Page 50
Author: Kristan Higgins
I lurch to my feet and slog back to the Boatworks. My nose is running, my feet are like ice, and I can only imagine how I look, my hair hanging in sodden strands, my mascara puddled, no doubt, underneath my eyes. In other words, I probably look as good as I feel.
I make it up to my apartment, and wouldn’t you know? Fat Mikey finally succeeds in tripping me, and I fall over the giant cat, smacking my knee on the hard corner of the table. “Thanks, Mikey,” I say, another dangerous laugh rising in my chest like a storm surge. “The perfect end to a perfect night. ”
A dime winks at me from the carpet under the table.
Without another thought, I pick it up and whip it across the room.
“DID YOU EVER FIND OUT SOMETHING about your husbands after they died? Something that surprised you?”
My aunts regard me with surprise. Mom looks up from her crossword puzzle, then looks back down to fill in another clue. It’s 10:00 a. m. , and I haven’t slept in, oh, twenty-eight hours. I have eleven and a half minutes left on this last batch of bread, and I intend to put the time to good use. “Well?” I demand.
“What bee’s in your bonnet?” Iris asks, turning her attention back to the pastry dough she’s rolling out.
“I found out a couple of things about Jimmy,” I say. My voice sounds overly loud to me, and the Black Widows exchange a glance, confirming the fact that I’m acting insane.
“What things?” Mom asks.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, shaking my head. “Did you?”
“Well, about a month after Larry died, I found out that he had a secret bank account,” Rose says slowly. “Fourteen thousand dollars in it. His name only. ” She looks sheepishly at her sisters, whose mouths are hanging open. “I never found out what he was planning to do with it. Leave me? Pay off some illegitimate child? Bribe a judge? I never found out. ”
“Been watching The Sopranos?” Mom asks dryly.
“What did you do with the money?” Iris asks.
“I invested in the stock market,” Rose cheeps. “Stevie never has to work in his life if he doesn’t want to. ”
“That was very prescient of you, Rose,” my mother says, hiding a grin. “Five down. Nine letters, having foresight. ”
“What about you, Iris?” I ask.
She cocks her head and looks thoughtfully over at the Hobart mixer. “Well, sure. Everyone has secrets, right?” She turns her attention back to the sweet pastry dough, her hands deft and quick. “Pete had that little room in the cellar, you know? His tool room?” Mom and Rose nod, and I seem to recall it, too, a tidy little room with an oiled worktable and tools hanging on a pegboard. “So I’m going through it one day after he died, and I come across this locked box. ”
“What was in it?” Rose asks.
“I’m getting to that,” Iris growls, glaring at her sister. “So I say to myself, ‘Why would Pete lock something away?’ Maybe it’s flammable, I don’t know. Some chemicals he used to strip furniture. Figure I better open it. ” The baking sheet is now filled with empty pastries, and Rose slides over the container of chocolate filling. Iris takes out the scoop, and with the skill acquired from decades of repetition, fills each pastry with chocolate as she continues her story. “Finally I find the key, taped to the under-side of a drawer. Lucy, honey, shove these on the rack for me, and Rose, would you pass me the raspberry?”
Rose and I obey promptly, and Iris starts on another batch of pastries. “So I open the box. Guess what was in there?”
“A human skull,” Mom suggests, making me wonder what secrets she herself might have.
“Not a skull. It was about a hundred copies of Penthouse. ” Iris jams her fists into her ample hips and snorts. “He’d been getting the porno. ”
“The porno!” Rose and Mom cluck in unison.
“That’s right. Had a separate post office box in Kingstown, if you can believe it, so I wouldn’t know about his dirty magazines. ”
“How’d that make you feel?” I ask, rubbing my gritty eyes.
“Well, crappy, of course! It wasn’t just the naked pictures. It was the secrecy. He spent hours down in the basement when I thought he was fixing things, and instead he was doing God knows what. ” She pauses. “Though he always was pretty, um…amorous when he came up. ”
“I bet,” Mom mutters, filling in another clue.
“You always talk about them like they were perfect,” I say, swallowing. The pebble’s bigger than ever.
“Well, what are we supposed to do? Spit on their graves?” Iris snorts, then reaches out and pats my shoulder. “So you found something out about Jimmy. So what. Doesn’t mean he didn’t love you. ”
“Of course not,” Rose murmurs, giving me a hug.
“What about you, Mom?” I ask my mother. “Did you ever find out something about Daddy?”
My mom doesn’t even look up from her puzzle. “No, honey. Your father was damn near perfect. ”
I wonder if it’s true. Then again, I only had eight years with him, and if Mom’s hiding something, it’s kind of wonderful of her not to tell me, to let me keep that little girl’s adoration.
“What did you find out, Lucy?” Rose asks.
“It wasn’t anything that big,” I lie.
And maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Jimmy steamrolled Ethan a little, but it wasn’t like Ethan and I were an item. We were pals, no more. Him saying he’s been in love with me since we met…I wonder. He never acted that way. Not before I met Jimmy, not after. In fact, he couldn’t have been more…enthusiastic about us getting married. And then after Jimmy died…no. I don’t want to have to look back at all the years I’ve known Ethan and reinterpret everything. He never acted like a man in love…well, maybe a little, recently. But he never said a word. He’d always been simply a friend. My best friend. He loved me, sure. In love for years? No.
My eleven and a half minutes are up, so I take the bread rack out—sourdough boules on the bottom, Italian on the top—and slide them off the pans to cool. On a whim, I stick a boule in a paper bag and tuck it under my arm, its warmth as comforting as a puppy.
“I’ll be back in about half an hour,” I announce.
“Bye,” the Black Widows chorus. As I head out the back door, I glance at them—Iris, strong and broad, Rose, smaller and plump, my mother, elegant and cool. Rose says something I can’t quite hear, and the other two laugh.
They’re happy, the Black Widows. Life threw them sucker punches, and they got over it. Their hearts were shredded on the cheese grater of life, just like mine was, and look at them now. Laughing, happy, watching Showtime and bickering with each other. I can do that, too. Be happy, I mean.
The smell of coffee is rich and dark in Starbucks. A few mothers sit around one table, babies on their laps, strollers against one wall. From over the speakers come the mournful voices of Sting and Sheryl Crow in a bittersweet duet.
Perry Wheatley is behind the counter, wiping down the cappuccino machine. I used to babysit her when I was in high school. Her parents always left brownies for me, as well as a video. They lived in a sweet house on the water, and I’d pretend it was mine, that I was a famous pastry chef, that I’d just been featured on the cover of Bon Appetit…
“Hi, Lucy! What can I get you?” Perry asks, her face lighting up at the sight of me.
“Hi, sweetie,” I say, smiling. “How are you?”
“I’m great!” she answers, and she does indeed look great. A cute kid turned beautiful, long hair, slender waist, the dewy skin of the blessed. I can remember us playing Adventure on Care Bear Island, a game I’d made up which involved piggyback rides and some happy screaming. Time flies.
“Is Doral-Anne here?” I ask.
Her smile drops, and she gives me a mock grimace. “Um, sure. Hang on. ” She goes into the storeroom, says something and scuttles back. “She’ll be right out, Lucy. ”
“Tha
nks, Pretty Perry,” I say. She smiles sweetly, making my heart tug.
Then Doral-Anne emerges. At the sight of me, her Isn’t Starbucks just the best thing to happen to Planet Earth expression drops.
“How’s Ethan feeling?” she asks, and I have to say, that’s not what I expected her to say. Fuck you, maybe, or Get out. Not something polite.
“He’s doing okay, Doral-Anne,” I say. “Do you have a second?”
She scowls at Perry, who’s obviously listening. “Why?”
“I’d like to talk to you. ”
With a grunt of disgust and a matching eye roll, she gestures toward the storeroom. “Fine. Come on out back. ”
Visions of fifth grade dance in my head, Doral-Anne tripping me at least once each recess, causing my knees to be constantly covered in scabs. Nonetheless, I follow her through the back, past the bags of coffee and mountains of cups, until we emerge into the parking lot.
“So what do you want?” she asks, her expression once again the familiar sneer.
“I just wanted to say thanks for looking after Nicky Mirabelli when Ethan was hit,” I say. “That was great of you. ”
Doral-Anne’s head jerks back in surprise.
“You were a lot more help that I was,” I acknowledge. “I just stood there like a fern. Until I fainted, that is. ”
“And started screaming,” she adds, apparently unable to resist the dig.
My face flushes. “Yup. ”
She stares at me a minute longer. “Did you want something else?”
I take a deep breath and look at her steadily. “I also wanted to say I was sorry about slapping you. That wasn’t real mature of me. I apologize. ”
She looks down. “Yeah, well, you had reason. ” She glances at me from beneath her too-long bangs. “I guess it freaked you out hearing about Jimmy and me being an item, huh?”
“It did,” I admit.
She sucks in her left cheek and makes a slurping noise. “Well. Thanks for stopping by. I was wondering how Ethan was. Glad he’s okay. ”
I remember the bag under my arm. “Here. A peace offering. ” I hand her the bread.
“It’s still warm,” she says, looking down at it with a little smile. The healing power of bread.
A thought occurs to me, so freakish and wrong that I can’t believe I came up with it. Even beyond that, I can’t believe what I say next. “Doral-Anne, Bunny’s is looking for a baker to take over the bread for me. Ethan mentioned that this Starbucks might close. Whether it does or not, Bunny’s is expanding, doing the whole coffee and pastry thing. But we’re also selling bread to NatureWorks. The hours are early, but you’d have more time with your kids after school. ”
Her mouth falls open. With one hand, she pushes her bangs off her face. “Lang, are you offering me a job?”
“I guess I am. If you’re interested, give me a call. Or drop by Bunny’s. The sooner you could start, the better. ”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
ON FRIDAY EVENING, I’m staring into my cupboard, realizing I have to make dinner, when my phone rings.
“Sweetheart, it’s Marie,” says my mother-in-law.
“Hi!” I say. “How are you?”
“Well, honey, we’re having a little party here tonight. At the restaurant, and of course we want you here. ”
I open my mouth to respond, but she keeps talking.
“It’s our anniversary, see? Forty years, we haven’t killed each other, that’s worth celebrating, right? So Gianni, he says to me, ‘Call the kids, we’ll have a party. Call everyone. ’ So I’ve been on the phone all day, and your mother and aunts are coming, and that nice sister of yours, too, and Ethan of course, it would be good to see him before he starts gallivanting all over the world, and of course Parker and Nicky will be there, the more the merrier. Of course, I tried you before, but you were out, and machines, who knows if you’d get the message or not, so—”
The Next Best Thing Page 50