The Glass Kitchen

by Linda Francis Lee

He pressed his forehead to hers, then rolled away. She expected him to keep going and get off the bed. Instead, he dragged her to him, wrapping her in his arms.

  “Go to sleep, Portia.”

  “But—”

  “Portia, sleep.”

  She debated. But then he tucked her close, his chest to her back, the tension finally easing out of him completely, and she drifted off to sleep.

  Twenty-six

  “DAD, REALLY, I don’t need to go to the Shrink anymore. I’m fine. You’re fine. Miranda’s fine.” Ariel plastered a big fat smile on her face. “We’re all fine, remember?”

  Which was far from true, but Ariel was tired of figuring out ways to avoid talking to the Shrink. It was exhausting to come up with new and increasingly inventive ways not to talk about anything that mattered.

  Her dad sat at the desk in his study, looking out the window instead of at all sorts of business stuff spread out in front of him. Just sitting. Just looking. So not like her dad.

  She felt a flicker of worry. No way her dad could die on her, too, surely.

  He turned back and studied her. She studied him right back. Something was definitely different about him, though thankfully as best she could tell, he looked perfectly healthy.

  An image of her mom popped into her head, dancing around her dad, laughing. “What can I do to wipe that scowl away?”

  Her dad would look back at her mom in that way of his, massively intense.

  Her dad was scary, but he was really great, too. Like, she remembered that when he got home late from his office, he would come sit on the edge of her mattress even though she pretended to be asleep. He wouldn’t say anything; he’d just have a look and then lean down and kiss her forehead. She knew he did the same thing to Miranda. Miranda had told her once. Of course he hadn’t sat on the edge of either of their mattresses since their mom had died. As far as she knew, anyway.

  “First off, Ariel,” he said, “I don’t appreciate you calling Dr. Parson the Shrink.”

  Ariel swallowed back the retort that no amount of lipstick on a pig was going to make that pig anything but. Calling the Shrink Dr. Parson wasn’t going to make him less of a quack.

  “Second, Dr. Parson said that when you’re in his office, you refuse to speak to him.”

  “I talk.”

  “About the weather. Or you grill him on his credentials.”

  “I ask: Does a man who lives and works in the twenty-first century seriously wear a goatee and round tortoise-shell glasses? I have two words for you: Fake Freud.”

  “Ariel.”

  “Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t judge him based on his Freud facial hair, but come on, he has a black leather sofa. Seriously, Dad, I know everyone says you’re a genius, but maybe money smarts don’t translate into regular street smarts. I tell you, the guy isn’t for real.”

  Her dad looked amused for a nanosecond before he wiped the humor from his face as fast as good old Wink swiped his big block letters from the dry board at school.

  “As much as I appreciate your assessment of my intellect, I assure you that Dr. Parson is for real. And for real you have to go tomorrow.”

  Sure enough, at 3:30 the next afternoon, Ariel found herself on that black sofa.

  “Have you ever considered getting one of those Victorian-type couches, or whatever they’re called? Chesterfields. I Googled that for you. I think Freud must have had a Chesterfield in his office.” Ariel made a production of considering the idea. “Tell me, Dr. Parson, do you think Freud would have had a leather sofa in his office if they’d been available back then? Because, really, I don’t think yours is working.”

  Ariel could have sworn that the guy actually blushed—at least as much as a guy with a beard could blush. No matter how hard she tried, she never managed to flummox her dad. She had to give him that.

  “Ariel,” Dr. Parson finally stated, “we are here to discuss the unfortunate things that have happened to you, not my furniture choices—”

  “Maybe you should talk to someone about your unfortunate furn—”

  “Ariel.” He barked her name before pulling himself together. Ariel’s personal diagnosis? The guy was losing it.

  He leaned forward. “We’ve been talking for three months. I’ve been patient. I’ve let you discuss whatever you want. I’ve asked you to write your feelings down in a journal. And I’ve done this in the hopes that you’d learn to trust me.”

  She barely held back a snort.

  Dr. Parson narrowed his eyes. “Ariel,” he said. “There’s one question I haven’t asked you directly, the one question that matters, the one question that I shouldn’t have to ask because you should want to talk to me about it on your own. Since that hasn’t happened, tell me: What happened in the car?”

  Her heart came to a full-blown stop.

  Ariel had to force herself to breathe, air in, air out. She felt the sweat on the palms of her hands. It took a second to drum up a smile.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I think you do.”

  Life had been so simple before. One dad, one mom, one sister—all of them living in a house in Montclair, New Jersey.

  “You’re only hurting yourself by bottling it up.”

  He leaned even closer, his elbows on his knees, his tablet and pen set aside.

  “Why won’t you talk about it, Ariel? Are you protecting someone?”

  The words were like a kick to the stomach. She searched for something to say, something sarcastic, something to distract him. But she couldn’t find anything. The facts were just facts. Life could change in an instant.

  She turned her head and focused on all those degrees framed and lined up on the plain white walls. One frame was slightly off. She had told him several times. Once he had stood up all of a sudden and strode over, straightened it, and then turned back. “There,” he had stated.

  Ariel had seen that he regretted his show of temper. It was the only time she had liked him. It was the only time she had thought about showing him what was inside her. But then he had come back to his chair, drawn a deep breath, and settled back into his Fake Freud persona.

  Now the frame was crooked again.

  “I’m not keeping a secret,” she said finally. “There’s no one to protect.”

  “Tell me about the accident, Ariel.” He hesitated. “Please.”

  A sigh escaped her lips. “Fine. My mom was driving me to a Mathlete competition in Paramus. I was in the backseat; she was in the front.” Her leg betrayed her, swinging too fast and hitting the coffee table. She made it stop. “She was driving really fast on the Garden State Parkway. We were late. We swerved. We wrecked. The car flew over the rail. Mom died. I didn’t.”

  The guy sat there for something like a full minute. Ariel knew, because she was counting, not to see how long it would take before he talked again, but to keep her mind focused on something besides the accident.

  Finally he found words again. “How did that make you feel?”

  How did it make her feel? How did he think it made her feel?

  She glanced at the clock and stood. “Oops, look at that. Time’s up.”

  Startled, the Shrink glanced over at the clock and blinked. “Ariel,” he said.

  But she was already banging out the door.

  Twenty-seven

  FOR THE LAST THREE WEEKS Portia had done little more than cook for The Glass Kitchen. Now she stood in the middle of her apartment, the day’s assortment of menu items already sold and out the door, and her head swam with images of cake. But not just any cake: a festive concoction loaded with candles. She closed her eyes and knew she needed to plan a birthday party.

  But for whom?

  She’d have to make the cake later because she needed to get upstairs to make dinner for the Kanes. When she walked into their kitchen, Miranda and Ariel were sitting at the table. Ariel was pretending to do homework; Miranda was staring at her silent cell phone.

  “Hey,” Portia said.
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br />   “Hey,” Ariel replied with little enthusiasm. Miranda just rolled her eyes.

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” Miranda snapped.

  “She’s waiting for the creep … I mean, Dustin … to call,” Ariel explained hastily.

  Miranda shot her little sister a glare. “You didn’t think he was a creep the other day when you—”

  She stopped abruptly, glancing at Portia. Both girls jerked back to what they had been doing.

  Miranda looked back down at her cell phone, her jaw set, but a moment later her lips started to tremble. “He’s not going to call. He broke up with me. He says I’m not mature enough for him.”

  Portia sighed. “Boys can be real jerks,” she said, leaning her hip against the kitchen counter. “Let me guess: You wouldn’t … sleep with him, right?”

  Ariel gasped.

  Miranda scowled. “It wasn’t like that.”

  Portia just waited.

  “Okay, maybe it was like that. Don’t you dare tell Dad!” She dropped her head to her arms. “I hate New York! I miss New Jersey!”

  With a mental sigh, Portia walked over to Miranda and, after only a brief hesitation, stroked her hair. “Oh, sweetie.”

  Miranda drew a shaky breath. “My mom used to call me that.” She started to cry. “It’s her birthday today. Or it would have been.”

  A shiver ran down Portia’s spine. The birthday cake. Not for some unknown someone who would show up at the apartment.

  Once again, her first instinct was to run, but she sat down and hugged Miranda instead. Ariel looked on with that same expression she’d had when Portia and her sisters were dancing it out. Portia extended her other arm, and Ariel tucked under it like a baby bird. With another sigh, Portia realized she was getting pulled in closer and closer to this family.

  “I miss her,” Miranda choked out, sobs racking her body.

  Ariel didn’t say anything. She just squeezed in closer.

  “When my sisters and I were your ages,” Portia finally said, “our parents died. So I know how awful it is.”

  “B-b-both of them?” Miranda asked.

  “Yep. We went to live with our grandmother.” Portia hesitated one last second, then plunged ahead. “And every year on our mom’s birthday, we celebrated with a party. What do you say we make a cake and have a birthday party for your mom?”

  Miranda sniffled and straightened up. “I guess so.”

  Ariel peered across from under Portia’s arm at her sister. “But what if it makes Dad too sad?”

  Miranda’s features hardened. “Erasing her is the wrong way to miss her.”

  That’s all it took. Instead of making dinner, Portia showed the girls how to make a birthday cake. And then she let them do it by themselves, trusting that the act of making something for their mother would be healing.

  Portia started on party sandwiches, little small square bites of cucumber and cream cheese, smoked turkey with gouda, ham and cheddar nestled inside bread with the crusts cut off while the girls worked together as a pair. When Ariel saw what she was doing, she laughed, the clear, bright laughter of a child rather than the mini adult she so often sounded like. “It’s going to be a real party!” Ariel cheered.

  The three worked together in a surprising harmony, and soon the cake was done. When Portia finished making the sandwiches and putting them in the refrigerator, she went downstairs and found streamers and an old HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign in Aunt Evie’s boxes.

  By the time they heard the front door open and close, they had the dining room set with birthday paraphernalia, party sandwiches covering the table, and a cake at the center of it all.

  “I smell something good,” Gabriel called out when he came in the front door.

  Portia held her breath. She had simply followed the knowing without a thought for the consequences.

  “What’s this?” Gabriel asked as he came around the corner. He took in the balloons and the banner. “Whose birthday is it?”

  No one spoke. Portia watched as understanding dawned, and she went cold. The hard planes of Gabriel’s face crumpled, sharp edges going weak. He didn’t look like he was on the verge of crying. It was more that some aching part of his soul had escaped the carefully controlled façade.

  Miranda must have been watching his face, too, because when she spoke her voice was harsh. “It’s a birthday party. For Mom.”

  Gabriel couldn’t seem to find words, but he looked every inch a wounded beast.

  “All you want to do is forget her!” Miranda accused him when he didn’t say anything. “You want us to forget her! You made us come to this awful place and be with these awful people who break up with us and don’t like us and tell us we don’t fit in—all because you don’t want to think about Mom. Well, guess what, we loved her! We miss her!”

  “Miranda, that’s enough,” Gabriel said, the words catching in his throat.

  “No, it’s not! I hate you! I hate you for moving us here!” She bolted from the room, her steps rapping a staccato beat up the stairs.

  Ariel’s small face looked so thin and fragile that Portia was shocked. The girl was obviously taking in everyone’s pain, with no idea what to do about it.

  “I’m sorry if we hurt you with the party,” Ariel choked out, and ran from the room before Gabriel could speak.

  He looked at Portia. The hard planes were back in place. “What in the hell is going on?”

  Portia took a deep breath. “The girls were upset when I got here. Miranda’s boyfriend broke up with her.”

  He narrowed his eyes at the boyfriend mention.

  “But the real problem, Gabriel, is that they feel they can’t talk about their mother.”

  “I’m paying a fortune to a shrink so they have someone to talk to!”

  “They need to talk to you.”

  He plowed his hands through his hair. “So you got it in your head to throw a party for a dead woman.”

  “Exactly,” Portia shot back. “My grandmother did the same thing for me and my sisters after our mother died. It made us feel as if she was still with us, somehow.”

  He strode to the table and stared at the cake.

  “Of course you miss her, Gabriel, but your daughters are still here. They need to celebrate their mother. If they’re at all like me, they’re terrified that they’ll forget her, that at some point a whole day will pass and they won’t even remember it was her birthday.” Idiotically, tears pricked Portia’s eyes.

  Gabriel turned to leave, but stopped at the door, his back to her. “Things are fine, Portia. Just leave it alone.”

  Her mouth dropped open when he left. “Things aren’t fine,” she called after him. “You’re smart enough to know that.”

  He disappeared up the stairs without replying. Stunned, Portia stared after him. Was he going to leave it at that?

  She had promised herself that she wouldn’t get involved, wouldn’t open herself up to this family. While she had opened herself to the knowing, she had promised herself that she wouldn’t use the knowing with Gabriel and the girls. Look what had happened when she had. She’d made a cake for the man’s dead wife, wrecking all three of them.

  Go back downstairs, she told herself.

  Instead, she followed Gabriel, taking the stairs two at a time up to the office level. He wasn’t there, so she kept going, hearing noise from the floor above. She tiptoed up the last flight and stopped in the doorway of a room that she had barely noticed the night they had gone to the roof. She saw now that it was being used for storage. There was an old bike and boxes, though there was also a sound system and television, even though there were no sofas or chairs.

  Gabriel stood inside a closet, pulling a box that seemed to have been hidden in the very back on a high shelf. He strode over and set it down with a thump, wrenched off the top, and pulled out several framed photographs.

  Something aching and painful twisted inside her: jealousy. Every time Gabriel came into her arms, she conveniently forgot about his
wife. But watching Gabriel stare at the photos of the woman, she had a blinding reminder of why she had told herself to stay away from this man. She started to turn away.

  “I’m selfish.”

  His voice stopped her.

  “You asked weeks ago why I didn’t have photos out, why I wasn’t keeping the memory of my wife alive for the girls. Miranda’s right. I didn’t want to remember.”

  Portia’s heart twisted a little more. “You loved her, and now she’s gone,” she said, her voice coming out a near whisper. “It’s okay to want to avoid the pain.”

  He hesitated. “It’s not that.” He ran his hands over his face. “How am I supposed to know what’s right or wrong? For the girls? They don’t come with an instruction manual.”

  Portia gave him a faint smile. “You just have to keep trying. That’s all they want.”

  He swallowed, nodded at her. “Get the girls, will you? I have an idea.”

  Portia found Miranda lying on her bed, curled on her side, eyes squeezed shut, earbuds in her ears. Portia knocked, then knocked more loudly, but there was no answer. With no help for it, Portia walked through the open door and sat on the bed. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Hey, kiddo.”

  Miranda rolled her eyes. “Who calls people ‘kiddo’?” Her voice rasped a little from all the tears.

  Portia knew Miranda was lashing out because she was hurting. “Your dad wants you and Ariel to go upstairs.”

  “What’s he going to do, lock us in the attic?”

  “Oh, honey, he’s figuring things out as he goes. He’s bound to make some mistakes along the way.”

  The girl snorted. “You think?”

  “He’s trying right now. Give him a chance.”

  “What? You’re telling me that he’s planning to sing Happy Birthday? Dive into the cake?” But Miranda sat up and scooted off the bed.

  Portia didn’t have the faintest idea what Gabriel had in mind, so she just said, “Let’s get Ariel.”

  They walked down the hall. Ariel’s bedroom was empty.

  “Where is she?” Portia asked, frowning.

  Miranda gave her a funny look, walked into the room, and knocked on the closet. “Hey, A, you in there?”