CHAPTER 40 IT’S TRUE THAT WE LOVE ONE ANOTHER
IT’S TRUE THAT WE LOVE ONE ANOTHER
Orchid
Casting eyes up from the luggage belt at Los Angeles’ LAX Airport, Orchid registered a face she thought she’d never see again.
“Orchid,” pronounced the man sporting her father’s likeness in the hue of a perpetual Southern California tan.
“You look just like Dad,” she said, suddenly shy, and put out her hand. Uncle Zach looked nothing like the scrawny twenty-four-year-old she’d remembered at her parents’ funeral.
“So do you,” he said, memorizing her features with a mirror-image of her hazel eyes.
He clasped her outstretched hand and used his muscle, will, and the magnetism of shared bloodlines to drag her into an embrace.
He smells like Dad. Or maybe it was her mind playing tricks. Her eyes suddenly watered.
“Wow, you’re all grown up. God, I’m sorry it’s been so long.”
Her uncle’s hair waved the same as hers, only in dark brown, and like her father, it looked good on him.
His gaze slalomed down her face, maybe marveling, like she did, how sixteen years could pass with no sense of time, how family is rare and finite yet can slip away, how features and mannerisms marked them as the same tribe.
He took her bag and strode through the airport. “I hope you’re hungry. Esty will have lunch ready and expect you to eat.”
“Eating’s a specialty of mine, though right now, my stomach’s a bundle of nerves,” she admitted.
“Don’t be nervous. I’m really glad you came.”
She followed Uncle Zach to a rounded Jaguar, its silver cat leaping forwards, oblivious to the harsh pavement that lay beneath, like Orchid leaping to meeting family members she’d never known.
“Esty wants me to get a hybrid.” His hand dismissed the car while his heightened posture caressed it with pride.
“Would you believe, this was the car I always wanted as a kid?” Orchid said.
“Oh yeah? What else did you want as a kid?”
“Normal stuff. A phone, a boyfriend.” This fragile moment of meeting thrust into the forefront her memory of wanting parents to love her, unconditional acceptance, to belong to someone. But she wasn’t about to say all that.
Along the road, palm trees waved against the bluebell sky, blotting out the ever-present sun. Freeways sprouted double the normal lanes wide. Cars weaved into braided lines as if to prove the need for so much asphalt.
“Beautiful weather,” she commented, fiddling with her window, a little down to feel the temperate air, then back up because her uncle had turned on the air conditioning. She glanced at his neatly pressed golf shirt and khakis.
His devilish grin produced folds at the corners of his eyes that looked just like Dad’s. After all, he was only six years older than Dad was when he died.
“You’ll learn. Only tourists talk about the weather here.”
He pulled into a compact parking garage under a series of tightly tucked condos. They walked up carpeted stairs to where Esty awaited, baby in her arms. Insta-family. The hugs of strangers, the smells of broccoli steaming, and overly stretched faces was overwhelming.
“Aww, Quentin is adorable,” Orchid said, finding that crinkling her nose produced blubbery squeals. She retrieved a gift-wrapped package from her bag and placed it on the staircase ledge. “A little something for him.”
“Well, thanks. You must be exhausted. Come sit,” Esty insisted, scraping the chair out at the head of the kitchen table filled with a wooden salad bowl, terrines of grains and platters of vegetables.
Orchid washed her hands at the kitchen sink, then, feeling like an alien among her newfound family, she accepted the seat of honor.
“Did Zach tell you we’re vegan? Hope that’s okay,” Esty said, ladling scoops of food onto Orchid’s plate as if to make up for the family meals missed over the last dozen-plus years. “The quinoa is organic. I just baked the kale chips this morning. This soy-ginger sauce is for the veggies.”
“I’m vegetarian so this is great. Thanks for doing this. Especially when you must be so busy with the baby.” She pointed a chin at Quentin, who was nodding into an open-mouthed sleep, cradled in the hollow of Esty’s arm.
“We don’t mind,” Zach answered for his wife, face twisted with regret. “I feel terrible that we lost touch. I was still in school when your dad died. I called your aunt and she always said you were fine. It’s not an excuse. Just, you know, I’m sorry.”
Zach tilted his head expectantly at her, looking just like Dad, and then picked up his fork to slice the soft broccoli crowns. His words were sincere. He was only twenty-four when she’d been orphaned. And she could see he was trying now.
“Hey, it must’ve been hard on you, too. Dad dying so suddenly and all.”
He nodded over his plate, corners of his mouth pulling down the corners of his eyes. Esty placed a hand over his.
“Yeah, it was such a shock. Your mom, too, they were both so young. The last six years of his life, I was in school here in LA, so I didn’t see them much. But when I was growing up, your dad was the best. He’d drive me to school in his sports car, and talk with me about girls.”
Zach lifted his eyes to Esty’s. She squeezed his hand and then pursed her lips into a little air kiss. “What? You knew girls before me?”
“None,” he pronounced, returning her air-kiss. These two are adorable.
Zach spooned greens into the small space she’d managed to empty on her plate. “What do you remember of your parents?” he asked.
Orchid swallowed. This was the reason she kept everyone out, so she never had to answer these awkward questions. Maybe this case was different. Maybe family calls for a new level of honesty. So, she aimed for disclosure.
“It’s going to sound terrible, but not a whole lot. I remember vacationing at an amusement park, family holidays, and stuff like Dad helping me with math but having a hard time understanding how the basics weren’t totally obvious to me.”
“Yup, your dad was a math whiz. He couldn’t get how post-grad students didn’t understand multi-variable calculus, so you were in good company,” he said with the teasing tone of an admiring little brother.
This tidbit of insight lightened the load of idolizing her dead parents, bringing her dad a little closer to human.
She dipped a shiny sugar snap pea into the sweet-tart sauce.
“But mostly,” she admitted, “when I think of them I remember their accident. Sometimes, I start with a happy memory, but then I always end with them dying. It makes me not want to think about them.”
Esty looked down at sleeping Quentin. “That’s really hard on a little kid to see something like that. On anyone, really.”
“Maybe I was always sensitive, but seeing the car crash . . . it seems like I can’t watch the news or see anything gruesome.”
Zach nodded. “You know what I always tell myself? That was a single instant in lives that were mostly filled with intellect and love and fun. And if your parents thought back on their lives, I doubt the accident is what they’d dwell on.”
His pronouncement rewound the scenes of her childhood until the early happy ones spun before her with the same tempo as the bloody accident and sterile years with her mother’s sister.
“How is your aunt?” her uncle asked about her other side of the family, no blood relation to him, as if paused at the same spot on the reel of her memory.
“She’s retired. She travels between Florida and a place she owns on one of the islands, I always forget which one.” Orchid sliced a bulgur stuffed pepper, sliding pale seeds to one side of her plate.
“And how about you? Zach says you’re not married?” Esty asked.
Orchid noted her un-ringed left hand gripping the tablecloth, not wanting to think about Phoenix in this place where she had a new chance to be accepted. “Nope, I’m single.”
“You’re still young. You know, we started dating when I was thirty-three and Zach was thirty-seven, so you never know when you’ll meet your guy.”
Air whistled between Orchid’s teeth.
Zach raised his fork. “You still down about that guy?”
“Yup, he’s engaged to his ex.”
Esty broke in. “You’re a beaut. That guy must be crazy.”
“Yup, or I am for holdin’ onto a pipedream.”
“There’re a lot of nice-looking men in California.”
“Three thousand miles is a bit far for dating,” she tossed out, experimenting with baring her teeth to the newly wakened little boy, extracting squeals from him with each face she made.
Esty looked at Zach. “Are we ready for Orchid’s surprise?”
Was surprise a euphemism for something bad?
Zach stood with his Dad-like grin. He waved over the table. “Leave it,” he said to his wife. “Let’s go.”
They packed into Esty’s Prius, Orchid squeezed next to a backwards-facing Quentin. They continued their non-verbal flirtation. Pink tongue. Squeal. Bottom teeth. Squeal.
“I refuse to ride in that gas-guzzling monster,” Esty explained, peeling past the Jaguar and taking local roads through Santa Monica.
They parked on a downtown street with brick sidewalks in front of a sage green awning. Zach popped out with swagger, swinging Orchid’s door wide while Esty scooped up Quentin. He nodded towards the café tables, surrounded by people inside and out.
“Let’s go in,” he said.
A bakery? Sure gets these guys excited. Her sweet tooth didn’t mind.
As they crossed the threshold, the smell of yeasted bliss mixed with roasted coffee beans and babble of conversation relaxed Orchid. Home. Then, the trio burst into celebrity.
“Zach!”
“Esty!”
“Quentin got so big!”
The name etched in the plate glass window suddenly penetrated her mind. Sweet Paige at a Time: Organic Bakery was their shop. Of course.
They navigated customers and staff to guide Orchid to the back kitchen.
“Sit,” Esty said, pulling out a chair for each of them at the wooden table as Zach arrived with a plate of oatmeal cookies, whole wheat scones and mini apple tarts.
“What a great place,” Orchid complimented, taking in the gleaming ovens and crumb-free floor. She bent a cookie in half and slid it into her mouth. Crisp oats on the surface blended with the moist interior, both still warm. Yum.
“Everything here’s sweetened with agave or stevia,” Zach said proudly, swiping the remaining half of Orchid’s cookie.
“Is this the only organic bakery in the area?”
“Unfortunately, no. There’s another place, all upscale and fancy.” Esty wielded a rounded knife to crumble the scone into bite-size chunks.
“What does page at a time mean?”
“I had some vague idea that literary types would hang out at cafés like this and write, so I thought we could organize readings and stuff. But I never did anything with the idea,” Zach admitted.
“Do you have a business plan?” Orchid asked, straightening with excitement over the potential of the place. They chatted into the afternoon, her business schooling kicking into gear.
By the time Orchid packed to leave the next day, she’d typed them a PowerPoint presentation.
“Check out all these great ideas you guys have.” She angled her laptop screen for them.
“I love the name change,” said Esty of the title page for Sweet Paige: Organic Café.
“It keeps your essence while broadening the appeal across day-parts,” Orchid agreed.
“Your financials are solid and you have a good start on your point of difference. There are a couple of avenues you could take: either build your physical presence in neighborhoods where this kind of place will appeal, or invest in a delivered business that leverages your profitable sweet lines. And you definitely need to play up that literary angle,” Orchid summarized, paging through to the end of the document.
Zach put an arm around his niece. “You are a marketing genius,” he said.
Esty hugged Orchid, sans baby for a change, as Quentin napped in his pack-and-play. “Sorry I can’t come to the airport. Never wake a sleeping baby!”
“Thanks for everything. You two are great together.”
“Well, we can’t wait for you to come again.”
Zach directed them to the Jaguar. The silver cat now seemed to leap with confidence, not recklessness.
On the freeway, Zach tapped the steering wheel in syncopation with a guitar ballad. Their age difference just twelve years, he was more like a cool older brother.
“I wish you weren’t going,” he said.
Orchid slumped to let the sun warm her turned face and absorb the goodbyes in the undulating palm fronds. “Yeah, me too.”
“Esty and I talked. You know, we missed all those years together. We can’t get that back but, hell, why don’t you move out here?”
“What?” Orchid sat up to stare skepticism at him. Maybe irrational ran through their genes.
“Hear me out. LA is great, you’d love it here. In the beginning, maybe it wouldn’t pay as much as Estée Lauder, but we’d love for you to start up the new line, run the marketing and strategy of the whole place. Who knows, it could be more lucrative in the long run.”
“Seriously?”
“Come work for Sweet Paige. Like you said, we could take it national. It’d be a real family business then.”
The idea of family was foreign enough, never mind family business. And now, an invitation to live in a new place, to be near family she didn’t realize she’d missed like an essential part of her.
She glanced at her bare left ring finger through teary vision. “That’s really generous of you. Guess there’s nothing I couldn’t leave behind in New York. Let me think about it.” She bent an arm to bring her phone closer, not seeing the time. “We’d better get to the airport.”