How to Bake a Perfect Life (30 page)

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.

Twice, people stop to say hello to Jonah. One is a balding genial man who is a bassist with the symphony; another is a Celtic drummer with a long, graying ponytail and an embroidered shirt. They both nod to me politely. Jonah says, “This is my friend Ramona.”

Meanwhile, he lays out cheese and crackers; deviled eggs; chocolate cake with frosting; three kinds of sandwiches, cut into triangles; bananas and clementines; and two glasses for the bottle of wine he has tucked away. Seeing there is still more in the depths, I say, “Whoa there, Curly. I’m worried about the bottomless pit. Are you expecting the sixth brigade to join us?”

He chuckles. “I told you. I couldn’t stop.” With his long-fingered right hand, he picks up a deviled egg and offers it to me. “Start here. I have been told my recipe is the best.”

For a moment I’m tempted to lean over and let him feed it to me, but I open my hand and he puts it in my palm. It’s cold, and the filling has a good strong color. It is also artfully swirled into the bowl of white. “Mmm,” I say, as I bite into it. “That really is great.”

He has been waiting for me and now pops a whole one into his own mouth, and I find myself watching. Sun glances off his glasses, touches his long throat. I find myself rubbing a palm on my knee. He catches me looking. “Do I have egg on my face?” He wipes the corners with a cloth napkin.

“No,” I say quietly. “What else should I try?”

He smiles ever so slightly. “Everything.”

“See, there you go, teasing me.” I hold the egg in my hand. “You promised to tell me your story.”

“I did.” He opens a bottle of San Pellegrino and pours it into glasses for us. “I told you I was divorced and that I have no children. Which is true.”

“But?”

“But I did once. A little boy. His name was Ethan, and he was born with congestive heart failure. He died when he was five, waiting for a heart.”

“Oh, Jonah!” I think of Sofia at five, and my eyes fill with tears. “I’m so sorry. That must have been terrible.”

“Yes,” he says matter-of-factly. “It was the worst thing that ever happened to me.” He looks at me and seems to be choosing his words carefully. “Life is not served by staying stuck in that time, but in a way I think I’ve been standing right there for a long time. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think so. Is that why you divorced?”

He takes a breath, sips the sparkling water. “Yes. She took
refuge in a conservative Christian church. It didn’t work for me.” He clears his throat, looks at me. “She found God. I lost him.”

I remember standing in the record store as he struggled with the loss of his music, the way that sudden, inexplicable twist of fate ended his dream.
Sometimes it feels like there’s no point
. My heart splits, and I see the hollow points of connection. “It doesn’t seem fair to lose two things that you love so much.”

He bows his head, and for a time he’s quiet. Finally he looks at me. “Exactly.”

“How did you cope?”

He gestures toward the food. “I started volunteering with the organization that helped us so much. I learned to meditate, to keep things very smooth and even and ordinary.”

“That’s where the music went,” I say aloud.

He smiles. “Yes.”

“And women?”

“No, not all of them.” He swallows. “But you … the other night …” He pauses. “It seemed like too much.”

For a moment, I let hope rush through me. “And now?”

“It’s too extraordinary that we met again. I like you.”

“Me, too.” I feel faintly dizzy. “Like you.” I ask, “Can I try the cake first?”

“If you wish. And, certainly, wine.” He pours a ruby red into goblets.

“Is this allowed in a public park?”

A single, careless shrug. “I doubt it.” He hands me a glass. “To serendipity.”

“And picnics,” I say.

We sip, and I choose a slice of cake and a fork. Jonah says, “So tell me about your husband.”

I tsk. “Dane. We were not married a terribly long time. Only seven years, and I don’t think it was really meant to be.” I sigh. “He’s kind of a big personality, and I got swept up into it.”

“Are you friendly?”

“No. Our divorce caused a rift between me and my family.” I lick a tiny bit of frosting to wash away the bitterness I can still sometimes taste. “He was unfaithful, and I kicked him out, quit the restaurant. Sofia was in college, her first year, and I had no idea what to do with myself.” I held up a finger. “Oh, and did I mention my grandmother was sinking into dementia? Bad year, all in all.”

“I guess!”

The expert in me eyes the crumb of the cake, and while bread is my specialty, I can see how perfect this is—moist and dense, with a thin layer of white frosting that turns out to be white chocolate. The whole thing explodes in my mouth, chocolate upon cocoa upon vanilla. “Oh!” I put my hand in front of my mouth. “You made this?”

He smiles. “Like it?”

I take another bite, close my eyes, pinpoint vanilla bean and the layers of chocolate all jammed into a feathery crumb. “Wow. Yes. Fantastic.” I open my eyes, look at the cake. “There’s something … can’t quite catch it …”

“Nutmeg.”

“Ah. Of course. Mmm. Is it your own recipe?”

“Now, that I can’t claim. I found it in a cookbook somewhere. Tweaked it a bit, but mostly it wasn’t mine.”

“You are a fantastic cook. You should be a chef.”

“No. Too much hard work.” He takes a plate from the basket—a real plate, painted blue and yellow in an ethnic pattern—and puts sandwiches and watermelon and more deviled eggs on it. “Have some supper now that you’ve had your dessert.”

I grin.

On the stage, the musicians begin to play. Jonah makes a plate for himself. “So what was Sofia like as a little girl?”

“Oh, she was wonderful. Always bossing the animals around and playing school. She had this giggle that killed me every time. I was finishing high school and all my friends were dating
and going to the prom, and I didn’t care. I just wanted to be with her every minute I could.” Licking frosting off the fork, I say, “God, this is so amazing.”

A woman approaches. She’s very long-legged and glossy in the way of women who have been wealthy their entire lives. “Hello, Jonah,” she purrs. “I thought that was you.”

His shoulders look rigid. “Hello, Alex.” His voice is calm.

She looks at me, head to toes, and then dismisses me. She squats in front of him, showing her sleek calves and a tasteful glimpse of cleavage. “How have you been?”

“Good. This is my friend Ramona. Ramona, this is Alex.”

“Hello,” she says, holding out a hand with a topaz the size of a bread box on her finger. “Jonah and I have a long history.”

“Ah. What a coincidence,” I say. “So do we. When did we meet, Jonah?”

His smile says everything I need to know. “Twenty-five years ago.”

“Old friends, then, huh?”

I look at Jonah, and he looks at me. “Not exactly.”

She shakes her hair, smiles. “Well, you know where to find me,” she says. Wiggling her fingers, she sways away.

“Please tell me that was not one of the Real Housewives of Vail,” I say. “I would hate to think I had been rude.”

He laughs. “Well done.”

“A love affair that ended badly?”

“Never even an affair. We dated a little, but she’s not … the kind of woman I like to spend time with.”

I pluck a sandwich from my plate. “Gorgeous and rich isn’t a combination that works for you?”

He frowns. “High maintenance. Wrong values.”

“What are the right values?”

“Human beings before things. Earth before consumption.” He lifts a shoulder. “Time is precious and should be respected.”

For a moment I look at him, thinking,
He really is the person I thought he was all those years ago
.

Onstage, the cellist begins to play a solo. The bow strokes are long and melancholy, as if to underline Jonah’s words.
Time is precious
. I look at Jonah’s hands, his neck. Notes weave into the gilded evening, sailing almost visibly through the air to land in my chest, caress my throat. “What
is
this?” I ask.

“This one,” he says in a rough voice, “is mine.”

I close my eyes, overcome and embarrassed to show too much, and let the notes settle into the crooks of my arms and the bones of my spine. Tears fill my eyes and spill over. Embarrassed, I blot them with a napkin. “Sorry. It’s just so beautiful. I can’t help it.”

“Don’t apologize. I’m touched that it moves you.” He takes my hand and pulls me closer, his thumb moving over my inner wrist. I scoot a little nearer and can hear him humming beneath the cello—not singing along but adding harmony or counterpoint. It makes me want to cover him with my body, press him into the grass, and kiss his throat. The brush of his thumb, slow and light, sends sparks leaping across my skin, and I can feel the movements beneath my hair on the nape of my neck, on my temples, beneath my arms.

I lift his hand, his marred hand, and press it to my face. “Will you play for me someday, Jonah?”

His breath leaves him on a sigh as he bends in to my invitation, sweeping his other arm around to create a circle that encloses us. His breath smells of chocolate as he leans to kiss me, and when his mouth touches mine, delicately at first—such full lips—my skin and brain are so tingly that I almost feel as if I will faint. I reach for him, for the brace of his shoulder, and grasp the fabric of his shirt as he—or I, or both—makes a low sound, angles his head, and our tongues touch. It feels like an act we invented this minute, something so rare and strange and incredible
that I want to hang in this cello-wound moment, just touching Jonah’s tongue, for at least a year.

But our bodies move, our lips, our tongues, exploring and breathing and sliding and swirling. We breathe. His hand is hot on the back of my neck, and I am holding too tightly to his shirt, and all my resolve to be distant and aloof and to guard myself is gone.

I pull back to look at him. His lion eyes look down at me and we move in to kiss again, this time eye to eye. “I can’t believe I’m kissing you,” he whispers.

“I know. It’s like a dream.”

The music trails away behind us. He straightens, tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear. “My hands are shaking.”

“Everything in me is shaking,” I say, and frown. It feels like too much. I think of him in the record store when we were young, asking why his dreams had been stolen. I think of the music he composed, the music played here tonight, and it is highly emotional. I think of his house, so austere, stripped clean of things to care about.

And now our hands are shaking with emotion. Too much. I think,
This is not going to be good for me
, and I cannot afford to be caught in a dramatic love affair. Too many people are depending on me. I must be the center that holds.

“Maybe,” I say, “we should play backgammon.”

He straightens. “Yes. That’s a good idea.”

He walks me home when the concert is over. Music unhinged me earlier, but we grounded ourselves in the game and food and laughing. Now I feel the evening coming to a close, and I need to make sure we do not take this anywhere.