Olivia could still not believe her good fortune in landing this job and living in this place. It was a far cry from the day she’d learned she was pregnant, in her final semester of graduate school at NYU just six years ago. Her then boyfriend, who wanted everything to do with acting and nothing to do with a baby (this was his life! his chance at making it!), made it painfully clear to Olivia that she would be on her own. She’d walked graduation with her belly burgeoning through her gown, wondering if she were the only art student to have spent her final semester alternately covered in clay and bent over the toilet bowl with morning sickness. Her father, Pierre, stood in the audience, clapping and shouting alongside Celeste, his restaurant partner who’d also largely helped to raise Olivia since her mother’s death. Afterward, they’d had a small luncheon and cake back at the restaurant.
Olivia had been frightened, but she’d had a plan: she would have the baby in the fall, and the two of them would move back to Brooklyn and live with her father, just like old times. But two years after making that plan, Olivia felt stifled. It was hard having a toddler in the city, alone. Gone was her access to the luxury of the NYU art studio and all its conveniences and inspiration. She could not afford to share an artist co-op space in any of the available buildings in and around the city, unlike some of her former classmates. For a while, she worked as an office assistant for the NYU art department, but it was mostly clerical work. Each time she put together announcements for student art shows, she felt a pang. With every grant or internship that came across her desk, Olivia grew more restless. A bitterness crept into her voice when she made small talk with the art students waiting outside the professors’ office doors, their brimming portfolios in hand. Yesterday she had been that aspiring pupil. Today she was an exhausted single mother awash in fresh resentment.
Worst of all was the guilt of being away from Luci. Juggling single parenthood with a creative life was nearly impossible, and eventually she gave up and returned to work at the restaurant. There her days were free to be with her daughter, and come nighttime Luci could be put to sleep in the back office. But it was draining, burning the candle at both ends and always having Luci in tow. And despite having secured some sense of routine and a small income, Olivia felt the calendar days peeling off the wall without really getting anywhere. Indeed, she had gone backward. She was single and back working at her father’s restaurant, only now with a child to support. Any aspirations of her own seemed laughable.
It was during that second winter since graduation that Olivia received an email from a former professor. A well-known sculptor from Washington, Connecticut, was seeking an apprentice. He worked out of a restored barn on his property. The pay was not much, but Olivia would have a small carriage house in which to live and access to studio work space. It was a ticket out of the city. And perhaps a ticket to a new life.
Olivia replied immediately, keeping the news and the new hope that flushed in her chest to herself. There was no need to involve her father. At least not yet. He would not support the notion, of that she was sure.
Pierre’s temper was legendary; at the restaurant he terrified as many sous-chefs as he inspired. And fired twice that number in any given month. But still there was an ever-present line out the door of green young chefs wanting to work with him. For those in the industry and in the know were aware that clientele had been flocking to Bon Coin for years. Reservations were not accepted. You obtained a seat only if the chef knew you; or if you were the honored guest of someone who knew him. His crème fraîche was a full-cream cloud. Between courses you cleansed your palate with tiny ramekins of pomegranate sorbet or flat water with a lemon twist; a shot of apple brandy served as a digestif. On the rare occasion he was in a whimsical mood, Pierre sent out an amuse-bouche: a single seared scallop, a frosty shot of cucumber soup. There was no menu. Patrons ate what he felt like cooking, all of it artfully plated, its minimalist presentation designed to surrender to one and only one sense: the intoxicating pleasure of taste.
Olivia was often asked, “Did you ever work with your father?”
“No,” she was quick to reply. “I worked for him.” Though he loved his only child with a singular focus otherwise reserved only for his cooking, in his kitchen even she was not spared his temperament.
“Zut, Livi!” he’d bellow, whisking a cutting board of diced onion out from under the blade of her knife and tossing it into the well of the sink. “Émincer l’oignon!” Pierre expected perfection at every turn, from the uniformity of minced carrots to the gleaming reflection of a freshly scrubbed sauté pan. Precision, attention, and the sourcing of raw ingredients—those were the hallmarks of a successful restaurant. That his employees simultaneously loved and loathed the man was not his concern; food critics were the only ones who had Pierre’s ear, and even they not all of the time. In her father’s kitchen Olivia learned to keep her head down, her knife sharp, and to persevere. Indeed, they were the skills of life.
* * *
In a way, working for her father had probably been what most helped her to secure her new job. Pierre was an artist, as well. Olivia understood temperaments and idiosyncrasies. Working for an artist was intimate. Olivia knew how Ben took his coffee, not that he’d ever asked her to get him one. She knew that when starting a new project he required complete solitude. Marge had explained these things during the interview. Olivia had borrowed her aunt’s car and driven out to the Connecticut countryside for the occasion, intent on meeting Ben Rothschild, the famous sculptor, and impressing him with her portfolio. But she’d been surprised to not even lay eyes on the man that first meeting. Instead, it was Marge who swung the front door ajar in her bare feet and a sweeping white tunic and invited her inside. She led her through rooms of antique rugs and Stickley furniture, which were otherwise stark white. She poured tea and pulled out a Windsor chair, motioning for Olivia to sit. What followed was a conversation more than an interview. What kind of training had she had at NYU? What was her medium? How did she feel about working closely with another person, who might just as soon request she leave him alone when he “caught the scent,” as Ben described his muse, as he might ask her to dig through dusty attic boxes in search of a long-lost photograph so he could study the lines of the family dog, who, by the way, was buried under the red maple in the backyard—should she want to visit him.
What was clear was that there were boundaries, but the lines were not of the usual pedestrian nature. The hours varied, as did the work. Which was why the two of them liked to keep their assistant in residence. “We all have our gifts and quirks,” Marge had said that day. That was just fine with Olivia. She had her own, foremost being Luci.
Luci should be treated as any other child. Olivia needed her to live in a space where people let her be herself. “She speaks to four people in her life,” Olivia had confided in Marge that day. “Me. My father, her gran-père. Her speech pathologist. And our Brooklyn neighbor, Celeste.”
Marge had listened deeply, nodding over her cup of tea. “Well, that must be a challenge for both of you,” she said, finally. “We know all about those, here.”
As Olivia would learn, after she accepted the job, Ben was a gentle man with soft watery eyes. He was as practical about his artistic success as he was about sleep: he needed nine hours exactly, many of which took place during the afternoons, and none of which were consecutive. And he had a complicated relationship with alcohol.