The first thing I did was talk them out of Chez Hilda as a name for their establishment. And next thing I knew, I was auditioning for the post of head chef as if I really wanted it. Earlier, between the hours of four and seven P.M., I had staged a small rebellion, shopping for ingredients that had no chic. It would serve my mother right: She clearly didn't understand that restaurants were not created equal, and I was not so pathetic a candidate that I needed her crude employment services. So I bought chuck and cheap Burgundy and the lettuce and cellophane-wrapped tomatoes of a prosaic salad. I made a stew, which my mother billed as Beef Bourguignon a la Natalie, and mashed potatoes-all of which unwittingly hit the nail on its head.

Mrs. Simone may have been dreaming of haute cuisine and pale pink linens, but Mr. Simone loved diner food. "You understand what I'm trying to do," he said, a solemn oath, looking up from his first bite of my Grape-Nut custard pudding.

"Have some more," my mother said.

"These old standbys? I just made what I thought you'd like."

"We're in the market for a chef," he announced.

"I can't believe it," said my mother. "Eddie, did you hear that? Natalie! Show him the letter from your cooking teacher."

Mr. Simone, eyes closed, licked the front and back of his spoon. Finally he asked what else I could do, dessert-wise, in this genre.

"What genre?" I asked.

"Home cooking, but top-notch."

My mother rose and said pointedly to my father, "Let's do the dishes and let the professionals talk." She commanded Mrs. Simone to sit and to have another helping.

"Desserts," Mr. Simone prompted.

I thought of my childhood and the UMa.s.s dining commons. "Fig squares. Brownies a la mode. Chocolate icebox cookie cake."

"With real whipped cream between the cookies?"

"Of course. And Boston cream pie."

He said happily, "Who makes that anymore?"

By that point, I was enjoying my own acting ability. "Apple pie, cherry pie, chocolate cream pie." I thought of the revolving pie display at the now defunct luncheonette near my father's store. "Lemon meringue pie, strawberry-rhubarb pie, gra.s.shopper pie, blueberry pie ... lattice tops on the fruit pies-"

"Oh my," he breathed.

I remembered the custard family. "And there's rice, coconut, Grape-Nuts, of course, and bread puddings-"

"With raisins?"

I gave him a sly look that said Raisin is my middle name.

He was not a restaurateur. Anyone with Betty Crocker on her shelf could have pa.s.sed this test. I said both grandly and modestly, "This is supposed to be pleasure, not business. We've put you on the spot."

He said, "You know, hon, I'm a pretty good judge of character. She strikes me as the kind of person we're looking for." He asked if I had a resume.

I told him what was on it: UMa.s.s, B.S. in biology, c.u.m laude. Les Trois Etoiles under Chef Pierre Tardieu; Star Market; Ten Tables.

My father piped up from the kitchen sink, "Ask me. Natty worked for me more summers than I can count. And she was always my best worker."

Mrs. Simone said, "We were going to put an ad in the Globe."

From the kitchen pa.s.s-through, my mother said, "It's very common to sell a house through word-of-mouth without an ad, before it ever goes on the market. Those deals are easiest on everyone concerned."

I asked Mr. Simone, "Do you like soups?"

He looked at me with a soulmate's gaze of joy and astonishment, so I continued, now addressing his wife. "There's so many modern twists on the old standbys: a chicken soup with fresh herbs, an onion soup with shallots and without the baked-on cheese, a black bean, a white gazpacho, a Mexican vegetable, a cabbage, a cream of carrot, a shrimp gumbo, a c.o.c.k-a-leekie-"

"Holy cow!" cried Mr. Simone. "You do all those?"

"Of course. And dozens more."

"It gets better and better," chuckled Mr. Simone.

His wife murmured, "I do like the fact that she worked at Ten Tables."

I said, "I have to be honest. If you call my boss there, he may say less than flattering things, but it's because he made s.e.xual advances and I rebuffed him. It's why I quit."

Attorney Simone liked even that-a sidebar confession. "Thanks for telling me, Natalie."

My mother materialized with my resume, my To-whom-it-may-concern reference letter, and a framed photo of my third and final graduating cla.s.s at Les Trois Etoiles. Mrs. Simone skimmed the papers, and pa.s.sed them to her husband. With a wink, he folded my vitae once, twice, then stuffed it into an inside breast pocket.

"What do you think about a salad bar?" asked Mrs. Simone.

"Love 'em," my mother snapped.

"What do you think, Natalie? People love a salad bar," Hilda said.

I said, "They're a little gimmicky."

My mother said, "You know, Hilda, I think she's right."

I said, "Besides, a salad bar takes up the room of several tables, and tables equal revenue."

"Lots of time for these kinds of discussions," said my father.

"What's our next step?" asked Mr. Simone.

"I'll understand if you want to place the ad," I said.

"Why should they?" asked my mother.

"She's too modest for her own good," said my father.

"It's their restaurant," I said. "Maybe there's someone out there who would be their dream chef."

"More than you?" my mother cried, sweeping her hand above the leftovers, her eyes signaling that someone who can't close a deal should know when to shut her mouth.

Still, Mr. Simone smiled broadly and asked Mrs. Simone, "Hon? Any reason to keep looking?"

She shrugged. "If you're satisfied ..."

There was a toast from their side, and one from ours. My father choked up, so my mother took over, explaining that the old softie knew someone would grab me up, but never this fast in a recession.

Finally, after two Sanka refills, the Simones said they had to run. They'd call me as soon as they found their s.p.a.ce.

"In that case," my mother teased, "you'll be open for business before you have a name on the door."

"We can't wait," said Mr. Simone.

"We can't wait," echoed my father.

"Do you have our number?" asked my mother.

As soon as they were out the door, she whirled around. "You're your own worst enemy. Miss Equal Opportunity! They should spend another six months interviewing every shmendrik who ever flipped a burger?"

"She didn't do any harm," said my father. "Now the Simones know that she's not afraid of compet.i.tion. They feel as if they got the best."

"You're a shmendrik, too," said my mother. "I'm surrounded by them."

We had heard it a dozen times before, the nice-guys-finish-last harangue. She stacked the dessert dishes, making a racket. "When are you going to learn that life is a series of compromises?" she asked me. "What do you think? That if you wait long enough, Locke-Ober's will come calling?"

"Enough, Audrey," said my father. "It all worked out."

She stamped her foot. "I want her to stop dreaming."

I said, "Gladly. Get me out of Cafe Shmendrik. I'll go back to real estate, or fruit. Or how about Vermont?"

"Honey-" said my father.

"Natalie, I didn't mean-" said my mother.

"Don't tell me what I want," I said.

FIFTEEN.

I heard from no one, or so I thought. My parents didn't ask about my friends from the Inn, but talked of young men I should date from among their acquaintances' sons. I didn't see their chatter as a campaign; certainly didn't see it as a cover-up of something that would clear up my rash but aggravate family relations-namely, their failure to report that a male Berry had telephoned three times since I'd been home.

"No, no calls," was their blank, automatic answer-not messages forgotten, but deliberate lies. I had no precedent for this in my house. I had heard of crude and puritanical fathers who hung up on undesirable suitors, who revoked privileges from wild daughters. As close as my own street, Mr. Donabedian was famous for having brushed a non-Armenian admirer of his oldest daughter with his car.

But no closer, not inside my family. My father had always treated my teenage boyfriends hospitably and without suspicion-precisely the way Isadore Cohen had treated him-inviting them in for a man-to-man discourse on their part-time shelving jobs at Garb Drug or Franco's Market, or on the near-wins of Newton South's various teams.

"Nice guy, your dad," they always said as we walked to their cars.

"He is," I'd agree.

But that was before boyfriends had to be taken seriously, before Danny O'Connor's mooning over Pammy metamorphosed into marriage, a state my father had not antic.i.p.ated in anything but a far-off, misty way. Our thin walls made me privy to my parents' self-recrimination: They had underestimated Pammy's feelings for the boy. They had not taken Danny seriously as a suitor. They had not realized that a little gra.s.s-stained pisher would be putting fifteen bucks a week into a diamond-ring fund or that Pammy would enter college secretly engaged, never accepting proffered blind dates, never even attending a mixer at a Jewish fraternity. I heard them say, "Things will be different with the klainer"-the little one-me. They had discovered through one less than ill.u.s.trious son-in-law that this was a dangerous age for a girl, an age when sheygets hangers-on turned into fiances.

So when I received an unsigned postcard of the Inn, interior, dining-room view, saying only, "Wish you were here," and, "Did you get my messages?" I took it to my room and lay down with it, relief tainted only by the simultaneous discovery that, like everyone else, I hated my parents.

"What's with you?" my mother asked, arriving home to find me pacing the living room. I waited for my father to join us from the garage, then read, my voice shaking with anger, " 'Dear Natalie, Did you get my messages?' "

"Who's that from?" asked my father.

I said it wasn't signed, but- "Not signed?" he repeated, as if that were the transgression.

My mother put her hand out.

I held the card to my chest. "What do you have to look at? You know who it's from."

They busied themselves at the front closet, handing each other hangers and arranging their coats.

"Messages," I demanded. "Who took them?"

"I forgot," my father snapped. "Okay? You satisfied? Your old man forgot to tell you that a boy called."

"You forgot multiple times?"

"Once."

I slapped the postcard and read again, " 'Did you get my messages?' plural?"

"You know your father can't take a message! Either he forgets altogether or he gets it wrong."

My father waved his arms. "The other phone was ringing! It was late. You were out."

I said, "I can't believe you'd lie to me."

"Forgetting to tell you about a phone message? That's what this is all about? That's the conspiracy?"

I said, "You knew I was waiting for a call."

He looked at my mother.

She twisted her lips before giving up, "The younger brother."

"Kris?"

"I believe he said Kris."

"When was this?"

My father said, "January? Then, maybe a week after that, he called back."