The Sweetness of Forgetting (2 page)

To Grandma and Grandpa from Weymouth

“God hath made of one blood all nations of men.”
—
ACTS 17:26

“One man’s candle is light for many.”
—
TRACTATE SHABBAT,
ORDER MOED OF THE TALMUD

“All God’s creatures are His family and he is the most beloved of God who doeth most good to God’s creatures.”
—
THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD

The Sweetness
of
Forgetting

Chapter
One

T
he street outside the bakery window is silent and still, and in the half hour just before sunrise, as dawn’s narrow fingers are just reaching over the horizon, I can almost believe I’m the only person on earth. It’s September, a week and a half after Labor Day, which in the little towns up and down Cape Cod means that the tourists have gone home, the Bostonians have boarded up their summer houses for the season, and the streets have taken on the deserted air of a restless dream.

The leaves outside have begun to change, and in a few weeks, I know they’ll mirror the muted hues of sunset, although most people don’t think to look here for fall foliage. The leaf peepers will head to Vermont, to New Hampshire, or to the Berkshires in the western part of our state, where the oaks and maples will paint the world in fiery red and burnt orange. But in the stillness of the off-season on the Cape, the swaying beach grass will turn golden as the days grow shorter; the birds migrating south from Canada will come to rest in great flocks; the marshes will fade into watercolor brushstrokes. And I will watch, as I always watch, from the window of the North Star Bakery.

I can’t remember a time when this place, my family’s business, didn’t feel more like home to me than the little yellow cottage by the bay that I was raised in, the home I’ve now had to move back into after the finalization of my divorce.

Divorce.
The word rings in my ears, over and over, making me feel like a failure once again as I try to conduct the balancing act of simultaneously opening the oven door with one foot, juggling two industrial-sized trays of miniature cinnamon pies, and keeping an eye on the front of the bakery. It occurs to me yet again as I slide the pies in, pull out a tray of croissants, and push the door shut with my hip that trying to have it all means only that your hands are always full. In this case, literally.

I’d wanted so much to stay married, for Annie’s sake. I didn’t want my daughter growing up in a home where she had to feel confused about her parents, like I had when I was a kid. I wanted more for her. But life never works out the way you plan, does it?

The front door chimes just as I’m lifting the flaky, buttery croissants from the baking sheet. I glance at the timer on the secondary oven; the vanilla cupcakes need to come out in just under sixty seconds, which will delay me in getting out to the front of the store.

“Hope?” a deep voice calls out from up front. “You back there?”

I sigh in relief. A customer I know, at least. Not that I don’t know almost everyone who remains in town after the tourists have gone home.

“Be out in a minute, Matt!” I shout.

I pull on my oven mitts, the bright blue ones with cupcakes embroidered on the edges that Annie bought me for my thirty-fifth birthday last year, and pull the vanilla cakes out of the oven. I breathe in deeply, the sugary scent taking me back to my own childhood for a moment. My
mamie
—French for “grandma”—founded the North Star Bakery sixty years ago, a few years after she moved to Cape Cod with my grandfather.
I grew up here, learning to bake at her knee as she patiently explained how to make dough, why breads rise, and how to turn both traditional and unexpected ingredient combinations into confections that the
Boston Globe
and the
Cape Cod Times
rave about every year.

I put the cupcakes on the cooling rack and slide two trays of anise and fennel cookies into the oven in their place. Beneath them, on the bottom rack, I slide in a batch of crescent moons: almond paste flavored with orange flower water, sprinkled with cinnamon, enclosed in a pastry shell, and shaped into gently curved slivers.

I close the oven door and brush the flour off my hands. Taking a deep breath, I set the digital timer and walk out of the kitchen into the brightly lit front room of the bakery. No matter how overwhelmed I am, it still makes me smile to come through the doors; Annie and I painted the bakery last fall, when business was slow, and she chose princess pink with white piping. Sometimes it feels like we’re living inside a giant cupcake.

Matt Hines is sitting in a chair facing the counter, and when he sees me, he jumps up and smiles.

“Hey, Hope,” he says.

I smile back. Matt was my high school boyfriend, half a lifetime ago. We broke up before heading off to separate colleges; I came back several years later with a bachelor’s degree, the useless half of a law school education, a new husband, and a baby daughter, and Matt and I have been friendly ever since. He’s asked me out several times since my divorce, but I’ve realized, almost with surprise, that we’ve outgrown each other. He’s like a favorite old sweater that no longer fits or flatters. Life changes you, even if you don’t realize it while it’s happening, and it turns out you can’t take back the years that have passed by. Matt doesn’t seem to realize that, though.

“Hey, Matt.” I try to sound neutral and friendly. “Can I get you a cup of coffee? On the house, since you had to wait.” I don’t
wait for an answer; I’m already pouring. I know exactly how Matt takes it: two sugars and one cream in a to-go cup, so that he can get to the Bank of the Cape, where he’s a regional vice president, to get his paperwork started before they open for business. Since he works just two blocks down on Main Street, he stops in once or twice a week.

Matt nods and takes the coffee from me with a smile.

“What else can I get you?” I ask, gesturing to the glass bakery case. I’ve been here since four, and although I’m not quite done with everything, there are already plenty of fresh pastries. I reach for a miniature pielike confection, which features a phyllolike shell filled with a lemony almond paste and brushed with rosewater and honey. “How about an almond rose tart?” I ask, holding it out to him. “I know they’re your favorite.”

He hesitates for only a second before reaching for it. He takes a bite and closes his eyes. “Hope, you were born to do this,” he says with his mouth full, and although I know it’s a compliment, the words hit me hard, because I never intended to do this at all. It wasn’t the life I wanted for myself, and Matt knows it. But my grandmother got sick, my mother died, and I no longer had a choice.

I brush the words away and pretend they don’t bother me as Matt says, “Hey, listen, I actually came this morning to talk to you about something. Can you sit with me for a sec?”

His smile looks a little frozen, I realize suddenly. I’m surprised I didn’t notice it earlier.

“Um . . .” I glance back toward the kitchen. The cinnamon pies need to come out soon, but I have a few minutes before the timer goes off. There’s no one else here at this early hour. I shrug. “Yeah, okay, but just for a minute.”

I pour myself a cup of coffee—black, my third of the morning—and slide into the chair across from Matt. I lean on the table and brace myself for him to ask me on another date. I’m not sure what to say; focusing on my husband and daughter for all these
years has cost me most of the friendships I once had, and selfishly, I don’t want to lose Matt too. “What’s up?”

From the way he pauses before answering, I have the sense that something’s wrong. Maybe it’s because I’ve grown accustomed to bad news lately. My mother’s cancer. My grandmother’s dementia. My husband deciding he no longer wanted to be my husband. So I’m surprised when what Matt says is, “How’s Annie?”

I look at him closely, my heart suddenly racing as I wonder whether he knows something I don’t. “Why? What happened?”

“I was just wondering,” Matt says quickly. “I’m being nice. Making conversation.”

“Oh,” I say, relieved that he hasn’t come as the bearer of some sort of bad news. I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that my daughter had been caught doing something foolish like shop-lifting or spray-painting her middle school. She’s been different since her father and I split up: edgy, nervous, and angry. More than once, I’ve guiltily searched her room, thinking I’d find cigarettes or drugs, but so far, the only evidence of the change in my Annie is the massive chip on her shoulder. “Sorry,” I tell Matt. “I keep waiting for something else to go wrong.”

He averts his eyes. “How about dinner tonight?” he asks. “Me and you. Annie’ll be at Rob’s again, right?”

I nod. My ex and I share custody equally, an arrangement I’m not happy about, because I think it makes Annie’s life less stable. “I don’t know, Matt,” I say. “I just think—” I search for words that won’t hurt. “I think maybe it’s too soon, you know? The divorce was so recent, and Annie’s really struggling. I think it’s better if we just—”

“It’s just dinner, Hope,” Matt interrupts me. “I’m not proposing to you.”

My cheeks are suddenly on fire. “Of course not,” I mumble.

He laughs and reaches for my hands. “Relax, Hope.” When I hesitate, he smiles slightly and adds, “You have to eat. How ’bout it?”

“Yeah, okay,” I say, and it’s at that moment that the front door of the bakery swings open, and Annie comes in, her backpack slung over her shoulder, her dark sunglasses on, even though dawn hasn’t yet broken. She stops and stares at us for a moment, and I know instantly what she’s thinking. I pull my hands away from Matt, but it’s too late.

“Great,” she says. She rips her sunglasses off and tosses her long, wavy, dishwater-blonde hair over her shoulder, fixing us with a glare that makes her deep gray eyes even stormier than usual. “Were you going to, like, start making out if I didn’t get here?”

“Annie,” I say, standing up. “It’s not what it looks like.”

“Whatever,” she mutters. Her new favorite word.

“Don’t be rude to Matt,” I say.

“What
ever,
” she repeats, rolling her eyes for emphasis this time. “I’ll be in the back. So you can, like, go back to doing whatever it is you’re doing.”

I look after her helplessly as she charges through the double doors to the kitchen. I hear her throw her backpack onto the counter, the weight of it rattling the stainless steel bowls I keep stacked there, and I wince.

“Sorry,” I say, turning back to Matt. He’s staring in the direction Annie disappeared.

“She’s really something,” he says.

I force a laugh. “Kids.”

“Frankly, I don’t know how you put up with it,” he says.

I smile tightly at him. I’m allowed to feel annoyed with my daughter, but he’s not. “She’s just going through a hard time,” I say. I stand up and glance toward the kitchen. “The divorce has been tough on her. And you remember seventh grade. It’s not exactly the easiest year.”

Matt stands up too. “But the way you let her talk to you . . .”

Something in my stomach tightens. “Good-bye, Matt,” I say through a jaw clenched so tightly it hurts. Before he can reply, I
turn away, heading for the kitchen, hoping that he takes the hint to leave.