The Cake Therapist (5 page)

I rolled down my window.

“Get in, Jett. I’ll take you to my house.”

Later, as she sat with a bag of frozen baby peas on her swollen eye and tissues stuffed in the nostril where her nose ring had been, I poured her a cup of creamy hot cocoa, stirred with a stick of cinnamon. The tiny marshmallows that bobbed on the top almost made her smile.

Although I bundled her up with blankets and pillows in front of my parlor fireplace, she still shivered. I had cleaned her up as best I could, offered to take her to the emergency room and call her mother. I tried to get her to talk.

“Did you know that guy?” I asked.

“Stupid Sean. The peas are starting to thaw,” she said, handing me the semi-frozen bag.

I went back to the kitchen, threw the peas back in the freezer, and rummaged around for something else. Mixed vegetables. How I hated those except in a spicy chicken chili I had yet to make this winter. But they would do.

“So you do know him,” I said, handing her the mixed vegetables.

We stared into the fire.

“Maybe we should report this to the police. He could try it again, you know.”

But she was adamant.

“It’s just a black eye, Neely. No big deal. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

I was tempted to pry, to center myself and let the flavors lead me to the tale of what had happened. It would, after all, have been for her own good. Wouldn’t it?

But how did I really know what her own good was? Jett wasn’t a client. She wasn’t a family member or a good friend who invited such intimacy. She was my young, scared, confused, and angry employee.

So I soothed her as best I could.

I didn’t ask any more.

I couldn’t judge.

I wouldn’t leave her.

I startled awake before dawn from a dream in which I was chased by a man with a jagged scar down the side of his face.

Jett’s blanket was folded neatly.

She was gone.

AUGUST 1932

The little brick house seemed to exhale in resignation, its sharp sighs starting in the stone cellar where Gustaf Habig had first fermented vinegar in the 1840s when Millcreek Valley was still known as Gansdorf—Goosetown. The oak barrels were long gone, but the residual tang moved languidly up the wooden stairs, through the middle room, and out the back screen door when anyone came inside.

Grace Habig, in her faded blue housedress, had drawn the shutters to help keep the interior as dark and cool as possible. Edward napped on the bed in the middle room.

In the kitchen, she took the enamelware colander down from the shelf and sat down with a paper bag of green beans and a paring knife. She had the radio on low to her favorite program,
Ma Perkins
.

She started to top and tail, then string each bean as the vibrato of the organ music swelled. She listened through several minutes of “deep cleaning,
deep
cleaning,
deep cleaning
” Oxydol detergent extolled by the announcer.

Grace already bought Oxydol, so she wished they’d just hurry up with it.

Finally.

“Now for
Ma Perkins
 . . .” and this week’s story began. Trouble with Cousin Sylvester again. At least Ma Perkins, too, had her troubles. Grace plunked another bean in the colander.

Most of the Fairview society ladies—at least those with still-employed husbands—had traveled north to their cottages in northern Michigan, resulting in scant seamstress work. But it was only a few weeks more until Labor Day. Then they would be back and Grace could count on back-to-school and cotillion dresses.

Edward’s former boss dropped by yesterday to leave a twenty-dollar bill. That loosened, a bit, the tight clenching that Grace felt from the right side of her temple, down her spine, and into her hip. The tension also seemed to ease up a little, she realized, when she was listening to
Ma
.

Later on in the morning, the ice man came around in his cart, using the large metal tongs to hoist a big block onto his burlap-covered shoulder. He hummed the bouncy tune “Whistling in the Dark.”

At least the ice business must be good,
thought Grace.

He brought it into the little kitchen and placed it in the top compartment of the metal icebox. He held out a few chips in his gloved hand for Grace—a treat on this hot day. She gave him a nickel and he tipped his hat as he left.

Now that the icebox would be good and cold, Grace got out the rotary beater with the jade green handle. She whipped a can of sweetened condensed milk with lemon juice and a little grated lemon peel, and poured it into a graham cracker crust to make a lemon bisque dessert that would firm up as it chilled.

A few minutes after the bisque was in the icebox, the insurance man came around to the back screen door, and Grace had another nickel for him—the weekly life insurance payment for her husband. Mr. Kellerman sat down on the painted kitchen chair, tired in this heat. He took out his limp handkerchief and mopped his brow. The few strands of hair he had left were plastered to the top of his head. Grace asked if he’d like a glass of water, but he declined. She recorded the payment in her narrow brown ledger, and Mr. Kellerman did the same in his. She hoped he left before Edward woke up and started coughing again.

She didn’t want any questions about mill fever. A lot of men got mill fever during the first months of breathing in the tiny cotton fibers that floated in the air. But then their lungs got used to it. Men like Edward, who had been gassed in the trenches of the Great War, however, didn’t always get used to it. Coughing led to not sleeping, which led to lethargy and weakness.

She’d also heard from a neighbor that if Mr. Kellerman thought someone was sick, he conveniently “forgot” to come to their house for the payment. If it looked like they’d skipped a payment, the life insurance company would drop them, and then they’d get nothing when they needed it most.

Mr. Kellerman stood up to leave just as Olive and Edie came in with stacks of old newspapers under their arms.

“Frankie let me pull the wagon,” Edie told her mother. Her face was flushed with the heat.

“Shhhh, Edie. Papa’s sleeping,” Grace said to her with a smile. And for Mr. Kellerman’s benefit as he tipped his hat on the back porch, she nodded toward the front of the house and lied: “He’s on the night shift now.”

When he was out of sight, Olive fumed. “You always say we have to tell the truth.”

“Just put the newspapers over here, Olive. Little pitchers have big ears.” Grace draped a length of oilcloth on the kitchen table. She placed some of the stacked newspapers down the length of the fabric, folded the fabric over, and started to whipstitch the open sides together with a thick needle meant for leatherwork.

Just before noon, she heard the ragman’s cart. His little son ran to the back and knocked on the screen door.

Olive let him in. “It’s that boy again, Mama.”

“That little boy has a name, Olive.” She looked at him. “Come in, please, Shemuel.”

“Do you have anything for us today, Mrs. Habig?”

“Yes, I do, so please sit down for a moment while I get things together.”

The ragman’s son sat down at the little table, eyeing the beans in the colander.

Grace cut a slice of bread, then opened the peanut butter tin and gave it a good stir to blend in the oil that had floated to the top. She spread the peanut butter on the bread and took a raisin cookie from the cookie jar.

“Here, Shemuel, eat this while Edie gets your bundle.” She placed the bread and the cookie on a plate at the table. She pointed to Edie, and Edie knew to get the unusable fabric scraps that Shemuel and his father would take to the paper mill.

“Olive, please get our guest a glass of milk.”

“But, Mama,” Olive started to complain.

“Olive, do as you’re told.”

Olive poured the last of the bottled milk into a glass.

The girls had milk for breakfast, Grace told herself, and she couldn’t let this hollow-cheeked boy go hungry. She just couldn’t.

Shemuel wolfed down the peanut butter bread and ate the cookie in two bites. He gulped down the milk, then jumped up from the table.

“Thank you, Mrs. Habig.”

Grace looked at him sadly.
What a life he must live.

Shyly, Edie handed him the bundle.

“See you next week, Mrs. Habig?”

Grace smiled. He bolted out the screen door and back to the cart, where his father was probably fuming, thought Grace.
Serves the old bastard right.

“He smells poor,” blurted Olive.

“He can’t help it,” Grace gently replied.

That night, when the upstairs still held the heat of the day, the little family settled in for the night in the back room of the cellar, away from the empty coal bin, but right near the wringer washer and the laundry tubs, the packets of starch and bluing. It smelled clean and fresh down there, and it was certainly cooler.

Grace spread an old tarp on the packed-earth floor and then arranged the oilcloth pallets she had made earlier in the day for the family to sleep on. She lit a kerosene lamp that cast a shadow on the whitewashed stone walls.

“Guess what this is,” Olive said to Edie, making shadow puppets on the wall.

“A rabbit,” Edie guessed.

“That was too easy. How about this one?”

“It looks like a snake.”

“That’s because it
is
a snake. But what
kind
of a snake?” Olive tried to stump her sister.

They soon tired of shadow puppets, and Grace began reading to them, by the glow of the lamp, from their favorite book—their only book.

“Let me tell a story, Mama,” begged Edie.

“Oh, Edie,” Olive fumed. “You don’t tell good stories.”

“I do so.”

“You do not.”

“Girls,” Grace Habig said in a short but emphatic reprimand. “Edie, you can tell a very quick story. So why don’t you start?”

“Once upon a time, there was a princess and a goblin and a boy named Curdie,” Edie began.

“That’s the same story that Mama was reading. You really are a pickle,” Olive complained to her sister. “You’re as dumb as a pickle.”

“Olive, we don’t talk like that in this house,” Grace wearily chastised. “That was a good little story, Edie, and thank you. Now both of you close your eyes and I’ll keep reading.”

The princess got lost again. Ohhhhh, shivered Edie, thinking of Jimmy McCray.

Olive fell asleep easily as her mother read, but it always took Edie longer.

The book was too long to read in one night, so when Edie’s breathing became slow and measured, Grace closed the book and blew out the kerosene lamp.

She lay down next to, but not touching, her husband. Edward, propped up against the cool wall with two pillows, held his bloodied handkerchief in his fist. His head lolled to one side, and Grace thought,
That can’t be comfortable
, but lying down brought on the coughing again.

“It has gone into brown lung,” the doctor had told her this afternoon, taking her aside and talking quietly, shaking his head sadly.

“Well, it’s better to know than not know,” Grace had replied. She didn’t think she’d ever wish mill fever back, but brown lung was much worse. Thankfully, the doctor had finally given Edward something to help him sleep.

After Grace nodded off, Edie stirred.

She opened her eyes wide, startled. How did she get underground? Had the goblins taken her? She lay still, afraid to move.

With the cellar windows open, Edie listened to Olive’s quiet breathing, the summer sound of cicadas, and the lap of the creek at the end of their yard. A light sleeper, Edie also heard the familiar sounds of the eleven o’clock factory whistle, a car shifting into a higher gear, a midnight train rumbling by in the distance. Slowly, she sank into dark oblivion, as soft and cool as the bridal silk her mother kept in a bolt wrapped in blue paper.

Sometime during the night, Olive pulled up the chenille spread to cover them both. They slept on, tangled together like puppies.

FEBRUARY

Raspberry and Blood Orange

Dawn was still hours away. The only building with lights on was Rainbow Cake, a sweet beacon in the night.

Norb was taking a batch of breakfast pastries out of the oven. He was not surprised to see me so early. The bakery was where I went to push “play” instead of that mental rewind button that always looped back in the same order: Luke and our marriage . . . Dad . . . Where my life was going . . . or not going.

And now, Jett.

When I woke up this morning to find her gone, I felt a mix of emotions I was still sorting out. I was sad that she didn’t really trust me or feel comfortable staying where it was safe. Yet I admired her for being so tough and independent. I was angry at the asshole who’d hurt her and still stunned that I had seen it happen, literally in my rearview mirror, on our main street. Added to that was the confusion as to what I should do about it all. I lurched toward the coffee bar. Maybe caffeine would help.

I ground the dark-roasted coffee beans, tamped down the grounds, and fired up the La Marzocco. I made myself a large latte, foaming the milk. When I tried to guide the froth into a plucky new leaf pattern, it drifted into a lopsided heart instead. “Perfect,” I muttered.

I took a sip. Was the milk starting to curdle? The froth had the faint suggestion of sour. I stirred in a teaspoon of sugar. I leaned down to check the sell-by date on the carton in the under-counter refrigerator. Okay. I sniffed the carton. The milk didn’t smell like anything, which was what you wanted milk to do.

I snatched a miniature croissant stuffed with ham and cheese and downed it in two bites, wiping the buttery flakes from my fingers on my work apron. I was starting to feel human again.

It was too early to call Jett at home or on her cell. I needed her to come in today, but at the same time, I hated to ask. She had been beaten up last night, emotionally and physically. And who knew what her home life was like? Could she tell her mother? I didn’t want to make things worse by her boss—that was me—adding even more stress by pressuring her. But she was a young girl in trouble and I wanted to help. So what to do? I sighed.

I wasn’t getting any flavor, any story, that took shape in my mind. But that was no surprise, really, so I was annoyed at myself for even wandering in that direction. I limited my ability to “read” people to those I barely knew rather than those I did. It would mean an unfair advantage in personal relationships. In business, an advantage was a good thing. But in private life, my insider info could lead to a host of happiness busters, such as an “I know best” attitude and being privy to things I was better off not knowing about friends or relatives. We were all entitled to our privacy.

Sigh.

I would have to fall back on simply doing the right thing. I texted her:
Hope you’re ok. I will help you in any way I can.
I’d wait for her reply. If I didn’t hear from her by midmorning, I’d go to her house. I felt better now that I had a plan.

A watched phone never beeps, so I got back to work.

If Jett couldn’t come in today, I would have to do the cake-top decoration myself. Which meant that I first needed to tackle the six dome cakes—from our couture line—for a special catering order that had to go out in the afternoon.

While I warmed the eggs in a bowl of hot water (which would help them hold more air when beaten), I gathered the rest of the ingredients from the pantry—sugar, a little baking powder, flour, and blood oranges. As I cracked each egg into the bowl and added the sugar while the mixer did its work, I wondered whether I was the only person who found the whir of a stand mixer oddly comforting. For me, it was the sound of something good about to happen.

And right now, I needed that.

After the egg-and-sugar mixture thickened, turned a pale yellow, and ribboned off the whisk attachment when I flipped it up to check—yes!—I folded in the dry ingredients and the blood-orange zest by hand. That was when the classic genoise batter bloomed into the most beautiful, aromatic coral. I loved blood orange.

When each jelly-roll-style genoise had baked, I rolled it up in a confectioner’s sugar–dusted towel to let it cool into a coiled shape.

After cooling, I carefully unrolled each one to spread on the seedless raspberry jam, then rolled it up again tightly. Then I cut each sweet cylinder into thin, spiraled slices with an inner stripe of dark pink.

Assembling the dome cake was the easiest part. I arranged the spiraled slices flat on the bottom and against the sides of small stainless steel bowls lined with plastic wrap. Then I filled the center with blood-orange mousse and arranged the rest of the slices on top. I had leftover cake spirals and mousse, so I created a tiny cake, too.

Nothing went to waste here.

Into the refrigerator went the cakes for an hour or so of chilling until each had set.

Meanwhile, Rainbow Cake’s e-mail held no surprises, only that Mr. Wa-chen of Hong Kong, who was somehow stuck in Kenya—no, that was yesterday—had found me here as well as on my personal e-mail. He must be desperate. But the good news was that if I needed a penis enlargement, help was on the way. Spam, spam. Delete, delete.

Several late-night e-mails from Luke, which I also deleted. In simply thinking his name, an iceberg of frozen emotions loomed on my horizon. Everything I knew about icebergs I learned from the
Titanic
. You saw the tip of the iceberg floating in the water, but what you didn’t see was all that lurked beneath the surface. I didn’t want—and I couldn’t afford—another shipwreck in my life. Avoiding my husband was a good thing, I told myself.

When the hour was up, I retrieved the dome cakes from the refrigerator, turned each one out, peeled off the plastic wrap, and smoothed on the palest pink, raspberry-flavored glaze so the spiraled design could still be seen.

Their topping would be clusters of raspberries, miniature blood oranges cut in half, and a few tiny pale green leaves, all made out of sugar paste and marzipan.

Just thinking about today’s to-do list propelled me back to my good buddy, the La Marzocco. Another latte. I didn’t even bother with a pattern on the foam. And it still needed a little sugar.

When I looked up again, it was seven thirty, dark was turning to dawn, and Maggie was coming in the back entrance. I always checked her face because it showed everything. Whether she’d had an easy morning before her mother took Emily to preschool. Whether she’d had yet another fight with her ex-husband, usually about the late or nonexistent child support. Or having Emily rate so low on his priority list. This morning, Maggie looked a little frazzled.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Well, it’s the shoemaker’s children all over again,” she said. “Not having shoes themselves even though their parent works in a shoe shop . . .”

“You mean Emily was supposed to bring a treat to school today and everybody forgot and you’re feeling guilty because you work in a bakery.” I speak “Maggie” quite well.

“Got it in one.”

“I could use a break before we open, so why don’t I run some cupcakes up to the preschool and then we can cross that off our list?”

“Would you?”

“I’ll be there when preschool starts.”

I quickly lined up three dozen miniature cupcakes on a tray, got out my piping bag, and filled it with pink raspberry buttercream. I piped a rosette on each cupcake, then dusted each with those colored sprinkles that all kids—even big ones—love.

As I put the package in the passenger’s seat of my car, Mrs. Amici growled something at me, raising her hands and Barney’s leash in the air. Barney didn’t like that one bit. But as she walked by the car, I realized she was just talking to herself. Uh-oh. Something that sounded like “abandon.” Was she planning to dance with wild abandon on the rickety tables at the American Legion this weekend? I’d love to see her do that, the cranky old bat.

I drove up the hill and turned left where the old Civil War–era convent used to be. A newer, more modern building now housed the nursing care facility, a residence for older nuns, and Ladybug Preschool. Mount Saint Mary High School, built in the early 1960s, sat closer to Benson Street at the southern end of the convent grounds.

I tried to sneak into the back of the class of four-year-olds, taught by another high school friend, Mary Ann Brown. But blond and blue-eyed Emily came running over and hugged me at my knees. “Your mommy sent these,” I whispered, showing her the cupcakes through the clear top of the bakery box.

“Neely, Neely, Neely!” she shouted, overjoyed. It was not entirely about me—it was the power of cupcakes.

But she had started a rampage of four-year-olds not yet corralled for the start of their morning. They hopped and skipped and twirled around me. Mary Ann just laughed.

“You brought us treats!” A calm, quiet voice somehow could be heard over the din.

An elderly woman in a pale blue warm-up suit smiled at me. She glided her walker into the room.

She looked so familiar to me. And then a flashback to my own childhood made me smile. “Good to see you again, Sister Agnes. I took your story-writing day-camp session at Mount Saint Mary the summer before sixth grade.” I still had the stories I’d written in cursive pencil, illustrated by crayon, somewhere in a box I hadn’t unpacked yet.

“Neely just opened the new bakery, Rainbow Cake, Sister,” Mary Ann explained.

“So now you tell stories with cake,” Sister said, smiling.

“I do, in a way,” I replied, delighted.

“We’re in for a sweet treat today.”

“I think the children need a story treat, too, Sister Agnes,” Mary Ann said. “Maybe something scary.” She made her eyes wide as she looked at the kids. “Oooohhhhh. Something scarrrryyyyy.” The children giggled and squirmed.

The nun smiled. “I have just the scary story,” she said, and carefully sat down in an armchair, keeping her walker close by. “Come, children, and sit by me. This is one you have to act out. I’ll say something and then you do it.”

The kids pirouetted, windmilled, and finally plopped down on the carpet.

“They’re full of beans again today,” the old woman said, bemused. She held her long, elegant finger up to her lips and waited until the last fidgety child was still.

“It was a winter day like today,” she began dramatically, “and the wind was blowing, blowing, blowing through the trees. Whooooooooooo . . .”

“Can you do this?” She began to sway in her chair like she was a tree blown by the wind. One little boy swayed so far to the left that he knocked over another boy, and they both wrestled until Mary Ann stepped in. One little girl swayed as if she might be doing it wrong. Emily and another little girl swayed with everything they had.

Sister continued. “A little goat wanted to cross a bridge and go over to the other side where there was more grass to eat. So he goes clip-clop, clip-clop, over the bridge.” Sister made the sound like the little goat walking on the bridge, and the kids did likewise.

“‘Who goes clip-clopping over my bridge?’ said the mean man who lived under it, and he shook his fist at the little goat. . . .”

The children shook their fists as I backed away from little goats, mean men, nuns, and storytime. All in a day’s work.

Well, almost all.

The late-morning text message from Jett was brief:
OK for work. Don’t say anything.

And then a second one:
Thanks.

Without spilling any secrets, I warned everyone that Jett didn’t feel good and needed her space today. And when Jett finally stomped her way into the bakery just after lunch, Maggie didn’t look at her twice.

Good job.

Jett had on a nose ring with a wider band, probably a clip-on to hide the wound. Her eye shadow in stormy blues, purples, and greens masked the bruising around her eye. She pounded a straight, silent line back to the workroom, seeming to be her old Goth self.

I could feel the stiffness in my shoulders relax a little bit.

I let her get settled, then casually walked back to the workroom.

“How are you?” I asked quietly.

“Those peas were killer. My mom didn’t even notice.”

Jett had done a pretty good job of camouflaging the exterior, but it was the interior that worried me.

“I don’t want to think that this guy is still running around and could hurt you again.”

“He won’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“I won’t be alone. And then he can’t get me.” Her face showed a steely resolve. I wasn’t getting anywhere.

“We’ll talk more about this when you’ve had some time to think about it.”

Late that afternoon, with the bakery bustling up front, a corporate event planner came in to pick up her catering order. If she liked what I did and brought us some of her business, Rainbow Cake might meet its financial goals for the next few months.

Might.

“Do you have time for a coffee?” I asked her. “I’d love to show you where I do the wedding cake tastings.”

“This was the last thing I had to do today so, yeah, sitting down for a little bit actually sounds good,” she said with a tired smile.

I put the tiny dome cake in our signature pale turquoise box, and we walked next door and into the warmth of my parlor. I bent down to light the gas fireplace and settled Val on the settee, where Jett’s folded blanket still rested from the night before.