How to Bake a Perfect Life Read online

  “No problem.” I glance at my mother, widening my eyes to say, Where did you find this sunny child? Her mask cracks slightly and she grins. “Katie has an aptitude for flowers. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

  “Not at all.” I frown at Cat, who is still standing there in the middle of the kitchen. “Thanks for everything, Cat,” I say pointedly. “I’ll see you later.”

  He lifts a finger. “Right. So long, ladies. Enjoy your flowers.”

  “I’m hungry,” Katie says. “Are there any more doughnuts?”

  “No more doughnuts,” I say.

  “Have a sandwich or something, sweetie,” Lily says.

  Our eyes meet over her head. My mother’s eyes say, This is not finished.

  “It isn’t what you think,” I say aloud, crossing my arms.

  She raises an eyebrow in disappointment, and it is as devastating as it was when I was seven or fifteen or twenty. “Really.”

  Katie is in the fridge, comfortably taking out sliced turkey and mustard, and I’m glad, at least, for that. “What’s not?” she says, oblivious to the undercurrents.

  “Nothing, kiddo,” I say. “You want some iced tea?”

  • • •

  My cell phone rings later, as I am refreshing the sourdough starters. I glance at the unfamiliar number and debate whether I should answer. I’m not interested in talking to solicitors. “Hello?”

  “Mom?”

  “Sofia!” I head out into the backyard. Merlin follows me. “What’s up? It must be very late there.”

  “It is.” Her voice sounds squashed. “Past midnight. I couldn’t sleep. How’s Katie doing?”

  “She’s with your grandmother, planting flowers.”

  Sofia gives a soft laugh. “Gram must love that.”

  “Yeah.” For a long moment I listen to the silence, the phone pressed tightly to my ear for fear I might miss some clue. Between us, the air rushes, sounding like the ocean that divides us. “What’s on your mind, honey?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want you to worry about me, okay, because I know you have other things on your mind, but you’re the person I really need to talk to. Can you promise to just let me fall apart without needing to solve my problems?”

  “Do I do that?”

  “Yes. You’re a fixer. That’s your entire impulse, and it’s okay, but it’s not going to work for me right now.”

  “Okay. I promise.” I rub a hand over my belly. “Fall apart.”

  “I don’t know if he’s going to live. He has so many things wrong and he’s really burned. I don’t know if he’ll want to live. I don’t know what to say when he’s lying there to—” Words give out and a puff of air comes through instead. I can see her in my imagination, hand pushing through her thick dark hair, making the bangs stand up. “I don’t know what I’m calling you for.”

  I take a breath and try to find the right non-fix-it words. “Because you know I love you. Because you know I’d rather hear your voice than any other on the planet. Because I’m thinking about you and it’s really good to hear from you.”

  “Yeah. All those things. The funny thing is, Mom, there’s no list to make this any better. I don’t know what to do,” she says, and begins to cry. “I have to be strong. For him. For Katie. For my own baby. And I have no idea how. I don’t know if I’m that strong.”

  Tears well up in my own eyes, but it’s absolutely critical that she not hear them. I blink and look up at the tops of the lilac bushes. “Close your eyes.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now imagine for one minute that you’re standing in the backyard with me. There’s a soft breeze, and it smells almost too much of lilacs. Somebody nearby is watering their lawn, and the sprinkler is making that tick-tick-tick sound. Milo is sitting at your feet.”

  “Okay. This is good.” Her voice is still wavery but better.

  “Now imagine, sweetheart, that I am taking your hand. Can you feel it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m right there with you. I’m always holding your hand. I am always here, whenever you need me. You are not alone.”

  “Imagine that I’m putting my head on your shoulder now, and just let me do that.”

  I close my eyes and imagine that I truly can hold her, that her face is pressed into my neck, soaking my shirt. Tears pour out of my eyes, down my face, as Sofia cries in my ear.

  After a time, she sniffles hard. “Okay. Thank you. I love you, Mom. I’m holding your hand.”

  “I feel it. Get some sleep. That will help, too.”

  “Light some candles, or have Grandma do it, okay? We need them.”

  “Consider it done. I love you, baby.”

  “I love you, too,” she says, and hangs up.

  Holding the phone in one hand, I rub the yawning ache in my chest with the other. My hair falls over my shoulders—too long for someone my age, I know it is—but there is no cutting it. It is the thing that is most myself, no matter what anyone else thinks. At moments like this, it’s like a cape shielding me from the world.

  My poor girl. My poor, poor baby.

  Merlin has been sitting with me, and now he jumps up as if he’s been called. He trots across the garden, walking carefully between the rows of new squash and corn, and heads for the open corner. There is an altar there that my grandmother erected years and years ago, and Merlin lies down alertly before it, paws neatly placed in front of him, his head high, as if he is listening.

  “What are you doing, you funny dog?”

  He looks over his shoulder at me and woofs softly, then looks back at the altar. Curious, I follow him. A garden statue of a saint I don’t remember stands amid a low border of alyssum. In the dimming evening, the flowers almost seem to have a light of their own, and I swear I can hear humming. It triggers an old hymn in my mind, something we used to sing with guitars—“Alleluia.”

  Merlin lets go of a soft, joyous woof and his tail wags slowly. I sit down next to him in the cool grass, thinking I could do worse than pray for my daughter here in this sacred space where my grandmother said her own prayers so often. “Are you listening? Help her. Help him.” I stroke Merlin’s thick fur, trying to even think of what to ask for. “Let them find peace and happiness.”

  The song is running insistently through my mind. So I begin to sing aloud, for my daughter.

  Katie

  TO: [email protected]

  FROM: [email protected]

  SUBJECT: a letter you can read to my dad

  Dear Dad,

  I’m writing this from my stepgrandma’s house. I guess you already know Lily, because she’s Sofia’s grandma, too. We have been planting flowers in Lily’s garden all day, but more about that in a minute.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever been to this house, but it’s really, really cool. There is a lot of wood and a stone fireplace with two sides—kitchen and living room—so everybody can enjoy a fire! It’s kind of up in the hills, and Lily (don’t get mad at me for calling her by her first name, okay? She doesn’t like to be called Grandma) says they had it specially built in the ’70s when their restaurant was the number-one steakhouse in the whole state. Like, they hired an architeck and everything.

  The restaurant is called the Erin Steakhouse because their family is Irish, which you probably already know. We went there for dinner, and it’s pretty cool, up on top of this bluff so you can see all the lights in the city and the mountains. It was kinda old school, but the food was really good. I had a steak, and baked potato with butter and sour cream, and a salad with little blue cheese crumbles on it, and big dinner rolls. I asked Lily if Ramona comes here, but she said no. Kinda mad like. I get the feeling Lily is mad at Ramona, but I like them both, although I got really mad at Ramona for losing my dog last night. It turned out okay because a man found him and brought him home.

  Which I guess I haven’t even told you about Merlin! He’s a really cute dog, with white and orangey fur and a freckle on his nose. I love him.
/>   The last thing I want to tell you (I can’t believe how long this is getting! I’m glad I wrote you first) is about the flowers. We went to a greenhouse and it was filled with flowers in every color. Pink and yellow and white and blue and even green. Inside, it felt like a different planet, like I could breathe ten times better. Lily let me buy a bunch of things, some marigolds, which are orange and brown, and dahlias, which she says come in a lot of different kinds, and she has a bunch of them and they will start blooming in a few more weeks, she says, so I’ll take pictures and send them. She let me take one with her camera, and although she couldn’t figure out how to upload it, I did and it’s attached here for when you wake up. Me and the garden.

  Anyways, everything is okay here, but I really miss you, Dad, and I can’t wait until you come home.

  Love, Katie

  Katie is writing on the computer, which is on a built-in desk right next to a balcony looking down into the living room. It’s the best thing she’s ever seen in a house. In fact, the entire house is amazing, with the ceiling at all angles and hidden window seats piled up with pillows. Lily showed Katie to a room at the end of a long, long hallway and said she could use it whenever she was over. It used to be Ramona’s room, but it’s been decorated since then with turquoise and green rugs and a bed that’s kind of low to the ground. The window is really high, looking down a rocky ledge and over the mountains. The first time Katie looks out, she feels dizzy, but the view is of mountains upon mountains upon mountains, like velvet cutouts in layers and layers of blue.

  Although it makes her feel like a traitor, and a super-spoiled traitor at that, Katie thinks this room is ten times better than the one over the bakery, and that was the prettiest room she’d ever had before this. It scares her even to think it, as if maybe not appreciating it enough might make it go away.

  So she acts all bored (Nonchalant, she writes in her mind to Madison), like she’s seen these kinds of things a million times, even though she could stare out that window forever. It makes her feel quiet inside. And when Lily asked if she wanted to spend the night, it was really hard for Katie to say, “No, thank you. I have to take care of my dog.”

  “Oh, honey, Ramona can take care of Merlin. We can call and ask. If you want to stay, that is.”

  But she decides to just have dinner and then go home. She loves being able to get on the computer and surf around. She writes an email to Madison, telling her about the day, and then, looking over her shoulder just in case, she opens another email.

  TO: [email protected]

  FROM: [email protected]

  SUBJECT: from Katie, saying hi

  Hi, Mom.

  Just checking to see if you got email yet. I’m having a good time here, so don’t worry about me. Sofia’s grandma is really nice to me and she helped me plant a bunch of flowers today, but I miss you a LOT.

  She chews on her lip, thinking. What else can she say to her mother? By now she’s probably feeling pretty crummy. Katie has seen her get off meth before—three times, as a matter of fact. Once she lasted only a couple of weeks, another time it was a year—that was when Katie lived with Sofia and Oscar. It wasn’t bad living there; she just felt like a traitor about her mom. So when Lacey stayed clean for a whole year, and Oscar was deployed again, he let Katie go live with her mom, as long as she promised to let him know the minute Lacey started using again.

  Don’t think about that now.

  She writes:

  I know you probably don’t feel very good, but remember: You can do it! You got clean before and felt really good, remember? Once you get out, I can come and live with you again. I love you! Lots! Lots! Lots!

  Your daughter,

  Katie

  PS—Dad got hurt really bad in Afghanistan. Probably nobody told you, so I thought you should know.

  She wants to write more, wants to pour out her worst fear about her dad—not that he will die but that he will look like a soldier who used to shop at the commissary, his nose burned off, the skin of his face all pink and white and stiff. If he looks like that, how can she love him? It makes her shudder.

  And that makes her feel like the worst person in the world, that she would be afraid of her dad having a messed-up face even more than she would be afraid of him being dead.

  From the kitchen she hears voices, a man’s and a woman’s, and hurries to send off the email. Lily calls up to her, “Katie, my husband and daughters just got here with a beautiful peach pie. Why don’t you come down and have some with us?”

  “Sure. I’ll be right there.”

  She closes down the computer and heads down the big sweep of stairs, which are made of wood and all open, with a view out the top windows of more mountains and pine trees. She feels as if she’s in a movie, and it makes her stand a little straighter, imagining she’s a singer like Taylor Swift, coming down the stairs of her beautiful house. She’s so absorbed in the fantasy that she starts when a woman comes around the corner from the kitchen. She has streaky blond hair cut in a very straight line at her shoulders, with straight bangs across her forehead, and Katie knows right away she is Ramona’s sister, because they have exactly the same eyes. “Hi, Katie,” she says, holding out a hand as if Katie is a grown-up. “I’m Stephanie, Sofia’s aunt. And this,” she turns, to introduce another woman behind her, also blond with giant blue eyes like Sofia’s, “is my sister Sarah. She just got home from India, so we’re celebrating.”

  “Hi.” Katie lifts a hand. Sarah wears a glittery red scarf around her neck and looks exotic. Interesting. For a minute Katie wishes to look exactly like her. “Cool scarf,” she says.

  Sarah takes it off, winds it around Katie’s neck. “It’s yours. I have a million of them.”

  In wonder, Katie touches it. “Really?”

  “Hello there, pretty girl,” a man with a sweep of silver hair brushed back from his face says in a booming voice. “I am so happy to finally meet you.”

  Lily says, “Katie, this is my husband, James. You can call him Gramps if you want. Everybody else does.”

  “Beware,” Stephanie says. “He’s a terrible tease.”

  The man winks at her. “You takin’ good care of Ramona over there, toots?”

  “I guess.” Katie shrugs.

  “Leave the poor girl alone,” Lily says.

  “Where’s Liam?” Stephanie asks. “I hardly see him lately.”

  Lily waves a hand. “Nobody does. He’s working or he’s holed up in that studio of his, or he’s out with some woman. Not that I ever see any of them.”

  It’s as big a family as she’s ever met, and they’re all so nice to her. Why, then, does Katie feel so mad all of a sudden?

  Ramona

  On Sunday afternoon, my brother comes over to help me with a few small repairs around the old house and to help Katie train Merlin. The dog is utterly meek and mild in my brother’s hands, and Ryan exclaims several times, “Dang, this dog is smart!”

  After lunch, Katie goes upstairs to read. Ryan and I take tall glasses of iced tea to the backyard. He kicks his long legs up on a lawn chair and slides down, a baseball cap tipped down over his eyes. “How’s business?” he asks, too casually.

  “What did you hear?”

  “That you’re very thin on credit.”

  “How did you hear that? Hardly anyone knows!”

  He makes a noise. “Come on, Ramona. Everybody knows everything about everybody in this business. There are spies everywhere.”

  I take a breath. “It’s true. Please don’t tell Dad and Steph. I’ll work things out.”

  Not looking at me, he nods. After a minute he asks, “You ever think about pooling resources with the Gallagher Group, now that Dane is gone?”

  “Oh, yeah, right. Like they would welcome me with open arms.”

  “Did you ever think about it? All those resources, the central ordering, the accounting department … Could be sweet.”

  “No. The whole point is to prove that I’m not the idiot b
imbo they all think I am.”

  “Nobody thinks that! Only you do.”

  I shake my head. “Ryan, you don’t, but believe me, Dad doesn’t think I could run a truck around the block. If I have to admit that I’m over my head with this bakery, all that is reinforced.”

  He sits up and pulls his cap off. Black hair, exactly like my father’s, falls across his brow. “It’s going to be better to just lose the whole thing? Including Grandma’s house?”

  “No.” For a long minute I swing back and forth on the glider, my bare feet grazing the top of the grass. “I am drowning. That’s the truth. It was a good business plan, and I had plenty of capital and plenty of experience. It wasn’t as if I heedlessly dove into something without knowing what I was doing.”

  “I know that.”

  “The old-house building stuff has been more of a problem than I anticipated, but I probably could have managed that if the economy hadn’t tanked. I lost so much capital and lost value in the building and—”

  He reaches for my hand. “It’s been hard for all of us, Ramona. I know so many small businesses that have gone under. It’s not your fault. What I want you to do is recognize that the answer is not to go under out of pride or stubbornness.”

  “I don’t think I’m stubborn.”

  He laughs. “An unstubborn Gallagher has never been born. What can I do, sis?”

  “Help me brainstorm. Help me come up with ways to generate more income without a lot of extra overhead.”

  “That I can do.”

  By the time he leaves to open the pub, we have mapped out an entire list of possibilities. I can use the Internet to offer the breads to a different set of customers, perhaps using frozen doughs, and I’m going to brainstorm some more ideas about that with Jimmy and my Web designer.

  There are a lot of intense athletes in the city. Runners who train for the Ascent to the top of Pikes Peak every summer and other extreme races at high altitudes. Cyclists who ride the mountain passes to train for their races, whatever they are. They burn a bazillion calories and need high-quality carbs. They would love my healthy breads. Ryan and I come up with two plans to get the word out to them: I’m going to look into the possibility of offering my wares at race events, and I’m also going to take Katie with me to the trailheads and offer samples.