Kitabı oku: «Icing On The Cake», sayfa 2

Chapter 2

“’Night, Miz T.”

“Good night, DeVon. Desharee.” I step aside as two-thirds of the night crew troops out the front door of No-Bagel Emporium. DeVon wears camouflage and Desharee’s in skintight jeans and a cropped tee. Neither smiles but I don’t expect it. Generation Z projects a permanent bad mood. I can no longer afford trained staff so we recruit for on-the-job educating. DeVon and Desharee are two of my high school work-study-program students.

Bakers are a breed unto themselves. There are rivalries and rituals among my crew that I don’t need or try to understand. Even so, I can’t keep back a big sigh when spying the ricotta tub on the counter that acts as our “fine” box. The crew is young so we fine a quarter per cuss word to keep things polite. My grandfather didn’t believe in cussing. Must be the only male to grow to manhood in New Jersey and not cuss. So we’ve kept the tradition alive in his honor. Today there’s a five dollar bill sticking out of the ricotta tub.

“You don’t need to know about the Lincoln, Miz T.”

Shemar has poked his head out from the back. “We were breaking it down for the new guy last night. It’s all good.” He makes that sideways-fist-to-the-chest move.

But I’m unconvinced. The night shift is the heart of a bakery, when the mixing and proofing and shaping and baking are done. The proof of success is in the product.

I lift out one of the loaves of sourdough stacked in racks for the morning rush and inspect it. It’s lightly brown, the crust texture thick and craggy. One stroke of a bread knife and the still-warm yeast aroma of fresh bread rises into my nostrils. Got to be in the top three of my favorite smells. I’m an olfactory person. The right smell can send me straight into ecstasy. Whatever occurred last night, Shemar got the job done.

“Would I lie to you, Miz T?”

I look up over my shoulder with a sheepish grin to see Shemar carrying a rack of pastries. “So what was the problem?”

“The fool didn’t feed Ma before he left last night.”

I blanch. “Is she okay?”

“True that. After I was done, he won’t ever forget again.”

Even so, I rush into the back and over to a large plastic tub that contains nothing less than our secret formula for bread-making. Lifting the lid, I lean in and inhale, reassured by its vague brewery aroma.

Every artisan bakery has its own Ma, or bread starter for the uninitiated. The fermentation processes caused by microbes that occur naturally in the environment give each bakery’s Ma and the bread made from it its unique flavor and proofing properties. The rivalry among bakers over their batches of Ma is legendary.

I learned not to say Ma contains “bacteria” after a class of first graders on a field trip to a bakery stampeded out shouting, “The bread’s got a disease!”

With a gloved hand I lift a glob of Ma to test its resilience. Like any living thing Ma must be fed or it will die. We put in fresh flour and stir it several times a day. Our Ma is five years old, and counting.

“You want a chocolate croissant?”

My empty stomach growls in expectation of a backslide in my resolve to lose a few. I loooove Shemar’s chocolate croissants but, “No, thanks.”

He crosses his arms high on his chest and leans back on a slant, giving me a smirk. “Watching your shape?”

I roll my eyes but smile. “How’s Shorty doing?”

Shemar pats our oldest mixer. “Shaking her rump like she’s in a 50 Cent video. Sounds like the gears are chewing on themselves. You are going to order a new mixer, right?”

“Soon.”

Last night I tried to find a younger less-used mixer for sale online. But unless eBay is giving them away, I’m several thousand dollars short of a deal. Plus we need new tables and chairs, a better line of credit, and a new—Sigh.

“What can I do you for, Miz T?”

“Not a thing. I’m just going out front to mainline coffee until time to open.”

“So then, I’m going roll on out of here. See ya!”

Shemar heads the night crew and is the only formally trained baker and pastry chef I have. With his cornrows and FUBU styling, he looks more like a hip-hop star than a baker. Desharee once compared him to D’Angelo. He is all laid-back sultry male. He’s also a dedicated baker with a work ethic of which Trump would approve. Shemar could earn a higher wage in a larger operation but he tells me he’s happy here.

The fact that the staff relates to Shemar makes my life easier. The fact he can get my deliveries to arrive on time makes him invaluable. This is New Jersey, and it seems every transaction has a back end. Sometimes he comes to work suspiciously mellow but I give him great leeway, and he gives give me bread fit for Trump Towers.

As I straighten up a stack of long slim baguettes as part of my morning inventory of breads, I’m reminded how he saved me from falling flat on my face when I went to take part in a Career Day program at a local high school last spring.

When it was my turn for a pitch I could tell by the rise of voices talking over me that I was going to lose out to the more sexy jobs like video store attendant, where slipping a free DVD to a pretty girl looked like a better opportunity for teen mating rituals.

Fortunately, Shemar interrupted my little speech and said, “Let me hit this, Miz T.”

He plucked a long baguette from our display and stepped forward, a calm and smooth presence. Then suddenly he went into hip-hop mode. “Yo, yo, I’ma break it down for you. The boss lady, Miz T, she got a job situation with real po-ten-tial. You feeling me?” Without raising his voice he brought silence to the room.

He held up the baguette. “Making good bread with a hard crust and tender center is like making love. You gotta have the touch, aw-ite.” As he spoke he ran a hand suggestively down its long length. The way he fondled that bread had me glancing nervously at a nearby knot of teachers.

Girls giggled and made yum yum sounds while the guys punched one another and grinned.

“You a baker, you can rest easy in your crib all day, get your party on in the evening, and still be steady stackin’ ends at night. But you got to have the will to learn the skills.”

Afterward, the faculty adviser told me the school frowns on using sex to advance one’s career opportunities. But we had made an impression.

The next afternoon two young men and a young woman in a work-study program showed up at my bakery door. Over the next few days, a dozen more potential employees slouched through my door. Word on the street was we were conducting some sort of kinky sex class. A few stayed when they found out we really did make bread.

Satisfied that we are ready to open, I return to the front where I spy Mrs. Morshheimer tapping on my window, as usual, In hopes that I’ll open early. I smile but shake my head, and point to my watch. I have ten minutes and I need another cup of coffee.

I reach for a copy of Shape that a customer left behind yesterday. As soon as my eyes fall on the bikini-clad cover model I regret my choice. There was a copy of Newsweek nearby, but it’s too late.

Nothing can long block my mind from replaying the gotcha moment of her and me in the altogether naked nude.

Well, there was that string about my waist from the ripped paper panties. There now, and I thought she’d seen it all.

Until four days ago, the babe who stole my life was little more than a dim Baywatch silhouette. All I’d ever seen of her were quick glimpses because Ted has had enough sense to keep us out of the same room. Now I know up close and personal a few of the dimensions that ruined my marriage. And, boy, does she have my number!

How will I ever erase the image of her from my envious, small-minded mind?

Was I ever that slim, that firm, that everything?

They must be implants. Ted always bragged that I was a good size.

Yeah, right. Ted probably paid for them.

Get a grip! Lots of women get implants, normal, nice, non-husband stealing women.

Even so, I hate her.

It wouldn’t matter if she were ten years older instead of twelve years younger. I’d hate her if she were shorter or taller, fifty pounds overweight, or skinnier than Kate Moss at sixteen. The truth is, when your husband leaves you for another woman, you hate the woman. Period.

If that’s not modern maturity, at least it’s honest.

Sure, I’d glimpsed her a few times, most notably in shopaholic ecstasy in Short Hills Mall in the months right after my divorce, and her marriage. Once I spotted her perusing bags at Anya Hindmarch, formerly my favorite handbag store that I can not now afford. Then there she was at the launch of Burberry Brit Red at Bloomies. Personally, I thought she’d only be interested in fragrance named after Britney or JLO. Another time, while window shopping, I spied her selecting triangle thongs at Dolce & Gabbana. And at Jimmie Choos—well, you get the idea. Oh, and once I saw her buy a tie for Ted at Bernini’s and knew he must have a big event coming up because I started him on that habit of a new Bernini tie for special occasions.

In fact, the more I saw of her living what had been my life, the angrier I became. That kind of emotion can motivate a person out of bed and through many a miserable day. I didn’t realize how corrosive it was to my psyche until I scared myself straight.

It happened one dark night of the soul. I had just had my card refused for insufficient funds at a drive-thru ATM when I spied her, on foot, crossing the all but empty parking lot and…

Let’s just say I realized I could end up with a number on my chest, cramped accommodations in unpleasant company, and one hell of a wardrobe crisis if I didn’t go cold turkey on her.

I never told anyone about that night. As far as I know, she told no one about what I’d almost done. That is probably what kept me out of jail.

Looking back I can’t believe I’m capable of that kind of rage. The kind that makes the blood pump so hard and fast your veins burn and cold sweat drops the size of bumblebees pop out. Right after that I had my first panic attack. The doctor murmured something about rage turned inward and the need to get a life.

So I stopped even thinking about her. I don’t even mention her. Ever. For four years, it’s a plan that was working. Why mess with it?

A flip of my wrist and the magazine lands in the trash bin.

Mrs. Morshheimer is still leaving nose prints on my front window. And I’m supposed to meet one half of my twin daughters for lunch in SoHo.

Just before ten-thirty, I make a quick tally. We’re average for the week. That’s recent weeks. I’d like to stay and hustle the lunch crowd. But I promised Sarah, and she said it’s important.

Chapter 3

The trendy restaurant on Seventh Avenue is full of lunch hour patrons. Sarah and I are stuck in a back corner at a narrow natural wood bar, teetering on stools half the width of my rear. I’m sure I’m instantly recognizable as a member of the Bridge and Tunnel crowd, suburbanites who come into Manhattan for shopping or entertainment.

For instance, Manhattanites wave off baskets of fragrant rolls as if they were being asked to partake of boiled eel eyes. One woman’s unlined face draws tight in the corners as she refuses a basket, but her nostrils quiver from a whiff of the oven browning she denies. The frantic voice in her head may be telling her how virtuous she is, how strong-willed, how disciplined. But it’s costing her.

When our waitress approaches I nod vigorously and she places the wire breadbasket draped in white between my daughter and me.

Even so, I’m already contemplating asking for carryout before our orders arrive. At least it would cut short this “kindly meant but really I don’t have the time to argue with my eldest child” lunch. It turns out this is a health intervention of sorts.

Sarah is ten minutes older than her twin Riley, but sometimes she seems ten years older. The genetic code split right down the middle with my girls. A performance artist who uses her family as her canvas, Riley inherited the Blake family temperament, which I’m told is a quite helpful state of mind for an artist. My mother has it. Sarah and I, no. Riley, oh yeah! For the past four years most of her Sturm und Drang has been directed at her decamped father.

Sarah got all the practical, disciplined, standards coding. Everything, from her thermal reconditioned straight hair to her dove-gray suit with tasteful pin to her kitten heels, screams reserved and rational. She has managed to find a rationale for being friendly, if not friends, with Brandi while Riley’s hatred for Brandi puts my dislike in perspective. Sometimes I think Sarah is trying to make up for her twin’s lack of self-control. But we all have issues, right? This no-nonsense approach works well for her career as a paralegal. But her brand of practicality also stops her from achieving her full potential. After one smack-down with the New York bar, Sarah decided that her law degree didn’t require that she practice law. I think that she just lost her nerve, but a mother doesn’t say that to a grown child. However, at the moment, she’s lecturing me as if I’m her child.

“You need a vacation, Mom.” That’s her punch line.

“Vacation? I’m working the night shift starting tonight because my new baker walked out after a fight with Shemar over the flour-to-water ratio for making ciabatta in August. I don’t have time for a nap. Forget a vacation.”

“That is exactly why you need one. When is the last time you took time off?”

I take a deep breath. Sarah and Riley both live and work in the city so I don’t see my girls that often. I don’t want to argue. No point in mentioning my spa day. The face Sarah made when she saw my watermelon toes was priceless. “I was in Phoenix two years ago.”

“That was for Grandpa Fred’s bypass surgery.”

I reach for a plump roll, perfectly formed and weighty enough to be genuine yeast bread, and place it on my plate. “What about the weekend in Kauai three years ago?”

“Didn’t you go there as part of the New Jersey independent bakers association to broker a supply deal for macadamia nuts?”

“For my Hawaiian bread.” I nod, happy to be reminded of a past culinary victory. “The secret is the bananas. Not the—” Sarah’s frown cuts short my recipe revelation. “Okay. I’ve got it. Not long ago I spent a few days in Savannah. And before you say it was business I want you to know I took a whole day to sightsee.”

“Mom, that was four years ago and you were scoping out relocation sites in case you went into merger with that Savannah frozen-dough plant.” Sarah reaches out to touch my arm. “I’m sorry if it’s still a sore subject.”

“Just because they backed out on the deal without even a discussion? Of course not.”

Out of habit I break the roll open with a thumb through the crust, expecting a moist but lightly risen center. Instead it’s damply dense. Clearly, it baked at too high a temperature and without enough moisture.

Disappointed, I lay it aside. “Okay, so I don’t do down time well. What’s the issue?”

“Let’s see. Health? Mental regeneration? Health? Refreshment of the soul? Health? A social life? Health?”

“Enough with the health. My doctor says I’m fine.”

“Really? When was the last time you saw a doctor?”

I look up as a waiter puts my order before me, hoping to avoid the trap I dug myself by mentioning my doctor. I’ve canceled my yearly checkup three times in a row. With my small-business insurance, I need to be deathly ill to be covered.

“Look, sweetie. I do appreciate your concern but I’m doing fine.”

“What’s this you’re eating, Mom?” Sarah picks up half of my sandwich and lifts a brow. “Is that pork?”

“It’s an Italian roast pork panini with organic basil pesto. Organic, get it?”

She shudders delicately and puts it down. “At your age, pork should be a rare indulgence, not a midweek lunch.”

I hunker down in my chair as she forks the first portion of her field greens salad. “I don’t eat this sort of thing often. This just sounded good and—”

“—I’m tired and wanted to give myself a little pick-me-up,” she finishes for me. “I know that speech, Mom. You’ve used it all my life. For chocolate. For ice cream.” Sarah shakes her head. “You’re in need of far too many pick-me-ups lately.”

I gaze longingly at the lovely pork sandwich I was relishing, get instead a mental picture of myself in paper-towel bikini, and put it down. “Fine. No pork.” I snap my fingers to gain the attention of the waitress nearby. “Bring me a field greens salad. No dressing.” I turn back to Sarah. “Happy now?”

Sarah reaches to squeeze my hand. “You don’t have to tell me. I know it’s got to be hard, with Dad and Brandi announcing that they’re trying to have a baby.”

“Baby! Baby?”

Now it’s Sarah’s turn to look stricken. “I thought you knew. Oh, Mom, Brandi called me last week. She’s always wanted a child…. Oh, damn!”

“No, it’s fine.” I reach for my pork sandwich, the indulgence of which has just been justified by Sarah’s revelation. “What’s the big deal, right?”

Sarah leans forward. “I’m so sorry, Mom. She said Dad would call you before they left for their vacation in New Mexico. I should have broached the news more gently.”

I wonder if news of this sort has a gentle approach.

A sudden too-tight sensation of warmth flames up inside me. Fricking great! A hot-flash reminder that I’m rapidly leaving the baby-maker category she’s snugly in the middle of.

As I reach for my water I notice Sarah chewing her lip. “How upset are you?”

She shrugs. “I’m grown. What’s another family member, more or less?”

“And Riley?”

“Riley’s being Riley.”

Which means Riley is furious. So, on to the next bit of family news. “Dating anyone?”

“Sort of.” Sarah frowns but says nothing as I pick up my sandwich again. “He’s a commodities dealer for the state of Montana.” Her shy smile says volumes that I’m not suppose to comment on. “At the moment he’s in Great Falls for a grain growers meeting.”

“Interesting. And Riley?”

Sarah rolls her eyes.

Unlike her sister, who vets men as if she were trying to buy a condo on the Upper East Side, Riley’s man-radar tracks exclusively for Mr. Wrong. No matter their backgrounds, the men in Riley’s life are inevitably the same: emotionally unavailable, self-centered and generally relationship-phobic. She says nice men are boring. I say relationships shouldn’t have to end with dramatic statements like “Come near me again and I’ll set your hair on fire!” That one was aimed at a Goth high school boyfriend with skin the color of an altar candle and black hair that looked like an untwisted wick.

I tell her there are other types of men out there. I hope she will eventually discover this the way she discovered that a pierced tongue wasn’t worth the cost of repairing the shattered enamel of her teeth.

“What’s wrong with Riley’s new man?”

“He’s an ex-con.”

I inhale for a big whaaaat? But the exhale never comes. In fact, the involuntary inhale seems to have sucked in more than a breath. That bite of pork panini has gone down the tube, my breathing tube to be exact.

A bit of pandemonium ensues while I’m slapped on the back by my daughter and then the nearest male waiter subjects me to the very undignified Heimlich. Thankfully the sandwich dislodges after only one try, and I’m left gasping and red-faced but generally okay.

Wiping my streaming eyes, I take my seat and then manage to rasp out, “I guess you were right about pork being a killer.”

Sarah nods, her smile only at half power, and reaches for her ringing phone.

“Hello?” Her expression goes strange, her face gray, in response to whatever she hears.

Instantly, I know it’s not good. Without a word she jerks the phone from her ear and holds it out to me. “Oh, Mom!”

I take it, certain it’s Riley in some sort of jam, again.

But it’s her, Brandi with a ^™ over the i, hysterical on the other end of a lousy-reception cell phone call.

“It’s Ted—Oh, God! He like—fell!” That’s all I hear before the connection is lost.

Ted’s funeral was yesterday. I went. I owed him that much. And my girls needed me. Riley and Sarah each clutched an arm so tight the circulation all but stopped in my fingers. She was there, of course, the center of all the attention in a broad-brim hat and veil as she sobbed softly into a monogrammed handkerchief during the service. We were relegated to bystander status. This, when you think of it, Is our fate since the divorce. We are part of the past life of a passed life.

We didn’t really exchange words with her. Okay, I admit that I did find myself saying something extremely awkward like “Sorry for your loss, I mean our loss,” as we left the funeral home chapel. I didn’t wait for her reply.

It’s tragic when someone you love dies young. It’s less tragic when that someone is someone you once loved but generally got over before the ink was dry on the divorce papers. It is less than heartbreaking when that someone left you for another woman, a woman he had secretly been seeing for months and married the day after the divorce was final. And yet…

I had just started working for a PR firm in the city when I met Ted. He wanted to open his own advertising firm in northern New Jersey. Did I want to join him as a partner, business and otherwise? Maybe not the most romantic proposal in the world but it sounded stable, ordinary, something I could manage. Falling in love has always seemed overrated to me. All that Hollywood heavy-breathing exploding fireworks stuff is marketing make-believe. I should know. I first made my living in advertising.

At first we were a good team. Ted was a natural-born salesman. I was good with ideas he often took credit for. I was also good with getting things done. Ted could sell but he couldn’t make accounts balance or manage a staff. Yet give him a good pitch and he would knock it out of the park at a fashionable lunch spot, at an even more expensive dinner, or on a prohibitively steep greens-fee golf course. The unglamorous job of running the office and drafting ideas was mine. Five years into it, we were a big success. After fifteen years we were a major force in northern New Jersey advertising. But I wasn’t happy, in the marriage or the business. If I drifted into an affair of the heart, it was with bread. Being wrist-deep in dough makes me happier than anything in my life besides my girls. I can be creative and eat it, too. But Ted took the more conventional approach to adultery.

The wife seldom knows what prompts her husband to stray. The unfaithful male usually just makes life so miserable that it’s the wife who finally files for divorce. Not so for me. I didn’t know she existed until Ted left with the uncharacteristic preemptive strike of filing first. How ugly was that? There are corporate dissolutions with less toxic vapor trails than our divorce.

I’ll never forget Ted telling a judge that it was I who’d really opted out of our marriage by leaving advertising, and causing him to lose business. “Liz lost her nerve, her drive, her ambition. She gave up.”

What, was he nuts? At the time, General Mills was dangling a contract before No-Bagel Emporium for producing frozen artisan dough. That was my doing and he knew it. Ted was always about money and more money. He threatened to sue for his share of “my” bakery if I didn’t give up my interest in “his” company. His attorney claimed my leaving had cost the company. Business had fallen off so precipitously after I left that Ted was still recovering. Add to that, I’d borrowed from Talbot Advertising to pay for my new oven and mixers, while Ted had had to hire both an idea person and an office manager to replace me.

I didn’t have the time or interest to invest further in the kind of ownership fight that might scare off General Mills. I might have been good at advertising but I didn’t love it like he did. I was about to make it big on my own, and I didn’t want him along for the ride. Ted got the firm and I kept my thriving bakery.

Looking back, my choice seems like a lousy bargain. Or am I just bitter because the General Mills deal fell through?

So, how do I feel about Ted’s death?

I never wished Ted dead. Even in my worst dark days when I thought revenge had its uses, I never wished for his demise. Bankruptcy maybe, until I realized that with Sarah and Riley in high school and college ahead, I needed all the financial help I could get. Then there was that wish that all his hair might fall out overnight. Juvenile. But I can honestly say I hadn’t given Ted an ungenerous thought in years—okay, months.

I did notice with a certain satisfaction that he never looked all that healthy after we divorced. Happier, perhaps, but never healthier. He was heading for a fall. I just didn’t know how literally he’d take one.

Ted was afraid of heights. Even a quick rise in an elevator gave him the willies. He would never have gone near a ledge in all the time I knew him. But for her he went on a mountain bike trail ride in New Mexico, made the mistake of peering over the rim into the arroyo below, lost his balance and took a half gainer over the edge.

Some might say Ted had it coming. I think, wow, you just never know.