How to Eat a Cupcake (13 page)

“You must be Ms. Quintana,” she said, kissing my cheek. “I'm Louise Gertzwell.” Her skin felt soft and papery and warm, like a cupcake liner that's just spent a few minutes on the cooling rack. “I've been so excited to meet you ever since Ogden told me about your new business. Gertzwell Farm fruit in cupcakes!” she cried, clapping her hands together. “Isn't that something?”

“It is,” I said. “It is
something
.” I shot Ogden a needling grin and his cheeks reddened. Still, it wasn't this lovely, cupcake-liner-cheeked woman's fault that she'd given birth to a jerk. I turned back to face Louise. “Please, call me Annie. We just finished up a tour of the orchard. It's even more beautiful than I expected.” From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Ogden's fleeting, satisfied smile.

Louise looked back and forth between the two of us. She sighed. “Oh, Ogden, honey! You told Ms. Quintana we're just thrilled to supply her shop with our fruit, didn't you? We talked about it just this morning, didn't we?”

I was surprised to hear Ogden emit a good-natured laugh. “We sure did, Mom, and it's all under control.” An affectionate, amused grin spread across his face as he looked at his mother. It was clear from their body language—Louise gazing up at her son with gentle admonishment, his large body angled down toward her slight one—that they were not only a mother and son, but also friends. I thought of Ogden growing up on the farm with his mother as his closest companion, felt the reverberations of my own relationship with my mother in the easy, effortless way they spoke with one another, and experienced an all-too-familiar pang of loss.

“You know what, Louise?” I said. “I think Ogden was just about to tell me exactly how thrilled he would be to supply our cupcakery with fruit when we ran into you. Isn't that right, Ogden?”

Ogden looked at me, the hint of a smile still on his lips. His voice was calm and sincere when he answered, “Actually, yes. I think it's just the sort of partnership Gertzwell Farm's been looking for.”

“Well,” I said. For one rare moment, I didn't know what to say. Then I remembered. I walked over to the truck, swung open its heavy door, and pulled out the shiny box I'd stuck in the shade under the seat. I walked back to Ogden and Louise, took a moment to show off the deep red Treat logo sticker that was hot off Julia's fancy branding team's press, and then slipped the lid off. At the sight of the dozen assorted cupcakes, as bright and optimistic as party hats, Louise's eyes lit up.

“How wonderful!” she said, clapping her hands together again.

I handed her one of the red velvet cupcakes that I'd made in the old-fashioned style, using beets instead of food coloring. I'd had to scrub my fingers raw for twenty minutes to get the crimson beet stain off them, but the result was worth it: a rich chocolate cake cut with a lighter, nearly unidentifiable, earthy sweetness, and topped with cream cheese icing and a feathery cap of coconut shavings. For Ogden, I selected a Moroccan vanilla bean and pumpkin spice cupcake that I'd been developing with Halloween in mind. It was not for the faint of heart, and I saw the exact moment in Ogden's eyes that the dash of heat—courtesy of a healthy pinch of cayenne—hit his tongue, and the moment a split-second later that the sugary vanilla swept away the heat, like salve on a wound.

“Oh,” he said, after swallowing. He looked at me, and I could see it was his turn to be at a loss for words.

I smiled.

Louise, on the other hand, was half giggling, half moaning her way through a second cupcake, this time a lemonade pound cake with a layer of hot pink Swiss meringue buttercream icing curling into countless tiny waves as festive and feminine as a little girl's birthday tiara.

“Exquisite!” she said, mouth full. And then, shrugging in her son's direction, her eyes twinkling, “What? I didn't eat lunch.”

Chapter 12

Julia

“J
ulia, my dear, you seem content,” my father pronounced, apropos of nothing, from his end of the dining table one morning that September. I looked up from my tea to see him peering at me, looking quite pleased himself as he brushed coffee cake remnants from his hands.

On some level, he was right. With the sun-soaked chandelier throwing tiny rainbows across the table, a flaky croissant oozing chocolate onto my plate, and the soothing rustle of my father's newspaper in the background, I had been feeling—if not content, exactly, at least sufficiently distracted.

“Who wouldn't be happy with this perfect fall weather? I'd forgotten how dreary the foggy San Francisco summer could be.”

“We both know it takes more than fog to slow you down,” my father chided, releasing one of his hearty laughs. I shrugged, smiling, relieved that he didn't seem to expect more of a response from me. “I think it's that cupcake shop that's put a swing back in your step.”

“It's keeping me on my toes, that's for sure.”

“How so?”

“Oh, nothing really. It seems we have some neighborhood vandals to contend with. Nothing we can't handle.”

Earlier that week our contractor, Burt, had arrived at the shop to find a deep key gauge in the new front door. To me, the gauge looked more like the work of an ice pick than a key, but the precise tool of choice seemed hardly worth splitting hairs over. The door had been repaired and repainted by the end of the day and, after filing yet another complaint with the police, none of us mentioned it again. I probably should have taken the incident more seriously, but frankly, to my newcomer's eye, the Mission seemed like the sort of neighborhood where that kind of thing happened all the time. I figured it was par for the course and added another zero to the maintenance column of the cupcakery's projected monthly budget. Anyway, it's all too easy to retroactively kick myself for not seeing the pattern that was developing; at the time, each incident seemed isolated and unworthy of too much concern.

“Be safe,” my father said, lifting his coffee cup into the air in front of him, “but give 'em hell! Don't let it get to you.” He lowered the cup to his lips and took a loud, satisfied sip.

“Of course not.”

“You and Annie together are unstoppable. Any fool could see that a mile away. I'm just  . . .” He hesitated, clearing his throat. I felt the skin on the back of my neck begin to prickle. It wasn't like my father to have to search for words, and I suddenly felt anxious about where this conversation might be headed. “I'm really proud of you, sweetheart,” he said. “I'm glad to see you rekindling your friendship with Annie. I know it's not always the easiest thing for you to fully open yourself up to people, but there's such a thing as too much independence. It's not in our nature. Everyone needs a best friend.”

I stared at my father as he took another long sip of coffee. I bristled at the thought of him, or anyone, really, observing me like this, formulating theories about me. “I do have a best friend,” I said. “I have Wes.”

My father shot me an indecipherable look but didn't say anything.

“Well, who's yours?” I asked, irritated.

“I have two,” he answered without hesitation. “Kip Shanahan, of course.” Kip was my father's Stanford roommate and my godfather—a loud, good-natured orthopedic surgeon who shared my father's affection for Kobe beef and Bordeaux. “And Curtis. He knows all my secrets.”

“What about Mom?” I asked quickly. I had no interest in hearing my father's secrets.

“Three!” he bellowed, laughing. He cast a comically exaggerated nervous glance over his shoulder. “I meant to say I have
three
best friends! And you'll never get me to admit I ever said otherwise.”

“No,” I said, laughing. “I meant, who is Mom's best friend?”

“Oh. Your mother's best friend? That's a tough one. She knows absolutely everyone, of course. Ten years ago I would have said Lucia. Now, I'm not so sure. I guess she's had trouble filling the slot lately.”

I was quiet as I took this information in. I'd always known that my mother and Lucia were friends, but I'd never assigned quite such a level of importance to the role Lucia had played in her life.

“Those were good years in this home,” my father said softly. He picked at the crumbs on his plate, suddenly subdued. “We had a solid run.”

The shift in my father's mood was unsettling, but he was right. There was a period of time when our home felt perfectly in sync. My mother had Lucia, my father had Curtis, and I had Annie. It occurred to me, as it somehow never had before, that I had caused the first fissure in those happy times by abandoning my friend.

“Do you remember that Thanksgiving when we invited Lucia and Annie and Curtis to join us?” my father asked. “It must have been fifteen years ago. I can't for the life of me figure out why we didn't do that every year. It was a wonderful holiday.”

This nostalgic streak was so unlike my father, the faraway look that momentarily glazed his eyes so different from his usual alert, jovial gaze that I didn't know how to answer. I felt a twist in my stomach and kept my eyes trained on the table. I didn't like the idea of age changing my father, making him a softer, vaguer version of the strong man he'd always been. He must have noticed my discomfort because he laughed, and the familiar, booming sound relieved me.

“Don't look like that, my dear,” he barked amiably. “All I'm saying is that I'm glad to have you back! The house feels better with a little more life in it. And please keep in mind that just because you don't remember that particular Thanksgiving doesn't mean I'm a dotty old fool.”

I didn't answer, but the truth was I
did
remember that Thanksgiving, just not in the same sentimental, soft-focused light that my father seemed to.

Our family had a tradition of spending the long Thanksgiving weekend at the Four Seasons in Maui, but for some reason my mother decided we would stay home that year. I had no idea why we were breaking with such a faultless tradition—I'd always loved returning home from Hawaii to endure San Francisco's rainy winter months with a nice bronze glow and sun-brightened streaks in my long hair—but my mother had insisted on Thanksgiving at home for once, and had extended the invitation to Lucia and Annie and even Curtis. Looking back, I suppose the change of plans might have had something to do with the fact that Annie and I were in eighth grade, safely ensconced in our small middle school yet less than a year away from entering the decidedly more adult world of Devon Prep. Who knows—maybe my mother had a crystal ball that told her that our happy little home dynamic was about to irrevocably shift. I wouldn't have put it past her.

As it turned out, our strange little six-some spent nearly the entire day in the kitchen together. We were drawn there, of course, by Lucia, who had devised a Thanksgiving menu so aggressively American you would have thought she was born in Massachusetts, not Ecuador. By the time I made it downstairs that morning, the air was already thick with the mouthwatering aromas of sweet potatoes and cranberries and turkey and pumpkin pie. I expected to find Lucia alone when I pushed open the kitchen's swinging door, and so was surprised to see my mother perched on a stool at the center island, slowly chopping herbs between sips of ice water.

“Hello, darling,” my mother rasped, waving the knife in the air. “Isn't this fabulous? The Four Seasons could learn a thing or two from our Lucia—if I ever let them get their greedy paws on her.”

Lucia's hair was pulled back into a neat bun at the nape of her neck, but her dark cheeks were blotchy and her hands fluttered in constant motion from one task to another. I could see she was teetering on the edge of that rattled state she worked herself into whenever she was cooking for a special occasion. Still, she looked happy—those blotches on her cheeks seemed to flare more in response to my mother's compliment than any agitation she was feeling. She paused from work long enough to give me a tight squeeze; she'd always seemed allergic to the idea of a greeting or farewell that didn't include some physical demonstration of affection. Due to my recent growth spurt we'd had to renegotiate how our bodies fit together for these hugs and had settled into a new configuration in which Lucia's chin rested for a moment on my shoulder, her brief kiss grazing my jawline. When she released me, she gestured toward a heaping platter of pastries and an enormous crystal bowl of cut fruit on the counter.

“Good morning,
mi amor
,” she said, holding eye contact for a long beat before turning back to the stove. “Eat breakfast and then I will put you to work. Your first job is to wake Annie or she will sleep all day long.”

I dropped into the breakfast booth in the corner of the kitchen, stabbing drowsily at pieces of melon with my fork and half listening to the steady flow of conversation between my mother and Lucia.

“And how is Mrs. von Dreiden?” Lucia asked. She'd managed to slide the cutting board of herbs away from my mother without her seeming to notice and had begun expertly gliding her knife in a silent rolling motion through the green stems. “I haven't heard much of her lately.”

I perked up. Judith von Dreiden was part of my mother's social circle and her daughter was a couple of years behind me in school. There were few topics that intrigued me more than adults' opinions of one another.

“Oh, I saw Judith last week,” my mother said. “She had the usual litany of complaints—fatigue, sore joints, headaches. I can't imagine how long her visits with her
actual
doctor must be considering how long she'll rattle on about that nonsense to me—she must have him on a special retainer! I keep telling her she needs to take up a cause—it's not healthy to think about yourself too much.”

“What a shame. She is such a nice lady,” Lucia said. She transferred the cut herbs from the cutting board to a small bowl. “Maybe she can join you on a committee at the museum? She collects art, doesn't she?”

My mother thought about this for a moment. I expected a biting comment from her, perhaps something about the “housewife disease” she was often accusing her friends of suffering from—symptoms included acute laziness and addiction to shopping. Instead, she shrugged and said, “She does love art. It's a good idea, Luce. I'll ask her.”

The back door to the kitchen swung open and Annie trudged into the room, her hair tangled and her eyes still sticky with sleep. Her step faltered for a moment when she saw all of us, but then she grunted a greeting and shoved me playfully deeper into the booth so she could slide in beside me.

“At last, our fourth wheel,” my mother said jauntily. For a woman whose daily life always seemed to me to pitch steadily forward on a wave of brisk, self-propelled momentum, she seemed unusually relaxed and cheerful today.

“
Buenos días, mi amor
,” Lucia said, crossing the room to hug and kiss Annie. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Morning, everyone,” Annie said. “I hope you're all feeling particularly thankful for my big hair and unbrushed teeth today.”

“Gross!” I said, laughing.

Lucia looked at my mother and shook her head, lifting her hands in front of her. “I take no responsibility for this. I know I taught her better.”

“Oh, our work here is done, Luce,” my mother answered. “These young ladies are responsible for their own actions.” She shook a finger at Annie, who was biting lustfully into an oversized muffin. “Just promise me you'll reintroduce yourself to some soap before we sit down to eat this afternoon.”

Annie grinned, and, though Lucia and my mother generously ignored the crumbs that dropped from her mouth as she did so, I fell into the sort of fit of uncontrollable giggles that only Annie seemed capable of eliciting from me.

We were still in the kitchen a couple of hours later when my father and Curtis returned from the driving range. It was barely eleven a.m. and my father was really more of a martini man, but he reached into the fridge and pulled out four beers. The sight of my mother's thin hand clasping a beer bottle was enough to set Annie and me giggling again, and Lucia and Curtis and my father all seemed to be having a hard time keeping a straight face at the sight as well.

“Just look at you all!” my mother rasped. “You'd think you stumbled into Mother Teresa sipping gin at the racetrack!” She tipped the beer bottle back for a long drink and we all erupted into laughter.

As much time as we each spent with one another, it was rare that we found ourselves all together in the same room. Curtis was his usual man-of-few-words self, but Lucia set him to work mashing potatoes and he appeared to loosen up a bit. I'd noticed that Annie always seemed to gravitate toward him, teasing him relentlessly and badgering him into conversation; he tolerated her needling that day in his typically unflappable style and even cracked a smile every so often.

As the morning wore on, I found myself feeling increasingly disconcerted by our strange six-some. Looked around, it dawned on me for the very first time that two of the four adults in the room were on our family's payroll. Did they even want to be there? I looked at Lucia, my heart aching with love for her. While my parents and I enjoyed ourselves, was she glancing at the clock, wondering when her workday would be over? I suddenly felt sick. Lucia was
paid
to ask my mother about her friends. Curtis was
paid
to join my father on the golf course on a national holiday. Worst of all, Lucia was paid to love me. I watched her pull Annie tight to her side as they passed each other by the fridge, watched Annie wriggle away, feigning irritation, and felt the unfamiliar tremors of jealousy and loss rattle within me.

Later, we all showered and changed into more formal clothes for the Thanksgiving meal and reconvened in the dining room. After Lucia set the last steaming dish on the table and took her place beside Annie, my father lifted his wineglass.