The Blue Bistro (14 page)

Adrienne went to Camp Hideaway for six weeks, and when Adrienne looked back on her life, she could say that she went to Camp Hideaway as one kind of person and left as another. Her first day at camp was up and down. The cabin was musty, her top bunk stared right into the cobwebby rafters, her cabin mates were all scrawny and knew nothing about puberty, the bathhouse smelled like a chemical toilet, the water at the fountain tasted like rust, and the dining hall served stale potato chips. However, things improved during taps, the flag lowering, and the campfire where one very cute male counselor played the guitar. There was the promise of swimming the next day, and canoeing and a scavenger hunt. After lights out, in the dark musty cabin, where some of her cabin mates were actually
crying,
Adrienne started telling lies. She told the twelve girls she had just met that she had been sent to camp because her brother was dying. Maybe she had meant to say “mother,” but she didn’t. She said, very distinctly, “brother,” and the girls were hooked. Adrienne felt bad almost immediately and wished that she could retract the claim or amend it, but there was no way to do so without being labeled a fake, a liar, a person to be gossiped about for the next six weeks. She told herself it wasn’t a complete lie because Adrienne had had a brother once upon a time—her mother had delivered
a stillborn baby three years before Adrienne, a baby named Jonathan. Adrienne had wondered for years about Jonathan and what he had looked like and whether or not he was technically her brother if he had died before she was even born. She wondered why Jonathan’s name hadn’t been on her mother’s tablet with the words “Unconditional love.” When the girls in her cabin asked her what her dying brother’s name was, she told them, and saying it out loud had made him seem real.

On the last night of camp, Adrienne confessed the truth to Pammy Ipp. By this time, Adrienne and Pammy were such good friends that Adrienne wanted to set the record straight: It wasn’t her brother who was dying, in fact, she had no brother. It was her mother who was dying.

Pammy Ipp had looked nonplussed. “Why didn’t you just tell us that in the first place?” she said.

When Adrienne walked into her mother’s hospital room upon her return home, she gagged. All of Rosalie’s hair was gone; she looked like a health class skeleton, a space alien. The worst thing was that Rosalie seemed to know how hideous she looked and she told Adrienne that she didn’t have to visit the hospital again if she didn’t want to. Didn’t have to visit her own sick mother!

Adrienne went home and cried. She was plagued by confusion and guilt. Why had she lied to her camp friends? Why had she bothered telling Pammy Ipp the truth at the last minute? Pammy hadn’t said a proper good-bye that final morning and Adrienne had seen her whispering with the other girls. Telling them, probably. Adrienne had lied and her mother was getting worse, not better, and Adrienne felt responsible.

She begged her father to take her to the hospital every day. Rosalie wore head scarves or an old Phillies baseball cap. She and Adrienne drank Pepsi and watched
General Hospital
and they talked about Adrienne’s friends at school. They did not talk about death, or even love, until the very end. Rosalie made it clear that the worst thing about dying
would be leaving Adrienne behind without a mother. Adrienne wanted to ask her mother about the tablet she had found, she wanted to ask about Jonathan, and most of all, she wanted to confess to the insidious lies of the summer, but she didn’t want to upset her mother or make her sicker. And then, the night before Adrienne was supposed to start seventh grade, Rosalie fell into a coma and died.

It was at the reception following the funeral that Adrienne decided to hate Mavis. Mavis called the school to say Adrienne wouldn’t be starting for two weeks. Mavis made the tea sandwiches and her mother’s favorite asparagus roll-ups; Mavis kept her arm around Adrienne’s shoulders and steered her toward this person and that person who wanted to express their condolences. In the days following, Mavis prodded Adrienne to write thank-you notes for flowers and food. Despite these things, or perhaps because of these things, Mavis became the enemy. Adrienne was relieved—happy, even—when, a few weeks later, her father told her they were moving to Maine. Adrienne wanted to leave. The town where she lived had become a minefield—here was the road where Rosalie once got a speeding ticket, here was the expressway that led to the hospital, here was the cemetery where Rosalie was now buried. Adrienne wanted to leave her friends who barely understood what had happened and her teachers who fully understood and treated Adrienne so gingerly it was as though she was the one with the disease. But most of all, Adrienne wanted to leave Mavis.

They sold their house and moved to Maine at the beginning of November. By Christmas, Adrienne’s father still hadn’t hired a hygienist. He was doing every single cleaning himself and it was too much. Finally, he hired a young girl named Curry Jones who had just finished her hygiene courses. Because she was brand-new, Dr. Don figured he could train her to work just like Mavis. Curry Jones was a pretty girl with a permanent scowl. During every cleaning, she dug the probe into the patient’s soft pink gums until blood sprang to the surface. Don fired her after two weeks.

He called Mavis in Philadelphia, he helped her find a school that would take Graham, and she relocated. The first thing she said to Adrienne upon arriving in the new office was, “I couldn’t stand to think of your father working with that
sadist.
” That, Adrienne later realized, was probably when the affair started, less than six months after Rosalie’s death. Adrienne was thirteen and the twins were eight. Adrienne was called on time and time again to babysit for them while her father and Mavis worked late. Adrienne had actually learned the alphabet in sign language.

Mavis followed them three years later to Iowa and eighteen months after that to Louisville, Kentucky. Dr. Don was a good dentist and he was respected and well-loved in each of his practices, but he didn’t have staying power. Before this last move, to the eastern shore, he tried to explain it to Adrienne over the phone. He couldn’t bear to have any place become his home.

“My home was with Rosalie,” he said. One thing Adrienne felt glad about was that even though Don and Mavis had now been together longer than Don and Rosalie, Don did not refer to Mavis as his home. He still loved Adrienne’s mother; he would always love her.

Adrienne didn’t fault her father for his peripatetic nature; since graduating from high school, Adrienne hadn’t stayed anywhere for more than two years. She couldn’t count the number of times she had been asked, “Where’s your home?” And when she couldn’t provide an answer, the well-intentioned soul might ask, “Where does your mother live?” Even at twenty-eight years old, home was where her mother lived. Everywhere. Nowhere.

Adrienne was still in her pajamas, reading and rereading the e-mail from her father and worrying prematurely about a visit from him and Mavis, when the phone rang. Adrienne had heard the growl of the espresso machine a few minutes earlier, and so she knew Caren—and probably Duncan—were awake. The ringing stopped and Caren tapped on the
door with her fingernails. She cracked the door and handed in the phone. “It’s for you,” she said. “It’s Thatch.”

Adrienne stared at the phone. She had yet to tell Thatcher the truth about her mother. She wanted to tell him but with all that was happening at the restaurant, there was never a good time. He was going to think she was a mental case.

“Hello?” she said.

“Can you come in?” Thatcher asked. “I know it’s short notice, but I have reconfirmation calls from ten to noon and I forgot I’m supposed to meet with my priest.”

Adrienne might have laughed, but a few nights earlier, a busy Saturday night, Thatcher and Fiona had both been an hour late because they attended five o’clock mass at St. Mary’s. His meeting with a priest seemed to follow in this vein.

“I was there until two last night,” she said. “And I was hoping to go to the beach today.”

“I’ll pay you,” Thatcher said.

“Obviously.”

“I’ll have Fee make you lunch.”

Adrienne smiled into the phone, thinking: teeth, clothes, her ten-speed bike. “I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

According to her sports watch, it only took her twelve minutes to make it to the fork in the road, but that wasn’t fast enough. She saw Thatcher driving toward her in his silver pickup on his way into town.

“Good, you’re here,” he said, though she was still three hundred yards from the restaurant. “I left the book open for you with a list of people to call to reconfirm. It’s easy. Just remind them of their time and the number in their party and note any changes, any special requests. Birthdays, that kind of thing. Okay?”

Adrienne was dying to ask him why he was going to see a priest. “What if someone calls for a reservation?”

“Write down the name and number and I’ll call back after twelve.”

Adrienne saluted and Thatcher drove away.

Adrienne pedaled toward the Bistro. It was another glorious day—bright sunshine, crisp, clean sea air. She had worn her bikini under her clothes; after Thatcher returned, she was going to lie on the beach in front of the restaurant.

Adrienne had expected the restaurant to be deserted but there were five cars and a big Sid Wainer truck in the parking lot. The delivery truck. Adrienne’s heart trilled at the thought of JZ, whom she hadn’t seen since the first night of bar. A second later she caught a glimpse of him from the back, in uniform, engaged in a heated conversation. Adrienne stopped her bike behind the car she knew to be Fiona’s—a navy blue Range Rover with tinted windows. Though she heard JZ’s voice, she couldn’t make out what he was saying. The back of his delivery truck was open, and in its dim interior she spied crates of lemons and limes, long braids of garlic, cartons of eggs, and a wooden box stamped
HAAS AVOCADO—CALIFORNIA
. Adrienne dismounted her bike and walked it closer to the front door. As she did, she heard one sentence very clearly. “I love you so much it’s making me weak.”

And then she heard someone answer. “It’s not
enough,
JZ. It will never be enough.”

Adrienne knew it was Fiona—of course, it was Fiona—but she had to get a visual. She peeked around the next closest car, Mario’s red Durango. From there, she could see them: JZ in his olive drab pants and white uniform shirt, and Fiona in cut-off jean shorts, a pale pink tank top, and pink leather clogs. Both of them looked anguished, close to tears. And then Fiona started to cough, a deep wracking cough that sounded like she was trying to dislodge a piece of concrete from her lungs. It caused her to bend at the waist, one hand bracing her knee, one hand covering her mouth. JZ picked her up under her arms and pressed her tiny body against his. Fiona’s clogs dropped from her feet. Adrienne couldn’t tear her eyes away—she could sense Fiona’s lightness and JZ’s strength, their mutual sadness and rage—God, how long had it been since she felt that way about someone? Ever? Fiona continued to cough, her face hidden in JZ’s shirt.

Adrienne leaned her bike against the geranium-filled dory and proceeded inside. It was, quite possibly, the most heartbreaking embrace she had ever seen.

The Bistro looked different during the day. It seemed tired and exposed, like a lady of the evening roused from sleep the next morning without her makeup. The tables were bare and the white wicker chairs had been flipped upside down on top of them so that the cleaning crew could do the floors. But the cleaning crew hadn’t arrived yet, and the floor was covered with dropped food and sticky puddles.

Since she knew Fiona wasn’t in the kitchen, Adrienne poked her head in. Half the crew was at work prepping. Joe was making the mustard in a twelve-quart stockpot. Adrienne watched him for a minute, in awe of the sheer volume of ingredients: a pound of dry mustard, five cups of vinegar, eight cups of sugar, a whole pound of butter, and a dozen eggs. Joe added sixteen grinds of white pepper from a pepper mill that was longer than his arm. Adrienne blew Joe a kiss, then she poked her head around the corner into pastry.

Mario was rolling out dough. She watched him flour the marble counter and work a huge mass of dough with his Walkman on.

When he saw her, he removed his headphones. “What are you doing here?”

“Working,” she said. “What are you making?”

“Pies,” he said. He checked his watch and wiped his brow on his shoulder. “And I have two kinds of ice cream to make. And a batch of marshmallows. And lemon curd. And I have pineapple to roast. And the rolls, but I save those for last.”

“You’re in the weeds, then?” she asked.

“Never me, baby,” he said.

Adrienne wanted to ask him about Fiona and JZ, but she was afraid that either he wouldn’t tell her what she wanted to know or else he would tell Fiona that she’d asked. So instead, Adrienne said, “How’s Delilah?” (It came as no surprise to find out that, after the night of the harem pants and finger cymbals, Mario and Delilah were having a fling.)

“Oh, honey,” he said. He cut twenty perfect rounds out of the dough and draped them into doll-sized pie pans.

“What?” Adrienne said.

“You want me to tell you about the sex?”

“No,” Adrienne said.

“Then what did you ask about Delilah for?”

She was just making conversation. Anything so she could stay and watch Mario work. He moved the pie dough into the freezer and set a timer. Then he began the ice cream. He took a carton of sixty eggs from the walk-in and proceeded to separate the yolks from the whites by sifting the whites through his fingers.

“Some people think sugar is the key to desserts,” Mario said. “But I am here to tell you that if you want a good dessert, you have to start with a fresh egg.” He held out his palm, displaying a whole, perfect, bright orange yolk, which he slipped into his Hobart mixer.

“What do you do with the whites?” Adrienne asked. “Throw them away?”

“I use them in the marshmallows,” he said. “Have you ever tasted one of my marshmallows?”

She shook her head.