Stick a Fork In It

by Robin Allen

  Daisy had saved me a spot, and together we breathed and sweated our way through an hour of warriors, triangles, and downward-facing dogs, with the added torture of something the instructor called donkey kicks. I’m pretty sure ancient yogis didn’t balance on their hands and kick their legs into the air, but after I figured out how to place my hurt hand on the floor without stressing it, I got the hang of them. The final pose, Savasana, is a time for quiet meditation, but I usually do the only thing you’re not supposed to: think.

  I wondered what John Without would say to me the next time we saw each other, what I would say to Drew the next time I saw him, and what Jamie would say when I told him that Drew was back. All of those thoughts made my shoulders tense up. Our instructor reminded us to relax, to say hello to our thoughts and then goodbye, which started me thinking about Troy and why he hadn’t said goodbye in a suicide note. Even if he had killed himself, given the nature of the restaurant he wanted to open, he would surely have had some final words—one last bid for attention.

  By the time our instructor said “Namaste” and bowed the light inside her to the light inside us, I knew I had a lot more work ahead of me.

  After class, Daisy and I walked next door to the University of Java. We sat at an open table near a picture window that overlooked the Greenbelt, gulping tepid water and smiling at the double takes people gave us. Our mothers were sisters, and we look enough alike to be twins, except her hair is much longer than mine.

  Daisy leaned down and looked under the table at my silver and purple spandex pants. “Where on earth did those come from?”

  “My yoga clothes didn’t survive the fire,” I said. “John With pulled these out of a pile John Without is planning to give to charity. Apparently his Prince phase is over.”

  “Even Prince would be embarrassed to wear those. It would be more charitable to throw them away.” She updated me on happenings with her husband, Erik, her thirteen-year-old daughter, Logan, and her eleven-year-old son, Jacob. “But that’s boring family stuff,” she said. “I’m sure your life is much more exciting than ortho appointments and volleyball camps.”

  “Are you wearing your big girl panties?” I asked.

  She laughed. “Are you kidding? I have a teen and a tween. My big girl panties are the only things holding me together most days.”

  I started with Drew Cooper and the brief conversation we had at Markham’s.

  “Drew Cooper,” she said wistfully. “There’s a name I never thought I’d hear again. How does he look?”

  “Really good,” I said. “What am I going to do?” Like the Johns, Daisy and Erik have been together for double-digit years, since freshman year of college. She’s well-versed in boy-girl stuff.

  “What do you want to do?” she asked.

  “Who’s on first?” I said with some frustration. “Don’t shrink me, Daze. Tell me what I should do.”

  “Ignore him and hope he goes away.”

  “That’s not practical.”

  “Tell him you love him and you want to get married.”

  I answered her with a look that said, “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Okay, then. Why don’t we start with what you want to do.” She put a spin on the words like she had already sent them around once before.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “First Drew and then Jamie. It’s not a question of if they’ll cheat, but when.”

  “You don’t know for sure Drew cheated.”

  “What else could it be? We were blissfully happy, all rice milk and peanut butter sandwiches, planning our life together. And then one morning he stopped answering his phone, cutting himself off from me, Mitch, Markham’s—everything he loved. Or claimed to love.”

  “He told you his mom was sick,” she said.

  “And he didn’t call for three years?” I shook my head. “He may have left because of his mom, but he stayed away because of another woman. And if he fell for someone that fast, he was already on his way out.”

  “I think you need to stop assuming and hear his whole story. If you’re right, you can say ‘I told you so.’ But if I’m right…”

  “You’re not right.”

  Daisy already knew about Troy’s death, so I filled her in on some of the details and my suspicions that his death had not been self-inflicted.

  “I would say you’re stretching things,” she said, “but you’re right that he loved having an audience. You remember that I had a couple of dates with him senior year?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Didn’t he get drunk?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Very. We went to Hill’s Café after a game. I thought it was going to be a normal first date, but a lot of the other players were there. All the ones who had fake IDs. They spent the night reliving every play. We won in the last seconds of overtime against Del Valle.”

  “I remember that game,” I said. “It took five minutes to pull their entire defensive line off Todd in the end zone, but he came up with the ball.”

  “Todd was at Hill’s that night, too, but the way those guys were talking, you’d think Troy was the only one on the field. Every time they’d start talking about something else, Troy would start talking about his brilliant plays. He got so drunk, Todd had to take me home.”

  “And you went on a second date after that?”

  “It was high school, and it was Troy the Train. You would have done the same thing.”

  I smiled. “Probably.”

  “I don’t think he really liked me,” Daisy said. “I think he took me out to get back at Ginger Krueger for asking Todd to be her lab partner.”

  “Troy married Ginger.”

  “No!”

  “She was at the restaurant the first time I was there. They got into an argument in front of me and Todd.”

  She sipped her water. “Do you remember that cheer she made up and had the squad do during a pep rally?”

  “I forgot about that!” I said. “Something about which twin is better.”

  “The train is number eight/The catch has better freight/If you want to win/You’ve got to pick the twin/Who gives it to you straight.”

  “Not a nice girl, that Ginger Krueger.”

  Daisy looked at her watch. “Oh! I have to go. Erik is expecting me home right about now.” We gathered our yoga mats and walked outside into an invisible fog of humid heat. “Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight?” she said.

  “I’d like that.”

  “Bring Jamie.”

  “Maybe.”

  Daisy hugged me, then pulled back and looked me in the eye. “I want to say one thing to you, and I don’t want you to respond, okay?” I nodded. “Jamie is a good man,” she said. “He made a mistake. It’s not fair to keep punishing him for what you think Drew did.”

  “What! I thought you were going to tell me I need to color my hair or drop my heels in down dog.”

  “Erik’s waiting,” she said. “I just want you to think about it.”

  I caught her wrist. “Erik can wait a little longer. Do you really think I’m confusing Jamie and Drew?”

  “Not confusing them, but confusing your feelings.”

  “Betrayal feels the same regardless of the traitor. I’m very clear about how I feel.”

  Daisy held my eyes. “Jamie didn’t leave you. He made a mistake, an error in judgment, and you have to decide if you can forgive him for that. But betrayal is not the same as abandonment.”

  “Goodness,” I said, my nose starting to prickle with the beginning of emotion. “Where have you been hiding that?”

  She hugged me hard. “I love you, Pop, but you spend too much time in your head. You need to follow your heart on this.”

  “That’s not practical,” I said.

  Daisy laughed and opened her car door. “Co
me over around six, and bring a bottle of wine if you want to drink good stuff.”

  I got into my Jeep and pointed it toward Markham’s so I could hear Drew’s story and tell Daisy “I told you so.”

  seventeen

  The clock on my penance for ruining the Johns’s anniversary dinner had some time left on it, and I needed to gear up to face Drew, so I sat in my Jeep in the Markham’s parking lot roasting like a Peking duck while I pondered Daisy’s insight. She wasn’t right that I had crossed Jamie with Drew, but I did feel abandoned by Drew in addition to feeling betrayed, which was only compounded by all the other things going on in my life at that time.

  Drew had to help his mother, of course, but why did he withdraw from me? I loved and trusted him, and I thought he felt the same. At the time, I had played through the usual scenarios of sudden death, amnesia, and Russian double agent, but after months of silence on his end, I knew he had made a life with someone else. And after I moved on to Jamie, I hardened my heart against Drew. I wanted to hear the rest of his story, but only to cross that T.

  A knock on the back of the Jeep brought me back to real time. I glanced up at my rearview mirror and saw a bandaged arm wave at me through cigarette smoke, then Trevor came around to my open door.

  “Those were some deep thoughts,” he said.

  “How many times have you cheated on Ursula?” I asked.

  He coughed smoke out of his mouth. “What kind of question is that?”

  “I’m doing research.”

  He put both hands on top of the Jeep and leaned into me. “You lookin’ for some action, Popstar?”

  I pushed him back. “Not today,” I said. “How many times?”

  “Define cheat.”

  “Trevor.”

  “We don’t have that kind of relationship. You know that. One week she’s callin’ me into the dry storage and I’m her MVP, the next week she’s callin’ me an immature churl and I’m a free agent.” He looked toward the kitchen door. “A guy can get restless during the off-season.”

  “The dry storage?”

  He waggled his eyebrows. “Or the walk-in.”

  I put my hand up. “Forget I started this.”

  “Yes ma’am.” He said it the cute, flirty way.

  He dropped his cigarette on the ground, and I stepped out of the Jeep and onto it. “Is Drew Cooper inside?”

  Trevor crossed his arms and squinted at me. “Not you too.” He sounded jealous, which could only mean one thing: Ursula was paying too much attention to the new GM.

  In a restaurant, the term “private life” does not mean that your life is private; it means that you know about your business before everybody else does. Usually. It’s not unusual for a waitress to find out that her bartender boyfriend dumped her when her coworkers tell her that he showed up the night before to give the new hostess a ride home. It’s a lot like high school.

  If Trevor suspected that Ursula was interested in Drew, the entire staff and some of the regular guests probably did, too. In a well-tended rumor mill like Markham’s, Drew and Ursula could already be dating or engaged. And if Ursula were to gain a couple of pounds or wear a baggy chef’s coat, then she’s having Drew’s baby.

  “No, not me too,” I said. “Just business to discuss.”

  “I hope it’s not serious business,” he said, looking down at my pants. “Did a gay man dress you today?”

  “As a matter of fact.”

  I followed Trevor through the back door and ran into Ursula coming out of the dry storage room with a jar of mayhaw jelly in her hand. “Poppy!” she chirped, then threw her free arm around my neck and kissed me on the cheek.

  Trevor turned around and winked at me. Ursula’s back was to him so she didn’t see him rub this thumb and first two fingers together and mouth “June sixth.”

  “Seventh,” I said out loud to him.

  Ursula pulled away. “What?”

  “Seventh heaven is where I am,” I said. “Is Drew in the office?”

  “Oh, that reminds me,” she said, backing me into the little room. “I want to know everything you can tell me about him.”

  Thank goodness I’d had a dollop of advanced warning from Trevor. “Why are you asking me?”

  “He used to work here, right?”

  “A few years ago.” I did not want to have this conversation with Ursula and hoped that if I stalled long enough, a prep cook’s sudden need for bread crumbs might rescue me. “Why don’t you ask Mitch?”

  “I haven’t seen him. He’s helping Mom redecorate the guest bedroom. Love your pants, by the way.”

  “Thanks. Does Nina allow overnight guests in her house?”

  “I stay there sometimes,” she said. “Now, dish on Drew.”

  I hadn’t been employed by Markham’s for the past couple of years, so rumors about my private life had been moldering on the top shelf of the walk-in behind opinions about whether Kate should be with Jack or Sawyer, but it was only a matter of time before someone pulled them down, garnished them, and presented them to Ursula. Better she hear the unembellished truth from me. “You know it’s not a good idea to date someone you work with, right?”

  “We’re not dating,” she said, then grinned. “Yet.”

  “What about Trevor?”

  “We’re not dating either.”

  Why did Trevor put up with her volatility when he could pluck practically anyone from the Markham’s garden of waitress flowers? Ursula is ten years older than Trevor, which he probably sees as a coup. And she does have Executive Chef embroidered on her chef’s coat, which means he’s dating the boss. And she’s also that perfect combination of confidence, beauty, and unpredictability, which a lot of men find enticing. And now she wanted to entice Drew Cooper.

  “You don’t need to know the details,” I said, “but I had just become chef when Drew was GM. It was around the time my mother died, and we started dating.” I stopped my narrative to decide how much to tell her. The story was in the details.

  “So you two were involved…what? Three years ago?”

  Maybe it was the cavalier way she lifted one shoulder or the way she twitched her head slightly to indicate that it had happened so long ago, it was no longer relevant. Or maybe it was her choice of the word “involved” that reduced my relationship with Drew to what she did with Trevor. Glimmers of the real Ursula York, Nina’s selfish little offspring who believed that anything that wasn’t about her couldn’t be important.

  Fine. Let her fall in love with Drew the deceiver, and let Drew fall in love with this immaculate version of Ursula. She might be all harps and rainbows now, but she is who she is, and she couldn’t keep this plate spinning much longer. A cook would forget to drop a couple of well-done steaks on a Saturday night and throw off her timing, or one of her cookbook recipes wouldn’t turn out right, or she wouldn’t be able to get an appointment with her hairdresser, and then it’s goodbye The Sound of Music and welcome to Jurassic Park. If I were in charge of karma, I couldn’t have come up with a better arrangement than for Drew to have his feelings swindled by Ursula. I just hoped it happened the day after her birthday.

  “It was thirty-five months ago,” I said. “We were engaged.” Let her think he was the marrying kind.

  She stared at me. “But…you…and Jamie.”

  “We broke up a few months before I started dating Jamie.”

  “What happened?” she said softly.

  “It just didn’t work out.” I had meant to sound indifferent, but somehow the pain and sadness of my entire history with Drew had come out in those five words.

  “Oh, Poppy.” She placed the jelly on a shelf, then embraced me in a tender two-armed hug. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  Our topic appeared in the doorway. “Tr
evor said you—” Drew took in the scene and smiled at me. “Oh, hi Sug…Poppy.”

  “We’re finishing up,” I said. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “I’d like that,” he said, then looked at Ursula and held up some paperwork. “I’d also like to discuss these food costs later.”

  “Sure thing, Drew!” she said, as if she could think of nothing more wonderful in all of Camelot than to justify her food costs. “Some of it’s for my cookbook.”

  Drew and I went into the office. He shut the door and dropped stiffly into the chair next to mine. “Mitch told me how you hurt your hand,” he said. We both looked at it. I had taken the bandage off for yoga class and never replaced it. It looked raw and vulnerable. “You’ve always been brave.”

  “You know why I’m here,” I said. My desire to hear flattering words from him had long since passed.

  “Are you going to listen to me this time and not jump to conclusions?”

  I nodded, thinking I’ll jump to all the conclusions I want to jump to, and you can’t stop me.

  After the story Drew told me, Daisy would be the one saying “I told you so.”

  eighteen

  “Do you remember when Iris died?” Drew asked. He stopped and dropped his eyes. “Sorry. Of course you do.” He started again. “She contracted food poisoning at a Sunday brunch.”

  “Clostridium botulinum,” I said. “Botulism.” Why was he bringing up my mother? To add another layer of pain?

  “And by the following Wednesday, she had…passed away.” He looked hard at me. “I just now put that together. That explains why you became a health inspector.”

  “But it doesn’t explain why you made a life with another woman.”

  He held up his hand. “Please just listen, okay? When my mom was diagnosed with kidney failure a few years ago, I went through the tests to see if I could be a donor. I was a match, but she didn’t want me to do it unless it was an emergency, so they put her on dialysis. The dialysis had stopped working, and she needed my kidney immediately. I already told you I drove all night. The doctors had us in the OR two hours after I got there.”