The Summer of Good Intentions (41 page)

Ellen woke up one morning and thought,
Enough
.

Her sister, Lanie, joked that she should christen the store The Midlife Crisis, but a friend suggested The Singular Kringle—and it stuck. He designed an elegant sign for above the door, festooned with a single pretzel shape—the traditional Danish kringle form—and the store's name in swirling blue letters. Her dream made real at last.

For the first few weeks only a handful of customers dropped by, and Ellen busied herself by rereading the classics, a lending library soon blossoming in her shop. She had forgotten how funny Nick was in
The Great Gatsby,
or was it just that she'd never noticed when she first read it in college?
Pride and Prejudice
and
Little Women
were still as heartbreaking as ever, and she'd rediscovered one of her favorites,
Middlemarch
. She couldn't help but to both pity and be angry with Dorothea all over again.

But then, word of mouth traveled, and the next thing she knew, her local customers were joined by farmers from their outposts, their wives, and professors who commuted the twenty miles to the university but made their homes in Amelia, population 5,320. Suddenly, she could barely keep up.

Amazing how time flew.

A fresh cup of coffee in hand, she went out back to check the kringle and was greeted by the sweet scent of apple mingling with blueberry. She pulled the piping-hot pastries from the oven and set them on a cooling rack.

“Perfect,” she announced to no one in particular.

The secret to a perfect kringle, she knew, was balance: When a person bit into a true kringle, she should taste equal parts pastry, filling, and icing. So many of the imitation kringles these days were all chewy dough, laden with frosting. But Ellen understood that no one element should overwhelm or supersede another.

When the bell on the front door jingled, she started. She'd almost forgotten she'd flipped over the
OPEN
sign out front; it was so easy to get lost in the wee hours in the back room while baking. Jack Singer, her punctual first customer each day, had been running the hardware store down the street since before anyone could remember. If she described a leak below her basin, he knew exactly which washer or screw she needed. She heard him stomp the snow from his boots, take a paper, and find his way to a table by the cash register.

“Good morning, sweetness,” he said as she swung through the kitchen doors. “Looks like the weatherman got it right for once . . . that's quite a storm we've got brewing out there. No pun intended.” He laughed at his own joke.

Ellen knew she should be offended by his endearments, but over the past year they'd grown on her, like a familiar hangnail that wouldn't go away.

“Looks that way,” she said as she arranged the mugs into neat rows on the counter and poured him a cup of coffee. She knew such would be the opening line for every conversation today. “Can I get you apple or blueberry? It'll be just a few more minutes, I'm afraid.”

“Blueberry sounds perfect.” He unfolded his paper, then added, “Please.”

After tidying up a bit more, she went back to decorate the pastries with icing. The blueberry was bursting with fat, purple fruit, and the apple looked invitingly tart. Carefully, she inched them onto the baker's board and carried them out to the display counter, where she eased them onto delicate, pretty doilies.

“Mmm. . . . If that doesn't warm my belly, nothing will.” Jack winked at her as she cut him a slice. She noticed that his paper was open to the horoscopes. Lately, she'd grown tired of their platitudes, and more particularly, of their pessimism. It seemed to her that horoscopes should buoy someone first thing in the morning, not send him off in search of a life raft. Still, she couldn't help but listen when Jack started reading aloud from the “Cancer” section.

“Today's forecast: ‘You may be tempted to come out of your shell, but it's best to keep your head down for a few days. Don't make any rash decisions as you're bound to regret them.' ”

She laughed out loud. “Honestly, what kind of horoscope is that?” Jack shrugged. She wondered if astrologers—and she used the word loosely because, after all, what kind of training
did
you have to have to become a certified astrologer?—could be sued for dispensing bad advice. It seemed they should be.

Slowly more customers began to trickle in, looking snow-shocked, not so unlike the cows earlier this morning. They brushed the white powder from their spring jackets and shivered their way to a table, nodding a hello in her general direction. One young woman, bundled in a navy pea coat, peeked out from behind a green scarf, her eyes seemingly frozen in a permanent expression of surprise.

When Henry Moon came in, Ellen grabbed his coffee and kringle right away. A gardener who ran the town nursery, he was a bit of an odd duck, but Ellen maintained he was more sensitive than odd, a wounded soul. He'd seemed a tad off ever since his wife died in a car accident more than a year ago. Each day between seven and eight, like clockwork, he stepped into the store. His hair and clothes always looked disheveled, as if he'd lost not just a wife but also a mother, someone who'd iron his pants, tuck in his shirt.

“Henry, will my daffodils survive in this snow?” she asked him while pouring a cup.

He took a sip, rubbed his lips together. “Who was it that said: ‘And then my heart with pleasure fills / And dances with the daffodils?' ”

She put her hand on her hip and looked at him. “You surprise me, Henry. That's lovely. Was it Shakespeare?”

“Wordsworth, I believe. But your daffodils should be fine—and dancing in no time. They're hardy plants. They expect a little snow once in a while.”

She liked how he made it sound as if flowers had interior lives, vibrant souls. As much as she loved literature, Ellen couldn't recite lyrics to save her life. She was a bit jealous, not to mention humbled.

“Well, that's good to know. Thank you.”

Henry nodded, said, “You bet.”

Larry and Erin came through the door just then, covered in white. Recent UW grads trying to make a living in the theater, they helped Ellen out at the store five days a week. Loyal customers, they'd come in and sold her on why she needed the help—her store was growing; the long hours were too much for one person to handle; they'd attract the younger clientele (though as far as she could see most of the young people went straight to Madison and didn't waste their time in a town like Amelia).

She had to admit, though, they had a point. Larry, with his hair down to his shoulders, was handsome in a hippie-rocker kind of way, with striking green eyes and a sense of humor that immediately set customers at ease. Erin was more refined, but quietly lovely. Most days she wore her long brown hair in a ponytail, high on the back of her head.

“Busy day today,” Ellen warned as they began taking off their coats. “Better get your game face on.”

“You mean you think we'll actually get some customers besides Henry and Jack?” Larry asked and tied on his apron.

Ellen slapped him on the arm.

“Better be careful what you wish for,” said Henry.

“We do have other customers in the store, you know.” She nodded to the undergrads and the two men in the corner, farmers in their hats and overalls huddled over steaming drinks and talking in hushed tones.

When a fresh group of customers burst into the store, Larry shouted “Morning!” and hurried to help them with their jackets. She liked that about him; he always seemed to go the extra mile. She supposed when she was younger she would have been drawn to Larry since she'd always been a sucker for that rocker-poet mystique. It made her a little sad to think that he probably considered her old enough to be his mom. Ellen liked to think of herself as hip and attractive but knew better: She was a middle-aged divorcèe without so much as a sugar daddy. Indeed with nary a prospect in sight.

As she twirled such depressing facts over in her mind, she noticed Erin's eyes follow Larry, a slight smile gracing her lips. When she caught Ellen looking at her, she quickly turned away to refill the cream canisters. But Ellen was sure she had seen it: a crimson flare bursting onto the girl's cheeks. Just for a moment, but long enough.

She turned to ring up a customer's order and smiled to hear the register's old-fashioned bell echo her satisfaction. At a certain age, she had come to understand, a person made her peace with living vicariously. She'd have to tell Lanie about the new lovebirds. When the phone interrupted her thoughts, she picked it up expecting to hear her sister's voice.

“Hello, Singular Kringle,” she said with a smile. She would have never guessed in a million years who would return the hello.

• • • •

“Quiet!” Lanie rolled over and hit the snooze button for the second time that morning. Benjamin had woken three times last night, and the third time she'd been unable to get him back to sleep for an hour. She had tried all her tricks, rocking him, giving him an extra bottle, singing, then finally pulling him into bed with her and Rob. She loved the warm snuggle of his body close to hers, feeling his weight shift and get heavier in her arms as he finally drifted off to sleep. But it had made for a hell of a night.

Rob groaned next to her. “How can it possibly be morning already?”

It was seven thirty. Benjamin lay sound asleep between them, his belly going up and down between breaths. His round little face, slightly parted lips, and long, dark eyelashes, all the image of idyllic sleep.

“Speak for yourself,” she quipped. Rob hadn't gotten up once to help.

“Someone's a little cranky.” He rolled over and kissed her cheek. “If you haven't noticed, I sleep in this bed, too.”

“Shh . . . you'll wake the baby.”

Lanie's eyelids felt like sandpaper. The muscles in her lower back ached. How she was going to win her plea in court today was beyond her.

The radio alarm came on again, the disc jockey reminding folks to drive carefully.

“Oh, no. I forgot about the snow.” They had been forecasting a spring blizzard last night, not so uncommon for this part of the country, but Lanie had hoped the meteorologists would get it wrong. “Perfect. Just perfect.”

“I'll scrape the windows, get the cars warmed up.” She could smell Rob's breath, slightly sour. She knew this was the closest she'd get to an apology or a thanks for the fact that she'd had only a few hours' sleep, while he'd had a blissful night.

Benjamin stirred beside her, smacked his lips. He was still the cutest baby ever, even if he was responsible for the immense sleep deprivation in their lives over the past ten months. The pediatrician had assured her that eventually he'd fall into his own nocturnal rhythms after she'd asked, with swollen eyes, if she'd ever sleep again. And it was true, most nights the baby slept soundly now, but every so often came a night when he was inconsolable.

“It's probably his teeth, huh?” Rob tried.

“That or he's trying to kill us.” They were still waiting for his top front teeth to poke through. And true, it wasn't until she'd smoothed some gel onto Benjamin's gums last night that the baby had finally settled in her arms.

She pushed herself out of bed and pulled the curtain back. At least three inches of snow coated the driveway. She groaned. “Doesn't God know it's April?”

“Yeah, and he's got an excellent sense of humor.”

“Shh!” She shushed him again, then whispered, “Very funny.” Lanie could feel herself being crabby, but she couldn't help it. She was too tired.

“Watch Benjamin for a minute, will you?” She sleepwalked out of the bedroom, down the hall to the bathroom. The toothpaste tube still lay on the counter from last night, the blue gel oozing out in an unappealing zigzag. She squeezed a small dab onto her toothbrush and brushed, then splashed cool water onto her face.

God, she looked awful. What was it that Ellen said? God made babies cute to distract everyone from looking at their exhausted mothers? Something like that. But Benjamin wouldn't be in court with her today. The judge wouldn't care that she'd been up half the night or that she'd more than likely have washed drool off her blouse minutes before entering the courtroom. She slathered on her trusty concealer, her one “can't-go-without” make-up trick. She always laughed at the celebrities who said they wouldn't step foot outside without curling their eyelashes or applying self-tanner. Lanie was lucky if she remembered to apply mascara. She did so this morning, though, the black liquid coming out in uneven clumps. She frowned. Already, faint lines were starting to show around her eyes and lips. Random sunspots bloomed on her fair skin.

She brushed her hair behind her ears with her fingers. Shortly after Benjamin had been born, she'd acquiesced, done what she swore she'd never do but that Rob had predicted all along: cut off her long, curly auburn locks to tame them into something resembling the “mom bob.” Some days she missed the sexy feel of long hair, but mostly she was just glad not to have to bother with it. Practicality, she'd discovered, was highly underrated. She pulled silver loop earrings through her earlobes, added a touch of gloss to her lips.
Ready to go.

No time for a shower this morning, but nothing that her favorite navy suit wouldn't fix. She was damned if she was going to lose this plea, a motion for a restraining order against a twenty-three-year-old loser who'd beaten both his ex-girlfriend and his toddler and was now making noises he'd do the same unless they moved back in with him. The woman had come to Lanie's office in tears yesterday, saying she feared that the next time he beat her he'd kill her.

It was almost impossible to believe that such things happened in the evolved city of Madison that prided itself on its bohemian, liberated culture. But they did on a daily basis. Lanie loved being able to help, but more often these days she found herself carrying her clients' stories back home, despite her promises to Rob not to. Work was like a bruise that she couldn't help pushing on again and again to see if it still hurt.