Her Story

Brewella Noir was never a simple woman.

She married well, twice, and buried better. What the settlements bought was passage — long crossings, steamer trunks, and a great deal more luggage coming home than went out. Antwerp, Lisbon, a winter in Trieste she still refuses to discuss. Whatever caught her eye came back with her, and she has never once apologized for a purchase.

She chose Lakewood because the light was good and the rent was not yet criminal. She took the smallest storefront on Madison, papered it black and white, and unpacked everything she had ever collected. The cake stands. The small ceramic animals of uncertain history. The glassware she insists was a gift.

Then she started making crêpes, having developed firm opinions about crêpes somewhere between the second husband and the third crossing.

Eight times a year she strips the room to nothing and does it over. Spring gets sprigs. October gets spiders, crocheted by hand, every one. December gets snowflakes, cut one at a time, and there are hundreds. She is aware this is unreasonable. She considers it the entire point of having a room.

The house is small on purpose. Nineteen seats, first come. Two burners, which means about five minutes a crêpe and no way around it — thirty or forty on a Saturday, and somebody will tell you before you commit. She would rather you waited for something good than hurried through something fine.

Nearly everything on the shelves wears a price tag, because she believes objects should keep moving. If you fall for the cake stand, the cake stand goes home with you. She will not be sentimental about it in front of you.

Brewella has never worked a day in her life, on account of being invented. The wallpaper is real. The shelves are real. The crêpes come out exactly as she would want them.

— B.