“Tanya, I’m so happy for you!” I said. I knew what courage it took for her to overcome her inhibitions after being date raped. Now she was ready to get married.
“Scars, not wounds, right?” I said.
“Scars, not wounds,” she said. “They’re there to stay. But even Christ kept His scars”.
“Yes,” I said. “So when is the big day?”
“I don’t know. Sometime next spring, I imagine. June maybe. Will you be able to come?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “I’m not sure when I’ll arrive, but it will definitely be in time to make sure you don’t order a wedding cake from a grocery store!”
“So, speaking of romance,” Tanya continued. “Any further contact with Dan? Or thaw from Philippe?”
I sighed and sat in one of the needlepoint chairs. “Nope. Dan’s been pretty quiet lately. And Philippe is—I don’t know. A couple weeks ago, I had two guys whose company I enjoyed, and they enjoyed mine. Now, the only affection I get is from Céline”.
Tanya laughed. “Do you remember when we did that magazine quiz in high school where you had to pick whether you wanted kids or a husband, but not both?”
“Yes,” I said with chagrin. “You picked kids. I picked a husband”.
“Now I’m getting married, and you have a kid who loves you”.
I laughed with her at the irony of it. “Céline isn’t my kid, but I am growing to like her a lot. And hopefully you’ll have kids”.
“And you’ll get married,” Tanya said with finality.
“We’ll see,” I said. “Right now, I’m focused on finishing school. That reminds me—have you been browsing Web sites for your wedding preparations?”
“Of course!” Tanya was ultraorganized.
“Will you send me some links?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said.
We finished our conversation, and I thought about my brother’s wedding last June and now Tanya’s this coming year.
Always a bridesmaid and never a bride?
Trust me
, I heard as I fell asleep.
When I walked into the bakery at Rambouillet on Thursday, Simone grabbed my arm and pulled me aside.
“Lexi,” she said. “Is it okay that I told Patricia about the American man who called a few weeks ago?”
I nodded slowly. “Yes. Why?”
Simone exhaled her relief. “I just wanted to make sure. I was telling her that I was practicing my English with you, but then when a man called speaking English, I could not understand him. She looked surprised, and asked who had called speaking English. So I told her”.
Ah ha
.
“Was that the friend you were in Paris with a couple weeks ago?”
I nodded. I had nothing to hide. “Yes”.
Simone said, “Patricia thought so too”.
I heard a slightly raised voice in the back. A man’s voice.
“I’m glad it was okay,” Simone said. “You wouldn’t know it was almost Christmas with the
problèmes
going on around here”.
A customer came in the door, and Simone went to help her. Before I went into the back, I noticed the beautiful, artistic touches Simone had made in the shop. Lovely garlands, swags of greenery, and ropes of cranberries decorated the display cases. She’d lined each case with forest green velvet and sprinkled gold dust throughout.
It was a wonderful place to work.
I went into the back and looked for my chef’s coat on the hooks near the office. A muffled, rapid-fire French argument took place on the other side of the door. I couldn’t hear the words, but I could tell it was Philippe and his father.
I went back to the cool room. On the way, I prayed for Philippe. When I got to the kitchen, Patricia was already there.
I turned on my emotional radar. Patricia smiled at me, genuine. I relaxed.
I knew she was used to getting her way and being in charge of the kitchen, but what she did for Céline and Philippe was truly selfless. She wouldn’t hold it against me if it didn’t go according to her plans, which made me want to help her even more.
“How were the examinations? Did you pass with one hundred percent?” she asked.
“I think I did well,” I said. “Better on cakes and mille-feuille than bread. Thankfully, they tested me on brioche. Philippe helped me with that, so I was right on”.
Patricia smiled. “Philippe, he is a good man”.
“Yes,” I agreed, “he is”. I changed the subject. “You said it was okay for me to take a day to gather what I need for my exhibition. I’d like to go to Paris on Saturday, to the flea market. Would that be okay? I think I can get most of what I need there”.
“Oui,”
Patricia said. “Can you stay late tomorrow night, then? I will too. We’ll work together and I can show you a few new things”.
I smiled at how far our relationship had come since Seattle. “I’d love that”.
“I’m not good for the chocolate today,” she said. “I’m going to prep the dough for tomorrow’s kugelhopf”.
She handed over the chocolate to me. We were dipping chocolates for the Christmas season. The good news was I’d purchased some red and white striped peppermint candies and crushed them in dark chocolate, and the bakery customers liked them. The bad news was I tried to make chocolate peppermint croissants, and they had to be thrown away.
An hour later I saw a special order for a local business—four dozen petits fours. I smiled, remembering the special orders I’d filled—and occasionally messed up—in Seattle. I decided to check with Patricia before filling this one.
I washed my hands and walked out of the cool room. I headed toward the oven room, where I could hear Patricia and Philippe talking.
“She needs to go to the flea market on Saturday,” Patricia said in a low voice. “You could take her. I can take care of everything here”.
I heard Philippe sigh. “I can’t, Patricia. I told Papa I would bake here in the morning and meet him at Versailles right after. And then I have a program to go to at Céline’s school”.
“Ah,” Patricia said. “I just think it’s better, you know,
à deux
. And Andrea has been gone some time, now”.
My heart clenched. What did I want him to say—to feel? What did I feel?
“Listen,” Philippe said. “I like Lexi. Very much. But between you and Papa, you’re trying to run my life. I am a grown man with a child. I will run my own life, now.
Ça va?
Please give me some space”.
I slipped back to the cool room and decided to take some initiative and do the petits fours. I had a lot of time to think as I worked, cutting, filling, icing, and decorating with the smallest of tips, the littlest knives.
I didn’t hold Philippe’s lack of clarity against him, as I suffered from it myself. Somehow I knew things were getting sorted out for both of us, though perhaps slowly.
I wondered if Philippe had only been interested in me because of Patricia’s pushing. I wondered if she was pushing harder now, because of Dan. Every day life became more complicated.
Friday I came into work and found Patricia making couronnes.
“What can I do?” I asked.
“Help me with the breads,” she said. I rolled up my sleeves and helped her form the dough into the couronne’s crown shape. We put
them into the proofer, and she took me to the back to show me the growing list of orders for Bûche de Noël.
“I want them to be decorated nicely. Would you like to figure that out?”
I grinned. “Would I! I told Anne I’d love to do that, and now I can”.
I sat down and sketched out some ideas before I got to work. The roll was chocolate cake with a smooth filling, rolled into a log shape. To my American eyes, it looked like a huge Hostess Ho Ho. I laughed.
After making the cake, which could be filled with coffee cream too, I frosted it with chocolate icing. Dragging a comblike tool through the icing gave it the texture of a tree trunk. I mixed white fondant for the ends, and dragged some brown icing through them so they’d look stumpy. Meringue mushrooms and twigs made out of chocolate-covered orange peels completed the look. Maybe I’d make some marzipan poinsettias to bring in some red.
As I iced, I felt someone come up behind me. I looked up. It was Philippe.
“Hi!” I said in English.
“Hi. That is beautiful”. He pointed to my cake.
“Patricia asked me to make the designs for this year’s Bûche de Noël. Most of it’s pretty traditional, but I thought the chocolate-covered candied orange peels made a nice twist”.
“Exactement,”
he said. “You’re right. Well done”. He smiled more personally toward me than he had in a while and left the room.
I felt toasty with praise.
At the end of the evening, Patricia came into the room.
“I have been neglectful of your pastry education the past few weeks. We can finish up here and then would you like to see the bakery in Versailles? It’s very close to being finished”.
We got into her car and headed toward Versailles. She put the proverbial pedal to the metal and took off. So did her mouth.
“Which way will you turn? Pick one, any one, and get going! “ she said to the driver in front of us, stabbing the air with her lit cigarette.
A car came through the roundabout and cut her off. She held up her hand as if she were going to flip him off, looked at me, and changed her mind.
My new nickname
, I thought, smiling.
Pop-up blocker
.
“Christmas is coming, but the lights are always either red or green!” Patricia shouted. If I hadn’t been worried for my life, I’d have been amused. Instead of focusing on her driving, I looked out the window.
There was a light snow falling, unusual for Paris, but beautiful. It softened the edges of an already soft city, spreading more light through the area around the City of Light. Once in Versailles, we drove down narrow cobblestone alleys.
“I’m taking you the back way,” Patricia said. “The roads are narrow because they were built for horse and carriage”.
If I closed my eyes, I could imagine the royals and their friends bustling down these streets, Marie Antoinette escaping the grandfather king to party and play.
A few minutes later we arrived at the bakery. I recognized it from my trip with Anne.
Patricia parked a block away and we got out and walked. We approached the window, and I could see work had been done since Anne and I had stopped by. The shop was twice as big as the one in Rambouillet, and at least twice as expensive. In luxury, it rivaled some of those I’d visited in Paris.
“We repainted,” Patricia said, showing me the royal blue woodwork and molding that framed the windows.
“And the gold!” I exclaimed. “It’s been dusted with gold!”
“Philippe’s idea,” she said, proudly. We looked at the windows, some of them freshly etched with sheaves of wheat and bars of chocolate. “Let’s go inside”.
Inside, the building was just as beautiful. The marble floors were polished and the display cases gleamed with polished brass.
“And now,” she said, “the thing you’ve been waiting for.
La laboratoire
.”
The pastry room was fantastic—and huge! It had dozens of compartments on the wall for neat organization of tools and ingredients. It had a freezer simply for marble slabs, and its own ice cream maker.
“Wow!” I said, and then realized I was speaking English.
“Extra!”
I repeated in French.
“Oui,”
Patricia said.
“Extra
. Chef Blois agreed to work here only after my father told him he could design the pastry room for himself and his staff on his own”.
“Who will the staff be?” I tried to sound nonchalant.
Patricia shrugged. “I don’t know. He’ll probably bring them with him”.
After a few more minutes, we walked outside to the car. “I hope we have a white Christmas,” I said, looking at the snow again. “We hardly ever have a white Christmas in Seattle”.
“There’s nowhere as beautiful as France for Christmas”. She looked at me very pointedly. “Or any other time”.
Saturday morning felt like a holiday in itself—no school and no work. I woke up early, made a cup of coffee, and checked my e-mail. I had a new one from Sophie.
Hey, Lexi, how are you? We are doing well here. Have fun with Dominique next week. Good luck. Maybe she’ll live with her Maman. Maybe you could room with Anne if you take a job there? I won’t miss Dominique, but I will miss Marianne.
I stopped reading. Was Marianne coming back to France for good too? I felt sick. It had only been a few months ago that I’d wanted to go to their wedding. What had happened?
I kept reading.
Anyway, things are going swimmingly at the shop. The new guy is working great, and Margot loves him. He does whatever she tells him to do. I’ve been taking art lessons; I’ve been meaning to tell you. And my dad gave me my old piano from childhood; I moved it into my apartment and started playing
again. Life is good! Oh, hey, do you have the maintenance log for the Jetta?
I made myself a mental note to ask my dad.
But, really, what I wanted to tell you was that Dan stopped in the other day and asked for your address. I was in a hurry, so I just jotted it down on one of my business cards and handed it over, but I wanted to say, “Hey! Why don’t you ask her yourself?” So … heads up. More later.
Love, Soph.
Why did Dan need my address? He sent me a nice e-mail after he returned to Seattle, but nothing too personal. I know he was giving me space to make my own decisions, and I appreciated that. Maybe he was making some decisions of his own.
I suddenly wanted to hear his voice.
I gathered my notebook with my exhibition notes in it and set out for the train.
First, I went to Paris. I visited the swankiest jewelry salons, and once I told them what I was doing, they were eager to help even though I wouldn’t be buying anything expensive. Then I visited my friend at the secondhand designer store.
“Mais oui!”
she told me. “I will be glad to help”. We paged through some catalogs she had, and she asked, “But what will you wear for this event?”
“My chef’s uniform,” I admitted. “Nothing fancy”.
“We can fix that”. She went to the accessory area and chose a crystal-encrusted hair clip for me to affix in my French twist. Then she chose some vintage earrings to match.