Baby Makes Three

A kitchen at rest, a kitchen such as this one, was a beautiful thing. A place of peace.

She ran her hand along the chopping block sitting next to the stove. The same monster slab of oak, easily ten inches thick, used to sit in their house. It had come from Gabe’s mother whose parents had been Polish butchers. Thousands of pigs had been bled on that wood, thousands of cabbages had been chopped, thousands of perogies had been rolled and formed there. Alice wanted to climb on top of it and dance.

This kitchen even smelled like a fresh start.

I will stop drinking, she promised. I will not waste this chance. She made the promise even as the remainder of last night’s wine throbbed in her skull. I will swallow my resentment and try very hard not to fight with my ex-husband.

“Hey,” Gabe said from behind her as if her promise had conjured him. She couldn’t quite face him yet. Things in her were shaken loose by the beauty of the place, by her earnest desire to deserve this fresh start.

“Executive chef,” she said, opening a door to find a small closet, lined with shelves, ready for spices and root vegetables, maple syrup and vinegars, “reporting for duty.”

“What do you think?” he asked and she finally had to look at him. For an instant she wanted to shield her eyes from the radiant brightness of him. He was clean and fresh in a wrinkled white shirt and khaki pants, his blond hair mussed by his hands, his face tanned from working outside.

He looked like a lifeguard. A Swiss Alps skirescue guy. He just needed the dog.

She felt small in comparison, dark and mean, dressed in black because it didn’t require her to think to coordinate.

“Alice?” he said, breaking in to her ugly comparisons. He ducked his head to look into her eyes and smiled. “What do you think? Recognize it?”

She realized, belatedly, that the kitchen wasn’t a coincidence. She’d told him a million times what a kitchen should look like according to her. She’d sketched the floor plan on the bare skin of his back over and over again.

“It’s amazing,” she said, her joy in finding her dream brought to life turning to cold resentment. Of course he would take this for himself, too. “You know that.”

“I practically have the floor plan tattooed on my back.” He grinned and the reminder of their intimacies, casually uttered out loud, chilled her to the bone. “When the time came to design the kitchen, I just remembered everything you taught me.”

It was a compliment, probably a sincere one, but she didn’t want compliments.

This is not mine, she told herself, ripping the dream from her clenched fists. I am hired help. I am a bit player. She had no business coveting the butcher’s block, imagining years of early mornings in this kitchen, planning menus.

There is nothing I want, she reminded herself. There is nothing I need.

She forced cold distance into her head and her heart and when she looked at the beautiful kitchen, the chandelier of pots and pans, she just saw things. Inanimate objects that had no relationship to her, that cost her nothing and only represented a way to get out of debt and move on with her life.

They were tools. That’s all. Gabe, this kitchen, the whole inn, they were a means to an end.

“I think we better get to work if you want to open in a month,” she said, cold as ice.

“But did you see the view?” Gabe pointed to the window. “Come on, we can have coffee and take a walk around the grounds. We have a capacity of one hundred guests between the cottages and the lodge, which we’re hoping—”

“No.” She shook her head. “I just want to work, Gabe. That’s all.”

For a moment she thought he might ask her what was wrong. Instead, true to form, he nodded in that definitive way that always indicated he was biting his tongue. “Okay. Come on into the office and we’ll talk—”

“Get your hands off me!” someone yelled, and both Gabe and Alice whirled to the doorway leading to the dining room. They stood like deer in headlights while the swinging door banged open and Max and a teenage boy plowed into the kitchen. “Didn’t you hear what I said!” The kid, practically drowning in oversize black clothes, yelled.

“Yep. And I’m not touching you.”

“Good, don’t start.”

Alice nearly stepped back, as though the kid were a rabid dog.

“Here he is,” Max said and from the corner of her eye she saw Gabe’s mouth fall open.

“You’re kidding me,” he said.

“Nope.” Max shook his head. “This is Cameron.”

“Cut that out, man,” Cameron said, jerking himself away from Max. “The name is Chaz.”

“Chaz makes you sound like an idiot,” Max said. “Your name is Cameron.”

“Hi, Max,” Alice said, pleased to see her former brother-in-law. The best things about Gabe were his brother and father, both as emotionally retarded as Gabe, but at least they didn’t try to pretend otherwise.

“Hey, Alice,” Max said with a quick grin. “Good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too.” She meant it. “How you keeping?”

“Starving,” he said. “We’ve been living on toast and freeze-dried noodles around here.”

Alice shuddered and Max’s grin stretched into a smile. He looked thin, painfully so, and wounded in some dark way, as if all the intensity that had illuminated him was banked, burning out.

“What the hell am I doing here, man?” Cameron, or whatever his name was, asked. “This is an afterschool program.”

“Not when you’ve got a day off school. Then it’s an all-day program.” Max answered.

“This your love-child you never told us about?” Alice asked Max, falling into their old give-and-take.

“This dude ain’t my father,” Cameron answered for him.

“Gabe didn’t tell you?” Max asked, his dark eyebrows hitting his hairline, and Alice suddenly felt a serious lack of information.

“Tell me what?” She crossed her arms over her chest, just in case Gabe misinterpreted her tone as happy.

It took a moment, but Gabe finally issued a response. He looked at her, put on his game face and said, “He’s your staff.”

“Bullshit!” the kid yelled.

Alice laughed. “I’m with him.”

Gabe winced and remained silent, which could mean only one thing. Alice’s mouth fell open. “You’re kidding.”

He shook his head.

“You’re kidding.” She turned to Max, who only shrugged.

She finally focused on the kid, whose eyes met hers briefly. “I got nothing to kid about,” he said, looking as unhappy as she felt.

She shook her head. “I can work alone until I get proper staff.”