Jenny looked around the beautiful restaurant. It was airy and light with a view of the building’s atrium, lush with tree-size tropical plants. They had been given prime seating—Martin and Philip were persons of consequence.
“How do you like New York so far?” Martin asked.
“It’s fascinating. Olivia’s apartment is great.” So much in New York was over the top and larger than life, but Olivia’s place was a comfortable oasis in an adorable brownstone filled with chintz-covered furniture, homey houseplants, bright Fiestaware in the china cupboard. Olivia had combined her good taste with the natural warmth of her personality, reflected in the cozy, sunny apartment.
“I’ve had the pleasure of reading some of your columns and essays,” Martin said, turning businesslike.
Jenny held her breath. She felt Philip doing the same.
“And here’s the thing,” Martin continued, leaning toward her a little. “I’m a fan. I like the material. And I’m not just saying that because Philip would strangle me if I didn’t. I’m saying that because there’s something special in your writing.”
“I don’t know what to say,” she told him. “I’m flattered, really.”
Martin held up his hand. “I’m just getting started. Like I said, I’m a fan. I could feel the atmosphere of this little family bakery as if I was right there. You brought your grandparents to life for me. I could hear their voices and picture them in my mind’s eye. I’m no baker but the recipes make sense to me. Your writing is lively, authentic and unpretentious.”
Jenny was still in the clutches of the panic attack. She could feel her face burning. Perhaps he would think it was just excitement. “Thank you,” she said a bit breathlessly. She took a quick sip of her Voss water. “But at the end of everything you said, I hear a great big ‘however’
coming.”
Martin and Philip exchanged a glance. “You have good hearing,” Martin said. “Very perceptive.”
“So what’s the however?” she asked.
The waiter came for their orders. She barely glanced at the menu, and opted for one of the specials, which contained at least three things she’d never heard of.
“The however is this,” Martin said. “You’ve given us the bakery. The recipes, the characters involved—your grandparents and co-workers, the quirky customers. It’s all there.
What’s missing is one key ingredient.”
“What’s that?”
“You.”
Jenny hadn’t expected this. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You need to be more present. Not just a narrator but a character yourself. Sure, people are going to like these vignettes, the recipes and character sketches. But in order for this book to be extraordinary, we need to see you in it. We need to see the things that define you, your dreams and emotions, and what this place represents for you. Show us your heart.”
“I don’t really consider myself interesting enough to write about.”
“Then you’re not thinking hard enough.” Martin was clearly unmoved by the fact that the whole notion distressed her completely. “You’ve given us little tantalizing glimpses of key things that happened in your life. The bitter-chocolate cake your grandmother made every year on your mother’s birthday. How could the reader not want to hear more? And the fiftieth-anniversary cake you yourself made for Philip’s parents. I’m thinking there’s much more to the story. I mean, come on—somebody orders a cake, and it leads to discovering the father you never knew.
That’
s
what people want to read.”
Now Jenny got it. She glanced at Philip and knew he got it, too.
“You want me to write about my mother,” she said.
Martin steepled his fingers together. “What was it like to have her walk away? And to have your father come into your life last summer? And here’s a question—who’s Joey?”
Oh, God. “You read the archives.” It was not a question.
“Sure,” Martin said. “I’m taking this project very seriously.”
She didn’t know what to say. The raw nerves of the past were suddenly exposed. Neither of these men wished her ill, but their scrutiny was painful. Years ago, when she had first started her column, Joey had been a part of her life. Naturally, allusions to him and his Italian heritage had made their way into the column. His father, Bruno, a lovable bear of a man, had even convinced Gram to add fiadone to the menu at the bakery.
“He, um…Joey and I were engaged,” she finally said, studying the crisp white tablecloth.
Even now, it hurt to say the words. And even now, she could picture Joey, laughing and innocent, so in love with her that his fellow rangers used to rib him for spontaneously bursting into song every time he thought of her. There was so much more Jenny could say about Joey, but she wasn’t used to talking about him, especially not to a man she was just coming to know. And in front of—good lord—a literary agent.
“Honey, I’m sorry,” Philip said, touching her hand in a gesture both awkward and comforting. “I hate that certain things happened to you, and I wasn’t there to…I don’t know.
Help or just listen. Just be there.”
His painful honesty touched her, yet she felt a faint shadow of bitterness, too. She wished he’d found her sooner, wished he’d been there when she desperately needed someone. Of course, that was impossible, and it wasn’t his fault. “I’m all right now. It was a long time ago,”
she told him. Then she turned to Mr. Greer. “I never put anything too personal in my writing. I’m not sure I’d know how to do it.”
“Little anecdotes work fine for a newspaper column.” He paused. “But you’ve got some thinking to do—about the personal stuff. Because here’s the thing about a food memoir. It’s never about the food.”
“In other words,” Jenny said to Nina on the phone that night, “he wants me to bleed on the page.”
“Can you do it?”
“Of course I can. The question is whether or not I’m willing to,” Jenny said. “And does anybody really care? I’m just a girl who grew up in a small town, helping out with the family business. Nobody special. I thought that was what people liked about my writing. They could relate to my story, make it their own. Why do I have to write about my mom and admit I never knew my dad? Why in God’s name do I have to bring up Joey?”
“People like that stuff. An ordinary person facing the out-of-the-ordinary.”
Jenny tried to imagine herself putting certain things on the page. “All I’ve ever wanted since I was a girl was to be heard. I wanted people to know my story, even though there was nothing particularly unique about it. People tell about their lives and they want them to be happy stories. When you have to go somewhere not so happy…” She looked out the window at the apartment buildings across the way, standing shoulder to shoulder in an impenetrable blockade.
“It’s going to change what this book is.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” Nina asked.
“I’m not sure. I had a pleasant collection of recipes and anecdotes about the bakery—that
’s what I thought it was. Now I’m about to change it into a story of abandonment and anger, and a failed love affair, and I’m supposed to pull out some sort of epiphany in the end.” She shook her head. “I have no idea how to end it.”
“Could be when you met Philip Bellamy or made the fiftieth-anniversary wedding cake for people you didn’t even know were your grandparents, take your pick,” Nina said. “How bad do you want this?”
Bad enough to hurt and bleed for it.
Jenny took a breath, got up and paced restlessly. “I want it.”
“Then I guess you’d better get busy finding that epiphany.”
She smiled and poured a glass of water on a houseplant. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“You know what I think? I think it’s Rourke McKnight.”
Jenny held the receiver away from her and scowled at it. “Come again?”
“You and Rourke. Maybe that’s the ending.”
“There is no me and Rourke. God, Nina.”
“And you know what else?” Nina said, unrepentant. “You sound miserable. I don’t think heading to the city was the best idea for you.”
“I’ve always wanted to do this, always. You of all people know that.”
“I think you liked the
idea
of it more than the reality,” Nina pointed out. “You know, the cute little apartment, the bustling crowds, the excitement. But the reality is, your life is in Avalon.
It’s where the people who care most about you are.”
“I’m supposed to be meeting my new family,” Jenny pointed out. “My father’s sisters, my paternal grandparents, cousins I never knew existed until half a year ago.”
“Fine, get to know them, but I still think you belong back here.”
Jenny winced. Was she that girl? The shop owner destined to spend her life in a small town while dreaming of a different life like a latter-day female George Bailey? She paced back and forth in front of the window. Outside, people hurried along on their errands, lines of traffic crushed and expanded like a giant accordion. In a doorway across the street, a woman in a gray cloth coat leaned against the jamb, brooding as though the scene was a personal affront to her.
“I like it here,” Jenny insisted, though the impersonal snapshot out the window made her wonder if she was fooling herself.
“Come home. You know you want to.”
“I don’t have a home, remember? I refuse to stay at Rourke’s any longer, and I love you dearly, but there’s no way I’m moving in with you and Sonnet.”
“You can find a rental. No big deal.” Nina, whose heart and soul belonged to Avalon, who loved it so much she worked fourteen-hour days as mayor, simply couldn’t seem to understand why someone would want to live anywhere else.
“I’ll think about it,” Jenny said, mainly because the whole issue was giving her a headache.
A confusion-induced headache. In all honesty, she didn’t know her own mind—her own heart—
anymore. “I’ve got some things I need to do here besides meeting my father’s family.”
“Like what?”
Jenny took a deep breath. “I need to go see Joey.”
“Aw, Jen.” Nina’s voice wavered. “Don’t do that to yourself.”
“I’ll be all right,” she said. “It’s just…something I need to do.”
She took a taxi because the day was so cold. There wasn’t much snow around, just grainy gray heaps along the curbs here and there. The sky was heavy and colorless over the Manhattan Bridge as the taxi crossed to Brooklyn and made its way along Flatbush Avenue. She’d been here once before, but her memory of that day was faulty, a blur of pain. Yet since the meeting with Martin Greer, she’d been thinking a lot about the stories inside her, and she was beginning to realize she’d been hiding from the past rather than facing up to it.
The taxi passed through the arched iron gate and trolled along the gray paved driveway.
She silently counted the rows, and then spoke up. “I think it’s here,” she said faintly. “Can you wait?”
The driver nodded and she got out. She seemed to be the only one here. The cold was etched into the very ground beneath her feet, the grass flattened and drained of color. She walked along, counting as she went, and then she stopped and turned, suddenly glad no one else was around. Her stomach fluttered with nervousness.
“Hey, Joey,” she said. “It’s me.” She took a deep breath, blew it halfway out and started talking. “There’s something I’m thinking about doing, and I wanted to tell you about it. You know how I’ve always wanted to write a book? You used to tease me about writing everything down, remember? I still do that, and now it looks as though I’ve been given that chance. It’s not easy, though. Some of the things I’ll be writing are going to take me back to…difficult times. I don’t know, maybe it’s masochistic, but I want to write about those times. It’s something I probably should have done a long time ago. I think you know why. Anyway, that’s the plan.”
The cold wind caused her eyes to water. She stood for a few moments longer, thinking, remembering. The headstone was situated next to an older marker for Joey’s mother. Joey’s still looked brand new, rounded at the top and gleaming, the carved letters crisp at the edges: Joseph Anthony Santini, 1976-1998. Beloved son.
Step softly—a dream lies buried here.
The buzzer sounded from the street. Jenny hurried to answer, opening the door for Jane Bellamy. Her grandmother—Philip’s mother—stood beaming at her. A wave of silver hair winged out from beneath her soft angora hat, and she wore a handsomely tailored burgundy wool coat. There was nothing the least bit unkind about her, but Jenny simply didn’t know how to act around her.
“Hello, dear,” Jane said. “I’m so pleased you agreed to come.”
“I really appreciate the invitation.” Jenny wondered if she looked as rattled as she felt. She
’d been trying all day to get some writing done, but had managed nothing more than organizing her e-mail files and playing a dozen games of Minesweeper. She gave her grandmother a hug.
Her
grandmother.
They had not known each other long, but there was nothing to dislike about Jane Gordon Bellamy. Jane’s grandfather had founded Camp Kioga and she had grown up there.
In 1956, she had married Charles Bellamy in a ceremony at Camp Kioga. Helen Majesky had created their wedding cake, a splendid confection covered in sugar-dough flowers. Fifty years later, Jenny had made an exact replica of that cake for their golden anniversary, also celebrated at the camp. Jane was sixty-nine years old, beautiful, with bright eyes, her silver hair fashionable, her cashmere winter coat draping nicely over her slender figure. There was an unpretentious air about her, even though she was married to a Bellamy and lived in one of the venerable old buildings on the Upper East Side.
Jane looked around the room, a bright spot even in the dead of winter. “How are you liking Olivia’s apartment?”
“I absolutely love this place. It’s just perfect.” Even so, Jenny was haunted by the things Nina had said on the phone the other day. Was it perfect, or was she forcing herself to feel that way because this was what she thought she wanted?
“I’m not surprised the two of you have similar taste,” Jane said. “After all, you’re sisters.”
Half sisters, Jenny thought. The other half of Olivia was her mother, Pamela Lightsey—
divorced, well off, socially connected, intimidating. Yet another thing she had in common with Olivia. They both had difficult mothers. The difference was, Pamela was made difficult by her presence and Mariska by her absence.