Before going to bed that night, I e-mailed off a photo of the macarons to Sylvie. Aimes-tu mes macarons? I asked. “Do you like my macarons?”
But what I really wanted to ask my cousin and consultant was this: What do you do when your bakers—and co–business owners, and best friends—aren’t getting along?
On Monday morning, Ella and I hoped Maddy would show up. We waited for half an hour, but…no Maddy. I tried to think of something that would make us feel better.
“Hey, Mom, can we check our website?” I called to her, sliding into the computer chair. Ella and I had been so focused on making treats for the marathon—and on the fight with Maddy—that we hadn’t checked it since delivering pamphlets a couple of days ago.
Mom hovered nearby to answer any questions that came up as we checked for orders. Then—feeling very formal and very grown-up—I typed the password into the administrator’s portion of the site.
“Oh, wow. We have an order!” Ella said.
“Oh my gosh!” I exclaimed.
“What do you know, girls,” Mom said. “Isn’t that fun?”
As we stared at the website, another order popped up right before our eyes.
This time, it started to sink in. We hopped up, cheered, and danced around the kitchen.
“Woo-hoo!”
“Customers!”
Then we sat back at the computer, Ella and I sharing a chair.
In the comments section, a few words of praise for our business showed up, too:
Product Quantity Color/Flavor
Macarons 6 Pink
Comment: So proud of you girls!
And…
Product Quantity Color/Flavor
Tartelettes 4 Strawberry
Comment: I’ve been waiting for a pâtisserie in Bentwick. I look forward to trying your tartelettes.
Both orders were from people we knew: Mrs. Crabb and Mr. Williams, who lived in Maddy’s neighborhood. When I saw those names, I was excited and sad all at the same time. “Maddy should be here,” I said quietly.
Ella nodded sadly. “I know. It doesn’t feel right to celebrate without her.”
“Let’s text her with the good news,” I said. I dashed off a text on my cell phone, and then set it beside me, checking it every few seconds. Maddy usually replied immediately. But after ten minutes, there was still no answer.
“Well,” I said to Ella, “I guess we have some orders to fill.”
We pulled some macarons and tartelette shells out of the freezer and started to fill the tartelettes with fresh strawberries. But that’s when it hit me—we didn’t have any packaging for them! We needed to make a mad dash to the Kitchen Shop. We didn’t have a choice now—there was no time for online ordering.
“Business picking up?” Mr. Hammond asked as Ella and I rushed in a half hour later.
“Yes!” Ella and I both replied, out of breath.
We went immediately to the packaging section, and for just a moment I was glad that Maddy wasn’t with us. I didn’t want to admit that she’d been right earlier: Packaging was important. At least Ella and I had no trouble agreeing on what to buy.
We chose the pretty pink boxes that were on sale—and much less expensive than the thicker white ones with the plastic windows on top. Ella didn’t have any money, and I had a lot less money to work with now that I didn’t have Maddy here to pool money with me.
But the boxes looked sturdy enough, and very professional. I couldn’t wait to tuck our macarons and tartelettes inside!
When Ella and I had our products ready to deliver, we called Mrs. Crabb and Mr. Williams to make sure they were both home for our deliveries. They were. But as soon as we hung up the phone, we ran into our next hurdle.
“I don’t think these will fit in my bike basket,” said Ella, examining the boxes.
I sized them up, too. “You’re right,” I said, my shoulders slumping. “They won’t fit in my basket either.”
Mom overheard us and came in from the living room. “Do you want me to drive you, girls?” she asked. “At least this first time?”
I thought about that. It was a tempting offer. But I could tell by the look on Ella’s face that she felt the same way I did: We had to find a way to deliver these ourselves. There had to be another solution.
As we walked into the garage to examine our baskets, I nearly tripped over something that I had abandoned by my bike: the bike trailer that Bonbon wouldn’t stay in. “That’s it!” I said to Ella. “We might as well use my birthday present for something.”
And that was how we ended up biking to Mrs. Crabb’s house with a bike trailer full of French treats. I smiled as I followed Ella along the towpath, feeling proud once again of the way Ella and I had kept going until we’d found a creative solution.
Mrs. Crabb—a tiny woman with a stooped back and silver hair—barely opened her door to peek through the crack.
“Oh, there you are, girls,” she said in a wobbly voice as she opened the door wide. “I just placed the order yesterday, and look: Here you are!”
After we handed her the pink box of macarons, she invited us to join her on her front porch for a little while. She brought out a pitcher of iced tea and served up a few of the macarons on pink glass plates.
“Delicious!” she said, after taking a bite.
I lifted my own macaron and then shot Ella a questioning glance. It felt funny to be eating our own products, especially ones that we had just sold to someone else. But Mrs. Crabb seemed grateful for the company. She proceeded to tell us all about her family’s history and how one of her great-great-somethings had actually worked at the Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, just over the state line.
Of course, I already knew a lot about the Slater Mill from Grandpa’s stories. It was part of how Blackstone Valley came to be called “the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution.” But I didn’t want to be rude, so I listened to Mrs. Crabb tell us about the water-powered mill, and about the canals, and then about the railroad that followed.
When we left nearly an hour later, all I could think about was how much time we had spent there—and about how Mr. Williams was probably waiting for us. But when Mrs. Crabb finally waved good-bye, her ear-to-ear smile was a pretty sweet reward.
The Williamses lived just a few blocks away. I rang the doorbell while Ella waited beside me on the porch, proudly holding the pink paper box with four strawberry tartelettes tucked inside.
Mr. Williams, in a striped shirt and khaki pants, met us at the door. “Hello, girls. That was prompt,” he said, reaching for the pink box.
We handed him his order, and he dug in his shirt pocket and pulled out a check. It was made out to “La Petite Pâtisserie.”
“Oh,” I said, staring at the check. “But, um…we don’t have a bank account yet.”
“Then I guess you’d better start one, hadn’t you?” Mr. Williams said curtly. “You girls have a nice day now.” And before we knew it, the door was closed.
Ella and I stared at each other for a moment. “What, no iced-tea party on the porch?” I whispered.
Ella giggled. Then we raced each other back to my house. With the empty bike trailer behind me and our first payments in my pocket, I felt as if I were flying.
uesday morning, Maddy still hadn’t answered my text. I guessed she wasn’t going to come back to the business, at least not any time soon.
To make things worse, we received our first complaint. Mr. Williams had sent an e-mail:
I am very, very disappointed in your tartelettes. I waited to serve them to friends last evening and when I opened the box, the tartelettes were broken to pieces. A disaster! I could not serve them.
My heart sank. “What do you think happened?” I said to Ella.
“Maybe the box wasn’t sturdy enough?” she suggested. Ella looked suddenly droopy, like a stuffed animal with the stuffing knocked out of her.
“Oh, no—I’ll bet I wasn’t careful enough with the bike trailer,” I realized sudden
ly. “We went over lots of bumps on the towpath, but I didn’t think that the tartelettes would break apart.”
I wanted to blame somebody, but how could I? I’d been the one to suggest using the bike trailer.
Mom wrapped her arm around my shoulders. “Mistakes are going to happen, Grace,” she said. “The trick is to figure out how to make it right with your customers, and then learn from the mistake so that you can keep it from happening again.”
I nodded sadly.
After Mom went back into the living room to work on lesson plans, Ella and I slumped down together at the kitchen table.
“Maybe we do need stronger packaging,” I said.
“But what about Mr. Williams?” Ella asked. “How can we make things right with him?”
I sighed. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of going to see him again if he was upset with us, but I knew what we had to do. “I think we should e-mail him to say that we’ll deliver another batch of perfect tartelettes for free—today,” I said.
Ella nodded. Then she blurted out, “Oh, I really don’t feel good.”
“I don’t either,” I said. “I’m sad and frustrated all at the same time.”
“No, I don’t mean it that way,” Ella said quickly. “I mean, I haven’t felt well since I got here, and now I feel—”
She jumped up and hurried off to the bathroom just off the kitchen. Was she really sick?
When she returned, she said in a wobbly voice, “I need to call for a ride home.”
Oh, poor Ella! After her dad picked her up, I felt bad for her, and a little bad for me, too.
Could this day get any worse? I wondered.
“Josh,” I said, trying to make myself heard over his piano playing. “Will you come with me? I need some courage, and Ella’s sick, and Maddy’s not…not around right now.”
“What’s going on?” he asked, looking up from the keys.
“I had a customer complaint,” I confessed. “Mr. Williams agreed to try another batch, but he still wants his money back. I need to deliver the tartelettes, and this time without breaking them along the way.”
“Sure,” Josh agreed.
With four new tartelettes extra-well padded and packaged, I biked the small order over in the bike trailer, taking a route through town this time instead of the bumpy towpath.
When we arrived at Mr. Williams’s house, I opened the box to be sure the tartelettes were still intact, and breathed a sigh of relief.
New rule, I told myself. Check all orders before delivering them.
Josh waited for me by our bikes as I started down the sidewalk. “You can do this,” he called over my shoulder.
“Thanks,” I said. I climbed the steps, paused in front of the doorbell for the second time, and then forced my finger forward.
Ding-ding-ding!
When the door opened, I was ready. I didn’t even wait for Mr. Williams to speak.
“I’m sorry the first batch broke,” I said quickly. “This one is free.” I handed him his check back, along with the box of tartelettes. “I hope you’ll try us again, Mr. Williams.”
He didn’t say anything, but he nodded his head at me. As he closed the door, I saw the faintest smile cross his lips.
Would he ever order from us again? I had no idea. But at least I’d done what I could do to make things right.
I set my shoulders and started back down the sidewalk toward Josh.
The next day, I tried to keep working in the kitchen—I really did. I made a few tartelette shells so that I could bake and freeze them ahead of time. We could fill them with fresh fruit just before the marathon.
Dad had taken the day off, and he and Josh were working on the bakery cart in the garage. But even with the sound of the saw just beyond the kitchen door, I still felt so alone.
And overwhelmed.
And unsure.
What if it was my fault that Maddy left? And did Ella get sick because she gets upset when the people around her are unhappy?
Then I had to wonder…had I pushed my friends too hard because I wanted this business so badly? Had I pushed the fun right out of our time together?
As if in answer, raindrops started pinging against the windowpane.
The more my thoughts clogged with doubt, the slower I worked. Pretty soon I felt as if I were pushing rocks in a wheelbarrow that would barely move.
“Hey, honey,” Mom said, passing through the kitchen in her old jeans and a long-sleeved paint-speckled T-shirt. I recognized that as her welding outfit.
“I’m heading out to help Dad and Josh with that cart—to get it started, anyway,” Mom said. “I’d invite you to join us, but you look pretty busy.”
I nodded.
“What happened to your friends?”
I bit back tears and shrugged.
“You okay?”
I nodded again and tried to focus on working a lump of dough into a tartelette pan.
Mom paused and then kissed the top of my head. “I’m proud of you, Grace,” she said. “You’re doing a really good job. I know it’s hard work.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I managed.
“Okay, then,” she said. “Promise you won’t use the oven without calling one of us in?”
I promised, and Mom finally left the kitchen.
As soon as she was gone, I put the dough back in the refrigerator, washed my hands, and sat down by Bonbon’s crate.
Mom said I was doing a good job, but it sure didn’t feel that way. I suddenly felt so tired. I didn’t have the energy to bake today.
Bonbon started whining softly.
“I know just how you feel, ma petite chienne,” I said, opening the door of her crate to let her out.
Bonbon trotted after me as I stepped into the living room to grab a throw from the couch. Then I went straight to the place where I always go when I need to turn inward for a while: the cozy bay window seat.
Bonbon followed me there, too, so I picked her up and set her in the window.
I climbed up onto the red-and-white checked cushion, curled on my side into a half shell, and—as Bonbon snuggled against my tummy—pulled the throw over us. Then I turned to gaze out the window.
I watched a single droplet of water find its way down the windowpane. When it hit bottom, I started over, tracing the pathway of another droplet with my finger.
You’d think water droplets would fall straight, but they never do. They travel a little to the left, a little to the right, around a particle of mud or dust here, around a bug splat there, but continuing on…just like the Blackstone River.
I could almost hear Grandpa say, “The Blackstone is the hardest-working river in America.” It navigates lots of obstacles along the way, but keeps on flowing until it reaches its destination.
I felt a little bit like that droplet, trying to find my way around all sorts of obstacles. But would I ever reach my goal? Would this business ever work?
I just didn’t know. I leaned forward and closed my eyes, resting my head against the cool windowpane.
don’t know how a person can run so many miles without collapsing, but somehow my mom was doing it.
She had woken me up this Saturday morning at seven o’clock, which was later than Bonbon usually let me sleep. Mom had already walked Bonbon so that I could bike with her while she ran. “I think it’ll do us both good,” she had said.
Now that we were on the trail, with occasional raindrops splattering on my arms and thighs, I was wide awake. I couldn’t believe the half marathon was only a week away—and Ella and I hadn’t met up to bake since Tuesday!
She had been sick all week, and I’d been too heartsick to bake without her and Maddy. Finally, Ella was coming over today to start our baking back up, but we had so much to do if we were going to be ready for our first big sale.
Mom’s arms and legs pumped a steady rhythm beside me. Her long runs of eleven or twelve miles were behind her now. This week, she was coasting with shorter and shorter runs to conserve her energy as the half
marathon drew close.
I glanced at Mom. Despite her red face and the river of sweat running down her tank top, she looked happy. She’d dreamed of running a half marathon and was working every day at making it come true.
“You know, Mom,” I said out loud, “sometimes starting a business feels like training for a marathon, too. And lately, without Maddy, it feels like it’s been all uphill.”
Mom gave me a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry, honey,” she said, in between breaths.
“Nothing’s going right,” I said. “Maddy’s mad at me, Ella’s been sick—even Bonbon seems unhappy. No one’s having any fun anymore.”
“No?” said Mom, glancing sideways at me. “When was the last time you remember having fun?”
I had to think long and hard about that. There was the sleepover in the tent after the flour incident. But before that? My mind had to go all the way back to France, when I was baking in the pâtisserie with Sylvie and Colette.
I suddenly flashed on little Bonbon, too, the first time I saw her in Paris—playing with another dog in the park, her rump in the air.
Poor Bonbon. She was used to roaming free all over Paris, and now she was stuck in a crate so much of the time and could only play with other dogs when she escaped from our kitchen. No wonder she was so unhappy!
A thought started taking shape at the back of my brain, but before it became crystal clear, the raindrops on our heads started coming down stronger. As the sky let loose with a downpour, Mom looked at me, her mouth wide open. Then we both started shrieking and laughing as we raced down the path toward home.
Mom raised her chin, stretched out her gait, and put on more speed, her calf muscles pumping. She sprinted beside me all the way to the Cross Road Bridge, where the rain finally lightened and Mom could slow to a cooldown pace.
“That’s what I call an instant cooldown,” Mom joked, wringing out her wet hair.
“That’s what I call fun,” I said, catching my breath. And with that one word, answers to my problems popped up like popcorn. I suddenly knew what I needed to do.
Grace Stirs It Up Page 8