A Table by the Window: A Novel of Family Secrets and Heirloom Recipes (Two Blue Doors)

by Lodge, Hillary Manton

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, arms folded protectively around my torso. “It was a clerical error, and I’m sorry.”

  “You’re distracted. You’re distracted with that Neil fellow, and it’s twenty-three pounds of potatoes worth of bad business.”

  “I’m sorry!” I repeated, my voice starting to sound shrill. “I don’t know what more you want me to say, but I think it’s stupid to bring Neil into this.”

  Nico pointed at the invoice. “You ordered these the day after he left.”

  “So?”

  “Where are your priorities? If you’re going to go moony over a man, this isn’t going to work.”

  “Lots of people have relationships and work in the restaurant business. Mom and Dad did it.”

  “Mom and Dad worked together. Do you know what the divorce rate is for people who work in the restaurant business?”

  “No, do you?” I shot back.

  “Neil’s going to take you away from what you love. You know that, right?”

  My hands balled into fists. I kept a tight rein on my temper, but Nico had really overstepped. “How is this Neil’s fault?”

  “He’s a doctor in Memphis. You think he’s going to leave that behind and come here for you? I don’t think so. I thought you loved this business.”

  “I do!” I yelled. “I’ve always loved it.”

  “If you marry him, you won’t be able to do it. You’ll work opposite schedules, and something will have to give. Look at Alex and Stephanie.”

  “Alex and Stephanie had their own challenges. Neil and I are different.”

  “Isn’t that what everyone tells themselves?”

  “Stop it, Nico. You’re being a bully.”

  He sighed. “You’re my baby sister. I don’t want to see you get hurt. And I don’t want to see this restaurant fail.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to fail because of a bulk order of potatoes,” I evaded, but I understood his point. “I don’t want to see this restaurant fail either.” I glanced inside, where my packing waited. I had no idea where Gigi had gone off to. “I have to keep getting ready. My flight’s tomorrow morning.”

  I closed the door and returned to my room.

  Nico may have been a bully, but that didn’t make him wrong.

  What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.

  —A. A. MILNE

  Where I had been packing neatly and methodically, now I angrily began to throw articles of clothing into my suitcase.

  Gigi made a nest on my pillows and watched warily.

  Of all the high-handed, condescending arguments I’d ever had with Nico, this had to have been the worst. And the very worst part? The more I thought about it, the more I realized he was right.

  Obviously, the potatoes were only a symptom of a deeper problem. And even if I never made another ordering mistake for the rest of my life, the fact remained that Neil and I were living in a dream world.

  Our worlds were too divergent and careers too individually all-consuming. If there was a way we could work together, or that one of us worked less, we might be able to make things work—after solving the distance issue.

  But all together?

  I loved Neil. I knew I did. More than I’d loved Éric, though they were two different men, in different stages of my life. I loved him, but we were still new. Our love hadn’t grown deep, coiled roots, not yet.

  Did we keep working at it, yanking and cutting on those roots down the road when things didn’t work? Or stop now, before things got too messy?

  I continued to throw things into my suitcase, things I hadn’t intended to pack. I didn’t care.

  I reached for my phone and looked at the time. Neil was on lunch, if he wasn’t working through it. I dialed his number.

  “I was just thinking about you,” Neil said when he picked up, a smile in his voice.

  My eyes squeezed shut. I loved his voice. I loved him. But he deserved someone who could be near him, who would be home when he was. Someone who would be around to hear about his day, and not just in a series of text messages, e-mails, and phone calls.

  “Hi,” I said, my voice wavering.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, the smile in his voice gone.

  I poured out the story of the potatoes and my argument with Nico.

  “That’s … the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said. “You can’t tell me there aren’t food banks in Portland that could use a cache of potatoes. Your brother needs to grow up.”

  “He does,” I agreed, “but that doesn’t make him entirely wrong. I can’t afford to make stupid mistakes, not with this restaurant. How is this going to work? We had a wonderful long weekend together. It was amazing. But I keep looking at us, and at the distance, and at our jobs, and I don’t see how it can work.”

  “What do you want, Juliette?”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “What do you want in life? You stayed at a job that made you miserable until it made you ill. And now it sounds like you’re letting your brother dictate your personal life. Tell me what you want, because I can’t figure you out.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him, but to my horror my mind went blank, and I realized the truth.

  At that moment, I had no idea.

  “I think we could be good together, Juliette,” Neil said when I didn’t answer. “But you have to want it too. I’m not going to guilt you into fighting for us or try to convince you of something you won’t ever be able to own in your heart.”

  I could hardly breathe. “I’m sorry, Neil. I’m so, so sorry.”

  With shaking hands, I hung up.

  I sat on the bed and stared out the window.

  I’d lost Neil.

  For several moments, I tried to wrap my mind around that concept. Around never writing to Neil, never hearing his voice. I wanted to call him back, to tell him we could try again, that if we fought hard enough, we could make a way for ourselves.

  But in my head I heard his voice asking me what I wanted, and the silence that followed.

  That awful silence.

  I tucked Gigi into her kennel, grabbed my purse, and got in my car.

  Sophie was working in her yard when I pulled up outside her house, clad in dungarees and a wide, floppy sun hat. She looked ridiculous, but so content that I envied her.

  She set her trowel aside when she saw me. “Juliette,” she said, her smile fading when she took in the puffy redness of my eyes. “What happened?”

  “I know we don’t always see eye to eye,” I said, “and we don’t always understand each other. But I’ve had a rotten morning, and I need my sister.”

  Without question, Sophie stood and enfolded me in a powerful hug. “Come inside,” she said. “Come tell me all about it.”

  Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one’s life.

  —ANTHONY BOURDAIN

  After several years of post-9/11 travel, I considered myself proficient at getting through airport security quickly—no belt, ballet flats, no jewelry with metal. I was in and out quickly; in truth, the flight from Portland to Sea-Tac lasted nearly as long.

  I maneuvered my way from arrivals to departures to board my international flight, only to find that my flight was delayed.

  Very delayed.

  The woman at the desk said something about flight checks and mechanical concerns and a weather system somewhere over the Atlantic, and, all in all, the plane wouldn’t be ready to board for five hours.

  I spent five minutes sitting in the gate, staring out the window.

  After five minutes, my mind began to wander. I was in Seattle, after all. I could go out. Leave the airport. Get a bite while not surrounded by people clutching their carry-ons.

  I found myself boarding the light rail and watching the scenery change from airport industrial to Seattle urban, before I disembarked at Beacon Hill.

  As the scenery sped by, my last conversatio
n with Neil echoed through my mind. The words I’d used, the words I’d heard—the hurt in his voice.

  There were no new e-mails; I ached at the idea of never hearing from him again, reading his perspective on the world. I hated the idea of him hurting—and of him thinking poorly of me. His good opinion meant a lot to me, but I couldn’t imagine I had retained it in any way.

  And yet—I couldn’t see a way out of it.

  That was the part that hurt the most.

  The weather was good, and I was glad for my comfortable flats as I traveled down the sidewalks, walking, searching. And then I found it—Tahmira.

  Éric’s restaurant.

  From the outside, it was beautiful. Small, but with elegant lines and old paned-glass windows. The outside was painted a grassy kelly-green, with navy trim. The door was natural wood, burnished with the patina of time. And, I supposed, no small amount of rainfall.

  I checked my watch. They served lunch until 2 p.m., and it was … 1:50. I walked through the door anyway.

  The waitress saw me, waved, and pointed at a table by the window. “I’ll be right with you,” she said cheerily, as if I hadn’t shown up at the tail end of her shift.

  After a short moment, she brought me a glass of water with a slice of lime, followed by a menu. The menu—it was pure Éric. I saw his flair for juxtaposed ingredients, for layered flavors, for breathing fresh life into traditional cuisine.

  I would have known it was his restaurant, solely from the menu. It contained his signature dishes, in particular the ones he made for me that chilly, rainy night so long ago. When the waitress returned, I heard myself ordering that meal all over again, pairing it with a glass of iced Moroccan mint tea.

  As I ate and drank, so many memories came flooding back. Happy memories. Bittersweet memories. The restaurant cleared out, the waitress made herself scarce, and I enjoyed my meal in peace.

  “Of all the gin joints,” said a warm male voice. “It’s good to see you, Juliette.”

  I looked up, both surprised and, somehow, not. “Hello, Éric,” I said, my heart too full to say much of anything else.

  He was older, of course. His skin was still the dusky tan I remembered, and he wore his hair in the same ponytail, but now the lines on his face were deeper and his dark hair sported streaks of gray. In his hand he cradled an oversized coffee mug. I watched as he took the seat opposite mine and sank into the chair.

  “Busy lunch crowd today,” he said, setting his coffee on the tabletop. “Almost fifty covers.”

  “That’s a lot for a space like this.”

  “You haven’t even seen my kitchen! It’s like a galley in there. But the crowd thinned out, and then Salima came and brought your order in …”

  “My flight was delayed; I thought I’d stop in. Ordinarily I wouldn’t come in so late.”

  Éric smiled at me, and just like that, we slipped into the easy shorthand of shared history.

  “Don’t worry—I’ve dined with you enough to know that to be true.” He gave me a once-over. “You look good.”

  “You too.” And he did. Despite the signs of age, he was just as handsome as ever, even if he was a little rounder around the edges than I’d remembered. “How have you been?”

  “Good. This place is still turning a profit, even with the economy the way it is. I like Seattle.” He shrugged. “I’ve thought about you, over the years.”

  “Oh?”

  “You, L’uccello Blu. I should never have left the way I did.”

  “We were both to blame.”

  “I was the one who did the leaving. Looking back, I know you were trying to protect Nico. I was sorry to hear L’uccello Blu closed. How is Nico?”

  “Starting a new place. He’s letting me help this time.”

  “Letting you?” Éric snorted. “He should be so lucky.”

  “You’re sweet.”

  “I’ve never met anyone who had a knack for the business, for the food, like you did. Or do, I guess.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I read a couple of your pieces when you first started at that local rag of yours. They were good. Though I never would have figured you for morning television.”

  I groaned. “You saw that?”

  “Beauty of the Internet.”

  “I knew it would be a disaster. No one would believe me.”

  He folded his hands. “Tell me about your new place.”

  “We’re leasing my grand-mère’s patisserie space from my mother.”

  “That patisserie? Of course. She was good, your gran. Did she pass on?”

  “She did, in January. Well, I quit my job at the paper and now I’m living in the upstairs apartment with our pastry chef, and we’re opening a restaurant in the old patisserie space. It’s coming together.”

  “I was about to ask if you were seeing someone. So, the pastry chef, huh?”

  “Wait, what?” I rewound my words in my head. “Oh goodness, no. And Clementine would be insulted that you assumed she was a man. Seriously. If she were here, I’d tell you to duck.”

  Éric barked a laugh. “Sorry. I never saw you as live-in-boyfriend type, but some people change, you know?”

  “Not me, at least not that much.”

  “So Nico’s got a female pastry chef in his kitchen?”

  “He does.”

  “Are they dating?”

  “Not yet. And to answer your question, I was sort of seeing someone recently, but it, um …” In the safety of Éric’s presence, tears threatened to fall. I blinked them back. “It didn’t work out,” I said at last.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. I didn’t doubt that he saw the tears.

  “Things don’t always work out.” I pasted a bright smile on my face. “Plenty to keep me busy at the restaurant, though.”

  “Don’t I know it.” Éric ran a hand over his hair.

  “How about you? Are you seeing someone?”

  “Oh, you know. Got married a few years ago. She left. Restaurant business is hard on relationships. I thought we were fine—we were never in the same room long enough to have a fight. Turns out that doesn’t work.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It is what it is. That’s life.” He waved a hand. “You know, all those things you say when things don’t turn out the way you want.”

  I lifted my iced tea. “Hear, hear.”

  He clinked my glass with his coffee mug. “We were good together, you and I.”

  I snorted. “We can’t get too nostalgic—it would never have lasted.”

  “But we had fun, right?”

  “I ate well.”

  “Then it was a success. You were so much fun to eat with. Fearless.”

  I flushed at the compliment. “I was so young.”

  “Did you ever tell Nico?”

  “About us?” I shook my head, feeling that uncomfortable yet familiar twinge of guilt in my heart. “No. I always felt guilty,” I admitted. “Like I ran you off, and then the restaurant closed, and I ruined everything.”

  “Oh, Etta. I wasn’t going to stick around forever. Nico knew that. And that restaurant? Well, there were all kinds of ordering problems, staff problems.”

  I told Éric about my potato-ordering gaffe. He threw back his head and laughed, a sound at once both rich and familiar. “Easy mistake. It could happen to anyone. Potatoes, huh? Well, Nico’s one to talk. Back at L’ucello Blu, he was hemorrhaging money and he wasn’t listening to anyone. Not you, not me, not your dad, no one. Three accountants told him to stop serving lunch, and his response was to hire a kid to stand outside with a sign, as if we were Little Caesars. When I was there, we stayed afloat because we were so busy, but I’ve been around. You can’t keep a business going like that forever. When I left—look, I’m sure it didn’t help, and I wish I’d stuck around to find Nico a good replacement. To say good-bye. But me being there wouldn’t have stopped the inevitable from happening. It’s not my fault,” Éric said, “and it’s not yours.”

&n
bsp; I felt tears sting my eyes. “Thanks.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  I swiped at a stray drop of moisture with my napkin. “My mom basically said as much, but … I don’t know.” I gave a watery chuckle. “She knew. About us.”

  “Not a lot ever got past her.”

  “And still doesn’t.” I shook my head. “She’s got cancer right now.”

  Éric grimaced. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “She’s fighting it. And she’s strong. I worry, though.”

  “Tell me about this trip you’re on.”

  I balled the used napkin in my hands. “My nonno’s celebrating his ninetieth birthday in Tuscany.”

  Éric gave a rueful smile. “Of course he is. Why can’t anyone in your family live in Nebraska?”

  I grinned at him as we fell back into our old camaraderie. “My first leg of the trip is to see my mother’s family in Montagnac.”

  “It’s a wonder more people don’t hate you.”

  I threw a napkin at him. “I’m only going in the first place because my parents couldn’t make it, because of my mom’s cancer.”

  “Still sorry about that. Are you going to go to Paris?”

  “I am.”

  He leaned back and propped his hands behind his head. “You should go to Timgad. Moroccan cuisine—pricey, but very, very good. I would take you there, but …”

  A long moment. I knew, looking into Éric’s eyes, that all the old chemistry was still very much there. But I was in Portland, he was in Seattle, and for a guy like him, the restaurant would be his wife. I could only ever aspire to being a mistress, with or without a ring.

  “Another lifetime,” I said.

  Éric gave a slow smile, tinged with sadness. “Agreed.”

  “I should be getting back to the airport.”

  “Wouldn’t want you to miss your flight.”

  “I’ve enjoyed this, catching up,” I said.

  “Stay in touch. I want to know how your new restaurant goes. First hand,” he added as he stood. “Not just from Google.”

  I hoisted my travel-heavy purse onto my shoulder. “Where would we be without Google?”

  “Oh, who knows?”