by Kate Falvey

Before my mom opened her restaurant, she said I’d be involved in every little bit of fuss and planning. “What should we call it, Alice?” She was so fizzy with enthusiasm, I almost swallowed my sarcasm. “How about ‘Death Warmed Over’ or ‘The Outhouse Express’ or ‘Chez Dumpling?’ or ‘Chez Dump’?”

“How about “Girl-not-even-close-to-being-funny,” Miri Watson, my mom’s girlfriend and co-lunatic said, matching me eye-roll for eye-roll. “Or the Brat Café?”

“Ok, ok, you two…” Mom, ever cheery, popped an anise-puff into my mouth. “EEWWW! Mom! I hate when you do that!” I spit the dough into a napkin and glared. “You’d never taste anything, Al, if I didn’t catch you by surprise.” She was standing by the oven looking very pleased with herself, swatting time with a red-handled spatula to some perky inner music all her own. Mom was what used to be called “a free spirit.” She named me after some fresh food goddess who opened a restaurant-that changed-the-world in Berkeley — a California town that my mother likes to call, ever so cleverly, “Quirkly.” Thanks, Alice Waters.

“I don’t know why we can’t call it The Bean,” said The Bean, otherwise known as Charles Henry, my brother. He was named after the Charles River in Boston – otherwise known as Beantown. Hence, The Bean. My mother has lived a nomadic life. One day, she says, she’ll tell me all about it. I can’t convince her that I really don’t want to know.

Miri was stirring something that looked like pancake batter with orange peels in it. “I like that, too, Beany Boy, but I think it’s been done. Chez Bean. Chez Nutmeg. Chez Legume. Chez We’d-Never-Dream-of-Putting-You-Off-By-Being-Pretentious. Why don’t we just call it what it is: “Last Gasp before We Hit the Skids” or something of the kind?”

Mom gave Miri “the look” — a special “not before the children” sort of look that was lost on Bean — not because he was ten but because he was oblivious. I, who have rarely been oblivious, knew what the look meant since I was eight. “I think what Miri means is that we should call it something like “Dream Made Real” or the “Faith Café?”

“OMG, Mom. Why not just call it “Corny-Beyond-Belief?”

“Alice Waters Dennehy. You’re not helping.”

“I rarely do, apparently.”

“Alice.”

“Mom.”

“Faceoff.” Miri handed us each two shiny metal bowls and an egg. “Bean?” she said, and my brother got out an egg timer as my mom and I set down our bowls on either end of the big, scarred pine farmer’s table. “Ready, set, BREAK” – and we did, egg after egg, separating whites from yolks as fast as we could. We went through three dozen eggs before one of my yolks got all gloppily in love with a white and refused to part from it – rather a sad affair. I conceded victory to my mom – but with only a grudging sportsmanship. “You win… What a surprise….”

Miri stepped in: “Alice, cease and desist or we’ll be making angel food cake until you go off – please, Goddess! – to college!”

Then for some reason — maybe because my mom looked so cute doing her victory lap around the table, gloating with a whisk held like the Olympic torch – I started to laugh – a big, honking, very un-girlish laugh like the true last laugh in this crazy old vaudeville sketch of a world, and then, because laughter is almost always contagious, everyone was laughing – holding stomachs and laughing –  and we teetered on the brink of an eggy, anise-scented food fight. No one took a first shot though we mimed flicking our spoons. We all knew how awful the clean-up would be and how my mom was a little insane about waste. Which meant: 35 yolks and 35 whites and one whole broken egg would have to be made into something intriguing. Pronto.

I flicked through the closest recipe book to hand: Creative Confections and spied a phrase next to a photo of a strawberry thyme cake with lemon buttercream icing. I thought of the way my mom and Miri moved us into this damp and creaky bungalow in the cheaper hinterlands of East End Maine when catering to picky Long Island foodies got too experimental, fraught, and messy to keep up. I thought of how unlikely it was that a café so far off the beaten track would become a local hangout and tourist hotspot. Yet we’d learned a lot about management from the catering business and my mother and Miri never wanted for verve, hapless though they often were….

I was often ashamed of being ashamed by their brash self-reliance and the half-baked survival schemes that figured into the family financial mix. I was definitely miffed when they yet again pried Bean and me out of our current ill-fitting school so we could squirm our awkward ways down other unknown hallways with more gaping, giggling strangers. This day, though, in our faded yellow kitchen with its scratched burnt — (literally, in spots) orange linoleum and avocado colored — stove, the winds worrying the coming blossoms on our ancient snow apple tree, Mom and Miri murmuring about cream of tartar, bundt pans, and bringing fresh bakes to the neighbors, I felt a kind of dopey peace.

“Got a name,” I said, with an uncharacteristic dash of quiet moony reverence for the women in my life. And even for my oblivious little brother, Bean.

“Just imagine,” Miri smirked, on the offensive against what she presumed would be another snarky and defeatist anti-name.

“That’s it.” I smiled with bit of Cheshire cat self-satisfaction, until my name offering emerged into the light and made us all pause and think we just might really do it this time.

Image by Alex Pfeiffer via Pixabay