Aftertaste - Meredith Mileti [109]
“What! She can’t do that! What the hell is Jake thinking?” I yell into the phone. “That place doesn’t need Jake. Since when is tapas haute cuisine? I told you she would run Grappa into the ground, didn’t I?”
Renata is quiet.
“Well, didn’t I?” I demand.
Renata softly clears her throat. Finally, she says, “Look, cara, forget I said anything. Come on, Mira, I want to hear about you. How are you doing?”
Before I know it, it’s as if I’m back in front of the bathroom mirror, spouting the made-for-Jake lies. In fact, I barely recognize the chic, hip life I’m describing to Renata, including my foray into the world of food writing—I think I even referred to Enid Maxwell as “my editor.”
Renata is impressed. “And what about love, Mira?” she asks me. “Are you ready for that again? It’s time.”
I tell her I’ve been too busy to think about love. We hang up, but only after I have made several vague promises to come to visit sometime soon, the moment there is a lull in my schedule.
I toss my cell phone onto the bed and head to the bathroom where I splash some cool water on my face. Could it be true? Not just the part about Jake’s ceding control of Grappa to someone I didn’t even know, but the part about the baby? If Jake had reconsidered fatherhood yet again, his timing was only slightly better (or slightly worse, depending on how you looked at it) this time. With a pang I remembered Jake’s hand on Nicola’s belly as I passed them on the way out of the lawyer’s office months ago. He had seemed so proud. How could anyone—even Jake—be so ambivalent? But what surprised me almost as much was that Nicola had agreed. Even if Jake had told me that he had second thoughts when there had been time to do anything about it, I’d never have chosen to get an abortion.
Or would I? If I’d known then that I’d be making a choice between Jake and Grappa on the one hand, and a nameless, faceless baby on the other, would I have been brave enough to choose the baby? For that matter, if I were Sarah could I have made the courageous decision she did?
It’s like a spasm, sudden and involuntary. I’m standing at the foot of Chloe’s crib, watching her breathe, panic rising, as if those previously unacknowledged thoughts had assumed a shape and a form and were lingering in the darkness ready to take Chloe from me the instant I close my eyes. I lean down next to her head, feeling her sweet, milky breath on my cheek, and softly stroke her forehead. I will never doubt that I made the right choice.
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that they chose to open Il Vinaio so shortly after losing their baby. Could it be that Jake believed he had to choose between fatherhood and his career as a chef? Couldn’t he have found room in his heart for both?
Maybe to be really good at either one, you do have to choose. After all, I’d made a choice, too. Just like Jake had. We’d chosen differently, and it had driven us apart.
The phone rings. I run across the room and make a dive for the bed before the second ring can wake Chloe. It’s a wireless number I don’t recognize.
“Hello?” I answer warily. It is almost eleven. No one I know, here anyway, would call so late.
“Mira, jeez, did I wake you? I hope I didn’t wake Chloe.”
“Who is this?” I whisper so as not to disturb Chloe, who I can hear stirring in her crib.
“It’s Ben. Ben Stemple. Look, I’m sorry to be calling so late, but something actually came up and I needed—”
“How did you even get my number?” I ask him.
“Aunt Fi gave it to me. Sorry about the party, by the way. I hope she gave you the message?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Listen, if you’re sleeping, I can just talk to you in the morning.”
“No, that’s okay. What’s up?” I ask him, sitting up in bed and adjusting the pillow behind me.
“I need some advice. Some cooking advice, actually.”
“Wow, you eat late.”
“What? Oh, yeah.” Ben laughs. “No, it’s actually for a meeting I have tomorrow morning. Do you remember those lofts I’m the plumbing sub on? Well,