Aftertaste - Meredith Mileti [37]
I’m not sure what to say. It isn’t that simple.
“My dad is apparently living the life of a swinging bachelor. The last thing he needs is his dumped daughter and granddaughter skulking back to him. We would cramp his style.”
“Mira, that is not fair. You don’t even know for sure he’s dating anyone.”
I straighten up and turn away. I’m disappointed that Richard doesn’t seem to understand that my life is in New York now. I hate it when he treats me like the fifteen-year-old girl he once knew.
“Sorry, love, don’t mean to end things on a bad note. It’s just that you always seem to take the most difficult route and, for once, I’d like to see you take it easy.”
Take it easy? How could Richard possibly think that going home to Pittsburgh would be taking it easy? That would be an admission of failure, not to mention a complete dead end. I’ll take the Big Apple—twelve-hour days, the stress of running a restaurant, exorbitant rent, skyrocketing day care expenses, and terror alerts—any day of the week.
“Well, it’s something to think about,” he says, ruffling Chloe’s curls and disappearing in the direction of the bathroom. We both watch him walk down the hall, striped towel swung over his shoulder, his spicy aftershave lingering in his wake. Chloe holds out a dimpled arm, her little body straining after Richard, her eyes following him all the way down the hallway. If she could talk, I know she would say, “take me with you,” although as soon as the bathroom door shuts behind him, Chloe turns her attention back to me, with no trace of want or abandonment, almost as if he’d never been there. With an impish smile she places her fingers, sticky with marmalade, in my hair, pulling me closer in order to nuzzle my face. I once read in a parenting magazine that babies under the age of eight months or so have a hard time holding pictures of people in their minds, hence the saying “out of sight, out of mind.” It is, I think, a convenient mechanism; it keeps children from missing people, from being disappointed too early in life.
Richard’s visit has dredged up all sorts of complicated feelings, which, owing to the busy week I have coming up, I’m hoping to be able to avoid thinking about. Not only are we previewing the new winter lunch menu at Grappa, but Thursday is also our meeting with the lawyers about final disposition of the marital assets and my next anger-management session.
As of the day after Thanksgiving, Jake still hasn’t shown his face at the restaurant when I’ve been there and isn’t returning my telephone calls. When Jake fails to respond to my message asking him to approve the proofs for the winter dinner menu, I go ahead and send only the luncheon menu to the printer. It’s starting to seem like we’re running two parallel restaurants here, a dangerous situation, particularly in the notoriously fickle Manhattan dining world. People want consistency; they want to know that if they wander in on a Thursday evening, they can get the arugula salad they had at lunch last week. At the moment, Jake doesn’t even know what’s in the arugula salad, besides arugula.
Just how dangerous things have become doesn’t become clear until the Monday after Thanksgiving. Arriving at the restaurant, I expect, as usual, to spend the morning taking inventory of the walk-in and unloading and stocking the week’s shipment of meat and fish. But this morning something doesn’t feel right. My vague feelings of discomfort about the management of the restaurant become all too concrete when, by eight o’clock, our deliveries still have not arrived. By five after, I’m on the phone. Clearly, something is wrong. The meat and fish are coming from different suppliers, and it’s too unlikely a coincidence that both of them would