Out to Lunch (4 page)

4

V
olnay whines at the door, deep and insistent.

“Okay, okay. I’m coming.” The morning walk is very important. I think somehow she knows that her arthritis loosens up after some exercise, and she’s so stiff these days when she wakes up that she’s less and less patient with my dawdling. I don’t know what it is; I was always the on-time-with-Swiss-precision girl. Aimee was the one who never managed to get out of the house at the right time. It used to make me nuts, her assing around when we needed to be somewhere. But she had personal magic for avoiding traffic and finding parking. I could leave a half an hour before her and arrive somewhere at the same time, because whatever route I take? Traffic and construction and street closures and detours and endless block circling, looking for a parking space. Arriving at my destination to see Aimee’s huge Audi SUV parked right in front. Maddening.

But apparently I have learned how to ass around the house myself of late, puttering and futzing and finding strange projects to obsess about. I’m not really sure what it is, maybe it’s that I generally sort of have nowhere to be, not in any serious way. And my self-imposed errands and life maintenance that are supposed to get me out of the house, I plan for certain times or days, and then suddenly I have to clean out the freezer or redo the spice rack.

Volnay gives a little bark, and I pop out of my head, looking at her sitting by the door, her little blue leash in her mouth. Poor thing.

I lean over and attach the leash, and open the door. She pulls me outside, down the front stoop, and out to the gate. I turn right, but she growls and I look back at her. She is leaning back into the leash, pulling me to the left.

“C’mon, NayNay, this way.” I give her a little tug. She tugs back. And I know exactly what she wants.

If we go right, we take a long winding stroll through the quiet neighborhood side streets, looking at the houses, seeing the occasional dog or a mom out with her kids. But if we go left, we head up the boulevard to the Square, and that is where The Larder Library is. It’s been almost two weeks. And my dog misses her friends and the home-baked dog treats and her comfy sleepy spot in the sunny window. I give one more halfhearted tug in the other direction, but she will not be moved. She has a lot of gravity for a thirty-pound dog.

“Fine. Let’s go see everyone.” We head up to Logan, walking by the big houses and towering trees. Volnay is prancing, head up proudly; her squat little bowlegs producing a smooth gait that would make the dog show people preen. She carries herself like a supermodel. Weiner dog or no, she is a fairly perfect specimen of her breed. And I know I’m supposed to be all about the rescue mutts, and I give money to PAWS every year, but there is something about having a dog with a pedigree that makes me smile. Her AKC name is The Lady Volnay of Côte de Beaune. The French would call her a
jolie laide
, “beautiful ugly,” like those people whose slightly off features, sort of unattractive and unconventional on their own, come together to make someone who is compelling, striking, and handsome in a unique way. I’m always so proud that I’m her person.

As we get close to the Square, which is oddly really more of a circle, my chest tightens. My breathing gets shallow. My palms slick over with sweat. My stomach turns over.

I pull back on Volnay’s leash and walk over to one of the outdoor chairs in front of La Boulangerie on the corner. I try to get a deeper breath, so annoyed with these little attacks that come upon me out of nowhere. It’s ridiculous. I thought it might be perimenopause, but my doc said my hormones are fine, and that it sounded to her like panic attacks. Which is ridiculous because I have nothing to be panicky about. But they keep happening, out of nowhere, my bowels turn to liquid, and my legs go all noodley. Volnay puts a paw on my knee. I sit and wait for it to subside. Finally my breathing gets smoother, and my rib cage unclenches.

Frankly, I want to go home. To crawl back into bed and go to sleep and not wake up for a year. But I know that as much as Volnay wants to go to the Library, deep down, so do I. Eloise and Andrea have called and sent e-mails, and little Benji keeps sending the funniest snarky e-cards, and poor Lois keeps leaving tins of pastries on my porch. We are a strange little family, but I know they are worried about me, and I didn’t have much time at the funeral or at the house after to do more than hug and accept the usual banal sentiments of condolence, and the last two weeks have been full of paperwork and phone calls and business crap, and with not getting good sleep, I’ve just had very little energy.

I stand up, less wobbly, and, pretty sure that pants-shitting is not in my future, head in the direction of the Library. Weirdly, I want to be able to see Nancy tomorrow and tell her that I did it, even though I know that she cares less about what I do and more about how it makes me feel to do it or not. But it will feel like a small victory.

The Voix
pipes in.
“Good lord, just get there already. It will make you feel better. Or it will make you feel worse. But so the fuck what? Put on your big-girl panties and do it, because we always had brave faces for the team, and like it or not, they need to see you and be with you and know you are okay.”

As soon as we turn the corner onto Kedzie, Volnay starts to pull on her leash, half dragging me down the block. We zip past Lula Café and City Lit Books, waving at Teresa, the proprietor, who is doing a display in the window as we pass.

Just on the next corner sits The Larder Library, a three-story gray stone Victorian lady with a wide stoop leading to the porch, the dark green sign with its gold lettering carefully weathered to look like it has been here forever. The heavy dark wood double doors are open to let in the soft unseasonably warm autumn breezes, and the sweet vanilla scent of something delicious is wafting out into the street.

I let go of the leash and Volnay tears up the steps ahead of me like a bat out of hell, careening into the shop, and skidding on the worn wooden floors, tumbling ass over teakettle and landing in a wriggling lump at Lois’s feet in their ubiquitous clogs.

“Well, my word, look who’s here!” Lois bends her round form down and scoops my pup up in her arms like she is a mere feather, snuggling her to a Teutonic bosom and letting the dog lick her wrinkled cheeks.

“Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.” I go over to accept the bone-crushing embrace. Lois is only barely five feet tall, but is strong as an ox with a milkmaid’s peaches-and-cream complexion, water blue eyes, and the pinkest Cupid’s bow mouth I’ve ever seen on a grown-up. Her hands and arms are strong from years working in her family bakery, kneading vast lumps of dough into submission, and whisking dozens of eggs to fluffy clouds by hand. Two of her sons run the bakery now; the third is a butcher at Paulina Market. But Lois was never one for retirement. She had been a widow for over twenty years and a neighborhood resident her whole life; we hadn’t even gotten the sign up before she wandered by with a strudel to offer her part-time services. One bite told us all we needed to know, and we hired her on the spot. She treats us all like errant nieces and nephews, and we dote on her.

“Liebchen.”
She cradles my face in her strong hands. “I’m so happy you’re here. Sit. I’ll make tea.”

She wanders over to the kitchen, tossing Volnay a biscuit on her way with perfect efficiency of motion. Volnay takes the treat and clicks after her, a kitchen-floor dog if ever there was one.

“Hey, Jenna, how are you?” Eloise floats out from behind the antique library table that serves as the front counter.

I remember when Aimee called to tell me that a small neighborhood library on the South Side was getting a makeover and that she had snapped up a ton of beautiful old furniture, including card catalogs, tables, chairs, shelves, even a pair of ancient carrels which we put in the back of the store for the local writers who like someplace a little quieter than New Wave Coffee for their free Wi-Fi. She nailed the “Library” part of our name in one fell swoop, furnishing nearly 80 percent of the store with that one adventure.

“Hi, El, I’m okay.”

She reaches out with her endless slender arms, bending at the waist to envelop me in a brief hug. As short and round as Lois is, Eloise is a lithe expanse of waif, at least six feet tall with a ballerina’s body and a mane of pre-Raphaelite auburn curls that she keeps twisted into a complicated bun, little ringlets escaping around her forehead that she is always blowing out of her green eyes with their pale lashes. She is elfin-featured, has impossibly long fingers, a tiny button nose, a pointed chin. A retired dancer at thirty with a degree in library science and an epic supply of insanely delicious cookie recipes, she glides around the store in an endless series of long, flowy skirts with leotard tops, and with her calm grace, teaches all of the children’s classes and does story time. She is also in charge of research and assists with book buying.

“Well, it’s about fucking time.” Andrea wanders down the staircase.

“Well, hello to you too.”

She grabs me by the shoulders and looks me in the eyes.

“How. Are. You? Are you beyond shitty? Because we are all beyond shitty, so you must just be beyond the beyond. You must be Losing. Your. Mind. Are you losing your mind?”

Andrea is the store manager, and after Aimee, probably the person I have been closest to the longest. She was my first sous-chef when I opened Fourchette, my catering company. She and I met doing a weeklong intensive chocolate course right after I got back from France. She is a brilliant self-taught chef, and was my right hand at Fourchette until the merger with Soiree, Aimee’s company. Then she became Vice President of Food and Beverage for StewartBrand, and when we sold to Peerless, took the generous buyout they offered to employees who did not want to stay, and asked us to install her at the Library, where she could stop dealing with demanding clients and vendors. She is store manager and head chef for the cooking classes and special events, and keeps the menagerie in line.

She and I are the same age, both native Chicagoans, although she is a Southsider and I am a Northsider. But as long as we stay away from each other during the Cubs/Sox crosstown series, we are very similar. Both only children of driven working parents, mine a therapist and an academic, hers both doctors. Both public school educated. Both single. In many ways we have much more in common than I had with Aimee. She and I are the same height and generally the same build, which makes shopping for clothes with her much easier for both of us. She has the most gorgeous caramel skin and keeps her chestnut hair in a close-clipped natural style, accentuating her beautifully shaped head and swanlike neck.

Andrea’s dad is African American, and her mom is Dominican, and they sort of adopted both Aimee and me over the years . . . Aimee, who lost both her parents within a year of each other in our late twenties; and me, with my folks in California for the past decade. We always spend Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve with them. Mother’s Day we always have a ladies’ lunch, and Father’s Day we have a BBQ.

“Hey, will you give your folks my love, and tell them thank you so much for the note and flowers?”

“You’ll tell them yourself on Sunday. You are coming to dinner.”

“Oh, that’s sweet, but . . .”

“You. Are. Coming. To. Dinner. Family dinner. Sunday night. Mom is making lechón and pan de coco, and Dad is making Nana’s mac ’n’ cheese. I’ll pick you up at six.”

There is no arguing. And if I am going to feel beyond shitty, as Andrea says, I ought to be full of delicious slow-roasted pig and mac ’n’ cheese and coconut bread.

“Thank you. Tell them I’ll bring that green slaw they love. Get a vegetable in us so our arteries don’t freeze solid before coffee.”

She leans over and kisses my cheek. “Good girl. They’ll be delighted.”

Lois comes over, handing us each a steaming cup of tea. She always remembers that I like mine with milk and one sugar, Andrea takes hers black; Aimee was a honey and lemon girl.

“Go, sit.” She motions to the sitting area in the bay window, a pair of extrawide and extradeep down-filled gray linen reading chairs, with a small side table for each, and a low coffee table in between. Andrea and I settle into the chairs; Volnay jumps up to share my space. Lois comes back over with a plate of vanilla shortbread, barely cooled from the oven, with a small pot of grapefruit curd to dip the crisp, buttery fingers in. Eloise slides the doors closed, and flips the sign to “We’ll be back in 20 minutes.” She and Lois grab tea for themselves, and bring over two of the wood armchairs to join our circle. We have no sooner flicked the first crumb off our laps, when there is a clattering at the door. Benji is having a fit on the porch, scratching at the door like the stray tomcat he is. Eloise glides over to let him in.

Our prodigal adopted son, Benji, came to us at sixteen as an intern. He’d been in a group home, taken from his addict single mom when he was fourteen, and was something of a problem child. But as he likes to say, cooking saved his life. The woman who ran the kitchen at the group home took him under her wing, and he found that he loved being in the kitchen and had a natural aptitude. He found a calling, discipline, and people who treated him with care and respect. Shavon, his mentor, served on the board of a small not-for-profit for which we were planning a pro bono benefit, and mentioned him to me. I met him the night of the party and immediately offered him an internship. He was one of the hardest workers I had ever met, and frequently saved the day when my team was in the weeds.