How to Bake a Perfect Life (39 page)

Ramona

  T
rying to make lemonade from lemons, I pay Katie to help me scour the bakery on Friday and Saturday. It is a good use of downtime, and it keeps Katie occupied. The money will no doubt all go to her mother, but that is her choice. Obviously she’s using some of her bakery earnings for things she wants—I noticed her fingernails were painted pale blue one day, and she had on a cute pair of sandals another. When I commented, she said, “Goodwill! Only two dollars, can you believe it? They’re a tiny bit too big, but my feet are still growing, right?”

On Sunday, Lily asks if Katie would like to ride up to the airport with her, but she refuses and hides out in her room all afternoon. Leaving her to her sulk, I tackle another task on my to-do list: having a conversation with my sister.

I’ve been thinking about this since our conversation on Thursday, when she point-blank refused to help me. We’ve been on the outs long enough, and I’m not going to leave it alone anymore.

But how to catch her so that she can’t run away is another trick entirely. I consider and discard a couple of possibilities: showing up at her town house some morning (but that would mean talking to her before she has coffee—never a good idea); going to the trailhead from which she walks every day at three
p.m. (but she is much fitter than me and would just outwalk me).

I settle on catching her at the steakhouse in mid-afternoon, when she’ll be performing any number of catch-up tasks for the week. My father is driving my mother to Denver, so he’ll be offsite.

Perfect.

As if I am attiring myself for battle, I choose my outfit carefully—a simple sundress that makes me look a little less curvy, hair pulled back in a half French braid that flows loose partway down my back, sandals. Silver bracelets, like war gear.

I drive over there to arrive at exactly two fifteen, one of the deadest times in any restaurant.

The Erin Steakhouse was established in 1964. A long, mid-century-style building with angles and plate-glass windows on a bluff, it offers spectacular views of the city from one side and the Front Range from the other and has been one of the premier restaurants in the city for more than forty-five years. People book tables with a view in order to propose. Graduating seniors are feted; Air Force Academy cadets and their parents celebrate here. And the number of prom dresses that have paraded through the establishment over the years has to count in the tens of thousands. It is the star of the Gallagher Group, my father’s flagship.

Or was. As I pull into the lot this afternoon, I am startled to see how dated it looks. With the critical eye I have developed under Cat’s tutelage, I mentally pull out the dusty, aging junipers and replace them with pots of cactus and yucca, cover the too-jaunty green shade of the paint with something more fitting to the landscape. Forest green, maybe, or a rosy sand to match the earth.

And the sign, I think, touching it as I walk by. The sign definitely needs help.

It isn’t a place I come to very often, but the Erin is still associated very much for me with the summer I was fifteen.

As I walk in, a hostess comes forward, and I wave her away. “I’m looking for Stephanie. Is she here?”

“Can I tell her who is looking for her?”

“I’m her sister,” I say, putting my finger to my lips and smiling as if this is a happy moment. “I’d like to surprise her.”

The girl is instantly conspiratorial. “Oh, sure,” she whispers, and comes close to me. “She’s over in the corner. Do you see her?”

I nod and make my way through the sparsely occupied tables. It does seem that there should be a little more business during a Sunday lunch, but this has always been mainly a dinner restaurant. The presence of customers is part of my plan to keep Stephanie mellow, so I’m glad for any of them.

My sister is neatly dressed in a white cardigan and sharply creased black pants. Her jewelry is a single thin gold bracelet and the amethyst ring that belonged to my grandmother. In this, she and Sofia are both like my mother—elegant, always perfectly groomed, though Sofia has a more passionate and expressive personality, which perfectly illuminates her Irish-Mexican DNA.

Steph is bent over a stack of papers, and I can see she’s doing scheduling. “Aren’t there computer programs for that now?” I say, sliding into the booth.

I’ve caught her off guard, as I’d hoped, and before she can erect her mask, I see the exhaustion around her eyes, the fleeting surprise. “Ramona!” she says, staring. “What are you doing here?”

I fold my hands on the table and look around. Inside, it’s even more dated, with a decidedly Vegas-circa-1973 feeling. It has to be hurting the restaurant. I frown. “Is the menu still the same here, too?”

She raises an eyebrow and gathers papers into a stack. Nods.

“Wow.”

“That’s not why you’re here.”

“No.” I sit straight and look her in the blue, blue eye. “I’m tired of this long war, and I want to end it.”

Irritably, she says, “What war? Don’t be dramatic.”

I think of Jonah, wonder how he might manage a conflict like this. Trying to channel his calming tone, I say, “Maybe it isn’t a war. Maybe it’s just been a disagreement, a different way of looking at things. What I know is that I—” I pause, bite my inner lip. “I miss my sister. I hate it that we never talk, that you’re so mad at me. And I don’t know why, so I can’t fix it.”

Color has been creeping into her cheeks as I talk. She has always had perfectly smooth skin, and it shows this color as delicately as a princess. “I’d rather not have this conversation here.” She glances over her shoulder. “Now.”

“I know. But the thing is, I’m not leaving until we talk today. And if you get up to walk away”—I smile brightly—“I’ll follow you.”

In a low voice, she says, “Why are you doing this?”

In a voice just as quiet: “Because you came to my business and yelled at me as if I were a child. Because I asked for your help and you completely dismissed me, and that is not what families are supposed to do.”

“Oh, what families do!” Her eyes narrow as she leans over the table. “You can do whatever
you
want,
whenever
you want, and then when you want us you can just come waltzing back and expect everything to be forgiven?”

“What did I do to be forgiven for, Steph?” I touch my chest. “What did I do?”

She makes a huffing sound of disbelief and looks over her shoulder again. “Let’s start with you screwing your father’s worst enemy.”

I shake my head. “That was after.”

“How about leaving the restaurant, leaving us in the lurch?”

“That’s true, I did do that.” It’s harder to be calm than I expected, and I have to look away, take a deep breath, and imagine the cool air of the mountains bringing down the temperature in my lungs. “But we both know that it wasn’t okay for the Gallagher Group to keep Dane when he had been so repeatedly, shamefully unfaithful to me.”

She rolls her eyes. “For God’s sake. It was years ago.”

“But we’re talking about what happened years ago.” I lean forward and say again, “What did I do
then
that I need to be forgiven for? Tell me and I’ll make amends.”

“You always get whatever you want, with a snap of your fingers. You just sail through everything, and everyone loves Ramona.”

I blink. “Sail through? Through what? Through being pregnant at fifteen? Through—”

“You always go back to that, like you’re the only person who had big problems as a teenager. Everybody does. Get over it.”

For a minute I want to storm away. Instead, I stand my ground. Quietly. Firmly. “You said I sailed through everything. I don’t see it that way. I think I’ve had kind of a challenging path.”

“No more challenging than anyone else.”

I lean back against the ugly green leather banquette. Maybe that’s true. “I don’t know how to atone for that. Can you forgive me for sailing through everything? For not having a harder road?” I frown. “I don’t think any of that is what this war is about.”

“Don’t call it war,” she says, and taps her stack of papers crisply against the table. “I just get tired of you being the center of everything. Plain and simple.”

“Talk to me.”

She meets my eyes. “Too late.” She swings her legs out of the booth and stands. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

Before she walks away, I say, “Well, thanks for that, anyway.
And if you need any help bringing the Erin into this century, I can probably help.”

She only glares over her shoulder and clip-clops into the kitchen.

Heading back to my car, I think,
At least I gave it a shot
. Maybe it will be like water against stone, but it is a beginning.

Because it’s that kind of a day, Katie is still in her room sulking when I get home. “Hey,” I say, knocking on the threshold. “You about ready to go to Jonah’s for Sunday-night supper?”

“I know you guys want to be alone,” she says, barely looking up from her thick book. Merlin sprawls on the floor of the screened-in balcony, panting hard.

“I love your company,” I say. “And maybe your dog would like to get out of this oven, hmmm?”

She glances over the top of her book. “We’ll go outside.”

“No, you should come with me. Jonah’s making his fish tacos, and you really loved them last time.”

“I don’t want to go, Ramona!” One foot is crossed over the top of her knee, and the foot wiggles furiously.

I wait.

“Did any of you ever think that I might want to see my dad? I mean, he is my dad, and I can be very helpful.” Tears glitter at the corners of her eyes. “Why didn’t Lily even ask me if I wanted to go with her?”

If living with my family, especially my mother, has taught me anything, it is to take a deep breath when a teenager flings an accusatory question on the table. It writhes between us like a rattlesnake, tail wiggling dangerously. “It would be terrible for you there, Katie. Sofia is in the hospital all the time, and there wouldn’t be anything to do. You would spend time in the room with your dad, but that would get old fast. He’s not well. He wouldn’t be talking to you—”

“I know that! I’m not a baby.”

My temper flares. “Well, you sure have been acting like one. Everyone is bending over backward to give you a better life, and you—”

“Nobody asked me if I wanted a better life!”

“No, because sometimes you have to trust adults to make good decisions on your behalf.”

“But I can’t act like a baby?”

In that instant I remember how illogical Sofia could be at this age, given to circular arguments and emotional pleas that didn’t follow any rules I could discern. Putting my hand on her knee, I say, “You can if you want to. You can sulk up here as long as you like, too, but please take care of your dog.” Merlin has come over to the side of the bed, panting, and I stroke his head. “I’m going to Jonah’s. You are welcome to come with me if you leave your mood behind.”

“I’m not going.” But she does fling her legs off the bed and put on her flip-flops. “We’ll go read outside.”

“Don’t forget the bug spray.”

She rolls her eyes. “I know, I know. West Nile virus.”

As I escape into the dusty gold air of late afternoon, I am not unhappy to be leaving her to her sulk. It occurs to me that nearly everything in my life is teetering on the edge of disaster, but I’m also happy. How is it possible that things can be so beautiful and so awful, so rewarding and so exhausting, all at once?

As I walk down the narrow sidewalk, passing tiny front gardens planted with flowers I can’t name, it seems easy to count my blessings. I’m relieved beyond measure that my mother is on her way to San Antonio, is in fact probably there. I’m relieved that if I had to have a big problem with the water heater, it came this weekend instead of two weekends from now when there is a festival. I’m glad for the good weather and my hair and living in such a beautiful place.

Any second now I’m going to burst into song. Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.

As I round the corner to Jonah’s house, the reason for my happiness is standing in his yard, watering the flower beds with a sprinkler hose. He’s tall and fit, his muscled runner’s legs showing beneath long khaki shorts. Something about his ankles is sexy, and it makes me smile.

And maybe it’s unfeminist of me to be so pleased by a man’s company, to find happiness in falling in love, but there is no denying the reality. I am thrilled to see him, every single time. “Hello, gorgeous,” I say, coming up the walk to stand beside him. “What are those flowers?”

“The purple ones are phlox. I wouldn’t choose them myself, but the garden here is old, and I like the way it all works together.” He gestures toward a climbing pink rose, which is blooming in a profuse cascade above a bank of something blue, and a line of yellow flowers below that. “Somebody really loved this place and spent a lot of time on it. I like to honor that.”

“It is beautiful. I have sometimes wondered why you chose this place, in particular.”

“Aside from the fact that it was obviously fated, you mean?”

I smile up at him. “Well, it is modest, and you could have probably chosen anything in town. There are some spectacular places around the city.”

He moves the spray over the blossoms, back and forth, back and forth. “There are. I looked at some of them.” There is something still in him when he says, “How much does one person need, really? This is plenty.”

“Can I kiss you for that, please?”

“You can kiss me whenever you like.” He points the sprinkler in the opposite direction from us and I lean in, standing on my toes to press my mouth to his. His hand wraps around my waist and hauls me close. “Mmm,” he says, smacking his lips. “One of my favorite things. Kisses from Ramona.”

I let him go and follow him across the lawn to turn off the water. It’s a thick, established bluegrass, and it gives off coolness that brushes my ankles. Over the top of the house, the mountains draw a zigzaggy dark line against a sky made of pale lemon clouds and layers of airy blue meringue.

“Listen,” I say.

He turns. Cocks his head.

The world is very still. Far away, a child calls. A bird is singing in the foliage. Water drips from leaves to the ground. “Could you write music from that?”