The Gap Year (31 page)

MONDAY, JANUARY 17, 2011

M
y biceps quiver from carrying a thirty-pound box of produce. I crunch across the frozen earth and pause, momentarily blinded by both the cloud of my breath, frozen in the early-morning air, and by the long, shaggy bangs that I forgot to pin back hanging down over my eyes. I rest the heavy box of exotic lettuces, hothouse heritage tomatoes, and high-dollar oranges on the tops of my thighs, catch my breath, and try to flip the damn bangs out of my eyes.

Up ahead is the back of the trailer. The door at the end is open and I can hear the clack of a metal spoon against a metal bowl, the thump of the big cutting board being lowered onto the counter, the murmur of requests, the morning chitchat of a business waking up.

All the trash cans behind the trailer are full, which means that business was booming yesterday. There are more red-and-white Coke cups strewn about than the Styrofoam cups they use for the hot mint tea: a clue that high school customers must have outnumbered the galloping gourmets, those intrepid Tweeters willing to travel for the hot new thing who have continued to create a following for FalaFellows since the opening five months ago.

Aubrey and Tyler also added “Ty-Mo’s” to the business’s name which, somehow, made the strange terrorist food more acceptable, so that all the fans of the biggest football hero Parkhaven ever produced, along with jocks and princesses, past and present, started coming. They joined the emo kids and alternative crowd who are drawn to sample delights from the land of hookahs and hashish. And for the first time in Parkhaven history, those two elements are sitting down and eating mashed chickpeas together.

Aubrey called this morning in a panic because her produce order wasn’t ready when she went to pick it up, and time to get the lunch prep done was running out. It is MLK Day, and that means that a lot of the food bloggers have the day off and have already written that they are making the trek out to “the ’burbs.” So, Aubrey had pleaded, could I please, please, please, please, please bring the order by on my way to work?

Every month that Aubrey has been in business seems to add another “please” to her requests. I had initially been stunned by just one. Five in a row seems like a minor miracle. At Christmas she’d come over and we’d made cookies. Six kinds. The Snicker Doodles had sold surprisingly well. I suggested that we sell chocolate-dipped strawberries at Valentine’s. She loved the idea.

Every week, Tyler drops by and gives me 10 percent of what they made. He and Aubrey rent a garage apartment and spend almost nothing. Tyler has surprised me in many ways. He seems to have no material needs. And he’s able to fix anything. I’ve been tempted to ask them to move in with me but have resisted. I’ve come to look on this as Aubrey’s gap year. One that, it appears, I’m not going to have to pay for.

I heft the box of produce up again, lug it as far as the closest table, and drop it. Tyler can take it from here.

I start to yell for Tyler when the pleasant hum from the trailer stops and Tyler, his voice bristling with sudden anger, explodes, “No! You’re kidding! You think we’d even be in business if I hadn’t put my name out there? You think half of Parkhaven High is coming because of refried bean balls?”

“Wow, that is such a shitty thing to say,” Aubrey snaps back. “What happened to building a dream together? Doing this the way we wanted to do it?”

I consider leaving the box and sneaking away, but the edges of the lettuce are already starting to turn black.

“The way
we
want? Try the way your father wants.”

“What does my father have to do with this?”

“Pretty much everything. You have let him, a guy who ditched you when you were two years old, totally change you.”

“I am not letting my father change me.”

“Okay, whatever you say, but every time you have one of your little meetings with him, you come back with some new grand plan.”

“Tyler, he knows how to start businesses. How to build a customer base. He helped one of the people he counseled start a
chain
of food trailers in L.A. Plus, P.S., he’s my father. We’re catching up on sixteen years.”

I’ve seen how much Martin loves helping his daughter. And, it’s true: All of his advice has been good. He really does know how to build and run a business.

“And that’s fine, Aubs, it really is.”

I try to recall when Aubrey stopped being A.J.

“I totally respect that. He’s a cool guy and all. Getting the foodies to come out. Writing about us. That is cool. I mean, a shitload of work for, I’m not sure, a lot of payoff, but it’s cool.”

“Tyler, every idea he’s given us has worked. It was his idea to put your name out there. Can we talk about this later?”

“ ‘Later’? There is no ‘later’ anymore, now that you’re taking classes three nights a week. Then either doing homework or with your dad the rest of the time.”

“Where is this coming from? You always said you supported me taking classes. One of us has to get some business skills if we ever want to grow this business.”

“Right, and the
biology class
you’re taking is going to help us how?”

“I’m getting prerequisites out of the way. You can’t just waltz into the business courses.”

“What was wrong with us just going out to the sites? We had guaranteed customers. A set menu. A set food order. Easy. Breezy.”

“You’re kidding. Tell me you are not seriously saying that we should be out on some construction site nuking crap food for the tool belts?”

“So this is better? Making bean burritos for hipsters?”

“You said you loved my falafel.”

“ ‘Love’? How is it possible to ‘love’ refried beans?”

“God, condescend much? Tyler, this is what I want to do. I like this. I’m good at it, and people—people who know—recognize that I’m good at it. We’re getting a buzz going. Look, we have got to get back to work. We are never going to be ready for lunch rush.”

Tyler mutters something I can’t hear and, for a second, the breath sticks in my chest.

“No, Tyler, seriously, I mean it, we have got to get back to work. Now!”

“Mmm, I like it when you get all boss-lady on me. You are definitely getting
my
buzz going.”

“Tyler, no! Stop it!”

Aubrey laughs and the tension pressing in on me disappears.

“Ty, no, we can’t.”

“Oh, you know that we can.”

“We’re behind already.”

“Did you just say you want it from behind? Because we can definitely go there.”

“We’re not off in the middle of nowhere anymore at some construction site. Someone might hear us.”

“Then you’re going to have to not scream so much.”

“We’ll have to bleach the counters again.”

“Call me Mr. Clean.”

The trailer door slams shut. I leave the box of produce on a table. The lettuce will survive. I hurry now. I’m late for work.

D
riving to the hospital, I stop at the four-way sign beside Parkhaven High. The marching band was picked to compete in the Grand National Marching Band competition to be held next month in Sarasota. Consequently, Shupe has them all out trooping up and down the frozen field. The white plumes on their tricornered hats bounce and sparkle in the chilly sunshine and, instead of wishing I hadn’t teased Aubrey about the hat, I just remember how happy she was swinging along behind her clarinet, part of that jolly feathered beast.

I drive away slowly, angling my side-view mirror so that I can watch the band. Captured within the silver frame of the mirror, the marchers shrink and motion blurs as I leave them behind. Soon the bright plumes become an indistinct fuzz, like the down of all baby birds. Like the soft, vulnerable fluff of the young that is bound to be shed even if the mama bird frets over the loss of every single gossamer puff.

A
t Parkhaven Medical Center the tall glass doors slide open and a cloud of warmth whooshes out as I step inside. The vast expanse of travertine flooring between the two banks of elevators is congested, and I have to navigate around a middle-aged woman crimping her step to match her mother’s, who is struggling with an aluminum walker. Once free of the crush at the door, I hurry past the information desk, the gift shop, the waiting area. The smell of enchiladas coming from the cafeteria makes me consider ditching the bagel smeared with peanut butter I brought for lunch.

I pass the public areas and veer off onto a hallway that opens into the old part of the hospital. The travertine gives way to beige linoleum. Fluorescent fixtures buzz overhead. I dig for the key to my office. My
new
office. It took two months to talk admin into setting aside what used to be a supply closet so Janis, the other LC, and I could have an office, but in the end we won.

I hang up the big, pillowy jacket that Aubrey rejected and I’ve adopted, delighted to finally have a truly warm jacket, lock my purse in an empty file drawer, and log in on the hospital’s system. I am hunting for the day’s census sheet when Janis bursts in gripping a bakery bag in one hand and holding out a clipboard with the other. “This what you’re looking for?” She is wearing, of course, animal-print scrubs. Cheetah, I think.

I take the clipboard, nod at the bag in her hand. “That looks dangerous.”

“It’s from the short fren in twenty-four twelve.” Janis uses our shorthand for “frenulum,” the bit of skin tethering the tongue to the floor of the mouth. When it’s too short, it can hobble the tongue, making nursing hard.

Janis extracts a chocolate-chip cookie the size of a minipizza from the white bag and breaks it in two. I take half, hold it up, and wonder, “Why do our patients never express gratitude through a nice bowl of edamame? Maybe a perfect cantaloupe?” After the first bite, I answer my own question, “Okay, that’s why. Because love runs on sugar and butter. What have we got?”

We review the census sheets together. Everyone that Janis has already seen that morning is highlighted in blue. Those who still need attention are highlighted in yellow.

Janis rushes through them in her haste to ask, “So?”

“So what?” I echo, knowing exactly what she’s referring to.

“So, last night? Martin? Details?”

Before I have to dodge her question, Janis’s cell rings. She checks the number and groans. “If that boy forgot his homework or lunch or head again, I will scream.” She slides the phone open and murmurs to her nine-year-old son, “Hey, punkin, what’s up?”

I wave the cookie in the general direction of the hospital’s Mother/Baby Unit upstairs, signaling that I’m heading to work. Janis nods, covers the phone, orders me, “Details. Tomorrow. You have to tell me
everything.
”

I nod, pretending that I will, and leave Janis asking her son, “Okay, so if you’re ‘three thousand percent’ certain that put your book report in your backpack, is there a chance you left it on the bus?”

T
he morning after Aubrey’s grand opening five months ago, I woke up refreshed from the first really good night’s sleep I’d gotten since she met Tyler. I walked into the great room and wondered why I had stopped allowing myself to appreciate the glorious light streaming in. I brewed a cup of Earl Grey tea, returned to the room that I now found, indeed, great, sat on the sofa, and watched a Milky Way of dust motes float through the radiance. Each particle was so precise and perfect, it was as if I’d had the prescription in my glasses strengthened.

The celestial stream whirled past and I thought about how I’d stopped drinking coffee. Bobbi Mac had gotten me hooked when I was ten. Just a few tablespoons in the morning with lots of milk and sugar, “to get the heart started.” In Europe, Martin and I had bonded over coffee, me proving to him how inherently sophisticated I was by learning to drink it the way he did, without the three spoons of sugar and half a pitcher of cream that I liked. In Sycamore Heights, coffee became a fetish—arabica, robusta, Jamaican Blue Mountain. I could not have imagined life without coffee any more than I could have imagined life without Martin.

And then, from the instant his sperm seduced my egg, coffee sickened me. One morning I craved it; the very next the smell nauseated me. Coffee became one more thing that Martin and I no longer had in common. In my fifth month, I tried to reclaim that bond and drank a cup of Kona Peaberry. I threw up longer and harder than I had during the morning-sickness months and never repeated the experiment.

Sipping Earl Grey in the great room that morning last August, I thought about Martin, about the life he had denied me, and I waited to be kneecapped by the rage and the sense of betrayal that usually skulked along with the topic. As with coffee, though, my craving for such a dark brew had vanished overnight.

Late that afternoon, Martin took a cab from the Candlewood Suites where he’d taken a long-term rental, stood on my porch, and very solemnly asked me out to dinner.

“How about a walk?” I suggested. “Maybe we can work up to dinner.”

Martin had let out the smallest exhalation. Just enough that I could see that he was sufficiently nervous to be relieved. “A walk would be good.”

We ambled around the Parkhaven reservoir and Martin asked, “Remember coming here? Pushing Aubrey in her stroller? How she used to say ‘dug’ for ‘duck’?”

The answer I would have given him on any day of the past sixteen years would have been a dark, rich house blend of rage, grievance, and sarcasm.
No, there are just
so many
happy family memories to draw on that I lose track
. Or, wounded and accusing, I would have demanded,
What about all the times I was out here alone and she held her arms out to every male over ten and under seventy and said, “Daddy
”? And the walk would have been ruined.

But that day, on what turned out to be the first of many walks, I just said yes, I did remember, and was happy to have someone by my side who also remembered that our daughter used to say “dugs” for “ducks.”

I
step out of the elevator on the fifth floor, the Mother/Baby Unit. Beneath the odors of cleansers and sanitizers, machines and humans, I always catch a whiff of caramel. Though no one else I’ve ever pointed it out to can discern the sweet fragrance, I smell the caramel scent I first noticed on Aubrey’s breath, exhaled on the milky breath of all the nursing infants on this floor.