Elin Hilderbrand - The Blue Bistro

“I want to make a face,” she said.

“Not only a chef,” Fiona said, “but an artist.”

Shaughnessy laid out the pepperoni. Eyes, nose, mouth.

“Your face is frowning,” Fiona said.

“Because I feel sad,” Shaughnessy said.

Fiona had a handful of sliced fresh mozzarella poised over the pizza, but when Shaughnessy said this, she lowered her hand to the counter and glanced at JZ. JZ shrugged.

Fiona raised Shaughnessy’s chin with her finger. Adrienne’s attention was captivated by the look on Fiona’s face. She recognized that look.

“Why are you sad?” Fiona said.

“Because I want everything to be different,” Shaughnessy said. “I want you to be my mother.”

Thatcher let Adrienne go early and she was glad; it had been the world’s longest day. When she got home, she showered, then fell into bed in her towel with her hair wet. She thought she might have crazy dreams about Holt Millman or the girl with the English accent who worked on the boat or Shaughnessy and JZ and the absent wife/mother whom they both seemed so eager to replace. But Adrienne slept without dreaming at all. When she heard the knock at her door, that was the one thing she was certain of: She hadn’t been dreaming and she wasn’t dreaming now. There was someone knocking on her door.

She pulled her comforter up under her chin. Thinking, Caren. But maybe Duncan-and how weird would that be?

“Hello?” she said.

It was dark, but even so, she could tell that the person in the doorway was Thatch. A light from somewhere caught his hair and she knew the shape of him, his tread, his smell. Thatcher Smith was in her room. She checked her clock-one forty-eight-not so late, really. Not by restaurant standards. His presence was so bizarre that she didn’t even know where to begin her thinking. She waited for him to speak.

He eased himself down onto the side of her bed. “Hi,” he said. “It’s me.”

“Hi, me,” she said. She worried what she looked like; she wondered if he could see her.

There was a long pause and then he sighed. “I’m sorry, Adrienne.”

The words hung in the room in an odd way, as if they required more explanation, but they didn’t.

“I know,” she said.

“You may wonder why I’m telling you now, in the middle of the night.”

“The middle of the night part doesn’t bother me,” Adrienne said. “Nor the fact that you seem to have broken into my house. But you made me wait ten days.”

“There’s a lot going on,” Thatcher said. “Fiona’s sick.”

“I know,” Adrienne said.

“She’s very sick.”

“I know,” Adrienne said-because she did know, somehow. The coughing, the childhood illness Thatcher didn’t want to talk about, Fiona’s reclusiveness, her embrace with JZ, the last year of the restaurant, Drew Amman-Keller’s cryptic words, Thatcher’s slavish devotion-they had all added up in Adrienne’s mind to an instinct she hadn’t been able to acknowledge, even to herself. But then there was earlier that evening, the scene she witnessed; Shaughnessy in the kitchen with Fiona. There had been something in Fiona’s face, a longing Adrienne had seen before in her own mother’s face when Rosalie lay in the hospital bed, her pale head covered with a Phillies cap. So, yes, Adrienne knew: Fiona was sick.

“Do you want me to leave?” Thatcher said.

“No,” Adrienne said. “I want you to stay. Do you want to talk about Fiona?”

“Not tonight,” Thatcher said. “Is that okay?”

“Of course.”

Thatcher removed his blazer and laid it across Adrienne’s computer table. Then he shed his loafers and his watch and his belt and he climbed into bed. Adrienne was nude-her towel had long ago been mixed up with the covers-and when he realized this fact, he inhaled a sharp breath.

“Sorry,” she said. “I showered when I got home, and…”

He kissed her and Adrienne was filled with awe. How had she survived ten days without his mouth on hers, his tongue, his lips, his body pressed against her body? How had she survived? It felt as though she had gone ten days without food, without water. Because she was hungry for him. She was starved.

Old Boyfriends

October 1, 2002

Dear Sully,

The one thing I remember my mother telling me about love was that you couldn’t hunt it down or sniff it out. Like all great mysteries in the world, my mother said, it just happened.

This summer was the best summer of my life. But although I wished for it and wanted it, love didn’t happen to me the way it happened to you. I can’t explain it any better than that. I hope someday you’ll forgive me for taking off like this, without warning, without good-bye. I thought this would be easiest-for me, certainly-but also for you.

If there was something else I could say, I would say it. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Adrienne

CYSTIC FIBROSIS

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease affecting approximately thirty thousand children and adults in the United States. CF causes the body to produce an abnormally thick, sticky mucus, due to the faulty transport of sodium chloride within cells lining organs-such as the lungs and pancreas-to their outer surfaces. The thick CF mucus also obstructs the pancreas, preventing enzymes from reaching the intestines to help break down and digest food.

CF has a variety of symptoms. The most common is very salty-tasting skin; persistent coughing, wheezing, or pneumonia; excessive appetite but poor weight gain. The treatment of CF depends on the stage of the disease and which organs are involved. One means of treatment, chest physical therapy, requires vigorous percussion (by using cupped hands) on the back and chest to dislodge the thick mucus from the lungs. Antibiotics are also used to treat lung infections and are administered intravenously, via pills, and/or medicinal vapors, which are inhaled to open up clogged airways.

The median life expectancy for someone with CF is thirty-two, though some patients have lived as long as fifty to sixty years.

Before she met Thatcher, Adrienne had been down the road and around the bend with three and a half other men. The first, chronologically, was her academic adviser during her fifth year of college. Adrienne was twenty-two years old, trying to earn enough credits to graduate from Florida State. Her transcript-with courses from IU Bloomington and Vanderbilt, and AP credits from her high school in Iowa, not to mention two semesters at Florida State-looked like a patchwork quilt and smacked (so her father claimed) of a half-baked effort that was draining him of his savings. She had plenty of class hours and good grades but nothing that equaled a major. She had started out as elementary ed at IU, then at Vandy she switched to sociology with a minor in art history. Florida State didn’t have a sociology major, though they did have anthropology, which she could qualify for with twenty-six more credits. Or she could go the route of art history, but she felt this wasn’t a major that would ever present any career opportunities, and her father agreed.

Thus, the academic adviser.

The first time Adrienne met with Will Kovak, she barely noticed him. She was too agitated about her tattered state of affairs. Her father was right: She wasn’t taking college seriously, she was flitting around, unwilling to commit to a major or even a school. Sure, some people transferred once, but twice? She hadn’t made a lasting friendship or held on to a single interest since her mother died. She had toyed around with notions of law school (everyone she knew who didn’t have long-term concrete goals applied to law school); she considered becoming a personal trainer; she had taken a course called African Drumming and really enjoyed it; she wondered if she should drop out of school and get a job. But where? Doing what? Her father and Mavis pelted her with possible vocations. Mavis thought she should teach the deaf. Her father thought she should take the hygienist’s courses and join him in practice. Both of them thought she should see a shrink. With all these disturbing notions flooding her mind, Will Kovak registered only as a body behind a desk. His office was dark; the venetian blinds were pulled against the strong Florida sun. She could hardly see him. All Adrienne cared about was her transcript, which lay on his desk like a trauma patient. Could he save it?