Let Them Eat Cake

by Sandra Byrd

  “You’ll have your own place then, which will really be your own space.”

  “My room at the Y?” I joked. I sat down next to her. “Tanya, I lost my job today.”

  “Oh, Lex, I’m sorry. I thought maybe you had when you said you needed to go job hunting. What happened?”

  “I wasn’t translating enough labels quickly enough.”

  “Are you sad?”

  “Sad? A little. I feel like a loser, but I hated that job. I counted every minute I was there. I made no friends and did no meaningful work. Scared? Yes.” I rubbed my fingers over a worn guide to Montreal. Then I handed it to Tanya. “I should have stayed there. I had my own place. I liked it there.”

  “So why did you come back?” Tanya asked.

  “I was broke, as always. Once it wasn’t part of a room-and-board agreement with the college, I had no choice.”

  “You’d wanted to go to France instead, anyway,” she reminded me.

  I nodded. Montreal had been my second choice.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. My parents are moving to the retirement house right after the wedding. They’re listing this house for sale soon. I guess I’ll try to find a job and then a place to live.”

  “How about teaching?” she asked. “You could so totally get a job at the French American School.” Tanya taught fourth grade and lived with another teacher in a two-bedroom apartment. She had started with a local school district and planned to transfer to a private Christian school nearby, but she’d signed a two-year teaching contract and a two-year lease with her roommate. She was stuck for now.

  “You want to know the truth?” I asked.

  “Lay it on me.” She handed me a copy of Baudelaire.

  “I don’t like kids.” There. I’d said it. The pillars of the house didn’t fall in and crush me. I hadn’t been struck with boils.

  “Really? I never knew that.”

  “I just never felt brave enough to admit I don’t like them. It’s watered-down blasphemy to a lot of Christians.”

  She opened the can of Diet Coke she’d brought. “Well, are you ever going to have kids of your own?”

  “First of all, that assumes I’m married at some point.”

  “Lots of time,” she said. Tanya wasn’t interested in dating, and I knew why. I’d tried to talk with her about it again a couple of months ago, but she’d shut me down.

  “And second, they’ll be interesting to me because they’ll be my kids. I’m just not into kids in general.”

  “I get it,” Tanya said. “Teaching is out.” She handed me last year’s stack of Paris Match magazines. “What did you want to do with a French degree?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I just like the language and the culture and all. Diplomacy or something.” I thought I’d be married. “I worked for that French import firm for a few months after college,” I reminded her. “I had high hopes when I started.”

  “Until they made it clear only family moved beyond receptionist.”

  “Uh-huh. Then I tried freelance translation, but there was never enough work to make ends meet. Part of my credit card debt is from then. I ate ramen noodles and eggs.”

  “What about the account manager job?”

  “Phone sales,” I said. “Totally bait and switch. A grunt in a sweaty cubicle begging people to buy extended warranties on their home appliances before midnight.”

  “Didn’t your uncle help you find that last job in Bellingham? Marketing executive?”

  “Yeah, but, you know … I lost that job too.”

  “I know,” Tanya said. “I’m sorry I brought it up. Does your uncle know you were not a good fit’?”

  I shook my head.

  “Something good will come up soon. Either a job or a place to live.”

  “Or a guy,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes at me, and we stood up. I knew she thought it was totally impractical to be thinking about men at a time like this, and maybe it was. But when we were in junior high, there was a questionnaire our friends passed around—I love questionnaires—that asked, if you had to pick getting married or having kids, which would you pick? Tanya wanted the kids. I wanted a soul mate. If I could have both, great. If not…

  I hung Nate’s old dartboard on the robe hook on the back of my door. I tore out a piece of notebook paper and ripped it into twenty pieces. I wrote “Guy” on four of them, “Job” on six of them, “Place to Live” on six of them, and “Guy” on four more (hey, a girl needs an advantage!). Then I arranged them on the dartboard, sticking them in the twelve, pizza-slice-shaped sections.

  “What are you doing?” Tanya asked.

  “It’s biblical.”

  “What?”

  “It’s the twenty-first-century equivalent of casting lots,” I said. “Mmm-hmm.”

  I threw a dart. I aimed hard for guy but got job instead. “Two out of three,” I said.

  I threw two more darts, aiming for all I was worth toward guy, and got two more jobs. Well, maybe that wasn’t too bad. I mean, I needed a job before I could get a place to live, right?

  I closed my eyes and threw a fourth dart.

  “Hey,” Tanya said. “I thought you said three.”

  Even blind, the last dart came up job. Oh, all right. I’ll be responsible. I felt with certainty that if Nate had thrown three darts, he would have hit job, place to live, and wife once each. Winner takes all.

  “Give me those darts,” Tanya said. “Maybe something miraculous will come along and release me from my teaching contract.”

  She threw one dart, then two. They both hit guy.

  “I quit,” she said, disgusted.

  “Stupid board.” I took it off the hook and stuffed it back into the closet.

  Tanya checked her watch. “I’d better go. Are you coming to church this weekend?”

  I shook my head. “Nah. Maybe next week.”

  Even girlfriends have unspoken conversations and unsaid expectations. I didn’t push her; she didn’t push me. For a while, anyway.

  L’eau trouble est le gain du pêcheur.

  There’s good fishing in troubled waters.

  Everyone went to work the next morning. Dad went to the recruiting station where he worked his jaws with other military cranks about the good old days, and Mom drove to Curves to work out before heading to the church’s preschool where she taught. I slipped into my brown suit and shoes, pretending to be going to my old job, but instead I got my leather résumé case out and drove downtown to try to elbow my way into the work force.

  But first, a café crème.

  I hadn’t noticed L’Esperance last time I was downtown, but it caught my eye now. I parked, got out, and walked to the restaurant. The front doors were French, of course, and opened up into a lovely café with about twelve tables. The counter at the front was long and brass and perfectly clean.

  There’s a certain smell to a bakery when it’s really, truly French. It’s yeasty and soft and crusty all at the same time, like a real baguette should be, perfuming the street for blocks around. It has a hint of bitter chocolate dust around the edges. The coffee smells like a fine-burning pipe tobacco with an edge of chicory. L’Esperance smelled right. It was a good sign.

  I stood at the counter for almost five minutes before a lazy fake blonde hung up her phone and came to stare at me. Good thing I didn’t have a job to get to.

  “I’d like a café crème.” I said it in English, of course, but pronounced “café crème” properly.

  “Coffee with cream?” she asked. Her nail polish was chipping. She helped it along as we talked.

  “Uh, yeah, café crème,” I said. The bakery’s name meant “hope” in French. I hoped nothing dropped off her nails and into my coffee.

  Just then a man appeared from the back.

  He had the buff build of a baker—they’re physically working all day—and long blond hair pulled back into a queue, like Russell Crowe in Master and Commander But
younger than Russell—twenty-seven, maybe twenty-eight years old.

  “Please help them load, yes?” He motioned the chipping-nail blonde toward the back and rolled his eyes. “Café crème, tout vite!” he said to me.

  Not only would he make it, he’d make it quickly! I smiled at him.

  A small rush of people came into the café, tinkling the door chimes over and over. By the time he was done making my coffee, there was a line five deep.

  “Voilà,” he said, handing it to me with a flourish. “Mademoiselle, a beautiful cup of coffee for a beautiful lady.”

  Frenchmen are such flirts. I love it.

  I paid him and sipped my café crème. It was delicious. I hadn’t tasted anything this French since Montreal my junior year. It was just the right thing to start the day.

  Bracing myself, I walked back out to the street. January is a blustery month in Seattle, drooping from post-holiday depression and rising barometers. In spite of urban legend to the contrary, most Seattlites use umbrellas. Unless you like that wet-dog look and smell, it’s a necessity.

  After polishing off my coffee, I rode the elevator up to the twelfth floor of the first building on my list. The day before, I’d carefully mapped out a plan based on the Sunday ads, a lead Nate’s golfing buddy had given him more than a month ago, and a list of names from the yellow pages. I faced off with Receptionist Number One at 10:00 a.m.

  “Hello, I’d like to leave a résumé,” I said.

  Without saying a word, she wearily waved to the stack of résumés spontaneously generating in the in box. My résumé floated down, settling on top of what I hoped were résumés of completely incompetent and unqualified individuals.

  I got into my car and drove four blocks south. At least the car was my own—until it was repossessed. I parked at a coin meter and went into the next building.

  “Hello, I’d like to talk with someone about your marketing jobs,” I said to Receptionist Number Two.

  I loathe marketing.

  “Do you have marketing experience?” she asked. “Yes.” Unfortunately.

  “Do you enjoy phone work?” She smiled, revealing a fleck of lipstick on her tooth. I restrained myself from telling her. My mother had a compulsion to tuck in exposed shirt tags on people in front of her in church or the grocery line. Horrified, I realized this personal appearance correction habit might be genetic.

  “Kind of,” I answered. I could see where this was going.

  “Leave your résumé,” she said.

  She didn’t look at it before I left.

  I spent another two hours trying to look both perky and positive as well as professional and grown-up. I’d waited for fifty minutes at my last call—prearranged via computer over the weekend—for a woman who never showed up. Her assistant kept apologizing. I left a résumé, smiled, and left. I decided to go home, look at Monster.com, and plan for tomorrow.

  On the way home I drove by the huge tower housing Leah’s law firm. I wondered which floor was hers. I envied her the job but not the cubicle.

  The next day I wore my navy skirt and a subtle string of pearls. I’d had no résumé responses from Monster.com and was politely turned down by three recruiters.

  Tanya called me on her lunch break. “Im taking a sanity break from my students. I have two girls catfighting and a boy who eats erasers when he’s nervous. I imagine that makes him constipated. Where are you?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “I’m asking.”

  “I’m parked outside the French American School.”

  Tanya groaned. “Do you think French girls have catfights? Do French erasers constipate?”

  I laughed. “Maybe it’s a good job option,” I said. “I could sub.”

  “You could,” Tanya said, “but would you enjoy the work? And it’d have to be full time eventually to make enough to live on. Subs make about a hundred dollars a day, maybe four to five times a month.”

  “Oh.” I knew in my heart that I wouldn’t enjoy teaching all day. It wouldn’t be fair to the kids—or to me. I just wasn’t meant to be a teacher. “You’ve been a great help to me,” I said wryly. “See you later.”

  As soon as we hung up, I started my asthmatic VW. It seemed to be choking—just like my career.

  When I woke up the next morning, I put my workout clothes in a gym bag. I needed to locate some endorphins.

  My mom was finishing up breakfast, decked out in matching Sag Harbor sweats. Who thought of naming a line of clothing for women Sag Harbor?

  “Mom, take the headband off. You look like a Jane Fonda wannabe.”

  “Jane Fonda became a Christian, you know.” She began wrapping up the breakfast rolls.

  “I know, I know. Do you see her at Curves?”

  I caught the soft roll she threw at me, and we both smiled.

  “Don’t forget you’re meeting Leah today,” she said.

  “I know.”

  My dad brought his cereal bowl to the sink, washed it with hot water and soap, and dried it. Then he put it in the dishwasher. “Dad, it’s clean,” I said.

  “Needs to be sanitized.” He pulled on his cap, then took it off, kissed my mother, kissed my cheek tenderly, and put it back on. “I thought I’d come to your office and meet you for lunch,” he said, “since you’ve got these long lunch hours now. You’re past the thirty-day trial period, and I want to make sure it’s not some two-bit, low-paying job going nowhere professionally. It’s got benefits and a future, right?”

  “Sorry, Dad, I’m meeting Leah today. Maybe next week, huh? Pretty busy this week.”

  That was true. I hoped he wouldn’t just drop in.

  Once they’d both left, I headed to the gym. Surrounded by strangers as I worked out, I felt lonely. I had Tanya, of course, but Tanya had a life, and I needed one of my own.

  I showered and dressed for my lunch with Leah in my favourite jeans, a cute red sweater, and a pair of flats. Leah always looked pulled together. I still needed to pick up something for us to eat. I could hear Tanya’s voice. “What’s in your wallet?”

  I looked. Eighty-three dollars, a Tully’s Coffee card, and Greg’s picture. With a nose ring and an earring this time. He looked like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. I laughed and snapped my wallet closed. Where to pick up lunch?

  Of course! L’Esperance! I could buy myself a café crème, get us both a sandwich and an Orangina, and perhaps a chic little salade niçoise.

  I drove to L’Esperance, which was only two blocks from Leah’s office. When I went in, the blond girl was nowhere to be seen, and the line stretched almost to the door. Without her, they were seriously short of counter help. A girl with multiple piercings helped each customer as quickly as she could.

  The café windows were draped in burgundy linen, pulled back with gold cord. Fleurs-de-lis speckled the walls. I could hear soft music and laughter in the back room from whence the yeasty-earthy-divine scent emanated. Baking smells.

  When I reached the counter, the Frenchman who’d served my coffee two days before had emerged from the kitchen to help.

  “You’re back!” he said, eyes twinkling. Everyone seemed to move more quickly when he was around.

  “Café crème,” I said in French. “And two salade niçoise luncheons to go.”

  “A Frenchwoman knows quality coffee.” He winked at me. He thought I was a française!

  When my order was finished, he packed it into a chic little to-go bag. He didn’t rush me even though there was a line. His eyes crinkled. I looked at them a little too long, and he held my gaze.

  Reluctantly, I left the shop and walked to Leah’s building. She was waiting for me in the atrium, and we claimed a table. I unpacked our lunch.

  “So how’s it going?” Leah tore off a piece of her roll and buttered it.

  I opened our plastic containers of salade niçoise and set one in front of her. “I’m not working at the translating place anymore.”

  She nodded slowly but didn’t look surprised. “I susp
ected as much. Things didn’t work out?”

  As much as I wanted to, I just couldn’t tell perfect Leah that I’d been canned again. “It was really boring,” I said truthfully, opting to look irresponsible rather than stupid.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “There are times when I think I don’t like law either. I think I might have liked to go to massage school.”

  “Really? So what are you going to do?” I asked, setting out the rest of the lunch. Where are our cookies? I bought the package lunch with cookies.

  “I’m going to be a lawyer,” she answered. “I’m deep in the groove now. I have to make it work. And I will.”

  I nodded. We chatted about clothes and her wedding and a new massage therapist she’d found who had become a friend. “I’ll pray for your job,” she said as she headed back to the elevator.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Oh, and Leah?” She stopped and looked at me.

  “Dont tell anyone yet, okay? I’m going to try to find another job before I mention it to my family.” She hugged me. “Mums the word.”

  Sometimes I envied her drive. Right now, though, I felt sorry for her and her high-paying career that she had to make work. On the other hand, at least she had a job to make work.

  What was so wrong with me that I couldn’t hold a job, find a guy, or live on my own?

  I headed back to L’Esperance to get my promised cookie. I needed it. I needed to eat Leah’s cookie, too, on a day like today.

  I stepped into the shop and found the counter untended. I heard some voices in the background, raised, so I decided not to stick around. Maybe God was saving me from over-indulgence, anyway.

  Just as I turned to leave, I spotted some papers on the counter. As I glanced at the content, my face flushed. I reached toward one, but my hand hesitated in midair. Finally, I tentatively took one. I slipped it into my résumé case and turned to leave.

  Elle qui aide d’autres est aidée.

  She who helps others is helped herself.

  Acouple of days later I called Tanya while I got dressed. “I think I’m having a heart attack.” I held the phone between my cheek and shoulder, sat on the edge of my bed, and pulled my pants over my knees.