Icing On The Cake

“No, it’s fine.” I reach for my pork sandwich, the indulgence of which has just been justified by Sarah’s revelation. “What’s the big deal, right?”

Sarah leans forward. “I’m so sorry, Mom. She said Dad would call you before they left for their vacation in New Mexico. I should have broached the news more gently.”

I wonder if news of this sort has a gentle approach.

A sudden too-tight sensation of warmth flames up inside me. Fricking great! A hot-flash reminder that I’m rapidly leaving the baby-maker category she’s snugly in the middle of.

As I reach for my water I notice Sarah chewing her lip. “How upset are you?”

She shrugs. “I’m grown. What’s another family member, more or less?”

“And Riley?”

“Riley’s being Riley.”

Which means Riley is furious. So, on to the next bit of family news. “Dating anyone?”

“Sort of.” Sarah frowns but says nothing as I pick up my sandwich again. “He’s a commodities dealer for the state of Montana.” Her shy smile says volumes that I’m not suppose to comment on. “At the moment he’s in Great Falls for a grain growers meeting.”

“Interesting. And Riley?”

Sarah rolls her eyes.

Unlike her sister, who vets men as if she were trying to buy a condo on the Upper East Side, Riley’s man-radar tracks exclusively for Mr. Wrong. No matter their backgrounds, the men in Riley’s life are inevitably the same: emotionally unavailable, self-centered and generally relationship-phobic. She says nice men are boring. I say relationships shouldn’t have to end with dramatic statements like “Come near me again and I’ll set your hair on fire!” That one was aimed at a Goth high school boyfriend with skin the color of an altar candle and black hair that looked like an untwisted wick.

I tell her there are other types of men out there. I hope she will eventually discover this the way she discovered that a pierced tongue wasn’t worth the cost of repairing the shattered enamel of her teeth.

“What’s wrong with Riley’s new man?”

“He’s an ex-con.”

I inhale for a big whaaaat? But the exhale never comes. In fact, the involuntary inhale seems to have sucked in more than a breath. That bite of pork panini has gone down the tube, my breathing tube to be exact.

A bit of pandemonium ensues while I’m slapped on the back by my daughter and then the nearest male waiter subjects me to the very undignified Heimlich. Thankfully the sandwich dislodges after only one try, and I’m left gasping and red-faced but generally okay.

Wiping my streaming eyes, I take my seat and then manage to rasp out, “I guess you were right about pork being a killer.”

Sarah nods, her smile only at half power, and reaches for her ringing phone.

“Hello?” Her expression goes strange, her face gray, in response to whatever she hears.

Instantly, I know it’s not good. Without a word she jerks the phone from her ear and holds it out to me. “Oh, Mom!”

I take it, certain it’s Riley in some sort of jam, again.

But it’s her, Brandi with a

over the i, hysterical on the other end of a lousy-reception cell phone call.

“It’s Ted—Oh, God! He like—fell!” That’s all I hear before the connection is lost.

Ted’s funeral was yesterday. I went. I owed him that much. And my girls needed me. Riley and Sarah each clutched an arm so tight the circulation all but stopped in my fingers. She was there, of course, the center of all the attention in a broad-brim hat and veil as she sobbed softly into a monogrammed handkerchief during the service. We were relegated to bystander status. This, when you think of it, Is our fate since the divorce. We are part of the past life of a passed life.

We didn’t really exchange words with her. Okay, I admit that I did find myself saying something extremely awkward like “Sorry for your loss, I mean our loss,” as we left the funeral home chapel. I didn’t wait for her reply.

It’s tragic when someone you love dies young. It’s less tragic when that someone is someone you once loved but generally got over before the ink was dry on the divorce papers. It is less than heartbreaking when that someone left you for another woman, a woman he had secretly been seeing for months and married the day after the divorce was final. And yet…

I had just started working for a PR firm in the city when I met Ted. He wanted to open his own advertising firm in northern New Jersey. Did I want to join him as a partner, business and otherwise? Maybe not the most romantic proposal in the world but it sounded stable, ordinary, something I could manage. Falling in love has always seemed overrated to me. All that Hollywood heavy-breathing exploding fireworks stuff is marketing make-believe. I should know. I first made my living in advertising.

At first we were a good team. Ted was a natural-born salesman. I was good with ideas he often took credit for. I was also good with getting things done. Ted could sell but he couldn’t make accounts balance or manage a staff. Yet give him a good pitch and he would knock it out of the park at a fashionable lunch spot, at an even more expensive dinner, or on a prohibitively steep greens-fee golf course. The unglamorous job of running the office and drafting ideas was mine. Five years into it, we were a big success. After fifteen years we were a major force in northern New Jersey advertising. But I wasn’t happy, in the marriage or the business. If I drifted into an affair of the heart, it was with bread. Being wrist-deep in dough makes me happier than anything in my life besides my girls. I can be creative and eat it, too. But Ted took the more conventional approach to adultery.

The wife seldom knows what prompts her husband to stray. The unfaithful male usually just makes life so miserable that it’s the wife who finally files for divorce. Not so for me. I didn’t know she existed until Ted left with the uncharacteristic preemptive strike of filing first. How ugly was that? There are corporate dissolutions with less toxic vapor trails than our divorce.

I’ll never forget Ted telling a judge that it was I who’d really opted out of our marriage by leaving advertising, and causing him to lose business. “Liz lost her nerve, her drive, her ambition. She gave up.”

What, was he nuts? At the time, General Mills was dangling a contract before No-Bagel Emporium for producing frozen artisan dough. That was my doing and he knew it. Ted was always about money and more money. He threatened to sue for his share of “my” bakery if I didn’t give up my interest in “his” company. His attorney claimed my leaving had cost the company. Business had fallen off so precipitously after I left that Ted was still recovering. Add to that, I’d borrowed from Talbot Advertising to pay for my new oven and mixers, while Ted had had to hire both an idea person and an office manager to replace me.

I didn’t have the time or interest to invest further in the kind of ownership fight that might scare off General Mills. I might have been good at advertising but I didn’t love it like he did. I was about to make it big on my own, and I didn’t want him along for the ride. Ted got the firm and I kept my thriving bakery.

Looking back, my choice seems like a lousy bargain. Or am I just bitter because the General Mills deal fell through?

So, how do I feel about Ted’s death?

I never wished Ted dead. Even in my worst dark days when I thought revenge had its uses, I never wished for his demise. Bankruptcy maybe, until I realized that with Sarah and Riley in high school and college ahead, I needed all the financial help I could get. Then there was that wish that all his hair might fall out overnight. Juvenile. But I can honestly say I hadn’t given Ted an ungenerous thought in years—okay, months.

I did notice with a certain satisfaction that he never looked all that healthy after we divorced. Happier, perhaps, but never healthier. He was heading for a fall. I just didn’t know how literally he’d take one.

Ted was afraid of heights. Even a quick rise in an elevator gave him the willies. He would never have gone near a ledge in all the time I knew him. But for her he went on a mountain bike trail ride in New Mexico, made the mistake of peering over the rim into the arroyo below, lost his balance and took a half gainer over the edge.

Some might say Ted had it coming. I think, wow, you just never know.

Chapter 4

It’s been a strange month. Ted’s death threw me, for all the usual reasons, and then some. You gain a new respect for life when one is snatched away by careless happenstance.

For instance, I’ve been driving a careful five miles under the speed limit. My response to the blare of car horns and ugly looks from fellow drivers is simply to smile and wave, as they are evidence of my very vital life. I always stopped for squirrels crossing the road. Now I stop, get out and shepherd them to the other curb. Live and let live, right?

I’ve made a few other changes. Pork paninis are behind me. And I decided to take a few risks.

I went to the bank this morning, with thoughts of expanding my credit line for equipment replacement and refurbishing.

“Your income has increased in recent months,” my account manager began, which seemed to be encouraging. “However…”

This is when I knew that what followed wasn’t going to make me smile.

So my Monday morning has begun with a fizzle.

As I am entering the bakery, it’s scant balm to my pride to see that racks of ciabatta and sourdough are emptier than usual at 10:30 a.m. You can’t exactly use photos of bread racks as evidence of improved sales.