How to Bake a Perfect Life Page 12

  Changed forever. But still me. I shaped the loaves and set them on the stove where the pilot light helped them rise a little better.

  When Poppy and I went to Denver the week before last to get her special flours, I’d bought a good looseleaf notebook and some markers and, on a whim, sheet protectors, slippery and attractive. Now, as the loaves rose, I used the markers to write on the front: RAMONA’S BOOK OF BREADS. In the best handwriting I could manage, I copied the white-bread recipe that had been the first one I’d figured out, then I included the one I made tonight.

  After that I added dividers to the notebook and labeled one of them Experiments. On the following sheet of paper I wrote, Experiments with levains, and faithfully recorded my two failed starts. #3 started on June 20, 1985.

  I put down my pen and waddled over to the counter, where I’d left the new starter. I smelled it, and for the first time there was the faintest hint of sourness. I stuck my little finger into it and tasted it. Still pretty floury, but was that a tiny hint of something else? Something more pleasant?

  Cheered, I recorded the observable changes, then put my loaves in the oven and sat in a kitchen smelling of bread until the moon was high in the sky. When the bread came out, hot and rich and perfectly brown, I cut a giant slice for the baby and me, buttered it, and ate it outside under the stars. It was the best thing I had ever tasted in my life.

  Only then, alone in the darkness, with bread I had created with my own hands, did I allow myself to think of Jonah and the sharp, sweet thing that had sprung up between us that afternoon, something as wild as an invisible yeast and just as powerful.

  RAMONA’S BOOK OF BREADS

  SOFT AND DELICIOUS WHEAT BREAD

  If you are pregnant or overwhelmed or full of disaster, this bread will cool your overheated spirit. Start it in the late afternoon on a waxing moon and let the evening spirits whisper you into stillness. Such a hearty bread requires a long kneading time, which will dispel a good deal of darkness from even the heaviest heart, and the scent of the baking will untie knots of misunderstanding.

  ¾ cup milk

  1 T honey

  ½ cup lukewarm water

  1 tsp dry yeast

  ¾ cup water

  1 T salt

  1 cup sourdough starter

  1⁄3 cup oil

  2 cups white flour

  6–7 cups whole-wheat flour

  Scald milk and let stand until lukewarm. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix honey into lukewarm water and sprinkle yeast over the top. Let stand for 10 minutes. Mix milk with ¾ cup of water, add salt, sourdough starter, and oil. Pour into yeast/water mixture and stir well. Add white flour and stir, then begin adding wheat flour 2 cups at a time. When a rough ball has formed, cover with a damp towel and let stand for 20 minutes.

  Turn the dough onto a floured surface and begin to knead with firm, sure strokes, until the dough feels smooth and elastic, about 12–15 minutes. Put the dough into an oiled bowl and turn until the entire surface is oiled. Cover with a damp towel and put in a draft-free spot to rise until doubled in bulk, usually an hour to an hour and a half.

  Turn the dough out again onto a floured surface and punch it down. Let it rest for 20 minutes, then knead again for 5–8 minutes. Divide into 2 large-size loaves and put each into a well-oiled pan to rise again for another hour. Bake in a 350-degree oven for 1 hour, or until loaves are golden brown and pull away from the sides of the pan. Tip out onto wire racks and let cool.

  My mother came back on Saturday, a few days before my birthday, as promised, and took me to shop at Cinderella City mall, which had a whole area in the basement where the shops all looked like a medieval village. I loved it down there, and my mom knew it. I didn’t want clothes, so she let me pick out earrings, some cute socks with toes, and two records, which I was pretty sure was a way to tell me she was sorry for her fit in the record store with Jonah, not that she said so. I bought Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual, and then, thinking about what Jonah had said about his favorites, a Rolling Stones album with a zipper on the cover. My mom said, “I love that record,” which almost made me put it back, but I didn’t.

  She never said a single thing about our big fight, or the fact that I was now talking seriously with two couples about adoption, or even if I could come home on my birthday, which was the next Wednesday. Every year, my birthday was always the same: a big party at the pool, then tacos and strawberry shortcake with everybody. I kept wondering if she was going to take me home as a surprise, but when we got back to Poppy’s, she hugged me really hard and said, “I can’t wait until you’re home again. I love you.”

  I managed not to cry until she was out of sight down the road, and then, because I didn’t want even Poppy to know how stupid I was for hoping, I went to the garden. There were squashes now, yellow and green, and tiny balls of pumpkins along the fence, and cherry tomatoes and big green tomatoes. I kicked at weeds with the toe of my sandal, and pretty soon one of the barn cats came out—stalking me through the corn, reaching out to spat my foot, then dashing into the shadows. It was a little orange-and-white ball of fluff with the prettiest face you ever saw. Some of the barn cats were skittish, but this one didn’t mind being picked up. I captured him and put him on my shoulder, listening to him purr.

  It was July. The baby would be born at the end of August and I could finally go home. In four days, I would be sixteen.

  I could not imagine being lonelier.

  Poppy made my tacos and strawberry shortcake on the big day. Nancy came down from Denver to share the celebration, and her present to me was a book about Paris breads and an apron with Boulanger—which meant “baker”—embroidered across the chest in script. I pretended to be cheered up by their singing and presents and by opening the gifts my mother had left. There was a bracelet Steph wove at camp and a small statue of a cat from Ryan. My baby sister Sarah, only eight, drew a picture of a unicorn, and Liam made a doll of Popsicle sticks covered with a lot of glue and glitter, which almost made me cry. He’s still so little!

  My dad signed the card but didn’t write anything else, just Love, Dad. I guess he’s mad at me, too.

  Sixteen. Big deal.

  That weekend was a festival for the town’s jubilee or something. At midday, Poppy and I took a picnic supper into town so we could watch the fireworks from the top of the rock, which didn’t look like a castle to me but just another mesa rock like the billions of others around here. I wanted someday to see a real castle, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t look like that.

  Anyway, she let me stop at the library first while she went around to meet some of her friends for coffee. It had been so hot that I sometimes read a book a day. We got up early, worked in the garden, baked, or canned, then I read through the afternoon and through the clockwork thunderstorms that rolled in every single day. Nancy brought big fat books she thought I’d like, and I peeled through those, too. Poppy wanted me to read “better” books, something like Anna Karenina, but Nancy rolled her eyes. “Please. Krantz is going to feel a lot better right now than Tolstoy.”

  At the library, I stocked up on glitz and stuffed them all into my backpack and wandered out into the heat of the late afternoon. Black clouds bore down from the west, flashing threads of lightning. Walking rain, smeary against the horizon, marched toward us, and a wind swept my skirt right up to my nose. I grabbed it with one hand and my hair with the other and closed my eyes against a second blast, turning my back to it.

  “Better get inside!” a man called, slamming his car door.

  Guiltily, I gauged the distance between me and the record store, wondering if I could make it before the rain caught me. Nearly two full blocks, but straight downhill. If I wasn’t pregnant, I could have dashed that distance in half a minute. Now probably not.

  But maybe only a minute and a half. Twisting my hair, I tucked it under my backpack straps, then kept my skirt in my hands and hurried down the street. I had to stop for traffic at Main Street, and the first of the rain started
pattering toward me, splashing on the hot sidewalk and sending up that hot, salty smell. The first drops on my skin were startling and cold. A truck clattered by, and I took the chance to dash across the street.

  It was like running into a wall of rain. Drops splattered all over me, on my nose and head, my arms and belly. Even running, I couldn’t avoid getting soaked or stung by the hail. By the time I flung myself into the record store, my hair was dripping and my arms were dotted with red marks from the hail. The entryway bell rang and I slammed the door closed again. The hail roared out of the west with a sound like a thousand baseballs falling from the sky, slamming the roof and hitting the sidewalk so hard they bounced as high as my waist. “Wow.” I wiped water off my face and turned around.

  Jonah was coming out of the back, a stack of records in his hands. He stopped dead still and looked at me with a little frown. I wanted to sink right through the floor.

  “Hello there,” he said finally, and put the records down on the counter. “You look wet.”

  I held out my dripping dress. “Kinda.”

  “Let me find you a towel. Stay right there.” He disappeared into the back and returned with a big blue towel. “Might not be elegant, but it should do the trick.”

  I was starting to shiver as I took the towel and rubbed my face, then dried my neck and arms. Jonah only stood there. “Are you okay?”

  My teeth chattered. “Just cold.”

  He gestured for me to follow him. Overhead, the hail pounded as if there was a war, and I sloshed forward, my feet squishing in my sandals. The books in my bag were heavy, and I suddenly worried that they might be damaged. “Yikes, these are library books!” I peered in to see if they were okay, holding the towel around my shoulders. Jonah disappeared again and came back with a heavy sweater in browns and blues. “Slip this on.”

  “I don’t want to mess it up.”

  “Don’t be silly.” He held it patiently. “It’s warm.”

  Taking the towel off my shoulders, I pulled the sweater over my head. I had to tug it down over my belly, but that didn’t stretch it out. A heady scent came out of the wool—cloves and oranges and something that made those prickles along my back stand up again. I got goose bumps all over, and without thinking I lifted it to my nose to sniff it more deeply. It was then that I realized it was his smell, and he was watching me with a funny expression.

  He balled the towel up in his hands, tossed it back and forth like a basketball. Looked over his shoulder. “Quite a storm.”

  “Yeah, it is.” I felt weirdly dizzy. We were kind of close. A lock of his hair had fallen out of the ponytail, and I suddenly wondered what it would look like if it was loose, falling over his shoulders. I wondered how it would feel, that shiny thick brown hair. Even though a rubber band held it back, I could tell it was slightly wavy.

  I couldn’t think of anything to say, and I sat down on the stool by the counter, pulling the sleeves down over my hands a little bit. After a minute, he put the towel down. “Want a cup of tea?”

  “Yeah! Can you make it here?”

  “Sure can. Be back in a sec. I’ll just start the kettle boiling.”

  When he was gone, I lifted my sweater-covered hands to my nose and inhaled deeply again, filling my lungs, my body, with his smell. It gave me the oddest feeling—swaying, unsteady, like being in a boat when a water-skier went by.

  The music had been rock and roll–ish and now it changed to classical. “Do you know what this is?” he asked when he returned, carrying two mugs of tea. It smelled of oranges and spice, and my stomach growled slightly.

  “Guitar?” I guessed.

  “Right. Very good. It is a man named Andrés Segovia. He’s a Spanish guitarist. It’s very rich music. I think you might like it.” He picked up a small suitcase from the counter behind him, which was scattered with papers and an adding machine and pens and rubber bands and notes. “Do you play backgammon?”

  I had never heard of it. Anxiously, I shook my head.

  “It’s easy. I’ll teach you.” He glanced toward the weather. “These storms never last that long, but while it’s going, we’re stuck.”

  “Okay.” It made me feel grown up, a taste of what adults did to pass the time. He opened the suitcase to show a dark felt board with alternating white and brown leather arrows sewn onto it. The pieces were white and brown, too, smooth cold disks he showed me how to lay out around the board. The guitar music danced around us, lilting and then solid, quiet and lacy, thoughtful then passionate. I cocked my head, listening, and suddenly the baby started to move. “I think she’s dancing!” I said with a laugh.

  “She?”

  I shrugged. “It sounds better than ‘it.’ ” She was swirling, doing somersaults. It made me feel slightly off-kilter, and I began to hum with the music, rubbing the elbows and knees and body parts inside my belly. For a minute I was lost in it, thinking of the elbow, her hands, the swirl and sway, as if she really could hear the music.

  “That must be pretty amazing,” Jonah said. “To have a person inside you.”

  “It’s kind of weird.” I looked up. “And interesting. I think she does like the music.”

  “How about you? Do you like it?”

  “Yeah. It’s not what I usually listen to, but it’s nice.”

  He nodded and began to tell me how to play the game. I didn’t get it at first, mainly because my brain was roaring with a thousand things—like the way he kept his bad hand tucked in his lap and played with his left, and the look of his long throat in the quiet light, and how close our knees were.

  Finally, though, because I didn’t want to look like an airhead—which I wasn’t at all—I concentrated and played for real. Although I didn’t win the first round, I got close.

  We played again. And as we played, our eyes on the pieces, we talked. About when my baby was due and how long he’d been living back in Castle Rock. I told him I liked watching MTV, and he said he did, too—but only sometimes. Sometimes, he said, the values were too materialistic.

  “That’s what Poppy says.” And a sudden wrenching sense of guilt twisted my tummy. I looked outside and the sun was beginning to peek through. “I guess I need to go find her pretty soon. She’ll be worried.”

  “She’ll understand about the rain.”

  I nodded, not at all sure that was true.

  “Sorry you got in trouble last time,” he said, and his voice seemed deeper, richer.

  “My mom was being weird,” I said, unable to look at him.

  “Parents only want to take care of their kids, Ramona.”

  To my horror, a welter of tears built in my throat. “I don’t know how long she’s going to stay mad at me about this. It’s terrible how she looks at me now.”

  “She loves you. I could see that.”

  I pressed the tops of my fists together. Nodded.

  Poppy came in then, the bell over the door banging loudly. “I thought I might find you here.”

  She didn’t sound mad, but I stood up anyway. “It was raining really hard. I didn’t know what to do.”

  Hiking her bag over her shoulder, she came up to the counter and leaned her elbows on it. “Backgammon! I haven’t played that in a long time.”

  “It’s fun. Do you have a board at home?”

  “I could probably get one next time we go to Denver.” She inclined her head. “You like board games, don’t you?”

  “My family plays them a lot.”

  Jonah collected the disks and settled them a few at a time into their places. He did it without much thought, but I saw the moment when he made to use his missing finger and three of them fell out of the space where the finger should have been. They clattered onto the counter, and one rolled away and fell on the floor, and I leapt up to grab it, chasing it under the lip of the counter before capturing it. “Got it!”

  His cheekbones were red when he held out his hand, palm up. “Thanks.”

  “We’d better get our errands done, Ramona,” Poppy said. “Wil
l we see you tonight at the fireworks, Jonah?”

  “I’m not sure. Some family friends are coming in today, and I’ve been summoned to my mother’s house for dinner.” He gave her a wry smile. “You know my mother.”

  “I do, son, I do. Enjoy.”

  I started to take off the sweater, but Jonah stilled my hand. “It’s chilly out there. You can bring it to me when you go to the farmers’ market next week.”

  “Okay, thanks.” I didn’t look back as we headed out, but I felt twenty feet tall, cloaked in Jonah’s sweater, and I kept wondering as we walked through town if anyone would realize it was his, that he’d loaned it to me.

  Poppy had to run a million errands before the fireworks. When she stopped at a friend’s house to take her some bread, I was too tired to go inside with her, and I begged off and curled up in the backseat for a nap. Jonah’s sweater was almost too warm, but I kept it on, letting the scent of it fill my head as I drifted off. Beneath my hands on my belly, the baby was quiet, as if she was sleeping, too.

  Suddenly I thought of her as whole. A person who was going to grow up and have favorite foods and hate to wear certain things and love to dance. I thought of her at three, with chubby feet and hands, and a pain like twelve knives went through my heart. I would never see her at three, or twelve—or at sixteen, like me. Opening my hands, I pressed palms and fingers in a net over my belly, feeling her. As if in response, a knob moved against my palm. From the corners of my eyes, tears leaked in a slow river into my hair.

  What if I didn’t want to give her away?

  The thought stayed with me, beating like a heart, through our picnic in the park, where we ate cheese sandwiches and sliced tomatoes from our garden. Little kids spun around in circles and screeched for the fireworks to start and held sparklers far away from their bodies.

  Poppy asked, “Are you all right, sweetie? You’re awfully quiet.”

  “I’m just thinking,” I said.

  She looked at me for a long moment. “If you ever want to talk, let me know. I’ll listen, I promise.”