How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [5]
“You know I do. Come on.”
We go up the stairs to the apartment kitchen, and he settles at the table. He’s wearing jeans and a crisp dark-blue shirt with a linen-and-silk blazer and the Italian shoes he pays too much money for. In the harsh overhead light, age shows at the corners of his eyes.
I put a plate of pain au chocolat before him, along with a blue-and-white china dish inherited from my grandmother and a snowy napkin. He likes these details, old-world and elegant. “Beautiful,” he murmurs.
The espresso is made on the stove, over the flame in a sturdy small pot, not in a machine. The pot belonged to my grandmother, and although it took a bit of mastery, I learned for Cat’s sake. As I wait for it to boil, I’m thinking in the back of my mind what to do, how to manage this new crisis, but Sofia crowds everything out. Is she in the air yet? How long will it take to get to Germany, until I know more about Oscar?
My primary fear is that they are calling her over to say goodbye to her husband. They usually ship soldiers through Germany very fast these days.
I rub the tight spot in the middle of my chest, turn the flame down beneath the pot. When it is finished, I pour it into cups and sit down with him.
After a moment I say, “It might be time to let the bakery go.”
“No, no. It’s a solid business model, Ramona. This problem with the pipes, it’s nothing.”
I look at the dark, dark coffee, shake my head. The economy has not been as terrible here as elsewhere, but it’s been bad enough, undercutting and undercutting and undercutting my business, not to mention the value of the house. And no one is giving small-business loans these days. Without an influx of cash, the business will fail.
“I need you, as my mentor, to just listen to me for a minute. Can you do that?”
“You know I can.”
“If I quit now, I won’t lose the house—and you know my family would never forgive me if that happened. We practically grew up here.”
“Your family,” he says with a shake of his head. “What have they done for you that you have to worry about what they think?”
“I would never forgive myself, Cat. It was my grandmother’s house. She left it to me in good faith.”
“You won’t lose the house. You’re gonna be all right.”
There must be answers, but I’m strung out from disaster and can’t see them right now. “I hope you’re right.” I take a sip of coffee, think about the long list of things that I have to get done. “Anyway, I have a lot to do, so thanks for coming, but I have to get busy.”
He carefully finishes the pain au chocolat, brushes his hands, and regards me silently for a moment. Once, the story goes, he was in love with my mother, but my father swept her off her feet and she married him instead. Cat opened a restaurant to compete with my father. For decades now they have jockeyed for top honors in the city. When I look at my father, sturdy and square and blessed with Paul Newman blue eyes, I see that he must have been handsome once, but I fail to know how he could have outshone Cat.
They are mortal enemies, which made it satisfying to turn to Cat as a mentor when I left the family business. What shames me is that I somehow allowed him into my bed for a time, and although I broke it off more than a year ago, he has not lost hope.
I can see in his eyes that he’s going to make the offer tonight. In a way, it would be a relief. To let go, let someone hug me, let someone else hold up the tent for a little while.
But I put up a weary hand. “You need to go.”
“All right.” He stands. “Remember, you do have a friend, Ramona. Can you do that for me?”
“I appreciate it,” I say. “Truly. Thank you for your help. I’m just worried sick about Sofia and Oscar.”
“Give it to the Blessed Mother. Sometimes there is nothing else to do.”
He is as Italian and Catholic as I am Irish and Catholic, though his faith is a big sweeping thing and mine is faint and faraway. “I’ll try.”
When he’s gone, I wander down the back stairs to the backyard that was my grandmother’s refuge. The lilacs are in bloom. Ancient bushes, some six or eight feet tall,