The Inn at Lake Devine (15 page)

Kris stood and said, “Well, then, I’m going to make a speech.” After a deep breath and an exaggerated exhale he said, “Today, friends and relatives, is my twenty-third birthday. As we all know, I’ve had better.” He raised his stein, looked directly at me, and said, “But, still, I’m grateful for who
is
here.”

Nelson said, on the downswing of everyone’s hoisting, “Quite the toastmaster, Kristofer. Hope you were going to do better than that as my best man.” Instantly, Kris reached across to squeeze Nelson’s shoulder. “Buddy,” he said softly. “I promise. Someday.”

W
e ate the ham, a Grand Marnier sweet potato soufflé, a wreath of steamed broccoli with cherry-tomato ornaments, shoestring onion rings in a milk batter from
Alice’s Restaurant Cookbook
, and a three-layer chocolate birthday cake. As I stood over the ham, massaging the Inn’s best knife against its carving stone, I apologized for what might be seen as an inappropriately festive meal. My words, I knew, were unnecessary because I had discovered in my five days of consolation cooking that life went on: Gretel seduced Chip; Bonnie Valluzzi switched her Christmas plans and her
major; Nelson received guys from high school, who arrived looking terrified, as if their parents had forced the sympathy call, then left having played boisterous hockey on the lake.

“It’s Christmas,” said Gretel in her headmistress fashion, “and it’s Kris’s birthday. You did a lovely job with the food and the presentation.” She turned to address the newcomers, Jeff and Bonnie. “Natalie’s a professional chef.”

Bonnie said brightly, “Here?”

I said, No, I was just helping out.

“Where do you work?” she asked.

I said I’d quit my job the month before and would be looking for another post as soon as I returned to Boston.

“My dad has a restaurant in New Haven,” said Bonnie. “Valluzzi’s.”

“It’s pizza,” said Jeff.

“I could give you his number. He knows a lot of restaurant owners and could make some calls.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but I’m going to exhaust the Boston possibilities first.”

“My dad has an inn in Vermont,” said Kris quietly.

I didn’t answer him directly, but smiled as if it were a stray, rhetorical compliment. Of course I had thought about the hole in their lineup, the unmentioned job of head chef in high season, and had decided it would be a terrible mistake. I couldn’t relax around Ingrid, and the food that pleased her would never please me. With these ingredients, these recipes, I had stopped auditioning for the role, stopped thinking about cuisine with roots along the Rhine. Tonight I was the executive chef instead of the visiting hand in the kitchen, and within the limitations of a huge smokehouse ham, I had cooked the way I’d been taught.

A
fter dessert and coffee, the members of the party excused themselves in twos. Bonnie said she’d take Jeff upstairs, along with plates of this unusual and original food for his parents, and water
for everyone’s pills. Gretel said she’d get Chip settled and would return in about forty-five minutes to help with the cleanup.

“ ‘Get settled’?” Kris repeated. “What does that mean, exactly?”

Chip, for once, answered first, avoiding my knowing stare. “I need my leg elevated, and I can’t do it without help.”

“And it’s really, really hard for him to fall asleep, Kristofer,” Gretel said, in a tone that pronounced her brother the least sensitive man in New England. “I read aloud to him and it lulls him to sleep.”

“You never do that for me,” her oldest brother said.

“I’ll do it,” cooed Kris, with a few comic strokes to Nelson’s brow.

“Poor Gretel,” I said. “Having to explain herself to a panel of brothers.”

Apparently, it took more than one midnight mediation session to turn Gretel into my ally. She took Chip’s good elbow and guided him between the vast number of empty tables, away from her inquisitors.

“Good night,” we called in a chorus, gaining only a toss of Gretel’s stiff hair and a raised hand from Chip.

“You don’t suppose …” Nelson began, as soon as they were out of earshot.

“I’d bet on it,” said Kris. “Tonight’s the night. Or else she’ll have to work it out long-distance.”

I said, “Unless she’s already worked it out.”

With that I turned my attention to collecting silverware, knowing I had their full attention.

“Natalie?” I heard.

I looked up, projecting as much counterfeit innocence as I could in one expression.

“Do you know something we don’t know?” asked Nelson.

I said, “Guys. Please. Let’s change the subject. Anyone want thirds on cake?”

“We’re waiting for your answer,” said Nelson.

“We have our ways,” said Kris. “You think we can’t interrogate you till you drop?”

Had I promised the brat anything that I wasn’t dying to betray? I reached for and scraped a few plates. Finally I said, “Would you guys beat him up or anything?”

“
Us?
” they said. “
Chip?
”

“And you don’t have a lot invested in your sister’s … how shall I say this—honor?”

“She’s answered it,” said Nelson. “Let’s not give her the satisfaction of eating out of her hand.”

“Good,” I said. “I’m glad you feel that way.”

Nelson and Kris wheedled further: How did I know? When did it happen? Where were they?

I said, Okay, but they wouldn’t tell their parents, would they?

They protested that they never told their parents anything.

I waited a few beats longer, then said only, “Okay.”

“Okay what?” said Kris.

“They sneaked into my room last night.”

“
Your
room?”

“Well, my new room. I moved my stuff into a double, and woke up around midnight to see two figures at the foot of my bed. Locked in an embrace.”

“Dressed?” asked Kris.

“Do we want to know?” Nelson asked, wincing.

“Dressed to kill. At least Gretel was, in this getup—the goddess Aphrodite, in this white chiffon number—”

Nelson’s expression changed. I saw something in his face that was unrelated to a big brother’s chagrin over a sister’s sexual escapades.

“Just a nightgown,” I backtracked. “Nothing scandalous.”

“What did it look like?” he asked.

I proceeded carefully. “White? Like a tunic. Crisscrossed”—I traced the path quickly, clinically, on my own body—“with white satin ribbons.”

Nelson looked at Kris.

Kris said, “What?”

“That doesn’t ring a bell?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I was hoping Natalie would get to the good stuff.”

Nelson murmured, “Of course you weren’t there.”

“Where?” Kris and I asked together.

“That nightgown,” he said. “It was Robin’s. I mean, it was Gretel’s gift to Robin at her shower. Robin loved it.”

I said, No, there must be some mistake—

“Gretel was packing up and returning the presents so I wouldn’t have to … so Sissy wouldn’t have to.”

I said, “Nelson, I had no idea—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You didn’t know …”

I said, “Except it’s one more thing for you to be upset about.”

He stood up, and pushed in his chair as if to a precise, reserved spot. “Would you folks mind if I turned in?”

We rushed to say, No, God no. Of course not.

“Natalie, as always, a magnificent dinner.” He reached for my hand, kissed it sadly, distractedly, then walked away, his fists in his jeans pockets.

Kris directed me to a perch on the counter, outside the work zone, and coaxed me to pick up Gretel’s adventure from the unfortunate junction of the repossessed gown.

Whispering in case there were principals or parents eavesdropping, I said, “So I wake up and I hear this sound”—I smacked my lips on the back of my hand to approximate smooching—“and I don’t say anything for a few seconds, then I pipe up, from the depths of my pillow, ‘Kids? Excuse me?’ ”

“No!” said Kris, laughing. “Did Gretel jump out of her skin?”

I shushed him. “Practically. She grabbed Chip. Meanwhile, I’ve turned on the light, so they know it’s me, which is when Gretel starts negotiating with me. Or interpreting for me—how they
couldn’t sleep and had been pacing and happened to run into each other outside my room.”

“Chip wasn’t undressed or anything. I mean it wasn’t totally embarrassing, was it?”

“Pajamas.” I fixed my eyes on his for comic effect and said gravely, “Thin cotton hospital pajamas.”

He groaned. “And you weren’t, like, embarrassed? I mean, you were decent and everything?”

I said, “I was most decent. No question.”

“I only asked because my family … several times a day, it seems—me included—does something that is totally … embarrassing.”

“No you don’t,” I said.

“I’m just picturing the whole situation, and I know Gretel, and I would put money on the fact that she made you feel as if you were the one who was trespassing.”

I smiled and said, “Maybe. But I handled it.”

“Who stayed? You or them?”

“Them.”

He smiled. “But you had the last word?”

“Damn right,” I said.

He picked up a dish towel and dried his hands. “Still, pretty brazen, huh? Leading him off to bed tonight for all the world to see. Knowing you know the whole story.”

“I’m just a temporary cook,” I said. “The young mistress of the house doesn’t have to kowtow to the help.”

He came over to where I was sitting on the linoleum counter above the cabinets. Solemnly, as if speaking for the entire ungrateful management, he said, “I want to thank you for dinner … not just for dinner. For breakfast today, too. Especially for breakfast.”

He took a step closer, so there was no room left between the toes of his sneakers and the cupboard door. Without meaning to—or at
least without planning the next step—I hooked my legs around his playfully. Which led to his arms around my neck, and my arms around his waist.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

We would have kissed. We were a second from it, an inch, which is where things froze on Christmas night 1974. We might as well have been kissing for the effect we created, the alarm we tripped.

The well-oiled door swung inward, delivering Kris’s mother for her nightly inspection. We jumped apart, but not as cleanly as we would have if our arms and legs hadn’t been entwined.

Ingrid stared for a few unforgiving seconds, then hissed, “Remember tomorrow,” and turned on her heels.

I jumped off the counter and sputtered, “Do you think we
forgot
?” at the same time Kris called, “Ma!”

The door swung hard, vibrating. If she heard us, she didn’t look back.

M
y parents came to the Inn an hour ahead of the service, so when Mrs. Fife couldn’t go to the funeral, couldn’t even be propped up, it was my mother who stayed behind with her.

Mr. Fife said, No, he couldn’t endorse such a plan; it was his duty to stay if Sissy couldn’t go. My mother insisted. She assured us that she’d locate what she needed—the tea bags, the scotch, the cold compresses—closing the door on our procession with a firm and competent click.

Mr. Fife, his sons, and Nelson got into the undertaker’s limousine; the remaining Berrys took the van, while I drove with my father, somberly dressed in his black overcoat and the gray felt homburg that he wore only for rides to churches and to synagogues. He kept shaking his head and repeating, “That poor Sissy. That poor woman. These poor people.”

I said, “It’s been hanging over everyone’s head for so long, they never thought this day would come.”

It set my father off, as if he had been mulling over this ill-gotten delay. “Why in God’s name did they wait so long?” he demanded.

“I told you—Jeff was in the hospital. They wanted him to be able to go. Then there was Christmas.”

“The Jews have it right,” my father said. “We bury our dead before
the next sundown.” He muttered, “Waiting and waiting in a strange place, away from home. It’s ridiculous! It’s cruel! And for what? To put a sick boy at his sister’s grave? Jesus, I couldn’t believe it when you told me they were waiting this long.”

I said, “It seemed right when the decision was made, to have the funeral up here, where Robin wanted to be married.”

“
Meshugas!
” my father said. He patted my hand, and I knew he was saying, I’m riled up, honey, but I didn’t mean that you had anything to do with this lousy decision.

I said, “I think it’s been torture for the Berrys.”

“Well, isn’t that too bad.”

Surprised, I said, “No one complained. I just meant that it’s a huge responsibility.”

“They’re innkeepers! They’re professional hosts. Tragedies happen. You make your living inviting strangers into your home, you can’t always expect it’s going to be easy.”

“First you say the funeral should have happened days ago, and in the next sentence you’re saying, ‘Too bad for the Berrys. They have to accept whatever happens under their roof.’ ”

“All of a sudden you admire them? You think I’m wrong to hold a grudge?”

We were at the
YIELD
sign that marked the end of the shore road and the beginning of the route to Gilbert Center. Two cars ahead of us, the limo driver, as if mindful of recent tragedies, was driving with studied slowness.