How to Bake a Perfect Life Page 31

  Even in the evening light, I can see the color drain away from her face, leaving her as pale as the moonflowers she planted against the fence. “When?”

  “The night before last.”

  “When did you find out?”

  “Sunday night.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I was just—”

  “You promised you would tell me anything I needed to know.” Her shoulders are shivering faintly. “I think this counts.”

  “Katie, I was trying to find a gentle way. I didn’t want it to upset you. I didn’t want you to feel so squashed—”

  “He’s my father, okay? Mine. Everybody else is related to him by marriage, but he is my own blood, and I had a right to know that right away. Right away.”

  “You did. I’m sorry. I made the wrong decision, but I was trying to protect you.”

  “I don’t want to be protected!” she screams. Her fists are at her sides, balled up tight at the end of rigid arms. “I hate you! All of you! This makes me sick. I should be with him. He wouldn’t do that if I was there!”

  She bursts into tears, and I dive forward to put my arms around her. With a wild roar, she flings her arms upward to break my grip, a classic self-defense move. I stumble backward slightly, still reaching for her, and she bolts.

  “Katie!” I cry, and run after her.

  At the door, she halts, holding up a hand, palm out, her breath coming in ragged gasps, her face wet with tears. “Don’t. I want to be alone.”

  With effort, I clasp my hands, step back. “I’m sorry.”

  She flings herself inside and I stand in the gilded light, staring after her. Cool air comes up from the grass. Somewhere, someone is playing music.

  Merlin nudges my hand, licks my palm, then stands there looking at me. “She will not welcome me right now, sweetie.” I open the screen. “Go with her.”

  He pauses, his tail low, his wise old eyes transmitting some message I don’t understand. I wish I spoke Dog. “What is it?”

  His tail waves slowly, and he looks back up the stairs.

  “I know. Go to her. Take care of her.”

  He trots up the stairs, and I close the screen door. Jonah comes up behind me, his hand making a comforting circle on the top of my back. I step away. “I need to think. To be alone.”

  “I see.”

  My head is hurting as I think about all the things I should be taking care of and I’m not. Katie. The bakery. Sofia. Every one of the failure tapes I’ve been hearing off and on through my life is playing at full volume in my head.

  “I was remembering the day your mother came into the shop and was so upset. Do you remember?”

  “Oh, yeah. I was so humiliated that she misunderstood everything, that she made me feel like such a slut.”

  “And yet,” he says in that smooth amber voice, his fingers touching my bare neck, “she was worried for a reason. There was a lot of electricity between us. You were so lonely and I was”—he takes a breath, blows it out—“lost. Sad. It could have been dangerous.”

  It is dangerous. It’s too dangerous. “Jonah, I’m sorry, but I think I need to be alone.”

  He hesitates for a moment, then says, “Don’t make trouble where there is none, Ramona.”

  “I’m not. Can you just give me a little space?”

  “Absolutely.” He raises his hands in surrender. “Call me.”

  When he’s gone, I carry the wine inside and up the steps. Katie has done all the dishes and left the house kitchen exquisitely tidy. Seeing it, the action she took before she found out her father had attempted to kill himself—kill himself!—makes me furious. If he was close, I would shake him.

  But anger will not help any of this. Squaring my shoulders, I head up to the third floor, where it’s stuffy enough that I go into Sofia’s bedroom first and open the windows. A breeze wafts through immediately, blowing away the scent of disuse.

  Katie’s door is closed. I knock. “Katie? Can I come in?”

  “No. I don’t want to talk.”

  I let the words fade away completely before I say, “I need to talk to you.”

  “No!” she cries, but I open the door anyway. As I come in, she screams, “Get out!” and flings a pillow at me.

  I grab it and stop where I am. In here, it’s cooler, with the wind coming through the screened balcony. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

  She rolls away, pulling the pillow over her head. “Go away.”

  Merlin is sitting by the bed, guarding her. He’s panting softly, giving his face the appearance of a grin. I think about that day I had hysterics after my mother hauled me out of the record shop, remembered how exhausted and overwhelmed I felt, by the pregnancy, by hormones, by the whole wide unfairness of the world.

  How much worse to be Katie right now!

  “You don’t have to say anything, Katie, but I want to talk. Take the pillow off your head, please.”

  She hauls it off, leaving her hair in a wild mess over her wet red face. I desperately want to put my hands on her, smooth away her suffering, but I dare not. Suddenly I am my mother, looking down at me in my misery, helpless to change anything, and it makes me ache. “I wish things were better for you, sweetie. I wish I could wave a magic wand. But I can’t. Nobody can make your life happy for you except yourself.”

  She sits up, her arms behind her on the bed, and looks at me with utter disdain. Her eyes glow against the tears. “Really.”

  “Sorry, that was stupid.”

  She stares at me, then, with an old expression, she says, “I’ve already heard all that stuff. You can’t find a way to say it new.” Her voice goes singsong. “ ‘Things work out for the best. God has a plan. Life is what you make it.’ ”

  I want to say I understand how it is to be exiled, to be alone with people you like but don’t feel entirely comfortable with, to face something that seems almost insurmountable. But—and this is the first time I have ever had this thought—I had advantages that have not been given to her.

  Still, in the mothering arsenal, it’s about all I’ve got for this child in this moment. “How about, you didn’t do anything to make this happen? How about, your dad loves you, but he’s afraid? How about, you have a home here and you’re safe and I care about you?”

  Her voice is absolutely calm when she says, “Whatever.” Her eyes bore into me. “Can I be alone now?”

  My mother and Poppy tucked me into bed and left me to grieve. I can do the same for her. “Okay. Good night, sweetie.”

  Katie

  After Ramona leaves, Katie sits up against the wall and stares out the window while the fan moves air around. Pretty soon Ramona will go to bed.

  All of a sudden it’s like she can see again after months of being in a bubble—a pink bubble where everything was all sweet-smelling and full of flowers and good clothes and the smell of bread. But tonight the bubble broke, and she can see that she has been really stupid. She’s gotten as soft as a cheerleader living in one of those big houses near downtown El Paso. Houses like this, she thinks.

  No wonder.

  Bad things happen when you let yourself get soft. Over and over Katie has had to learn that lesson, so many times you’d think she’d remember not to do it. Soft as a little girl in her happy family, before her dad went to Iraq. Then her mom deployed, too, and she had to live with her grandma. Then everybody was home again—a happy soft life, until her mom and dad started fighting all the time and they got divorced. That was when Katie had to really learn to fend for herself, because her mom started using for the first time. When she went to live with her dad and Sofia, right after they got married when her dad was at Fort Bliss, it was good. It took her a while to like Sofia, but Sofia was a good cook and Katie was only nine then and really hungry, so she liked to eat.

  Now she is soft again. And maybe her mom isn’t the greatest mother in the world, but she has been teaching Katie how to be tough all of her life.

  And, honestly, who else
does she have? Her coward of a dad, who tried to kill himself? Again the thought fills her with such a huge prickling of red spikes that she almost can’t catch her breath. How could he do that to her? Her emotions are making so much noise that she can hardly think straight, even after two hours of crying.

  The one thing she keeps thinking is that she needs to see her mom. Just go see her at the rehab. She has been thinking about that for a while and has even looked up the cost of a bus ticket, which is sixty-three dollars.

  She hears Ramona turn on the shower downstairs.

  Katie begins to make a plan. Some parts of it she doesn’t like, but life has taught her you have to do what you have to do. Right now she has to see her mother.

  Sofia’s Journal

  JULY 13, 20—

  It’s almost my mom’s birthday. I’ll have to remind Katie. If my grandmother is here, there won’t be anyone to celebrate my mom’s day properly, and after all the black balloons last year, she deserves something this year.

  I’ve slept for almost two days straight through, and it’s amazing how much better things look this morning. Oscar tried to kill himself, but he was not successful. I’m furious with him, but he’s just in pain and lost and can’t hear me. I’m not going away. I’m not going to let him down.

  I’m so pregnant now, though, that it’s kind of crazy. They sent me again for an ultrasound to make sure it wasn’t two babies, but just like last time, it was fine. I’m just super-big, super-pregnant. It’s a big baby. I think, more and more, that it’s a boy. A big, hearty boy with arms and legs he keeps stretching into the sides of my body. A rambunctious boy who dances around in there like he has his own private radio station. I can’t wait to see him, but once he’s here, the scary part starts. As long as he’s curled up there under my ribs, he’s pretty safe.

  It hit me last night as I was walking down to dinner that every single one of these soldiers was once a baby swirling around inside his mother’s tummy. Every single one of them was a baby with a diaper, learning how to make noises for the first time and to spit SpaghettiOs all over the place.

  And not just these soldiers here in this hospital, but all the others out there in the fields, on our side and the other side. All those fierce, bearded extremists were babies, too. That freaks me out!

  It’s starting to sink in that my mom is really not going to be here for the baby’s birth. I love my grandmother, but I wish my mom was here. I know she cannot be here for the delivery, but it would mean a lot to me if she was, since Oscar isn’t going to be there, either, unless I get wheeled into his room to go through labor. Which they probably wouldn’t do, considering all the risk of infection.

  Amazing how much better I feel after getting some sleep!

  Later

  I just had what my grandma Adelaide would have called a come-to-Jesus talk with Oscar. He was conscious again, feeling pretty sick, which serves him right. I stomped right up to the side of his bed and said, “Listen to me, Oscar Wilson. You are going to live, do you hear me? I need you. I love you. I am not giving up, do you hear me?”

  He looked at me, his eyes so sad. “I can’t do it, Sofia.”

  “Yes, you can.” I kissed his fingers where they stick out of the bandages. “Listen, your daughter sent an email.”

  He swiveled his eyes up to the ceiling.

  “Are you listening, Oscar? This is from the daughter who was living with her mother the crackhead, until I managed to get her to safety with my mother. Remember all that?”

  He looked at me but didn’t say anything.

  So I read him the letter from Katie, which I glued in right here:

  Dear Dad,

  It’s kind of a big day around here. I cut my hair, which everyone has been trying to get me to do for ages, and it looks good, I have to say, all these curls showing up.

  My hobby this summer, as I keep telling you, is flowers. I’ve planted so many it’s crazy—geraniums and dahlias are summer flowers, and I love them. I also like the spring flowers that were blooming when I first got here (which is starting to feel like a different life to me!), which this old lady who visits says are lilacs. She’s a big gardener, and Merlin, my dog, likes her a lot. He acts like a puppy when she’s around. Sometimes I think she’s kind of touched in the head, because the only time she talks to me is when she’s in the garden, and she seems to forget things I’ve told her. But it’s not touched in a bad way, just kind of like being old, you know? She knows everything about flowers, though, that’s for sure.

  Ramona got me a library card, so I’m reading a lot. I read seventeen books in June! That’s a lot, even for me.

  I wish you would write to me. I miss you and I love you. GET WELL SOON! Love (x10!), Katie

  I folded the letter up and looked at him, and there were tears running out of his eyes. Which I took as a good sign.

  “Next time somebody brings you some pills, you think about that daughter of yours when she hears the news.”

  He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. I know the words went home.

  My grandmother is coming to take me to dinner, so I’d better get ready.

  Today is better. I don’t know if he’ll choose to live, but at least I’m back in the right place.

  Ramona

  My apprentices and I are awake and working by two this morning, just to have that extra bit of time. It’s such a relief to be back at work, to have some way of forgetting about all the trouble in my daughter’s and Katie’s lives. Bread has always given me this, an escape. This morning, the rye starter is as dark and rich as the heart of a wild animal, and the smell of it is like earth and time and desire.

  It is going to be a powerful bread, too powerful to be shaped into big loaves. I’m going to make small loaves studded with blue cheese, an old-world recipe that will please a certain contingent very much.

  As I open the shutters and write the specials in neon, and the sun starts to tip above the edge of the earth, I feel a sense of possibility. Katie’s flowers are blooming in profusion—exactly the same flowers, I suddenly realize, that my grandmother Adelaide had in this spot.

  How extraordinary!

  The sight of them draws me. Attired still in my chef’s coat and tight braid, I walk down the sidewalk to admire the mix of daisies and blue bachelor’s buttons she’s planted along the wrought-iron fence.

  “Ramona!”

  I turn, thinking that the voice sounds very like my grandmother’s, but no one is there. Looking up to the third-floor windows, I see movement, a head or body moving away. Katie must be up. Cheered, I head inside and up the stairs.

  There is no one in the kitchen. Merlin is whining upstairs, and with an overwhelming sense of worry, I run up the last steps, panting by the time I reach the landing. Katie’s door is closed, and for a single, searing second, my hand hovers over the doorknob. I’m afraid of what I might find.

  Merlin, hearing me, barks sharply, and I open the door. Katie’s bed is empty. Merlin is shut on the balcony, and I head across the room to let him in. He leaps through, whining anxiously, licking my hand, leaping toward the door. On the bed is a note. “Wait, Merlin.”

  He makes a noise of urgency. “Okay, okay.” I snatch the note up as I rush toward the door.

  Don’t worry, it says. I have something to do, but I will be fine.

  Oh, my God. What does that mean? Where has she gone?

  Merlin is already at the foot of the stairs, waiting for me, and instead of going toward the backyard, he is most insistent that we go toward the front. After Katie, I suppose.

  “I don’t know where she went, Merlin. Wait.”

  He makes a pained, yipping noise and comes to take my hand, putting his teeth around my palm and then leaping backward. What can I do but find a leash and let him lead?

  And I do follow, for about two blocks—when it becomes plain he will walk to wherever she is, and that’s not possible. “Wait.” I pull up on the leash, check the time, and tug him back around. He plants h
is feet and gives me a grave look. Not moving.

  I think about all the child pornographers and kidnappers and rapists in the world, the sexual predators who would slurp her up without hesitation. Maybe Merlin knows something I don’t. But when I let him lead again, he drags me toward Colorado Avenue. There he stops, looking in both directions, a soft pitiful whine in his throat. He looks hard, as if he is listening, takes a step, stops. Looks up at me.

  In my clogs and coat, I bend down and hug him. “It’s okay.” I pull back. “I promise we’ll find her. Okay?”

  His whiskey-brown eyes are grave. He almost nods.

  We return to the bakery, and there are customers going up the walk, coming out. It shocks me a little to see business as usual. Leading Merlin around the side of the house, I let him free in the backyard, where he heads for the bench and sits down, making complaining noises to the invisible air.

  Inside, I call Jimmy into my office. “I have a big problem. Katie seems to have run away, and I’m going to have to find her. If we don’t stay open, the bakery will die. Can you cover it?”

  “Yeah.” She shrugs, pats a hand over her belly. “If I get in any trouble, I’ll call Cat, right?”

  “Actually, no. I’m going to make other arrangements. But thank you. I’ll give you a raise. Someday.”

  She gives me a thumbs-up. “Get your girl.”

  I have no idea where to start, where she might be. Would she try to run all the way to her father? Go back to El Paso? The first person to call is Sofia, but I’m absolutely loath to add even a single minute of extra worry to her plate. The baby is due any day.

  First I’ll try some other things. In Katie’s room, I look for the notebook she keeps, but it’s gone—obviously with her. There’s nothing else, really, except a letter from her friend Madison. It’s written on pink paper and talks about a boy at the mall and getting a bra and nothing else. Still, it has a return address and a name I might be able to reach if I have to.