The Meryl Streep Movie Club

by Mia March

  Perhaps that was why Kat had never left. Maybe Kat did want to open her own bakery—maybe she already had the money saved up. But that would mean leaving Lolly and the inn. And perhaps now, given her mother’s diagnosis, she felt she’d have to stay forever.

  Aha—June saw Kat stiffen as Pierce Brosnan told Meryl Streep that her daughter was only getting married and settling down on the island because it was unthinkable for her to leave Meryl Streep there on her own. Kat was biting her lip and poking at a cupcake, still in its wrapper. June glanced over at Lolly, who was laughing at something Pearl had whispered in her ear.

  “I love this song!” Isabel said when they started singing “S.O.S.” Isabel started singing low along with it, and Lolly surprised everyone by singing along too, making everyone clap—well, except for the elderly sisters-in-law, who shushed her. June was humming along, but her mood changed when Amanda Seyfried said something about how it “sucked” not to know who your father was. She had no father; now she had three.

  “It’s a birthright for God’s sake,” Frances Mayweather shouted.

  Isabel shot the woman a grimace. “I like what the fiancé just said to Amanda Seyfried. That ‘finding herself’ won’t come from finding her father. It’ll come from finding out who she is.”

  “I think he’s right about that,” Lolly whispered back.

  Frances Mayweather munched her popcorn loudly, perhaps in protest. She made a humph sound as Amanda Seyfried happily announced she didn’t need to know who her father was; all three men were her father. And instead of marrying, the young couple were finally breaking free of their island and seeing the world.

  But the planned wedding wasn’t going to waste. Because Meryl was marrying Pierce Brosnan in their place. They made one gorgeous couple.

  “Now that’s a happy ending,” June said. “She ends up with her first love. Makes me think there’s hope for me.” She laughed, though she was dead serious.

  “Cavorting with three different men,” Frances said, taking a bite of her cupcake. “Not knowing the father of your own child—that’s what’s celebrated in this movie? Frankly, I find it appalling.”

  “Oh, Francy, please. It’s a movie,” the other one said.

  Lolly sipped her iced tea and put the glass down a bit forcefully, June noticed. “Well, I like how you get the perspective of the child involved. And she fared quite well without knowing her father. Meryl Streep’s character clearly raised her very well on her own.”

  Thank you, Lolly.

  “Still, in my day,” Frances said, “you didn’t sleep with a man unless he was your husband. So you knew who your child’s father was. These days, women are so desperate for a man’s attention that they give themselves away. And then a poor kid is born and gets stuck without a father.”

  June almost choked on her iced tea.

  “The daughter seemed perfectly well adjusted to me,” Kat said, teeth gritted. June had a feeling that if Frances Mayweather wasn’t seventysomething years old, Kat would give it to her good.

  “So well-adjusted that she got engaged at twenty because, growing up with that hippie-dippy mother, she needed a man’s guiding hand,” Frances countered.

  “Hardly,” Lolly said, as politely as she could. The woman was her guest, after all. “Amanda Seyfried’s character got engaged because she fell in love. And when you’re that in love, you celebrate it.”

  Thank you again, Aunt Lolly, June sent telepathically again. Huh. She liked this new, supportive Lolly Weller. She just hated what might be underlying it.

  Frances Mayweather snorted. “She’s twenty. She knows nothing of love. I married at thirty, relatively late, I’ll grant you, but I loved my Paul, Lena’s brother, God rest his soul, because he was a good man, a good provider, and had manners. He worked for IBM for forty-one years. Rose every time I entered or left a room. I knew what love was.”

  “I fell in love with a guy at twenty-one,” June said, staring at her cupcake, which she’d lost all appetite for. “He also had manners. I fell in love with him in an hour. Sometimes you just know.”

  Frances stared down her pointy nose at her. “Dear, you can’t fall in love in an hour. That’s called romance. Lust. Men will go to bed with anyone they find attractive and new. It’s what keeps men going to prostitutes. All these politicians getting caught with high-priced call girls? That’s what it’s about. It’s hardly love. It’s why their wives don’t leave them, either. They know the difference.”

  This time June did choke on her iced tea.

  Isabel stood up, her gold bangles clinking. “You know what I think? I think there are a million different reasons for why people do what they do when they do them. And judging others when you don’t know a thing about their lives or stories or situation is just wrong.”

  “Said by a fancy-dressed gal without a worry in her life,” Frances muttered to her sister-in-law, who clearly was the henpecked listener of the traveling pair.

  “Actually, I just found out weeks ago my husband was having an affair,” Isabel said, hands on her hips. “I caught him in bed with another woman.”

  “All of this airing of dirty laundry is inappropriate,” Frances said, standing up. “We’ll be checking out a day early tomorrow. And I expect not to be charged a fee.”

  “Oh, no,” Lolly said, crossing her arms over her chest. “We’ll be glad to see you go.”

  Frances’s beady eyes widened as much as they could, then she grabbed her sister-in-law’s arm and led her out of the room. “I still expect my special-ordered breakfast at seven forty-five. Poached eggs on lightly toasted wheat bread and a fruit salad. Same for Lena, but the toast doesn’t have to be light.”

  “Good night,” Lolly said, rolling her eyes as the pair shuffled out and up the stairs.

  Everyone was staring in awed shock at Lolly.

  “Good for you, Mom,” Kat said, high-fiving Lolly, who seemed quite pleased at the praise. But then Kat’s expression changed, and June had a feeling she knew what was bothering Kat. The same thing that had been bothering June a few minutes ago.

  Lolly had uncharacteristically told a guest to shove it, not in those words of course, because she was likely on last hurrahs.

  “Don’t listen to that old witch, June,” Pearl said—also uncharacteristically. “If you and John had something special between you, even after an hour, that’s all you need to know.”

  June plunked her lemon wedge off the rim of her glass and watched it plop in the tea. “Thanks, Pearl. But she’s right, though, in a way. It isn’t fair that Charlie has never known his dad. Because of a choice I made.”

  “June Jennifer Nash,” Isabel said, “stop that right now. Circumstance led to Charlie not knowing his father.”

  June was so surprised at Isabel’s using June’s full name the way their mother used to when she wanted her full attention, at the way her sister was sticking up for her, that she just squeezed Isabel’s hand and mouthed, Thank you.

  Maybe her story with John would end the same way it had for Meryl and Pierce Brosnan. Separated by circumstance and finding their way to each other. It was possible. Last week June had read a newspaper article about a couple who’d been separated by World War II, only to reunite after divorces and widowhood forty-two years later.

  “If we did have something special,” June said, “if I was more than just a girl he found ‘attractive and new,’ then why did he leave me like that?” Tears stung her eyes. “Why did he make me believe in all that beautiful stuff, and then just disappear like it hadn’t meant anything, hadn’t mattered?”

  Because it had mattered to her. It had mattered in so many ways. And the most important one was Charlie.

  Lolly sat down beside June and pulled her into a hug. “He missed out on a great person.”

  June was so touched that she couldn’t speak for a moment.
“Thanks, Aunt Lolly,” she finally whispered. She couldn’t remember her aunt saying anything like that seven years ago. She leaned her head back against the sofa. “I’ve always thought he’d seek me out. Wonder about me, where I was, and come find me. And I’m easy to find. Even back then, I stayed at school for two months after I found out I was pregnant. And I even left a note for my file to say that if anyone wanted to get in touch with me, they could reach me at my aunt’s inn. I left an e-mail address, phone, everything. I was an idiot like Frances Mayweather, or whatever her name is, said.”

  “Ignore that shrew,” Isabel told her. “You’ll encounter people like that your whole life. You have to brush them off. Why should you care what a stranger thinks of you, anyway?”

  “Good point,” June said. “I beat myself up enough over it anyway. Who needs mean old ladies?”

  Isabel gave a firm nod of her head. “That’s right. I’m sorry for what you went through, June. Sorry that John hurt you. Sorry that he missed out on Charlie.”

  June glanced at Isabel and could see that her sister seemed to mean it. “I can’t tell you all how much this means to me. You all being supportive.”

  “We have your back,” Kat said. “Definitely.”

  June did feel stronger, sitting here among these women. Her sister, who suddenly felt like a sister. Her aunt, who seemed motherly. Her cousin, who was beginning to be a true friend. She took a good, cleansing breath and felt very, very grateful. And because she was feeling grateful, she sent out a wish to the universe that somewhere tonight Marley, with her secret and her book, had someone to talk to also.

  Chapter 9

  Kat

  Early Saturday morning, after Kat scrubbed the bathroom on the top floor (her least favorite task) and pulled off her yellow rubber gloves, she took a long, hot shower and headed to the kitchen to bake the muffins (six dozen—cranberry, blueberry, chocolate chip, and corn) and scones (four dozen mixed berry, and white chocolate and raspberry) for her clients around the harbor. Even after all that scrubbing, a few hours of baking would be as good as a restorative nap. The feel of flour sifting through her fingers, of dough, warm and pliant and sweet-smelling in her hands, of chocolate chips and fruit, always lifted her heart in the way movies did for her aunt. The way playing with the stray dog Isabel had taken in did for her cousin. And the way June looked when her son sat on her lap at meals, unable to get close enough to her.

  Kat checked her production schedule and realized she also had a child’s birthday cake (train tracks with choo-choos for three-year-old Max) due for a 2:00 p.m. delivery. As she set out her big silver mixing bowls and reached for the sack of flour, Kat saw she was short. Enough for the cake, but way too short for the dozens of muffins and scones she needed to make this morning. She’d been a bit scattered lately, she knew. Between her mother and Oliver and her cousins and the holiday weekend, she’d forgotten to add flour to her list. And chocolate chips, she saw.

  She got her bike from the shed and took the long route to the market, to avoid Oliver’s office. After the discussion of Mamma Mia! last night, she’d called Oliver to say she wouldn’t be coming over; it had been late and she was exhausted, plus she had a full day of baking ahead. He’d asked her straight out if she was avoiding him; she’d barely had time for him all week—and they had something pretty spectacular to celebrate, to talk about, unless she’d forgotten all about that. Hardly, she’d told him. As if she could.

  She was avoiding him, she supposed, but she hadn’t admitted it. She just wanted—needed—some time to herself to figure out how she truly felt. But how could she say that to Oliver without hurting him even more? He’d told her to get a piece of paper and a pen, that he’d scoped out three more potential storefronts for her bakery and had addresses and leasing information for her, and Kat reminded him she wasn’t ready for that, which led to a bit of an argument about foot-dragging.

  “Why am I arguing with you about my own business?” she’d snapped. There was dead silence, which meant she’d offended him. “I mean my bakery business. I don’t want to be pushed, Oliver.”

  “I’m not pushing, Kat. I’m helping.”

  She’d almost wished he’d been over last night, watching Mamma Mia! with them, so that he could see the young couple had chosen not to get married on their wedding day, after all. They were still together, but were giving each other time to grow up, as individuals and as a couple.

  Was that what she wanted? Needed? More time?

  She’d felt eyes on her during Mamma Mia! Her cousins’. And worse, her mother’s. If Lolly Weller had wondered if Kat, like Amanda Seyfried, had always felt she needed to stay in Boothbay Harbor, needed to stay at the inn, because her mother needed her, Lolly hadn’t come out and asked. She wouldn’t; it wasn’t her way. Lolly took people at their word. At their actions, really. If Kat had never left Boothbay Harbor, it was because she didn’t want to.

  Sometimes she wished her mother were one of those nosy, prying busybodies. Wished she’d ask the question. Probe for possible truths. Kat had been raised to say what she meant, but so much went unsaid. Surely her mother had to know that.

  Then again, her mother was feeling like hell. Tired. Nauseated on and off. Losing her hair. If Kat had something to say, if she wanted her mother to know something, she’d have to say it and not expect her mother to be a mind reader. A heart reader.

  Kat swerved her bike to avoid a gray cat that darted across the street, her heart skipping a beat when she neared the little storefront on Violet Place with its FOR LEASE sign in the picture window. Only four businesses were on the side street, a cobbler, a masseuse who specialized in Reiki and reading auras, and a law office. But there were beautiful trees and big planters of impatiens, and each shop had an old-fashioned, sweet quality to it, as the awnings had to be similar, based on an old ordinance. Even the law office looked inviting. She could imagine Kat’s Cakes & Confections in that space.

  She got off her bike and leaned it against a streetlamp, then peered into the vacant shop. It was small; there would be just enough room for a counter and display case, but the back room, visible through a gorgeous exposed-brick archway, was large enough for a comfortable working kitchen. She liked that the long wall of the shop was all brick and the others a pale apricot, the floors a warm tile. She envisioned Kat’s Cakes & Confections painted across the huge window.

  Oliver had pointed out the empty shop—months ago. From the moment they’d started dating six months ago he’d been encouraging her to open her bakery, assuring her he’d lend her start-up costs, that he knew she’d be a success. But start-up money wasn’t what was holding her back; she was close to having the ideal figure she’d gotten from the Start Your Local Business seminar she’d attended last summer. She was holding back and wasn’t sure why. Maybe because opening the bakery would take her away from the inn—especially now when her mother did need her. Kat wasn’t clinging to that as a reason to stay; she couldn’t leave Lolly now even if she wanted to.

  Maybe one day, she thought with one last look at the storefront. Just not now. She got back on her bike and rode to the grocery store. She was heading back, the flour and chocolate chips in the bike’s basket, when she saw Dr. Viola, her mother’s oncology resident, lying out on a pier beside an old lobster boat. Matteo Viola. Such a beautiful name. He wore aviator sunglasses, but she was sure it was him; his hair, dark and wavy and slightly long, especially for a doctor, was unmistakable. As were his green scrub pants, rolled up to his knees, his olive skin, and the hard lines of his long, tall body. His bare chest was a revelation, though. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. He lay at the end of the pier, his head on a backpack, one knee up, reading a book.

  She walked up behind him and read the title of the book. Handbook of Evidence-Based Radiation Oncology. “Light beach read?” she asked with a smile.

  He sat up and turned around, pushing the sunglasses up on hi
s head. “Oh, hey. Kat Weller, right?”

  She was too pleased that he remembered her name.

  He glanced at her bike, at the ten-pound bag of flour in the basket. “That’s quite a lot of flour.”

  “All out. Not good for a baker. I make lots of extras just because it calms me. My family lucks out on those sessions. Yesterday I baked four pies. Even the sulking teenage guest at my mother’s inn smiled.”

  He did too. “I’ve been the beneficiary of those kinds of pies and cakes my entire life. My parents own a bakery in town, did you know that? The Italian Bakery on Townsend, next to the flower shop.”

  She gasped. Alonzo and Francesca—of course. She realized she’d never known their last names because they were on a first-name basis with everyone. Warm and friendly and always handing out cookies to the kids. Sometimes you’d open your box of cookies from the Italian Bakery and find a decadent cannoli slipped in. They specialized in breads and Italian pastries. No one bought bread from anyone else. Even her nephew, Charlie, had been salivating at the window over the cannoli.

  “I had no idea Alonzo and Francesca were your parents. I love their place. Sometimes I buy from there just to take the incredible pastries home and re-create the magic. I’ve never had an éclair like from the Italian Bakery.”

  “So you’re a baker too? What’s your specialty?”

  “I started my own baking business out of the Three Captains’ Inn, where I live. Kat’s Cakes and Confections, I call it. I bake for the inn, but I specialize in wedding cakes and do cakes and cupcakes of all kinds. And I’m getting kind of famous for my muffins too.”