Whole Latte Life (31 page)
Rachel whisks an egg at the counter. “Yes.”
“Nice. All you’ll have to do is reheat this. More time for girl talk that way, which is the point, right?” She slices a meatball into thin strips. “Well say hi to Ashley for me.”
Rachel sits at the table and peels the lid from her drink. “Thanks for the smoothie.”
“Sure.” Sara Beth works on breaking up a meatball strip with a fork.
“So what’s up?” Rachel watches her slice. “Was there something you wanted?”
“Actually, yes.” She pushes the crumbled meatballs aside and reaches for a sausage. “I wanted to thank you for what you did.”
“For what I did?” Rachel cups her smoothie in front of her.
She pulls the folded newspaper from her bag, setting the photograph in front of Rachel. “For this.”
Rachel looks at the couple dancing. “It’s a nice picture of the two of you.” She takes a moment longer before turning the paper back, then goes to the refrigerator and pulls out fresh parsley, a tub of ricotta cheese and shredded mozzarella. Cradling it all in her arm, she piles on the whisked egg shimmying in the bowl. Her other hand grabs a large bowl before setting it all on the table.
“It’s more than a nice picture,” Sara Beth insists. “You captured something between us.” She points to the picture, tapping it lightly. “This was the night Tom found out about the carriage house, and boy did we have an argument about it. What you see here is what got us through that evening.” She pauses. “I can see, in what you captured, that he won’t walk out on me.”
Rachel reaches for the plate of sausages and meatballs and knives them into the large bowl of sauce she made the day before. “Here. Stir.” She slides the sauce bowl over. “Walk out on you?”
Sara Beth slowly stirs. “Well. Yes. All this stuff I’m doing, and sorry to say, that I
did
, isn’t just about me. I’m trying to fix things with others too.” Rachel stands and pulls a glass lasagna pan from the cabinet. After greasing it lightly, she sits again and spreads a cup of the meat sauce in the bottom. “With Tom. And now with you, too.” She pauses. “Are you working for the paper?”
Rachel lays lasagna noodles in the pan. “Freelancing for the summer, something to keep me busy. You were part of an assignment.” She spreads a ladle of sauce over the lasagna.
“Oh!” Sara starts refolding the newspaper. “So you took pictures of the concert?”
Rachel layers the cheese mixture on the noodles. “I shot a bunch but I never know which pictures they’ll use.”
“I had no idea.” Still. There is something in that picture, in the manner in which Rachel composed it, framed it, backlit it. It looks like a personal written invitation that drew her here today.
Dear Sara Beth. Please come. Time: 2PM Place: Rachel’s Kitchen. Coffee will be served.
And it worked. She came right away when she saw that photo.
“When did this happen?” Sara Beth asks.
Rachel walks to the refrigerator. “The concert was my first assignment.” She sets a chunk of parmesan on the table along with a silver metal cheese grater. “The editor must have liked that shot.”
“I thought maybe you took it with a personal intention in mind. You know, when you saw Tom and I dancing, like you made it some sort of gesture on your part. That we’re still friends?” She sits still as a mannequin, her legs crossed, her long gauzy skirt draped in folds. She doesn’t dare move in case she misses a gesture, expression, a tip of her head that will end all this
dreaded
formality.
Rachel finishes with the last of the noodles and spreads the remaining sauce on top. She wipes her forehead with the back of her hand. “There were aesthetic lines in your dancing. You two had a way about you that made for a good shot.”
“Huh.” With her smoothie cupped in front of her on the pine and tiled table, the lasagna mess scattered around the kitchen, flowers and fun music thrown in the mix, she feels the cruelty of the room. This kitchen is behind the velvet ropes of a museum now.
Look. Don’t touch.
It’s a painting by one of the masters, out of her reach. The function of this room, this art, is necessary to her life. But the comfort of all its goodness is roped off somehow.
“Rach?” Rachel stands and sets the oven temperature. “Could it be? You know, a starting point?”
Before she can respond, Aimee and Sharon walk in through the back door carrying tomatoes from Rachel’s garden.
“Sara Beth!” Aimee says. She sets the tomatoes carefully on the counter and bends to give her a hug. “It’s so nice to see you!”
“Thanks, Aimee. You too. I didn’t realize Rachel had company.” She twists around to greet Sharon behind her. “How are you, Sharon?”
“Oh great. Are you walking with us today? We’re doing three miles now.”
“Walking?” She reaches for the cheese grater and notices that Rachel wears her good sneakers, sport socks, shorts and a sport tank. Power walk time with the girlfriends.
“We convinced Rach to walk after the lasagna bakes, and to try out our new wrist weights.”
“We’re headed over to my shop,” Aimee says. “I bought a couple of gorgeous gowns from eBay, and gosh, you’d love them, they’re right up your antique alley. Want to come see?”
“Thanks guys, but the kids are home alone.” It feels like too much, the way her friends’ lives go on all around her. Rachel headed to New York, Aimee selling beautiful vintage gowns to the town’s brides. Weddings go on, life goes on. Lately it feels like everyone’s life goes on around her, around and around, making her dizzy standing in one place, stuck in a plan. She picks up her newspaper and beaded bag. “Maybe next time?” she asks Rachel.
“Sure. I’ll walk you out.” She wipes her hands on a dishtowel.
Without saying goodbye, Sara Beth pushes quickly out the door to the front yard.
“Hey,” Rachel says. “Slow down, and why the tears?”
“I can’t believe how much I miss that.” She nods toward the house. “That easiness you have with them. Cooking food together, your
great
kitchen, the talking. The sweet flowers I
don’t
know anything about.”
Rachel sits on the garden bench. “Those aren’t tears from missing a kitchen social. It’s not just me, is it?”
“Not just.”
Sara Beth sits beside her.
“Do you want me to cancel the walk?”
“That’s all right. I can’t do it now.”
“Do what?”
“Fix this. Me. Us.” She stands to leave. “We need more than that smoothie inside. We need a huge pot of coffee on a long voyage on that boat, with no interruptions. Like my kids, who are home alone for
way
too long now, like my long overdue grocery shopping that Tom’s supposed to do, like the business that I need to find a vacant store for and is stuck in some weird dream. And lasagnas and walking friends.” She runs a hand through her short hair. “Like my marriage on my mind. You get the picture.”
“But we’ll start. Come on.”
She wanted to come back to Addison after that Manhattan weekend and set her life on its intended course. But she owes Rachel more. She owes her all the baggage she dumped deep into the Hudson River that night on the Staten Island Ferry. She owes her an explanation for abandoning her.
The folded newspaper is in her hand. “I had thought maybe…Well, your friends are waiting.” She shakes her head and squeezes Rachel’s hand before hurrying out to the car.
R
achel sits at the antique easel, sensing the wall of sketches behind her, a life displayed. She sketched Ashley shortly after Carl’s death. They needed each other intensely then, and it shows in the drawing’s affecting expression. She sketched her beach cottage the first summer there, when she couldn’t get enough of that heaven.
Today her camera focused on kids twirling sparklers, babies looking out from porta-playpens, men tossing horseshoes and women talking and setting out food on The Green. Someone stuck little American flags in the flower barrels. Her camera captured what The Addison Weekly wanted on Independence Day. People want to see themselves happy.
Now her pencil moves back and forth and it gets to the point where she no longer needs the Manhattan photograph to copy. It’s better sketching from feeling, trusting her heart to guide her hand.
But it isn’t working. The varying skyline is set against the light of dusk. She reaches forward and touches the Empire State Building, needing to break through this block. If she stalls on a portrait, she visits with the subject. If it is a beach scene, she needs an afternoon by the water.
It’s obvious what needs to be done. She packs the sketch and charcoals into a zippered portfolio. Tomorrow afternoon she’s supposed to meet Michael at the cottage. But a shiny cottage key tempts her.
Anytime
, he said. She needs to be closer to her subject. If she leaves now, it’s early enough to catch the last Cross Sound Ferry. She’ll sit on the deck and raise her face into the sea breeze as Long Island nears.
Summer living is easy. It takes no time to pack a suitcase: Bermudas, t-shirts, capris, yes, her True Religions and a cardigan for the evenings, espadrilles and sandals. Last she tosses in the new Yankees cap she bought for Michael, a surprise day gift.
The truck’s tires crunch on the stone driveway. It takes a second for Michael’s eyes to make out her black car in the shadows. He doesn’t get out of the pickup right away. Everything about the night has to gather together first. The darkness conceals the old cottage roof shingles and peeling paint. But it has strong lines, a bungalow with a peaked roof, a wide front porch with old lattice windows, all of it sitting on a stone foundation. The front porch light shines softly on the shelf of conch shells and gulls. It isn’t a bad little place; it only needs a sprucing up.
He unlocks the front door and sets the bag of groceries, another flashlight and a package of window alarms on the kitchen counter. Rachel’s easy touch fills the room with murmurs telling secrets.
Here! Look at this.
A large glass vase, the color and texture of green sea glass, overflows with pale yellow heather and blades of tall thin marsh grass.
Oh, and here, too!
Beside it, on the kitchen table, lays the novel she began last week. The windows are opened, the white shutters folded back, the sense of the beach right outside. It’s always there now, that feeling of missing her, and this, her touch in the cottage, helps.
While unpacking milk and eggs and seeing the lasagna in the freezer, he worries about her on the beach alone. What if someone follows her back? Or if she forgets to lock up? He takes two deep breaths, slowly exhaling. Exercise helps, too, his therapist told him. Serious exercise. Maybe he needs to start jogging. Or just come clean with the truth. His therapist said the more he talks about it, the better he’ll feel. Heading here straight from work still in uniform, he planned only to stock the refrigerator and open a window so the cottage would be ready for tomorrow. But this place has a way of changing plans. It’s like one of Rachel’s sketches, shading their lives right into its lines, its shadows. He steps outside, the screen door squeaking behind him. The sea air cooled at twilight.
The walk to the beach takes minutes and he notices her as soon as he steps on the boardwalk, sitting in the far shadows. He notices, too, how she turns to watch. She knows from a distance it’s him. Maybe it’s the uniform discernible in the dim lighting, or the leather boots sounding foreign on the boardwalk, or his silhouette in shadow.