Marianne's Vacation Page 2

  Part 1

  I have to give you quite a bit of background in order for any of this to make sense to you - that is, if it makes sense at all. Some of this you may remember, but I want to remind you, in order to set the context.

  My mother was from the south of France. She met my father when he was serving in the Navy in the Mediterranean before WWII. I don't know all the details, but I think she was a waitress in a restaurant in Marseilles. Anyway, they met. Love ensued. Somehow Papa managed to scrape together the money to get her out of France and to America during the Depression. My father deposited my mother with his own mother at the family home in Charleston, and then promptly returned to his ship. I was born two years later, approximately nine months after Daddy came home on on a brief leave.

  Maw Maw was good to us, but following the Depression and, with her husband dead and her only son far away in the Navy, her fortunes were dwindling. To make matters worse, Papa was killed in 1943 in Sicily. While the War was still going on, Maman got a job as a cook in a restaurant owned by a Greek family. Maw Maw took care of me while Maman was at work.

  When Maman first went to work there, the restaurant was about to go bankrupt because the Greek owners didn't know how to cook to suit the locals. Maman solved the problem by sitting down with Maw Maw's cook, who was an old black lady, and virtually every other black cook in our neighborhood. She learned all their recipes and cooking secrets. Maman combined what she learned from the Gullah women of Charleston with the cooking techniques she learned from her mother and aunts in Provence, and before long Maman was turning out the best Low Country food in the area, bar none. In a way Maman was doing what they now call fusion cooking decades before that was a concept, much less a word.

  Maman's complete mastery of Low Country cooking coincided with the end of the War. The soldiers came home. People had money again, and everybody wanted to enjoy life after the hard years of Depression and War. With Maman's food and the festive atmosphere created by the Delios family, the fortunes of the Olympia Restaurant turned around, and it became a local landmark for years. It was 'the' place north of the Cooper River Bridge to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries and other special occasions. It was a happy place, always filled with the smell of wonderful food and the sounds of people having a good time.

  Not long after the War ended, Maw Maw died, and left her estate, which consisted mostly of her house, to me. Maman was by then the head cook at the Olympia. While I was really little, I hung out in the kitchen with Maman and all her assistant cooks, who were mostly the black women who had cooked for the old ladies in our neighborhood in Charleston. When Maw Maw died, Maman got Mr. Delios to hire Bertie, our cook, and then Bertie got some of her friends to come work for us.

  When I was old enough, I bussed tables and then I worked my way up to waiting tables by myself. I was earning excellent wages and amazing tips by the time I was fourteen or so.

  Kris Delios was the oldest son of the owner of the restaurant. He had worked in the restaurant since he was a child, too. Neither of us ever had time to date anybody else, so we sort of fell in love with each other by default.

  It wasn't hard to fall in love with Kris Delios. He was dark, handsome, fun and... um... sexy....

  Anyway, Kris and I got married right out of high school. Maman was the cook in the restaurant. Kris's mother was the hostess. His father was the manager and tended bar. All of their kids worked there in some capacity. Kris and I waited tables. Soon Kris became sort of his dad's assistant manager. Most days it was like the tower of Babel in the restaurant. The Delios family all spoke Greek among themselves. Maman and I spoke French to each other (she insisted I learn to speak French and refused to converse with me in English unless social politeness required it). The Delios family picked up a little French. We picked up a little Greek. We even picked up a few Gullah words from the kitchen workers. It ended up that we all communicated in a sort of patois that nobody could understand but us. One old Gullah lady who worked for Maman in the kitchen said she thought we spoke a language that was harder to understand than regular Gullah. We called it Gullah-pean, and thought we were just the cleverest and funniest bunch of folks on earth. Those were good years filled with happy times and so much love I could sit right here and cry just thinking about it.

  Maman died in 1952. She had always spoken with longing about her home in Provence and insisted she intended to return to France someday. After she died, I contacted the French embassy in Washington. They helped me contact relatives in her home town to arrange to have her buried there.

  Maman had always said she wanted to be cremated and I honored her wish. That caused problems with the burial. After it was already too late, I learned that Catholics aren't supposed to be cremated. The parish priest in her home town refused to bury her in the church cemetery. Ultimately, her family buried her in a place outside the church walls, but in what they promised would be a beautiful spot nevertheless.

  I missed Maman terribly, but the Delios family closed in around me and made me feel loved and safe. Maman had taught me all her recipes and cooking techniques, so I moved from waiting tables to being the head cook. Kris and I were young and in love. I was doing work I adored in a place where I felt safe and loved.

  You were born in 1954. That was magical period in my life. I loved being a mother. I never hired a babysitter or put you in day care of any sort. I brought you to the restaurant with me where you were loved and cared for by all of the Delios women, the kitchen helpers, and, when you got old enough to venture out into the dining room, you were universally spoiled rotten by our many regular customers.

  By the early 1960's Kris' parents had made enough money to retire. They decided to go back to Greece, partly because their money would go further there and partly because they had always missed their home town. They turned the business over to Kris, who was the oldest and the most business-savvy of their children, and returned to Santorini. We missed them, but our lives went on very much as they had before. Kris and his sisters worked the front of the restaurant. I oversaw the kitchen staff. You had the run of the entire place. When you got older, your favorite pass-time was helping in the kitchen. Kris and I would sometimes allow ourselves to dream of turning the business over to you one day.

  After you started to school, I always worked the day shift, and Kris closed up in the evenings. One day when you were about ten, Kris came home from work early, with a bottle of wine and a stack of papers. He invited me to sit down at the kitchen table with him. He poured us some wine and we chatted for a little while. Then he dropped a bomb.

  He told me that he had sold the restaurant to some kind of developer. He said he wanted to move to Alaska. He had heard stories about a huge building craze up there. Things were booming and he thought he could make a killing opening a bar, or a chain of them. He told me he was tired of Charleston, tired of running the restaurant that was his father's dream. Listening to his excited chatter, I felt a surge of anticipation about the prospect of heading off on some kind of a grand adventure. It all sounded very exciting to someone who had never been outside of Charleston County.

  In his next breath, however, he destroyed my world when he told me he was also tired of being a husband and father. He wanted his own life, and he meant to have it, far away from Charleston, and from you and me.

  He opened an envelope and took out a check. He said he had kept only enough of the money he got for the restaurant to get to Alaska. He would fend for himself once he got there. He gave the rest to me for us to live on until I could get on my feet. He handed me the check, and then he handed me divorce papers to sign.

  I took the money and signed the papers without reading them.

  He left for Alaska the next day. As you will recall for two years, he sent a letter to you once a month, religiously. Every letter was dated on the 11th of the month, which was the day on which you were born. After two years the letters suddenly stopped.

  Marianne stopped and cleared her throat
. She took a few sips of tea and looked up toward the ceiling, blinking. Christa went into the kitchen and brought back a box of tissues. She handed her mother one and wiped her eyes with another. They held hands for a few minutes until Marianne pulled herself together enough to continue.

  I sold Maw Maw's family home in Charleston's historic district and bought a small cottage in Goose Creek to save money on taxes. I learned that the buyers of the restaurant intended to turn it into a nightclub. They did not plan to serve meals. For the first time in my life, I had to look for a job.

  Kris's sisters moved on to other restaurants. His parents wrote to us regularly from Greece. They were angry with him and their letters hurled all kinds of venom until he stopped communicating with any of us. After that, they worried about what had happened to him. To their credit they never hinted that they blamed me in any way. They also insisted that they wanted to maintain a relationship with you, which they did until they died. God, I loved those wonderful people.

  The money Kris left us was not enough to support us and also to send you to college. Remember how we made it our mission to save enough money for you to go to college? You wanted to be a music teacher and I was determined