Éclairs for Elodie
by Jameyanne Fuller
Pierre doesn’t sleep the night after the accident. He stays down in the bakery and makes éclairs instead, because Elodie loves—she loved—éclairs. The sticky glaze, then the light crunch of the pastry, and finally the delight of the sweet custard within. “It’s just heavenly, n’est pas?” she would say. So tonight Pierre makes éclairs for Elodie.
He starts with custard, simmering eggs, sugar, cream, milk, butter, and vanilla until it thickens. As he strains the custard, he breathes in the sweet steam filling the kitchen. Yes, it is heavenly. He sets the custard in the ice box to thicken, then begins the pate à choux. As he stirs the dough in the saucepan over the burner, he thinks of summer picnics on the seashore, dancing with Elodie on the beach to music only they could hear. He remembers the day they married, just after he turned eighteen, before he had to leave for the Great War that had already taken his father, and then their joy when the war ended and Pierre could stay home and help run the bakery with Elodie while they started a family.
He pipes lines of pastry onto the tray, then puts them in the oven. While they bake, then cool and dry, he mixes the chocolate glaze, and his mind turns to the glow of sunlight on her hair, the little strands of red and blond in the brown that only come out in the sunlight. He thinks of her hand, her fingers lacing through his or cupping his cheek. He remembers playing hide and seek with her on the beach when they were children. He remembers their first catastrophic attempts at baking, the mess they made of themselves and the kitchen, the scolding they received from their mothers over the blackened lumps that were supposed to be cookies.
By the time the éclairs are done, Pierre’s reminiscence has turned to intent.
He eats the first éclair while it is still hot, scalding his tongue on the pastry but still relishing the perfectly soft crackle of it. He pictures the smile she would have given him—no, the smile she will give him—when she tries these. And he knows this will be nowhere near enough.
He uses all the ingredients, stacks crock after crock of custard in the ice box, bakes and bakes and bakes until the kitchen is sweltering and he has sweated through his clothes. He whisks and pipes and stuffs and dips until his back and arms are aching. And when the sun rises and the counters are lined with nothing but trays of éclairs, Elodie steps into the kitchen, and his heart stops.
She is fresh as a dewdrop, with her hair loose and messy around her shoulders and a crease from the pillow still pressed into her cheek. Her belly is just beginning to strain at her nightgown. She presses one hand to it and smiles softly at Pierre. “I thought I was dreaming that smell,” she says. He brings her an éclair and stands with his hand on her back while she eats. His heart is so full he thinks he might cry, and he is sure he will never let her go again.
“These are your best yet,” she says. “But you should have come to bed. I missed you.” She touches the shadow under his left eye, then leans in and kisses it.
He wraps his arms around her and kisses her lips, because he missed her too. She tastes of chocolate and custard. She tastes of summer. She tastes heavenly.
Elodie’s parents come to check on them. After the war and the influenza, they are the only family Pierre has left. But when Elodie comes in with the teapot, her father bursts into tears and her mother faints dead away.
They hurry to leave, despite Pierre’s and Elodie’s pleas for them to stay. At the door, Elodie’s father looks straight into Pierre’s eyes, and his expression is so full of concern and grief Pierre has to take a step back. “Oh, you poor boy,” he whispers. “What have you done?”
Pierre does not go to the funeral. He makes more éclairs, now with Elodie at his side, tasting each step, like they used to do. In the quiet moments, while the pastry bakes and the custard sets, when Elodie steps from the room, he is struck by a painful certainty that he has done something wrong, missed something important, that he is in the wrong place today. But he cannot put his finger on the absence, cannot remember the reason for the painful pressure of loss on his heart. What could he possibly be missing when he has Elodie, dancing back into the room with her hair tucked up in a blue scarf and a little clutch of the first wildflowers from the front garden in her hand.
Elodie’s mother comes later that afternoon, twisting her elegant black hat in her hands. She asks to speak to Pierre alone, and then she begs him to stop.
“You have to accept what has happened,” she says. Her voice breaks. “This—living in this fantasy—it can’t go on.”
Pierre doesn’t understand what she means. Why can’t things go on as they have? He is happier than he has ever been. When he tells her this, she pales, and her eyes shine with tears.
“But, Pierre, the accident,” she whispers. His heart aches with sudden loss, a grief he can’t name. He pushes it away. He has Elodie. In a few months, their child will be born. There is no reason to feel so empty and alone.
“This can’t go on,” Elodie’s mother says.
And because her inexplicable sadness hurts him, and because he knows she will not listen, will not understand, he says, “I think you should leave.”
When she is gone, he returns to the kitchen to finish the latest batch of éclairs. Elodie is singing as she scrubs the counter. He joins in. They are off-key and joyous, and when the éclairs are done, they share one, passing it back and forth for bites, licking each other’s sticky fingers and laughing.
The éclair drives the accident and the funeral he skipped and the grief from Pierre’s mind. He will not remember again. For he has Elodie, and that is what matters.
A month passes. Pierre and Elodie make éclairs. Pierre builds a cradle for the baby and paints the nursery yellow, and Elodie sews a matching baby blanket.
Elodie’s parents don’t come back to the bakery. Elodie misses them, so Pierre goes to convince them to visit. Elodie’s father answers the door. “We’d like you to come for dinner,” he says. “The nursery is almost finished, and we want to show you.”
Elodie’s father shakes his head sadly. “We can’t, Pierre. You’ve chosen your way to handle this, and we can’t participate. It hurts too much.”
Pierre has no idea what he’s talking about.
Elodie’s father studies him, then sighs. “Come in. I want to give you something.”
Pierre follows Elodie’s father back into the kitchen, where he rifles through drawers for a few minutes, then turns and presses a crumpled paper into Pierre’s hand. “It was—it was Elodie’s favorite when we visited Paris, when she was small.” Pierre notices how he trips over Elodie’s name. “She demanded the baker give her the recipe so she could try it.” He smiles wistfully. Pierre can picture it, Elodie at eight or nine—he can’t remember which summer she went to Paris—standing on a stool at a bakery counter with her chin thrust forward, pencil and paper at the ready, demanding the baker tell her how to make whatever confection delighted her so. Pierre smiles too as he unfolds the paper, and then he recoils.
Elodie’s father has given Pierre a recipe for madeleines. Pierre is sure he’s trying to trick him, though he can’t fathom the reason, but everyone has heard of Marcel Proust and his magical madeleines. Proust’s lemon cookies that bring back times lost, that make you remember what you have forgotten.
Pierre is about to shout at Elodie’s father, and he’s not even sure why, because he hasn’t forgotten anything, but then he realizes the recipe is indeed written in Elodie’s loopy hand. It is not a lie. These were her favorites, and perhaps there is nothing more to it.
Still, when he returns to the bakery, Pierre folds the recipe for madeleines carefully and tucks it at the very bottom of his drawer of recipes he hopes to try one day.
Elodie brings him an éclair with a sad smile. “They aren’t coming, are they?” she says. Pierre shakes his head miserably. He doesn’t understand what is wrong. But when he bites into it, all of the unsettling feelings inside Pierre fade away.
Another month passes. Pierre is lost in a haze of crisp puffs of pate à choux and chocolate glaze and Elodie’s hand in his and her laughter and singing and smile on the beach in the sunset. Winter turns to spring. Pierre paints the nursery green. Spring turns to summer. The streets of Nice fill with the city people on summer vacations, some strangers, but plenty of familiar faces from years past. Pierre paints the nursery yellow.
A young woman Pierre has never seen before comes into the bakery with a baby strapped to her chest. Elodie coos over the baby, and the woman smiles at her as she hands over her money. “Just you wait,” she says, reaching out to touch Elodie’s belly. The woman leaves, and Elodie’s face falls. And Pierre knows there is something wrong he should have noticed before. It has been months since— It has been months and Elodie’s belly has not grown past that first bump. Why is their child not growing? Why has their child not been born?
He is still troubled when an older woman comes into the bakery a few minutes later. Pierre knows her. She has been coming to Nice every summer since he and Elodie were children and Elodie’s parents were running the bakery. Elodie is back in the kitchen now. The older woman asks about brioche, but there are only éclairs. When did he stop making anything but éclairs? Pierre realizes he doesn’t know. But then the woman drops the pretense. She leans across the counter and cups his cheek in her hand. “I was so sorry to hear about the accident,” she murmurs.
After she is gone, Pierre finds Elodie crying in the kitchen, her tears flooding down her cheeks and splashing into a fresh saucepan of pate à choux. He hurries to her side and pulls her into his arms.
“There’s something wrong with me,” she says.
“No, no, you’re perfect.”
“No, there is something wrong with me. I shouldn’t be here. I’m stuck. And our baby…” Her hand drops to her belly, and sobs wrack her shoulders. “She will never be born, will she?”
Pierre doesn’t know, but he can’t stand her sorrow, so he says, “Of course you should be here, Elodie.” He plucks an éclair off the wrack and holds it out to her, but she pushes it away and sets her hand on the counter to steady herself. No. Her hand is on the hot stove.
Pierre cries out and pulls her away. Elodie stares at her palm, confused. Her skin is unburned. “How…?” Pierre whispers.
“There was an accident,” Elodie says. And Pierre realizes she put her hand on the stove on purpose. He is shocked and horrified and so, so confused.
Elodie sinks into sadness. She does not weep again, and she avoids the stove, but she has become a pale, silent shadow of the vibrant girl she was just a few days ago. She does not sing or dance. She barely helps with the éclairs and won’t face the customers anymore. She is quiet for hours on end, gazing into the distance with her trembling lips pressed tight together.
“Elodie, darling, what’s wrong?” Pierre pleads with her one evening.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she whispers. One hand cups her belly. The fingers of her other hand trace the wood grain of the counter by touch. “There was an accident, and I’m trapped. And I’m trapping you. You can’t live like this.”
But this is how Pierre wants to live, making éclairs in their little seaside bakery with Elodie by his side. He paints the nursery pink. Elodie said the baby was a girl. He buys an expensive doll from a shop and lays her in the cradle, waiting for their baby. He builds a dresser and paints it white with little pink roses on the trim.
Elodie remains distant.
Pierre doesn’t understand until the next week, when an older gentleman brings him a family recipe for almond croissants and begs him to bring his son back. His son died last year from the influenza. “I know you can do it,” the man says. He glances at the trays and trays of éclairs, then behind him, to where Elodie sits, pale and quiet, with a half-knitted baby blanket in her lap, her mouth open in a perfect “Oh.” The truth hits Pierre, and it is like someone has punched a hole in his chest. No amount of éclairs will erase this. Not again.
“Please,” the old man says.
But Pierre thinks of Elodie’s parents’ sorrow and worry and sick horror at him. He remembers that he missed a funeral.
When did he last leave the bakery? When was the last time he cared about anything but making éclairs to keep the truth at bay, to keep Elodie with him, whatever the cost.
He pushes the recipe for almond croissants back toward the old man, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”
Pierre and Elodie sit at the kitchen table, studying the madeleine recipe. They have decided that he has to remember all of it.
“I don’t know what will happen,” Pierre says.
“We have to try,” Elodie says.
“I can’t lose you,” Pierre says.
Elodie touches his face. “I can’t stay. I don’t belong here. I love you, Pierre. I love you so much. But I’ve been feeling like something is wrong for months, and this is it. And you can’t live like this forever. You know you can’t.”
He is going to say no. He can’t do this. He just can’t.
Elodie catches his face between her hands. “If I stay, I am just torturing my family. I’m torturing you, even if you don’t know it, Pierre. Please. You have a whole life to live. You deserve so much more than to live it with a dead girl.”
“But you are all I want,” Pierre whispers. “Please, Elodie, don’t do this.”
She leans her forehead against his. “Please, Pierre. For me.”
And so they make the madeleines.
They went dancing on New Year’s Eve, giddy with the end of the war and the dwindling of influenza. It was raining when they left the dance hall, so Pierre waved down a taxi. He helped Elodie inside, out of the wet, but then his attention was caught by a paper boy shouting about some headline—he doesn’t remember what it was now, and it doesn’t matter—it wasn’t worth it. He stepped away, for just a moment, to buy the paper.
He stepped away, and the driver took off, wheels screaming.
Pierre watched, helpless, clutching the stupid paper, as the driver swerved around the corner, too fast, skidding on the wet road, and crashed into the guardrail at the edge of the promenade, crashed straight through it, and fell, fell into the Paillon flooding from its culvert into the sea.
Pierre is weeping. Half of a lemon cookie is crushed into a pulp in his hand.
Elodie holds him close, stroking his back and hair as he sobs into her chest.
“I should have been with you,” he whispers.
“No. No, Pierre, I’m so glad you weren’t.” She is weeping too.
“I’m sorry.” And he doesn’t know if he’s apologizing for not being with her when she died or for dragging her back into a world where she doesn’t belong anymore. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Shhhh. It’s all right. You’re going to be all right.”
“Not without you.” His heart is breaking, and it is not for the first time. After everything he has done to keep her here, she wants to leave, and who is he to stop her? Now that she knows, she will not be happy here. And now that he knows… He can barely look at her, and he is horrified with himself. This is not honoring her. It is not letting her rest in peace. For heaven’s sake, he missed her funeral. He keeps coming back to that small fact. He missed his wife’s funeral.
So he weeps now, and finally, he lets her go.
“I love you,” Elodie murmurs. She presses a kiss into his hair. “I love you so, so much, Pierre.” And then she fades away, and Pierre is alone in the kitchen, sobbing into his own hands.
Slowly, he stands. He brings the trays of éclairs out onto the street for anyone to take, than hangs up the closed sign. Finally, he sits back at the kitchen table. His tea has gone cold, but he chooses another madeleine and dips it into the cup anyway.
He will remember that night in the rain, the taxi’s screaming wheels, the grating crash of metal on metal, that final splash. He will remember standing at the gaping hole, strangers’ hands holding him back as he screamed for Elodie. He will remember her face, blue and still but twisted in fear, when they pulled her from the river. He will grieve her. But he will keep making the madeleines. He will keep remembering. And one day, when he dips that little lemon cookie into his tea and takes a bite, he will remember something sweet.
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Jameyanne Fuller is a space lawyer by day, writer by night. Sometimes she sleeps. Her short fiction has been published in over a dozen magazines and anthologies, most recently Cast of Wonders, Andromeda Spaceways, and Electric Spec. When she isn’t writing, Jameyanne enjoys tandem bicycling around D.C., trying out complicated recipes, and going for long walks with her editorial assistants, Frolic and Neutron. Follow her on Tumblr and BlueSky @JameyanneFuller or visit her website at www.jameyannefuller.com.