Although it’s just past one in the afternoon she’s had enough of today to last a few weeks. Anna does what she always does to cheer herself up. She plans the evening meal. Well…since Erik won’t be there she won’t have to make red meat, for a change. What did she need after such a harrowing morning? Comfort food, absolutely…ah ha! She knows exactly what she’ll make, her version of ‘chicken soup’ and Betsy’s all time favorite. This, of course, is the only reason she dared to bring it to the table a second time.
Anna has time to kill before getting the kids; Betsy and Drew from the middle school, her stepdaughter Maggie from the high school. Her stepson Greg already moved on to college. So Anna, in no hurry, takes the long way to the market. After all, she really only needs two things: red wine and fresh leeks. For the umpteenth time in memory she drives past the location, her location; the perfect spot for the comfort food café she began conceptualizing years ago when her children were just born. Early in married life Anna worked her way day by day through each of the gourmet recipes in Julia Child’s biblical, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. As a result Anna indeed developed a mastery in the kitchen. With experience she even dared to alter, amend, and adapt her newly honed skills and Ms. Child’s recipes to the family table.
Erik bought the building for her restaurant three years ago. Allegedly keeping the promise he made when she finally agreed to remarry him after four years of pseudodivorce. In her mind she refers to it as the ‘pseudodivorce’ because it was kept an absolute secret. This time, though, would be vastly, incredibly, remarkably different. See, already she’s moved…to her mom and dad’s yes, but farther than she’d gotten last time around. Much farther.
Despite being ‘divorced’ seven years ago, they continued living together, went to church together, attended charity events and public galas together. Not even their children knew, although they may have wondered why Mom and Dad slept in different wings of the house. Not even her parents and especially not his mother were ever to find out. Those were his conditions for agreeing to divorce her. That she maintain the status quo, keep mum, and live ‘as if.’
At the time she hoped the divorce would have earned her some sense of autonomy, some control over the direction of her and her children’s lives. She agreed to his conditions because they enabled her to have her cake and eat it too, or so she thought. She negotiated several months’ worth of courses with top chefs in cities around the world into the deal for herself. She’d be able to live comfortably and raise her children well, and she wouldn’t be obligated to serve as Erik’s virtual slave as she’d been conditioned over the years.
Yes she is fully aware how mercenary the restaurant for remarriage sounds but, really, what does it matter now? For three years he strung her along with promises. First he needed to get the zoning rules changed. Rallying the city council behind this decision alone took over a year. Then the building was supposedly condemned byinitial city inspectors, which she should have realized was suspect as Erik golfed with the state supervisor of building inspectors—their ultimate boss. As a powerful personal injury attorney, he knew everyone who was anyone in local and state government and was in bed with most of the movers and shakers in town in one way or another. She only began to understand these symbiotic, under the radar, relationships once she started paying closer attention to his associates and their comings and goings.
His vast, often hidden network of connections is also probably why Anna struggled to get even an interview for decent full time job. She’d probably been blackballed in advance by Erik simply saying in passing at some fundraiser, “You know now Anna’s got it into her head to get back into politics after all these years. I mean yes…she did ultimately finish her degree, but you all know how strongly I feel about the sanctity of the family and the Godliness of a loving home for the sake of the children…” And she believed in it all too…once upon a time, long, long ago.
Then there was the series of contractors Erik swept through, firing each one before they could actually make any headway on reconstructing the café building. Today she parks in the weedy asphalt lot, another zoning issue there; parking. Today she wants a good long look. The whole thing just looks forlorn and sad from every angle. The layer of plaster over the concrete block is peeling off the exterior. The awning frame is rusted and caved in through the middle. It never did see the lovely canvas design she spent hours choosing colors for.
Anna picks her way through the muddy trenches that were once intended to be home to full-size trees and perennial gardens. She clambers through the hole a truck created in the picket fence around the al fresco deck. From there she can see the interior through the wide windows. Of course she tries the door handle to no avail. The place may be abandoned, but Erik still keeps it like a fortress. Even his discards warrant lock and key.
Surveying the dozens of varieties of tables, chairs, booths, and counters scattered about breaks her heart for the umpteenth time. As always she envisions the warm atmosphere inviting friendly faces in out of the rain. Anna’s hopes and dreams still materialize in the fog where she breathes on the window.
“Oh Anna it smells so delicious! What’s on special today? Did you make soup? Oh of course you did, you have a sixth sense don’t you. You always know what we’ll want!” dotes her neighbor Karen as she helps her elderly mother to her seat, their usual table. Anna in an apron her grandmother wore hugs them both and helps Karen’s mother settle in comfortably. She has ingeniously arranged the seating rooms so that loud clamoring tables with small children (who…don’t get her wrong, she adores) are far from the tables for adults. She even designed an area that naturally attracts the teens and preteens after school. Instead of gourmet coffees, Anna designed ‘gourmet’ cocoas and tea and juice blends the kids can ohh and ahh and brag about. Anna’s milk and fruit juice–based blends are actually healthy and invigorating.
Seeing her hopes for the future in the dust, ladders, and fallen bits of ceiling is far more devastating than seeing Erik’s intestines fall out. She remembers each chair and each plate service she’d narrowed down as her finalists. Creating the perfect atmosphere, attaining just the right balance between welcome comfort and tasteful elegance became a passion. Once she realized she would never have the marriage and the husband that would provide her children with the kind of family she dreamed of, she diverted all those thwarted hopes to the restaurant. The truth of all those losses, all her mistakes and misjudgments about Erik, confront her daily. Seeing this last costly dream neglected casts a shadow over Anna that she cannot shake. She wipes the steam from her breath off the window with her palm, wiping the slate clean.
But of course…there is dinner to make. The kids’ll be upset about what happened to their dad and will need something hearty and comforting after dropping by the hospital to see him. Anna reminds herself to ring his room as they head over there after school. She’d hate for the kids to stumble into what she had. That would be too confusing.
WATCHING HIS SACCHARINE PERFORMANCE during Betsy, Drew, and Maggie’s visit to the hospital only makes her more determined to get free.
“Oh and you should have seen what a trooper your mom was guys…” he boasts to them. “If she hadn’t come home just then, who knows what might have happened to old Dad?” Their ‘marriage’ seemed to have devolved into a theatrical competition. Whichever one of them would crack and betray the truth in front of the kids, Mother Reinhardt, or anyone else would be the loser. Who could appear the most solicitous, convivial, and happy despite the abyss of lies and emptiness that lay beneath? Of course Anna was losing this battle, because she in fact has a heart left. Or rather she hopes she has a heart left.
The whole show reminds her of the night she met Erik. She was nineteen and