CHAPTER 7
The scones were dry again. I knew before I even peeled back the cellophane and lifted one of the neatly arranged scones out of the box that Donna hadn’t fixed the problem. Dry and grainy, they were worse than the batch she’d delivered on Tuesday. I tried to ease one off the waxed paper, but it crumbled in my fingers. I picked up the pieces and carried them into the back room where Lorenzo was sitting in front of a long wood table that he used for a desk.
He looked up from his notebook and calculator. “What now?”
When I’d interviewed for the job last year, Lorenzo told me that he wanted to make his new coffeehouse a “destination where students and young professionals gather to enjoy fancy coffee drinks and upscale breakfast foods.” No bad coffee served out of cheap white cups. Lorenzo saw the future: two-dollar cups of coffee, comfy couches, eclectic music, and scones. So far, the future was still the future.
“What do you mean, what now?” I asked. This was part of our daily routine. Pushing, pulling, arguing, accusing, teasing, and laughing. We both loved it.
“You were in here an hour ago complaining about how I make cappuccinos.”
“The customer thought the milk tasted sour,” I said. He threw up his hands to complain. “Lorenzo, we have to make customers happy or they won’t come back. This won’t make anyone happy, either.” I set the scone pieces on the desk.
Lorenzo stared at them for a moment before putting one of the pieces in his mouth. He tilted his head as he chewed and grimaced as he swallowed. “It’s dry.”
I nodded. “I thought you were going to talk to Donna.”
“I did!” At thirty-five, he was only ten years older than me, but already his black hair was streaked with gray. Women flirted with him, especially when they heard his Italian accent. At first I thought he must have a girlfriend because he seemed so uninterested. “Don’t say that we should serve croissants. Damn French.”
“I won’t.” I picked up the scone pieces. “But we need to have better scones.”
“But it will cost me?” He arched his right eyebrow and then picked up his pencil. I knew this sign—our conversation was nearing the end for now. Lorenzo lived in Back Bay, drove an old BMW, and wore Cole Haan loafers. This wasn’t the first business he’d started. He might be a good businessman but he had a blind spot when it came to food quality.
But I smiled. Lorenzo was a good person. Open, too. He kept a business card for his therapist (she’s like a mother) taped to the wall above his desk and recently he’d started confiding in me about his boyfriend. But he never dumped anything on me or expected me to fix his problems. He didn’t need encouragement, either. He was strong and just wanted me to listen. I so appreciated that.
“You remember that I’m leaving today and will be gone until Monday,” I said.
He shook his head. “I am quite sure that we will not survive without you.”
I laughed. “You’ll survive.”
Just as I started into the front room, he called my name. He always drew out the last letter so that it sounded as if he were saying Clara instead of Clare. “Claraaa. You should learn to bake delicious scones. That would solve our problem.”
I laughed and thought about my recent cooking attempts. Chicken that tasted like rubber. Grilled pork chops with charred edges. Yet I’d made a solid spaghetti sauce last night for Ben and my parents and everyone loved my sugar cookies.
I glanced at my watch. Four hours until my train left. I felt a twist in my stomach, but I didn’t have time to worry about my trip now.
I wet a rag and worked through the front room, wiping down tables, straightening chairs and couch cushions, and organizing newspapers on the giant coffee table. After sweeping the floor and organizing the counter, I surveyed the room. Not bad. It was ten, past the breakfast rush. The rest of the day would be spotty with people looking for a place to study and hang out, but no big crowds.
I’d been working the same shift, Tuesday through Friday, six to eleven, for the last six months. I loved smelling that first pot of coffee and greeting the regulars—the dog walker, the sociology professor who took a latte to go, and the French students who practiced conversing at the far table. I always felt a letdown at the end of the morning, especially on days like today when I had to hurry to my college’s English department’s writing center where I tutored three afternoons a week.
I stepped behind the counter and opened my book. I was a year away from finishing my master’s degree in English literature, and this summer I was taking a class on D. H. Lawrence. My mother thought Lawrence was one of the world’s greatest authors and that Sons and Lovers was a masterpiece for the way Lawrence’s themes infiltrated the text. She called it “thematic penetration,” which always felt so overtly sexual that it made me cringe. So far, I thought Lawrence was overrated.
I began to read, but after a few sentences glanced at the remaining scones in the box on the counter. Donna owned a bakery in Brighton and had promised scones and muffins—no croissants—delivered by six every other morning. That she was four hours late today was only part of the problem. I’d never tasted a good scone, but Elise, Logan’s girlfriend, loved them and once described them to me. Flaky but not dry. Sweet but not too sweet. And best served warm out of the oven. I glanced at our industrial stove next to the counter. I didn’t think it had ever been used.
The bell on the door rang, and I looked up to see a woman and a young girl take their usual table in front of the huge window. I frowned. The other day I had to scrub the window to get the girl’s grimy fingerprints off the glass. The floor-to-ceiling glass was twice as wide as my outstretched arms and let in light even when it was cloudy outside. It was the most important part of the room.
“What can I get for you?” I shoved my hands into my back pockets.
The woman didn’t look at me as she tied her daughter’s sneaker. “Earl Grey tea, an apple juice, and a blueberry muffin. That’s all.”
No smile. No please or thank you. The woman screamed privilege with her massive diamond ring and big Coach bag. I didn’t move. I wanted her to know that I wasn’t just a coffeehouse waitress, still living at home with my parents. I was somebody, too. But instead the girl looked at me. She couldn’t have been more than five years old. She had a roll of fat around each wrist and stubby fingers speckled with brown. I imagined those fingers on my window and when I frowned again, she lifted her arm and gave me the finger. I was so surprised that I stumbled backward. The woman finally looked up.
“Anything else?” I grabbed onto a chair to steady myself.
“I said that was all.”
I felt a jolt of anger. What kind of mother was she? But oh, no, I’d be nice. And good. I’d be good even if it killed me. I marched back to the counter. But my hand wouldn’t stop shaking as I poured hot water into a mug.
Three hours until my train left.
My problem was that I was nervous about my trip. I was going to New York to help Lee move yet again, her fifth place in three years. I didn’t understand how she kept getting herself into these situations—bad roommates, bad landlords, bad apartments. Tomorrow she was moving into a two-bedroom apartment in a much safer neighborhood with new roommates. Anyone would be better than her current ones, Tina and her rude boyfriend, Markus.
But it was the second part of the trip that made me nervous. On Friday, Lee and I were flying to Chicago. Amy was getting married and nearly everyone in our pledge class would be there. Over the years I’d hardly seen college friends; just Sarah, who came through here last year, and Lee, of course. This would be the first time since graduating three years ago that we’d all be together.
Everyone was disappointed that Lee and I hadn’t gone back for football games or birthday parties. But traveling was expensive and I was saving to move into my own apartment. Which would happen, finally, in August when Ben, who was living with us for the summer, went back to Philly for his last year of law school.
“Of course, Clare, you can do whatever you want. But everyone I knew lived at home for a while after college,” my mother said when I told her that I was the only one of my friends not to have an apartment. It wasn’t 1960, I’d said, and times had changed. But in the end, it didn’t make sense to move out. Even Sarah, who scoffed when I told her I was still at home, agreed. My parents traveled or were on the Vineyard three quarters of the year. Why rent an apartment when our house, completely furnished and with a new alarm system, sat empty and the utilities paid?
Still, I worried what people would think. Everyone was doing amazing things. Sarah was in medical school. Amy was in the marketing department at Kraft Foods. Lynn worked for an ad agency in Dallas. And who would have thought that Ducky would be running half-marathons and selling commercial real estate in Chicago?
I was almost finished with graduate school and looking into PhD programs. That was what I’d say. Not that I still slept in the bed I’d had since I was twelve, thought D. H. Lawrence was boring, didn’t like tutoring, and worried about a giant window in a coffeehouse that sold two-dollar cappuccinos. Oh, God, I felt my nerves churning through my stomach like water boiling on the stove.
I carried the tea, muffin, and juice over to the woman’s table. The door opened and a tall brunette walked toward us. The women hugged and then the brunette smiled at me and ordered a cappuccino. She even said please.
See? It was easy to be nice. It didn’t take much.
I made the woman’s cappuccino and retreated behind the counter. I could tell by how they leaned toward each other, how they smiled and laughed so easily, that they were old friends, maybe college friends, like Lee and me. We were still close, despite living in different states. I called her every day to listen, cheer her up, and offer advice. Try adding beans to rice, for protein. Tell the asshole Markus to get his own laundry detergent! Maybe the next job will work out! Last night she said that she needed to tell me about an awful conversation she’d had with her mom regarding her twelve-year-old twin siblings, whom Lee called The Miracles. Maybe this time I’d be helpful. Knowing what to say about her family was often a challenge.
“I wanna go to the zoo!” the girl squealed. I glanced up from my book, her words landing like cement in my stomach. Take her to the zoo, for God’s sake. Go!
The mother was too busy to respond. The girl frowned as she scooted behind the table. She plucked a blueberry from the muffin, squished it, and took her finger across the window, leaving a foot-long streak. I glared at the woman. Why bring your daughter just to ignore her? Pay attention! Love her! Get her away from my window!
I licked my dry lips.
It would be a jam-packed weekend. By coincidence my parents and Logan were going to be in Chicago, too. Logan, who was bringing Elise, had a meeting, and my mother was speaking at a conference. Lee and I were joining them for dinner when we arrived tomorrow; afterward, we’d meet up with our friends.
Ducky was selling commercial real estate?
You should learn to bake delicious scones.
I glanced at the stove again. I had this sudden urge to pour sugar into a bowl and unwrap sticks of cold, slippery butter and knead the dough—was this how to make scones? I’d ask Elise and when I got back next week, I’d make a batch. Maybe they’d be better than Donna’s. Maybe they’d be good enough to sell. I felt excited, suddenly, and hopeful. Yes, hope was a wonderful feeling.
The bell on the door rang and I grinned. Ben. The law office where he was interning was only a mile away but he rarely left his desk. Not for lunch. Hardly for dinner, either. Leaner than he was in college, he wore an old suit, charcoal gray, with a white shirt and blue tie. By the end of the day his shirt would be untucked and his eyes blurry from reading. When he got back late to the house every night, he was often too tired to do anything but sit on the couch and watch baseball on TV.
“This is a surprise,” I said. Ben wasn’t going to Chicago with me. He barely knew Amy or Dougy, her fiancé, and hardly anyone was bringing dates. Besides, he wanted to work all weekend. I straightened and smoothed the front of my apron. Then I made sure my earrings were straight and tucked my hair behind my ears. We’d broken up for a few years after college and had recently gotten back together. At first we were a little careful around each other. Sometimes I still felt that way, especially now that he was living with us at the house.
“I’ve been calling.” He sucked in quick breaths. “Is the phone off the hook?”
His cheeks were flushed and sweat dripped down the sides of his face. I reached up and flicked off a few drops. I asked, “Wait, did you run here?”
“Yeah. I couldn’t find a cab. And I had to hurry.”
I glanced at his black dress shoes and imagined his feet, hot and sweaty, swimming in his socks. I pulled him over to the counter and poured a glass of water.
He drank and then pointed to the scones. “What are those?”
“Scones. Here, taste this.” I handed him one of the pieces.
He turned it over in his hand and popped it in his mouth. He chewed and then shrugged. “It’s bland.”
“I know, right? I’ve got this idea. I’m going to start making really, really good scones. And maybe sell them here.”
“I thought you were going to quit this place and try to get more hours at the writing center,” he said as he took the back of his hand across his forehead.
“I know . . .” I shifted my feet. He was right. I’d said that. I glanced at the scones. Butter, flour, baking soda. Yes, scones were made with baking soda. But maybe not.
“I’ve got to get back. I came to tell you that your mom called. She’s been trying to reach you. You left your credit card at the house. You’ll need it to travel.”
How had that happened? Then I remembered being on the phone the other night with the airline and paying for Lee’s ticket to Chicago, and I must not have put the credit card back in my wallet. I shifted my feet again. I didn’t want Ben to think that I was irresponsible with money. “Oh, no.”
“Your mom didn’t have time to run it down here to you, so I told her that I’d get ahold of you. She was pretty relieved.”
Of course she didn’t have time to run it down here. I was surprised she even knew the phone number. Neither parent had visited me here yet. I wasn’t surprised, however, that she called Ben. My parents loved him. He was, as my dad liked to say, “a practical person who got things done.” And I was happy, for the most part, that they felt this way about him. “Thank you.”
“Are you going to have time to get it before you leave?” he asked.
I’d planned to go straight to the airport after tutoring this afternoon. But I could stop at home, if I hurried. I nodded.
“Oh, and as I was leaving the house this morning, you got a call from Joel.”
Joel was the director of the writing center and had hired me a few months ago to work as a tutor. It was a good deal. I received a small stipend and could take graduate classes for free. But Joel’s perpetually bloodshot eyes (broken blood vessels, someone told me) and grouchy personality made me so on edge that I avoided him as much as possible. “What did he say?”
“Something about some woman you worked with yesterday. He wanted to talk to you about her. He sounded concerned. Did something happen?”
My last appointment of the day. The woman was older than me, heavy with shoulder-length, curly black hair and a nasty scowl. She walked in, threw herself into the chair, and told me that if she failed her next paper she’d fail the class. She wouldn’t get her degree. You have to help me, she’d demanded.
“This woman was so angry,” I said. “And her paper was a mess.”
Ben dipped his eyebrows into a slight frown. “Were you able to help her?”
“Yes.” I shifted my feet. Actually, no. She was supposed to compare a novel and film and yet she’d come in with only a weak, scattered analysis of To Kill a Mockingbird. Her sentences were long and incomprehensible and at the end, when our time was up, she burst into a tirade of obscenities at the school, her professor, and me. Then she stormed out of my cubicle. “I’ll see him this afternoon.”
Ben shook his head. “He said he’ll only be in this morning.”
“I’ll call him on Monday.”
“Maybe you should call him now?”
“But—”
“Clare, you said yourself that only a few grad students get tapped for these positions. You don’t want to mess it up. It’ll help with PhD applications. Right?”
I glanced at the window. Yes, PhD applications. I should tell Ben that the only reason I got the tutoring job was because Joel realized I was Eleanor Michaels’s daughter. He was so dismissive when I interviewed (you went to college where?). When he called later to offer me the job, he was much nicer as he added, “Maybe you could ask your mom to speak to our undergraduates?”
Why had I ever decided to get a master’s degree in English literature?
I should also tell Ben that I was a terrible tutor and wasn’t sure I should go for my PhD. But that was what I’d said (I’d make a terrible nurse!) when I’d finished my science courses two years ago and decided against pursuing nursing or counseling. I needed a career where I could work without disappointing anyone.
Ben lifted his hand and touched my cheek. It both surprised me, he wasn’t much for affection in public, and made me soften. I felt, suddenly, overwhelmed. Maybe it was the trip ahead. Or the woman and the call from Joel. Or D. H. Lawrence and his thematic penetration. It most definitely had to do with getting that window clean before I left. I bit my lower lip, trying to hold back tears.
“Is something wrong?” he asked. I glanced at the woman, ignoring her daughter, and the blueberry streaks on the window. “You okay going without me?”
I nodded. He leaned over and kissed me, lightly, quickly, on the cheek. I had a sudden urge to grab him in a bear hug and plant a wet, passionate kiss on his lips, one that would cause the women to stop talking and gape at us. He glanced at his watch and turned to go. I reached for his hand and squeezed.
He grinned. “Call me when you get to Lee’s. Okay?”
I nodded again and watched him leave. Ben wasn’t sentimental or overly romantic. He didn’t talk subjects to death or play manipulative games. I was happy we were back together and I loved him even if sometimes I wished for something. But I didn’t know what that was, and I certainly didn’t think it was very nice to wish or yearn for someone or something when Ben and I were living together this summer. This feeling reminded me of how out of control I felt senior year of college.
I’d tried not to think about that crazy time and what had happened to Lee. When I caught her zoning out, which she still did, or when she called, crying over something innocuous (the homeless woman on the corner is blind!), I wondered if she was remembering, somehow, what had happened. But she rarely talked about it nor had she ever told me what happened that night.
Sometimes I had nightmares about it although I never told Lee. They were always the same. I was trying to run from Charlie’s house but my legs wouldn’t move. I never saw the men but felt them behind me. I’d wake—heart pounding—and go over that night as I stared at the ceiling. I was always angry with myself and imagined behaving differently. I would have stood up to Owen and the other two; I wouldn’t have left Lee. I would have been the hero.
“Excuse me!” the mother yelled at me from her chair next to the window.
I gave them the bill. When they left, I took out the Windex and paper towels and cleaned the streaks. Then I looked up and down the street. It was quiet, only a woman walking with her head down. I tried to remember why I’d been excited about baking scones. Maybe I was trying to remember the feeling of being excited.
Excited. Excitement. Exhilaration. Joy. These were words Lee always used to describe her passion back in college. I just want to make films. That’s all I want to do. I can’t imagine any greater joy! She must’ve said that to me a million times. This often led to a conversation about the origins of passion. Was it something you were born with or could you learn it? Who had it and who didn’t?
The sunlight shifted and now I saw a big smudge on the glass that I hadn’t seen before. I took my paper towel over it, scrubbing until it was gone.
Lately Lee hadn’t talked much about filmmaking. This was what happened. The college years were for dreams and idealism but the world made demands. Rent, food, clothing. Look at my brother. All those years of studying to be an economist and what did he do? Went to work at a London hedge fund, whatever that was.
Lee had changed although I didn’t think it had anything to do with idealism or demands. Ever since that night in Florida, she was different. Less sure of herself. Slow to make decisions. Easily intimidated. Take, for example, the time she house-sat in Scarsdale last year. It was a beautiful house and she planned to spend her time writing a screenplay. But at the end of two months, when the couple who’d hired her returned, they reneged on their offer to pay. They said the house stay was “payment enough.” The old Lee would have never put up with this. The new Lee cowered and walked away without a fight.
When I pushed her on this, she said, “But they were so nice to let me stay. And I wasn’t very productive. I couldn’t even finish the first act.”
As if that were some kind of justification for not paying her.
I stepped back from the glass. There, now it was clean. A couple, arms linked, walked into the coffeehouse.
“Someone’ll be right with you,” I said. In the back room Diana, who was working the next shift, was tying on her apron while Lorenzo filled his briefcase. The back door to the alley was propped open and warm air wafted into the room.
“Clarraaa is leaving us,” he said. “But she says we will survive without her.”
Diana laughed and rolled her eyes. She liked working here, too. I motioned toward the front room, we have customers, and she nodded and hurried by me.
Lorenzo stopped shoving papers into his briefcase and looked at me. “You seem a little tense, my friend. Pretravel anxiety, perhaps?”
“Just a little nervous.” Last week I’d told him about Amy’s wedding and that I hadn’t seen my college friends in a long time but I didn’t go into detail.
“Ah, yes, it could be wonderful. Or a disaster! May I give you some advice?”
“Because you are so much older and wiser than I am?” I grinned.
“Yes, yes! Old enough to be your older brother.” He tilted his head back and laughed. Then he swept his hair off his forehead, folded his arms, and I knew he was going to be serious. “If I were you, I’d spend my travel time remembering who these people were when you knew them. Because now everyone will try to impress each other with their jobs and lives. Do not be fooled. It is very difficult to change.”
“Thanks for the advice.” I shook my head. “But that’s really cynical.”
“It is human nature.” He shook his finger at me.
“So, you really don’t think people are capable of changing?” I asked.
“That is not what I said.” He reached for his sunglasses. “It is easy to change apartments. It is not so easy to change the inside. I should know. I spend hundreds of dollars every month trying to do that. Now I am off to see her to try yet again.”
He nodded at his therapist’s card on the wall. We smiled at each other and then he was gone. I sat in his chair, still warm, and thought that college seemed, suddenly, so far away. I wasn’t like Ducky who dressed in our school colors for her annual Christmas card or Susie who once told me that she rarely missed a home football game. I never ran into people from school—Boston wasn’t a popular post-graduation destination—and most people here knew nothing about it.
I put the phone on the cradle—it had been off the hook—and twirled the cord between my fingers. Lorenzo was wrong. Like Lee, I’d changed over the last three years, too. I was more patient with my mother and Lee, happy to be back with Ben, and I always tried to be a good person. But were these changes natural or because of what happened in Florida?
I jumped when the phone rang and then picked it up.
“What the hell, Clare? I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Doesn’t anyone answer the phone at your house? Why don’t you have an answering machine yet?”
Sarah. I sat back in the chair. “Well, nice to talk to you, too, Sarah.”
She laughed. “Okay, sorry. It’s just that you’re impossible to get ahold of. I’ve been calling this number for the last three hours! Just tell me that you’re still coming and bringing Lee. Tell me that you two aren’t bagging out.”
“Of course we’re not bagging out,” I said. “Why would we do that?”
“You know why. You never come back. And it’s not the same without you guys.” She sighed. “Okay, listen, so you know that Ducky got us a block of rooms at the hotel? You, me, Lee, and Lisa are sharing one. You okay with that?”
“Of course. Thank you.”
“And you’ll both be there tomorrow night?”
“Yes.”
She sighed again. “Oh, God, we’re going to have a blast. Everyone’s gonna be there! Even Lynn. She’s flying in from Dallas.”
In my mind I saw Lynn’s freckles, Sarah’s frizzy red hair, and Ducky’s pearls. Sarah was right. These were old friends and we always had fun together. No one would care that I was living at home and working in a coffeehouse. Right?
“How’s Lee? I heard she has another job, like at CBS or something?”
“ABC.” My dad, who knew a programming director, got her the job six months ago. It was a relief because now, at least, she had a real job with health insurance.
“Well, does she like it? I mean, anything’s better than that stupid internship, right? Didn’t she hate that?”
“Yeah, it didn’t work out,” I said. And neither had the other jobs. The NYU library. The wedding photographer’s assistant.
“But is she, like, okay?” Sarah asked. “You know, about everything?”
I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Sarah always brought up Florida, even in roundabout ways, whenever we talked. “Yeah, she’s all right.”
“Okay, good,” she said. “Listen, Clare? The real reason I called is because . . .”
I heard a familiar hesitation in her voice and sat up. “What?”
“Well, Amy told Lisa, who called me. Not that it’ll matter because I know you and Ben are back together, but we thought you should know so you’ll be, you know, prepared. Christopher Mansfield will be at the wedding. Apparently he and Dougy were friends through intramural basketball or something. Who knew?”
“Oh.” I felt goose bumps race up and down my arms. I’d had no contact, nor had I heard anything about him, since we graduated. He seemed to have disappeared much like I had. “Oh.”
“Yup, that’s all there is to say about this, huh?” She laughed slightly.
In my mind I saw Christopher’s big eyes and those huge hands. I put my head on Lorenzo’s desk, the wood cool against my forehead. I couldn’t decide if I was happy or afraid, excited or worried.
“Clare? Hello?”
“I’m here. Wow. Thanks for telling me. Do you know what he’s been doing?”
“Politics or something. He lives in Washington, D.C. Anyway, I have to go. See you tomorrow night!”
After we hung up, I pushed out of the chair and went to the open door. In front of me, I saw the dark alley with the garbage barrels and trash bins against the redbrick wall, and yet my mind was flooded with other images. The scrubby yard behind Christopher’s house, the tables in our sorority’s dining room, and the beautiful, tree-lined walk through campus to classes.
I thought about Christopher’s breath on my neck and how he traced my collarbone with his finger. But I had no time to dwell on this now. I had to be at the writing center in a half hour. I reached for my bags and hurried into the alley.