MOM kept the recipe for her red sauce on a notecard in the top cupboard where she couldn’t reach without a chair. She made the sauce every time we came to visit, and every time she’d point to the cupboard and tell us not to tell anyone. It was a recipe that her own mom had come up with and she didn’t want anyone else to find it. 

After the sauce had been simmering for a few hours, she’d taste it and make a very distinct face. It was a face she’d been making since we were kids. It was a face that said, This is Right. Everything is going to turn out the way it’s supposed to.  

We would try to make the face at each other when we sat in the car while she attended night classes, or sitting on the bedroom floor, watching the clock to make sure her pills wore off when they were supposed to, and then also when she’d close the bedroom door to cry for hours on end and scream if we tried to go in with her.  

Neither of us could get the face right, at least not with each other. When we were older and each found our own things to love as much as Mom loved that sauce, we’d make the face without even trying, without even realizing, until it was pointed out to us by other people. People we’d pretend were going to be around forever even when we knew they wouldn’t.  

While the sauce continued to cook down, we’d sit at the kitchen table and Mom would tell us stories about the ghost at her work.  

They have a big walk-in vault in the basement of her office. The giant round door had been removed, and the space is just used for storage. The ghost is a beautiful woman in a red evening gown. She sits on a stack of paper boxes, waiting.  

Everyone at work sees the ghost but Mom is the only one she talks to. She says the ghost tells her things about us.  “So,” Mom says, “Now, I know all the secrets.”  

She wants to start selling her sauce but needs our help with the Food Code.  

Food Code is the criteria that all food must meet before it can be sold in stores. Food Code makes sure that consumption of a product won’t kill the majority of people who eat it. Food Code means the product comes in uniform, sealed containers and it has a nice-looking label that your son will make on the computer if he loves you and wants you to be able to retire to Myrtle Beach, someday.  

I change the subject. I ask if we can hear more about the ghost.  

The ghost died in her sleep at home. It doesn’t make sense that she is in the vault. Mom says, if the vault door were still there, the ghost would be able to leave.  

She says the men at her job are mean to the ghost and she feels helpless to do anything because it’s not like she can file an official complaint. She wants us to tell her what she should do. Can we at least do that?  

We look down. We cannot. And we feel bad that we cannot.  

She stops making sauce when we come over. She says she needs to focus on inventory. On preparing for success. Empty jars fill the pantry. The shelves in the garage. The laundry room. Our old closets. They’re everywhere, each with a label bearing the sketch of a woman wearing a red dress. Instead, she orders takeout from a homestyle chain restaurant. It’s expensive and there’s not enough for all of us.  

None of us wants to risk taking more than our share, so we don’t take anything. We say we aren’t hungry and Mom won’t eat if we don’t, so no one touches a thing.  

This is the best possible outcome.  

After any number of these meals without eating, we are no longer welcome. We don’t go back again until the police call and ask us to check on her.  

When we get to the house, her car is there, but she is not. Neither are any of the jars. The sauce pot is in the sink. The trash is full of rotted vegetable remains.  

The notecard wasn’t where Mom said it would be. It was taped to the back of the washing machine. It took us forever to find it, and when we did, it was just a list of ingredients. No measurements.  

We write in the amounts that make sense for an acceptable base and make a few cases of sauce. We taste nothing along the way. We print new labels. We keep the design, but the dress is no longer red. It is the color of the paper it is printed on. We come up with a brand name. Vestito Rosso. We make a website. We set up an email account.   

We sell the house and use the money to pay for internet banner ads, product placement on TV, and name drops in celebrity magazine profiles.   

We rent a storage unit and arrange for automatic monthly payments that will go on forever.  

We put the cases in the unit, lock the lock, and throw away our keys.  

Every once in a while we get emails from people still waiting for the sauce to come out. Then there are the people who are sure they’ve had the sauce before and it was the best they ever had. They describe the taste in detail and their description is the same as what my sister and I remember. They want to know when it’s coming back.  

We collaborate on the responses to these people who miss something they never had but it’s harder than it sounds.  

There are some responses I don’t think we’ll ever be able to send.