How Sweet It Is (8 page)

“They were out together Saturday at that new Italian restaurant.”

“The Mona Lisa,” I said. Lucas and I ate there often. I loved their portabella mushrooms served with creamy fettuccini. “She’s a wedding planner,” I told my friends. “Maybe he was asking her for tips about our wedding.”

Jeannie moved closer to my bed. “Honey,” she said, “the only tip he was getting was on how to make out with the wedding planner after dinner and before dessert.”

Suddenly, just like that, a cloud appeared in my hospital room. It must have entered from the vent right over the bobbing purple
Get Well
balloon. Lucas and Ella? “But… but she isn’t even a Braves fan!”

Sally looked at me like I had lost my mind, but Jeannie murmured, “I know, I know.”

I wanted to jump out of the bed, pull off the bandages, and run. Run to a place where things were still bright and perfect.

“You’re going to be just fine, honey,” Jeannie said, and this time I let Sally hold my hand as Jeannie stroked my other arm. “You’ll be okay.”

Jeannie should know about these things. She’s been divorced twice. She’s only thirty-two. She’s also prematurely gray.

I waited until they left to let what they had told me sink in.

When the nurse came in at midnight to check my vitals, I was sitting up in the bed crying into the bouquet of white lilies, red carnations, and baby’s breath my parents had brought the day before. The nurse sat on the edge of my bed and rubbed my back with slender fingers. At last she said, “It’s gonna get better.”

She didn’t say a word about the long-stemmed red roses that swam in the toilet bowl. Later that night she sent an aide to fish them out. He wore latex gloves and a funny grin. As he left, I wondered when Lucas had brought the roses for me. Was it before or after he went out with Ella? Did he call the florist and order them at the same time he called the Mona Lisa to make dinner reservations for himself and Ella?

Red roses were delivered to the restaurant where I worked when Lucas and I first got engaged. I felt so excited when I saw them in the tall narrow vase. Chef B grinned like a silly schoolboy. The whole restaurant staff couldn’t stop smiling. I was engaged to Lucas; we were going to be married within a year! Delight spilled out of me that night as I prepared and decorated a chiffon cream cake. Never was there a more joyfully decorated border on a cake. Anyone who looked closely could see that each dot had a smile; every pearl was as exquisite as a wedding bouquet.

I step back into the cabin, close the sliding door behind me, and lock it. I’m from the city, so I believe in locking things with as many deadbolts as possible. My apartment had three locks. Yolanda invested in four.

The moonlight shines on the sofa where my journal lies. I haven’t added a line to it since the morning I traveled here, and that seems like weeks ago. Out of consideration for my former boss, I feel obligated to use this hardbound book. Obligation—how much of what we do is just because of a sense of obligation? I am obligated to teach cooking, thanks to my grandpa. I am obligated to listen to my mother share about her oddly named relatives and her messages of wisdom. As a child, I was obligated to attend state fairs and hand out flyers on ordering a ham from our family’s pig farm.

As the owl continues his or her nighttime noise, I pick up the journal and open to the next blank page. The pages are so crisp, so white, so unoccupied. If I write my thoughts and feelings, the pages will become gray, ugly, damaged. I hear Chef B’s instructions: “She write her heart onto the pages of her journal. She find some peace. Write each day. Date on the page.”

Stretched out on the sofa, I cover myself with the quilt and write:
3 a.m. Grandpa Ernest’s cabin
. I don’t bother with the date because I’m not exactly sure if it’s the 28th or 29th.

Okay, what next? How does one go about writing her heart? I place a hand over my heart as though that gesture will help me know the exact words to jot onto the journal page. After a moment, I am able to write:
Lucas heard about my scars and left.
Placing the cap back on the pen, I stare at the words I’ve just written. They won’t let me leave them alone. Pulling the cap off the pen, I add the lines:
No, he left way before the accident. He was going out with Ella before Christmas of last year. My scars had nothing to do with him cheating on me.

That is all I write. I am afraid that if I write more, I might not be able to go back to sleep. Lucas is a two-timer. Lucas is history. He will never come through the door and apologize. He didn’t want to marry me. He just didn’t know how to break up.

I am halfway to the loft when I come back down the stairs to pick up the journal and add more thoughts. Seated on the edge of the couch, I write one more line:
My only crime is that I loved the wrong person.

I ease into bed and the calling owl disturbs me for a bit longer. Finally either I have tuned him out or he’s moved to a tree farther away. Surprisingly, sleep comes over me, accompanied by a peaceful dream. In the dream, I’m in a parade, complete with billowing banners and helium balloons. The float I’m riding on is not for the homecoming queen, but rather for the girl who found out her fiancé was cheating on her before she married him. The mayor is even there, handing out free cake samples. He congratulates me on learning the truth before it was much too late.

eleven

T
he idea for my cake decorating business came from Jeannie. When I told Jeannie and Sally one night over a dinner of garlic scallops, tomato risotto, cranberry spinach salad, and herb rolls that I had inherited Grandpa’s cabin and was considering a move to Bryson City, they wondered aloud how I could quit my job at Palacio del Rey.

“How will you pay the bills?” Practical Sally wanted to know.

“My aunt said that the utility bills will continue to be paid from some bank account,” I told her.

Sally raised her eyebrows. “Sounds a little mysterious.” Nodding, she said, “I like it.”

“Maybe the neighbor pays them with money he and my grandpa stole together on some venture in the Caribbean.”

Sally’s eyes lit up like they always do when she thinks a topic is fascinating. “Yeah, and the cops are after your neighbor and they come to your grandpa’s cabin to ask you to open a safe that is locked up in the basement.”

We laughed and ate slices of peach pie for dessert. I had tried a new pie recipe, one that used brown sugar and rolled oats in the crust. “Every cook should willing to try the new,” Chef B told us in his basic cooking class. With a crooked smile, he added, “And willing to accept the old might still be best.” Although I like oatmeal and brown sugar, I prefer standard white flour crust for my peach pies.

“All right,” said Sally as she finished her slice. “So the utilities are paid for and there’s no mortgage or rent. What are you going to do for food and clothes and Band-Aids and gas money?” Again, the very practical vet.

“Maybe you could get a job as a pastry chef in the mountains,” suggested Jeannie. “Or,” she added as a smile crossed her lips, “build your own catering business.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Jeannie persevered. “How about a cake decorating business?”

That’s when we all smiled.

I have the brochure’s design on a file on my computer. Jeannie took a picture of my chocolate swirl ice cream cake and I placed that on the cover. The cake is no tiramisu, but it does look regal in the photo.

I wanted to put a picture of the seven-tiered wedding cake I created for Chef B’s sister’s wedding last fall on the cover.

While Jeannie said the cake was “definitely classy,” she wondered if it was too fancy. “People in the mountains,” Jeannie explained, “want a delicious cake that is simple.”

Sally said to make sure I put something in my brochure about working at Palacio del Rey as a pastry chef. She felt that would give me clout. “And the fact that you studied in Atlanta,” she added. “People think of Atlanta as the New York City of the South.”

I thought,
They do?
but didn’t question Sally. When Sally has that I-know-what-I’m-saying look in her eyes and tone in her voice, I know not to question my friend. Her clients’ owners don’t ask, “What do you mean my cat has a hairball?” or “Why are you suggesting that my dog needs eye drops for his red eyes?”

Of course, Jeannie and Sally didn’t really think I’d leave Atlanta to move to the home of a grandfather I rarely saw. They were just trying to go along with my cake business plan to keep my mind off Lucas. When I told them I was moving in April, they acted as though I’d told them I was marrying Elvis.

Sally and I rented a U-Haul, and with the help of three friends from church, we were able to load up my apartment’s furnishings and drive them to my parents’ for storage. Sally and I spent a night on the farm, ate blueberry pancakes with maple syrup and a side of thick bacon strips for breakfast, and then she drove me back to my apartment in Atlanta. As we entered my kitchen crammed with partially packed cardboard boxes, she said in a soft tone, “You don’t have to carry through with this, you know.”

I had taken all my furniture to my parents and was planning to spend my last two nights in Atlanta in my sleeping bag. On the hard floor. I wasn’t going to quit my plan to relocate.

————

Standing in the checkout line at Ingle’s, I suddenly have a hard time believing that the people in this town would care that I’ve studied and worked in Atlanta. I envision most of the locals shrugging their shoulders and saying, “Who cares?” Thank goodness I’ve decided to start out just with cakes and not a full-fledged catering service.

As small as this store is, they still have a rack by the checkout line crammed with glossy women’s magazines, just like any grocery store in the big city. I used to subscribe to
People,
but now I avoid its cover. I look away from the issues of
Glamour
,
Elle, Good Housekeeping,
and
Allure
. I don’t need to see perfect smiles and skin today, or any day.

I keep my eyes on my shopping cart or, as the real Southerners call it, buggy. I stare at what I’ve placed there—the tiny carton of half-and-half, whipping cream, gallon of milk, clear jug of orange juice, blue plastic bag of confectioner’s sugar, head of lettuce, can of jumbo olives, balsamic salad dressing, and two gray cartons of large eggs. A rack of donuts placed by the checkout catches my eye, and my stomach agrees that donuts always make a home cozier. I pick out a bag of Krispy Kreme mini crullers.

When the woman in front of me—dressed in an emerald wool cap that reveals pink puffy curlers secured in her gray hair—starts to complain about not getting to use a coupon, I can’t help but look up from the donut box to see what is going on. However, once I look up, it’s as if the newest issue of
Glamour
is taunting me to take a peek. Lowering my eyes, I place the donuts in the buggy.

“Those bodies are all air brushed,” Sally told me shortly after my accident. “You don’t believe that those celebrities have no moles or laugh lines, do you?”

“Well…”

“Come on, Deena. Everyone has a scar or two. Be realistic. These Hollywood starlets never fell off their bikes or got stitches?” She looked at me and smiled. “Every other day one of them steps up to admit she had plastic surgery. I bet most of what they show off on the covers isn’t real.”

Still, as it is with so much of life, it depends on what others think is real. Other people think celebrities really are just that flawlessly beautiful. And compared to them, I am a train wreck. The scars on my right arm glare at me through my longsleeved shirt. They remind me every day that I am no longer beautiful. I was the homecoming queen in high school and now look at me! People used to say my brown hair and eyes were prettier than Julia Roberts’s. Now I just have a pair of rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. If you look closely, you can even see the fertile Nile River Valley where the scars meet just an inch from my wrist.

“The scars will fade in time.” Dr. Bland’s voice usually enters my thoughts when I get on this well-worn path called Feeling Sorry for Myself.

The cashier, a young girl with several moles dotting her arms, is trying to help the woman in curlers. “That coupon expired last month,” she says sympathetically.

The woman raises both hands. “Then that means I can’t buy the dog food?”

“Well, you can buy it,” the cashier tells her. “You just can’t use the coupon.”

The woman lowers her hands, shakes her head. “I have been shopping at this store all my life!” she blurts out and then takes a breath. “I can’t believe you won’t let me use the coupon!”

“Ma’am, it’s expired.”

“What will Sinatra do?” She lovingly strokes the twenty-two-pound bag of Kibbles’n Bits. “What will he do? I can’t bear it. I can’t.”

I am assuming Sinatra is her canine.

“He had surgery last week. This may be the last dog food I get to buy him,” she says, turning to me.

I don’t know what to say. I keep my mouth shut, afraid that instead of showing empathy I’ll shout out “I’m allergic to dogs!”

The cashier notes the line forming behind me. A man in a Hurricanes cap clears his throat; another customer rattles change in his pocket. The cashier asks, “Ma’am, what are you going to do?”