Little Earthquakes by Jennifer Weiner Page B

welcome,” she said. A plan was forming in her mind. “So what do you think? Should we try?”
    He got up off the futon, reaching for his belt buckle.
    “Whoa, cowboy! Slow down!”
    He dropped his hands, looking puzzled. “I thought we were going to…”
    “Oh, we are. But not tonight. Tonight,” she said, “we’re just going to make out.”
    He grinned, looking honestly happy for the first time since he’d arrived at Poire. “That,” he said, “I can handle.”
    Three hours later, Becky’s lips were swollen, her cheeks and chin rubbed raw from his stubble. “Please,” Andrew groaned, pressing his whole length against her. “Please, Becky, I know it’ll work, please…”
    With a force of will she hadn’t known she’d possessed, Becky wrenched herself away. She knew that if they kept kissing, if he kept touching her, if his fingertips grazed the crotch of her panties one more time, she wouldn’t be able to wait.
    “Friday,” she gasped. “After work.” She’d have to make some excuse to her boyfriend. “Can you pick me up?”
    He could, he said. She kissed him, kissed him, kissed him, planning the menu in her head.
     
    In spite of Becky’s career at Poire—and in spite of what people might have inferred from her figure—good cooking did not run in the Rothstein family. When Becky was a teenager, most of her mother’s meals had come in the form of a powdered shake mix that she’d blend with ice cubes and, if she was feeling really sporting, bananas. Ronald Rothstein had eaten whatever was set in front of him, without ever seeming to taste it or even really looking. “Delicious,” he’d say, whether it had been or not.
    Grandma Malkie was the cook in the family. With her shelf of a bosom and wide, quivering hips, she was also Edith Rothstein’s worst nightmare. “Ess, ess,” she’d croon to little Becky, slipping bits of rugelach and hand-rolled hamantaschen into her mouth when her mother wasn’t looking. Becky loved spending nights at her grandmother’s house, where she could stay up late, sprawled on her grandmother’s peach satin comforter, playing Crazy Eights and eating salted cashews. Grandma Malkie was the one Becky had come to in tears after Ross Farber had chanted “Fatty, fatty two-by-four” at her on the bus back from the Hebrew-school field trip. “Never mind him,” Grandma Malkie had said, handing Becky a clean handkerchief. “You look just the way you’re supposed to. Just the way your mother should, if she’d let herself eat a meal once in a while.”
    “Boys won’t like me,” Becky said, sniffling and wiping her eyes.
    “You’re too young to worry about boys,” Grandma Malkie decreed. “But I’ll tell you a secret. You know what boys like? A woman who’s happy with herself. Who’s not making herself miserable with the Jane Fonda videotapes and complaining all the time about whether this part or that one’s too big. And you know what else they like?” She leaned close, whispering into her granddaughter’s ear. “Good food.”
    Becky had started cooking when she was fourteen, out of self-defense, she’d later joke, but really, it was to honor her grandmother. With the help of Julia Child and a copy of The Joy of Cooking her mother had gotten as a wedding gift and never even opened, she discovered heavy cream and chives and shallots, lamb chops seared on the gas grill she’d bought herself with her bat mitzvah money, quiches and soufflés, napoleons and éclairs, stews and daubes and ragouts, and fresh Florida fish baked in parchment with nothing but lemon juice and olive oil.
    She’d cooked for men before. She had a boyfriend her sophomore year who was heavily into salmon, after he’d read that it could help prevent prostate cancer, but he could only afford the canned stuff, which he’d bring her in bulk from the grocery store. “Prostate patties,” Becky would announce…or, once, feeling ambitious and wanting to get rid of a half can of bread