We Were Beautiful

by Heather Hepler

  “Hey,” a man from the doorway calls. I glance around, but no one pays him any attention. He sees me looking and nods. “You,” he says. “You need more butter?” I shrug and he rolls his eyes. “What about anchovy cream cheese?” A tiny woman comes out of the office with a phone wedged between her shoulder and her ear.

  “Carlos,” she says, looking at the man. “Forty butter and no cream cheese.” He nods and heads back outside. Then she turns to me. She puts the phone down on the counter and smiles. “You’re Mia,” she says, taking my hand. I nod. “Call me Nonna.” She gives me an apron and shows me where I can store my camera. I’m still not planning to use it, but I wasn’t about to leave it in the apartment with my grandmother. That’s one of the downsides of a digital camera. All you have to do is turn it on to see any photos I’ve taken.

  Then Nonna tells me I have to pull my hair back.

  “Health code,” she says when I hesitate. I haven’t worn my hair back in almost a year, but before I can explain she hands me a rubber band from one of the desk drawers, and checks an invoice while I try to pull as much of my hair into a ponytail as possible. Nonna looks at me for about two seconds, and then shows me where I can wash my hands.

  “Your first job every morning is to fill the coffee makers.” She leads me to the front where no fewer than twelve coffee makers are lined up along the back wall like an army of caffeinated soldiers.

  “Which ones are decaf?” I ask, looking for green rims on some of the pots.

  Nonna starts laughing. “Decaf,” she says, laughing even harder. “Aren’t you precious?” She wipes at her eyes with the hem of her apron, then shows me where I can find the filters and how to work the grinder. Nonna moves along to show me the baking list that’s pinned on the doorframe leading into the kitchen. I start scanning it before she pulls it down and leads me back inside the kitchen. “We’ll start with rugelach,” she says, clapping her hands together.

  She instructs me to haul out bins of sugar and flour and a huge tub of cinnamon, then puts me to work zesting oranges while she drops huge slabs of cream cheese into the stand mixer. Nonna talks the whole time she’s working, telling me how happy she is that I came to help this summer while her daughter-in-law, who usually works as the baker’s helper, is out with a new baby.

  “Tiny little thing. Not much bigger than a loaf of bread.” I assume she means the baby and not the daughter-in-law. In the time it takes us to slide the last of the pastries into the ovens and start on the turnovers, I’ve learned the whole Brunelli family tree. It seems that other than one of the waitresses (and now me), everyone at Brunelli’s is related.

  “Nine children,” Nonna says. She laughs when she sees my eyes go huge. “Twenty-seven grandchildren. Wait, no, twenty-eight. I almost forgot little Gracie.”

  I can’t even imagine having that big of a family. The truth is, I can barely remember what it’s like to have any family at all—big, little, or otherwise. Thankfully Nonna doesn’t ask about my family. Maybe knowing my grandmother is enough information for anyone.

  I concentrate on using a fork to press the edges of the turnovers together so the apple filling won’t leak out. I steal a look at the clock hanging over the sink. Almost six. Nonna didn’t say when I would be finished. I had hoped to be out before the diner opened, but looking at the list she gave me, it’s obvious that’s not going to happen. Nonna sees the look on my face.

  She puts a floury hand on my arm and smiles. “Don’t worry, Mia-honey. It just takes a little while to get the hang of it.” She takes the fork from me and crimps the edges of half a dozen turnovers faster than I could have done one. “And don’t worry about that,” she says, nodding toward the list. “I have someone coming in to help you.”

  Nonna instructs me to make sure the coffee machines are all on. I walk to the front, keeping my chin tucked so that my face stays a little hidden. Joey, the guy who works the grill and who Nonna told me is still unmarried (she crossed herself as she said it), flips the sign on the door to Open and turns the catch, unlocking it. He barely steps back from the door before people start streaming in. I start back toward the kitchen, but a man in a suit starts yelling at me to give him his usual. Grace, who Nonna warned me to be careful of (without explanation), elbows me aside and begins pulling pastries from the racks under the counter. She starts firing words at me that I assume are Italian. I stand there, not sure what to do.

  Grace turns on me, her face red. “Get. The. Coffee.”

  This I understand. I spend the next hour pouring coffee into cups and refilling the machines as they empty.

  I quickly learn the difference between a cannoli and a cream horn, which look similar except the horns narrow at one end and are soft. I also learn the names of the other three people working the front. Mary is short and round and seems afraid of everyone and everything. Gina smiles a lot and flirts with everyone who comes in. I don’t really get a sense of Rosie, who stays at the far end of the counter ringing up everyone’s order.

  “Hey, new girl! How’ bout a cookie?” someone shouts.

  I keep spooning coffee into a filter until Gina nudges me. “He means you, honey.”

  I look over at a man wearing a three-piece suit and a wide smile. I’m sure that one look at my face will change his mind about asking me to help him, but other than a slight slip in his smile, which he quickly recovers, he is completely unfazed.

  “How ’bout that cookie?”

  I use one of the papers (which I’ve been told are simply called cookie papers) to reach into the big jar of gingerbread cookies on the counter. I start to pull out a gingerbread man in a pair of green shorts with matching suspenders when I feel a hand on my arm.

  “He’ll want a girl,” Gina says.

  The man grins at me. “The girls are a bigger cookie for the same price.” I grab a gingerbread girl with a blue polka-dotted dress and slide it into a bag. I hand it across the counter to the man.

  “Grazie,” he says before shuffling down the counter to talk with Mary while she takes his money.

  Customers continue to trickle in, but the urgency with which they order seems to diminish. A dozen or so people sit at the tables on the sidewalk in front of the diner, reading newspapers, sipping coffee, and munching on pastries. Most of them are older people dressed far too warmly for the sun, which is already hot enough to make the streets steam. But one head stands out from the gray hair and wool caps of the crowd. I stare at the girl as she folds down the front of her paper and takes a bite of a cinnamon roll. She has her hair pulled back in a ponytail, which isn’t unusual, but the color makes her stand out. Her hair is blue. Startlingly blue. Even bluer when the sun hits it. Not sky blue or navy blue, but blue blue–blueberry blue.

  “Cute boy?” Gina asks, looking out at the tables in the front. I start to shake my head, but Gina’s eyes go big. She’s already around the counter and to the front door before I have a chance to say anything. She yanks the door open and stomps over to the girl with the blue hair. While I can’t hear what she’s saying, I can see how she’s saying it. The blue-haired girl rolls her eyes, making Gina’s face go nearly purple. Now I can make out some of the words. Late and disrespectful filter in toward us. Everyone at the tables has stopped to watch the show.

  “Mom,” the girl says, her voice carrying through the open door. “Chillax.” Gina looks like her head is about to pop off.

  Grace snorts and Mary just looks worried, which I’ve gathered is her normal state. Nonna comes out of the back at that moment, wiping her hands on her apron. When she sees what’s happening out front, she hustles to the door even faster than Gina did. Once outside, Nonna begins yelling at Gina, her arms waving. Soon both women’s arms are waving so much they look like the loons on our lake just before they jump into the air and fly away. The girl with the blue hair leans back and takes a drink of her coffee, clearly enjoying the show. Gina finally comes back in, quiet but still simmering. Nonna bends and says something to the girl, who folds her paper und
er her arm, picks up her cup and plate, and follows Nonna inside.

  The distraction gives me a chance to duck back into the kitchen. It’s one thing to meet dozens of strangers across a glass pastry case, but it’s another to see someone my own age up close. When I enter, there’s a scale, a stack of parchment squares, and a huge mound of cookie dough on one of the marble counters in the kitchen. Within moments Nonna joins me, followed by the blue-haired girl. I duck my head, hoping the girl won’t look my way.

  “Measure out one-pound portions,” Nonna says, handing me a pair of plastic gloves. “Logs, wrap, freezer.”

  I stare at the mountain of dough and start carving hunks off it with a scraper. I’m surrounded by one-pound islands of cookie dough when someone joins me at the counter. A glint of blue makes me close my eyes.

  “Hey,” the girl says.

  “Hey,” I mumble. I had mostly forgotten what I looked like while it was slamming out front, but in the too-hot kitchen, in close proximity to a girl my age, I am very aware of how my face must look to her. I wish she had chosen to stand on the left side of me, the normal side. But if she notices me at all, she doesn’t let on. She just starts rolling the mounds of dough into fat snakes and then wrapping them in squares of parchment. By the time we finish, Nonna delivers another mountain of dough to us.

  “I hate peanut butter,” the girl says, nodding at the new mound. I glance over at her, but she keeps rolling out the cookie dough snakes. “I mean, not hate like I hate war or people who don’t recycle or my mother. It’s more like a strong aversion.” I glance at her again. She’s smiling. “Okay, I don’t hate my mother.” She sighs. “That makes me sound like a psychopath. My mom’s just sometimes so—” She doesn’t finish, but I nod anyway.

  The girl looks at me. “Yours too?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, thinking of the last year. The girl stops rolling and turns toward me.

  “I’m Fig,” she says, holding out her gloved hand. I lift my face and look at her full on for the first time, expecting her to drop her hand or at least flinch, but she doesn’t. She just beams at me. “In Western culture, it’s common practice to shake hands when you meet someone,” Fig says, her hand still held out between us. I take her hand. “And now you tell me your name,” she prompts.

  “Mia,” I say.

  “Good to meet you, Mia,” she says, giving my hand a firm shake. She turns back to the dough and begins grumbling about the stench of peanuts. “So . . .” Fig looks at me and tilts her head. “Who’s punishing you?”

  I stiffen. “What do you mean?” I don’t bother to keep the defensiveness out of my voice, and brace myself for the punch line.

  “Well, obviously, you must have made someone mad. Otherwise, why would you be sentenced to a summer working here?” She waves her hand around the kitchen.

  I don’t know how to answer, but I manage some kind of noncommittal shrug.

  “Fine,” she says. “Keep your secrets. I won’t tell you mine either.”

  I frown down at my hands. Good job, Mia. You just alienated the one person your age who has actually been human to you in the last year. But then Fig starts laughing.

  “Okay. I don’t have any secrets.” She drops her voice to a whisper. “Not like I haven’t tried, but with my family, it’s completely impossible.” She smiles at me again. “They’re everywhere.” She makes her voice all wobbly and spooky. I catch myself grinning and then even laughing, something I haven’t done in a long time.

  Nonna comes back with another batch of dough. This time it’s brown and smells like Christmas. “I knew you two would be friends,” she says. Fig rolls her eyes, but her face is pure happy. “Fiona,” Nonna says over her shoulder. “We need more cannoli cream.”

  “Fiona?” I ask once Nonna is out of earshot. “I thought you said your name was Fig.”

  “Nonna’s the only one who calls me that. Everyone else calls me Fig.” She looks at me and sighs. “Fiona Imogene Greico.” She traces her initials in the flour on the counter. FIG. “It’s better than what they used to call me.” She drops her voice to a whisper. “Fatty.” Fig lifts one eyebrow as if challenging me to disagree. Then she slaps her hand against her forehead, leaving a floury mark right over her left eye. “Man, that was my one secret.” She sighs. “Okay, now I got nothing.”

  We spend the rest of the morning mixing icings and fillings and cutting up fruit. Fig grumbles whenever her mother comes into the kitchen, but she’s not very convincing, because as soon as her mother is gone, she’s laughing again. The door from the front into the kitchen keeps spitting out relatives every few minutes. All the names make my head spin.

  “I don’t know how I’m ever going to remember everyone’s name,” I say.

  “Don’t worry,” Fig says after I meet another cousin. “I can’t even keep them all straight.”

  Finally, Nonna tells us we’re finished and hands us paper lunch bags, instructing us to grab drinks from the cooler out front.

  “Come on,” Fig says. She leads me past her mother and her aunts, who press cookies into our hands, and around the counter to the front of the deli, where the tables are starting to fill up with people coming in for lunch. We stop at the cooler and Fig grabs a couple of bottles of ginger ale for us.

  “Let’s sit outside,” she says. “Away from the prying eyes.” We both look over at her various family members manning the counter, wiping down tables and yelling orders to other family members running the grill. Several of them are watching us. “See?” she says. “And they wonder why I’m always taking off.”

  Fig leads me out onto the sidewalk and toward the table she was sitting at when I first saw her. A woman trips over a crack in the sidewalk because she’s more intent on staring at me than looking where she’s going. My cheeks burn. Fig looks at me for a moment.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “I get that all the time.” She yanks her hair out of her ponytail and it spills down over her shoulders in a blue waterfall. “You’ll just have to get used to it if you hang out with me.”

  I simply look at her. She cannot be serious. I’m 99 percent sure that she was not the one who almost caused the woman to turn her ankle.

  Fig takes a bite of her pickle. “You should have seen it when I had my hair zebra striped. It was awesome.”

  I shake my head at her, and feel my cheeks going back to normal. Fig keeps looking at me while I unwrap my sandwich. I take a bite of it, chew, and swallow.

  “How long have you been working here?” I ask.

  “A couple of months.” I am surprised, but she doesn’t elaborate. I expected her to say forever. We sit there, munching on our sandwiches and sneaking bits of each other’s cookies. Then Fig starts telling me stories. She calls them “The File of Crazy Tales from the Brunelli Family.” Somewhere in the middle of all her talking, I realize I’m with someone who’s not looking at me like I’m a monster, or who isn’t looking at me because I’m a reminder. Then my phone buzzes where it’s resting on the table.

  I pick up my phone and look at the screen. Mom. Three letters are all it takes to yank me back and remind me that I’m not supposed to smile or laugh. I’m not supposed to forget. Truth is, I’m not really even supposed to be alive.

  Chapter Four

  I shouldn’t have answered the phone. Fig tries to give me privacy, but that’s pretty hard to do when you’re only a table-length apart. Finally she stands, collects our empty lunch bags and bottles, and makes a gesture toward the trash can near the entrance to Brunelli’s. I nod, watching her bright blue hair catch the sunlight as she walks away.

  “Hi, Mom,” I say.

  “How are you?” she asks, but she doesn’t really want to know, because she immediately launches into a long explanation about how the weather is in Napa and how they put a hold on all fruitcake production until the citron issue is resolved. I interject the appropriate um-hums and reallys.

  “I’ve been trying to reach your father,” she says, finally getting to the reason
she called. “You don’t know where he is. Do you?”

  “Somewhere on the Gulf Coast,” I say. She’s silent for a long moment, and I think maybe she was going to ask where I am or how I like New York, but she doesn’t.

  I hear voices in the background and then my mother’s voice speaking to them. “Listen,” she says to me. “It’s going to be a while before I can talk to you again.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  She’s silent for several moments. “I need to go,” she says at last. I stare at the tabletop, wishing she would say something more. Something to explain or defend or anything. But all she does is repeat that she won’t be able to talk to me for a while. She doesn’t give me a chance to ask any questions. She eventually tells me she loves me, which might have been nice, except she doesn’t actually say “I love you,” but “Love ya.” The fact that she can’t even say those three words really says it all. My mother used to tell us she loved us about seventeen times a day, with words and notes in our lunches, a triple squeeze of our hands, and heart-shaped pancakes on cold winter mornings. Now, she can’t even manage it once in more than ten months.

  “I’m going to go,” she says.

  “Okay,” I say. “Bye.” But she’s already gone.

  I can feel the questions radiating from Fig when I go inside, but something in my eyes makes her keep her distance. Nonna’s hug of thanks threatens to unglue me as I confirm that no, they didn’t scare me off and yes, I’ll be back in the morning.

  The five-minute walk back to Veronica’s feels like five years. I pull out the keys Veronica left for me and let myself in. If she asks me any questions, my excuse is ready. I’m very tired. I think I’m going to go lie down.

  “Hello?” I say softly, then again, a little louder. My voice echoes back at me. There’s no one home. I climb into my bed, and notice I smell of sugar and vanilla and pickles. I stare at the ceiling. I was so busy all morning that I barely had time to think about anything other than what was going on right then. But now, alone, everything comes pouring back in. I force my thoughts away from Maine and my father’s goodbye. I tell myself not to think of my mother. Because I doubt very much she’s thinking of me.