The Cake Therapist (7 page)

“Don’t be ridiculous, Jean,” replied Mrs. Ellison, losing patience. “You’re only sixteen. Do you want the dress to fall right off in front of all the boys?”

Jean smiled a dreamy smile into the long mirror. She preened and turned in the pale blue gown, raising a shoulder in a pinup girl pose, flipping her long honey-colored hair back with one hand.

“The bertha collar won’t lay right with a lower neckline,” Edie blurted out as she took a straight pin out of her mouth, then wished she hadn’t said anything. “Plus,” she said more meekly, looking over at Mrs. Ellison and then back at Jean, “your brassiere would show.”

Jean’s soft smile turned to a furious frown. “Who cares?”

Pouting into the long mirror, Jean did a quick turnaround on the step stool to face Mrs. Ellison. “You’re just such a fuddy-duddy, Mother. You still want me to look like a little girl!” She stomped down, almost knocking Edie backward, and ran to her room, tripping on the still-unpinned part of the hemline. She slammed the door shut and then, with even more drama, locked the door.

Mrs. Ellison rolled her eyes heavenward.

Edie sighed, but tried to hide it. She’d never be home in time to listen to
The Aldrich Family
at nine o’clock if she didn’t get this hem finished. And she still had to press the gown once the hem was done.

“El, dear.” Mrs. Ellison walked to the top of the stairs and called down to the living room. “Please do something with your daughter.”

“I’m trying to listen to Edward R. Murrow,” he called up to his wife. “There’s a war on in Europe, you know.”

“Well, there seems to be a war on up here, too, dear.”

In his own good time, Mr. Ellison came upstairs in his reasonable, measured way, his cardigan sweater buttoned over office shirt and tie, pipe in hand.

He gently rapped on Jean’s bedroom door. “Princess,” he cajoled. No answer. “Sweetheart,” he tried again. The door stayed shut. He looked at his wife, whose mouth was set in a firm line.

Come on, come on,
Edie thought.
At this rate, I’ll be here all night.

Then he looked back at the door, as if the wood held the answer to his problem. He took several thoughtful puffs on his pipe.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” he announced to them all. He turned his face back to the door. “When you make your debut next year, Princess, we’ll talk about a different style of dress. But not before. And that’s that. Let’s not waste any more time. You’ve got homework to do. So open the door right now, Jean Ann.”

“Oh, Daddy,” Jean sighed dramatically, swinging the door open. She flung herself in his arms. “I’m glad you understand.” He gave her a hug and absently patted her on the head.

“Now, let’s not have any more foolishness.” He gestured toward Edie with his pipe. “Miss Habig was good enough to come this evening at short notice, and we shouldn’t keep her any longer.”

“All right, Daddy.” Jean fluttered her eyes down toward the big-patterned carpet, seemingly contrite. Her father, his duty done, went back downstairs to the big console radio.

Jean’s head snapped back up. She flounced past her mother and got up on the step stool again so Edie could finally finish hemming the long gown.

And now it was time to get home, Edie thought, as she briskly walked, almost at a run. Although Mrs. Ellison had suggested that Mr. Ellison drive her home, Edie declined and Mrs. Ellison didn’t press the matter.

Under a streetlamp, she bent down and removed a piece of gravel from her red shoe and hoped it didn’t put a hole in her anklet sock.

By the time Edie reached the old canal in Lockton, a smoky yellow fog had rolled in, blanketing the stone slab sidewalks and brick streets. She could hardly make out any of the familiar landmarks. Except for the pitifully weak circles of coal-dusted light that the streetlamps beamed out, everything was murky.

The smoky air seemed to muffle sound as well. No cars, no streetcars, no one out walking. Even the
clack-clack-clack
of the machines making cotton batting and mattress covers was muted.

Edie walked past the warm light of the Friendly Café. It was after dinner hours, so only one couple sat in a booth at the window, drinking coffee and eating pie. Pie sounded good, thought Edie, and almost stopped in. But home sounded better.

She quick-stepped through a puddle of darkness between the streetlamp and the pedestrian walkway on the side of the two-lane bridge. Almost home.

The tall man startled her, staggering up from the creek, reeking of whiskey and stagnant water.

He came right up to her, blocking her path, and whistled low.

Edie’s heart pounded. There was something familiar about him, but she was too frightened to think what. She stood absolutely still, as if that way she’d be invisible and he’d move on.

He leaned so close to her that his chin almost touched her forehead.

That was when Edie tried to scream, but nothing came out.

He wove back and forth, unsteady on his feet.

He grabbed her face with his big hands, leaning in to kiss her. She twisted away and tried to run past him, but he was suddenly alert and fast.

He grabbed a sleeve of her coat, yanked her toward him, then gripped both of her arms. The sudden movement threw them both off balance. He fell backward, pulling her down the steep bank, and they rolled to a stop.

Edie felt cold stones against her back, the weight of him. Her right arm went numb, pinned under her at an awkward angle.

He put his hand over her nose and mouth, and she couldn’t breathe. She heard the water trickle past, a car shift gears as it rolled over the bridge, several sirens in the distance.

She tossed her head back and forth, moving the big hand a little, and gulped in air. She tried to scream again, but still nothing came out.

She blacked out for a while, but came to with the pain.

It hurt so bad, she thought she was on fire and she wondered if she was. She could hear a fire truck’s siren getting closer, then fading away.
I’m going to die.

It seemed to go on forever. She blacked out, woke up to the searing pain, and drifted off again to nothingness. When she surfaced again, she kept her eyes closed. The pain was still there, but not as bad. He grunted, then rolled off Edie and onto his back, spread-eagled. He didn’t move.

Edie turned her head slightly and saw that his mouth had fallen open, but she was still too scared to move. Everything was black again for a while.

And then Edie opened her eyes. She heard something, but it stopped. The cold, muddy creek water had seeped into her clothes. Her body hurt all over. She shivered. If she just let go, she could drift down, down, down to another place.

Her eyelids flickered shut for a few moments, but the sound woke her again. A sound like the whirring of wings.

She felt the lap of small waves from the direction of the oxbow bend, where the wild geese still flocked in cold weather. The vibration hummed just above the water and echoed back under the bridge.

“Get up, Edie.”

Wings beating on water.

Somewhere inside that sound, she heard her mother’s voice carrying down the creek.

“Get up, Edie. Get up. Go on home.”

But that can’t be,
Edie thought dully. Mama was dead.

Edie closed her eyes again. She must be dreaming. But her mother’s voice grew louder.

“Get up, Edie. Go home.”

A fearful thought slashed through Edie’s cloudy brain. What if the man heard and woke up?

Her eyes flew open. She felt the small, choppy waves lapping at her feet. The factory whistle shrieked. There was a humming in her ears. “Hoooooooommmmmmme.”

She eased up so she could feel her arm again, and the pain made her wince as she moved it from under her body to her side. The effort made her lightheaded.

But still the hum like the steady drone of bees carried the word she clung to: “Hoooooooommmmmmme.”

She knew that once she moved, she would have to keep going or the man could wake up and hurt her again. She rolled over on her hands and knees and got her bearings for a few seconds.

He was still passed out.

She felt the gravel in the creek bed bite into her palms. She had lost a shoe somewhere. But she moved.

Lurching forward, she slipped in the mud, then twisted to stiffly pull off the torn panties down at her ankles and the other shoe. She shoved them both in her coat pocket. Edie crawled on hands and knees up the steep and slippery bank, grabbing at the scrub trees and clumps of tall weeds. She made it to the pole of the streetlight on the other side of the bridge and dragged herself upright. She stood under its dim circle and caught her breath.

“Better go home and sleep it off, doll,” a man muttered as he walked past, clutching his metal lunch box under his arm. He didn’t tip his cap. “Hate to see a woman drunk,” he said, shaking his head as he walked by and then was lost in the smoky haze.

Mr. Schramm,
she thought. She called out to her friend’s father, but her voice still didn’t work.
How could Mr. Schramm not know me? How can he not see I need help?

She heard more men, talking quietly, walking home from the three-to-eleven shift.

She had to get home.

Edie steadied herself, then hobbled from the support of the streetlamp and turned the corner.

Home. Home. Home.

She lurched toward anything to hold on to—wrought-iron gateposts, a parked car, the broad girth of trees—until she reached the little house and let herself in the front door. With her last bit of strength, she threw the bolt on the old lock they never used and slid down against the door, onto the floor.

She heard Olive snoring softly upstairs.

Edie lost consciousness again, her head lolling on her shoulders as she slumped against the door, legs splayed out.

The violent trembling brought her back to the surface again.

Where am I?
she wondered. In the dark, she saw the familiar outline of the hallway, the light of the streetlamp coming in the window.

I’m home. I must have fallen. I’m cold.

And then it all came back, and Edie started to cry. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to stifle the sobs. She didn’t want Olive to hear. And she couldn’t stay on the floor where Olive might see her.

Edie crawled to the bathroom, dragged herself up on her knees, and filled the claw-foot tub with hot water until the bathroom was steaming. While the water was running, she tore off her clothing, stained with blood and mud. She gathered it all up in a ball and limped naked through the dark house to toss it on the back porch. In the morning, she would get rid of it. Maybe she would give the clothing to Shemuel, the ragman’s son. Shemuel could keep a secret. And the paper mill didn’t care whether rags were clean or soiled.

She locked the back door and wedged a chair beneath the handle.

Edie climbed in the tub and submerged herself in the water. When she pushed back her wet hair and wiped her eyes, she almost screamed. The water had turned a brownish pink. She drained the tub and filled it up again. She soaked until she was not cold anymore. She scrubbed herself clean until her skin turned pink and the hot water ran out.

She wrapped herself in a towel and tiptoed upstairs. She took a clean nightgown from the dresser drawer, pulled it over her head, and climbed into bed beside her sister.

“You’re late,” mumbled Olive.

Sunday was my day off. I hadn’t been to see Gran in two weeks, so I agreed to go with Aunt Helen up to Mount Saint Mary’s.

The convent grounds on the crest of the hill had been overlooking Millcreek Valley since the 1860s. Long gone were the mansard-roofed school buildings and the basilica-style church. The newer complex—Mount Saint Mary High School, a residence for older nuns, a preschool, and a nursing home—had a modern, functional look. Even the iron scrollwork gate, at the end of the old circular drive that wound down the hill to the town, had been padlocked. Everyone used the hilltop entrance now.

My mother and Helen were Mount Saint Mary Academy alums, but had been in different grades. After eighth grade, they’d gone to Millcreek Valley High School. They didn’t hang out together back then, and that was really no surprise. My mother got her sense of duty, deportment—and a nervous tic, I always teased her—from her years in convent school. Helen went the other way—she drank, smoked, fooled around with boys, and generally had a good time. “I knew I was going to burn in hell anyway,” Helen always joked.

When Mom married my dad, Helen’s brother, the two women gradually got to know each other. After we lost our house when Dad left, Mom stayed on at Gran’s only long enough to see me off to college. Mom still somehow blamed Gran for Dad’s defection, but Helen was determinedly neutral. Still, nobody thought Mom and Helen’s living arrangement would last as long as it had.

Mom needed routine, stability, and neatness. Helen thrived on chaos and was an unrepentant slob. But they were both hardworking and practical. And they both liked rules—Mom to follow them, Helen to break them. Maybe that was what made it work.

When Helen and I pulled up outside the covered entry of the nursing care facility, a goose and a gander dressed up like George and Martha Washington offered a silent but lighthearted greeting. Although this was a warm and caring place, it was still hard to see those you loved in decline.

Helen punched in the security code to the memory care wing. Sister Agnes, the nun from Emily’s preschool, was talking calmly to Gran, who looked like a bewildered doll sitting in a chair that was too big. I knew that the nuns who still lived at Mount Saint Mary’s went back and forth between the nursing home and the preschool, so I wasn’t surprised.

Sister smiled at us. “She has been a little agitated this morning,” she said. She smiled at Gran. “But I kept telling Dorothy that her two favorite people were coming to visit.” She reached over and patted Gran’s hand. “And here they are.”

“Thank you, Sister,” Helen said gently. “Mom, let’s walk a little bit. You were always the best walker around.”

“Walk,” Gran repeated weakly, as if she wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

We both helped Gran up from the chair and held on to her until she became steadier on her feet. Gran seemed to think more clearly when she was moving.

We meandered down the hall, while Helen chattered on.

Gran shuffled to a stop and turned to me. “It’s an orange day, isn’t it?” she asked.

An orange day?

Helen shook her head sadly. “Mom, let’s keep walking.” Helen gestured to me to take Gran’s elbow to get her moving again.

But I was starting to taste it, too. Orange. I squeezed Gran’s hand and we both smiled.

Suddenly she was younger. I was younger, maybe eight years old.

We were in her kitchen at the back of her house that was now mine.

It was a snowy day. She stood at the big enameled sink in the corner, washing dishes and putting them on the draining board to dry.

“Go into the pantry, Claire, and get the box grater for me, will you, sweetie?”

The tiny pantry smelled of spices and danced with color from the small stained glass window high up in the wall. I had to climb onto a stool to reach up into the cabinet where Gran kept her baking utensils.

When I swung the pantry door back open, it was like I had stepped into a good dream. My father was sitting at the kitchen table, smiling into his coffee mug.

Smiling.

Gran wiped her hands on her apron, then took a blue bowl of pillowy dough and turned it out onto a floured pastry board in the center of the table.

“Remember these sweet rolls, Jack? The ones with the cinnamon filling and the orange icing?”

My father looked up at Gran, and his eyes twinkled.

When he saw me hesitate, he reached out to pull me close and nuzzled my ear. I could feel his scratchy whiskers. “Are you going to help Gran make Daddy’s favorite rolls, Punkin?”

I put my arms around his neck and held on tight.

“It’s not every day your daddy starts a new job,” Gran said. “That’s an orange day.”

Gran rolled out the dough, spread it with softened butter, and sprinkled on the cinnamon and sugar. She rolled it up into a cylinder and Daddy cut the rolls with a bread knife, sawing through the dough so gently that each roll was a perfect spiral.

While the rolls baked, he helped me grate the orange rind and squeeze the juice into a bowl of powdered sugar to make the icing.

We frosted the warm rolls, the aroma wafting through the kitchen like a bright orange scarf that loosely bound us together.

An orange day, a happy day, a brand-new day in the secret language that only the three of us seemed to understand.

“Mmmmm,” Daddy said, taking a bite of his roll. “Orange wakes you up, but cinnamon makes you remember. I guess you can’t have a future without a past.” The brightness started to dim.

“The past is past, and nobody can change it. It’s what you do with your new day, Jack.” Gran looked at him seriously.

“I know it will work out this time, Ma. I’m putting all the other stuff behind me. Right, Punkin?” he’d said.

“Right, Claire?”

Helen was almost shouting.

“I heard you, I heard you,” I said.

The orange band faded and then vanished. Gran had a vacant look about her again.

But I felt calmer. Although I had a million other things to do, just being with Gran, slowing down, and sharing our special bond had helped. I hoped it had helped her, too.

In the hallway outside the nursing care wing, we passed Sister Josepha, Helen’s teacher from grade school who was now retired. Sister was decked out in a mint-green blouse and a skirt that looked like a patchwork quilt. She had short, silver pixie hair and a medal of Saint Joseph around her neck. In fact, she looked better than Helen, who wore her mom jeans and Fighting Irish sweatshirt, neither of which did her lumpy figure any good.

“We’re looking for the
Infant of Prague
,” Helen said, out of the blue.

Sister Josepha rolled her eyes in my direction and laughed. “You may not know this, Claire, but Helen was always the one who wanted to change the outfits on that little statue.” I must have looked blank again because she added, “The
Infant of Prague
is Jesus depicted as a toddler. We have that little statue perched on a marble stand somewhere.” Josepha looked up and down the hallway. “The cleaners must have moved it for some reason. Anyway, the colors of the Infant’s robes reflect the seasons of the Church. You know, red for Pentecost, white for Easter and Christmas, rose for Laetare Sunday, purple for Advent and Lent, and so on. Helen was always lobbying hard to change those little outfits.”

“Aunt Helen lobbied to dress the
Infant of Prague
?”

“Better than cleaning erasers from the chalkboard,” Helen said. “Unless you could clap them together and get chalk dust all over some kid you didn’t like.”

“Oh, Helen.” Sister Josepha laughed. “You never change.”

Helen grinned.

Sister Josepha left us to our rambles.

“I know it’s here somewhere,” Helen said as we slowly walked by the preschool rooms. “You can’t have a bunch of old convent nuns living together without that statue somewhere.”

We didn’t find it, but it was so like Helen to try to turn our stroll with Gran into an adventure.

On the way home, Helen said, “Mom seemed all right until she started talking about that orange stuff. What was that about, anyway?”

“I remember Gran always made those orange cinnamon rolls that were so good.”

Helen agreed. “They were good.”

“Maybe she just imagined a happy time and that’s how she was trying to explain it.”

Helen seemed to accept that explanation. “Mom always did have a vivid imagination.”

Imagination and vision. I was beginning to appreciate those qualities more and more now that I was back home. Sometimes you had to look past what was and imagine what could be.

At one time, you could head west from where we had been up on the convent hill to the Miami and Erie Canal. I imagine that in the early days of the canal in the 1820s, when boats were towed by mules and the pace of life was just as slow, Lockton had looked picturesque and bucolic. The lockkeeper’s cottage and a few farms on either side of the canal. But after the Civil War, the Machine Age finally arrived, mules were replaced by motors, and factories displaced the farms, taking advantage of the available waterpower.

In the 1980s, the Machine Age went. It took the rosiest of rose-colored glasses to look past the vacant paper, shingle, and mattress factory sites now. These “brownfields” awaited federal cleanup money for asbestos and petroleum contamination. The huge Simms & Taylor complex was being demolished, brick by brick. The canal had become part of I-75.

In comparison, blue-collar Millcreek Valley had given itself a much-needed makeover. It had always had a mom-and-pop, cottage-industry sort of downtown. Now it had a theme, one that would not go out of style—weddings. As we drove in companionable silence, we passed boutiques, florists, and travel offices. Luckily for all of us, here came the brides.

The front of my bakery even looked like a wedding cake, or a massive old Victorian headboard painted white.

“I won’t ask what your plans are tonight because I know you won’t tell me,” Helen said as she got out of the car. “Just don’t sit home by yourself and think about your old life in New York and what might have been. You can always come with your mother and me to the Legion.”

I tried to edit my horrified expression, but I wasn’t quick enough.

Helen grinned. “Gotcha!” she said, then got serious again. “She worries about you, you know.”

I was going to respond, “When doesn’t Mom worry?” but that was childish. I smiled and shrugged. “I know. I’m okay. Really.”

But really, I wasn’t. My showing up to watch the Super Bowl at Finnegan’s was going to be a game-time decision. Was I strong enough to brave the “Why is she here and not there?” stares from people I knew, but not well? Or even worse, was I strong enough to see Luke with someone else on national television? Was I strong enough to go to Finnegan’s and pretend my life was just fine, thank you very much?

Yes, I was. I’d had years of practice already.

By the time I was sixteen and Mom and I were living with Gran, we didn’t have a car anymore. My mother had to get a job and walked to work. I hiked up Benson Street hill to high school or got a ride from Gavin. But then I got my dream job at the Fairview Pastry Shop two towns away.

After school, I would run down the hill, grab my bike, then pedal to work from Millcreek Valley through Lockton and on to Fairview.

It was a mile and a half, but two worlds, away. Blue-collar Millcreek Valley to no-collar Lockton to white-collar Fairview.

Fairview was all broad, treelined streets with gracious Queen Anne–style homes, many of them with carriage houses. Long ago, factory and mill workers may have lived in Millcreek Valley and Lockton, but the owners built their mansions in Fairview.

Fairview households had maids and housekeepers, whom they often sent to pick up their bakery orders—miniature Danish, crinkle-top spice cookies, and rococo birthday cakes in a fantasy of roses, leaves, and borders piped with a frosting that tasted faintly of coconut.

Early one Saturday morning in the pastry shop, right before Mother’s Day my senior year, people were standing in line and we were already on number sixty-two.

“Claire, do you think you can wait on customers now?” owner Mrs. Merz had asked me in her typically passive-aggressive way. Hadn’t I just carried in trays of Danish and replenished the stack of bakery boxes? Wasn’t that me scrubbing out the icing that had stuck to the interior of the inwardly slanting glass display case? And before that, who took the phone order when she was busy with a customer? Didn’t I always do as she asked?

I heaved an internal sigh and pulled the chain that changed the number on the old-fashioned sign, calling out, “Sixty-three!”

I knew I looked flustered. My hair was pulled into a topknot and a few strands escaped over my ears and down my neck. I had on jeans and a T-shirt with a limp bakery apron in a washed-out brown and yellow sunflower print. I stuck out my lower lip to blow air upward and get the bangs out of my eyes. If I touched my hair with my hands, I’d have to leave the customer to go wash them and get another snide comment from Mrs. Merz.