How to Bake a Perfect Life (18 page)

So we did. Nancy brought me books on single parenting, on mothering a baby—and also the statistics on the lifelong earning loss for teen mothers. Poppy talked about her travels and how much she had hoped I would follow in her footsteps. That pained me. I wanted that, too.

But would it be enough?

My heart felt torn in two, and for that long week I thought and thought and thought. I thought about it while I gardened and while I listened to music.

And while I kneaded bread. Especially then. I was learning now to combine flours for new flavors—a bit of buckwheat added specks of purple to a white loaf, and spelt made it taste a little spongier. I folded eggs into a brioche dough and imagined myself as a world traveler, living in Paris, learning to bake bread there.

But I kept seeing the baby strapped to my chest in a Snugli.

I braided sweet breads and painted them with egg whites, breads so beautiful that Poppy sold them for an extra dollar. I imagined going to school and facing everybody when I had a
baby at home. It would be embarrassing, but would it be any worse than going back without the baby?

At the end of the week, my mother and my grandmother drove up to Poppy’s house. Before they got there, Nancy, Poppy, and I baked zucchini bread, made coffee, and set the table in the kitchen with a cloth embroidered with tiny mirrors around the edges. Nancy had all kinds of papers and folders of information for me to use if I wanted. She had stayed completely neutral and factual, and for that I was grateful.

Poppy went upstairs to change and came down wearing a dress, with her hair tied back in a braid. She had put on lipstick, which she never did. It was weird to see her so nervous.

“Can you tell me why you and Grandma don’t talk?”

“Maybe someday,” she said. “I’ll talk to her today. I promise we’ll be nice. This is about you.”

“Thank you.”

I spent a lot of time with my grandmother back at home. I was her first granddaughter, and I knew, along with everybody else, that I was her favorite. When I saw her climbing out of the car in a dark-blue dress belted smartly at the middle, my heart swelled to the size of the Empire State Building, and I ran down the steps. “Grandma!” I cried, and flung myself into her arms.

She caught me tightly, fiercely. “Oh, child, I’m so glad to see you! Let me look at you.” She held me at arm’s length, studying my face and then looking at my belly. “You are prettier every day, Ramona. You’re as beautiful as my own mother was. I’m so sorry you’re having to go through this. It’s not your fault that men can’t handle themselves around a beauty.”

“Mother,” said Lily. “Please. Let’s go inside.”

We all sat at the table, with Poppy putting down the neatly sliced zucchini bread and pouring the coffee. “So, what’s this all about, Ramona?” my mother said.

I took a breath, squared my shoulders, and said, “First, I want to ask you to listen to me all the way through before you say one word.”

My mother’s face turned into a mask of solid rock. She pressed her coral-lipsticked lips together.

“We’re listening, honey,” Adelaide said.

“Okay. I asked you to come here so that we can make a plan that would make it possible for me to keep the baby.”

“What?” my grandmother said, and slammed her hand on the table. “Did you put her up to this, Poppy? Is this some woman-power thing?”

“Let her finish, Mother,” Poppy said. “Everybody needs to let her present her case.”

My mother’s lips didn’t move one tiny bit, so I looked at my grandma. “I want to keep the baby. I can do it if you guys help me. I can still go to school and finish my education and then find a job.”

“Go to college,” my mother said.

“But, Ramona—” began Adelaide.

“Please let me finish. Look, I’m not an idiot. I know it will be hard. I know this is not a great thing, that you all had other dreams for me. I had a different plan in mind, too, but maybe this is just how things are supposed to go. Maybe it’s fate or something that this baby is important to my life.” I looked at my mother. “Think about when you were pregnant with me.”

Adelaide and Poppy looked at my mother. Who had the stoniest, coldest look on her face that I’d ever seen. “No, Ramona. The answer is no. I am not going to let you throw your life away like this.”

“It’s not your decision.”

She crossed her legs and lit a cigarette, daring Poppy to say a word. With her thin arms crossed over her chest, she blew a stream of smoke out into the kitchen, and the smell of it choked
me. “It is my decision,” she said. “You are a minor, and I am still your mother.”

I stood up. “But this baby is mine!”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Ramona! Come down off your cloud. Wake up! This isn’t some little toy you get to bring home, or a kitten who will be so cute on your bed.” A lock of hair at the edge of her bangs quivered, and I thought she wanted to shake me. “It’s another human being, who will depend on you for absolutely everything. A newborn consumes every tiny bit of energy you have. You won’t even want to watch television, much less go to school.”

“Mom, I know all this. I’ve been reading and studying, and I know it will be hard. That’s why I asked you here—I need your help.”

My grandmother reached out a hand. “Please sit down, sweetheart. Listen a minute.”

I flopped onto the chair.

“You have to go to school. You know that’s true. The world is changing, and a woman needs a way to support herself. Men are not all that reliable, frankly, and you need a way to take care of yourself. You need a good education.”

“I agree. That’s why—”

“And you need a chance to ripen yourself, grow up, find out who you are, before you start trying to guide another person.”

“I have you guys, a really good family. She’ll have four mothers, not just one.”

“Three. I will not do this.” My mother stood up and stormed out of the kitchen.

“Lily, come sit down,” Poppy said.

But it all went downhill from there. My grandmother turned on Poppy, blaming her for the decision, and I shouted that Poppy was on their side, and Adelaide shouted that not everyone was as screwed up as Poppy, which made Poppy furious,
and Nancy reached for her and pulled her back when it seemed like she might hit my grandmother.

That was when I grabbed the umbrella and bolted out the front door. “I’m getting out of here. You’re all crazy.”

“Ramona! Get back here!” my mother screamed from the yard as I took off.

But I ignored her.

I walked along the red dirt road with the umbrella over my head, hoping that it wouldn’t start to lightning, because I would have to go back. And if I would do something as stupid as walk in the rain with a lightning rod of an umbrella over my head, maybe they were right, anyway.

It was very quiet. The fields stretched for empty miles in every direction, rolling fields of grass that had gone a pale yellow in the summer heat. Behind the fields rose the mountains, their lower half dark blue and furry-looking, the top half buried in the pillow clouds. A bird sat on a fence post, whistling. It looked lonely.

I walked and walked. The air tasted like rain. I knew I should go back, but I didn’t want them to talk me into anything. I needed to decide for myself. It was my life. Either way, something was lost. Either way, something was won. I needed to figure out which was the best answer for me.

A car came along the road behind me, and when I looked back, I saw an old Mercedes, the kind with little fins on the taillights. It slowed as it approached, and I frowned, looking steadfastly ahead. What if it was that creepy guy from town?

Beside me, a calm, honeyed voice said, “Where you headed, my friend?”

Jonah! I turned, brushing bangs out of my eyes. “I don’t know.” I sagged. “Away from my mother.”

“Hop in. We can have a cup of hot chocolate at the truck stop.”

I desperately wanted to, but things were bad enough today
without me getting in trouble. And I had to think of the baby. “Sorry, I can’t. My mother is mad enough already. Thanks, though.”

“Your aunt called me.” One elbow hung out of the car and his hair was tied back with a leather string, which seemed sexy somehow. “She said you were pretty upset and might need a friend to talk to.”

“Oh.” I still didn’t move right away. It might be kind of overwhelming to be in a closed car with him. But Poppy was right: I needed somebody impartial to talk to, and he had the most patient eyes I’d ever seen. “Okay.”

I walked around the car and got in just as it started to rain in heavy splotches, so big they made a fat sound as they hit the roof. The car was old but still beautiful, and instinctively I touched the dash. “Is this wood? I never saw a car with a wooden dash before.”

He nodded. “She’s a beauty. My first car, and I haven’t had a reason to get another one. I fixed her up myself.”

“Cool.”

Cocooned in the car with the windshield wipers slapping back and forth, the rain pounding, the gravel crunching beneath the tires, I felt myself relax. The song “Fernando” came on the radio, and I made a soft noise. “I love this song.”

He turned the music up.

“Do you like it, too?” I asked in surprise.

“It’s wistful,” he said. “You like emotional music. Music that tells a story.”

“I guess I do.”

“Let me ask you: When you hear a song, do you see pictures, or do you feel it in your chest, or none of the above?”

For a minute I curled a long strand of hair around my finger, thinking. “Pictures. I see like a little movie. And when it’s sad, I feel it in my heart. Also when it’s happy, I guess.” I wondered if that was the right answer. “How about you?”

“I see it in colors. This song is silvery, and green in this part. It’s reddish brown in the drums.”

“Oh, my gosh! I can see that! The flutey sound is silver, right?”

He looked at me, a genuine smile opening his serious face. “Yes. Exactly.”

We pulled up in front of the truck stop. There weren’t many other cars, and the rain was pouring down. “Ready to make a break for it?”

I grinned. “I am if you are.”

“Ready, set, run!”

We bolted out of the car, dashing toward the door with our hands over our heads. Jonah got there first and pushed the door open to usher me inside. We found a booth in the nonsmoking section, and when our waitress, a tall curvy woman with a lot of long blond hair, came over, Jonah said, “I’ll just have a coffee. How about you, Ramona?”

“Hot chocolate, please.”

“Tell me what’s happening,” he said when she left.

I looked out the window at the smeary view. “My mother is so mad at me, I think she’d like to shake me. She wants me to give the baby away. So does everybody else.”

He folded his hands in front of him on the table, the right over the left, hiding the ruined fingers. “I take it that you might not want to?”

I leaned forward, my own hands in front of me. “You know that day you played the classical guitar music in the shop? I could feel the baby dancing. I don’t think it was real to me before then that there is a person inside me.”

His eyes stayed on my face. He nodded.

“I’m confused,” I said. “Maybe they’re right. They love me. I know they love me, right?”

“They do. They care about you more than anything else.”

“But I think I”—I touched my fingers to my mouth—“care
about this baby more than anything else. It’s like the way it happened doesn’t even matter. The baby is mine. It’s like she’s here for a reason or something.”

The waitress brought our drinks in heavy ceramic cups with a pitcher of cream. “You want something to eat with that, sweetie? I used to get such an acid stomach from chocolate when I was pregnant.”

I looked up. It was the first time anyone had treated me like a member of a club, a club of women who were pregnant or had been. “I think I would, actually. Pie? Do you have apple pie?” I looked at Jonah. “If that’s okay. I don’t have any money with me.”

“Oh, he’s rich, sweetheart,” she said, and winked at Jonah. “He can handle it.”

Jonah flushed, just as he had the day he dropped the backgammon piece. “I’m pretty sure I can manage a piece of pie. As a matter of fact, bring me one, too. With ice cream. You want ice cream, Ramona?”

“Yes!”

“Be right back.”

I stirred my hot chocolate. “Have you ever had to make a really big decision? How do you do it?”

He took a breath. “Well, you have to weigh the alternatives and consider what will make you happy. And what will make you miserable. Then trust your gut. Make a choice and be real with it, no matter what happens. Once you choose, don’t second-guess yourself.”

“I kept thinking that I was just going to go back to school and be the same old person I was, but everything is changed now. I think what I have to do is imagine who I’ll be ten years from now and think about what I will want then.”

“Good plan. You can talk it out with me if you want. See how it plays.”

I took a breath and shook my hair out of my face. “Okay, this
might be stupid, but this is what I think. I think if I let her go, I’m going to wonder every single day what she’s doing and what she looks like and if her parents are being good to her.

“I think if I
don’t
give her up, I’m sometimes going to be mad about taking on too much responsibility so young. I think I’ll be sad about not going to Paris and Ireland and all those places, and I bet it’s going to be kind of hard to find a boyfriend if I’m a single mom.” I sipped my chocolate. It was so good to take my time to say these things out loud. “But I don’t think I will mind as much about those things as I will mind not having my child with me.”

“So your gut is saying you want to keep the baby.”

“My heart and my gut and my entire soul.”

He nodded, his eyes very kind. “It sounds to me like you know exactly what to do.”

“How do I convince everybody else?”

“You’ll figure it out.”

The waitress brought our pie. We ate it, talking and not talking, peacefully.

When Jonah drove me home, I sat in the car, gathering my courage for a minute. “Thanks, Jonah.”

He touched my upper arm with one finger. “You’re welcome.”