The Blue Bistro (46 page)

There was still work to do. Adrienne had to call every guest who was on the books for the next five days. It took several hours and she was worried her voice would falter, but it didn’t.
The restaurant is closing early. All reservations are cancelled. We’re sorry for the inconvenience. I’m sorry . . . that’s all I can tell you.
Mario brought her a pile of crackers on a napkin. The rest of the staff was getting drunk at the bar—Duncan was pouring—though some, like Tyler, Elliott, and Christo, had left right away. Adrienne cancelled with Holt Millman’s secretary, Dottie Shore, she cancelled with Darla, she cancelled with Cat, the Devlins, the Kennedys, Leon Cross, and the local author.

What happened? Darla asked, Dottie Shore asked, the local author asked.

I’m sorry,
Adrienne said. She felt bad because she liked these people, she felt she knew them though she probably didn’t and they certainly didn’t know her. They would never understand the blow she’d been dealt:
Thatcher married Fiona before she died.
They would never know how her heart felt stripped and exposed, like the yolk of an egg separated from its whole, like a child without a mother.

I’m sorry,
she said.
That’s all I can tell you.

The last person Adrienne called was Mack Peterson. Guests from the Beach Club held thirty-seven reservations in the last five nights. Thatcher had been right about Mack: He was good for business.

“We’re closing early,” Adrienne said. “Please convey to your guests how sorry we are for the inconvenience.”

“They’ll get over it,” Mack said. “The important thing is that everyone there is all right. Is everyone all right?”

“I’m sorry,” Adrienne said. “All I can tell you is that we’re closing. But thank you, Mack, for all the business you sent us.”

“Half my staff leaves on Labor Day and we’re open another six weeks,” Mack said. “If you’re looking for a job, call me. I would love to hire you.”

“That’s very kind,” Adrienne said. “Thank you.”

She crossed the last names from the reservation sheet and double-checked her list to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anyone. She called Bartlett’s Farm to cancel their vegetable order, she called East Coast Seafood, she called Caviarteria in New York, she called the mushroom company in Kennett Square, she called Classic Wines, she called Flowers on Chestnut, she called the cleaning crew. Closing, closing, closing. And then it was done.

Mario walked out of the back carrying two steaming plates: omelets.

“You want?”

“No,” she said.

“Come on, you have to eat something.”

“Something,” she said. “But not that.”

“I’ll tell you a secret,” Mario said. “Me and Louis and the cousins are looking to buy Sloop’s down on Steamboat Wharf. Maybe this fall if we can get the money. Open it up next summer as Calamari Café, Italian with Cuban accents. Antonio as chef. We want you to work the front.”

Adrienne shut her eyes. She was shocked that Mario would mention his new restaurant on the very morning that Fiona had died. And yet, wasn’t that human nature—the desire to move forward, to move away from the bad, sad news? Wasn’t that what Adrienne and Dr. Don had been doing their whole lives? Hadn’t they always hoped that grief was something they could run away from? Adrienne imagined the Italian-Cuban café that the Subiacos would open next June. It would be a great place. Another great place.

“Sorry,” Adrienne said.

Mario cocked his head. “Come on, you think about it.”

“Thank you,” she said. “But no.”

“Okay,” Mario said, holding out the omelets. “I’ll give these away to somebody else.”

Caren, Bruno, and Spillman sat at the bar, drinking, and eating omelets.

“Fiona was like my sister,” Caren said. “I didn’t always like her, but I always loved her.”

“She knew we loved her,” Bruno said.

Spillman set his beer down on top of his check. “I don’t even want this money,” he said.

“You could give it to charity,” Duncan said.

“Red would kill me,” Spillman said.

Caren glanced at Adrienne then reached out for her hand. “Are you all done?”

“Yeah.”

“So have a drink. Champagne?”

“I can’t,” Adrienne said. “I don’t care if I ever drink champagne again.”

“How about something else?” Caren asked. “Martini?”

“No,” Adrienne said.

“You look awful. Sit down. How about a Coke?” Duncan pulled out a glass and hit the gun. He slid the Coke across the bar.

“I don’t feel like it,” Adrienne said. “I’m tired.”

“You can sleep for the rest of the week,” Caren said. “This is going to be the last time to sit with all of us.”

Joe came out of the kitchen. He put his arm around Adrienne and kissed her temple.

“Thatcher married her,” Adrienne said. She gazed at the surprised faces of Spillman and Bruno, the downcast eyes of Duncan and Caren who had probably suspected as much all along. Joe tightened his grip on Adrienne’s shoulder.

“It was the right thing to do,” Adrienne said. This was the only way she could bear to think of it: as a generous gesture on Thatcher’s part. A good deed. But she knew it was just as likely that Fiona did it as a favor to Thatcher, that he’d begged her. He loved Fiona more than any woman in the world. Not romantically, maybe, but he loved her just the same. “I don’t feel much like hanging out.”

“No,” Caren whispered.

“I’m going home to get some sleep,” Adrienne said.

Caren passed her the keys to the Jetta. “Take my car,” she said.

“And take this,” Duncan said. He held aloft the brass hand bell that he used each night to announce last call.

“No, I can’t,” Adrienne said.

“Take it,” Duncan said. “You earned it.”

“You earned it,” Bruno said.

“You earned it,” Joe said.

“Take the bell, Adrienne,” Spillman said.

She took the bell. It was heavier than she expected. Her eyes filled with tears and she couldn’t bring herself to look at anyone, or worse yet, utter words of good-bye, so instead
she rang the bell and listened to its deep metallic thrum. The Bistro was quiet then except for the distant sound of the ocean, and the resonant note of the bell.

Adrienne rang the bell again, then again, as she walked out of the restaurant. Its tone was pure and holy, a benediction.

Because he is twelve, and in middle school, and because Fiona is a girl, Thatcher always takes friends along when he stops by Fiona’s house, and most of the time these friends are Jimmy Sosnowski and Philip St. Clair. This particular day in May, Fiona has slipped Thatch a note in the hallway between history and music class, a scrap of paper that says, simply,
“cheesecake.”
Last week, she passed him notes that said
“quiche”
and
“meatballs,”
and the week before it was
“bread pudding”
and
“veal parmigiana.”
Most of the time the word is enticing enough to get him over right after school—for example, the veal parmigiana. Thatcher and Jimmy and Phil sat at Fiona’s kitchen table throwing apples from the fruit bowl at one another and teasing the Kemps’ Yorkshire terrier, Sharky, while Fiona, in her mother’s frilly, flowered, and very queer-looking apron, dredged the veal cutlets in flour, dipped them in egg, dressed them with breadcrumbs, and then sautéed them in hot oil in her mother’s electric frying pan. The boys really liked the frying part—there was something cool about meat in hot, splattering oil. But they lost interest during the sauce and cheese steps, and by the time Fiona slid the baking pan into the oven, Jimmy and Phil were ready to go home. Not Thatcher—he stayed until Fiona pulled the cheesy, bubbling dish from the oven and ate with
Fiona and Dr. and Mrs. Kemp. His father worked late and his brothers were scattered throughout the neighborhood (his two older brothers could drive and many times they ate at the Burger King on Grape Road). Thatcher liked it when Fiona cooked; he liked it more than he would ever admit.

So cheesecake. Thatcher figures it will be easy to get Jimmy and Phil to come along for a dessert, but Phil has gotten a new skateboard and so, after school, two hours are spent in the parking lot of the Notre Dame football stadium with the three of them trying stunts (none of them particularly impressive). Every twenty minutes or so, Thatcher reminds Jimmy and Phil about the cheesecake. He knows Fiona will be, at these very minutes, making it. Her cooking fascinates him. She is the only twelve-year-old Thatcher knows who has her own subscription to
Gourmet
magazine. Cooking is something Fiona does, Mrs. Kemp told him once, because Fiona is sick. Really sick, the kind of sick that puts her in the hospital in Chicago for weeks at a time. Fiona’s illness makes Jimmy and Phil uncomfortable, on top of the fact that she’s a girl. They don’t want to catch anything. How many times has Thatcher told them? “She doesn’t have anything you can catch. She was born sick.”

“You know,” Phil says, front wheels of his skateboard in the air. “I think you like Fiona. Really like her.”

“I think so, too,” Jimmy says.

“Shut up,” Thatcher says. He is sweating. It’s a true spring day, where even the air in the asphalt parking lot smells like cut grass and forsythia. “I’m just hungry.”

They reach the Kemps’ house at five o’clock, dangerously close to dinner time, and making the situation more precarious is Dr. Kemp’s brown Crown Victoria in the driveway.