Stir Me Up Read online

  “Wait!” Estella cries, coming in. “Wait! Don’t throw it out!”

  “Estella, it’s awful.”

  “Let me try it.”

  “No. It’s awful, I said.”

  “Let me just try it!” She comes over and takes a fork out. “What did you make?”

  “Nothing. A mess.” Julian wheels into the house—and straight to his room.

  Estella takes a bite. “It’s vegetarian lasagne.”

  “It’s crap.”

  “It just needs some salt.”

  “I’m throwing it out.”

  “Give it to me.”

  “No, it’s mine.”

  “It’s my food you used. I’m taking it.”

  “No, you’re not. Let go, you’ll burn yourself.”

  “What the hell is going on in here?” Dad demands, coming in.

  Estella releases the dish. “Your perfectionist tendencies have reflected on your daughter so much that now she’s tossing out a delicious dinner just because it needs a little salt.”

  Dad looks at me. Asks me in French what the problem is.

  “I’ve told you this makes me feel left out,” Estella complains.

  Dad sighs. “What is the problem?” he repeats in English.

  “It’s shit.”

  “Italian shit?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Chris!” Estella says. “Let it sit for a few minutes. And add some salt. That’s all it needs. It’s fine, trust me.”

  “Whatever,” I say. “Keep it. Who cares.”

  Dad eyes Estella. “Are we resting?”

  “Julian needs his meds.”

  “He’s a twenty-year-old Marine. Not a child.”

  “He doesn’t keep track of the meds. I do.”

  Dad purses his lips and goes upstairs alone and obviously unhappy about it.

  We eat in near-silence that night. Barely anyone says a word. Julian doesn’t look at me once. The lasagne is bland but edible. For everyone but Dad, of course. Whatever.

  The following day, I catch Taryn alone at lunch. “So, Luke’s planning to go to New York?” she asks.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard. Eat the muffin I brought for you, or you’ll hurt my feelings.”

  Taryn takes a nibble of it. “Mmm. It’s good.”

  “Great. Eat it then. It’s low-fat.”

  She takes another nibble. “Okay, look, Luke was hot, but he was also demanding and insecure.”

  “I know.”

  “And not that bright.”

  “The breakup’s not even the worst of it.”

  “Why, what does that mean?” she asks.

  I tell her about how Julian feels guilty and says we should cool it awhile.

  “So, do you think that’s it with him?” she asks.

  The question hurts to hear. “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe he’s saying what he means. That because of your situation, he wants you both to be sure first. Not just go barrel-assing into it.”

  “Yeah. I guess.” I give a heavy sigh. “His kiss was so incredible.”

  Taryn smiles. “Oh yeah?”

  I nod. “I mean like...oh my God...”

  She grins. Eats a bigger chunk of muffin.

  “I mean, we were right near each other and I was reaching around him to put something down and he stepped on my foot. So, I jerked it away, but that made him lose his balance...” I close my eyes, remembering it. “He topples over and takes out a chair and he’s hurt and embarrassed and pissed off. I go down to help him up and that makes him even madder. ‘You think I can’t get up myself?’”

  “Stop. I’m going to combust sitting here. I may have to grab someone.”

  “Hey, if you want to grab someone...” says this guy down at the other end of the table from us.

  “Screw you, eavesdropper,” says Taryn.

  “Okay,” he says, grinning. “How about behind the gym after school?”

  Taryn rolls her eyes and turns her back to him. “Too bad he’s a dog,” she mutters to me.

  I laugh, but my mind’s racing back to the kiss, to the way I felt just before it, and during. “It was amazing,” I murmur, half to myself. “An amazing kiss. But then the next night he’s telling me we need to calm down and think this through and that he’s more messed up than I realize.”

  “He may have a point.”

  “What?”

  “Look, I know you’re attracted to Julian, and I don’t blame you, but maybe he’s right. Maybe you should just take it easy for the time being. You just broke up with Luke.”

  “So?”

  “So, maybe you shouldn’t just go racing headfirst into this thing. Why don’t you refocus on work for a while. You know, let the dust settle.”

  “You’re supposed to be my friend.”

  “I am your friend,” she says placing her hand on my arm. “And as your friend I’m telling you to slow the train down, cool your jets for a few weeks at least.”

  Hmph. Makes sense. I suppose. “Finish the muffin.”

  Taryn rolls her eyes at me, but she does.

  * * *

  Fine, I think to myself as I drive to work. I’ll calm down, cool my jets, refocus on étoile for now. As it turns out, with the Thanksgiving holiday fast approaching, this isn’t difficult to do. In a matter of days, I get sucked into the vortex that is the restaurant this time of year. Julian has a room at the VA hospital in Northampton where he has outpatient therapy, and now suddenly he starts staying there on and off. When he is home, he hides from me in his room and the garage. Luke’s no longer in the picture. So, with nothing else to take up my time and needing the escape, I lose myself in work. School becomes just an interruption to it. Homework is what gets done during lunch hour and the staff meal.

  I work with Dad every day during the week before Thanksgiving, mostly cranking out different variations of oyster soup, until the smell of oysters makes me want to vomit. I come home stinking of them and soak in the shower with different bath oils and it’s no use, the sweet-fishy stink is permanently embedded in my nostrils and brain.

  I try to get Dad to switch to an herbed soup, a pumpkin soup, a pumpkin soup with shrimp, an onion soup, any soup that doesn’t have an oyster in it. Who likes the taste of oysters so much they want them floating in soup anyway? Isn’t that why people always put all the crap on them when they eat them out of the shell? This is what happens when you put a Frenchman in charge of an American holiday. The oysters. I tell him. Should be in the dressing. Please. It’s like asking the Eiffel Tower to bend just a little for you.

  Meanwhile Taryn, in my absence, makes a run to the mall on Black Friday without me, and I have to spend a series of all-nighters getting my application done for the University of Vermont, the one school to which I’m applying. “You look terrible,” Estella comments as I take a break to help her rake leaves one morning. I ignore her, rake up the leaves, and go to work.

  Going back to school on Monday is actually a relief—from all the work. Thanksgiving sucks. I hate it. I work on my college essays and ask Julian if he’ll still read them for me. He does, but his comments come back to me via email. So much for having another late night conversation with him about them. I text him back a thank-you. Shoot me.

  Saturday, there’s a really great party I have to miss because I’m on the hot line, which yes, all right, I still hate and have to do anyway to prove to Dad I can. I drive home that night sweaty and exhausted.

  “Come over!” Taryn shouts through my cell phone, because the party’s booming all around her.

  “Can’t. Too tired,” I tell her.

  “Look, I didn’t mean work your whole life away. You’re a workaholic! But I will save you here and now by insisting you get your ASS OVER HERE because this is an AWESOME PARTY! And you have to take some time to enjoy life! THIS IS YOUR CHILDHOOD THAT’S SLIPPING AWAY FROM YOU, BABE! YOU’RE MISSING OUT ON ALL THE FUN!”

  That call does it. Suddenly, I reali
ze Taryn’s right—I’m like this addictive person and I get caught up in what I’m doing and the next thing I know here I am working away my teen years. I continue driving home and instead of crashing immediately, I make a detour to the kitchen freezer and dig out the tub of mocha chip. I’m three scoops in when I hear Julian’s wheelchair. I’m waiting—hoping I’ll see him—but no. Eventually, I go out and check and he’s not around anywhere at all. I dig out another big chunk of mocha chip and chomp it down.

  The next morning I find out Julian’s leaving for two weeks to go to the air base and see his battalion return home. Also, he has to get his medal, and there are buddies of his he’s planning to visit. Estella’s going with him.

  “See you in a few weeks,” she says, giving me a hug. I watch her take the last bag down to the car. Julian’s next to me, on his crutches. He seems to be getting around much more smoothly on them.

  “Have a good trip,” I say without really looking at him.

  “Thanks.”

  A lot of big things are happening to Julian on this trip―things he wanted no part of not so long ago―and standing there next to him I feel like I’m being cut out of them. I can’t see him receive his medal. I don’t know what he’s thinking, what changed his mind. He’s doing all this without even telling me about it. Estella was the one who mentioned it.

  He heads for the door and doesn’t turn around or say anything. He just stops for a moment and then hobbles his way silently on down to the car.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I like Christmas food. It’s more fun and flexible than Thanksgiving food, and just to be nice, Dad lets me spend most of my time working for Natalie, our pastry chef. To get things rolling, Natalie, Dad and I spend an entire weekend working with the pastry staff to create a gorgeous turreted, frosted and candy-coated gingerbread castle for the front entrance. It’s fantastic, has been photographed for a food magazine, and this year includes a drawbridge and bright green marzipan dragon.

  I text a picture of it to Estella and Julian. Estella writes back that it’s gorgeous and the trip is going well. She calls Dad every day, but it’s still nice to hear from her myself. Julian doesn’t send a response.

  Of course somewhere in all this I have final exams to study for, but I’m a senior now so really teachers have stopped pushing us so hard. Plus, it’s Christmas, so there are the lights to go up on the house and the wreath to hang on the door. Dad decides to get a second, smaller tree for the family room this year so there can be one especially for Estella’s collection of red-and-white snowman ornaments. Together, we get both trees up and decorated so everything will be ready when she and Julian return home. We don’t send her pictures of the trees, because we want them to be a surprise for her. Meanwhile, at work, I’m put on what is literally the most fun job I get to do all year—holiday chocolates.

  Each meal at étoile always ends with a little silver tray of chocolates, and the ones we have for Christmas are unreal—eggnog truffles laced with cognac, hazelnut pralines, glacéed red currants on chocolate-dipped spun sugar nests, and just to be whimsical, little red-and-white-dyed white chocolate Santa hats filled with crushed candy cane-laced peppermint cream. Making them is kind of like performing surgery. That’s the job I’m put on—the hats. It’s amazingly cool—very intricate work. I take a picture of them with my phone and forward it to Julian:

  Do you like my hats?

  Very nice, he texts back. My only communication from him since he left. At least I get my old bed back while he’s gone. Even if it reminds me of him. I’m asleep there a few days later, when something―a soft noise, maybe―wakes me. I flip over, open one eye, and see a figure in a wheelchair in the far corner of the room staring at me. “Julian?” I gasp, clutching the covers.

  “Yeah, sorry to scare you.”

  “I thought you were coming home on Thursday.”

  “We decided to leave early. Estella left your dad a message.”

  “I don’t think he got it,” I say, fairly certain Dad would’ve mentioned it to me if he’d known. “How was your trip?”

  “All right.” He turns to peer out the window into the blackness that is a Vermont winter night.

  “I’ll go and let you rest.” I reach down to get my clothes, figuring I’ll put them on under the covers and slink out.

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” he says.

  Um. Okay...Not sure what to make of this, I slip my arm back in and look at him. He’s in jeans, a green sweater and sneakers. “How were your friends?”

  “Fine,” Julian says. “Go back to sleep.”

  I lie back on the pillows and watch him as he turns away from me. His face is stunning there, framed in the dim yellow glow from my automatic night-light—the slope of his cheek, the turn of his mouth. “Would you open the window?” I ask.

  “It’s freezing out.”

  “But I want to hear my owl.”

  “What owl?”

  “The one who sometimes comes by,” I yawn, “and hoots for me.”

  “All right. Get deeper under the covers first.”

  I lift them up to my chin. Julian cracks the window and then wheels over to the other side of the bed and transfers onto it with me—above the covers and on the opposite side. He turns to look at me. “Do you mind?”

  “No.” I toss him the extra quilt and he covers himself with it and leans back on the headboard, arranging the pillows so they’re more comfortable against his back. I huddle deeper under the covers myself.

  “Are you cold?” he asks. He spreads most of his quilt over me, even though I’m already under one that’s far warmer than his. I catch his arm, not knowing what his reaction will be to this after ignoring me for so many weeks, but fortunately he pulls me over to him so I’m against his side. There’s more rearranging of blankets as his arm comes around me. “So, I’m supposed to hold you all night while we freeze to death and listen for your owl?” he asks.

  “Yep.”

  “Okay. Sounds good.”

  I am quiet, happy to be in his arms after him saying we should take some time apart from each other. I wonder if this is part of why he left—to take some time away from me. “Your trip was kind of a surprise to me.”

  “Me too. I didn’t think I’d go. But then I talked to a few of the guys and decided I wanted to see them return home. And I had to do a few other things. Visit some people.”

  “Other Marines in your unit?” I ask.

  “Families of.” They were condolence visits, I realize, probably to the relatives of the two men whose lives he tried to save. “Of these two guys... Jake Hossler and Issac Hayman.” Julian strokes my arm with his other hand. “We used to call them Hustler and Hymen.”

  “With a nickname like Hymen, I hope he was good in a fight.”

  “He was. They both were.” Julian’s voice is soft. He stops stroking my arm. “They both had wives. And babies.”

  “How terrible” is all I can think of to say.

  Gradually his arms tighten around me. “The whole trip was terrible.”

  My God, how bad must it have been for him to admit this? My arms tighten around him.

  “I hate that I’m the one who made it,” he says.

  “I’m glad you are. Is that bad of me?”

  “No.” His lips graze my ear. “I missed you.”

  “You barely texted me and never called.”

  “I thought about you all the time. How I’m not sure what to do....”

  “How about you just keep holding me,” I say.

  “Okay,” he agrees and the room goes silent and the word floats somewhere between the cold bite of air from the window and the warmth of his chest and arms. I cuddle deeper into him and close my eyes.

  “Cami?” he whispers sometime later.

  I stir against him, barely awake. “Should I move?”

  “No. Listen.”

  I do—and I smile. “My owl!”

  “Yep. He just started.”

  “Can you make out what he’s
saying?” I ask.

  “Umm...saying?”

  “Who cooks for you,” I call, mimicking the owl. “Who cooks for you all.”

  Julian nudges my head with his chin. “To you everything is cooking.”

  Not right now it isn’t, I think to myself.

  “Do you think if we went outside we’d see him?” I ask, though I’m starting to get seriously drowsy again. “Like if we brought a flashlight and turned it on at the last minute?”

  “We’d have to be very quiet about it.”

  “It’d be like a deep reconnaissance mission for you,” I mumble. “I bet you’d like that.”

  He rests his cheek on top of my head. “I would if you were there.”

  I smile, cuddle against him, and let my owl sing me to sleep.

  * * *

  Christmas Day is one of the few holidays where the restaurant is closed. It’s also the only day of the year that Dad makes his famous pecan cherry sticky buns. By the time I’m up and have thrown on a sweatshirt and slippers the house is already filled with the smells of caramel and cinnamon.

  “Heaven,” Estella says from the stairwell. “I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

  I laugh and beat her down to the kitchen.

  “They’re almost done,” Dad says, shutting the oven. “Who’s for coffee?”

  “Forget coffee. We have presents,” Estella says.

  Dad smiles and we all work our way into the living room. Julian comes in. “My God,” he says. “What’s in the oven?”

  “Dad’s famous sticky buns,” I tell him. “Come on, Julian. You go first.” I hand him the one from me.

  It’s a boxed set of “The Godfather” movies, which Estella said he’s been wanting to see.

  He thanks me and acts somewhat embarrassed. Dad and Estella exchange gifts and I get a new cell phone from them with a cool cover—hooray. They open my gifts—perfume for Estella and a Santa tie for Dad to go with the red velvet dinner jacket he wears each Christmas Eve. Then it’s time for me to open my gift from Julian.

  It’s a small box and lightweight. I open it thinking maybe it’s a scarf. But actually no, it’s a pair of gloves—the kind that chefs sometimes wear to keep from getting cut and burnt. They make ultra-sheer ones, but these are the old-fashioned kind that are made from chain mail—you know, the stuff knights used to wear into battle.