How to Bake a Perfect Life (38 page)

She takes a breath and I can see her in my mind’s eye, squaring her shoulders. “How’s Katie? She sounds so happy! I’ve never known her to be this way. You’re such a good mother.”

“Oh, it’s not me she loves. It’s your grandmother. They have this whole flower thing going. To tell you the truth, she’s pretty sad about Lily leaving to be with you.”

“Then have her stay with Katie. I’m a grown-up. I’ll be okay.”

“Even adults need help, sweetie. I’m here for Katie. She’ll be fine.” I lower my voice. “We actually celebrated her first period today. How exciting is that?”

Sofia bursts into tears.

“Honey! What’s wrong?”

“I’m just so glad she’s with you. Imagine, Mom, how that would have been in that crack house she was living in. I’m so grateful. Thank you.”

“She’s wonderful, Sofia, and she’s been a big help to me.” Merlin has come into the kitchen and sits down in front of me, one paw on my foot. “I think her dog needs to go outside, as a matter of fact. He’s sitting here staring at me.”

“I should let you go, anyway. I have to go sleep for a while. I’m a basket case, as you can tell.”

I chuckle. “Sleep will help. And this is a very emotional period anyway, even if you didn’t have all this stuff going on.”

“Have Gram give me a call when she knows when she’s getting in. I’ll make arrangements for her. And tell her that I am so grateful that she’s coming.”

“I will.” We hang up and I sit for a minute in the quiet
kitchen, worrying about my baby, so many miles away, alone and lonely, wanting her mother with her. Is there any way to make that happen? Could someone fill in for me?

But even if I could get coverage for the bakery, it feels wrong to create any more upheaval for Katie. She might be irritated at Lily, but the simple cornerstones of normality are so important for her healing—the flowers, regular mealtimes, her dog, her bedroom. She is thriving, like a plant in the right soil, and it feels like my job to be a fence around her.

Merlin lifts his foot and taps my toes lightly. “Sorry,” I say with a chuckle. “You need to go outside. I forgot.”

But when I stand up, he jumps up and heads for the attic, not the stairs to go to the yard. It sparks fear in me. “Is there something wrong?”

He woofs and jerks his head, as if to say,
Come on
. Following him, I wonder traitorously if a cat would ever do this. He leads me into the attic room, where Katie is curled up in a ball under her covers. “Are you all right, Katie?”

“No,” she says. “I have really, really bad cramps and I don’t know what to do.”

I stroke her forehead. “Aw, I’m so sorry. It won’t always be like this, but when it is, what you need is ibuprofen and a good hot bath.”

“Now?”

“Yeah. It’ll help.”

“I’m not going down there. You have a man in your room.”

That throws me, and for a minute I have to think about all the ramifications. “Yes, I do. I’m sorry if that upsets you. I thought you were asleep.”

“I don’t care.”

“It’s only Jonah, and he’s asleep and the door is closed. A bath will make you feel better. I’ll make sure he doesn’t come out.”

“No. It’s embarrassing.”

I wonder if I should kick him out, but that feels wrong, too.

“Well, I can’t force you, though it would really help. Hold on and I’ll get you some Advil.”

Sullenly, she flings back the covers. “I’ll take a bath,” she growls, as if she’s doing me a favor. “I feel gross anyway.”

“Good choice.” I scrub Merlin’s head. He licks my wrist. “Give your dog some extra love. He came to get me.”

When I get back to my room, an exhausted Katie sleeping upstairs, the sun is beginning to come up over the horizon. In my bed, Jonah is asleep, naked, his white shoulders flung out of the sheets, one foot sticking out at the end of the bed. Milo is asleep at the small of Jonah’s back, and when I come into the room, he stretches out one black paw and begins to purr audibly.

At the side of the bed, I pause, looking down at my sleeping lover in the soft gray light. His grizzled jaw, his tousled dark hair, his beautiful mouth. I want to bake bread to commemorate this emotion, create something beautiful just for him. Whispers of what it will be waft over me as I admire him—almonds, perhaps. Walnuts. Honey to make the crust the color of his hair.

My entire being is alive with a thrumming. With sunlight.

I press my fingers to my mouth. I am so in love. And like every woman in love through all of time, I crawl in beside him, quietly, so that I can watch him sleep. I look at his ear and the white skin on his shoulders. He has not even one freckle.

His eye is open, looking at me. At this angle I can see the crow’s feet around his eyes. There is silver in his morning beard. He blinks, closes his eye, and lets go of a breath. Blindly, he reaches for my hand, draws it across the covers to his mouth, and kisses my fingers—one, two, three—then tucks it under his chin as if it is his own hand. We both doze for a while, but it’s no good. I’m awake. I poke him. “I want to go eat breakfast.”

“Do you get up this early every day?”

“Yes! I run a bakery. The bread doesn’t bake itself.”

He sighs. “Okay, I thought you might be my soul mate, but that would mean I could sleep in.”

A zing of disappointment touches me. “Really? How late do you want to sleep?”

“Six?”

“It’s five after six.”

“Ah, good, then.” He moves over, tucks me into his body, and makes love to me one more time.

We shower together afterward, and I realize as I’m soaping his body that I am happy. “This might be one of the better moments of my life thus far.”

“Yeah? Like top five? Top ten?”

I make swirls of soap in his chest hair. “Hmmm. At the least the top twenty.”

He laughs.

I leave a note for Katie on the table, though I doubt very much she’ll be awake before we return. In the cool, bright freshness of seven a.m., we head out for Gertrude’s, an upscale breakfast spot on West Colorado Avenue. I don’t usually go there, but Jonah loves it. We have to wait just inside the door while they make a table ready, and he holds my hand. A spritely little rose he plucked from my garden is sticking out of his shirt pocket, and there is that luminosity of sex all over his skin, shining out of his eyes. I see women eyeing him, and it makes me proud and possessive.

And suddenly I am completely aware of this exact moment—the smell of potatoes browning on a grill, the clatter of someone putting dishes away, the low murmur of polite patrons—because, as I look up at Jonah, I realize that I have fallen over into another state of being and there is no returning from it. Whatever happens, I can’t un-fall in love with him. Whatever thing was born so long ago, that summer when I was pregnant with Sofia, has now sprouted, coming to vigorous life.

The protective person in me, the one who has made so many mistakes, wearily warns against it, but even she knows this is already in motion. She says there could be things lurking, says that we don’t really know each other.

It doesn’t matter. Now, in this very moment, when I am forty years and eleven months into my life, I am in love with Jonah.

He catches my gaze and lifts my hand to his lips. “It was that expression that used to haunt me when we were young. No one, ever, has looked at me like that.” Tenderly, he rubs his thumb over the palm of my hand. “Am I giving it back to you the way I hope I am? I had to hide it then.”

“You are not hiding it now.”

An older woman, tucking her hair under a sun hat, gives us a look. “You two must be newlyweds,” she says.

He tucks my hand close to his ribs. “Something like that.”

RAMONA’S BOOK OF BREADS

SUNSHINE FRUIT AND HONEY BREAD

Sometimes a recipe is born from a moment, and this is the recipe that I came up with after my first night with Jonah. Filled with light and juice and tenderness, it is one of my favorite things. Try it with a cup of sweet chai.

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp kosher salt

½ cup butter, softened

½ cup raw sugar

½ cup dark honey

½ tsp vanilla extract

½ tsp orange extract

2 tsp grated orange zest

2 eggs

1 cup raspberries, whole

¹
/
₃
cup slivered toasted almonds

Juice of 1 orange, mixed with enough powdered sugar to make a thin glaze

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease a 9 × 5-inch loaf pan. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Cream butter, raw sugar, honey, extracts, and zest. Add eggs one at a time. Mix in the dry ingredients until just moist, then very gently fold in the raspberries and toasted
almonds. Bake for 55–60 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

Cool for 20 minutes, then tip bread out onto a wire rack and cool thoroughly. Drizzle the top lightly with glaze.

Katie

  A
long bar of hot sunlight wakes Katie. She notices right away that the cramps are gone. She still feels kind of grouchy, but maybe that’s from not sleeping enough last night. Lily told her that teenagers need ten solid hours of sleep a night, sometimes even twelve when they’re growing.

She changes into jeans and a cute little halter top Lily got her, then heads downstairs to find the note from Ramona. She’s left some
pain au chocolat
on the table, too, and Katie honestly doesn’t mind. She’s been noticing that Jonah really likes Ramona, and he’s a good guy. Katie likes that he cooks, that his house is so clean, that he’s so … classy. From all that Lily has let slip, Ramona has had a broken heart for a long time, so this is a good thing.

She pours a glass of milk to go with the
pain au chocolat
and carries both to the computer nook. There are three emails there this morning. One is from Sofia. One is from Madison, her friend in El Paso. The third is from her mother. She reads them in order. Sofia’s is short. She talks about Oscar and thanks Katie for writing emails every day. They help, she says; he listens carefully.

Katie writes back,
Why won’t he reply to my emails?

Then she reads the note from her friend. It’s been less than two months, but already that friendship seems like something from another life. Madison tells her all about meeting a boy at the swimming pool, about sneaking a cigarette from her mother, about getting a bra in a B cup!

Katie can’t believe this has been her best friend for seven years.

Last, she reads the email from her mother.

HI KATIE BABIE!

YOUR OLD MOMMA IS SURE PROUD OF YOU FOR GETTING SO MUCH MONEY TO ME. YOU MUST BE WORKING REALLY HARD. WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO GET MOOLA. IM WORKING MY PROGRAM BUT I HATE THIS STUPID PLACE AND ALL THE STUPID THINGS THEY MAKE YOU DO. IM LOOKING BETTER THO YOU WOULD BE HAPPY TO SEE THAT MY FACE IS CLEARING UP. WHATS GOING ONE WITH YOU? HOW IS YOUR DOG? HAVE YOU SENT MORE MONEY YET.

I WAS THINKING YOU SHOULD COME SEE ME. THEY’LL LET ME OUT FOR AN HOUR IF I WANT TO SEE MY CHILD, AND THEN I HAVE TO COME BACK IN, BUT I COULD DO THAT EVERY DAY IF YOU COULD GET HERE COME RIDE THE BUSS DOWN AND STAY WITH THE PETROSKYS. THEN WE COULD SEE EACH OTHER AN HOUR EVERYDAY. I SURE MISS YOU BABY AND WANT TO SEE YOU SO, SO, SO BAD. I THINK THE BUSS DOESNT COST THAT MUCH MAYBE RAMONA WOULD PAY. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT IDEA? WRITE BACK AND TELL ME.

LOVE MOM

For a long time, Katie sits right there without moving, feeling a weird hollowness in her chest, like all her air has been sucked out. When she takes a breath, it doesn’t go away.

She doesn’t want to go to El Paso to see her mother. She’ll just keep sending money and hope that keeps her from insisting. Katie had been thinking of telling her mom about getting her
first period and all that, so her mom would be included (she was feeling guilty over dinner that Ramona and Lily were acting like mothers, though she was happy that they did).

Instead, now she writes,

Hi, Mom. Merlin is good. I’m good. I sent some money yesterday, so you should get it pretty soon. I’ve got a big flower show on Monday, so I might not be back to talk for a while, but I love you lots. Katie