First, Sunday Becomes a Party, Then a Crowd

Sunday morning. I am sitting in the garden with my newspaper and a cup of double dose caffeine to wake me up.

Husband comes bounding in from a jog, revitalized and resuscitated from breathing the ocean air.

“Did you make a shopping list?” he asks.

“What shopping list?”

“For the party tonight.”

I searched my brain for what party he was talking about. It came to me. Our party.

“That’s right. Forgot the Reillys are coming,” I said.

“Well, you’d better get to it. You don’t have much time.

“It’s only 9 a.m.,” I said.

That’s 10 hours before anyone shows up. I mean. How much time does anyone need to prepare for an informal party for four? Shopping takes an hour, the cooking two hours and tidying up another hour. That leaves you with six hours to do the flowers, set the table, take a bath and primp.

That was when the phone rang.

“Hi, Mom. OK if Jim, I and the baby come to dinner tonight?”

“Sure.”

“Can we bring a friend?”

“Sure.”

“Two friends?”

“Sure.”

“And the dog?”

“Sure.”

I started making out my shopping list when the phone rang again.

“Hi, Rose? It’s Sheila. We’re coming to your party. I gave my Hollywood Bowl tickets away so we’re free. I’ll bring some Il Fornaio bread and make a tart.”

OK. That’s 10 not counting the child and the dog.

“Are you bringing your dog?”

“Good grief, no,” she said. “What an idea.”

I revised my shopping list. I also revised my menu. I decided on a barbecue to divert some of the labor to my husband who loves grilling lamb on the barbecue. With the meat course out of the way, it would leave me with the appetizer, the ratatouille, the salad and second fruit tart, plus the pasta with tomato sauce made with mint, which my husband begged me to duplicate after tasting it at Chianti’s the night before. Chef Antonio Tommasi said the idea for using mint came from reading about such a dish in an ancient Italian cookbook. Loved the idea but it was one more thing the menu didn’t need. A monkey wrench in the works. Another job. A pain in the neck.

“We’ll just have a small amount as second course. It won’t be much trouble,” he said, his eyes squinting with guilt.

“Sure, sure.”

It was already noon and time was running out.

“Rose,” came a voice from the depths of the cupboard.

It was my husband checking out the bar situation.

“Do you know you’re short on wine glasses? There are only four left from the two dozen I bought six months ago? What happened to them?”

“They broke in the dishwasher.”

“You put my good wine glasses in the dishwasher?” His eyes widened into disks.

The phone rang.

It was my second daughter. She was calling from work.

“Mom, Vincent is in town and wants to come over to say hello. Can he come for dinner?”

“Sure,” I said. What’s one more guest after you’ve reached 10.

“He’s with two friends.”

“Plus or minus you?”

“Of course, plus me.”

I made a mental note to increase the shopping list by a third. I put my computer on fast forward. Who started all this, anyway?

Ah, yes, the Reillys. Then there are the Ritchies. . . .

The phone rang.

It was Anne Reilly.

“Guess what?”

“You can’t come?”

“Heck, no. You’ll never guess who’s in town.”

“Who?”

“Vincent.”

“That Vincent?”

“Yes.”

“But he’s in town.”

A beat.

“That’s what I just said,” Anne said. “And I’m bringing him over.”

“Then you must be the two friends he’s coming with.”

“What?

“Never mind. I’ll see you at 7:30.”

I mentally decreased the shopping list by two. That left. . . .

I decided to forget the count and go shopping. Quickly.

The market looked as if it had just announced a monthlong strike. There were lines a block long. It was 3 p.m. before I got home with the groceries.

I threw on an apron, washed my hands in the deliberate way doctors do before they perform major surgery and let my brain go on remote control. What else could I do? I was cooking for an army and I hadn’t even begun to unpack the truckload of groceries.

I don’t remember the next three to four hours. I don’t remember cooking or tidying up. I don’t remember doing the flowers, setting the table, taking a bath or primping.

I was racing down the stairs when the clock struck 7:30 p.m. No one had arrived.

My husband was in the garden preparing the barbecue grill, the picture of a contented man.

Why not? Everything was intact.

His rack of lamb was tucked nice and cozy in its blanket of herby marinade and ready to cook.

The crostini appetizers I decided to use to tie in with the offbeat pasta were on the serving tray.

The pasta sauce with special mint sauce was ready for the finishing touches.

The salted pasta water was bubbling quietly in the soup stock caldron I inherited from my father’s restaurant.

The ratatouille for 20 was simmering slowly over flame control.

The arugula, radicchio, red leaf lettuces and fresh herbs were wrapped in a towel and crisping in the crisper.

The extra, extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar were at the ready for a last-minute splash over the salad.

The tricolor melons were cubed and chilling in the fridge.

The bottles of 1986 Laforet Chardonnay Bourgogne were on ice. Wine glasses--brand-new, and courtesy of my husband, who had dashed out of the house to buy new ones--were washed and buffed dry.

The second fruit tart. . . .

That was when everybody started to pile in. They arrived one after the other--the Reillys, Ritchies, Vincent, the kids, their baby, friends, friends of friends and the dog.

It brought its own rubber bone.