How to Bake a Perfect Life Read online

  I have no idea what the right thing to say might be. Listen, I think, just listen. “That must be crushing.”

  “It is. I’ve been waiting and praying for him to wake up. I have been sitting right beside him and reading aloud and trying to be encouraging, and now he’s finally awake and he can’t even stand the sight of me?”

  “I’m sure that’s not what it is, Sofia. He might be shocked and upset and angry, but not at you.”

  “I know. I keep telling myself that, too, but it’s hard. I’m not tough, like you.”

  I laugh a little. “I’m a real tough marshmallow, baby. What if I can send you some backup?”

  “Are you coming?” Her voice is filled with hope.

  It pierces me. “I can’t, honey, not if we are going to have any money at all. I can’t leave the business right this second, and there’s Katie.”

  “I know. I understand. But I wish you were here. It would make it so much better.”

  “How about a couple of aunties instead? Poppy and Nancy will come if you want them to. They’re so excited about it.”

  Her voice is quiet. “I know you love them, Mom, but they are kind of eccentric and this is an Army hospital, and … I don’t know.” She starts to cry softly, then swears. “Damn! I keep telling myself that crying doesn’t help, but I can’t seem to stop anyway.”

  For a minute I’m wondering about my choices. Would it be better to leave somebody else in charge of the bakery? Bring Katie with me to Texas to look out for Sofia?

  No. Impossible. “I would love to be there with you, Sofia. I hope you know that.”

  “I do. And you know I love the aunties. I just wish it was you.”

  How did I get so lucky to have this child who likes my company? Who needs and wants me? In a deliberately upbeat tone, I say, “Remember, Nancy is a midwife, and it won’t be so bad to have someone with medical training around. Oscar loves Poppy, too. Maybe that will help.”

  “Maybe.” She takes a breath. “When are they coming?”

  “They have to get things arranged—maybe a week or two. I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay. I guess I should let you get back to work. What kind of bread are you making today?”

  I tell her the names of the breads, the oatmeal sunflower and millet whole wheat and the sharply sour rustica. But what she wants is distraction and a sense of normality. “Oh, guess what? I met a guy from a long time ago, from when I was pregnant with you.”

  “No way! The sweater guy?”

  I blush to the top of my bra. I’d forgotten that I told her all about the sweater, which I do still have tucked away in a trunk of things I’ve kept. Sofia loved to go through it with me and have me tell stories about each thing. My roller skates, a scrapbook I made at church camp one year, an autograph book and pictures. And the sweater. She used to like to put it on. “Yeah. How weird is that? He found Katie’s dog when he got out of the yard one day and brought him back.”

  “So is he still hot?”

  I should never have brought this up. It feels girlish and idiotic to be talking about him so soon. As if it has the potential to be something.

  My mother is right. I should know better by now.

  But this is my daughter, who needs distraction. “Yes,” I say. “Way out of my league!” I laugh to show it doesn’t bother me, but I’m thinking of his house, the music playing, his calm, elegant manners.

  “Nobody is out of your league, Mom. You’re probably out of his.” A voice murmurs nearby and Sofia says something muffled. “Hey, I have to go. The doctors are going in.”

  “Love you! Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Kiss, love, bye!”

  I stand in the dark garden with the phone in my hand and send a prayer to my baby across the miles. Be well. Be safe. Be strong. A wind moves across the moonflowers, making them bounce, and my cat comes streaking out of the garden. For a minute it almost looks as if someone is standing there. Then a cloud shifts and the area is too dark to see.

  The bread is waiting.

  Jimmy is at the door with a frown. “We might have a problem.” She holds out a wooden spoon. “This is Adelaide’s sponge.”

  Even before it gets to my nose, I can tell it’s gone too sour. “Ay yi yi.” With the tip of my little finger, I scoop out a small taste, put it on my tongue, and turn to spit it right out again. I should never have refreshed it when I was so angry at my sister, and I’m still rattled over Sofia. “Tell you what. Do what you can with the others and I’ll get this washed and refreshed this afternoon.”

  She nods. “Any ideas what to put in place of the rusticas, then?”

  “You know, Jimmy, I’m going to let you decide.”

  One pierced eyebrow lifts in wary surprise. “Me. Decide.”

  I laugh. “Yes. It’s time. Choose something and let’s go with it.”

  “Cheese and herb focaccia,” she says, testing. She’s been dying to make focaccias part of our repertoire.

  “Perfect.” I carry the starter to the counter. Even the color is off, a vague pink, stained with my lingering fury at my sister. Later it will have to be washed, but for now I have to focus on what to fill the cases with this morning. Baguettes, I think, the best and simplest bread in the world. I wash my hands and dive into the comfort of flour and salt, yeast and water, the eternal, essential cornerstones of bread.

  RAMONA’S BOOK OF BREADS

  CARING FOR YOUR MOTHER DOUGH

  Starters are sturdier than they appear, despite all the legends of miners sleeping with their starters against their bodies overnight to keep them from freezing. Still, some tenderness is required.

  To care well for a mother dough, take it out of the fridge and refresh it once a week. The starter may have a layer of liquid, which will vary in color from light yellow to dark brown. This is the natural alcohol produced by the yeasts and is never to be feared. Stir it into the starter vigorously, measure out half of the starter, and put it in a fresh jar. Use the other half in some baking, or throw the other half away (or give it away). To the remaining dough, add 1 cup flour, 1 cup water, and stir vigorously. Let it stand overnight and return to the fridge.

  If a starter has gone too sour or weak, stir it vigorously, measure half into a large, clean jar, and add 1 cup of lukewarm water and stir it in. Then add ½ cup rye flour and 1¼ cups unbleached white flour. Stir and let stand in a warm place where you can keep an eye on it. You should see plenty of activity within a couple of hours. By morning, even the most bitter of mother doughs should be refreshed and ready to work again.

  Katie

  When Katie gets up, Merlin is already outside in the backyard with Ramona. Shimmying into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, she pads down the stairs as quietly as if someone might hear her. In the cool, still-shadowy kitchen, which smells a little of the supper they ate last night with the aunties, she turns on the computer. While it boots, she peeks out the kitchen window to be sure Ramona is still there. From below come the sounds of the girls setting up the bakery cases for the day. It’s only five a.m. With a rush of longing, Katie thinks of how the dew will still be all over everything, making diamonds out of flower petals and stalks of grass. She loves to help pull weeds first thing, then have breakfast and some tea. Ramona says she is a natural lark, whatever that means. Lily is more of an owl and does her gardening in the evening, but she has to wear long sleeves and put on mosquito repellent, which stinks so much that Katie doesn’t understand why she wouldn’t get up early.

  When the computer comes up, she opens the email from her mother and reads it again. When she first read it, she felt her throat get all clogged up with tears, and it was just depressing—how her mom doesn’t know how to spell, and how she writes everything in capital letters as if she’s yelling. Which is kind of how she is. Noisy. Like a hurricane or a tornado.

  What Katie didn’t get until she came here is how nice it can be to have everything all calm and ordinary—reliable. Like right now she could open the cupboard and
there would be cereal, and on the counter are some bananas and oranges, and there’s milk in the fridge. A long time ago life was like that, when Katie’s mom and dad were still married, but even before Lacey came back from Iraq as a different person, she didn’t always have that much food in the house. She liked to be skinny and she wanted Katie to be skinny, too, so they would practice going without food for lunch or sometimes dinner.

  Katie never liked it. She got too hungry. Even thinking about it now, she gets up and takes a banana off the counter and peels it and eats it just because she can. While she eats, she reads the email over and over.

  Her dad is awake, which is a good thing, but Sofia made it sound as if it could be a super-long time before he’s well, which only makes sense.

  That made Katie think about where she would be living. It’s one thing to be here with Ramona for the summer, but how can Katie stay here? She thinks again of Lily volunteering to go down to Texas, and the same stupid pang goes through her chest. She is my granddaughter, Lily said. Until then Katie had been thinking maybe she finally had a grandmother of her own, but that was dumb. Why would any grandmother care more about a strange kid than about her own blood?

  Katie’s only true blood are her mom and dad. She has to take care of those relationships. This won’t last. She has to keep remembering that.

  This. Will. Not. Last.

  Clicking the email reply, she writes:

  TO: [email protected]

  FROM: [email protected]

  SUBJECT: It’s all good here, too.

  Dear Mom,

  I loved getting an email from you. It sounds like you’re doing really well, and I hope you can keep getting better and better. I’m working in the bakery, just little stuff, running things from the front to the back, and I get paid for it. It’s not like a real job, because I’m too young, but I like it a lot.

  I’ve been learning all about flowers. Dahlias have hundreds of different species, did you know that? And they are so beautiful! Lily, who is Sofia’s grandmother, has a lot of different kinds in her garden. Some have little curled petals and some have spiky petals and they come in every color you can think of. I really like gardening. We have a vegetable garden in the backyard here, too, but I like the flowers best.

  I have saved up $20 and can send that to you first thing tomorrow. Please quit smoking! I know it’s hard, but it’s not good for you. Write soon.

  Love,

  Katie

  PS—Dad woke up from his coma, so he’s going to be okay.

  Ramona

  I’m ready to go way too early on Sunday evening, even after changing my clothes four times and then putting on makeup and changing again. Katie, sitting at the kitchen table to cut out pictures of flowers from a gardening magazine, finally says, “Why are you so jumpy?”

  I halt in my tracks, looking down at the fourth shirt I’ve put on, a simple V-neck T-shirt, dark blue to maybe hide the little tummy that pushes over the top of my jeans. “Does this make me look too fat?”

  She narrows her eyes. “Kinda. What about the green one you had on first?”

  “I like it, but it seems kind of hippie-ish?”

  “It’s a good color.”

  I inhale and exhale slowly. “Okay, I’m changing.” In my bedroom, strewn now with all my dithering, I pull off the navy-blue T-shirt and shake out the printed green-and-orange peasant blouse I chose first. It shows off my collarbones and drapes kindly over my tummy, and Katie is right: It’s a good color. I pop out into the kitchen. “Better?”

  “Yes,” she says definitively. “And you should wear the sandals with those jewels on them.”

  “Oh! Good idea!” I scramble in the hall closet through the forty thousand shoes that live in the darkness there, breeding. Someday I have to find some time to declutter this house. Maybe I can get to it in 2042. Sliding my feet into the shoes, I clip-clop over to the table and sit down with her. “Thanks.”

  “This is the guy who brought Merlin back? You’re going on a date with him because he returned the dog?”

  “Um … no. Here’s the thing—don’t say anything to Lily or to the aunties if they’re here, but he’s somebody I knew a long time ago.”

  “Wow. That’s kinda weird. Merlin went to his house. Just like he came to me.”

  I blink at her. It’s true. “How weird.”

  She rubs her foot over his back. “I don’t think he’s really a dog.”

  “Really?” I laugh. “What, then?”

  “I dunno. Maybe an angel or something.” She looks over the top of the picture. “Why would they care about you going out with that guy?”

  “They won’t. I will. This is my secret.”

  She lifts a shoulder. “Okay.”

  “You sure you’re going to be okay?”

  She raises those droll eyebrows, her eyes with too much knowledge. “Seriously? I’m almost fourteen. And it’s not like I’ve had highly supervised environments.”

  I laugh. She’s so old for her years sometimes. “Well, I’ll have my cell phone, and you have your dog angel to protect you. And my mom can be here in ten minutes.”

  She focuses too intently on cutting out a photo of a cactus dahlia the color of a baby’s fingernail. “Whatever.”

  Still wounded, then. I wonder if I should address it or let it be.

  Leave it. Her defenses are up and prickly.

  The clock reads four forty-five. He won’t be here for another fifteen minutes. I fold my arms. “Did you write your dad another email?”

  “Yes. And Sofia wrote me back. She said to tell you she’ll call when they get more information.” She smears purple glue over the back of the photo and sticks it on a notebook page, smoothing the wrinkles out neatly, then writes Cactus Dahlia in colored pencil beside it.

  I think of my book of breads, and just as I am about to tell her about it, the doorbell rings downstairs. Widening my eyes in Katie’s direction, I put my hand to my throat. I whisper, “That’s him.”

  Leaning over the table, she whispers back, “You should probably go let him in.”

  I grab my purse, swipe lipstick over my mouth, and drop it in the bag. “There’s plenty to eat and drink. And you can reach me—”

  “On your cell phone. I got it.”

  Laughing, I unthinkingly drop a kiss on the top of her head. As if she is my own. She gives me a look over her shoulder, and I waggle my fingers, not taking it back. “Have fun,” she says, her green eyes unreadable.

  I fly down the stairs, my hair a wild flying cape behind me, and halt at the foot. Jonah is on the porch, framed by the old glass in the front door. Behind him is the thick dust-gold of late-afternoon sunlight. His jaw is clean and he’s looking toward the west, and for one long second I let myself fill up with the pleasure of just looking at him. Then he turns and sees me through the door and smiles.

  I open the door to him and step out. “Hi.” It sounds breathless.

  “Hi.” A wistful sort of smile touches his mouth. “Hope I’m not too early.”

  “No, I always get ready too early, since I have a tendency to be late for everything. It used to drive my ex-husband crazy.” I look up at him. “Oh, sorry. I’m really not one of those people who talk about their exes all the time. I mean, not that we’re … uh …” My hand flutters up, then down. I will myself to shut up.

  He takes a step closer to me, picks up my hand. “Are you nervous?”

  I laugh ruefully. “What was your first clue?”

  He lifts my hand, carries it to his mouth, and kisses the palm. It quiets me. He says, “I was nervous, too. But I have the opposite trouble—I have a hard time thinking of what to say. My tendency is to pontificate about something, on and on and on. About exciting things like the mathematical grades in composition, say, or obscure eighteenth-century violinists.”

  “Oh, please, sir, do say more!”

  “Exactly.” He indicates the picnic basket in his other hand. “In this case, I made way too much food
, in the event we couldn’t think of anything to say.”

  “That’s not ever a problem with me.” I smile then, and we seem to sway forward without moving, into a space only the two of us can occupy. He lets my hand go, sparing us the awkwardness of knowing when to clasp and when to release.

  The park is only a few blocks away, and within a minute or two we join the flow of people headed for the outdoor concert. “You opened this morning for Sunday traffic, right?” he asks. “I saw the flyers.”

  “Where did you find one?”

  “At the organic grocer in Manitou.”

  “Do you run, then?”

  “There are hikers there, too.”

  “Not that early.”

  He inclines his head. “I do. Ran track in high school and never gave it up.”

  “Are you one of those extreme people? Running the Ascent and marathons and all that stuff?”

  “Not at all.” He grins down at me. “You sound as if you’d turn around and go home if I said yes.”

  “Let’s just say I’ve had a few encounters with runners of the extreme variety. Takes a particular kind of personality.”

  “True. How about you? Everyone here seems to have a sport. Do you?”

  “Who has time?” I shake my head. “I’m a small-business owner.”

  “An extreme sport of another sort.”

  We reach the park and find an open expanse of grass beneath a tree. From the hamper, Jonah produces a green-and-white-checked tablecloth and flings it up and into a parachute that falls wide on the grass. “After you,” he says, gesturing. We settle cross-legged on the cloth. He’s wearing sunglasses, and I take mine out of my purse, too, dazzled by all the light splashing into the park. Overhead, the elms and cottonwoods rustle in a breath of wind, and from where we sit, the mountains are huddled like a football team, burly and blue.

  As Jonah begins to take things out of the hamper, the musicians are warming up on the stage, which is curved like a sea-shell for the acoustics. The crowd is a genteel sort—I see several Mother Bridget regulars, tidily attired in their SPF-50 hiking shirts and tear-resistant pants. The women sometimes don a skirt with their Tevas, but mostly the shop of choice is REI.