Lucinda Moody
It was a handsome looking vanilla slice. She studied it. My journey rests on you. Her shiny fork approached the pastry lid.
Over the past six months, when she had dreamt of the opening of her café, one of two scenes would play out in her mind to entertain her. In one, her passionfruit vanilla slice was the star. It would wait, deep and dusted with icing sugar, in its pan until she would come into the kitchen, slowly—she wanted to be careful not to rush her customers—to saw through the pastry flakes and custard with her bread knife. She would sit one rectangle on each plate, adorn each with a violet, and silently declare them ready to be a part of the private and steady conversation being had at the back table.
Her second dream would see squares of pissaladière being warmed and plated in a café so full of clamour, laughter and warmth that she would break into a smile. She lingered over the vision tonight; the carafes of red wine on the tables were a problem. She would need to wait to get her licence, if she ever did. And in any case there was another obstruction—dark, looming—the café hadn’t opened yet. It was still another five days away. Too long to wait, and too soon for her. Her heart quickened, and she waited for it to slow before raising her fork again to the pastry lid.
It was soft. There was no resistance—top, middle or bottom. No flaky shards spun into the air. The fork sank down between layers of chewy pastry. Her hopeful heart went with it. She noticed that her back was aching. She closed her eyes. This is not going to work. She didn’t have it in her to start again or even to start staring down the doubts that lined up and danced in front of her. She knew them well but tonight let them perform tirelessly as she cleaned up, turned off the lights, brushed her teeth, climbed the stairs and, facing the wall, willed herself to sleep in the sleep-out above the café.
Walking over to her scrapbook on the bench, she realised she had done so without intention and wondered again what was so comforting about her own handwritten recipes. It’s the only evidence I’ve got that I’ve ever done anything. But it was not speaking to her this morning. It shrugged its shoulders as she flicked through.
She felt it all around her in the kitchen today as well. It wasn’t just last night, she admitted to herself. The preparation over the past three months had been energising, but the past week had been uncertain and she felt like she had been pitting herself against something rather than creating it.
When her friends Karen and Peter had owned the shop, it was dull and sparse. Blinds shunned the dear sunlight that tried to stream in every afternoon. The couple ignored what had seemed to her audible calls from the beautiful deep sills for pots of herbs and lipstick-red geraniums; they didn’t hear the pleas from the walls for a lick of paint to warm them and for brewing, baking and basting to fill their corners.
So when she bought this shop terrace from them three months ago, and downsized her life to fit into the sleep-out above the kitchen, she would bring it warmth and even a permanent resident; it would in return let her use its space, the shopfront—now a café—to play out a life, to use as a showpiece. The spinning wheel that had been her life now had traction.
How differently she saw the same walls this morning. They looked straight back at her, and she felt as alone as she had before she had come here.
She dragged the massive pots out of the back fridge. She had to taste this stuff again. She had planned another dry run that evening with her family, but it would be one of her last before strangers would be in here paying money to eat. She needed to sit with her food alone again.
Almost an hour later she took a seat at the big table—the table for six—and sat for a minute. She had laid out six meals for her pretend customers. With a weary hand she lifted a spoonful of the pea soup that had glugged on the stove for hours the night before. The warmth of it travelled through her before she tasted anything. But then it came, and it was good—it was a soulful soup, good enough to serve to strangers, she thought.
She moved down a seat to her pissaladière—her savoury specialty. The salt of the olives and anchovies cut through the air and she longed for a glass of wine to round them out. It wasn’t as good as it should be though—too doughy—what had she done to that oven? To have the pastry for her vanilla slice fail as well? She pushed up her sleeves—she would have to work it out head on this afternoon.
She slid from seat to seat, around her big table, and bent over her plates, eyes closed, smelling, sipping, chewing and thinking. These flavours were good. She would pay money for them. But she had few items on her menu—if she did not fix her pissaladière and vanilla slices, she could barely call herself a café.
She moved around the corner to sit at the head of the table. She looked at her tabletop, its colours, shapes and textures. Is this enough?
She could see the legs of passers-by beneath the sheets her brother had draped along the shopfront. She sat in her space. She felt the walls warm up. Or was she just willing them to? It soon wouldn’t matter.
She and this room, they were about to be on show.