IMMACULATE CONCEPTION AND THE IDIOT CHILD

I’m not a mother but I have given birth. I didn’t have sex to conceive my child, so in many ways, I liken myself to the Virgin Mary. We differ, however, in the character and quality of our offspring. The lovely, and saintly mother of all Christians immaculately gave birth to a child that would become king and heavenly father to millions. I attempted to single-handedly give birth to a child who I prayed would make me queen, and millions. What I conceived was a sweet idiot that made me a slave and a pauper: my bakery and cafe.

Businesses are like babies. They are toughest to manage in their infancy stage, but they’re running pretty much on their own by the age of three. If you’ve made it to that milestone, you’re almost there. This Mary’s child became a toddler but still couldn’t walk or feed itself — it needed mommy’s attention 24/7.

I had no time to socialize or nurture relationships — my good friends became acquaintances and romantic dates became but a distant memory. What little time I had off was as precious as the ill-afforded, rare manicure, or hair color that didn’t come from a box.

I warned the staff not to call me when I took a break unless the store was on fire. But more often than not, I’d get urgent calls.

“Mary, how do I turn the lights off?”

“See the switch on the wall? That’ll do the trick!”

“Mary, we’re out of skim milk what should we do?”

“Take money from petty cash and buy a quart at the corner deli.”

Too often I bit my tongue and hid the bitch because that silly employee was a warm body, that watched the store while I was out.

I was destined for a life in food. I have been baking since I was eight and cooking full menus and catering family events since I was in my early teens. In New York City, I pushed my way into this line of work in my twenties while temping at a famous advertising agency, sitting in front of a computer, word processing and creating documents with footers, headers and all.

As I typed my fingers to the bone to the pay rent for my Hell’s Kitchen apartment, I salivated for a chance to work in that agency’s executive kitchen. To me, that was where the agency’s real source of creative inspiration lived. I dreamt about styling food for Pyrex and Pan Am commercials. Cherry pie bubbling red and hot in heat resistant glass… Eating the world on a Pan Am international flight… Ay Dios mio, if only.

I made it known to all that would listen, that I was a pro in the kitchen, just in case the chef ever called in sick or needed an assistant.

As most chefs do, the well-regarded one that manned that kingdom walked out in a fit of rage in the middle of a busy day: there entered Mary. Channeling grandma and making food for the advertising gurus that could sell poop in a box, I was in heaven. I was able to play the part and put out decent food thanks to Gourmet Magazine and Julia Child.

This is how it started for me in the world of food. In those early stages of my culinary career, I really didn’t know what I was doing, and I have to be honest, most of the time, I still don’t. But I always manage somehow because I’m either delusional or have extraordinarily large ovaries.

My exaggerated confidence probably comes from being raised by an old woman as an only child. Rarely a day went by where my grandmother didn’t say, “Mami, you are so beautiful, or “Mami, you are so special, talented, and smart.” What she forgot to say was, Mami, work at a bakery before you open one! Learn on someone else’s dime. The old woman that was delighted by my endless capabilities created a huge sense of false intelligence and aggrandized self-confidence that gave me a run for my money and wits.

After spending a few years working in kitchens I reentered the corporate world with the same feigned gusto. I spent a few years on Wall Street and another few in the financial news and entertainment world.

A couple of months after my adored adopted city was brought to its knees by the devastating blow that was 9/11, I lost the six-figure job I had working as a media executive. I decided it was time to go back to my roots and follow my food dreams. I took my life’s savings and invested them all in my child, Mary’s off Jane Bakery. No double entendre here folks, I’m Mary and my shop was off Jane Street.

I was working for a male chauvinistic pig at the time. I can still taste his self-importance in my mouth just writing about him. I can still visualize him sitting in his corner office, leaning back on his expensive leather chair, arms extended behind his neck with his Prada covered little feet on his desk. During a long boring meeting, he once said, “I come from Cuban pedigree.” He comes from pedigree all right, the son-of-a-bitch looks like a Pekinese dog.

Off I went to work 18-hour days seven days a week and run myself poor and ragged. After months at an impossible pace, I hired a general manager that knew the baby’s infancy weaknesses all too well — he embezzled a chunk of my working capital. Funny how someone as smart as me could fall in like with a con man that doubled as an Irish nanny. But it’s tough being an only parent, particularly when you have a special needs child.

I wasn’t down for the count, though, little is impossible for this Mary; I learned how to steal from Peter to pay Paul, and surrounded myself with wonderful people that cared about me, and the business. But, along with the wonderful people came tribes of thieves, simpletons, and transients.

My shop survived embezzlement, dozens of ill-fit employees, two blackouts, and a water-main break that devastated it’s already weak constitution. As luck would have it, the water main, which ran directly in front of my shop, predated any city plans.

On that cold, blustery January day, our poor city workers ran around like Keystone cops looking for the shut-off valve in order to help save the baby from drowning. But they were late. The poor child needed four months to recuperate from the water that entered every nook and cranny of its existence. It was saved but left weaker than it was before it’s near death experience.

Because I am so brilliant, the insurance carrier turned its back on me, and I was forced to settle with the city that owns the water-mains for less than what I owed in attorney fees. But when in a bind you take what you can.

For a while, I continued to stroke the idiot child, and watch the employees that baby-sat it, like a hawk. But the near-drowning never allowed the child to stand again I went down in its wake.