A Single Thread (Cobbled Court) (6 page)

“I’ve got a friend who’s an electrician. If you want, I can give him a call. He’s usually pretty busy, but if I asked him, I’m sure he’d come right away. He owes me a favor. Would you like me to ask him?”

“Would you, please?” I swallowed hard and grabbed my purse. “Sorry about the cream, but you and your friend can help yourselves to coffee.”

“Sure thing, but…,” he said, his eyes narrowing as he watched me head for the stairs. “Lady, where are you going?”

“To lunch. I need some buffalo chicken wings and Dr. Pepper. And I need them now.”

T
he server, a handsome, tall man with gray hair and blue eyes who might have been a few years younger or older than myself, and whose brogue brought forth visions of green hills in the old country, wore a disdainful expression.

“Madam,” he said, “I may be an Irish restaurateur, but this is a fine dining establishment, not a pub. We do not serve bar food here. I can offer you a very fine duck confit, a dish that recently caused the food critic from the
Globe
to lay her head on the table and weep for joy, but chicken wings never have and never will appear on the menu of Grill on the Green. And there isn’t a restaurant within five hundred miles that serves Dr. Pepper. This is New England, not the Alamo.”

There was something in his eye, just the barest glimmer of a twinkle, that indicated he might be teasing me, but I wasn’t sure, so I dutifully ordered a ginger ale and the duck and made no more mention of chicken wings.

“So you’re the owner?” I asked as he wrote down the order. “I saw you seating people on my first visit to New Bern.”

“I am. Today I’m also the waiter. One of my servers called in sick. Other days I’m the maitre d’, the chef, the head dishwasher, bartender, and bouncer—whatever is needed. That’s the nature of owning your own business. You’ve got to be a jack of all trades, able to step in and do anyone’s job at a moment’s notice—and do it well.”

“Yes. I’m beginning to understand that myself. I’m Evelyn Dixon,” I said, smiling. “I’ve taken out a lease on the old Fielding Drug building, in Cobbled Court.”

His eyes grew wide, and he started to say something, but suddenly flinched and turned around just in time to see one of his servers nearly drop a tray; it was like he had eyes in the back of his head. “For heaven’s sake, Jason!” he exclaimed, grabbing the edge of the tray a split second before it would have clattered to the floor, taking two entrées with it. “Watch what you’re doing!”

“Sorry, Charlie,” the young server said. “I lost my balance. I’ll be more careful.”

“You certainly will,” he retorted, the threat of the waiter’s imminent unemployment clear in his tone. He glared at the young man and then looked down at the tray. “Is this order for table twenty-four? The salmon is for Mrs. Wynne?” The server nodded. “Take it back! Don’t even think of serving it like that. Abigail likes her salmon well done, charred on the outside. Black! I’ve told you that a million times.”

“I know.” Jason nodded earnestly. “I told Maurice that it was for Mrs. Wynne. I told him what you said, but he said he wouldn’t do it. He threw a spatula at me and said it was a crime to serve it like that.”

Charlie rubbed his face with his hands. “Well, that is as may be, but Abigail Burgess Wynne is the customer, and one of my best, so Maurice is going to have to put principle aside and cook her salmon the way she wants it. You go back there and tell him I said that, and if he doesn’t like it, he can just…” Jason, who couldn’t have been more than twenty, faced with the prospect of delivering this message from his irate, temperamental boss to the equally irate and temperamental chef, had a look of terror on his face. Charlie sighed, his anger deflating.

“Never mind. I’ll deal with Maurice. But if you’re ever going to make anything of yourself in the restaurant business, Jason, you’ve got to grow a spine. Get this lady a ginger ale. And a glass of chardonnay while you’re at it, on the house. She’s going to need it. She’s about to open her own business.”

He marched off, jaw set and eyes steely, ready to do battle with the kitchen king.

Within a minute, Jason was back, carefully balancing two glasses on his serving tray. “Oh,” I said, gesturing toward the wine glass, “I don’t need this. I think he was just kidding.”

“Maybe,” he said, putting both glasses on the table, “but you can’t always tell if Charlie is joking or not. He’s not in a good mood, and I’m not taking any chances.”

“So he’s hard to work for?”

“Not exactly. He’s demanding, that’s for sure, but he’s not any harder on us than he is on himself. When I first started working here, he scared me, but I’ve learned a lot from him. His family back in Ireland owned restaurants for generations. Charlie knows everything about food. Maurice does the cooking, but if he wasn’t so busy running the restaurant, Charlie could do the job himself. He and Maurice plan all the menus together.”

Jason grinned as he continued. “Someday, I’d like to have my own restaurant, you know. Nothing as fancy as this. Maybe just a nice diner or something. I figure that by working for Charlie, in a couple of years I’ll know enough to make a go of it.”

“Does he know that’s what you want to do?” I asked, sipping at my ginger ale. “A lot of entrepreneurs might not hire someone who could become the competition in a year or two.”

Jason laughed at the idea. “Me? Competition for the Grill? I don’t see that happening, but Charlie knows about my plans. I told him during the interview, and he hired me anyway. Ever since then he’s been helping me, pulling me aside, explaining the business side of things to me, having me work in different parts of the restaurant so I’ll know what it really takes to run one of my own. Charlie’s really a good guy deep down; he just comes off a little hard-nosed at first.”

“Jason!”

The young waiter jumped, and so did I; Charlie seemed to appear out of nowhere. “Have you been standing here talking all this time?”

“No, Charlie…. I got the drinks, just like you said to.”

“Well, good for you! And did I then say you could stand here sucking up oxygen while the people at table twenty-six die from thirst because you’ve neglected to fill the water glasses? Get on with you, boy!”

Jason scuttled away.

“You haven’t touched your wine,” Charlie said with a frown. “Go on then. Try it,” he commanded.

I did. It was delicious, a flavor like oak and black currants and age, an aroma like secret underground caverns.

“Wonderful! It must be expensive.”

Charlie shook his head. “Not at all. This is our house chardonnay. It’s French and very affordable for the quality. Most people think domestic wines are cheaper, but lately the California vintages have gotten ridiculously overpriced. Many of the European wines are a much better value, if you know what to look for. Of course, we carry wines that cost as much as two or three hundred dollars a bottle for those who want it, but, by and large, our wine list is very accessible. You’ve got to know what your customers want,” he said. “That’s true for any business.”

“You’re right,” I sighed. “I know what quilters want in Texas, but I’m a little less sure about the trends in New England. I hope I don’t fill my store with Dr. Pepper when what folks are really interested in is ginger ale.”

“Yes, I heard about you. News travels fast in New Bern. Everyone says you won’t last six months.”

“That’s me. Evelyn Dixon—insane entrepreneur.”

“Well,” he shrugged, “aren’t we all? Insane, I mean. Charlie Donnelly.” He reached out his hand, and I shook it.

“Nice to meet you, Charlie.”

“So you’re from Texas, are you?” he asked suspiciously. “Where’s your accent?”

“Don’t have one. I was born in Wisconsin and moved to Texas as an adult.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” he said, smiling slightly, the hint of a twinkle returning to his eye. “Nothing like an accent to charm the customers.”

Just then, a waitress, the same young woman I remembered from my previous visit, approached carrying two steaming plates.

“Thank you, Gina. You can put them right there.” Charlie nodded his head in my direction. The waitress put both plates down on the table and left to tend to other customers.

The platters were loaded with a dozen different miniature entrées and appetizers, all beautifully presented. There was a piece of fish cut into a diamond shape, with golden grill marks crisscrossing the tender white flesh swimming in a brilliant green sauce, a miniature crab cake sitting on top of a single leaf of bright red radicchio, a slice of sizzling steak with a pink center that smelled of ginger and garlic and spices I couldn’t name, and several other dishes, including a small duck leg placed artfully on top of a mound of ruby-colored chutney—the confit that made food critics cry.

“I didn’t order all this,” I said helplessly.

“No, of course you didn’t. I did. Some of those things aren’t even on the menu.”

“It looks delicious, but this…Well, it’s too much. I’ll never be able to finish it all. At least sit down and help me eat some of it.”

Charlie frowned and shook his head. “Can’t do that. I’ve got a restaurant to run. Every table is full. I never sit down to eat until at least nine o’clock, after the rush is over.”

“But I…” I really didn’t know what to say. The food smelled delicious, and I was starving, but the Grill was not an inexpensive place and I was worried about how I’d pay for all this.

“Try it,” Charlie said. Clearly, he was not going to budge until I’d tasted the food. “The confit first. Make sure you eat it with the chutney. It’s delicious. My mother’s recipe. Well, go on,” he said impatiently.

“Charlie…I…Well, it’s just that…a pipe burst at the shop this morning, and it’s going to cost fifteen hundred dollars to fix it, and now I’ll have to delay my opening again. I haven’t had any income for months, just money going out for remodeling and buying stock. I’ve been watching every penny, haven’t even gone to the movies in three months. But today was such an awful day that I decided I just had to have a little treat, but I was only thinking of getting a soda and an appetizer, not all this….”

I looked up, trying to read his face, hoping for some sign that he understood my predicament, but it was impossible. Embarrassing as it was, I was just going to have to say it. “Charlie, I can’t afford this.”

Charlie looked at me blankly for a moment. Then one corner of his mouth twitched, and the other followed, and he smiled. “Well, of course you can’t, you silly woman. You’re about to open your own business; you don’t have two nickels to rub together. You think I don’t know that? This is on me, a sort of welcome-to-the-neighborhood dinner. I reckoned I’d better do it while you’re still here, because, as everyone says, you won’t last six months.”

There was the sound of a woman’s voice, raised and clearly irritated, coming from the back of the restaurant, and Charlie turned.

“Then again,” he said over his shoulder as he walked off to see what the commotion was, “everyone might be wrong. Eat your duck.”

I smiled, picked up my knife and fork, cut off a small piece of the bird, and put it into my mouth.

Charlie was right. Tears came into my eyes. I had made a friend.

J
ason, one of the newer waiters at the Grill, finally brought our entrées.

“Asian shrimp salad for Mr. Spaulding,” he said, putting down the plates, “and the salmon for you, Mrs. Wynne. Sorry for the delay.” The poor boy looked frazzled.

“That’s fine, Jason. We weren’t waiting long.” I smiled conspiratorially and rested my hand on his arm for a moment. “I saw Charlie charge back to the kitchen looking ready to explode. Let me guess—Maurice didn’t want to burn my salmon?”

Jason smiled but didn’t say anything. I laughed.

“A very diplomatic response. Well, you tell Maurice that I said my fish was delicious, absolute perfection, that I think he’s a genius and I’m going to tell all my friends to order it just this way. That should really irritate him, don’t you think?”

Again, the young server declined comment, but he sounded sincere when he said he hoped we enjoyed our meal before walking toward the kitchen.

“See, Abigail? That’s what I’m talking about,” Franklin said as he took up his fork and began carefully picking scallions out of his salad. I’ve never understood why he just doesn’t order the salad without the scallions, but that’s Franklin. He never wants to be a bother to anyone; and besides, he says that picking out the onions makes him eat more slowly.

“You have such a way with people, even young people like our waiter. He came to the table, completely petrified that we were going to be angry after waiting so long, yet with a few kind words you put him completely at ease. When you want to, you can win anyone over. Now, why can’t you do the same thing with Liza?”

“There is a big difference between being pleasant to a waiter, or a bank teller, or even a tennis partner—someone you have to see only occasionally—and dealing with an uninvited guest, or rather a criminal, who is serving out their sentence in your guest room.” I picked up my knife and sliced into the crisp, black skin of the salmon. It broke under the blade with a satisfying crunch.

“Abigail, be fair. Liza isn’t exactly a criminal.” Franklin raised his hand to interrupt a forthcoming protest on my part. “I know. I know. She took a sweater without paying for it, but it isn’t like you’re harboring a hardened felon under your roof—just a sad, lonely, confused girl who is crying out for help.”

I rolled my eyes. “Franklin, please. Don’t give me any of that psychological mumbo jumbo. She’s a grown woman. She’s nineteen years old, not some pitiable, misunderstood child, and she should be responsible for her own actions.” He started to say something, but this time it was my turn to cut him off.

“You’re too softhearted, Franklin. You see her as this vulnerable little orphan, but you’re wrong. I’m telling you, the girl is anything but vulnerable. Pigheaded, that’s what she is!”

“Oh, come on, Abigail. She can’t be all that bad.”

“No? She’s impossible, Franklin. Impossible! She’s gloomy, rude, and self-centered. She doesn’t get up until noon, doesn’t go to bed until three, and hides out in her room all day either listening to that cacophony of tin cans and catgut she calls music or working on her so-called ‘art.’ From what I can see, her three semesters at art school were a complete waste of time and money. All her canvasses are covered with globs of paint, bits of twine, or wire, and who knows what else. ‘Found objects’ she calls them, which is apparently the art world’s new word for trash. Ridiculous! I’m a well-known patron of the arts! True, I’ve never been enthused about modern art, but I can appreciate it. No one can say I don’t. How much did I give to her Geltzmer Museum last year? Ten thousand?”

“Fifteen,” Franklin answered without looking up from his plate. The offending onions now pushed to one side, he was concentrated on finishing his salad. I, on the other hand, hadn’t eaten more than two or three bites of my salmon. Franklin was right; he did eat too fast.

“There, you see? That’s my point exactly. I appreciate modern art more than most people, but this! Do you know, she’s just completed a so-called self-portrait—entirely out of bottle caps—and had the audacity to ask if she could hang it up in the foyer! And then, when I suggested it might be more appropriate to hang it in her room, an offer which, frankly, I considered generous, she slammed her door and didn’t come out for an entire day!”

“You know what they say, Abbie—beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe she was trying to communicate with you, trying to help you understand where she’s coming from. Legally, you’re right, Liza is an adult, but she’s still very young, a teenager, and she’s lost her mother to boot. Heaven knows, I wasn’t the best father in the world, but my Janice and Caitlin turned out all right in the end. The real key to dealing with teenagers is trying to see things from their point of view and being willing to negotiate a little.”

“I do not negotiate with terrorists,” I declared, only half joking.

Franklin ignored my comment. “Really, Abbie, would it have killed you to hang her picture where people could see it?”

“That’s not the point!” I was growing increasingly annoyed with Franklin’s lack of sympathy for my situation. Whose side was he on anyway? “I don’t see why I should have to negotiate a thing. It’s my house, and I like it the way it is. My foyer has appeared in the pages of
Architectural Digest
. I’m certainly not going to take down my own carefully arranged artwork to be replaced by a collage of Liza’s face composed entirely of filthy, rusting bottle caps. That’s not art, Franklin; it’s self-indulgence, and it seems to me that Liza Burgess has been indulged quite enough already!”

Just remembering the episode got my blood boiling again, and by the time I’d finished my speech, my voice was raised and I could feel the heat on my face. Charlie Donnelly appeared at the table.

“Everything fine here? Franklin? Abigail, how is your salmon? Black enough for you?”

I took a deep breath and forced a smile to my lips. “Just right. If you were to believe my niece, it’s almost as black as my heart.” I laughed, trying to sound lighthearted, but knew I wasn’t convincing. Because I eat at the Grill several times a week, Charlie knew all about the situation with Liza.

“Forgive me. I didn’t mean to raise my voice, Charlie. It’s just that I’m finding the rigors of surrogate motherhood rather challenging.”

Charlie smiled winningly, turning the full beam of his Irish charm upon me. “Nothing to forgive, Abigail. We understand each other. You’re just my kind of woman—difficult!” He winked, and I couldn’t help but laugh, meaning it this time.

“I’m going to run back into the kitchen and order you up your usual decaf cappuccino. That’ll set you right. Anything for you, Franklin? Maybe a piece of chocolate bread pudding? You can’t expect to do a good afternoon’s work on just a salad.”

Franklin shook his head. “No. Thanks, Charlie. I’m trying to lose a few pounds.”

Charlie picked up Franklin’s empty plate, brushed a few imaginary crumbs off the tablecloth, and went back to the pantry to make my cappuccino.

Calmer, in a more modulated tone, I picked up where I’d left off. “Either my sister was the worst mother on earth, raising her daughter to behave like this, or she must have found the child abandoned under a cabbage leaf somewhere. It must be the latter. Though Susan’s faults were many and well documented, even she couldn’t have raised such a monstrous child. Clearly, the girl was a foundling, or there was some mix-up in the maternity ward. I refuse to believe that Liza and I share even a drop of DNA from a common gene pool!”

“DNA comes in strands, not drops,” Franklin pointed out as he reached into the bread basket and broke off a crust. His unruffled demeanor was irritating.

“Don’t be so pedantic. You know what I mean. I cannot go on like this. She’s been in my house barely a month, and I’m already about to tear out my hair! I’ll never survive a year of this!”

“Abigail,” he said, “do you think you might be overdramatizing this just a bit?”

“No, I don’t. She is simply impossible. She barely speaks to me, and when she does, her tone is terribly rude. You’d think she’d be the tiniest bit grateful to me. After all, if it weren’t for me she’d be rotting in a jail cell somewhere!”

“It sounds like she’s angry.”

“Really, Franklin?” I said, arching my eyebrows to their highest point. “How very insightful of you. Of course, she’s angry. But she has no right to take her anger out on me. It isn’t like I got her into this. Until Harry Gulden foisted her off on me, I’d barely laid eyes on her.”

“That’s true. She is your niece, but it’s not like you’ve had anything to do with her. What could she possibly have against you? After all, you’ve done nothing, just left her to her own devices for the last nineteen years—and her mother too.”

I looked up. The accusation in his eyes was plain. “That’s not fair, Franklin. You of all people should know that. You know what Susan did to me.”

“I do, but that was years ago. Couldn’t you at least have gone to see her at the end? She was dying.”

“And was my going to her bedside, pretending everything was so much water under the bridge, going to change that?” I snapped. “You make me sound utterly heartless, and it’s not fair! You know I did what I could. I made sure there was money enough for Susan’s doctors, and for Liza’s education after. I told you to make sure they had whatever they needed.”

Franklin looked at me and said in a cold voice, “What you said was to make sure they had whatever they needed as long as you never had to deal with them personally. You were willing to be generous with your wallet, Abigail, just not with your forgiveness.”

“I was protecting them,” I hissed. “I didn’t want them to be embarrassed about taking money from me. That’s why I had you make up that story about Uncle Dwight dying and leaving Susan a legacy. So they wouldn’t have to feel beholden to me.”

“Abbie, I’m not sure even you believe that speech. Maybe you’d better rehearse it a few more times.”

“Franklin Spaulding! How dare you!” This was too much. I was furious, but he didn’t seem to care.

“Abbie, I’ve always thought you were a simply marvelous woman—difficult, as Charlie so aptly observed, though worth the effort. But you’ve always held everyone at arm’s length. Even me, and I’ve known you, known your secrets, taken care of every detail of your personal affairs, for the last thirty years. It was the same with Susan, though once upon a time she was closer to you than anyone in the world. I know she hurt you terribly, but if you couldn’t bring yourself to forgive Susan, or even see her, you might at least have reached out to Liza. After Susan died, she had no one to turn to.”

“No one but you! I heard the way she talked to you in the judge’s chambers. Clearly, you decided to be the person she could turn to, and look what came from it. She came here, looking for you, but somehow I’m the one who’s left to clean up the mess that you, with all your meddling in private affairs that don’t concern you, have created. Who asked you to do that? All you were supposed to do was make sure she had enough money. That’s all!” In spite of my earlier resolve, my voice was raised. A few people in the restaurant were craning their necks to look at us; many more were pretending not to look. I was mortified. I took a deep breath, touched my napkin to my lips, and laid it on the table.

I got up to leave just as Charlie returned carrying a cup of steaming cappuccino. His eyes moved quickly from my face to Franklin’s, assessing the situation. “Abigail,” he said soothingly, “sit down and have your coffee. It’s got a lovely big cap of foam. I made it myself.”

“Thank you, Charlie, but I have to go. I’m not feeling well. Please just add the bill to my tab and leave twenty percent for Jason.” I gave him a quick peck on the cheek and picked up my handbag, then leaned down to speak to Franklin.

“Franklin,” I said quietly but through clenched teeth, “you’re my lawyer. You’re not my lover, or my minister, or my therapist. You’re my lawyer. That’s all. From here on out, I want you to do what I ask you to do, the job I pay you to do, and nothing else. These are family matters, Franklin. I’ll thank you to stay out of them.”

I stood erect, and Franklin said, “You’re right. It is a family matter, Abigail. Your family. Why don’t you start acting like it?”

I didn’t respond, just squared my shoulders and walked out of the restaurant.