The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D (17 page)

To say Flour had been an overnight success wouldn’t be true, though some of the reviews had been written as if it were. In the years since, he had been approached about expanding his brand, but he’d declined. Pick what’s going to be your masterpiece, he’d said, and do it well.

He had done it well. But then William ran off to Milan with a man much younger than Max, as well as most of the money in their bank account.

Kate watched Max wipe the butcher-block counter. His arms were thick as logs, but he moved like a person who believed himself to be fragile. He swept the crumbs into a careful pile and then into his palm, cupping the bits like broken glass. After he’d dumped them into the sink, he stood looking into the yard. The thick shrubs behind the bakery ended at a small cliff, and a stony path wound down to the Atlantic. Kate knew it well. The summer after James was born she’d been working at the bakery and strolled out back for a moment of air and kept walking, hungry for wild spaces and loud sounds. Wind rattled the beetlebung trees, and waves broke on the rocks like dishes thrown to the floor. At the bottom of the cliff she sat on a
boulder and choked on heaving breaths she hadn’t felt coming, overcome with the difference between the muggy quiet of her days and the humming community of the bakery—the claustrophobia of her own quiet love, against the connection to something larger.

She followed his gaze out the window. “Let’s take a walk.”

He dismissed the idea with a wave, a place he didn’t want to go. “I was actually heading out when you came,” he said. “Guess who’s in town?”

Kate looked at him blankly. She hadn’t talked to any of their culinary school friends in a while.

“Fiona and Charles,” he said.

“Fiona. No kidding.” She hadn’t seen her in years, since shortly after Fiona and Charles’s wedding.

“They just got in today. I was going to meet them for a drink. Come with me.”

Fiona would take everything over, and Charles—well, Charles was Charles. Though maybe that’s what Max wanted right now, the mindlessness of them.

Kate grinned. “Well, at least he can give you tax advice. Let me check with Chris. He’s expecting me back.”

“They’re always expecting you back.” He untied his apron and pulled it over his head. “Besides, you look like you could use a drink too. No offense, hon, but you don’t look yourself. Did you get a cheap cut again?”

“Thanks a lot.” She put a hand through her unkempt bob, badly in need of a trim. “No. It’s outgrown, but the same.”

Max hit the lights in the kitchen, then turned back and pulled aside the curtain for her to pass through.

“Lose weight?”

“Nope.”

He studied her as she walked by, touched her middle back. “You’re all washed out. You should put on some mascara or something.”

“Yeah, the kids really care about those thick lashes.”

“Don’t you go letting yourself go. You can’t let the turkeys get you down.” Ever a product of the seventies, Max still owned a T-shirt with the Boynton cartoon bird and its trademark blasé stare. It had worn to threads around the neck, but he called it an antique work of post-ironic expression. He called all the outmoded clothes he didn’t want to part with works of post-ironic expression.

“No, indeed,” he said softly, pulling the door closed behind them. “You cannot let the turkeys get you down.”

The old tavern had been on the verge of falling apart for as long as Kate could remember, perched precariously on the edge of the channel. Each time she entered she had the unsettling sense that if too many people sat on the far end of the bar, the whole place would pitch forward and sink.

“Kate! Max said you might be out here on the island.” Fiona waved, her watch a blinding mix of platinum and gems. She had grown her hair long, and yes, wore lipstick. Kate would not have recognized her. “You remember my husband Charles?” she asked. He sat beside her, gelled hair stiff as his button-down shirt.

In culinary school, Fiona had been so rough around the edges that she’d been nicknamed Sarge. She had worn her hair short, military short, and she’d had a freedom in her eyes that said
I couldn’t care less
. A few years after school, Kate heard she’d married a reporter who covered stocks and bonds for a weekly business magazine. Friends who’d attended the wedding had been amused to no end that Sarge had not only married, but had married a business writer, a stuffed shirt who seemed to have no particular brilliance for finance save the coincidence of his name. Imagine, a finance reporter named Charles Schwab. Kate had met up with them once, in the early years. Now they had a child and lived in the Boston suburbs, and Fiona worked at the kitchen of the most uptight French restaurant in the city and painted her toenails pink. Evidence, Kate
supposed, that with enough will, a person could make herself over any way she chose.

They moved through the pleasantries of updates. It was clear from Fiona’s light banter that she did not know Max’s situation. Kate looked away as he gave vague answers to questions about the bakery, plans for the future. During the first pause, Max raised his hand to the bartender. “Two martinis, please,” and he pushed a napkin in front of Kate.

“No, Max, I’ll just have a beer,” Kate said.

“Since when do you drink beer? Have some style, drink like a grown-up.” Kate shrugged. It had been a long time since she’d had a real drink.

“Olive or twist?” he asked.

“Twist.” Even the word felt strange in her mouth, as if it were said by someone else.

“Did I hear you moved to D.C.?” Fiona asked.

“Two years ago. Chris’s company wanted him to work out of the headquarters.”

She nodded. “Where are you working now?” Fiona’s mind had always been a database of restaurants in virtually any city.

“Not really anywhere. A little bit here and there when people call me in, but not regularly. I’ve been home with the kids. For now.”

Fiona smiled as if Kate had said she sold herbs from her window box. “That’s great. It’s a special time when they’re young.”

“You know, Kate, I heard about a catering company starting up in Washington,” Max said. “It’s small, but they’re doing some good stuff. Events at the Smithsonian, the zoo, that sort of thing. A nice way to ease back in.”

Kate nodded. “There are some great options out there.” Catering would be one way to do part-time work. Still, restaurants were what she missed, a sense of place, the feeling of belonging to something larger than yourself. Each day had a rhythm, a coordination rising to a barely bearable chaos. There could be pandemonium
across the room on the line but she rarely minded. It fed her focus. And then it came back down, it always did, and there was regrouping, and the cycle of beginning fresh the next day.

“Wait, I just remembered—did Anthony call you about the restaurant opening in Dupont Circle?” Max asked. “He really wants you.”

“Yes. It sounds amazing.” Kate swirled her finger in her glass, pushed the lemon rind against the rim. “They’re working with Klein & Ashbaugh on design. It’s going to be really nice.”

“It’s gonna take off is what it’s gonna do.” Max lifted his eyebrows at her understatement. “That would be a great place to be.”

“Long hours, though.”

Fiona looked at her, curious. She took a long sip of her wine.

“Fiona, how much time did you take off work after your daughter was born?” Max asked. “Like, two hours?”

Charles shook his head. “If that. I think she left the bread rising at the restaurant and got back from the hospital in time to punch it down.”

Kate laughed and shifted in her chair, looking for a bowl of nuts, popcorn, something to occupy her hands. “Well, before I take on anything, we need to figure out whether we’re staying in Washington. Chris travels a lot, and I actually don’t think it matters much anymore where he lives. We could be going anywhere.” It came out as easily as if it were true.

Max held her eye a moment, his look soft, then changed the subject. “You’re right in the District, aren’t you? Near the zoo?”

“The zoo’s our second home. The kids talk about the pandas like they’re their pets. Tian Tian this, Mei Xiang that …”

“Great city. I worked for a small paper in D.C. for a few years,” Charles said, plucking at his cuffs. “I started up a financial newsletter on the side, a real long shot, but with my name, you know, it really took off.”

He paused to take a sip of his drink and to give her the chance to express her fascination. The bar noise filled the long pause. “Well,” he said finally. “Do you like it there?”

“Sure, I guess. The museums, the weather … everyone loves D.C.” Kate leaned back in her chair with her drink. The Metro tunnels, the frightened commuters. Long slow escalators, impossibly high. “But it’s a company town, no soul. I miss New York.”

“You weren’t
in
New York, honey,” Max said gently. “You were in Connecticut.”

“You were in Connecticut?” Fiona laughed. “Hoo, boy. Watch out, suburbs. I’d hate to get on the wrong side of
you
at a PTA event.”

Kate laughed, but arched her brows, confused. “What do you mean?”

“You, nasty girl. Torturing Jasper Friedling during the exam.”

Kate shook her head, trying to remember.

“You hid his stuff, remember? You moved the whisk and the spatula from where he’d put them and it was making him crazy, up against the clock, his utensils turning up in weird drawers or the fridge. That temper, he was turning
purple
.”

Kate threw back her head and laughed loudly. Heads turned throughout the bar. God, she’d forgotten; fifteen years since culinary school, but it felt like a million. Back then she’d done so much cooking that her chapped hands never healed one day to the next. But she’d loved it; hours would pass pulling together a menu in a way time never had doing anything else.

“Evil woman,” said Max. “Your poor cursed children.”

Kate dipped her head, still laughing softly. “It was evil. But that guy was horrific, such a little Napoleon.”

The camaraderie in school and in restaurants had seemed unique to that world too, the high emotions immediate and true, people candid with one another and saying what needed to be said. Even the pranks had been raw and honest. It seemed like no one did truly
out-there
things anymore—hilarious and blunt, calling someone out when his behavior was too much. Social checks and balances. Everything in her world now was small and subtle, little passive-aggressive digs. She preferred it the other way. At least you knew where you stood with people.

She thought of Elizabeth telling off her old boyfriend Ted when he’d criticized her job, and of their spontaneous breakup. That was the sort of thing Kate herself was known for—acting first and realizing the repercussions later, for better or for worse. There had been something honest and free about Elizabeth in her twenties, a person Kate never would have imagined. But she sensed she was on the cusp of watching it wane. How strange that it should make her sad; she’d never known Elizabeth then, and never would fully know what had been lost.

“I heard Jasper got even worse when he opened his own place,” said Max.

“But did you hear what he’s doing now?” asked Fiona. “He’s giving ten percent of the profits to families affected by the terrorist attacks.”

“Jasper
Friedling
? The man who wouldn’t give anyone change for the coffee machine?” Kate said with a guttural sound of disbelief.

“The father of one of his daughter’s friends worked a kiosk in the World Trade Center. The guy had five kids, and no benefits. Jasper started with them, giving the wife ten percent of a week’s profits. Now he gives to a different family every week.”

Kate held her drink and played with the rim. Her smile faded. She’d read so many of the profiles and could easily envision this man as well. A father at his kiosk. Maybe he’d stayed a moment too long, reluctant to leave his cart—food or flowers, maybe imitation designer handbags. Worried about how he’d pay for five pairs of sneakers if he abandoned his inventory, and so he hadn’t run when he had the chance. She pushed the thought away, didn’t want to add it to the collection of obituaries, the snapshots so jarring in their potent brevity. Reading them and all the other news had proven that the city she missed, the city she and Elizabeth had been shaped by, no longer existed.

“Well, I’ll be. Jasper Friedling, charitable powerhouse,” said Max. “Who knew?”

Fiona pushed at the edges of her napkin with a neat squared
nail. Charles sighed, and reached for a bowl of nuts. No one spoke. When that day was mentioned, this was usually the way.
Did you know anyone who … My brother-in-law worked on the …
Max lifted his glass to catch the bartender’s attention, and turned to Kate. “Another?”

She checked her watch. Six o’clock. “Thanks, but no. I have to get back.” She tried to leave Max money for the drink, but he waved it away.

“Remember,” he said. “Next week. The tarts.”

She headed out into the street and winced at the light, jarring after the dimness of the bar. As she oriented herself there was a loud roar overhead. She flinched and looked up to see a small plane flying low over the harbor, close enough to read its number on the side and see the outline of the pilot’s profile. Surely a plane had never been so low, so loud. It was aimed directly for the bell tower across the street. The drilling whine of its propellers reverberated clear through her eustachian tubes, her sinuses. She put both hands over her head, dropping her purse.