Chapter 9 Aoife
AOIFE
Seven months later
Rockport is where I find my new home. The first winter storm slides in on quiet feet and takes the town by the shoulders.
Snow flurries drift like sifted flour, the harbor bells knock once and then go still, and the gulls tuck their beaks into their feathers and pretend they never knew how to scream.
I wake to the smell of yeast and cold metal, the kind of morning that makes you grateful for hot water and a working pilot light.
The baby rolls under my palm as if to say, again, and I rub the curve low on my belly until the wave passes and the room steadies.
My room sits above a bakery that opens at five, which means most days I wake to the sound of trays sliding and proofing cabinets exhaling like sleepy dragons.
The landlady calls me Miss Kelly and always leaves a second key on a hook inside the stairwell because she is convinced I will lock myself out, and I love her for it even as I pretend to be offended.
The apartment smells like cinnamon by noon and bleach by midnight, and I have learned to treat both as comfort.
By six I am dressed in black and denim, hair twisted up, sweater stretched thin across a body that feels borrowed.
I lace my boots while the kettle hums, sip tea that is more milk than leaves, and stand very still when the baby delivers a decisive kick against the underside of my ribs.
“You are punctual,” I tell him, because in the quiet moments I stop pretending the baby is a question.
“You are also dramatic. That is a family trait, I think.” The kettle clicks.
The town breathes in. I shoulder my bag and go to work.
Salt & Sparrow sits three doors up from the water, in a long, narrow space that used to house a chandlery and now houses linen-draped tables and a bar that glows like honey under brass lamps.
The sign outside is hand painted and a little crooked.
In the mornings the dining room looks like it is holding its breath.
By night it glows. Fairy lights run along the beam that carries the length of the ceiling.
A cluster of paper stars hangs in the front window and turns slowly even when there is no draft.
I did not choose the name of the place or the stars, but I have adopted both, the way you adopt a street when your feet have kept its rhythm long enough.
When I arrived I scrubbed pots for a week, then watched the line for another week, then made a soup that sold out in an hour.
Marta, the owner, handed me the keys to the walk-in the following morning.
She is small and precise and has a silver streak through her short dark hair that makes her look like a saint painted with better lighting.
She runs the dining room with a delicate sort of ferocity and a ledger that never quite leaves her hand.
She introduced me to vendors and to the oyster man and to the woman at the post office who knows how to forward packages without asking for names.
She told me I could call her at any hour and meant it.
She calls me Chef when she wants me to take the compliment and Aoife when she wants me to drink water.
I unlock the side door. The walk-in sighs when I open it.
I stack the morning on the low boy—parsnips, fenugreek, the cod the boats brought in just before the snow, a bouquet of thyme tied with baker’s twine, a jar of lemon peel I candied yesterday because the idea would not leave me alone until I did.
I set a pot on low for stock, bones first, then onions that sweat until they gloss.
By seven, the prep crew drifts in like tide.
Noor ties on her apron and hums a song I do not know as she lines up potatoes the way a jeweler lines up stones.
Felix bounces on his toes as if the floor owes him change.
He folds towels with the fervor of a convert and flirts with the espresso machine until it agrees to be generous.
Luis, still growing, still lanky, hauls crates with a gentleness that makes me proud and a speed that makes me nervous.
He slices his first onion of the day and swears softly when the knife catches.
I take his knife, hone it twice, hand it back, and watch his shoulders settle.
“Morning, Chef,” Noor says. She looks at my belly, not shocked anymore, just checking, the way you check the sky for weather. “How is the small boss?”
“Practicing Riverdance,” I say. “He has strong feelings about fennel.”
“Good taste,” she says. “Fennel needs opinions.”
We set the board with lists. Par-cook the potatoes for confit.
Shave the fennel for salad and for braise.
Zest the citrus for the duck glaze even though I tell myself I am not thinking about duck today.
I write the soup on the board, parsnip and pear with white pepper and a pinch of clove.
I write the fish special, cod with brown butter and caper raisin, and then draw a line through it because the scallops look better, damp and sweet, the kind of scallops that carry the smell of the boat for exactly one breath before it becomes the smell of the ocean itself.
I write scallops with leek ash and persillade.
I write brown bread with seaweed butter because we always run out and because the regulars ask for it with a look that feels like a secret handshake.
Felix sticks his head into the walk-in and then sticks his whole body inside because he never learned to stop dramatizing. “Chef,” he calls, echo going round the racks. “We are short on cream.”
“Use evaporated milk and pretend to be French,” I say. “It is a storm day. They will forgive us if we make it taste like memory.”
“Memory I can do,” he says, and comes out flushed and grinning, arms full.
At nine, the fisherwoman knocks twice on the back door and lets herself in.
She is as tall as a mast and red-cheeked and she wears two knives on her belt like a warning and a promise.
She names each scallop boat the shells came from, taps the rough edge of one shell with her thumbnail the way a musician tests a drum.
She pours a dozen on ice just for me, for tasting.
I pop one with a twist of the wrist and the sweet brine hits my tongue and I close my eyes at the first clean rush of it.
I tip the shell to the mouth of the baby and say, “We are eating the weather,” and the baby answers with a lazy roll of heel against palm.
“Kid has taste,” the fisherwoman says. “How far along are you now, Chef?”
“Eight months,” I say. “He is punctual and I am out of breath.”
“Then bring him soup and sit sometimes,” she says, and clamps one big hand on my shoulder. “Salt on your lips. Good luck in your bones.”
By lunch we are busy. The town wakes slower in a storm, but hunger always wins.
A couple in thick sweaters shares a pot of mussels and two slices of brown bread and talk to each other with their heads bent, private as prayer.
A woman reads a paperback and eats every shred of fennel on her plate, eyes wet but not from the soup.
Two men in clean work jackets sit at the bar and ask me, through the pass, whether we will do the Guinness cake on Christmas Eve.
“We will,” I say, and they nod as if a treaty has been confirmed.
Between tickets, between the heat and the clatter, the baby shifts again. I lean one hand on the low boy and breathe until the room returns to a single point. Noor makes a motion with the stool. I shake my head. “Not yet,” I say. “Give me two more fires.”
We send scallops that look lacquered and smell like a promise fulfilled.
We send soup that glows like late afternoon.
We send a plate of roasted carrots with cumin and honey and a puck of goat’s cheese rolled in cracked pepper.
We send bread that lands with a soft knock and breaks into a steam that smells like kelp and memory and wet stone.
At the lull Marta appears at the end of the line with her ledger under her arm. She watches me for a moment and then sets the ledger down and takes my tongs without asking.
“You hydrate,” she says. “I plate.”
“You will plate too neatly,” I say, but I drink the water anyway.
She leans close so I do not have to lean toward her. “The caterers from the inn called,” she says in a low voice. “They want you to design the Christmas Eve menu. Six courses. Family style. They asked for the soda bread curls.”
“They always ask for the curls,” I say. “What is the budget.”
“Small,” she says. “Like a pocket full of buttons.”
“Then we will make the buttons shine,” I say.
Marta smiles, quick and fierce. “You always do.”
The snow picks up in the afternoon and then drops away to a lazy dusting, as if the sky grew bored.
A woman in a green parka comes in and orders tea and looks at the baby with the open curiosity of someone who is trying not to cry in public.
I bring her a slice of cake because she needs it and because I can.
She thanks me the way you thank a miracle you did not want to ask for.
By four, the deliveries have stopped. The town tucks itself in.
We prep for dinner by counting candles and counting scallops and counting how many times I need to tell Felix to stop tasting the persillade with a spoon.
“It is parsley and garlic,” I say. “It will taste like parsley and garlic every time.”
“It tastes like Italy,” he says. “I have never been.”
“You can visit with your mouth,” I say. “Wash the spoon.”