Sally McIvers

Sally McIvers normally puts little effort into dinner. Ryan fails to appreciate it when she does. But tonight, she decides, dinner will be something special.

She takes great pride in her cooking. Sally used to be a sous chef at one of Wichita’s finest steak houses. Then five years ago, Ryan came home with an announcement. No discussion, just an announcement. His company promoted him, and he and she were moving to New York.

Sally hung up her apron, but when the couple bought their home in Bronxville, she insisted on a high-end kitchen with a gas cooktop and a gas oven. She owns the best cutlery and cookware. She shops for the finest, freshest meats and vegetables. She occasionally teaches cooking classes, helping her students master such demanding dishes as baked Alaska and crème brȗlėe. But despite her painstaking attention to detail, her husband sees no difference between her filet mignon and a can of Dinty Moore beef stew.

Ryan has various explanations for why he’s so indiscriminating. His taste buds don’t work properly. His mother never trained his palate. He’s too tired to appreciate Sally’s skills after a nonstop day of stock trading. He’s just a steak-and-potatoes guy who was raised on a Kansas cattle ranch.

So, Sally has fallen into the habit of feeding him such everyday fare as hamburgers, hot dogs, grilled cheese sandwiches, and canned beans or potato chips. She forgets why she married such a cretin in the first place. Looks and money go only so far in countering a disregard for life’s sublime pleasures, she thinks. Her time in the kitchen, which should give her joy, has become nothing but drudgery.

The McIvers’ garage connects to the kitchen. Each night, Ryan drives home from the commuter station, parks his Jaguar, closes the garage door with his remote, and walks in on Sally as she is throwing dinner together. He gives her a quick “Hi, babe,” pours some scotch from the liquor cabinet, drifts off to the living room, and plops himself in front of the TV to watch CNBC. When Sally complains about his evening routine, Ryan tells her the work of a stock trader is never done.

She used to try, with occasional success, to coax him to the dining room table so they could share a meal together. Now, though, she brings him a plate on a TV tray and goes off to their bedroom to read. Sometimes he wanders in to talk, most times he doesn’t. They don’t have much to say to each other anymore.

Today, to get in the spirit of things, Sally pulls a pair of black-and white, houndstooth-patterned pants over a well-sculpted pair of legs; dons her white, double-breasted jacket; puts on an apron; and places a toque over her long, beautifully coiffed blond hair. She hasn’t worn her full chef’s uniform since leaving Wichita, and it makes her feel upbeat and strong. A spring breeze, carrying the smell of a neighbor’s lilacs, brings her more happiness than she has had in months. 

Sally reaches into her utensil drawer for her Wüsthof, a razor-sharp, perfectly balanced chef’s knife that slices tomatoes, chops onions, cuts up carrots, and bones chickens. If she had to take only one thing with her to a desert island, it would be her Wüsthof. The Germans make a great knife, she tells herself.

She works first on the duchess potatoes, chopping them quickly and then putting them into a bowl to be mashed. She combines the mashed potatoes with egg yolk, butter, salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and then forces the mixture through a piping bag to create intricate, flower-shaped designs. When she’s ready, she will bake her potato creations at 475 degrees Fahrenheit until they turn golden brown.

Next, she works on slicing and cutting carrots, turnips, and cauliflower for a bouquetiėre, an arrangement of vegetables placed around a roast to resemble flowers. As the knife takes on each vegetable, Sally falls into a kind of trance, imagining how cutting a long carrot feels like chopping up a finger, how carving a turnip is like working on a hardened body mass, how her knife acts like a brain surgeon’s scalpel on cauliflower. With each movement of the blade, her smile grows just a bit wider.

Then she works on the bėarnaise sauce, one of the foundations of French cuisine. She lays the ingredients out before her on the white quartz top of her kitchen island—clarified butter, egg yolks, white wine vinegar, shallots, chervil, peppercorns, and tarragon. Sally knows just the right combination of heat and whisking to make an excellent, mouth-watering bėarnaise.

Finally, she moves on to the meat, a large, center-cut filet of tenderloin that turns into heaven itself in the hands of an excellent chef. Again, Sally lays out the ingredients before her—a pound of center-cut beef tenderloin, unsalted butter, olive oil, salt, pepper, a medium shallot, red wine, demi-glace, and tarragon. She gets ready to make the sauce that transforms the meat into chateaubriand, one of the world’s great delicacies. But then, the cut of meat catches her eye, and her hand is drawn to it.

Her knife starts playing with the filet, making small cuts at first, then slashing it, then, finally, stabbing it time and time again.

“Damn you, Ryan!” she yells out as she thrusts the knife into the beef. “Damn you for making me leave what I loved! Damn you for forcing me to this god-forsaken city! Damn you for not appreciating me! Damn you, night after night, for eating hamburgers when you could be eating some of the world’s most spectacular meals! Damn you and your god-damned CNBC!”

Sally falls to her knees, then collapses on the floor into a sobbing mass. Her anger, despair, and sorrow play themselves out. She collects herself, rises, shakes off her anger and self pity, and systematically proceeds to finish preparing her meal. As it cooks, she downs nearly a whole bottle of pinot noir.

She hears the garage door open, hears Ryan turn off the engine and close the door of his Jaguar. She hears the garage door start to close as Ryan hits the remote. Then, Ryan opens the door from the garage and walks in.

“Hi, babe,” he says. Sally, sitting at the kitchen table, lifts her glass of pinot in a flippant salute.

“Hi, yourself,” she says with disgust in her voice.

“Love your duds,” Ryan says. There’s something sexy about a woman in chef’s clothes, he thinks to himself, but he doesn’t make a move on Sally. It’s been too long since anything intimate has occurred between them.

As he walks to the liquor cabinet, reaching for his scotch, he notices the good smells Sally’s cooking is producing.

“Man, those aren’t hamburgers I’m smelling,” he says. “What’s cooking?”

Chateaubriand, Sally tells him.

“That’ll serve two, right?” Ryan says.

Yeah, two. Or, you know, it can last a couple of nights if only one is eating it, she says.

“Well, when it’s ready, why don’t you cut me off some and bring it out? I really need to watch CNBC tonight. Apple’s stock is tanking, and I want to see what people are saying about it.”

Sally has her chef’s knife on the table. She grabs it, rises up, and heads toward Ryan, holding the knife straight up, not like a kitchen utensil but a weapon.

Before Ryan knows what’s happening, Sally is driving the knife into his back with quick, efficient strokes, yelling the whole time, making not words but angry noises. Ryan’s blood spatters onto her white apron. He turns to face her. His knees buckle, and he falls kneeling to the ground. Sally continues stabbing into his shoulders and torso. He falls face forward onto the floor.

“Why?” he wheezes. “Why?”

Because you’re a miserable prick, she says. You’re a jerk, and I hate you.

With that, he loses consciousness, and she stands watching him until he breathes his last breath.

Sally isn’t sure what she’ll do with Ryan’s body. She isn’t sure how she’ll explain his disappearance. But still she smiles, knowing she’ll have the house to herself for a couple of days, and she’ll feast like a queen on chateaubriand, one of her signature dishes.