The Love Season Part 21

Marguerite lay in bed, used up, spent, as tired as she'd ever been in her life, and yet she couldn't sleep. There was excitement and, yes, anxiety, about not one but two of her upstairs guest rooms occupied, about Renata and Daniel asleep above her head. In a hundred years she never could have predicted that she would have them both in her house again. To have them show up unannounced and know they would be welcome to stay the night, like they were family.

Marguerite had expected Daniel to be officious, gruff, angry, annoyed, impatient, disgruntled, demanding-but if she and Porter were playing their old game and she had only one word to describe Daniel, it would be "contrite." He was as contrite as a little boy who had put a baseball through her window.

"I'm sorry," he said when Marguerite and Renata opened the door. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." The apologies came in a stream and Marguerite couldn't tell if he was sorry for showing up on her doorstep at midnight with his overnight bag, or sorry for coming to Nantucket to meddle in his daughter's affairs, or sorry for keeping Marguerite and Renata away from each other for fourteen years, or sorry for his punis.h.i.+ng words so long ago or sorry for feeling threatened by Marguerite since the day he showed up at Les Parapluies without a reservation, when he pulled out a chair and took a seat in their lives, uninvited. Possibly all of those things. Marguerite allowed Dan to embrace her and kiss her cheek, and then she stood aside and watched as father and daughter confronted each other. Renata crossed her arms over her chest and gave Daniel a withering look.

"Oh, Daddy!" she said. Then she grimaced. "Don't tell me what happened over there. Please don't tell me. I really don't want to know."

"I'd rather not think about it myself," Daniel said. He sighed. "I'm not trying to control your life, honey."

Renata hugged him; Marguerite saw her tug on his earlobe. "Yes, you are," she said. "Of course you are."

"Would you like a drink, Daniel?" Marguerite asked. "I have scotch."

"No, thanks, Margo," he said. "I've had plenty to drink already tonight." He sniffed the air. "Smells like I missed quite a meal."

"You did," Renata said. She s.h.i.+fted her feet. "Can we talk about everything in the morning? I'm too tired to do it now. I'm just too tired."

"Yes," Daniel said. Marguerite noticed him peer into the sitting room. In the morning he would want to see the house; he would want to see what was the same, what was different. He would look for signs of Candace. It was fruitless to hope he might bestow a kind of forgiveness, but she would hope anyway.

"Yes," Marguerite agreed. "You, my dear, have had quite a day. Let me show you upstairs."

Marguerite led the way with Renata at her heels. Daniel, who had been left to carry the bags, loitered at the bottom of the stairs. He was snooping around already, reading something that he found on one of the bottom steps, something Marguerite hadn't even realized she'd left there-her columns from the Calgary newspaper.

"Dad?" Renata said impatiently.

He raised his face and sought out Marguerite's eyes. "Do you enjoy working with Joanie?" he said.

Marguerite raised one eyebrow, a trick she hadn't used in years and years. "You know Joanie Sparks?" she said. "You know the food editor of The Calgary Daily Press?"

"Do you remember my best man, Gregory?"

Marguerite nodded. How would she ever explain that she'd been thinking of Gregory just today, and the relentless way he'd pursued poor Francesca?

"Joanie is his sister," Dan said. "I dated her a million years ago. In high school."

"You gave her my name then?" Marguerite said. "You suggested I write the column?"

He shrugged, returned his attention to the clippings for a second, then set them down. He picked up his overnight case and Renata's lumpy bag and ascended the stairs with a benign, noncommittal smile on his face. "I did," he said. "And not only that but I read the column every week. Online."

"You do?" Marguerite said.

"You do?" Renata said.

"It's a wonderful column," Daniel said.

Forgiveness, Marguerite thought. It had been there all along.

"Well," she said, trying not to smile. "Thank you."

The grandfather clock eked out another hour. The announcement was mercifully short: two o'clock.

Sleep! Marguerite commanded herself. Now!

She closed her eyes. In the morning, she would make a second meal, breakfast. She and Daniel and Renata would drink coffee on the patio, read the Sunday New York Times, which Marguerite had had delivered every week since the year she met Porter. They would say things and leave many things unsaid. And then-either together or separately-Renata and Daniel would leave to go back to New York. They would resume their lives, and Marguerite would resume hers.

She was not optimistic enough to believe that, from this day on, she would see them often, or soon, though she hoped her status improved from a mere name on the Christmas card list. She hoped Renata would write-or e-mail! She hoped both Renata and Daniel would think of Nantucket on a bright, hot summer day and know they were welcome there anytime, without warning. For them, her door was open.

If nothing else, Marguerite told herself, she would be left with the memory of this day. It would be a comfort and a blessing to think back on it.

There was, after all, nothing like living in the past.

A Reading Group Gold Selection.

THE LOVE SEASON.

By Elin Hilderbrand.

In Her Own Words.

* A Conversation with Elin Hilderbrand.

Food for Thought * "The Dinner Party"

2006 Cape Cod Times Keep on Reading.

* Reading Group Questions For more reading group suggestions.

visit www.readinggroupgold.com.

ST. MARTIN'S GRIFFIN.

In Her Own Words.

A Conversation with Elin Hilderbrand.

Your novels-The Blue Bistro, Summer People, Nantucket Nights, and The Beach Club-are all set in Nantucket. Could you take a moment to talk about this small Ma.s.sachusetts island as literary inspiration?

"There is no other place in the world like [Nantucket]."

I have lived on Nantucket for thirteen years now, and to paraphrase John Denver, when I arrived in the summer of 1993, I felt I was "coming home to a place I'd never been before." I immediately understood that I belonged on the island, that it was my home. There are so many aspects of the island that inspire me-the beaches, the open moors dotted with ponds, and the historic downtown. What I like best about Nantucket, however, is the fact that it is an authentic place. There is no other place in the world like it. There are no stoplights, no chains of any kind, no strip malls or fast food restaurants. It is original, singular, unique.

In writing The Love Season, how did you draw from your own personal and professional experience-as a "foodie," an avid traveler, a mother?

This novel started out as a short story called "Cooking with Herbs" that I wrote while I was in graduate school at Iowa. I wanted to write a story about cooking, which is an avocation of mine. I love to make everything from scratch-my own baguettes, soups, salad dressings, pasta sauces, my own mayonnaise even.

The wonderful thing about transforming this short story about cooking into a novel about cooking, love, death, and family was that I got to enhance every aspect of the novel with the things I had learned since leaving graduate school. I traveled extensively with my husband, and I had three children. Having children expanded my world and my understanding of human nature.

Are you a list maker, like Marguerite? What's on your to-do list at this very moment?

The list is never ending! With three kids, it is a litany of pickups and drop-offs and doctor's appointments and basketball games and playdates. I also sit on the board of three island nonprofits and I am chairing one benefit, editing a major publication, and heading a PR committee. Only a part of my day is spent writing-the rest is dedicated to my kids and to my attempts to make Nantucket a better island for all who live here.

Could you please list, for your readers, some of your favorite books?

Must start with The Riders, by Tim Winton. He's an Australian writer and the most brilliant mind I've ever encountered. I wish he was better known in America. Move on to anything by Richard Russo, especially The Risk Pool, and anything by Jane Smiley, especially The Age of Grief. Other favorites are Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin and Crooked Little Heart by Anne Lamott.

And what books appear on your To-Be-Read list?

I just started The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, which won the Man Booker this year, and I'm trying to hunt down The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud because the readers I trust have been raving about it. Because there are so many demands on my time, I'm pretty picky when it comes to what I'll read. I do read constantly, though, because reading really good writing inspires me to do better work, to concentrate on my language and the flow of my sentences.

"I like surprises and developments to unfold as I write."

Is writing like cooking for you? Do you have a recipe in your head before you approach a writing project?

Never the whole thing. I tend to start out with characters and a general idea of where I want the novel to go. But I like surprises and developments to unfold as I write. I discover the characters and a lot of times they will dictate what happens next. For example, in The Love Season, it wasn't clear to me that Renata would escape the dinner party until I actually saw her having c.o.c.ktails with Cade and his former girlfriend. And I thought, "The poor girl. I have to get her out of there."

What, if any, special ingredients do you bring to the (writing) table?

You asked earlier about my travels. My husband and I have been all over the world-through southeast Asia and Nepal, Thailand, Singapore, Bali; across South America and in Costa Rica and Belize; and to Africa twice-Morocco and South Africa. We also spent three winters living in western Australia. I don't write about my travels as often as I would like to, but having been across the globe has given me a better understanding of people in general, and a sense of adventure and story. I find the older I get, the more deeply I feel things...and this (hopefully) is reflected in my writing.

And what are you working on now?

I just finished writing a novel called Barefoot, about a mother of two who is diagnosed with lung cancer, and who goes-along with her sister and her best friend-to Nantucket for the summer. I have started a new, new book called c.o.c.ktails, Dinner and Dancing, which is about a mother of four children who takes on the task of chairing a huge charity benefit. It looks at the whole world of do-gooding with a new eye. It is very fun to write, which I can only hope means it will be fun to read!

ELIN HILDERBRAND grew up in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, and is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a teaching/writing fellow. Her short fiction has appeared in Seventeen, The Ma.s.sachusetts Review, and The Colorado Review. She lives with her husband and three children in Nantucket, Ma.s.sachusetts. This is her fifth novel.

Food for Thought.

The Dinner Party.

She pulled out her blender and added the ingredients for the pots de creme: eggs, sugar, half a cup of her morning coffee, heavy cream, and eight ounces of melted Scharffen Berger chocolate. What could be easier?

-Marguerite Beale.

self-exiled chef in The Love Season.

Nantucket author Elin Hilderbrand is making dinner. This is not the Black Angus steak cheeseburgers and Bartlett corn she would normally serve her husband and three children on a steamy summer day. This is a very special dinner-the same dinner her protagonist, Marguerite Beale, makes in Hilderbrand's fifth novel, The Love Season.

A fict.i.tious chef who has given up cooking to punish herself after her best friend's death, Beale crafts the dinner only because her G.o.dchild is coming for the first time-to learn more about her dead mother.

Hilderbrand is making the dinner for twelve people who helped inspire the novel, which she originally t.i.tled "The Dinner Party." The group is gathering at 5 Quince St., in the circa 1730s home where the novel is set.

At 11:30 a.m., Hilderbrand darts into the fish market to pick up smoked mussels, which she will serve with a homemade aioli. "In the book, Marguerite smokes the oysters herself, but that's beyond me," Hilderbrand says, driving toward Bartlett's Farm to pick up fresh dill, basil, and thyme, along with island-grown tomatoes and zucchini. In the novel, Hilderbrand specifically notes that Marguerite does not go to Bartlett's Farm, but says the farm she does visit is modeled on the local landmark.

"There's a little bit of me in Marguerite, in how I cook."

Making A Novel Dinner.

Then, it's back to the house Hilderbrand and her family are renting while their own home-just down the street-is being remodeled. Although some of her equipment-like her tart pan-has disappeared into a box marked "a.s.sorted kitchen stuff," Hilderbrand is unfazed.

The biggest challenge to making dinner for twelve, she says, is the refrigerator-finding ingredients in it and then finding s.p.a.ce for things like the chocolate pots de creme, which need refrigerating until the 7 p.m. dinner. She plops down in front of the open refrigerator, to start rearranging from the bottom shelf up.

Reading The Love Season and then watching Hilderbrand make this meal is a little odd-like playing with a set of nesting dolls or strolling through a house of mirrors.

One can see Hilderbrand in Marguerite, in the list each makes to plan the dinner; in the way the author expertly cracks eggs into the blender for pots de creme and uses her own morning coffee; and the fact that she actually says, "What could be easier?"-unaware she is echoing the words she put in Marguerite's mouth when writing the book sitting on the beach a year ago.

"There's a little bit of me in Marguerite, in how I cook," Hilderbrand says.

And, yes, that's her jogging in Morocco, unaware-like her character, Candace Harris Knox-that her blonde hair, baseball cap, and running shorts would draw so much attention in the Muslim country.

"The Love Season's scene in Morocco was a conscious effort on my part to get one of our travels into a book," says Hilderbrand, who traveled extensively with her husband, Cliffside Beach Club manager Chip Cunningham, in Southeast Asia before they started a family.

Capturing The Island.

But The Love Season and Hilderbrand's other novels are also a reflection-and usually a composite-of the people, places, and experiences she encounters living on Nantucket.

Cunningham (a character in his wife's first Nantucket book) says many repeat customers at the hotel he manages look forward to his wife publis.h.i.+ng a new novel each season.

"It's part of what they a.s.sociate with Nantucket," he says. "I'll have Elin come down and sign it for them."

Hilderbrand sees her books as souvenirs-little pieces of the island visitors can take home with them to evoke the feeling of Nantucket long after they've left.

The Love Season earned a four-star critic's choice rating in June from People magazine reviewer Sue Corbett, who wrote, "Hilderbrand, who wrote 2002's Nantucket Nights, serves up a mouthwatering menu, keeps the Veuve Clicquot flowing and tops it all with a dollop of mystery that will have even drowsy sunbathers turning pages until the very satisfying end."

"Hilderbrand sees her books as souvenirs-little pieces of [Nantucket] visitors can take home with them."

Hilderbrand honed her writing skills at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop. Her cooking got its polish from taking lessons with cookbook author and former Que Sera Sarah owner, Sarah Leah Chase, one of the guests she has invited to this dinner. Hilderbrand explains how she decided to write a couple of novels (The Love Season and The Blue Bistro) based specifically on Nantucket's food scene: "I did the hotel books, and a restaurant owner came up and said to me, 'You could never write about a restaurant. It would be too scandalous.' I thought, 'Aha, then I have to write it.' "