Locust Lane(40)

“No, Dad, wait…”

Jack sat in a booth, staring at his phone. Michel stopped at the end of the table. Its surface was littered with cheese-smeared foil, bucket-sized drink cups, crumpled napkins. Jack looked up.

“What did you say to Christopher about his mother?”

“I was just telling him that it wasn’t healthy to dwell on her so much,” he said reasonably. “It’s a morbid ideation.”

“What business is that of yours?”

For the briefest of moments, there was a flash of something dark and tribal in the boy’s close-set eyes, the fury of a young chieftain challenged. Michel remembered this from his childhood. A precursor to violence and mayhem. But it passed after just a few seconds.

“Look, I’m really sorry,” he said, his tone chastened. “That was stupid. I was trying to help but…”

“This is my wife.”

“No, you’re totally right. Stupid … You want me to go apologize to him?”

Kids from other tables were watching now.

“You can do that later.”

“I’m really sorry, Mr. Mahoun. I got a big mouth sometimes.”

“We’ll put it behind us.”

And then the boy offered his hand. Michel took it. His grip was gentle, but there was a crushing force behind it. Michel wondered if that was the point of the gesture. As he left the restaurant, he couldn’t decide if his son’s friend was genuinely contrite or the best liar he’d ever met.



* * *



Night wore on, and Michel tried to wrestle his thoughts into some sort of order. It was how his father had taught him to deal with a rush. Look at one problem at a time, the biggest first. Each one you solve makes the next easier. And then the diners are happy and you’re drinking a brandy.

So. First things first. Christopher was innocent. There was no sense wasting time trying to figure out if it was true. But what had happened at that house, in the hours he was alone with her? Why had he wandered the streets? She’d spurned him. That had to be it. She’d rejected him and he was humiliated. And so the problem was one of perception. The police had simply jumped to what they thought was a logical conclusion. Once they looked deeper, they’d see it wasn’t Christopher. It couldn’t be him.

Michel couldn’t believe that his son was enduring yet another terrible thing, something unfair and beyond his control. Hadn’t Maryam’s death been enough? It had split the boy’s life in two. Before her illness, Christopher was happy. He loved to spend time at L’?toile, where Michel was the head chef and Maryam worked as a ma?tre d’, one of the few women who held this job in Paris. He was always underfoot yet never in the way. Michel dreamed of him following in his footsteps, just as he had with his own father. Working side by side. The son learning, equaling, surpassing.

But then Maryam developed a cough that would not go away. There were blood tests and scans and bad news. Nine months later she was dead. Christopher turned eleven during her decline. At first, he wouldn’t leave her side. He slept with her, he helped her walk, he constantly embraced her. Near the end, however, as her body deteriorated and her mind slipped, he changed. He wouldn’t touch her; he barely spoke to her or even looked at her. He grew quieter and quieter until, on the day of her funeral, he stopped talking altogether. The silence lasted for two months. Nothing Michel did could break it. Teachers, priests, doctors; friends and family—no one could get through to him.

Finally, one morning, Christopher simply walked into the kitchen and asked Michel to make him eggs. Just like that. Michel was so overjoyed that it took him a few hours to understand that his son’s voice was different. It wasn’t the natural break of puberty—that didn’t happen for a few more years. His voice wasn’t lower so much as hollow. There was an echo to it, as if he were speaking from deep inside his own body. Like the real Christopher was trapped in there.

He stopped coming to the restaurant. On the few occasions he absolutely had to be there, he’d avoid the kitchen. His fascination with cooking vanished. There were no more tutorials about butter and cream, no more tastings or stirrings. Michel feared that his dream of his son following in his footsteps had died along with his wife.

It was only after they moved to Boston that the true recovery began. Michel’s cousin Claude—Sofia’s father—needed an executive chef for his Back Bay restaurant, Corniche. Tired of living in a place where every last thing reminded him of his dead wife, Michel had leapt at the opportunity. Christopher took to America the moment he stepped off the plane at Logan. He learned English with startling speed. His voice changed again, this time the natural deepening of puberty. His interest in cooking renewed. He started wearing a Celtics leprechaun cap everywhere. He reinvented himself. Which, after all, was the point of America.

And yet, Michel sometimes saw the pain that had driven him into that two-month silence. He had a particular problem with rejection. Small things—a slight from a friend, an indifferent response from a girl—would drive him into days-long sulks. But mostly, he was the buoyant, happy kid the rest of the world saw. Michel took over the Emerson Grille, using money Claude loaned him for a down payment, and Papillon was reborn. French cuisine with the slightest Lebanese accent, just like his father’s restaurant. Christopher began to work there, first as a busboy, then as a waiter, sometimes in the kitchen. Recently, Michel had been teaching him about sauces. The possibility of his working with Michel when he finished college was once again alive.