I step outside to empty the mailbox. Most of it, as usual, is for Addie. For someone so concerned about waste, she sure gets a lot of catalogs.
“You and Addie must have cooked up some sorcery to bring us a day like today. I don’t think I could have stood another day of freezing rain.”
Here we go, at it again, conversation about the weather. Boring. I’m so sick of it. Doesn’t anyone have anything to say besides relating the latest weather update from their smartphone? I, for one, have never minded our frozen winters and saturated springs.
Babcia, my grandmother, always said she had a winter’s soul, which I must have inherited. When the freezing air shrieks over the Detroit River, the wind whipping the water into angry blades, I wrap my scarf across my face and pretend to be a samurai warrior. Using my umbrella as a shield, I ward off the stinging ice and pelting hail as it thrashes me from all sides.
Fearless, I endure our endless winters, for the reward is exhilarating. When the new season shows her gift in the tip of an asparagus helmet funneling above the soil, when baby lettuce leaves curl above the earth in a sigh, I’m walking on air.
Unlike Addie, I believe the foul weather was good for the diner. Even though we’re in the midst of a cash-flow problem, the last thing we need is a rush. We’ve had an opportunity to get our footing, tighten the menu, and build relationships with those folks who didn’t mind getting a bit damp.
Making sure Sarah Montgomery, for instance, had two pieces of cornbread with her greens, and omitting the onions from Lenny William’s sweet potato hash, while always remembering to inquire about his newborn. The weather, from my vantage point, has been a blessing.
To say I’m the executive chef at Welcome Home is inaccurate, considering I left cooking school before earning my whites. I couldn’t stand another minute with the arrogant instructor, who imagined himself Gordon Ramsay. Besides, I’d already completed the pastry division, which is my calling.
I spent the following year working in New York’s Levain Bakery, whose cookies have been written up as fucking insane. You can get away with writing that in Manhattan. I learned more working at Levain than I ever did in school. Its infamous cookies inspired our Heartbreakers, a gargantuan chocolate cookie, the diner’s most popular treat.
Calling myself the executive chef is, furthermore, absurd, since we’re just a small eatery open only for breakfast and lunch. But I do have control of the menu and the kitchen. Down the road, we hope to expand the restaurant beyond the current forty-six-person seating, and remain open for dinner. We’ll have to jump through a million hoops to get a liquor license, but booze is where the real money’s made.
Kevin’s in the bathroom, the top of the tank on the floor by his feet. He examines the inside basin, jiggling the toilet’s handle. “Still having issues with the toilet?”
“No, Kevin,” I say, sweeping up the plaster shards that fell from the ceiling. “Thanks to you, the flush is now a gush. A perfect potty.”
He regards me, a question in his eyes, as if asking, Did you wear that dress for me? After today, this dress will be banished to my closet until I meet a man I’m into.
“That whatchamajigger—the flapper valve you replaced—did the job. Thanks again.” He smiles, as if I tossed him a bone, and bends to scratch Hero beneath his ears.
Our house, even if falling apart, is ours. How lucky we are to live here, in a neighborhood so rich with history. What other major American city has homes with this amount of square footage that one can purchase for three thousand dollars, vacant acreage included? The floors are buckled, sinks are stained with rust, cabinet doors don’t close all the way, and most of the outlets don’t work. I love it!
Ninety years ago, this home would have been worth three hundred thousand dollars in today’s money. Back then, home ownership was emblematic of Detroit’s promise to Poles and Italians, who could not find basic sustenance, much less purchase land in their home country. The unskilled laborers flooded the city to work in slaughterhouses and automobile factories. During this era, Detroit made the same promise to blacks across the American South desperate to escape poverty, lynching, and lack of work.
Today, Detroit is making a new promise to Addie and me: Stick with me. Believe in me. One day I will rise like a phoenix from the ashes.
I grew up an hour’s drive east of Detroit. The city’s road map to economic desolation is old news to me: the riots in the sixties followed by the frantic white exodus to the suburbs, people who fled with incalculable wealth and future tax dollars in hand. I understand how crack decimated forgotten neighborhoods, turning them into crime-infested ghettos; how city schools and infrastructure nose-dived into third-world chaos, culminating in Detroit having the dubious distinction of being the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history.
There was blame enough to pack the city landfill. And when the car industries collapsed under a government corrupted by greed, it was as if someone poured gasoline over the city and lit a match. And the fiddler played while Rome burned.
I get that. I live in the fallout. Every day I trudge through the ruins of our burned-down, boarded-up, graffiti-stained neighborhood. It’s as if the area’s been erased, but the outline remains. A few intact homes, such as ours, serve as commas in a run-on sentence of skeletal frames lining our street. I’ve become desensitized. It’s a feeling that might be shared with someone who lives in a war-ravaged city that was once beautiful. Like in Syria or Lebanon. But this is the United States.
It’s hard to wrap my head around. It’s too much. You have to shut down to survive. I try, however, to discover beauty in the ruined acreage, finding poetry in the rubble, in the promise of a daisy rising through crumbling asphalt.
Driving down Grand Boulevard you see the hard stuff, when the abandoned Packard Automotive Plant explodes between your eyes like a paintball pellet. There’s no shutting down the magnitude of that thirty-five-acre industrial grid of busted-out windows and collapsed roofs. It’s a decaying fortress—dystopic, apocalyptic—a testimony to the Motor City gone to hell. That place is cool.
The shock on my friends’ faces when they visit from Ann Arbor, and the fear in my parents’ eyes when they make the drive from bucolic Manchester, is my slap in the face—when I realize our living situation is not the norm for intelligent women who should know better. In truth, with Hero as my bodyguard, my only day-to-day fear is crossing paths with Curtis, a retired autoworker. The vinyl siding of his home is only a foot away from ours.
Having lived in his house his entire life, he considers himself the neighborhood militia. He pesters me with his opinions about our setting up shop in what he considers to be a bad section of town. And he thinks our neighborhood’s safe? A security light is attached to the side of his home. It blazes into my living room like a searchlight through the night and I’m forced to wear sunglasses.
But Addie and I are opportunists. We’re betting on Detroit’s comeback, rooting for our city, investing our youth and energy in the place where our passion lies. When given a gift horse, don’t inspect its teeth.
I took a risk going into business with Addie, and I’m not the gambling kind. She’s an only child, and—I’d never be so cruel as to say this to her face—she’s spoiled. She plays the victim card, rehashing what her therapist has deduced about her childhood: the damage inflicted by her absent dad, and her mother, whose only concern is that her next husband support her Neiman addiction. Granted, Aunt Teresa’s flaky, but she’s not a bad person. She’s worried about her daughter’s future, and she lent us a solid chunk of start-up cash. Addie has an undergraduate degree in classical civilizations. What else could she do after college but go into the service industry?
I’ve been relieved and surprised she’s pulled her weight at the diner. While planting vegetables and tending sheep on summers spent at my family’s farm, she must have developed a work ethic.
I’ve a picture of the two of us holding hands when we were girls. I’m laughing, wearing mud-caked jeans
and a tattered T. Addie stares down the photographer with solemn warrior eyes. Her long, white braids are tied at the tips with pink ribbons, the same shade as the OshKosh overalls she always wore. She’d plead with Babcia to work out the stains and wash them each evening.
I remove the asparagus salad from the fridge and put the container in my backpack, which is already loaded with a plastic liner, blanket, plates, and napkins. No need for forks—asparagus is finger food. Crisp, tender, and sweet, young asparagus have a delectable hint of bitterness. Some dislike the flavor of the spears, while others say they don’t like the smell of their pee after eating them. Granted, there is no smell quite like the smell of asparagus pee. Sulfuric and malty, it’s another fragrance of spring.
“Ready to rock, Kev. The party’s on.”
Hero understands the signals; I’ll be leaving him alone. He emits a shuddering whine, more of a wheeze, and rolls over onto his back. I squat down and scratch him on his stomach. Pale pink with charcoal splotches, it’s the one portion of this animal that’s soft and vulnerable.
“OK, boy. I’ll take you on a long walk when I return. But with those ecstasy-baked kids from the Techno Fest running loose, I need my Hero to guard the fort.” He jumps to his feet, panting, and gives a sharp bark as if he just punched the time clock. Kevin and I giggle. Kevin takes my pack, and I grab Addie’s mail.
Heading up the stairs, I hear television voices hovering in the stairwell.
“Are you kidding me?” I say to Kevin. “TV on a day like today? They should have the windows open, let some fresh air into the place.”
I open the door—they’re fighting over the remote. My astonishment turns to amusement. Addie’s so obnoxious when she launches into her diatribe about television being the opiate of the masses. Gotcha, girl. Placing the mail on the counter, I can’t resist the wisecracks. At the same time, I’m envious that Addie and David have such a fun-loving and goofy relationship. My eyes slide to Kevin, so serious as usual.
Taken by the silliness of the show, I begin spinning about the room, enjoying the feeling of the dress billowing about my legs. I fall into David, who catches me, laughing. I glance at Addie, now frowning, her brows scrunched together as she tidies the stack of mail. Does she think I’m making eyes at her man?
Unsure how to handle the situation, I distance myself from the guys and rejoin her at the counter. She’s never reacted to my roughhousing with David this way. I inquire about her cold; she’s been ill the past few days.
“We’re riding bikes, right?” says Kevin, breaking the tension. “Public transportation’s sketchy on a holiday.”
“On a holiday, Kevin?” I raise my brows. “When is Detroit public transportation ever not sketchy?”
As we pedal through the streets, the distant pound of Metallica reverberates through the city. The rhythm’s as repetitive as a whirling dervish, shaking the marrow in my bones.
Avoiding potholes and crumbling asphalt, the four of us whiz past fenced-off parking lots, abandoned churches, and faceless industrial walls. Wheeling onto East Grand Boulevard, we see a burst of yellow and purple tulips redeem an otherwise tawdry apartment building. And then, again, more grids of disintegrating concrete, pavement, and gutters littered with debris.
When we make a sharp left turn to cross the MacArthur Bridge, the landscape, at once, changes. Belle Isle, a pastoral park resting between Detroit and Canada, is only four miles from our home. But from the abrupt change in scenery, it may as well be four thousand. Lush foliage and woodland trails meander alongside a well-tended beach. Boathouses, a conservatory, an aquarium, and a zoo dot the thousand-acre island. Last year the management was taken over by the state, part of a lease agreement with Detroit, and the park is being restored to its former glory.
After chaining our bikes to a rack, we head to our favorite spot. Addie and I organize the picnic beneath the sprawling maple, and we sit on the blanket. My back is to the Detroit River, and beyond its jade waters lies the skyline of Windsor. I’m happy but anxious, not quite sure what to do with myself on a day off. What’s wrong with me? At last I’ve an occasion to relax, but I’m as jittery as the squirrels darting around the trees. I remove the salad, plates, and napkins from my pack. Addie hands me the chicken sandwiches, each wrapped as carefully as a gift. I arrange the food on plates, then pass them around.
Addie’s lightened up. That scene in the kitchen, or whatever it was that was bothering her, seems to be forgotten. Now she’s flirting with David, trying to draw us all into her rainbow cheer. I glance at her, noting the red sandals she wears are the exact shade of the color of her backpack. That’s no accident.
Maybe I’m on edge because of Kevin, knowing he’s crushing on me. It’s exhausting screening my every movement and comment to ensure they won’t be misinterpreted. Trying to stem the flow of his unspoken desire is like pitting cherries in July: The buckets keep replenishing, and it’s draining trying to keep pace. A lot of sweet goodness, but you want them to go away.
I adjust my knees under the folds of my dress, arranging the fabric over my legs. I glance at Kevin, and he shifts his eyes. Watching those two, all goggle-eyed with their amorous teasing, may, however, be as uncomfortable for him as it is for me. The way David touches her and how her eyes flash when she speaks to him remind me I haven’t been properly kissed, much less made love to, in over two years. Here I am, thirty-one years old, and I may as well be a virgin.
My last boyfriend, Andy, was a barista at a coffee shop near Levain. We lived together, but his degrading machismo was the main reason I left New York. Since I was a girl, I’ve worked to quieten the voices in my head that tell me I must live up to some sort of masculine ideal. Lessons taught by my parents—never let someone’s opinion define my reality, and I am the only person accountable for my happiness—were a gift they gave me at an impressionable age.
As I bite into my sandwich, chunks of chicken drop from the bread, falling onto my plate. I glance around the group, but no one seems to notice my messiness. The sandwich is delicious with these spicy greens. I wipe my lips.
I stand over five feet ten inches and am a heavy-boned woman. Not fat, but curvaceous. Men have told me I’m sexy, and, until Andy, I’d always felt that I was alluring. In a natural, healthy way. I ride my bike, take speed walks with Hero, and I’m addicted to the adrenaline the fast-paced diner demands. I’ve a good appetite and, as a pastry chef, indulge in my art. Maybe it’s tucked an extra few pounds around my hips, but that’s a small price to pay for a scratch-made buttery scone.
I’ve always loved my body. Until I fell for Andy, who told me he’d never before dated a woman who wore clothing sizes in the double digits. (The average clothes size for American women is fourteen. I googled this. I wear a ten, sometimes a twelve, depending on how it’s cut.) He told me in graphic detail what he could do with his former size-zero partners that he couldn’t do with me.
The scary thing was that my love for him was so big I started to believe him. And along came the voices of self-loathing. I imagined myself as a bull in a china shop—obese, unfeminine, and worthless. After starving myself on rabbit food and then zipping my jeans, I’d note the soft bulge of flesh plumped over my belt line and cry.
On Addie’s sole visit to New York, I introduced her to Andy over drinks. Into our second round, he said if I lost thirty pounds, I’d almost be as pretty as my cousin.
Addie was horrified. Toxic jerk, she exclaimed to me in private after I described to her his litany of abuses. And you’re living with him? Andy is unleashing his own insecurities on you so that he feels more like a man. After I told her he wouldn’t hold my hand in public, she asked me why would I date a man who was such a misogynist.
Maybe I put up with Andy because I was lonely and he was handsome. Or maybe there’s something about me that prefers cruel dudes. Who knows? But those early lessons resurfaced after Addie’s visit: My power does not rest in my ability to be physically attractive to men. My power comes from my intelligence, hu
mor, values, and kindness.
Andy wounded me, but he taught me a valuable lesson. It was not about my weight. It was about him and his lack of self-worth. He tried to bring me down to his level by projecting his own inadequacies onto me.
As if Andy weren’t enough, losing ground in the exorbitant rent we were paying dealt the final blow. It was time to leave the East Coast and surround myself with the people who loved me. I’ve vowed to stay away from men like Andy, but the experience has made me gun-shy.
It’s not that I haven’t had opportunities since I’ve returned home. I’m aware of the way men regard me when I enter a room. Especially Kevin. Poor guy. He has everything going for him, but I don’t feel so much as a spark. Since the beginning of time, women have been making bad choices about men. But you can’t force yourself to fall in love with a person just because they look good on paper. Hormones and pheromones—those two cataclysmic atomic levelers—call the shots. Not your brain. That’s why the fallout’s often a disaster.
I watch him finish his sandwich, fold up the wax paper, and clean his plate with a napkin. Then, with a sweep of his hand, he brushes away a trail of ants heading toward our picnic. If I settled for him, I’d end up hurting him. It would ruin a pleasant friendship.
Perhaps I should take notes from Addie. With her intellect and soft wit, among her girlfriends she talks the feminist talk of an awakened woman. But watch that size-two girl in action around an attractive dude. Even if she gives him the finger, it’s as if she’s giving an invitation. She’s onstage, acting the part of a sexy, fun, girly-girl type. When I try mimicking her flirty ways, she seems to disapprove. I think of that scene in the kitchen when I was joking around with the guys—she was frowning, scrubbing the counter. Trying to understand what makes my cousin tick is like trying to read a sentence in a bowl of alphabet soup.
I’ll stop focusing on the voids in my life, the mistakes I’ve made in the past. I will celebrate the life I’m building now. Frankly, aside from romance and sex, I’m not convinced I want to share my life with a man. It’s too much drama. I like the freedom this singleness allows. I like being surrounded by my things. My photographs of my family and friends. My cookbooks. My yard-sale furniture and the decorative finds I’ve painstakingly collected. Perhaps that seems selfish, but the knickknacks I’ve chosen to embellish my home are a distillation of me. The memories they hold make me happy.
The Welcome Home Diner: A Novel Page 6
