Chapter 44

Cathy was preparing pizzas while Kevin and Sandra were cooking them. Dan stood at the door of the back kitchen watching the three of them at work. Sandra was doing a pretty good job of getting the pizzas on and off the paddle. He figured that in another night or two, she’d be ready to handle the pizza oven all by herself.

He went back into the kitchen and looked over the recipe for blueberry muffins that he had downloaded from the web. It was time for him to try an experiment. He glanced over at the clock, and wrote down the time. Reaching over to the small oven, he turned it on and set the temperature.

The recipe said that it would take fifteen minutes of preparation time, and between twenty and twenty five minutes of cooking time. That was forty minutes; ten minutes too long. He thought that he could get the preparation time down to five minutes by having all of the dry ingredients premixed and by preparing the topping the night before. That would get the time to prepare the muffins down to thirty minutes at most. It would still be tight to get the muffins out in time for the morning rush.

With quick confident moves he started to pull together the ingredients for blueberry muffins. He measured out the premixed dry ingredients dropping them into the mixing bowl. He added the oil, eggs, and milk. While the mixer was doing its business, he pulled down the muffin bin trays and placed the little paper cups inside them. He grabbed the mixing bowl and folded in the blueberries. He poured the contents into a pitcher. It took him a minute to fill all of the little cups with the batter. He put the topping on the muffins.

Dan stepped back and looked up at the clock. Frowning, he said, “Seven minutes.”

He put the muffin bin trays into the oven and closed the door. He stepped back and considered the situation. The timing was going to be too tight and the muffins would be too hot to sell. He didn’t want to come to work ten minutes earlier every day just to sell a dozen hot muffins in the morning.

Dan went over to the mixer and took it apart to wash it. That was another thing that worked against selling muffins in the morning. It would set back getting the dough together for the lunch rush almost twenty minutes. Shaking his head, he said, “It’s just looking worse and worse.”

Dan had put the mixer back together just before in time for the muffins had to finished cooking. He looked in the oven and saw that they looked done. He tested them with a toothpick and pulled out the two trays bins from the oven. He set the bins aside to cool for a minute. The muffins looked delicious. He dumped them out of the bins and arranged them on a serving tray. They were almost too hot to handle.

He looked up at the clock and swore. Thirty-five minutes had passed since he had started. Depressed, he picked up one of the muffins and removed the paper. He cut it in half and added a pat of butter to each half. The hot muffin melted the butter.

He took a bite and groaned, “Oh, that’s so good.”

After finishing the muffin, he carried the tray into the dining area of the pizzeria. More than one person watched him walk past. The smell of hot muffins had filled the air.

One of the customers held up a hand and asked, “Is that a new dessert item?”

Dan smiled and answered, “I’m just trying out the idea. Here, have one.”

The customer looked over the muffin and took a bite out of it. With an expression of ecstasy on his face, he said, “This is good!.”

“I’m glad you like it,” Dan said.

“I love it,” the man said even as he went to take another bite of his muffin.

Dan went around the room handing out muffins to the customers as they finished their meals. Everyone seemed to like them a lot. One customer told him that he could substitute chocolate chips for the blueberries, and they’d be perfect. Dan hadn’t even considered doing that.

When he had handed out the last muffin, Dan went over to the pizza station. Kevin said, “It looks like your muffins are a hit.”

“Yeah,” Dan said with a sigh. It was too bad that he couldn’t do them for the morning.

“You don’t seem that excited,” Kevin said.

“They take too long to prepare,” Dan said with a shrug of his shoulders. It was a good idea, but nothing was going to come of it.

Kevin said, “So cook them the night before.”

“There’s a lot of difference between a cold muffin and a hot muffin. I could buy cold muffins and sell them,” Dan said.

“That’s true. Make the batter the night before, and cook them in the morning,” Kevin said.

Dan shook his head and said, “I thought about that, but I don’t think the batter would be good after spending ten hours in the refrigerator.”

“You’re probably right. I’d still give it a try,” Kevin said. He’d seen how people had reacted to the muffins.

Not expecting much, Dan said, “I’ll try it out.”

“Good,” Kevin said.

Diana came back from a delivery and went over to the pizza station. She counted out the money for the pizza, and handed it over to Dan.

Frowning, she said, “She didn’t give me a tip.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Dan said. It happened to all of the delivery people on occasion.

“It happens,” Diana said shrugging her shoulders.

Dan was pleased to see that she wasn’t complaining like she normally did when she was stiffed on a tip.

It was later than usual when Diana returned home from work. She had stayed behind to help clean up the pizzeria. Although he didn’t say anything, she knew that her actions had surprised Dan. Almost as soon as she entered the house, her mother greeted her.

“How was work?”

“It was okay,” Diana answered with a negligent shrug of her shoulders. She had been stiffed with no tip from one person and no one had given her a decent tip that night.

“You’re late.”

“I stayed late to help Dan clean up the store,” Diana replied.

“You have school tomorrow,” her mother said.

Diana shook her head and said, “I’m going to stay home from school, tomorrow.”

“Again? You missed school today,” her mother said. She had given Diana permission to stay at home that morning knowing that Diana’s grades were good. She figured her daughter was suffering a bad case of senior-itis.

Diana said, “My grades are good enough that I’d have to make a Cs on the last tests of the year to drop my grade below an A.”

“I know your grades are good, and that you can miss school. I just don’t think It’s a good idea to miss school like that. You aren’t sick,” her mother said.

Diana nodded her head and said, “I know. I just have a personal problem that I have to work on, tomorrow.”

“What’s the matter?” her mother asked sitting up straighter in her chair. She wondered what kind of personal problem would keep her daughter from going to school.

Diana sat down on the couch and said, “The other night I discovered that Dan didn’t think I was reliable.”

“Oh,” her mother said, rather surprised.

She wondered if she needed to have a long talk with Dan. Diana was a straight A student. To consider her unreliable was ... a little misleading.

She asked, “Did he tell you that?”

“No, he didn’t. It was Granny Parker. She told me that I was taking advantage of my relationship with Dan. The next day Dad told me the same thing,” Diana said slumping down into the seat. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant thing to think about.

Ignoring for the moment any involvement of her husband, her mother was more concerned about the other person feeding her daughter that kind of nonsense. She asked, “Who’s is Granny Parker?”

Diana laughed at the expression on her mother’s face and said, “She’s an old lady that comes into the pizzeria every afternoon when the teenagers are there. She hangs around with them offering advice and a friendly shoulder to cry on.”

“Why do you call her Granny Parker?”

Diana answered, “That’s her name. Her granddaughter is Kim Parker.”

“I hope she’s nicer than Kim,” her mother said with a sour face. She was finding that just the mention of that girl’s name was enough to make her angry.

“Kim visited the pizzeria and spouted off her normal trash. Granny Parker hauled her out of there by her ear! According to Dan, it was really something to watch,” Diana said.

“So Granny Parker accused you of taking advantage of Dan,” her mother said arching an eyebrow. She didn’t exactly approve of strangers telling her daughter that she wasn’t a good kid.

“She was right,” Diana said with a sigh.

“You aren’t serious,” her mother said.

Diana looked at the floor. She said, “I am serious. I’ve been a terrible spoiled brat when it comes to him. I’ve treated his pizzeria as a sometimes job, where I can pick up some spending money. Did you know that the other night was the first night off that he’s taken since Sue’s art show?”

“You’re kidding,” her mother said thinking that Dan had to be exhausted. This was beginning to explain why her husband was so upset with Diana.

“No. He’s been working all day every day since then. He’s dragging around half dead, and I’m working when I damn well feel like it. The fact is, that I’m not helping him,” Diana said.

Her mother frowned and said, “You knew that he was working so much and you didn’t say anything about it?”

“I didn’t think anything of it,” Diana said. With tears forming in her eyes, she said, “I wasn’t thinking about him. I was so concerned about myself, that I didn’t think about him.”

“I don’t know what to say,” her mother said.

She knew that Diana was occasionally selfish and didn’t always take Dan’s feelings into account, but he believed the Diana did care about him. It didn’t sound like she was acting all that concerned about him, in light of this new information.

Ashamed, Diana looked down at the floor and said, “I started thinking about how I was treating everyone around me. I realized that my life is a little out of control. My priorities are all screwed up.”

“You need to take control of your life,” her mother said.

Diana couldn’t look at her mother. In a soft voice, she said, “I started thinking about a lot of things since talking to Granny Parker. I was so sure that winning the scholarship had confirmed that I knew what I was doing. I realized that I had only been talking the right story. I haven’t been living it like Dan has been.”

“Okay,” her mother said.

“I need to finish my personal definition of happiness. I need to identify my goals. That’s the only way that I can take control of my life.”

“You could start by helping your brother,” her mother said pointedly.

“No, I have to do things in the right order. First, I have to be in control of myself. To do that, I have to know what will make me happy. I’m working on my personal definition of happiness,” Diana said. She had been pursuing the pleasure of the moment thinking that pleasure was the same as happiness.

“How is it going?”

“I was all hung up on the physical environment part of it. I kept thinking that I had to identify a single physical environment that would last me for the rest of my life. This morning I finally got through that part. I realized that I wanted my physical environment to change as I grew as a person,” Diana said. She had also let it hold her back from addressing the other aspects of her personal definition of happiness.

“That’s reasonable,” her mother said wondering what the physical environment had to do with happiness. Maybe Diana was right and she did need to read those articles. At least she would know enough to warn Dan and Diana when they were doing something stupid.

After two years of her daughter sounding a lot like Dan it seemed to her that Diana was finally starting to act like him. She decided that it was a good thing and that she should support her daughter. She said, “I think that you might be right. It might be much more important for you to get your act together than to go to school tomorrow. I’ll call the school in the morning and let them im know that you won’t be in.”