Читать книгу The Look of Love - Jill Egizii - Страница 6

Crisis of mortal proportions averted and maximum humiliation achieved. All in all, not a bad day for Erik. Even while flat on his back he still managed to attain his daily quota of irking Anna and keeping her distracted from her own life. As she left the hospital she at last remembered to call and apologize for missing her interviews but the icy tones of the receptionists made it clear that bridges had burned. And these were the only two interviews her father’s aging political reputation managed to catch for her.

Because she married at nineteen, Anna’s actual résumé is nonexistent. She had her degree yes, that’s true. After all, she went away to college at sixteen. When she married Erik she had four credits outstanding to earn her diploma. It took her five years to find the time to take that last course to earn her B.A. in political science. But she did it after both her stepchildren started school and before Drew and Betsy were more than vague ideas in her imagination. All this made finding a job in the politically charged state capitol even more difficult. Anna’s father retired from state politics just long enough ago to make pulling any strings for her difficult. Oh, the glory of the small town culture of the state capitol.

Although it’s just past one in the afternoon she’s had enough of today to last a few weeks. Anna does what she always does to cheer herself up. She plans the evening meal. Well…since Erik won’t be there she won’t have to make red meat, for a change. What did she need after such a harrowing morning? Comfort food, absolutely…ah ha! She knows exactly what she’ll make, her version of ‘chicken soup’ and Betsy’s all time favorite. This, of course, is the only reason she dared to bring it to the table a second time.

Anna has time to kill before getting the kids; Betsy and Drew from the middle school, her stepdaughter Maggie from the high school. Her stepson Greg already moved on to college. So Anna, in no hurry, takes the long way to the market. After all, she really only needs two things: red wine and fresh leeks. For the umpteenth time in memory she drives past the location, her location; the perfect spot for the comfort food café she began conceptualizing years ago when her children were just born. Early in married life Anna worked her way day by day through each of the gourmet recipes in Julia Child’s biblical, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. As a result Anna indeed developed a mastery in the kitchen. With experience she even dared to alter, amend, and adapt her newly honed skills and Ms. Child’s recipes to the family table.

Erik bought the building for her restaurant three years ago. Allegedly keeping the promise he made when she finally agreed to remarry him after four years of pseudodivorce. In her mind she refers to it as the ‘pseudodivorce’ because it was kept an absolute secret. This time, though, would be vastly, incredibly, remarkably different. See, already she’s moved…to her mom and dad’s yes, but farther than she’d gotten last time around. Much farther.

Despite being ‘divorced’ seven years ago, they continued living together, went to church together, attended charity events and public galas together. Not even their children knew, although they may have wondered why Mom and Dad slept in different wings of the house. Not even her parents and especially not his mother were ever to find out. Those were his conditions for agreeing to divorce her. That she maintain the status quo, keep mum, and live ‘as if.’

At the time she hoped the divorce would have earned her some sense of autonomy, some control over the direction of her and her children’s lives. She agreed to his conditions because they enabled her to have her cake and eat it too, or so she thought. She negotiated several months’ worth of courses with top chefs in cities around the world into the deal for herself. She’d be able to live comfortably and raise her children well, and she wouldn’t be obligated to serve as Erik’s virtual slave as she’d been conditioned over the years.

Yes she is fully aware how mercenary the restaurant for remarriage sounds but, really, what does it matter now? For three years he strung her along with promises. First he needed to get the zoning rules changed. Rallying the city council behind this decision alone took over a year. Then the building was supposedly condemned byinitial city inspectors, which she should have realized was suspect as Erik golfed with the state supervisor of building inspectors—their ultimate boss. As a powerful personal injury attorney, he knew everyone who was anyone in local and state government and was in bed with most of the movers and shakers in town in one way or another. She only began to understand these symbiotic, under the radar, relationships once she started paying closer attention to his associates and their comings and goings.

His vast, often hidden network of connections is also probably why Anna struggled to get even an interview for decent full time job. She’d probably been blackballed in advance by Erik simply saying in passing at some fundraiser, “You know now Anna’s got it into her head to get back into politics after all these years. I mean yes…she did ultimately finish her degree, but you all know how strongly I feel about the sanctity of the family and the Godliness of a loving home for the sake of the children…” And she believed in it all too…once upon a time, long, long ago.

Then there was the series of contractors Erik swept through, firing each one before they could actually make any headway on reconstructing the café building. Today she parks in the weedy asphalt lot, another zoning issue there; parking. Today she wants a good long look. The whole thing just looks forlorn and sad from every angle. The layer of plaster over the concrete block is peeling off the exterior. The awning frame is rusted and caved in through the middle. It never did see the lovely canvas design she spent hours choosing colors for.

Anna picks her way through the muddy trenches that were once intended to be home to full-size trees and perennial gardens. She clambers through the hole a truck created in the picket fence around the al fresco deck. From there she can see the interior through the wide windows. Of course she tries the door handle to no avail. The place may be abandoned, but Erik still keeps it like a fortress. Even his discards warrant lock and key.

Surveying the dozens of varieties of tables, chairs, booths, and counters scattered about breaks her heart for the umpteenth time. As always she envisions the warm atmosphere inviting friendly faces in out of the rain. Anna’s hopes and dreams still materialize in the fog where she breathes on the window.

“Oh Anna it smells so delicious! What’s on special today? Did you make soup? Oh of course you did, you have a sixth sense don’t you. You always know what we’ll want!” dotes her neighbor Karen as she helps her elderly mother to her seat, their usual table. Anna in an apron her grandmother wore hugs them both and helps Karen’s mother settle in comfortably. She has ingeniously arranged the seating rooms so that loud clamoring tables with small children (who…don’t get her wrong, she adores) are far from the tables for adults. She even designed an area that naturally attracts the teens and preteens after school. Instead of gourmet coffees, Anna designed ‘gourmet’ cocoas and tea and juice blends the kids can ohh and ahh and brag about. Anna’s milk and fruit juice–based blends are actually healthy and invigorating.

Seeing her hopes for the future in the dust, ladders, and fallen bits of ceiling is far more devastating than seeing Erik’s intestines fall out. She remembers each chair and each plate service she’d narrowed down as her finalists. Creating the perfect atmosphere, attaining just the right balance between welcome comfort and tasteful elegance became a passion. Once she realized she would never have the marriage and the husband that would provide her children with the kind of family she dreamed of, she diverted all those thwarted hopes to the restaurant. The truth of all those losses, all her mistakes and misjudgments about Erik, confront her daily. Seeing this last costly dream neglected casts a shadow over Anna that she cannot shake. She wipes the steam from her breath off the window with her palm, wiping the slate clean.

But of course…there is dinner to make. The kids’ll be upset about what happened to their dad and will need something hearty and comforting after dropping by the hospital to see him. Anna reminds herself to ring his room as they head over there after school. She’d hate for the kids to stumble into what she had. That would be too confusing.

WATCHING HIS SACCHARINE PERFORMANCE during Betsy, Drew, and Maggie’s visit to the hospital only makes her more determined to get free.

“Oh and you should have seen what a trooper your mom was guys…” he boasts to them. “If she hadn’t come home just then, who knows what might have happened to old Dad?” Their ‘marriage’ seemed to have devolved into a theatrical competition. Whichever one of them would crack and betray the truth in front of the kids, Mother Reinhardt, or anyone else would be the loser. Who could appear the most solicitous, convivial, and happy despite the abyss of lies and emptiness that lay beneath? Of course Anna was losing this battle, because she in fact has a heart left. Or rather she hopes she has a heart left.

The whole show reminds her of the night she met Erik. She was nineteen and went into the hottest restaurant bar in town with her older brother who’d just finished law school. She felt privileged and special. She was in fact taken aback by the glamorous appearance of all the other patrons, most of whom were around her father’s age. Their expensive suits and custom tailored shirts. She knew how to spot quality of course, thanks to her father’s impeccable taste.

But they noticed her…oh yes…they all noticed her in her green dress that brought out the color of her eyes and highlighted her natural auburn hair that she wore piled high on her head. The hair, along with the stilettos, were adopted to make her look taller, so she wouldn’t be mistaken for a high-school girl.

Anna remembers her first sight of Erik holding court at the far end of the bar. The apparent gathering place of the ‘young bucks,’ considering not one of them looked over thirty. Half a dozen men gathered around to be regaled by the tall dark-haired hero of the bunch. Anna couldn’t tell what he was saying but she could see the interest with which the company was listening, hanging on his every word. Anna thought they must be strategizing or discussing politics to be that intent. At the end of his monologue the onlookers let loose with sincere chuckles and a few guffaws.

The most handsome and flashiest, the one who’d been telling the story, Erik finally turned around to take in the effect his compelling tale had on the rest of the patrons. Anna almost giggled when he gave an almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgement to her brother.

“Do you know him?” she pressed.

“Sure…I know him, everyone knows him. That’s Erik Reinhardt. You know those ads for The Enforcer?” he asked. Anna nodded enthralled. “That’s him,” her brother said with a wave of his hand to indicate her entrance into the big leagues. Erik made some space for himself. Then, taking a long look at his chunky metal (and Anna assumed expensive) watch, he realized he had somewhere else to be. Much to Anna’s surprise he paced to the booths behind the bar and extracted a woman who must have been his date—tall, thin, blonde, and obviously drunk. As he escorted her to the door he grazed by Anna saying something she couldn’t hear to her brother. Then he was gone.

That didn’t stop Anna from watching out the front windows as he loaded the blonde into a dark green Jaguar sedan parked right out front and zipped away. Anna was dazzled by the sight of the man who looked as though he had it all, a modern day Cary Grant. Anna recognized how he had the clothes, the car, the money, the career, the looks, the attitude…everything that indicates power and success. All the things Anna was accustomed to having in her experience, in her life. Teamed up with a star like that Anna could easily imagine being welcomed by the whole town.

The very next day her brother got an unexpected phone call from the alpha male himself, inviting him to interview at the firm. “I heard you recently graduated with honors from law school and…oh and by the way who was that delightful redhead you were with last night?” That was the beginning of the end for Anna. She shakes her head to set the old memories free.

Betsy, Drew, and Maggie feel more relaxed, more at ease, more themselves as they pull into the driveway. Knowing Erik won’t be there to reign over the dinner table, or make an unexpected appearance as they sprawl about doing homework (or later as they watch a bit of TV) seems to put them at ease. So it seems to Anna anyway.

This is what she imagines a real divorce will earn her this time. Get them free from his palpable influence. To Anna Erik has become a thing, an energy, a bad odor, a distinct tang polluting the air whenever and wherever he was present. Her weakness was she felt sorry for him, wanted to show him, felt obligated to prove to him that life could be joyful, that love meant giving. So she gave and forgave, and buffered him from the things she knew set him off. She took on this Herculean task for years, until those years became decades that eventually became a way of life.

Betsy and Drew, after a bit less prodding and bribing than usual, dutifully spread their books and papers over the kitchen table as Anna pulls out her ingredients. Maggie, the oldest in her senior year, retreats to work in her room where, as she often reminds everyone, she can work in peace and quiet. Maggie claims the chattering of the kids and Anna clattering pots and pans make it impossible for her to study in the kitchen. Anna chalks the attitude up to Maggie’s age.

She knows Maggie longs to break free, to experience life beyond their tiny country club village. Maggie swore over and over, up and down that she would never settle for such a backward, dingy place for her life’s adventure. Anna quietly applauds her. Does all she can to make it possible for Maggie to break out by slipping university brochures for California and Oregon into her room. Of course, in one of her moods Maggie accuses Anna of wanting her gone because she’s an evil stepmother, which they all knew is a wild exaggeration…Anna raised Maggie and her older brother Greg from ages nine months and two years, respectively, after their mother died of breast cancer.

Anna sautés cubed bacon, from their own hogs, in garlic oil she infused herself. The scent of the heavy saltiness steeped in garlic draws her back into herself; back into her body, her kitchen, her life. To Anna it’s the scent of home, her home. She skins and debones chicken thighs and breasts adding them in chunky slices to the sauté. As she strips and slices thin disks of fat leeks, Betsy recognizes the wafting scent of her favorite dinner.

“Ohh Mom, is that what I think it is?”

“That depends…what do you think it is?” Anna asks in return. Betsy makes a gleeful squeal abandoning her math book to join Anna at the stove.

“What can I do? I want to help,” Betsy wants to know.

“Oh, hey Mom can you put in extra mushrooms?” Drew interjects, engrossed in his work.

“Extra mushrooms? Since when are you a huge mushroom fan?” Anna asks.

“Oh please Mom.” Drew says with an eye roll. “I’m fourteen now. I’m the one that always liked mushrooms…remember? It’s Betsy who didn’t, that is until she turned twelve and started copying me.” Drew informs his errant Mother. Of course Anna knows this, but she just loves to hear him tell it.

“Here Bets, do you want to stir in the leeks?” Anna asks. Betsy deftly tips the small cutting board over the heavy pot and slides the pale green circles into the mix. “Look Mom pink and green, just like my bedroom curtains,” Betsy says putting her face in the steam and inhaling deeply. As Anna opens the tall green bottle she gestures to Betsy. Betsy nods taking the bottle carefully from her Mother.

“OK, but you stir while I pour Mom, I don’t want to add too much. I don’t like mine soupy.” Anna obliges, gently stirring while Betsy slowly fills the pot with the red wine. After adding the extra mushrooms they bring it to a simmer and clap on the lid. Now they have about forty-five minutes to finish schoolwork before Anna needs to make the noodles.

Together the four of them enjoy Anna’s stripped-down version of traditional coq au vin. Betsy’s toddler name for it, ‘Coco Van,’ somehow stuck. In fact it was the inspiration for Anna’s still secret name for the restaurant; Coco’s Café.

They while away their evening in the normal way, Anna nagging them in turn to get off the phone while she checks over their assignments. Anna negotiates which shows are Ok and which are not. Eventually they all settle in together to watch a few recorded episodes of their current family favorite—the show about the teenage girl who is given ‘odd jobs’ by God in the form of various normal looking people.