How Sweet It Is Read online

  “Yes, but I still have pain all over,” I told him, hoping to sound refined, with only a mild strand of desperation. What I really wanted to say was, “Which pain were the drugs supposed to cure? The pain in my legs or the pain in my heart?” Somewhere around March, two months after the accident and a month after my grandpa Ernest’s death, I’d realized my life was in shambles. I didn’t know how I would ever be normal again. And somewhere around that time, the physical pain went away and the heart pain set in.

  Just like death, people don’t like to talk about pain—well, unless it belongs to them. They want you to move on, get over it, resume your life, whip up an omelet, frost a cake, be happy, play the saxophone. But I still carry pain—and Extra Strength Tylenol is not getting rid of it.

  When the fries arrive on a chipped blue plate, I squeeze Hunt’s ketchup into a mound and dip one crispy slice into the red circle. I chew loudly, making a smacking noise, just to hear the sound. I figure table manners don’t count when you dine solo, although my mother would surely disagree. “Deena, Deena, you must eat like royalty,” she once said. I don’t know where that idea of hers came from. I’m the daughter of pig farmers and have yet to feel regal.

  The next time I sink a fry into the red condiment, all I can think is that the ketchup looks like a pool of fresh blood.

  three

  Covering my plate with three white paper napkins from the dispenser, I recall the first time Chef Bordeaux taught our class how to make crispy fried potatoes. He called them by a fancier name, yet they were just one step above French fries. He coated them in a seasoning of salt, pepper, garlic salt, cayenne pepper, and olive oil. Then he baked them at 400 degrees for thirty minutes, taking them out of the oven once to stir them. “So as not to burn,” he said. We ate them when they were done, and we were all impressed with the soft insides and flavorful taste.

  “You like potatoes?” he asked us.

  “Yes,” we said, in between bites. We were all in training. I’d only been working at his restaurant for a month. Anthony, just off the boat from a small village outside of Lyon, France, said never had he had potatoes so “delicate.” He then switched from English to French, and none of us understood him. Chef B grew up in San Sebastian, Spain, but he tried to follow the young Frenchman’s enthusiasm. After all, Anthony had been recommended to him and the Palacio del Rey from a two-star restaurant in Lyon.

  Anthony makes the best braised duck in orange sauce I’ve ever tasted. He knows how much I like it, so he made the dish for my going-away party. Chef Bordeaux made wild rice seasoned with garlic and fresh rosemary from his own garden. The rest of the meal included shiitake mushrooms filled with cheese and baby shrimp, mint sorbet, and basil and parmesan Tuscan loaf bread. The party couldn’t have been more flavorful or beautiful, unless perhaps it had taken place on the Queen Mary 2. It was too bad the occasion was that I was leaving the restaurant.

  The event even included a gift. Everyone chipped in and brought a set of cake pans for me. There were three—an 8-inch, 9-inch and 13-inch—and each one was wrapped in silver-and-purple paper topped with a large bow. I almost cried when I opened them, and I don’t cry easily. My mother taught my sister and me the art of sucking in not only your stomach but also your emotions. “A woman cannot be easily read,” she told us. “A woman must cover her body and her heart.”

  I pull another napkin from the metal dispenser and lay it like a veil over my plate of half-consumed food. Hunger grips my stomach, so I decide to eat a few more greasy potatoes, in spite of what the ketchup brings to mind. I lift one edge of a napkin and take two fries from the plate. They will never compare to Chef B’s potatoes, but sometimes you just make the best of what you have.

  Suddenly, I want to make a list of all the food we had at my going-away party, and I’m sure it’s because I don’t want to forget any part of the event that was held in my honor. After all, how many good-bye parties does one get in a lifetime?

  Before i grab a napkin to jot down the names of the various dishes from my party, I see another gift—one that begs my attention—and I pull it from my purse. It’s a hardcover journal Chef B gave me. “Writing down your heart is healing,” he told me when I opened the blank journal. “One lady, father die, then her sister, then her cat. Next, she does not want to keep on. She write her heart onto the pages of her journal. She find some peace.”

  The shiny cover of the journal features a slice of peach pie next to a goblet of a clear liquid and a white mug of a dark beverage—my guess, Costa Rican coffee with a rainforest blend.

  “Write each day. Date on the page,” were Chef B’s instructions to me.

  Writing and I have never gotten along. Writing makes me remember a creative writing class I was forced to take in high school.

  “How many writing courses did you have in high school?” Sally asked me once when I complained about my lack of desire to write.

  I was icing a coconut chocolate cake in my apartment for my friend Jeannie’s thirtieth birthday. I thought a moment as Sally swiped a dollop of buttercream frosting from the bowl. “One.”

  “One class?”

  “Yeah, one creative writing class.”

  “And it was awful?” She licked her fingers, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “It was terrible.”

  “Why?”

  I needed no other prompting; I told her. “The teacher went on and on about the muse and words and the value of them. Her husband had Alzheimer’s, and she had to tell him good-bye long before he actually physically died.”

  “One class?” said Sally. I don’t know why she felt she had to repeat that again.

  I took a spatula from a drawer and used it to scoop the thick, creamy frosting from the mixing bowl into my decorator’s bag. “Her husband loved roses, and she’d pick one from their garden each morning. She always placed the rose in a slender crystal vase—one he had given to her the first time he’d ever bought her roses. Then she’d push his wheelchair to the kitchen table and ask him, ‘What color is it?’ He would stare at the rose and answer whatever color it was. Until one morning when she brought in a red rose and her husband called it yellow.”

  “Sad,” said Sally. She thought a moment longer and repeated, “Sad.”

  “The teacher read a poem she wrote about it, and then a short essay, and then another poem. All about her husband and this rose.”

  “Alzheimer’s is a nasty disease.” Sally had a faraway look in her eyes, and under other circumstances I would have thought to ask if she’d had experience with a loved one with Alzheimer’s, but no, I was on a roll.

  “She even wrote a letter to the editor of the paper about her husband and the rose.” My voice had somehow reached that annoying high-pitched timbre. I took a breath and added, “All these tips on how to deal with losing your loved one before he’s really gone.”

  Sally sighed as she watched me pipe fleur-de-lis—three shells—along the sides of the cake. “So you really hated that class, then,” she concluded. “You make it sound like you’ve suffered through dozens of creative writing classes.”

  True, I’ve only had one creative writing class, but it felt like a dozen.

  Does Chef B really expect me to write down my feelings? When pigs fly, I think as I snap the journal shut. If the slice of peach pie on the cover were real, it would have fallen onto the floor from the force of my closing the cover.

  I need a slice of peach pie.

  The door swings open, and I look up to see a couple walk into the diner. They are both young and beautiful, laughing as they wipe themselves off from the rain. Her hair is thick and brown. As she shakes her head, I’m reminded of the fleece of the Shetland sheep our neighbors in Tifton raised. He— tall and muscular—smiles, places a protective arm around her, kisses her cheek. They stand together, waiting to be seated. Inseparable. Able to face anything because love is the strongest force against a world of uncertainty. I wonder if they’re engaged or married. I wonder if he ru
ns his finger along her jaw from her earlobe to her chin and then cups her face in his hands, all the while telling her that there is no one but her in his universe. Has he called her to say that a day without hearing her voice is not worth living?

  I have to turn away. Sometimes other people’s happiness brings an ache in my gut so large and deep that I wonder if I’m sinking. Sinking into my own gut—now that’s a medically unsound concept. Sally would dismiss it with a wave of her surgically adept hands. “Deena,” she’d say. “You can’t drown from your own sorrow. I know it might feel like you could, but…” Then she’d smile because she doesn’t like to be serious for too long.

  When the waitress refills my iced tea, she stares out the drenched window and asks if I’d like anything else. Oh yes, there are a few more things I would like. Happiness. A fiancé who stays faithful. The ability to forget the car accident. “Peach pie,” I answer. “With ice cream on—”

  “We’re out,” she says flatly.

  My mouth must be hanging open. “No peach pie?”

  She shakes her curls and sticks her pencil into a few loose ones on the right side of her head. This is Georgia, I think. Every car parked in the lot outside this rainy window has a peach on its license plate. How can Good Eatin’ be out of peach pie? How can they call this place good if they don’t have enough peach pie to go around?

  “We have chocolate,” the waitress volunteers with a smile.

  “Chocolate?”

  “Let me make sure.” With her face turned toward the kitchen, she yells, “Hey, Harry! We got chocolate pie back there?” Waiting for his reply, she taps her fingers against the pencil in her hair with one hand and pats her generous waist with the other. She reminds me of one of those wind-up toys where the monkey frantically claps the two cymbals together until he winds down.

  “What?” comes a tenor voice from the back, somewhere over the long, empty counter.

  “Chocolate?” A louder tone. “Listen to me, Harry! Do you hear me?” Through her frown she shouts, “Chocolate pie!”

  A few rows in front of me, the happy couple cover their ears with obvious hands.

  “It’s okay,” I quietly tell her. “I’m fine.”

  She stops tapping and patting, shrugs. “Our chocolate pie is good. Creamy. Rich.” She keeps going. “We make it with whole milk. None of that skimmed, low-percent, by-product stuff.”

  “That’s all right.” I don’t tell her that I don’t like chocolate pie. Waitresses don’t really want to hear about your menu likes and dislikes, anyway. I muster a smile, or something that resembles one. “Thanks, though.” Mom would be proud of me.

  When the waitress ambles toward the cash register, I take another look at the journal. This time when I open it, surprisingly I have the desire to write something. This is a moment I can’t let get away. Focusing on the first page, I uncap my pen. I run my finger over the smooth, lined paper. Concentrate on writing as neatly as you can, I tell myself. Such a hard thing for me to do.

  April 15th, diner outside Gainesville. I ordered iced tea and fries. I wanted a slice of peach pie, but they were out. They have chocolate, but I am almost allergic to that. The rain acts like it doesn’t want to stop. I’m on my way to Bryson City. I am leaving Atlanta.

  Putting down the pen, I think, “That wasn’t too bad.” I have Tylenol to mask my physical pain and this journal to tackle my emotional pain. What can go wrong?

  Before leaving, I place two dollars on the table for a tip. Then I add another dollar, and from the bottom of my purse, a quarter, two dimes, and a shiny nickel. I feel sorry for the waitress having to work in a place that isn’t well stocked with peach pie. After I gather my purse and my small amount of courage, I plunge out into the rain again for the rest of my journey.

  four

  Well, well. It’s been a while, Shug. Look at you—all growed up.”

  Aunt Regena Lorraine is wearing a bright orange dress, a color that might appear on those decoratively-painted Ukrainian eggs featured in travel books and posters. Light swirls of white and yellow are mixed in with the orange, giving the dress an intricate look. Her gray hair is tied in a ponytail, though a few tendrils float free, one curling along a large gold hoop earring. She poises a pudgy bejeweled hand—I count three silver rings—against the side of her lined face and studies me through leopard-spotted glasses.

  I’m twenty-seven years old; I hope I’m grown. And on the other hand, she just saw me less than five months ago at Christmas. I haven’t growed up since then.

  Aunt Regena Lorraine shifts her attention from me to a shaggy creature she fondly calls Giovanni. The dog is golden with a patch of olive on its left front paw. “He got in that paint I was using in the downstairs bathroom,” she explains as Giovanni sniffs my knees.

  “Nice color,” I tell her while I watch the animal circle two times and make himself comfortable on a striped rug by the sliding glass door that leads to the deck of the A-frame cabin.

  My aunt waddles into the kitchen, gives a sigh as large as she is, and starts opening cabinets. As she moves, I smell her perfume, which is light and sweet. I recall her wearing the same scent at Christmas when I sat next to her on my parents’ couch and she showed me photos of her father’s recent trip to Venice. Grandpa Ernest traveled from North Carolina to Italy to Greece to spend Christmas at his favorite island, Kos.

  My aunt mutters as she fingers various items she pulls out from the cabinet shelves. “I can’t believe he didn’t get rid of this,” she says as she touches a fondue pot. She notes a bowl with a crooked rim. “Oh, he kept this all these years. Well, well.”

  The “he” she is talking about is Grandpa Ernest, who, until his recent death, occupied this cabin. Perhaps she never had the opportunity to look through his kitchen cabinets while he was alive and today she’s enjoying the chance.

  When she takes out a tin can with Santa’s jolly face painted on the side, she muses, “I gave him this years ago.” Opening the tin, she cries, “It’s still full of licorice!” Then she laughs, takes out a piece of the black sweet, and pops it into her mouth. After a moment of chewing, she says, “Mmmmm. It’s still good. Well, I can’t believe it!” To me she says with confidence, “Licorice stored tightly in a tin keeps.” She finishes the piece and scans the container. “This must be… let’s see… Christmas of ’99. No, must have been 2001.” She laughs again. “I know I gave it to him.”

  I am not allergic to licorice, but it also is not one of my favorite things.

  Suddenly my aunt calls for tea and fills a stainless-steel teakettle with water from the tap. “The sink water here is good,” she tells me. “At the coast, my stars. You could kill a few dozen seagulls with that nasty tap water. Always buy bottled when you go to the Outer Banks.”

  As though on cue, and in doggy agreement, Giovanni produces two barks.

  I’m not sure what to do with this tidbit of advice. So I do nothing but stand watching my aunt take out two mugs from a cabinet. One says Cherokee on it and has a painted bear. The other says Blowing Rock and has the face of an Indian maiden with large, dark eyes. From a tote bag that has You must do the thing you think you cannot do boldly scripted across it, she produces a Ziploc bag. “Shug,” she says as she spoons the contents of the bag into each mug, “you are going to like it here.”

  The Ziploc’s contents look to me like a dime bag of marijuana you would buy from a dealer in an Atlanta alley. What is Aunt Regena Lorraine doing with it?

  “I just love sassafras tea, don’t you?” she exclaims as she lifts the whistling teakettle and pours water into each mug.

  I don’t know; I’ve never tried it. Except for sweetened iced tea, I’m not a tea drinker. Hot coffee suits me, and I know where almost all of the Starbucks are located in Atlanta. I move to the sink to wash my hands and remove the slobber Giovanni placed there. As I dry my hands on a cotton towel, I see a can opener hanging on a small nail. I stoop to read the inscription on the stainless-steel handle. In a bold lime green font
it states Always open with love. This strikes me as funny because I don’t think I’ve ever opened a can of condensed milk or cherry pie filling with love. Determination and frustration, for sure, but not love. My eyes scan the small kitchen to see other utensils hanging in odd places around the room.

  I am about to study more of them when Regena Lorraine summons me into the dining room. “Don’t want the tea to get cold, Shug,” she says. “Sassafras tastes best with steam rising from it.”

  As we sit across from each other at the wooden dining table, I think to myself that my aunt is my only connection to this small town called Bryson City. I don’t know another soul within a one-hundred-mile radius. And as eccentric as my sister Andrea and I have always thought our aunt to be, knowing her is better than knowing no one. I’m sure she’ll guide me on where to hand out my brochures and maybe even show me other venues for advertising my cake-decorating business to this mountain community.

  With satisfaction, Regena Lorraine breathes in the aroma of her mug of tea. Steam is rising from the liquid, causing her glasses to fog. “When is your first day to be at The Center?” she asks.

  I wonder where my grandpa keeps the sugar. “What?”

  “Have you called them yet?” Taking off her glasses, she wipes them with the fabric around the neck of her dress.

  “Called who?”

  She laughs, but I can’t see what is so funny. “They are going to love you!”

  “Who?” I ask. I want to say, “What in the world are you talking about?” but I don’t. My mother would consider that pure rudeness. I think of how to rephrase the question so that it will come across as polite and make my mother proud of me. “Can you explain this to me?”