Chapter 19 #2
“It gets worse. Things started to fall apart at the restaurant. Profits were slipping, one of my sous chefs spiraled and had to go to rehab, the owners were on me to try this new trend, then that one. At the same time, Noelle was diagnosed with cancer. Ewing sarcoma, cancer in her bones.” Laurent looked exhausted. He looked a hundred years old.
“That should have been my sign to pull back and spend time with my sister. But I couldn’t. The thought of losing my restaurant was unbearable. It would mean everything I’d worked so hard for had failed. That I was a failure.
“So I just dove in deeper. It got so bad I cut myself off from everyone and spent most nights sleeping on a cot in the kitchens. And all the while my sister was wasting away, bent double in pain, spending her days in hospitals.”
Laurent looked at me, and his eyes were full of tears. “I’m so ashamed of that time in my life. I blocked everything out and focused only on the tiny aspects of life that I could control.”
My heart hurt for him. The quirks I’d noticed: his spotless apartment, the need for everything to be neat and organized, his perfectly-pressed clothes…They were all an attempt to find order in a life that had spun into chaos.
“I hate myself for it,” Laurent said quietly, a tear rolling down his face. “My sister gets cancer, and I reorganize my spice rack.”
“People react to grief in strange ways,” I said gently. “The afternoon after my mother’s funeral, I went to a department store and spent five hundred euros on a vase. For some reason, I thought it would ease the overwhelming sadness I was feeling.”
Laurent wiped his eyes. “I know. And I lost the restaurant anyway. It wasn’t turning the profit the owners wanted, so they closed it down. I wrecked all those relationships for nothing.
“The morning that I went home and apologized to my family for everything, Noelle had been stuck inside for days and was desperate to get out of the house. I offered to drive her anywhere she wanted. Do you know what we did?”
“What?” I whispered.
Laurent’s face softened. “We went to an ice cream shop. She ordered chocolate in a waffle cone, and I got pistachio. Her immune system was still weak, and it made me nervous for her to be around people, so I drove us out into the middle of nowhere, where there were only farms nearby. All the canola fields were in bloom. Watching Noelle lick her ice cream and laugh as it dripped down her hands, I realized that even when your life has an enormous hole ripped through it, it’s still beautiful.
It’s still so full of beauty. When you dropped into my life and gave me those delicious, squashed macarons, I knew you would only add to that beauty. ”
Laurent’s face was glazed with tears, but he still smiled. “Don’t worry about Sabine. She has it in for me, and I’m sure she recognized from the start how captivated I was by you. So now she has it in for you, too. She’s just blowing hot air.
“I’ve talked to Fatima; I know she’s impressed by your baking skills. As she should be,” Laurent added, grinning. “I’m not exaggerating when I say that, if you ever went to pastry school, you’d amaze them.”
I’d just managed to regain a tiny bit of composure, but that comment sent me spiraling.
“Wait, what did I say?” Laurent asked as my face crumpled.
I slumped back into my seat. Minerva, still in my lap, raised her head in disapproval.
“I did go to pastry school,” I sighed. “I wasn’t good enough for it. I was so bad they kicked me out.”
There. The biggest shame of my life, out in the open. I had no idea this random Thursday evening would result in Laurent and I sharing our deepest failures.
“They kicked you out?” Laurent sounded completely nonplussed. “Margot, you’re incredible at baking, though. How long ago was this?”
I took a few slow breaths, trying to steady myself.
“I guess it’s been six years now.” I wiped a hand across my eyes.
“All I ever wanted to do was become a pastry chef, like my mother. She’d saved up money for so long so I could go.
She was so proud when I got into the same pastry school she’d gone to. ”
Keep going, I told myself.
“It was hard, harder than I expected, honestly. I was in the kitchens for ten or twelve hours a day, just baking, baking, baking. Normally that’d be fine, but this school was just a bad fit.” I sighed.
“Or maybe any pastry school would be a bad fit for me. I don’t know.
The pastry school was in Vienna, and I worried it wasn’t what I wanted.
It’s fully steeped in the classics, with no room for innovation.
That’s not how I usually bake, but my mother so badly wanted me to go to her same pastry school, and I was so happy to make her happy.
“Everything I made was just a little wrong to my instructors. They hated any changes I made to the recipes. I was miserable, and I even started to hate baking, but I never breathed a word to my mother. I figured I’d just push through, get my certificate, make my mom thrilled, then go off and bake how I wanted.
My voice caught. “But then my mother died a few months in.” I sighed. “It was just like the wheels came off. Everything I made was burnt, or soggy, or tasteless, or…it was all just terrible.”
My voice wobbled and, impatiently, I cleared my throat.
“The instructors already weren’t impressed with me, and by then I was so bad it was pulling everyone else down.
One day, after I absolutely ruined a batch of canelés, the head instructor asked to speak with me after class.
She was quite kind about it, but it was clear the decision was final. ”
I cleared my throat again. “All that money my mother had saved, all the pride she’d had in me, was for nothing.
She was so convinced I was a good baker.
At least she never got to see how I ended up.
” I pressed my lips tight together. I could feel my face burning.
It was amazing, really, that the shame hadn’t lessened one bit over the years. It still threatened to eat me up.
I chanced a look at Laurent. His eyes were filled with tears. As I watched, one slipped down his cheek.
“Margot,” he said softly. “I don’t know what happened then, but I can tell you today that you’re an utterly amazing baker.
You’ve made things I would be proud to have in any restaurant I worked at.
I’m being completely honest when I say that your talent is incredible.
You’re going to be amazing at the gala. Have you…
” He hesitated. “Have you ever considered going back to pastry school?”
I laughed miserably. “I’ve filled out applications about fifty times. I always lose my nerve, though. What if the first pastry school wasn’t actually a bad fit, and I’m just really not good enough? I’d hate to let my mom down like that.”
Minerva stood up and resettled herself on my lap.
Laurent watched her, smiling, then looked up at me.
“Well, I won’t tell you what to do, but I can promise you something.
I know your mother would be proud of you.
That I can tell you without any doubt. You don’t need to be perfect to make someone proud. ”
That, of course, made me cry again. Laurent’s arms came around me, and he pulled me close to his warm chest.
“I’m so sorry about your mother,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m so sorry you’ve had to live all these years feeling like you weren’t good enough.”
Laurent held me as I cried myself out. When I finally shuddered to a stop, I was trembling and there was snot all over my face. Laurent thoughtfully passed over the box of tissues. I gave him a watery smile.
“I do think you should consider pastry school again,” he said gently. “You shouldn’t let one bad experience stop you from the career you’ve always wanted. And you certainly shouldn’t worry one moment about Sabine’s opinion.”
I looked down at my hands. There was a smudge of blueberry on my thumb. I wanted to believe Laurent. I wanted to be the type of person who was brave enough to try again.
I sighed. “Let’s just enjoy dessert. I want to know what you think of this new pear turnover recipe.” I smiled until Laurent smiled back at me.