A Pinch of Ooh La La (2 page)

Pick Yourself Up

B
rad Mehldau's song “Intro” blared through the stereo system the morning I finally decided to make a few changes in my life. His drummer, Jorge Rossy, moved into a six-four beat that forced the trio to amp their groove. It was seven a.m. and my bakery, Scratch, was empty except for a handful of early- morning regulars. While Dad had a more soulful sound and was an honest-to-goodness jazz legend, Brad was a technical powerhouse and one of the best of his generation, and his takes on “Intro” and Nick Drake's “River Man”
were just two of my favorites.

Jazz—not that
smooth
jazz Muzak crap that literally made me want to puke anytime I heard it, but rather
authentic
jazz—was almost always playing at my bakery. Some days we tossed in singers like Otis Redding or Sam Cooke, Etta James or Frank Sinatra—singers who, as Daddy would say,
saaang
,
but more times than not, patrons stepped inside Scratch and heard Louis Armstrong's trumpet over the hiss of the espresso machine, or Bill Evans playing a melodic solo just when they needed to hear Evans most.

Dad taught us that we should listen to every genre of music out there and shun nothing, but I always returned to jazz. Coltrane. Bird. Billie. Ella's version of . . .
anything
. Jazz was pretty much all I listened to. Even the menu at Scratch paid homage. There was the Chet Baker cupcake, made with Madagascar vanilla; the Sarah Vaughan, a bittersweet chocolate truffle tart; and the Miles Davis, a dark chocolate cupcake with chocolate chips, topped with chocolate icing. Other items on the menu included the doughnut of the day, old-time favorites such as cobblers and sweet potato pie, and seasonal items like plum tarts and strawberry shortcake.

I hummed along to Mehldau as I helped Beth, second-in-command pastry chef, roll out the last of the sourdough loaves for the lunch crowd. Bendrix was there by then, drinking espresso at his favorite booth in the back and reading the paper on his tablet. He'd been on twenty-four-hour call at the hospital and, as was his habit, had stopped by for coffee before going home.

After making a cappuccino for myself, I took out two pains
aux raisins
and joined him. He continued reading while I began returning e-mail on my laptop. After a moment, I heard him mention something about the People's Republic of China and mumbled a noncommittal reply. I wasn't in the mood for world events so early in the morning but didn't want to flat-out ignore him either.

“Not China, silly,” I heard him say.
“Va-gina.”

I looked up from my laptop, knowing I'd missed something.
What is going on with the Chinese and their vaginas?

Bendrix shook his head ever so slightly and continued to peruse his tablet. “I was at the hospital and trying to remember the last time you went on a date. I went as far back as the eighteenth century.”

I played along. “Ah, right, that dreaded Count Vladimir. Hated that guy.”

“It's been too long, Abbey. If you don't have sex soon, that vagina of yours is going to forget what it's there for. If you don't have sex soon, that vagina of yours is going to dry up and wither away.”

“Thanks for thinking of my—
vagina
,”
I whispered, “while you were at the hospital, supposedly saving lives.”

“Call it multitasking. It's been close to three years.”

“Almost four, but who's counting?” I made a show of glancing around the bakery before going back to my e-mail. “Unlike you, I'm not good at multitasking. I've been busy creating a business. Besides, my”—I whispered—“
vagina
is perfectly fine.”

“Your vagina is as dry as the Sahara. Your vagina is so dry it crunches. Your vagina is so—”

“Okay, okay. I get the point. What's with you this morning? Why are we talking about my
you know what
? It's too early. Go back to your paper or whatever you're doing. I don't need sex right now, okay? I'm in my celibate phase. Besides, whatever is going on with my . . . private body parts is none of your business.”

“
Private body parts?
You sound like you're five years old. It's a
vagina
and you have one for a reason.”

I shushed him, thinking of my customers trying to enjoy their muffins, not that anyone was nearby. I also wouldn't dare say the word
muffin
aloud. I knew Bendrix would run with it:
You need someone enjoying your muffin.
Your muffin needs attention.
And whatever else he'd say.

He swung his tablet around and I stared at a series of cupids fluttering alongside four couples who kissed and smiled.
LoveMatch.com
floated at the top of the screen in a swirly font.

I shifted my gaze from the dating site and looked at him directly. “Uh . . . you need to go home and get some sleep; you're obviously delirious.”

“It's time you got out there again. Your dream of Prince
Charming walking in here and sweeping you off those clogs you're wearing isn't gonna happen.”

“And neither is online dating.”

“‘Meet your perfect match,'” he read. “‘Find love by browsing our top singles, all at your convenience.'”

“It's not going to happen, Bendrix.”

“It's time, Abbey.”

“Is not.”

“It is.”

Thankfully, Noel, one of my baristas, walked over to tell me my eight o'clock appointment would be late. A definite hipster, Noel had good looks and a superior talent for chitchat and remembering names, all essential to our early success. He had the required tattoos and his hair was perfectly coiffed to look messily neat. His interruption gave Bendrix and me a momentary break from sounding like children.

I didn't understand why Bendrix was being so pushy, frankly. There was a time, years ago, when he'd tried to convince me to start dating again, but those conversations had petered out once I became fully committed to opening Scratch. Besides, he was one to talk. If I feared getting hurt again, so did he, and he was as shut down as I was.

The year prior, the love of his life, one Anthony Wilson, had confessed to making out with another man at a party. Bendrix was so upset after hearing Anthony's confession, he broke up with him. Mind you, these two had been dating for more than two years by that point and were planning on buying a house together. I, for one, stood on the side of common sense and told Bendrix that he should give Anthony a second chance. At least hear him out, I'd said. It was a kiss, after all, not a full-blown affair, or anything close; and Anthony had confessed, which was a clear indication that the kiss was a cry for help. But Bendrix,
stubborn and prideful, wanted nothing more to do with Anthony. I was so upset after their breakup, you would've thought I'd been dumped. I never knew anyone who was a better fit for Bendrix, who could make him do that rare thing he so disdained—smile—as often as Anthony could. They were good together. Then again, if Bendrix knew me better than anyone, I knew him just as well, and my guess was that after two years with Anthony, he'd been falling hard, and loving a person so deeply scared him, and that kiss had given him a way out. Bendrix waved away my take on the situation, calling it psychobabble, and after the split he rarely wanted to talk about Anthony, or, God help him, discuss his feelings. When it came to love, I was the Cowardly Lion and Bendrix the Tin Man. If I dealt with the Avery debacle by baking, Bendrix dealt with his heartbreak by working longer hours at the hospital, volunteering at a free clinic in East Oakland, and watching esoteric foreign films from the sixties.

Anthony's name worked like kryptonite against Bendrix's cool exterior, and he had a way of recoiling whenever he heard it. Even so, I thought, if he kept bugging me about dating, I was going to pull out the name and throw it at him.

He waited for Noel to leave the table before starting up again. “You have to think about egg production.”

“You have to think about leaving me alone. You're getting on my nerves.”

“I'm concerned. From what I learned in medical school, eggs get old, and when they do, they don't lay as well, making it harder to create the necessary zygote that eventually leads to diaper changes and midnight feedings.”

It wasn't fair that he mentioned kids, but he had a point and he knew it. Forty loomed: a six-foot-high billboard lit up on a dark highway and drawing closer and closer and closer. What's more, if my heart was holding sit-ins and quietly requesting that I find
romance, my uterus was holding protests with a megaphone and placards:
What do we want? Sperm! When do we want it? Now!

I looked at him from across the table. “Why are you putting all of this in my face? Why are you being a jerk?”

He leaned in, his voice low. “If you want a family as much as I know you do, now is the time to start trying. The older you get, the higher the risks of ectopic pregnancy, high blood pressure, diabetes—”

“You've made your point.”

He reached over and took my hand. “I worry about you.”

“I know. Stop it. It's annoying.”

I wasn't a believer in reincarnation, but if past lives existed, I had to believe that Bendrix and I had lived together through several. I imagined us bumbling along through one lifetime after another as brother and sister, husband and wife, mother and son—we'd experienced it all together, only to reach this point now, best friends. We had met the first day of our freshman year of high school. When I saw him in the cafeteria in his oversized T-shirt with a picture of the Cure, it was love at first sight. His Afro had been straightened to within a short breath of its life, dyed lime green, and styled so that several oiled strands fell perfectly over his left eye. His pants were held together in spots by safety pins. I was in my black phase—black jumper, black stockings, black shoes—and my own hair was shaped like a block of cotton candy. Frankenstein's bride had nothing on me.

He was reading Baudelaire and eating an elaborate sandwich on a toasted baguette with various kinds of sprouts and vegetables sticking out. He didn't look up from his book until I made a show of clearing my throat and opening my Plath. When he saw what I was reading he smiled. “Child, I cannot believe we have another four years of this shit. I feel like Oliver Twist trapped in that damn orphanage.”

“More like
Carrie
,” I rejoined.

“Yes,” he said, widening his eyes. “Pig's blood and all. Bendrix Henderson.”

“Abbey Lincoln Ross.”

•   •   •

I
took a bite of my pain aux raisins and Bendrix sipped his espresso while staring at me. In the momentary silence that followed, I felt a sense of anxiety coming from him that I hadn't noticed before. I could feel my heart quickening because I just knew that something was up. Something was wrong.

“What happened?”

He stared down at his tablet longer than necessary. Waffling, I believe it is called.

“Bendrix.”

He sighed and swiped, then pushed his tablet in front of me. I picked it up and stared directly into Avery Brooks's caramel peepers and shockingly white teeth. Avery stared back at me from the photo as if no time had passed at all. I read the headline—
AVERY BROOKS
MAKING QUIET COMEBA
CK IN AMSTERDAM
—then let my gaze wander back down to
the photo. He stood in front of a large abstract painting flanked by potted plants and an oversized red chair; a staircase peeked out from behind. Sunlight shone through the windowpanes to his left, and at his feet there was a small stuffed rabbit, a kid's toy. His home, presumably, in Amsterdam.

“I guess Mexico didn't work out,” I heard Bendrix say.

I remained quiet, until—“How long have you known?”

“I found out a few hours ago while I was at the hospital.”

I skimmed the text long enough to catch familiar phrases like
impassioned artist
,
fraud
,
Oscar-nominated documentary
, and the more unfamiliar
phoenix rises
,
sales doubling
, and
second life
. I clicked to the next page and saw Avery with his arm around a
ruddy, freckled girl whose blond pigtails flipped upward as though pulled by strings. She wore clogs and lederhosen.

I exaggerate, but only slightly. She was in her twenties and pretty in a pale, freckled, Scandinavian way.

“They have a son,” Bendrix said.

“That explains the pink rabbit. Good for them. Pippi Longstocking and Basquiat's love child.” I pushed the tablet toward him and covered my eyes with my fingers as if I'd been reading for hours. “What else?”

“Apparently he's working on a series of paintings.”

“
Original
this time?”

“So he says. He's been selling. The price for his work is up. They love him in Europe. His show hasn't opened and most of the work has already sold.”

Bendrix gave me the necessary time to pout before speaking. “He's putting his life back together—all of his life, not just work. That's what I've been trying to tell you, Abbey. I love what you've done with Scratch as much as you do, but you need to get on with living.”

“But you don't understand. I need time. Yes, you were there, but you don't know what it's like to be humiliated in movie theaters and on Blu-ray and DVD and live streaming.”

I always fell back on my humiliation when I was pushed too hard. And why shouldn't I? Who else could say they had discovered their fiancé was cheating while watching a documentary about his life? Show of hands?
Anyone? Anyone at all?

Avery B: His Rise and Fall
was a Sundance Audience Award winner and went on to be nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary. I mean, how does something like that happen?!

“That movie was years ago, Abbey.”