Whistlin' Dixie in a Nor'easter (24 page)

“George Clark’s,” I yelled back across the yard. “Jeb knows where it is.”

“Great,” she said, and ducked back into the front seat. “First stop, George Clark’s, next stop Moose Head.”

“Toodeloo, Leelee,” Alice hollered from the backseat, and leaned over Jeb’s shoulder to crank up the radio.

“GUN IT, JAYEB!” Virginia screamed and Jeb Duggar sped off with my three best friends in tow, windows rolled down and the radio blasting.

A hot flash of terror screamed through my body as soon as I opened my eyes the next morning. It was official. My vacation from Helga was over. I was going to have to face her completely on my own with no more Baker as a barrier between us. I decided to put it out of my mind, for a few minutes anyway, as I huddled in front of the space heater and dressed for the day.

Alice and Mary Jule found their way down to the apartment about nine, despite their throbbing heads, all dressed up in their jogging suits and ready to explore the neighborhood on foot. When they walked into the apartment, Virginia threw on her tennis shoes to go with them and I soaked bandannas in Skin So Soft. Wanting to prolong my vacation as long
as possible, and avoid any accidental collisions with Rolf or Helga, I was happy to stay behind with Issie and Sarah.

On their way out of the apartment door, all bundled up of course and armed with the toe heaters I had given them, I heard Alice saying hello to someone. When I peeked through the window, I was relieved to learn it was Roberta. She was returning from the backyard, clad in her Sorel snow boots, with a spade in one hand and a brown grocery bag in the other. I joined them outside.

“You must be Roberta,” Alice said before I could make the introduction, and gave her a hug. “You have saved our Leelee from house work hell. I don’t know how to thank you.”

I was a little concerned that that might make Roberta feel bad, so I said, “Alice’s just jealous, Roberta.”

“Glad to be of service! You’ve gut quite a crew there, Leelee.”

“Now don’t I though? This is Virginia, Mary Jule, and you’ve just met Alice.”

“Nice to meet all yous.” Roberta smiled her smile, and her natural warmth enveloped us all.

“What’s in your bag?” Virginia asked.

Roberta couldn’t wait to show us her haul. “I’ve gut enough dandelion greens here to eat for Sunday lunch and have leftovers, too.”

“Pardon me?” Mary Jule wanted to be extra polite to her but she was terribly confused all the same. “Are you talking about the kind of dandelions with a thingamajig that you pick, and blow the little fuzzy, fly-away things?”

“Yuup. Them are dandelions alreet.”

“And y’all
eat them
up here?” Mary Jule asked, ever so gingerly.

“Why, sure. My husband’s a green lover. He’ll be happy tonight, I tell you.”

Mary Jule looked over at me on the verge of tears. It all came home to her at that very moment. Her dear friend, Leelee Satterfield, was living in a place where people eat weeds.

Roberta was proud, as usual, to be the Vermont educator. She told each of them that she would be happy to give them any Vermont information
they needed to know, all the while tugging on her undies with the spade still in her hand.

We chatted with her for a while, until she had to start her prep work. With the restaurant opening that night, Roberta had much to do and cordially shooed the girls on their way.

Once she thought about bumping into Helga
or
Rolf, Mary Jule decided to stay inside with me, and the other two took off down the lane.

Alice spotted Peter first. She and Virginia were returning from their walk when she saw him stepping out of his truck. They were beside themselves when they barged back inside the apartment.

“
Who
is that guy that just came in the restaurant door before us?” Alice ran right up to me with Virginia at her heels.

Since Mary Jule, my daughters, and I were hiding from Rolf and Helga in the apartment I wasn’t sure which guy she was talking about. It could have been Pierre, Rolf, or Peter. They hadn’t met any of them yet.

“Was he young or old?”

“Young
ish
,” Alice said.

“Blond hair, kinda tall?”

“Yeah, that’s the guy,” Virginia said.

“Black truck?”

“Yes, Leelee, yes! Who is he?” Alice demanded to know.

“My new sous-chef.”

“That’s
Peter
. You have got to be kidding. Why didn’t you tell us he was drop-dead gorgeous?”

“I don’t know. Is he?”

“Naw, he’s ugly,” Virginia said.

“I guess he’s cute, but I’ve always been attracted to dark-headed guys. I was just glad to notice he has good hygiene,” I said.

“I wanna see him,” said Mary Jule. “Come on, Fiery, introduce us.”

“No, I don’t want to see Rolf ’til I have to and if I take y’all in the kitchen, I’ll have to talk to him. Besides, Helga could show up at any moment and I wanna avoid her as long as possible.”

“Oh, come on, you scaredy-cat. What are you so afraid of? We’ll be right with you,” Alice said.

“
Okay
. But let’s at least wait ’til Rolf has had a chance to get acquainted with Peter. I don’t want to be the one to introduce the two of them.”

Peter seemed confident to me, and perfectly capable of taking care of himself. I was sure his self-introduction to Rolf would go well and the two of them would ease on through the transition.
They are both professionals
, I thought. Ed had already broken the news to the Schloygins so there really was no need for me to say a word.

Twenty minutes was all my friends would give me. Knowing I had to face the kitchen people eventually, I white-knuckled it and with the other three trailing behind I crept out to the commercial kitchen for introductions.

“Hi, Peter,” I said, and shyly waved at him from the door. My friends more or less pushed me from behind into the room.

He looked up from the veal stock he was preparing and smiled. “Well, hello there, Leelee.”

“Hi, Rolf,” I said, and waved at him, too.

“Hello,” Rolf mumbled. No other comment.
Thank God.

“Everyone, these are my best friends from home. Alice, Virginia, and Mary Jule. They’ve come to help me out.”

All of my friends politely waved and said, “Hi.”

Peter smiled again and simply said, “Hi, best friends.”

Rolf was busy at the cutting board, slicing fillets. He said hello but never looked up again.

Alice went straight up to Peter and started chatting his head off. “Are you married, Peter?” I could have strangled her.

“Nope, not married.”

Alice kept on. “Is that right? How about children, do you have any kids?”

“No children.”

“That’s good. Do you
like
children?”
What is she
doing
?
I kept thinking. I was dying to tell her to shut up.

“Sure, I have lots of nieces and nephews.”

I couldn’t take it any longer. I smashed my big toe on top of her big toe
as hard as I could. She would have killed me if I had done that to her. “Excuse me, y’all, I don’t mean to cut this short but I’m sure Peter’s got a lot to do and Isabella is waiting on you to read her that story, remember, Alice?” I lied.

“Nice meeting you, Peter, hope you enjoy it here,” Alice said, while I dragged her toward the door.

“Nice meeting you guys,” he responded.

“Peter, I’m just curious,” Mary Jule asked, right before we left the kitchen. “Where are you from?”

“Jersey.”

“I knew it,” she said. “You sound just like Bruce Springsteen.”

“That’s funny, I’ve been told Bruce sounds just like me.”

Chapter Fifteen

“
Vhat
is going on here?” Helga demanded to know, in her commanding voice, as soon as she appeared in the kitchen after her two-month “holiday” as she called it.

Rolf looked up from his usual station behind the chef’s line and answered, “Vhat do you mean, Helga? Everything es all right.”

“
Nein!
Vermont Haus Inn has been changed. It looks one hundred percent different. My customaz vill never recognize dis place; they vill turn around and leave.”

“I am unaware of dis,” Rolf told her. “Nev’a mind!” For some reason he always said “never mind” when he was frustrated, upset, or angry.

My moment of truth had arrived. This was exactly what I had been dreading ever since Alice, Virginia, and Mary Jule insisted on revamping the Vermont Haus Inn. My body went limp at the thought of what she would say next. The day she screamed at me about Gracie pooping in the dining room was minor compared to this and all I wanted to do was sprint out of that kitchen. The fact that she spoke to Rolf in English instead of German told me that her comments were intended for all ears.

Mary Jule had been helping me with the seating chart for the evening when the embittered Sergeant stormed into the kitchen. Since it was a holiday weekend, Memorial Day, we had eighty dinner reservations already for each night. I had painstakingly mapped out both the 6:00
P.M.
and 8:00
P.M.
table sittings with regard to where each customer would sit, trying my best not to give Helga any other reason to be annoyed.

Mary Jule pinched me right above my elbow when she got her first look at Helga Schloygin. We’d been pinching each other since the third grade. I pinched her right back to acknowledge her uneasiness, and leaned in closer to her, pressing my arm against hers for protection. Helga marched right up to me, unflicked cigarette in her hand, never bothering to acknowledge Mary Jule.

“Hi, Helga, how was your trip?” I said, almost trembling. My tiny bit of hope, that she might consider the transformation a plus, had completely vanished.

“It
was
vedy good, but unfortunately all dat good is ov’a,” she said, seething like a pot ready to explode. She lifted her reading glasses from the chain around her neck to her nose. That movement caused her ashes to drop and I watched as they splattered and then dissolved into the ice that was in a bucket on the floor next to the bar. “First things first. Vhat have you done vis my hippo collection?”

“My friend Virginia packed it up and she has it all ready for you. Just a minute and I’ll go get it,” I said, and hurried out the door. Mary Jule trailed right along behind me. There was no way she was going to be left behind to face that woman alone.
What must Peter think!
I had never warned him about the tension between Helga and me and now it was worse than before she left.

Mary Jule resembled a frightened teen in a Freddy Krueger movie as we pushed past the six-top table and ran for cover in my apartment. Sarah and Issie were upstairs with Mandy watching cartoons. Alice was in front of the mirror in the bathroom and Virginia had my makeup mirror propped up on my dresser in the sitting room with a chair pulled up to it. Both were primping for opening night.

“Virginia, where are Helga’s hippos?” I cried. “She’s having a stroke. I
told y’all she would be furious. Now what am I gonna do?” I paced around the apartment, frantic.

“They’re right there,” she said, and pointed to a stack of boxes in the corner.
H’S HIPS
was scribbled in big black letters on the side of the box.

“She’s scary,” said Mary Jule. “Poor Fiery, I see exactly what she means; Helga is the Wicked Witch. Bless your heart, Leelee, I feel so sorry for you.”

“Now wait just a second. Be calm, both of you. What can she really do to us?” Alice said, as she stepped out of the bathroom. “I’m not that scared of her—just give her back her stupid hippos! Follow me, Leelee.” She grabbed the box of neatly packed away hippopotami and led the way to the kitchen.

Virginia and Mary Jule tagged along, too, not wanting to miss a potential showdown. If there is one thing my friends love, it’s watching a confrontation, any confrontation, as long as it has nothing to do with them. Here’s a secret about my friends. Not a one of them would have had the nerve to confront Helga alone. As a group, we’d always been able to do anything. Roll a teacher’s house, back up a tall tale told to a parent, create an alibi for each other, or even assume each other’s identities. I fired Mary Jule’s housekeeper for her once over a three-way telephone call. I just said I was her. I’d never have been able to do that if Mary Jule hadn’t been secretly on the phone with me or if I had had to say I was really Leelee.

Alice, chicken all of a sudden, made me go in first once we got to the kitchen door, claiming it was the least I could do since she was the one holding the hippos.

The two of us approached Helga, with great trepidation of course, while she was slicing lemons for her bar garnish. “Helga, I’d like for you to meet my best friends from home,” I said as nice as I could, “Alice, Virginia, and Mary Jule.”

“I’ll take zat,” Helga said, and snatched the box out of Alice’s arms before she had a chance to hand it over.

“Sure,” Alice said anxiously. The foreboding sight of Helga frightened even her.

Helga shoved the box under the sink and went straight back to her bar
prep—never acknowledging my friends. All four of us slinked back to the apartment.

“I can’t go back in there,” I told my friends. “See how mean she is to me? I can’t stand that woman!”

“I am totally in shock, is all I have to say,” Virginia said, and handed a bottle of wine she had snuck out of the basement over to me to open. None of them had a clue how to properly open a wine bottle. They tried, but their efforts always ended in broken corks.
At least I’ve mastered this
, I thought, as I popped the cork right out.

“I say we should just ignore her. We don’t have to speak to her, either. What can she do to us? Spank us? Scream at us? So what if she never talks to us, I couldn’t care less,” Virginia said. She took the bottle of chardonnay out of my hands and poured us each a glass.

“All
I
know is, I don’t know what I’d do if y’all weren’t here tonight,” I said, and held my glass up to toast my closest friends.