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“What was this list for anyway?” Closing my eyes, I was instantly catapulted back to my seventh-grade classroom, the buzz of hormones and invincibility, the smells of old linoleum, adolescent boys wearing too little deodorant,
7th grade - 12/13 yrs old.
Only I knew my mom’s secret recipe. She’d made me memorize it the night before she passed away.
Wow, your mother was worried about a recipe on her deathbed...oooookkkkkaaaayyyy, makes sense. Was it the secret Cola recipe worth millions? No?! Bush's Baked Beans, still no?!
Dr. Gertrude Lund, my great-aunt on my mother’s side, was an eighty-year-old esteemed professor emeritus of religion and mythology who had relocated from New England to live in the tiny cottage in our backyard almost two years ago. She was an opinionated, stubborn character with outrageous fashion sense and a razor-sharp intellect.
Behind me Aunt Gert harrumphed. “You, my dear, are entirely too tenderhearted,” she said. Then, pitching her voice loudly enough so Norman could hear across the room, she added, “You know what the Bhagavad Gita says about greedy people? Lust, anger, and greed are the three doors to hell. Not my words. Lord Krishna’s.”
The Eatery had been in our family since my maternal grandparents opened it as newlyweds in the 1950s, using their honeymoon money as a down payment on this little spot.
Aunt Gert snorted from behind me. She had never married and had strong opinions on the subject of women’s rights. She’d once shared a podium with Gloria Steinem at a women’s liberation rally.
was thirteen, all ponytail and flat training bra and pointy elbows.
Over the music I eavesdropped on the adults’ conversation as my mother cheerfully interrogated Rory’s mom, Nancy. In the first week of July the Shaws had moved from the Bay Area into the 1950s rambler across the street, and my mom, a self-appointed welcome wagon for any new neighbors, had promptly taken them a lemon pound cake and invited them to stop in at the Eatery. Which they’d done this afternoon. By the end of their conversation my mother was already planning to hire Rory as a busboy at the diner when he was old enough and had invited the Shaws over for a cookout that weekend. My mother
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mom had a plan but never shared it with you Lolly. Or anyone for that matter.
“Lolly, what are the three secret ingredients that make this the best lemon meringue pie in the world?” She’d drilled me that last night before she died, demanding I recite every ingredient, every step, until she was satisfied I had it down pat. “The three ingredients are Meyer lemons, European butter, and a leaf of lemon balm boiled into the syrup every time,” I’d dutifully recited in her hospital room, feeling the weight of grief, of responsibility rest heavier on my shoulders with every word.
Um, if it was so important and she was dying, why not write down the fukn receipe? why the fuk chance it to a distraught daughter about to lose her mother?
But since her sudden death and everything that had come after, I had not been able to see lemons in such a positive light. They represented duty and loss more than anything else to me now.
yea, if I had to spend my last hours with a mother obsessed over a pie receipe, I might hate lemons too
So this was it, the truth about my lemon of a life. I was on the cusp of turning thirty-three, and that sparkly purple list of life goals spoke loudly about all I had not done. In the loneliness of the kitchen I felt the sharp slice of despair. How had it come to this? How had I not managed to accomplish even one thing on the list?
33-13 = 20 years. shit I'm more upset that I had to read this worthless story for one day.
And indeed up until ten years ago I’d been well on my way to accomplishing each one, and then life had gotten in the way. It wasn’t my fault that circumstances had derailed me. It wasn’t fair either. But it had happened.
But if I didn’t do something now, when would I? I gave the list a sideways glance and made a snap decision. I simply could not reach my thirty-third birthday with all my goals still unmet.
5 stoopid and childish goals...damn girl, you didn't make any adult goals when you turned 18 or went away to college? Or shit, even when you hit 30yrs old? Wow, those 20 year goals of a 13yr old must have been profound...that pony you wanted should have been a unicorn.
Tonight I had to stay home because my parents had gone with Mr. and Mrs. Shaw to a New Year’s Eve party in Green Lake,
parents still hanging tight after 5 years of neighbor goals
Most Mondays, the only day the diner was closed, the Shaws came over for a game night. While the adults played poker in the dining room and drank beer and dirty martinis, Rory and I would watch a movie in the den.
damn, after running a resturants 6 days a week, I would think a little down time would be in order - spending it with their kids!!
We were not best friends. I had Ashley for that, and Rory had a couple of good guy pals from the high school soccer team, but we were friendly. Rory was a year ahead of me in school, but he always made a point to greet me if he saw me in the hall between classes. We didn’t hang out together outside the Monday-evening game nights, but I felt happier knowing he was across the street.
who is Ashley?? This is the only mention of this beotch in the whole novel.
The knife slid through the center of the apple and sliced hard across the pad of my thumb. I gave a low, strangled gasp and dropped the apple and the knife, clutching my hand. Blood welled up instantly from the wound, glistening deep red, running down my wrist onto the counter. Oh, this was bad. Feeling a little faint, I tried to think. My heart was pounding and my head felt light.
you work in the family restaurant around knives and frequent cutting of body parts, but I get it, panic set in...OSHA doesn't require first aid training to work....
He gave me a steady look. “I’ll always be here for you, Lolly,” he assured me, and I believed him.
sure, I believe every 17yr old high school boy when he says this
It was a crazy notion, but I was having such a good time with Rory I didn’t want it to end. The thought of doing something a little adventurous with him was exciting.
What good time? Wrapping up your bloody thumb??? Damn girl
She held out my diary, open to my life goals page.
if at 13yrs old in the 90s your life goals were these 5 only...damn, I don't know 90s kids like I thought...raised mine differently I guess
Besides being a professor at a prestigious women’s college in New England, Aunt Gert had worked for the United Nations on a special council on world religions during the Cold War. She’d hiked the Atlas Mountains and lived with Bedouins and studied the religious practices of remote tribes along the Amazon.
I turned away and tucked the diary in my top drawer. “Daphne found my old middle school diary when she was looking through some boxes
knew only the broad strokes of Aunt Gert’s life. Her hardscrabble upbringing on a berry farm in southern Ohio. How she’d gotten herself a full ride to Columbia University through sheer perseverance and a brilliant intellect. She’d
“Life is too short for second-guesses.” She sniffed. “You make the best choice you can, and then you stick with it. I don’t look back.” She gave me a shrewd look. “What about you? Are you regretting your life choices at so tender an age?”
We’d met during a junior year semester study abroad in England and bonded over trips to the British Museum, the Borough Market, and Notting Hill, two fresh-faced American girls with the world as our oyster.
so she made it 3 years into college...studying what? 4months possibly in England? What was Lolly's degree going to be in? She took a marketing class but damn good that did for her family resturant
“Is already impossible,” I responded quickly. My family would never be happy together 4 ever. That goal had slipped through my fingers ten years ago.
so mom died when she was 22yrs as she 32yrs now (about to turn 33yrs)
“Dad and Daphne can’t survive without me.”
a 32yr washed up, looking to the past and eccentric pastry chef? is the glue to hold this family together?
Eve hauled a small wooden crate from under the table and grabbed a handful of lip balms. Blackberry–sweet corn, rosemary-mint, and coriander-lime.
theres so much detail here yet we know next to nothing about anything else
Dad had written back and agreed, even though Mom had been gone almost eight years by that point. She was family, he explained to Daphne and me, and you don’t turn away family, even if that family happens to be a brilliantly eccentric religion and mythology professor with a penchant for wildly patterned caftans.
soo, she's family but was she at the funeral? I mean, she like a daughter to Aunty crazy. What happened in those 8yrs? Why is she almost like a stranger in this sentence??
On his bicep his navy tattoo, an anchor with the initials USN woven in rope, flexed with his movements. He was making frikadeller, Danish meatballs,
Julio was peeling potatoes. Angel, Julio’s younger brother, was prepping the dish cart, getting ready to start bussing tables.
that's 5 ppl running a small ass diner
sixty-five, Marty Blanchard was the hardest-working man I knew. Small and whipcord lean, he’d grown up roping cattle on a ranch in Wyoming and then served a ten-year stint in the navy. After he married Mom, he’d worked ceaselessly at the diner, acting as the head cook, janitor, and general handyman. Although I was the first one at the diner in the mornings, he was the last one to turn out the lights at night.
65yr old man and he can't run a small ass diner after all the other crazy life careers?? And how did he become a cook??
Lolly, we can’t make big changes to this place. Your mother had a vision, just like her parents before her, and it’s up to us to carry out that vision. It’s your legacy.”
generational crap handed down
I was so tired of standing here week after week and having the exact same argument. It was grinding me down. I didn’t want this to be the sum total of my life: struggling to keep a floundering diner afloat, barely scraping by week after week, utterly stuck in a life that seemed smaller with each passing day. Something had to change.
Just like how you can't get over a teen crush? Wow, your self actualization needs some work
Eleven years ago I’d indulged in a cream tea,
32-11 = 21yrs old during her semester abroad
She smiled with a touch of self-deprecation. “My family always asks why I chose this life. They don’t understand. The long hours on the floor. Difficult customers. Your feet aching so badly you can hardly walk up the steps to your flat. Never a weekend off. You know it’s hard to make a living in this business. They want me to get married and give them grandchildren or at least get a proper job with normal hours.” I nodded. I identified. She was describing every day for me at the Eatery. And now here at Toast too. Sore feet and surly patrons happened regardless of location. It was the
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so you made goal #2 in Seattle!
Feeling oddly deflated, I navigated to the photo app on my phone, curious to see what it could tell me about my life. I felt a little like I was voyeuristically spying on someone else’s life. Technically it was my own life, but it still felt illicit somehow. I scrolled through more than a hundred photos before I stopped. What the photos showed about my own life was just plain depressing. Almost all of the photos were taken at Toast or with the Toast employees at what looked like various pubs. Lots of group shots of me holding a pint with people I recognized as kitchen and waitstaff. There were
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so Lolly have a restaurant, a boyfrien,d and your coworkers are your friends in the country you love...but back in Seattle you've got one friend, still whinging about your high school crush and never go anywhere...
“Okay, I guess. You know he never really recovered after you left for England and the diner closed.
stoopid
“Oh yeah, since when?” Her tone was a challenge. “You went off to England a decade ago. You haven’t come home in years. You left us.
stoopid
After Toast had closed in the wee hours of the morning, the staff had all gone out to a nearby pub. Chandice had been there and Nicola and a few others, and then, just as I was about to call it a night, Colin showed up. I recognized him from the photos on my phone.
He was perfectly sweet, but I felt nothing for him. In fact, dancing with him made me miss Rory all the more.
gag with me a lemon pie
Downstairs the smoke alarm went off, and Dad started swearing, using a colorful string of expletives he’d learned in the navy.
sooo, the cook of the restaurant burns food at home???
At fifteen my awareness of boys was burgeoning, and I had suddenly started to take notice of Rory in a new way. We’d been close ever since our failed New Year’s Day polar plunge. Once a month or so we’d hike down to South Beach to hang out together at our secret beach spot, and we still saw each other on Monday nights for our parents’ poker night—but
?? this explains nothing...
I don’t want my life to just be Dad and Daphne and the Eatery anymore.
but you had a good fake in England you didn't like that either...I guess Eve and Aunt Gert plus the staff at the Eatery or The Shaws or Ashley the best friend from high school (btw, where is that beotch), none of them count when you count your blessings.
I thought of my mom and of Rory. She’d always adored him and had been hoping we’d end up together since the day the Shaws moved in across the street. She’d been elated when we finally got together and she had died before our love story imploded. I had a feeling she would be devastated if she knew how things had turned out.
I don't think mom would have been devastated. Technically on those Monday nights probably clued her into your "situation" Or when he worked at the Eatery...
It would be my last chance to see Rory. He’d just worked his last day bussing tables at the Eatery the week before. He was going to spend the summer staffing a camp for aspiring soccer stars in California. Then in the fall he would start college at Michigan State University, majoring in kinesiology, the first step on his path to becoming a doctor for a professional sports team. And I would stay in Magnolia and finish my senior year of high school.
For the past six months Rory had been dating Jessica Sharma.
Yea, good for you Rory!!
I had a handful of close friends, was on the yearbook staff, and worked most evenings at the diner. Jessica was captain of the cheerleading squad and in the honor society. She was beautiful as well as smart—slender and coltish, brimming with confidence and enough canniness to know how to hold a man’s attention, something I’d had no practice at yet. We hadn’t been in each other’s orbits until she set her sights on Rory.
who be these so called close friends...where are they when your mom days, or when you run the family restaurant....
Mom shrugged. “A free meal is a free meal. Besides, we’re like family. Ask him.”
maybe not like family as I didn't see the Shaw's helping your mom laid dying or helping after she died.
Later that night I saw the light go on in his room across the street as I lay in bed with the shade up, keeping an eye out for him.
stalker
