The Next Best Thing

“SO? YOU WANT TO DATE HER? She’s perfectly nice. A widow. Sure, she was sad when her husband, bless his heart, crashed into that tree, but none of the Prozac, you know what I’m saying? And as you can see, she has a nice figure.”

Aunt Iris has just dragged me from the kitchen, where I was taking out fifteen loaves of rye. A man in his forties, short, plump, balding, stands in front of the counter, frozen in terror. Was I wishing that the Black Widows would fix me up? I take it back.

“Sorry about this,” I said. “Can I help you?”

“Um…I just…I wanted a danish.”

“And you got a danish,” Iris says pointedly. She jerks her head toward me. “So what do you think?”

“I need some change,” the man whispers to me.

“Sure.” I snatch the twenty from where it’s being held hostage in Iris’s hand and hit a key on the cash register. “Just one danish? Anything else?”

“Nothing else! Uh, I mean, no thanks.” He looks warily at Iris, then back at me. “I’m sorry.”

Iris bristles, swelling like an indignant and regal toad. “Oh, she’s not good enough for you, is that it? Why? What’s special about you, huh, mister?” She grabs me by my shoulders, gives a brisk shake. “Look at those hips. She was born to have children, and none of this epidural crap. Ask my daughter. She’s a lesbian doctor.” Aunt Iris releases me, folds her arms and stares the man down. “I had two children, not a drop of painkiller for me. Did it hurt? Of course it did. It was childbirth, for heaven’s sake. I made do. I bore it. The tearing…not so bad. It didn’t kill me.”

I hand the man his change. “Have a nice day. Come again.”

The man won’t be coming again, I assure you. He scuttles out the door. I’d be willing to bet he never comes to the island again.

“Iris, maybe you could…tone it down a little?” I suggest.

“What?” Iris asks, wounded. She snatches up a rag and starts polishing the immaculate counter. “Tone what down?”

“Well, parading me out here like a farm animal at an auction.”

“You said you wanted to date someone, so I’m helping, that’s all.”

“That was more along the lines of pimping, with a crash course in obstetrics thrown in.”

“So fussy! I thought beggars couldn’t be choosers,” she huffs.

“I’m not a beggar! I just…I can meet someone on my own. You’re so nice to try, but please don’t harass the customers. Business is bad enough.”

“Business is fine,” she snorts. “Listen to her. Business is bad. Fifty—seven years of bad business, huh? Put you through your fancy—shmancy baking college, didn’t it? Hmm?”

“Yes, Aunt Iris. It did,” I admit. “It’s just that we could do a lot more if we put in some tables, offered coffees and—”

Iris’s magnificent eye roll is interrupted as the bell rings. My aunt’s usually stern face morphs into sycophantic adoration. “Oh, Grinelda! Hello, hello! Come in, dear! So nice of you to visit us.”

I stifle a sigh.

Grinelda is a frequent visitor to Bunny’s. She is a self—proclaimed gypsy, and my aunts and mother revere her. Gypsies have a special place in the hearts of Hungarians, and the Black Widows, devout Catholics all, view Grinelda as second only to the Book of the Apocalypse in terms of prophetic abilities. Like Madonna or Cher, Grinelda has no last name, which means she must be paid in cash. Also like the aforementioned pop stars, Grinelda likes to dress up. Today’s ensemble is sort of “attention deficit disorder meets kindergartner on sugar high.” Long, shiny purple skirt riding higher in the back than in the front, as it must make the long journey over Grinelda’s impressive rump. Red blouse with a piece of duct tape running up one shoulder seam, pilling black shawl, a sliding jingle of cheap bracelets and punishing, clip—on earrings.

Her voice rusted by fifty years of small brown cigars, Grinelda now croaks out a greeting. “Daisy, Iris, Rose…your loved ones await a word.”

“Lucy, honey, don’t just sit there like a lump, get her something to eat!” Aunt Rose trills, bursting from the back of the kitchen from where she was slathering a wedding cake in her special blend of Crisco and confectioner’s sugar. “Go!” She yanks off her apron and smoothes her hair.

I do as I’m told, heaping ten of Bunny’s most garish and colorful cookies on a plate and stirring three teaspoons of sugar into a large mug of “staff—only” coffee.

My mother emerges from her office, applying another coat of lipstick as she does. “Oh, good, she’s here. Lucy, do you want a reading, too? Electrolysis, maybe?”

“No, thanks,” I say, ignoring the mustache crack. “Mom, Grinelda’s about as a psychic as a fern. And a hundred bucks a pop? I just don’t think you should—”

“Shh! She’ll hear you, honey. Quiet down and go in the back if you’re such a cynic. Go! Shoo!” Mom takes the plate of cookies from me, and approaches Grinelda with the reverence of a Wise Man nearing baby Jesus. “Grinelda! Welcome!”

I’ve always found it odd that Mom is as sold as her sisters on Grinelda, since she seems so much more sophisticated, but I guess we all have our weak spots. And though I am indeed cynical about Grinelda’s abilities, I peek from the kitchen. Grinelda may be a fraud, but she’s still fun to watch.

“Daisy, my dear,” the gypsy croaks, cutting her crepey eyes to me, “it’s so good to see you. I’m feeling a bit tired today, but I’ll do my best.”

The three sisters cluck and fuss around Grinelda, who doesn’t waste time, shoving two cookies into her mouth at once. Through a spray of crumbs, she says, “I’m getting a letter…someone’s coming.” My aunts and mother clutch hands, crowding around the little table. “The letter is…L. Yes. It’s a man whose name begins with L. Does one of you know a man whose name begins with L?”

“Doesn’t everyone know a man whose name begins with L?” I ask sweetly. I am ignored.

“Larry,” Aunt Rose breathes. “My Larry.” As if Grinelda didn’t know Rose’s husband’s name. She’s been bilking the Black Widows for years.

“Larry…he wants you to know something…he’s still with you. True love never dies. And whenever you see a yellow flower next to a red flower, it’s a sign from him, a sign that he loves you.”

The fact that Grinelda walks through Ellington Park to get here, and that the park is planted with dozens and dozens of red and yellow chrysanthemums currently in robust bloom and easily visible from this very shop, is lost on little Rose. She clutches her hand to her ample bosom. “Oh, a sign! Larry, honey, I love you, too, sweetheart!”

Well, I can’t help it. My throat feels a little tight. Sure, Grinelda’s full of garbage, but the expression on Rose’s face is probably worth the hundred bucks she just shelled out.

“The man is fading…and now there’s someone else. Another man…tall. Limping. Name starts with a P.”

“Pete! My Pete!” Iris trumpets. “He walked with a limp! Shot in the leg by his idiot brother!”

Grinelda lights a cheroot and sucks on it, nodding wisely, then exhaling a bluish stream of smoke. “Yep. Limping.”

While I don’t believe Grinelda can see the dead, I do believe that those who have died visit us. There are those rogue dimes, for example, found in unusual spots…the exact middle of the kitchen counter, or in my sock drawer. Occasionally I’ll dream that Jimmy’s back on earth for a chat. He always looks gorgeous in those dreams, and is always just checking in. The widows group I’d belonged to assured me that this kind of thing was a fairly common experience.

So it’s not that I don’t believe. I just don’t believe Grinelda.

My latest batch of bread has twenty minutes to go before it’ll be done. A little air would be nice, so I head out for a stroll down Main Street. The trees have lost their deep green summer lushness, and the sunlight has a mellow, golden softness to it. An elderly couple walks slowly across the green, him with a cane, her clinging to his arm. Beautiful. They head into the cemetery, and I look away.

The dark, rich scent of roasting coffee wafts out from Starbucks. I could really use a strong cuppa joe…I was up till 2:00 a.m. this morning watching The Hunt for Red October, and my tired brain yearns for a caffeine fix. I can’t go in, of course. Starbucks is my competitor, and it’s run by the meanest girl in Mackerly—Doral—Anne Driscoll.

Well, she’s not the meanest girl anymore. That’s not fair. She’s the meanest woman. I’ve known her all my life, and she basically lived the cliché of Tough Townie…multiple piercings in her ears, eyebrows, nose and tongue, jeans so tight you could count her pocket change, a surly sneer perpetually spreading across her thin and usually cursing mouth. Tattooed by the time she was fourteen, smoking, drinking, sleeping around…the woiks, as Bugs Bunny would say. And then there was the utter contempt she had for me, a rather meek and shy child who lived to please teachers and sang in St. Bonaventure’s choir.

Unlike most of my graduating class, Doral—Anne never left Mackerly. She sneered and spat with what we all knew was just envy whenever college was mentioned. She waited tables at a diner in Kingstown, and when Gianni’s opened in Mackerly, she got a job there.

Well before I met Ethan or Jimmy, Doral—Anne was talking about Gianni’s. Every time I ran into her when home for the weekend, she’d bring it up. How great it was working there. How much money she made. How fantastic the owners were. College—especially my college—was for pussies. She was in the restaurant business. Probably Gianni’s was going to train her to be manager.

In my “try to be nice to everyone” way, I’d tell her that sounded great, which seemed to make her nastier than ever. “‘That sounds great,’” she’d mimic. “Lang, you’re such a stupid little goody—good.”

When I met Jimmy, Doral—Anne was still a waitress, no management position in sight. She didn’t dare take potshots at me at Gianni’s, not when the chef himself was in love with me, not when the owners treated me like gold, and man, did she hate it. Narrowed eyes every time I came in. Jerky, hard movements. Overly loud laughter to show how much fun she was having.

A month after Ethan introduced Jimmy and me, Doral—Anne got caught stealing and was fired. And because I’d seen her in action there, heard her claims of being groomed for manager and because I now held a place of honor in the Mirabelli family, she hated me all the more.