The Cake Therapist (20 page)

They sat silent for a moment, lost in their thoughts.

“When I found the ring, I thought maybe you had changed your mind about running away, Edie,” Shemuel continued, “but still wanted to help me, just like your mother always did. I thought you left it for me on purpose. But just in case I had missed you on the train somehow, I got off at the Queen City terminal and looked for you, but you were gone.”

“I don’t remember,” said Edie sadly.

“You seemed to do all right for yourself since then, Shemuel,” said Olive angrily. “Even a new name. I changed my name, too, when I married Frank, but it didn’t change my luck.”

“Things switched for us, Olive,” he said quietly. “You had what I wanted when I was a boy. You had parents who loved you and a meal on the table every night. You had a clean house and a real bed. You had warm clothes. I never had that. My old name tied me to that old life.”

“Didn’t you care what happened to Edie? Didn’t you ever try to find her?”

“Yes, Olive. Many times. After I got out of the Army and started doing well in my business, I hired private detectives to search for her, but they never found anything.”

“They could have found me,” fumed Olive.

“They did find you. But I didn’t get in touch. I thought Edie might have been running away from you, too, Olive.”

Olive glared.

“This is almost too much for me,” Edie said, sinking back into her chair.

We sat in silence again.

Now was my time to speak. This was going to sound strange to them, I knew. But maybe something would jog Edie’s memory.

“As you said,” I began, gesturing to Shemuel, “Edie must have gotten off the train before it left the Millcreek Valley station. But where did she go? She didn’t go back home. She didn’t walk along the railroad tracks because she couldn’t see anything in the heavy snowstorm. But she could have walked up the convent hill,” I ventured.

“Why would you do that?” Shemuel asked Edie.

“I don’t know,” Edie said.

“Maybe you thought you saw something on the train and got scared,” I suggested. “You could have jumped off at the last minute and started running away from the train, away from town. Up the convent hill. You might have seen the light through the stained glass window in Bernadette’s grotto, and walked toward it. I have done that myself.”

“I pray there at least once a day,” Edie said. “Something about being there keeps my mind from racing. I can slow down my thoughts and just breathe.”

“Yes,” I said. “It has had that effect on me, too.” I gently nudged her back in time. “That day after Pearl Harbor, you might have stayed in the grotto to get out of the weather. Do you remember being there?”

She shook her head no.

“Maybe you felt safe there,” I continued, “safe from something bad that happened to you. From what Shemuel and Olive have said, you might have had post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“Edie?” exclaimed Olive. “Post-traumatic stress? I thought you only got that in war.”

“You can get that after any sudden trauma,” Shemuel said. “War. Natural disasters. Domestic violence. I’ve known men who had ‘shell shock,’ they used to call it. And one of my employees developed PTSD after her husband beat her and her children. We tried everything we could to help her, but she eventually had to go on disability. She wouldn’t leave the house.”

“You wouldn’t leave the house, either,” Olive said sadly. “Do you remember that, Edie? You locked us up like we lived in Fort Knox. I just didn’t know why.”

“Maybe what happened to you was so painful, you had to shut down in order to keep going. Maybe you kept reliving this
thing
, like a terrifying nightmare. A nightmare you couldn’t fully wake up from. Maybe you had to forget everything in order to get over it.”

Edie just shook her head.

“How can you forget everything?” Olive asked.

“I knew a guy who never drove a car again after he was an ambulance driver in the war. I knew another guy who never spoke after he got home. You see stuff. You do stuff. And it gets to you. Losing the past doesn’t sound far-fetched to me,” said Shemuel. “You do what you have to do to survive.”

“Maybe she collapsed and someone found her in the grotto,” I continued. “A nun, perhaps, since she was on convent grounds. I don’t know. That’s all I’ve got.”

“Well, that might explain how Edie became a nun,” said Shemuel. “But why didn’t anyone know that?”

We sat in silence again.

Olive’s frail fingers curled around her sister’s hand. “You’re here now and that’s all that matters to me.” Tears rolled down her wizened cheeks. There was something about tough old Mrs. Amici crying that got to me more than her sharp words ever did. I took a clean napkin and reached over to gently dry her tears, sparing the precious handkerchief.

“Where’s Barney? Where’s my dog?” she wailed. Olive’s eyes fluttered and then closed. “Pickle and Olive,” she whispered. “Pickle and Olive,” she repeated, getting louder.

Shemuel pushed himself forward in his chair. “Don’t worry, Olive. I’ll post Diane’s bail. I’ll see that she gets a good attorney. Don’t worry about that. Don’t worry.”

But Olive didn’t seem to hear. She started rocking back and forth. “Pickle and Olive. Pickle and Olive. Pickle and Olive . . .”

I pushed the call button by her bed, then knelt by her wheelchair. Edie and I both stroked Olive’s hand until help arrived.

MARCH 1964

Sister Agnes climbed the big staircase of the academy, pausing on the spacious landing for a moment to admire the towering oil painting of God the Father high up in the clouds with the sun streaming behind Him.

She loved the colors—blue green, salmon, gold. Not at all what you’d think the God of Abraham would favor. She would have guessed a dark, thunder blue and lightning-bolt yellow—sort of like an atomic blast. She squinted to read the artist’s name in the bottom right corner and said a silent “hello” to her friend and mentor, Ethel Parsons Paullin.

When Agnes was working with textbook illustrators in New York, she had met Mrs. Paullin on a visit to the Church of Saint Vincent Ferrer on the Upper East Side. Mrs. Paullin was giving a walking lecture on the series of fourteen oil paintings, representing the Stations of the Cross, which she and her late husband, Telford, had completed in 1918. After the lecture, Agnes and the older artist had struck up a friendly conversation, for it turned out that Ethel had grown up in northern Ohio and had worked on a project in Lockton.

Agnes remembered her delightful sense of humor as the older woman talked about her varied career designing mattress covers, playing cards, stained glass windows, and religious art. “From the profane to the sacred,” Mrs. Paullin had joked. “I do it all. In fact, the subject matter of the work matters little to me. Instead, I have only one test for my designs. If they give me a feeling of restful happiness, I know they will please other people.”

The benefactors of the school had certainly been pleased when, a few years later, Mrs. Paullin had donated the massive oil of God the Father to Mount Saint Mary in honor of her dear friend Sister Agnes—a woman who, like Mrs. Paullin, had defied expectations and achieved creative success.

On the third floor, Sister dipped her long, slim fingers into the holy water font attached to the wall and made the sign of the cross. She always bowed her head to the framed black-and-white print of Blessed Julie Billiart, as if the French founder of their order could actually see her.

Sister Agnes looked a little like Blessed Julie. Her black veil was neatly pinned to her face-framing headdress. A white linen wimple curved around her face, while a stiff white bib reached from shoulder to shoulder of her black long-sleeved gown. Strands of wooden rosary beads tied at her waist jostled with each step.

The long hallway had tall windows on the left that looked down onto the circular drive and the town at the bottom of the hill. On the right, dark oak doors opened to classrooms.

In the alcove on a window wall stood a favorite of nuns and students alike. A lifelike statue of the Infant of Prague—Jesus as a princely toddler holding an orb and scepter—reigned atop a plaster pillar. Every month, the nuns changed the handmade mantle and gown on the Infant. Today, the Infant was dressed in Lenten violet. Two weeks from now, the nun on the rota would change the gown to white for Easter.

The original McCall’s pattern had gotten a lot of use over the years, thought Agnes, who remembered stitching an alb or undergarment out of white dimity for the Infant when she was in the infirmary here.
The Infant has more clothes than I do now,
she thought.

When she first came to the convent, she had been so exhausted that she couldn’t sew or read. Her eyes just couldn’t focus to thread a needle or read the small print of the only book she had brought with her. There was so much else going on with the war, the nuns had just given her the rest she needed. When they kept asking questions as she got better, Agnes was afraid to admit she no longer had a clear picture of what her life was like before. She knew she had to have a story for the sisters, so she stitched one together from tiny scraps of memory. Caroline Edwards—the signature in the book she had brought with her,
The Princess and the Goblin
. Chicago. She loved to read. She was good with a needle. Lemon was her favorite flavor.

“What about your family, Caroline? Is there anyone we should contact?” the kindly nuns kept pressing.

Trying to remember had brought back that cold weight, the darkness pressing down on her. There was something hovering just beyond the reach of allowable memory that still came up in dreams. A silhouette. A shadow. A feeling.

Caroline couldn’t go there and Agnes wouldn’t. “All my family are gone,” she had finally told the nuns. That was the truth, at least—she couldn’t recall who her parents and siblings were, if indeed she’d ever had any. Or the place she had called home when she was a child.

Although she had lived and taught in many places, when Agnes came back to Mount Saint Mary’s, she felt at home. The nuns here sent her to college in Boston during her novitiate, taught her how to manage a classroom when she began teaching, cheered her on as she wrote and published stories for primary school readers and then became the editor of a series. They welcomed her back when she needed quiet time to write and edit another book, as she was doing now. They gave her the balm of uncomplicated companionship and daily structure.

She had been happy here, as she told Mrs. Paullin the last time they met in the artist’s New York studio.

Yet some things could come only from the children. Agnes opened the door and stepped into the large, high-ceilinged room of second-graders. The classroom featured one wall of large, south-facing windows that looked out onto the fishpond and garden. A bitter wind flung tiny ice pellets against them.

The bulletin boards on either side of the front blackboard were almost completely covered with colorful construction paper baskets, partially filled with cut paper flowers, as the students added blooms to mark each step toward their First Communion in May. The baskets added the only extra color, except for the globe on Sister Josepha’s desk.

Thirty-four children—girls and boys in navy wool and starched white cotton uniforms—all rose together when their teacher signaled with her wooden spindle “clicker.” The racket of their wooden chairs sliding back from their wood-topped metal desks was as familiar to Agnes as the peal of the convent bells that rang the Angelus at six, noon, and six every day.

She smiled and rubbed her hands together. She couldn’t wait to get started. It was story time.

The
beep-beep-beep
of the security code announced entry into the memory care wing at Mount Saint Mary’s.

Sister Agnes slowly glided into the ward with her walker, wearing her usual blue fleece and the medal of the Blessed Mother on a silvery chain.

“Couldn’t sleep again,” she explained ruefully to the staff nurse. “Arthritis acting up.”

“You know you’re always welcome, at any time, Sister. And you’re more awake than I am.”

“If you want to get a cup of coffee, I can hold down the fort.”

“I’d love to. I’ll just run down to the break room and be right back. You know where the call button is if you need me?”

Agnes nodded with that quiet assurance that always made everyone feel more peaceful. Few people knew her unusual story, and Agnes preferred to keep it that way. Only Shemuel, Neely, and Olive knew that she had been Edie Habig, not Caroline Edwards, before she took her vows. When Agnes tried to remember her past, she could recall only her childhood. If this was what God chose to return to her, Agnes would be grateful and not ask for more. Reuniting with her sister was gift enough.

The nun wheeled her slow, deliberate way down to Olive’s room. After sustaining a concussion, Olive had been diagnosed with dementia. Sister Agnes had helped arrange for the rehab hospital to send her here.

Outside each patient’s one-bed room, a glass shadow box held precious photos and mementos that showed the person that dementia had stolen away. A yellowed newspaper clipping of Mr. Patton playing baseball in college, a few poker chips, and a Salesman of the Year plaque. Photos of Mrs. Foster on her wedding day, holding her baby daughter, then with her grandchildren on a picnic—and a tea towel she had embroidered. Mrs. O’Neil’s was so crammed with mementos, it was difficult to take it all in, but Sister Agnes’ eye always went to the photo of the granddaughter, Neely, the one who had brought that delicious strawberry cake. Olive’s shadow box had not yet been filled, but her grandson, Bobby—the great-nephew that Agnes hadn’t known about—said he’d bring some things in this week. Of course, he had said the same thing last week when he visited, but then they’d all had a lot to deal with recently.

Agnes slowly wheeled herself into Room 7.

She looked at the small figure with the sparse, cotton-candy hair and the faded pink nightgown, the distress etched on her face even in sleep. Olive tossed her head back and forth like she was having a bad dream. Her weak moan sounded like a kitten mewling.

Poor Olive,
Agnes thought.
She must be terribly frightened to be in strange surroundings, even this kind and caring place. At this age, we don’t adjust too well to anything new,
she mused,
even with all of our wits about us.
Olive always was a fighter, not a peacemaker. Agnes would have to help her calm down.

Bending over Olive’s bed made Agnes’ back hurt even more.
I’m going to have to sit down,
she thought. But she knew she couldn’t grip her walker and move the room’s only chair closer to the bed at the same time. She would simply have to sit on the bed. Agnes pressed the button and lowered the bed rail. Slowly, she eased her right hip down to the edge of the bed and faced her sister. She took her hand and whispered the universal words of comfort.
It’s all right.

A new story came to her, as a story still did, sometimes. Little children and old people seemed to find her stories soothing. With her left hand, she touched her talisman, the Miraculous Medal with the image of the Virgin Mary, the lining of her blue cloak radiating those beautiful colors, and gave a silent
Thank you
.

Agnes whispered, “Once upon a time, there were two little girls who lived in a little house by a creek. In their kitchen was a big bowl of yellow lemons because their mother made lemon cake every week. Their house always smelled wonderful.”

Olive lay still as if she were listening.

Agnes continued. “One fine day, their mother opened all the windows in the little house. The delicious smell of lemon cake drifted out the windows and up in the air.”

The sleeping woman stirred and turned abruptly on her side, knocking Agnes off balance. Awkwardly, in slow motion, she fell on her side and rolled over to face her tiny sister.

Well, I didn’t expect that,
Agnes thought.
But what’s the harm?
Sometimes people needed basic human touch more than a story. This must be what the Blessed Mother wanted her to do.

Olive draped her arm, light as a dried husk, on top of Agnes as they lay together.

“Pickle,” she sighed. “Pickle.” A ghost of a smile flickered on her face. “Pickle,” Olive breathed again.

Agnes smiled.

She felt her own eyelids get heavy, and, surrendering, she let herself drift off to sleep.

But gentle drifting quickly turned into frantic falling. For the first time in a long time, Agnes spiraled down into the black whirlpool of nightmare, the one with the faceless man chasing her around and around, and when she tried to scream, nothing came out. She felt that same heavy weight as she sank to the bottom of the vortex.

Help me. Please, help me.

Just before the dark waters overwhelmed her, Agnes found herself in a place where lamplight flickered on a wall.

She
knew
this place.

She was a little girl again, lying beside her sister on a cool cellar floor, with the sounds of summer cicadas and the low murmur of a bedtime story.

At last, they were home.

•   •   •

Two cheese coneys sat in front of me, piled with tangles of shredded cheese, in our old wooden booth at the House of Chili. The lunchtime crowd had started to thin. I was starving, but the chili dogs could wait. I couldn’t get enough of Ben sitting across from me. Maybe it was because he had been out of town for more than a week. Maybe it was his navy blazer or his crisp shirt, and the slight tan he had picked up on a job in Dallas.

Maybe it was realizing that what I, too, had been searching for was right under my nose the whole time.

“I have so much to tell you,” I began, and then filled him in on Jett, who was healing and back to work, and whose stalker ex-boyfriend, Sean, was still in custody awaiting trial. On Diane, who was out of jail on probation. And on the long-separated sisters Pickle and Olive, who were as reunited as Sister Agnes’ limited memory and Mrs. Amici’s dementia would allow. At least they could see each other every day at Mount Saint Mary’s.

Ben listened with raised eyebrows. “Whoa. Things were never this interesting before you moved back,” he said, taking a sip of his iced tea. “We went years without this much drama.”

Then he got serious, reaching across the table to take my hand. “It was like these problems we didn’t know we had were just waiting until you came back to fix them.”

“The power of cake,” I said with a smile.

“If you say so.” He withdrew his hand. “But how about the power of chili?”

Ben tore open a small bag of oyster crackers and sprinkled them over his five-way—an oval plate of chili spaghetti with red beans, chopped raw onion, and cheese.

“Since when did you start putting crackers on top?” I asked.

“I’ve always liked my five-way like this.”

Another mental note.

He swirled this Queen City favorite on his fork and took a satisfying bite.

He waved his empty fork at me. “Eat, woman.”

I took a bite of my chili dog, and it tasted
just right
.