Back To U

chapter Twenty-Two

No matter what a chef tells you, cooking is not entirely like life.



Gwen's journal… June 6th Monday



I haven’t made a journal entry in twenty years, and this is the last blank page. It seems right to fill it in because I’m forty, and it’s spring, and because sometimes hope is more than just an idea. Sometimes it even requires courage, putting yourself on the line like a man who brings flowers on Valentine’s Day. Like a woman who...



Gwen's life the day before…



"Put the cinnamon in the egg batter right here." She tapped on the large laminated French toast recipe and smiled at the work-study student. She glanced across the kitchen where the last breakfast of the semester was nearly ready for the serving line. She waved at Stuart, got a nod in return.

The work-study student looked impressed. "Old Man Jameson must be in a really good mood. I’ve never seen him actually nod before."

Gwen laughed. "Yeah, Old Man Jameson’s gonna like retirement."

The student shook out the last of the cinnamon, and she took the empty container and headed towards the offices. She passed the one she’d cleaned out for the new assistant and opened the door to hers. She moved a couple of boxes out of her path, but the cookbooks she'd packed from the house, the textbooks from the cooking program, and all her binders of notes would have to wait until Monday to be shelved.

Glancing at her watch, she saw that two hours until graduation didn’t give her much time to get ready. She needed to get going, but she couldn’t help herself and sat for a minute in the leather chair. It was cushier than the assistant’s one she’d sat in for the past six months. Being director of food services would have its perks.

She set the cinnamon bottle on the desk and studied the photos she’d moved straight from her desk next door. Her mom and Missy stood beside her on spring break at a resort in Mexico that was so low budget no one complained when Ellen sunbathed topless. In deference to Missy, Gwen had left her own top on but liked to think she could have been a girl-gone-wild herself. She'd even encouraged her mom, who’d wanted to increase her vitamin D levels, at least until they’d seen the police cruiser in the parking lot.

Reaching for the next photo, she smiled at all of them on the campus oval. She'd have to make an annual event of the finals week barbecue she’d talked Stuart into. Maybe she’d name it the Old Man Jameson Memorial Weenie Roast. He’d think that was funny but never admit it.

In the photo, Guy and Annie had their right hands up in front of their chests, happy or cheer she was pretty sure. They were all stumbling along with sign language, but Guy and Annie were patient teachers. And the boys looked so happy, Hayden’s arm around Missy, and the rest of them making kissing faces and flipping off the camera. It was so sweet of them to remember the revenge of the pee photo.

She didn’t want to think about the fall, the past, Max. She was done with all of it and only looking forward. She spotted the blank name plate on her desk, pulled out a roll of masking tape and a marker and wrote Gwen Ciarrochi on it. She stuck it on, set the roll of tape on a stack of files beside her and spotted it. It was amazing that after twenty years she could still recognize the battered green cover of her college journal. She leafed through it, pleasure and sadness in equal measure, until she stopped at the last entry just one page from the end.



Gwen's journal… December 11th, Monday 1990



Not everyone is meant to stay together.



It’s just the place, maybe, or fun that makes two people a couple for a while. It’s not like most things are supposed to last forever. And the truth is that women are just more mature than men. That’s why most couples have the man older, and it’s not like I think anybody needs to be some kind of stereotype or perfect or anything. But I just need other things right now. And it’s hard to say that, but, you know, I need to be honest.

I’m just beyond where I was and looking for, well, I’m not looking, but the man I end up with will be there for me no matter what. I’m there. I’m just more mature, and I need to move on I think. I really, really need to get out of this.



Back to U…



She watched the journal shake, her hands unsteady. Setting it down on the desk, she tried to take a deep breath, think clearly even though she was overwhelmed with feeling.

Max had brought the journal to her office. She hadn’t seen it in twenty years, but he had. He’d found it, no doubt, in his apartment where she’d left it when she'd run away from everything. Ellen had asked Gwen's roommate to box up her things, and Steve had picked them up. God, Steve. They had probably started then, the two of them. He, a new graduate, and she, newly adrift.

But the journal had been left behind, and Max had read it, hadn’t he? Read it alone and known her judgment of him. The man I end up with will be there for me no matter what.

Would he have read what ran beneath her words, the river of fear and self-doubt and panic? Why would he? She’d left him. She’d written off her love for him clearly enough, and he hadn’t come after her, that dismissed, imperfect boy.

She closed her eyes and saw him again for the first time, smiling across the table at her, first in the bar, then at his parent’s house. She felt their first kiss against his car, the heat of the dorm shower the first time she touched him.

He was the boy she loved. And he'd become the man she would have fallen in love with if she’d ever fallen out in the twenty years that had passed.

In her time back at Belmar, Max had taken care of her mom, understood what her daughter meant to her, and had always come to her at night when she dreamed. He’d never had anything to prove.

She opened her eyes, saw the cinnamon, and ripped off another chunk of masking tape. She grabbed the marker, wrote Not for People, and stuck it on the label as a reminder there were recipes she didn’t ever want to change.

Stuart stood in the doorway. "You still here, missy? Get goin'. You’ve got your la-de-da graduation."

Gwen smiled at him. "I do. And I have a favor to ask."





She stood on the oval and scanned the crowds.

She’d felt a little funny at first in the cap and gown, Belmar blue with a bobbly tassel. But when she’d flipped the silver fringe from the right side to the left, and walked away from the stage with her diploma in hand, she’d heard Missy shout out. She’d given a teary smile in the direction it came from. She had so much, she should probably not even hope. She should just count the blessings she already had, but she wouldn’t settle again. She couldn’t settle without first giving it the old college try.

As she walked down the brick sidewalk, she saw the graduation crowd scattered across the expanse of green lawn. Where would he be? She knew him well, and it warmed her to know that. So the question was, where would the best photos be?

Making her way around the groups of families and friends, she spotted him, capturing images of graduates on their way out across a parking lot, their gowns fluttering like birds.

She took a deep, shaky breath and walked to stand beside him.

She heard a slow click like he knew she was there, the swish from her own gown probably giving her away. He lowered the camera and looked at her with an expression she couldn’t read, but unreadable was better than an instant no.

She tried to smile, but her heart raced in both nervous panic and the desire to throw her arms around his neck and not let go. She let out a slow breath. "Will you come with me?" She waited, thought he would ask where, but he just shrugged as if he had nothing to lose and fell in beside her.

They crossed the oval and headed toward the edge of campus, passing beneath the arch to the football stadium. She led him then, beneath the east bleachers where she stopped. He looked up at the rows of seats overhead just as he had that day she’d sat above him and their time together had started to unravel. She watched the sun filter down over his face. "You want to take a gum on the underside of humanity shot for old time’s sake?"

He turned to her and looked so tired she wanted to smooth the lines of his face. "What do you want, Gwen?"

"I want both of us to stop looking at things from here." She studied the dark slats above. There just wasn't enough light. "I thought I came back to fix something, but I came to start new." She took his hand, relieved that he let her, and led him along the back corridor and out into the full sun of the stands.

He stopped in front of her, waited with his back to the field.

She wanted to look at him for the rest of her life. "You didn't let me down, Max. I was just afraid you would." It clicked for her for the first time that Steve had left her before she could leave, and she’d done the same to Max. Maybe karma, college, and cinnamon had made things right.

She smiled. "You never needed to make the big gesture. I needed to." She pointed towards the field, and he turned around.

They were all lying down at the fifty yard line, and they’d done a good job, but to be on the safe side, she leaned closer to Max and whispered, "It’s a heart."

Missy took the point, her body angled into a V, her feet pointing to Deb while Annie and Guy made up the right curve of it. On the left, Bryan, Josh, and Hayden formed their side. It was a little bulkier with their football bodies, but good. And at the top, her mother sole to sole with…

"Is that Old Man Jameson?" Max motioned toward the field.

"Yeah." She squinted. Was her mother running her toes up his calf?

"Is Ellen..."

"Yeah." She turned Max away from the view and tilted her chin to meet his lips, warm and exactly what she wanted, and he kissed her back with the same fierce joy she felt.

She leaned back to enjoy his face returning her smile. "Enough about them. Back to you."