic-flavored bean stock over it all. Now she would bake the casserole slowly, and it would come out crusty, brown, and pungent. Shewould serve the dish with a crisp green salad, French bread, beer, and fresh fruit for dessert. She licked her lips in anticipation and closed the oven door. She would have only to reheat the cassoulet tonight, after the flavors had mingled together all day. She could concentrate on talking with her friends rather than cooking for them and yet serve them with a delicious meal.
    She especially wanted to please the people who were coming tonight, because she liked them all so much. The Andersons were coming: John and Katy. He was a pediatrician; she was an artist taking time out to have babies. She was pregnant now with their first child. They were a beautiful couple, John and Katy; they were a lucky pair, and it made Nell happy just to know they existed, just