23. Alexandra
twenty-three
“He did what?” Barbara asks. She is in her seventies, but she has a young voice. I picture her sitting in the lotus position in the zen room of her Village flat. Outside of Red Barn, she’s a total hippie. Nothing normally surprises her.
“You heard me. He totally decorated my room. Furnished it. Hold on.” I switch the call to video to show her around.
“Honey. Don’t do the millennial thing with me. It’s rude.”
“What millennial thing?”
“The video.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“I’m naked.”
“Eww.”
“Excuse me! I look great.”
Please remove the visual from my brain.
She lowers her voice. “I’m not alone.”
Kill me now. “I’llllll call back.” I hang up.
The phone lights up. Barbie Doll calling. I pick up the phone with two fingers. Hesitate. Hit the green button and close my eyes.
“Don’t you hang up on me,” she says. “Now. I get it. He fixed up the room, yada yada yada. I heard the room was more like an attic, so it looks to me he did the right thing. Now, tell me something I don’t know.”
How did she know about the attic rumor? I let that slide for now.
“Barb. It has a reading nook. And mohair pillows. And a cedar chest. And and and… he hired a decorator!”
“It’s not about the room.”
“Exactly! Why would he do that?”
“You’re not calling about the room. What else happened with Chris Wright?”
I plop on the super comfy, super soft bed and let out a deep sigh. “What didn’t happen.”
“Honey, you’ve been there a few weeks already. Thank god you’re having sex.” Her voice is all matter-of-fact. “I mean the guy is—” she lowers her voice, “he’s built for sex.”
Barbara having these thoughts about Christopher is confusing to me, and I don’t need more of that now. “Barb! I did not have sex with him.”
“Oh.” She seems disappointed.
“We just kissed.” And fooled around. He gave me an orgasm. Or two.
A perky, “oh,” this time.
Gaaah.“Why am I even calling you?” I say, at the same time she says, “Why are you calling me?” After that, we stay silent for a while, her presence comforting me, even when we’re both silent on the phone.
“Why are you freaking out, honey?” she finally asks.
“I’m scared,” I admit.
“Of what?”
“Of losing myself. He’s just so… so…”
“So what?”
“So man and so gentle and strong and perfect in every way. He’s a great dad, been raising his daughter alone since she was born. And he works with his hands, and he’s smart and so generous. Everybody loves him,” I finish on a whisper.
“And my Lexie loves him above all,” she says in a low voice.
My throat constricts, and I don’t answer.
“And what’s wrong with that?” she presses.
“Everything. I can’t. I can’t do it. I won’t.”
“And why is that?”
“You know why.”
“Honey, I loved your grandmother, but she had some seriously twisted ideas about men and family and life in general. Happiness and success to her meant a very different thing than it would to you, or to a lot of people, for that matter. Tell me all that BS she fed you didn’t stick, did it?”
“But it’s true, Barb. It’s true. We’re not cut out for love. We’re not meant for normal families.”
She clears her throat, and I hear her whisper thank you off the phone, then there’s the telltale sound of her taking a sip. I picture her in a kimono (she would have thrown something on before calling me back, I won’t have it any other way), looking lovingly at a man leaving the room after handing her a cup of freshly brewed, organic, sustainably-grown-from-a-small-farmer-somewhere-in-India, evening tea. Having pondered my freaking-out outburst with a spirit now elevated to Gandhi-level wisdom, she says, “Let’s talk about it once you’ve had sex with him.”
Seriously. “You’re incredible,” I say, sighing and acting upset. Meanwhile, I’m overtaken by visions of Christopher lowering himself over my body, and the feel of his hands still burns my flesh.
“I know, you’re welcome.”
“I didn’t mean that as a compliment. Not this time at least.”
“I know that too. But you will, eventually.”
There’s nothing to say to that, so I don’t respond to that, specifically. Instead, I say, “How’s it going at Red Barn?” Which is not, in my mind, a total change of topic because everything that’s happening here is so entirely tied to Red Barn, and everything moving forward will be as well, in ways that are incompatible.
“Alright. I’ll come up and check him out in person,” is her non-answer to my question.
“Wh-what?”
“You need reassurance, I get that. Plus, I’m curious to see the man who woke up my Lexie. I’ve heard good things.”
“What—who?”
“Honey, I have my sources.”
My cheeks are burning. What the hell is going on? “Barbara,” I say, putting all my focus on steadying my voice and making it sound mature and responsible. “You will do no such thing. There’s better use of your time than pursuing…” What’s the word I’m looking for? Aaagh. “Trivial… hunches.” There.
My phone seems to vibrate, she laughs so hard. “You’re good! You’re good.” She laughs, again. “Practicing your board voice? Rita used to do that in her bathroom before going to see bankers, at the beginning.”
“You knew Rita at the beginning? I thought she hired you as an assistant later on.”
“We were roommates when she just got to Brooklyn. Your mom wasn’t even two years old, yet.” She takes a breath. “I practically raised her for a while.”
The line goes silent for a moment.
It’s too much for me to handle right now, so I go back to my previous question. “How’s it going at Red Barn?”
“The jerks are getting ready to fire my ass, so I’m prepping for that. Once that’s done, I’ll have time to come up.”
I gasp. “What? Can they do that? Are you lawyering up?”
“I don’t need to lawyer up. You’ll rehire me in a few months. No, I’m downloading all the data I need, a little at a time. To help us strategize what you need to do when you return.”
“What data?”
The sound of fabric ruffling comes through the phone. “Let’s talk about it later, okay?” she says, a smile in her voice.
Then there’s the muted sound of giggles, clearly not directed at me. “Love you,” she finally says to me before hanging up.
I’m trying to process the idea of Barbara getting fired from Red Barn. Barbara having sex with a man. And Barbara being so aloof about the state of my evolving relationship with Christopher.
Barbara thinks I love Christopher. But in Barbara’s world, everyone loves everyone. If you don’t love someone, it’s because you haven’t had a chance to know them yet.
In Barbara’s world, you love people who are cool and haven’t hurt you. In my mind, I’d always add “yet” at the end of that sentence when it applied to men, since they were bound to hurt me eventually, and I had family history to prove my point.
Christopher is cool and hasn’t hurt me (yet), so in Barbara’s world I love him.
I didn’t have the heart to set her straight.
But when my phone rings again and this time it’s Sarah, the conversation is going to go very differently.
“Lexie! I misssss you. Can you talk, right now? Is this a good time? Is it not too late? At what time to bakers go to bed, again?”
I laugh at her non-stop questioning. I miss her too.
Sing-songing the words, she ends with, “How’s Emerald Creek? And the apprenticeship?”
“The apprenticeship part—I’m not gonna lie; it’s harder than I thought. It’s just not for me, you know?”
“I hear you.” She sighs. “You have regrets?”
“No. I have to do this.”
“Not really, you don’t,” she grunts. Then changes the topic. “How about the non-apprenticeship part? You doing anything fun?”
I look around the room, wondering when and how to tell her about the bedroom makeover. I close the door to the hidden staircase and store the key away.
“Yeah, I started working on some of the businesses’ social media.” I mention Grace and her spa and other businesses I’m beginning to help.
Sarah laughs. “I’m talking about real fun.”
“Oh, yeah. Wellll. Something crazy happened today. Actually, lots of crazy things.” And that’s when I tell her most of what’s happened between Christopher and me since the middle of the night. My cheeks are burning just giving her the gist of it, so I leave out most of the graphic details.
When I’m done, she says, “Jesus Fucking Christ, that is hot. Like really, really hot. Man. When are you gonna do it?”
“I don’t know! It’s not like this was planned or anything.”
“Hmm. But wasn’t it? Deep down?”
I ignore her mind games. “He has a kid. We can’t just jump on each other once the bakery is closed. We’ll have to wait for Skye to be at a sleepover.” Well, looks like I’ve already given this some thought.
“Where d’you think you’ll do it? Your bedroom? His bedroom?”
“Who cares?” It’s always been that way. Sarah needs a plan while I need to go with the flow so I don’t counteract what’s bound to happen and create more mess in the process.
“I do! It’s important. His bedroom would carry meaning, you know? Like he wants you in his bed. Now, your bedroom is cute, and then you’d have his smell on your pillow. That’s a plus. But wait. Isn’t your bed twin-size? I wonder if that’s a pro or a con.”
“It’s not anymore.” I try to hide the excitement in my voice.
“What do you mean? Did you get a new bed? When did this happen? God I hate that you’re so far.” The last part of her words are mumbled, and then my phone beeps. Sarah is asking to switch to video. “Spill it,” she says, her face filling the whole screen.
I turn on the video on my phone. “Here’s what I walked into earlier today.” I have to lower the sound on my phone when she shrieks, “Ohmygod” non-stop for the first fifteen seconds of the tour I give her.
Once I zoom in on the details—the books on the shelves, the pottery vase on the dresser, the candles on the mantel, the watercolor of a barn in the snow over my bed—she gets sort of quiet, like she might be hyperventilating. She’s squinting and mumbling.
“Oh, my god, Lexie. That’s. So. Hot.”
“What do you mean? What’s hot?” It’s nice, it’s over the top caring. But hot? Okay, maybe a little.
Maybe more than a little.
“He’s got feelings for you. I can tell. And you have feelings for him.”
I huff. “Sarah, we don’t have feelings for each other. We’re just fooling around.”
“Why can’t you have feelings? Don’t be so cynical.”
“It’s just—You know how it is. I’ll get attached, and then, I’ll have to leave.”
“You don’t have to leave Vermont. You’ll be a gazillionaire. You can run Red Barn from anywhere. And, if you fail that exam you seem to think is freaking hard, you’ll marry him, he’ll put a bun in your oven, and you’ll live happily ever after selling his delicious croissants instead of Red Barn’s industrial shit.”
I chuckle at her preposterous ideas. “You’re such an idealist.”
“Realist! I’m a realist, Lexie. And you’re a closet romantic. This is what your life should be! Aww, I’m gonna miss you,” she says, pretending to whine. “Will you have a guest room for me? Oh, wait! That bedroom will be the guest room.”
“That’s not the plan for me.”
“Whose plan? Your grandmother’s?”
“Yes. And I know what you’re going to say. That she’s gone, and I’m free to live my life, now. But it’s not that easy, you know? It’s my family legacy, and maybe she wanted me to go back to the roots of baking and bring it back to the family business. That was her way of getting me on board, of continuing the mission.”
“First off, it was her mission. Not yours—”
“You know how family’s important to me. And Red Barn is the only thing that connects me to my family now.”
“Lexie. This is your life to live, not anyone else’s. Just go with the flow, seize the opportunities.”
I wish I could, but there are layers of my life that even Sarah can’t understand. “I am. The opportunity is to have fun while I’m here, possibly amazing sex, and that’s it. I’m seizing it.”
“All I’m saying is, don’t deny your feelings.”
I shut my eyes. “I can’t allow myself to have feelings. Christopher doesn’t want a relationship. He’s got his daughter, and he doesn’t want her to know about us. He wants to protect her.” Easier to blame it on him than to argue again with Sarah about why I won’t allow myself a normal life.
I carry a burden of guilt that no therapist has been able to shake off, and I deal with it by no longer wanting things I can’t have.
Like a real family.
“Hmm,” she says. “Okay, I get it. He just wants to fuck you in a decent place. Good for him for having taste.”
“Oh, wow. Classy, Sarah.”
“You don’t want to hear about feelings, girl. Deal with it.” She has a point, even if I don’t like it that much. “Oh and, let me know how your first full-on sex goes. And since there are no feelings, I’ll want all the juicy details. I’m in a sexual desert, right now, so I’m going to live my sex life by proxy.”