Bittersweet (8 page)

“Oh yeah.” He screws up his face and pushes his glasses up his little Bug-nose, and oh my God it just about
kills
me. Really. I might have a heart attack right here on the coffee table, all over the carefully arranged armies of the North and South.

“But we can try,” I say, massaging my chest. “We can always leave a voice mail, right?”

He shrugs, gathering up his books and papers and toys. “I’ll check online. It’s faster.”

He zooms to the computer in the kitchen on superfast, round-and-round cartoon feet, stopping only once to rescue a lone little green man who fell to the linoleum in the rush.

Civil War researched and Dad temporarily forgotten, I shoo Bug into bed and start on those cupcakes for Monday’s French presentation. An hour later there’s the click-clack-jingle-jangle of keys in the front lock as Mom struggles through the doorway with her giant purse and a few bags of leftovers.

“Put this away for me, baby?” Mom hands over the goods and shakes out her snow-dusted coat in the hall.

I transfer two stacks of aluminum take-out containers into the fridge, shove the plastic bags under the sink, and get back to work. “How’d the rest of the night go?”

“Carly quit.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep. Said waitressing wasn’t what she expected. It’s food service, for the love of pie. What’s to expect?” She kicks off her boots and flops onto a chair at the kitchen table. “What are you making over there?”

“Carousel Cupcakes. They’re for this careers and hobbies thing for French.” I hold up my baking notebook to show her the rough sketch—white cake with sunshine-orange icing, a chocolate straw and animal cracker stuck into the top. I really wanted to do these two-tiered lavender honey cakes I saw on a wedding show at Dani’s, but I figured words like “bear” and “tiger” were easier to explain
en français
. Besides, no way the
masses of Watonka High would appreciate a work of art like two-tiered lavender honey cakes.

Mom’s beaming like a normal parent would if her kid just got accepted to Harvard. “You’re so clever with those things.”

I stir a bit more yellow into the frosting, a drop at a time until I get the color just right. Mom’s always been my number one cupcake fan. The other day a lady asked to see our sample book, and Mom gushed over those photos like they were her grandbabies or something. “Look at this one,” she cooed, pointing to a shot of my lamb cupcakes—shaved coconut wool, a mini-cupcake head, and chocolate chips for eyes. “My daughter makes them all by hand. Aren’t they cute?” I smile when I think about it now, even though it
is
kind of silly. Lamb cupcakes? Honestly. But Mom goes crazy for stuff like that.

“So,” she continues, “speaking of Carly—”

“Yeah, I know we have that nondiscrimination policy, but is it illegal to discriminate against psychos? Because she’s the third psycho to quit this year, and—”

“Hudson, there’s something we need to talk about, honey.”

I toss my wooden spoon into the bowl. “Honey” is total red alert stuff in our house. Was she hovering when I talked to Josh at the diner? Did Bug slip up and tell her about the skates?

“Everything okay?” I ask.

Mom taps her fingers on the table. Shuffles through the papers Bug left. Stares out the window as the plastic wall clock ticks off the seconds. Minutes.

“Hurley’s …,” she finally says, “we’re not doing so hot.”

“We were slammed today.”

Mom shakes her head. “It’s not enough. We got a nice boost after your cupcake article, but … I don’t know. This was the worst month on the books in years.”

“That bad?”

“I’m working on a plan to turn it around.” Her so-called reassuring grin looks like it hurts, and it reminds me of that day in her bedroom before the Empire Games.
Big night tonight, baby. Let’s get moving!

“You gonna let me in on this plan?” I fill a pastry bag with the sunshine-colored icing. I know from years of overheard arguments that selling the place is not an option. It was the only thing besides me and Bug that she wanted out of the split, and she got it, free and clear. Lump sum settlement, the lawyers called it. The house got sold, the mortgage on Hurley’s got paid off, and Dad got to check out, no strings attached.

“We have to cut back hours,” she says. “We’ll stay open late after the Sabres and Bills games, but otherwise we’ll close a little earlier. And what about your cupcakes? Can we put some more variety out there, something special for the holidays? Might give us another jump.”

“Easy enough. I’ll have Dani take some new pictures for the sample book, too.” Okay, so I misjudged the urgency. Shorter hours, a few extra cupcakes to get us back in the black, no biggie. “Don’t worry, Ma. We’ll be fine.”

“Thanks, baby.” She sighs again and looks at the clock, the second hand making everything seem like a final countdown.

“Mom?”

“We’re not replacing Carly,” she announces, fast and blurry like she just talked herself into it. “Things are too tight right now. These new girls want the same benefits the big chains offer, and I can’t do that. I’m sorry, Hudson.” She looks at me and waits for it to sink in, and when it does, the pastry bag slips from my hands and hits the counter, squirting out a blob of orange-yellow goo.

“I know you don’t have direct waitressing experience,” she continues, “but you’re a fast learner, and you’ll have lots of help. Dani and Marianne are strong. Nat’s good, too, and she’ll be back full time after her nursing exams. I can’t give you much more than minimum for an hourly, but you’ll make good tips….” She finally meets my eyes, her reassuring grin utterly failing to convince me. “You might actually like it.”

Waitressing?
I shake my head. I can’t do what Dani does—talk to all those people, be friendly and perky as they order her around and drop food on the floor and demand refills and discounts and more, more, more. I can’t deal with lousy tippers and picky eaters and adults who try to order off the kiddie menu. I know she loves waitressing, but she’s always been a front-of-the-house kind of girl, all smiles and big eyes, bad stuff rolling off her shoulders like kids sledding down a steep hill.

Mom frowns, still watching me closely, and my throat tightens up. No matter how much time I put in at the ovens of Hurley’s, no matter how many cupcakes I ice, I’ve always held on to one simple fact: Baking is the one thing Mom never did.
She
was the waitress who got promoted to manager, the manager who became the owner, the owner who gives a little more of her life to that place every day. She’s always joked about leaving me the family business, but I never took it seriously. How could I? All this time, as long as I was just baking, my destiny could be separate from hers. Parallel, never overlapping. Close, but not the same.

“I don’t want to waitress.” My voice cracks. “I like my cupcakes.”

“We’ll find a way for you to do both.” Mom shuffles the papers on the table again, tapping them against the edge three times. “We have to pull together on this.”

I take a deep breath and reassemble the pastry bag.
Pulling together.
If only that strategy applied three years ago.

“You’re young, Hudson.” Mom flashes the everything’s-gonna-be-just-fine smile again. “A little more hard work won’t kill you.”

“You can’t prove that. Look at all those people from the steel mill with black lung.”

“You won’t get lung disease from waiting tables.”

“No, but I might get carpal tunnel from carrying the trays, and back problems, and …”

“And if I had another choice, I’d take it.”

I squeeze a spiral of bright orange icing onto a waiting cupcake, turning it to cover all the edges.
Squeeze and turn. Squeeze and turn.

“It’s only for a little while,” Mom says. “Just until things
get back on track. And look at the bright side—it’s a chance for you to finally learn some other aspects of the business. I was younger than you when I got my start, remember?”

Squeeze and turn. Squeeze and turn.

“Hudson, please?” she asks, softer than before. “I really need your help with this—at least on Sunday to Wednesday dinners. Right now the diner is the only thing paying Mrs. Ferris for the roof over our heads.”

Guilt. Guilt.
Guilt
. Pass the freakin’ butter.

“Speaking of paying Mrs. Ferris,” I say, “you know you owe me forty bucks, right?”

Mom stands, her shoulders slumped. I can almost feel the ache in her bones, radiating out through her skin. Her eyes are red and puffy, dark-circled as if she hasn’t slept in days. I know she just wants to kiss me good night and crawl between the cool sheets of her bed, but quickly, quietly, she digs two tens from her purse and hands them over. “I’ll get the rest for you tomorrow, okay?”

“Fine.” I stuff the money into my pocket and go back to icing the cupcakes.

“Can I … you want some help?” she asks.

Yes.
I want some help getting out of this job, out of this apartment, out of this place. I want some help figuring out what to do with my life. I want some help believing that there’s more to it than unclogging toilets and inventorying milk and sorting money from a drawer that’s always just short of enough.

I hand her the box of animal crackers. “I need all the lions, tigers, and bears in separate piles. Um, please.”

She dumps the box into a bowl and picks through the crackers, snacking on the ones with missing limbs. While we work, she hums an old Bob Dylan tune, and the melody reminds me of this time we got stranded in the diner during a blizzard, us and Bug, and Dad couldn’t get to us because there was a citywide driving ban. We were there for two days, and without its usual crowds and smells, the place took on a kind of magic. We had all the food we needed and slept sideways in the big booths with the heat cranked up. On the second morning, the wind settled down and Mom took us outside to make a snowman in the parking lot. It had a carrot nose and cut potatoes for eyes and a Hurley’s apron tied around the middle. Later, when our noses froze and our fingers ached, Mom made us hot chocolate with scoops of vanilla ice cream and sang that Dylan song as Bug and I drank out of the pink-and-white diner mugs and took turns twirling around the floor, collapsing when we got too dizzy.

… without your love, I’d be nowhere at all. I’d be lost if not for you …

The plows came that night, digging us out so we could finally drive home. I remember watching them mow into our snowman, his raw potato eyes browning in the open air. I wished we could stay snowed in for one more night, but school was set to reopen the following morning and so would Hurley’s, and besides, my father was probably worried.

It was the last blizzard he ever saw.

I look up and catch my mother watching me over the counter, animal crackers separated on a plate before her, and my heart cracks right down the middle. The left half knows that look on her face from the months following their divorce—her anxiety and worry. All that desperation. The quiet regret, wishing she could have done better for us, wishing the one who
really
owed us the big fat apology was still around to say it.

But the right side of my heart looks at the lines in her face and sees the map of my future. Today I take the waitress gig. Next I’ll be managing the schedule. Then in a few years or a decade or maybe even two, I’ll inherit the restaurant. Cement my crowning achievement as Beth Avery’s daughter, the proud-but-struggling new owner and sometimes-cupcake-baker of a forgettable old diner off the I-190, a pair of scuffed-up ice skates dangling from a hook in the staff closet, a bittersweet memento of another life.

I used to believe that figure skating was my way out, my first-class, one-way ticket to all the good things in the world. “Mom and I didn’t have the talent and opportunities you have, kiddo,” Dad told me more than once. “If you stay focused, you can skate your way to the top. You can be the queen of everything. You just have to want it bad enough.”

For a long time after he left, I didn’t want it. And now that I’m finally ready to want something again, it’s too late. I’m afraid to skate in front of people. I’m giving up the last of my free time to work at my mother’s diner. Queen of everything?
Please. Every one of my chances is gone, and here I remain, stuck outside of Buffalo, the chicken wing capital of the world, queen of nothing but a few zany cupcakes.

“Okay, Ma.” I swipe a lion cracker through the sunshine-colored icing and bite off his head. “I’ll do it. But Sunday to Wednesday nights blow. After tomorrow, I want better shifts.”

She smiles, and the deep lines in her face vanish, temporarily changing the map of my future to a broad, blank canvas. “You got it, baby.”

Vanilla cupcakes baked over a blend of chopped pineapples, butter, and brown sugar inverted on a warm plate and served with vanilla bean ice cream