How to Bake a Perfect Life Page 3

  Katie tucks her thumbs under the straps. “That’s okay. I’m fine.”

  “No problem.” He points at me. “Tell Ramona about the dog.” Katie still hangs at the door, as if she will run away the minute we turn our backs.

  “Dog?”

  “They made me leave my dog. In El Paso. At the airport.” Tears well up in her eyes. “He didn’t have the right carrier and they’ve got him in some container place, but I need to get him here. He doesn’t have anybody else but me, and he’s gonna be so, so scared.”

  “Oh! Your dog. I didn’t know you had a dog.”

  She lifts her shoulders. “I haven’t had him very long. I found him by the railroad tracks. His name is Merlin.”

  I struggle to keep my expression neutral. My cat will not be pleased. And a dog that’s been living as a vagabond might have all kinds of issues, not the least being he might consider cats a good protein source. “How long ago did you find him?”

  In a voice that’s too loud, she says, “The day my mom went to jail. He stayed with me all night, and otherwise I would have been alone. And I’m not leaving him.”

  I tell myself that the child has lost her mother to meth and her father to three tours of duty and she needs something. But I don’t have to be thrilled about it. “Tell you what,” I say. “Let’s call the airport and ask them what we need to do. I’m sure they can put him on another plane right away.”

  “Really?” Her eyes overflow, and the sight goes straight through my solar plexus. I have been this child, this lost and lonely girl. The person in my corner was my aunt Poppy, and I can try to be that person for Katie.

  “I promise I’ll make sure he doesn’t get in any trouble,” Katie says.

  “I believe you.” I gesture toward her. “You must be starving.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s head upstairs, then, and I’ll fix you some lunch.” I point to the glass case, which holds a few loaves from yesterday. “How about some samples of bread?”

  “Okay. I’m really hungry,” she admits. “They only had stuff to buy on the plane.”

  And nobody thought to give you any cash. “Luckily, some bread just came out of the oven. Pumpernickel. Have you ever had it?”

  Katie winces. “Isn’t it all, like, black and stuff?”

  “It is. Let’s find something else.”

  “Wait.” Her chin juts out and she sends me a fierce look. “Is my dad going to die? Please tell me the truth. I can’t stand it when people lie.”

  “Okay.” I pause, considering. “Honestly, I don’t know, Katie. I don’t think so, but he’s badly burned, so it will be a little while before we know for sure.”

  “How bad?”

  “I don’t know that, either. We’ll know more when Sofia calls. She won’t get to the hospital until tomorrow.”

  “Is his face burned?” Her voice cracks.

  “We can ask.”

  “Okay.” Her arms ease, and she puts a hand on her belly. “I guess I can eat now, okay?”

  “Yes.” I wave my arm toward the bakery cases. “Pick some bread and I’ll make you a grilled cheese sandwich, how’s that?”

  “Good,” Katie says. “Thanks.” She dashes a hand beneath each eye, wiping at tears that have leaked out, and peers at the loaves. “Wow. What are all of these?”

  Some tension drains from my shoulders. Bread I know. Bread I love. Bread can hold this young girl in its cozy grip for a moment of peace. “Usually there would be more, but we had a problem outside.” I point, naming the loaves. “Sourdough wheat. The previously dismissed pumpernickel. Oatmeal and sunflower seed. And white.” It’s fresh, maybe still warm, and as fluffy as a cloud. I add a little semolina flour for texture and flavor. “Are you a white-bread kind of person?”

  “I guess.”

  I pull the loaf, light and airy, out of the case. “There’s a reason it has always been so popular.” Yes, I think. White bread will mist over her troubles, obscure some of that terror.

  My brother clomps down the stairs in his heavy boots. “All set.” He lifts his chin to the front yard. “What the hell happened out there?”

  “Broken water pipe.”

  He shakes his head. “You ever do anything the easy way?”

  I shrug. It’s a sore point today. My family all tried to talk me out of using the house as a bakery, but I believed in the location and the model—a boulangerie nestled into the mixed residential and business district on the quaint Westside. I thought I understood how much work an old building might be.

  I underestimated it by about 500 percent.

  He points behind me. “Don’t look now, but you’ve got help.”

  I turn around in time to see my mother. My first urge is to hide Katie behind me. “Mom! I didn’t realize you were coming this morning.”

  Lily is a small, trim woman with blond hair she keeps clipped short, once every three weeks, like a man. She’s wearing a tidy knit pantsuit, black with purple piping. “Good morning!” she says. “I thought you might need some help. And besides, I had to bring doughnuts, didn’t I?”

  “Mom,” I say, gesturing to the shelves of bread around us, “you have noticed that this is a bakery?”

  “No, you’re the one who says it’s a boulangerie, which is breads, not pastries. You don’t have crullers, do you?” She shoves the box from Dunkin’ Donuts into my hand and bends toward Katie as if she is six instead of thirteen. “Hello!” Her voice is a little too … bright. “You must be Katie.”

  The girl nods, clutching her book close to her chest. “I like doughnuts.”

  “See?” Lily waves her hand. “C’mon. Let’s all have some.” She marches toward the door that leads up the stairs to my home kitchen. “You coming, Ryan?”

  “Uh … no.” My brother wiggles his nose. “Gotta get back to work.”

  Katie plants her feet. “What about my dog?”

  “You have a dog?” Lily asks.

  “She does,” I say. “And maybe, Mom, that would be something you could do. The dog is stuck at the El Paso airport. He had the wrong carrier, and Katie, I’m guessing”—I look at her for confirmation—“didn’t have the money to get the whole thing sorted out.”

  “Baby, don’t you have a cell phone?”

  Katie all but rolls her eyes. “I don’t even have lunch money.”

  I smile. She can hold her own with my mother. “Let’s call the airport right now. See what we can find out. Upstairs. With food.” I open the box. “Have a doughnut to tide you over.”

  She takes two, and by the time we get upstairs, the first is gone.

  My mother is in charge of looking up numbers while I take the bread to slice and butter for a grilled cheese sandwich. The loaf is fragrant with baking. “Smell that.” I hold it out to Katie.

  She bends forward and sniffs politely. “Uh-huh.” She narrows her eyes when I start to slice a chunk of white cheddar for the sandwich. “Do you have any normal cheese?”

  “It’s just cheddar.”

  Lily looks over the top of her rectangular purple glasses. “She means American, Ramona. All children like American cheese.” To Katie she says, “Yellow slices, right?”

  “Yeah. Like in those little wrappers sometimes.”

  I’m pretty sure there is no American cheese in my fridge. I’m a cheese freak, but not for that. “Sorry, honey. I don’t have any. Do you want to try this?”

  Her left foot swings. She is very, very thin. I can see the exact shape of her wrist bones. “Can I just eat more doughnuts?”

  “No. You need some real food.”

  “Peanut butter and jelly?”

  “That I can do.”

  “Not the crunchy kind, though, is it?”

  “No.” I smile in spite of myself. “It’s smooth.”

  “Good.” Katie sits gingerly at the table, her backpack slung around her shoulders, the paperback still clutched in her hands.

  “Do you want to put your stuff away first? Maybe wash your face and hands
?”

  “I’d like to go to the bathroom.”

  “Oh, of course! I’m sorry. C’mon.”

  The bakery occupies the entire lower level of the Victorian, but I live on the upper two floors, big spacious rooms with long, double-hung windows that let in buckets of light. Some of the rooms are a bit shabby these days, since all the money is going into the bakery, but the floors are hardwood covered with my grandmother’s rugs, and there is the grace of knee-high baseboards, intricately carved. The kitchen, which I updated at the same time as I did the bakery, faces east and the side yard. The living room is in front, facing south and the street, which is lined with elm trees that break and bring down the power lines whenever there is a heavy snow.

  My bedroom is on this floor, too, along with the gigantic bathroom with its claw-footed tub. Both rooms look to the mountains, burly and blue and very close by.

  “You’re up here.” I lead Katie to the third level, under the eaves. It can be hot in the summertime, but Katie’s bedroom has windows all along the north wall and a small screened-in balcony that overlooks the backyard. It will be a good place for the dog to sleep, I think now.

  “This is my room?” Katie says.

  “There’s no television because there’s no cable up here, but if there’s something else you can think of, say so. The bathroom is tiny, but it has a nice view and a good shower. If you want a bath, you can use the one downstairs—it has a great tub. Sofia and I really like it.”

  Katie looks winded.

  “Sorry, I’m talking you to death. Why don’t you take a few minutes, get settled, and come down whenever you want?”

  Her expression is one of loss. Patting her shoulder, I say, “Take your time, sweetie.”

  Katie

  Katie sinks down on the bed, and it’s so super-super-soft that it almost calls her name. She falls backward onto it. The covers poof up around her arms like clouds, and through the window comes a breeze that tickles over the top of her head. The wallpaper is old, with tiny orange flowers on it, making her think of a book she found at the library where a girl traveled back in time through a closet. On a stand in the corner is a huge blue vase with purple flowers. Katie can smell them from the bed.

  After a second, she gets up and looks out the window, where she can see the tops of trees and a tiny bird sitting on a branch, whistling, and, way far away on the ground, a stream. Purple flowers are on bushes all over the place.

  Not what she was expecting. None of it.

  Out of her backpack she takes a notebook. There are two girls on the front of it, with bandannas in their hair and high heels on their feet. Madison gave it to her at the airport. “Write to me every day,” she said. “And when you can get to a computer, email me. When we go to the library on Fridays, I’ll email you back.” Madison’s computer broke a while ago, and they hadn’t gotten a new one yet. Maybe when her dad was deployed again, her mom had said. Her mom was the one who’d told them they could write letters, too. Like in the mail, with an envelope. Mrs. Petrosky had given Katie envelopes and stamps, with their address written right on the box of envelopes.

  Katie tried not to cry, and so did Madison, but they were best friends. They’d been through a lot together—they both had parents who were soldiers and they had lived in three of the same places at the same time, and they’d known each other since they were six.

  Now, in her new bedroom, Katie opens the notebook and writes:

  May 20, 20—

  Hey, Madison,

  This is the first letter. I’m here. It’s pretty. Sofia’s mom is nice, but we knew she probably would be, right, because Sofia is so nice. Merlin is still stuck at the airport, but it seems like these people are going to get him home. Right now I’m SUPER hungry, and I’m going to get some lunch. But I feel better writing to you even if you can’t read it yet. It’s like when you went to camp last summer, right?

  More L8er, Katie

  Ramona

  When I get back downstairs, my mother is making coffee. “Do you want some, too?” she asks. Like it’s her kitchen.

  I nod.

  “Have you heard anything from Sofia?”

  “Not yet. She has to get to the hospital, get herself settled, all that. We probably won’t hear for another day or two.”

  Lily measures coffee into a paper filter. “Poor baby. Who knows what she’ll find. I’m so worried about her. I mean—burns, dear God.” She shakes her head. “I’ve got the prayer team on it.”

  I’m worried, too, but it always feels like my mother is making things into some big drama. Even if this might qualify, I don’t want to start hand-wringing. “She’s strong. She knew what she was getting into when she married a career soldier.”

  “Well, it’s one thing to know intellectually. Another to have to deal with it emotionally. And she’s pregnant.” Lily clicks her tongue. “Such a handsome man, too. Is his face burned?”

  Would it be better if he was ugly? “I don’t know anything, Mom. Nothing.”

  She finishes the prep on the coffeemaker, presses the button. Carefully not looking at me, she says, “Katie makes me think of you that summer you went to Poppy’s farm in Sedalia.”

  All I can manage is a nod. That was a painful time for me. Us. I was fifteen and pregnant, exiled to my aunt’s house for the summer. The memory edges along my ribs, joins with the present day. I think of Sofia’s pale face as she blew me a kiss from the circle of soldiers’ wives.

  “What was that young man’s name?” Lily asks.

  I frown, drawn from my thoughts into what feels like a non sequitur. “Who are you talking about?”

  “That summer you spent with Poppy,” she says, again avoiding the obvious way to refer to it. “There was a young man who worked at the record store. You were just smitten.” She laughs. “And it was so strange—he was kind of funny-looking, wasn’t he?”

  “Jonah,” I say, buttering bread. “I wasn’t smitten. He was my friend.” I frown, looking at her. “And, as I remember, he was beautiful.”

  “You had the worst crush ever,” my mother snorts. “And, no, he was pretty funny-looking.”

  There are footsteps in the hallway, and I make a chopping motion across my throat. As Katie comes around the corner, I pick up the handset of the phone and give it to my mother. “Why don’t you see what you can figure out about the dog?”

  “I can do that.” She sits down at the table and flips open the little notebook she carries in her purse. Every single one of us has tried to get her to switch to a BlackBerry, but she thinks they’re rude. “Katie, come sit here with me and let’s see what we can find out, shall we?”

  “You can probably look things up on the computer faster,” Katie says, pointing to the desktop in a nook in the kitchen, breathing softly beneath the gurgling coffee. “Or doesn’t it work?”

  I wink at Katie. “It works fine.”

  “So does information,” Lily says. “What airline did you fly on, sweetie?”

  So it begins. Katie’s life in my house. My life with Katie in it.

  In the middle of the night, the phone rings and I scramble in the dark to answer it, knowing who it will be. “Hello?”

  “Mom?” Sofia’s voice on the other end of the line is thin. “Did I wake you up? Of course I did. I’m sorry. I just needed to talk to you.”

  “It’s fine, baby. I’m here.” I click on the lamp, push hair out of my eyes, and squint at the clock—2:36 a.m. “Have you seen Oscar?”

  “Yes.” The word is squeezed flat.

  I wait, my lungs thick with a mucus of worry. In the background, I can hear a television or something. “Take your time.”

  “It’s bad. Second- and third-degree burns over sixty percent of his body. And he”—she takes a quick gasping breath—“lost most of his right leg, part of his right hand.”

  “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.”

  “He’s in a coma, which they say is a blessing.”

  “Is there anyone there with you? Do you hav
e a place to stay?”

  “Yes, it’s all very well organized. There’s a house nearby that’s run by a private organization, and I have a driver assigned to me.” She strives for good cheer, but I can hear the terror in her voice. “The Soldiers’ Angels gave us a quilt that’s just beautiful, and they have this little backpack they give to soldiers because they might not have their stuff with them, you know?”

  “That sounds great.” I would have spared her this. Don’t love a soldier, I would have said, or a policeman, or a smoke jumper. In this moment, though, I want only to offer her something to buoy her. “He’s lucky to have you there, sweetie.”

  “They aren’t going to move him for a few days.” Her breath hitches. “I don’t think they expect him to live, Mom.”

  I say the only thing I can. “They don’t know everything. You have to have faith.”

  “You’re right.” Her voice takes on some color. “I will.” She clears her throat, dons her armor again. “Did Katie get there safely?”

  “She did. She is sound asleep in the orange bedroom. Her dog, however, is not here yet.”

  “A dog?”

  “She found him on the train tracks the night her mother was arrested. He sounds like a total vagabond. If he were a man, he would be your stepfather—amoral and utterly charming.”

  Sofia laughs, that helpless reaction-style giggle. “Oh, Mom! Thank you so much for all of this.” Suddenly there are tears twining through the laughter, and—finally—she lets down her guard and sobs, the sound shattering over the tiny nerves on the bridge of my nose. “I’m so scared. Tell me I can do this.”

  “You’re stronger than you know, Sofia. You can do anything. And I’m always right here.”

  “Thank you.” She takes in a big breath. “Kiss Katie for me. Tell her I’ll call her tomorrow. But, Mom, don’t tell her too much about Oscar, all right? Downplay it.”