The Cake Therapist Read online

  I gave them each a business card, as well as the rest of the cakes, fillings, and frostings to take home in a Rainbow Cake box, along with a few cellophane-wrapped sugar cookies. If Mrs. Schumacher told the other ladies who lunch about Rainbow Cake, maybe I would get more special occasion commissions. A debutante ball, a fund-raising gala, a patron’s party.

  “I’m so glad we caught you right when you were opening,” said Ellen, as I walked them out to their car parked at the curb. “With our wedding coming up so quickly in April, we’d never have been able to book with you otherwise. I know you’ll do a fabulous job.”

  “And we can cross this off our list,” added Mrs. Schumacher. “I’m just glad I didn’t want to try on any mother-of-the-bride dresses today,” she joked, patting her stomach. “On second thought, maybe we shouldn’t be taking all of this cake home, as delicious as it was,” she said to Ellen, who was holding the cake box. “I’m not certain I have that kind of willpower!”

  Barney, who was making his daily rounds with Mrs. Amici, took Mrs. Schumacher’s words to heart and immediately jumped up on Ellen, trying to sniff the box. “Cake!” his big eyes and wagging tail seemed to say.

  “Barney! Get down!” Mrs. Amici practically growled.

  But he kept jumping up, barking excitedly.

  Laughing, Ellen held the cake box up higher with her right hand, and bent down to pet Barney with the left. Her ring sparkled in the cold winter light. “You’ve got good taste in cake, don’t you, boy?”

  She held out the cake box to Mrs. Amici. “Would you like to have these little cupcakes? They’re absolutely delicious.”

  I expected Mrs. Amici to snarl a reply, but for once she seemed speechless and a little shaky. “Where did you . . . ?” she stammered, looking at Ellen’s ring.

  Ellen held out her hand. “It has been in my husband’s family for a long time,” she said. “I just love it.”

  “Some families have all the luck.” Mrs. Amici pulled Barney away. He stopped and howled before trotting down the street again to check out the enigmatic scent of yet another streetlight.

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said to my new clients. “I had hoped the spell of cake and frosting would have protected you a little longer. Mrs. Amici is our resident snark.”

  “No problem,” Ellen said, still smiling. “It’s that poor puppy’s loss. I’m sure he’s never had anything as tasty as what’s in this box.” She opened the car doors and put the cake box in the backseat. The mother and daughter drove off just as the postman handed me my mail.

  Too bad the spell didn’t last for me, either, I thought as I shuffled through the bills and the junk mail.

  A card with handwriting all too familiar to me would go straight in the trash when I went back inside.

  Next, I pulled a plain postcard out of the stack, postmarked Kansas City. I didn’t think I knew anyone there.

  I turned it over and immediately recognized the spiky handwriting.

  Dad.

  When I tried to picture my father, what I got was the snapshot from my fourteenth birthday—Dad looking away from the camera, his long arm looped around my bony shoulders as if I were the stake to which he was tethered.

  When I imagined Dad’s voice, all that usually came to me was a Ray LaMontagne song, strummed on a guitar, about how his hometown was bringin’ him down, and how he was going to finally stay gone. If Dad had a theme song, that would be it.

  From my sixteenth birthday onward, I’d gotten a postcard or two every year, from all over the country. They were always mailed to Gran’s old house in some misguided way, I surmised as I got older, to avoid my mother. But they eventually reached me. As far as I knew, he had never sent money, even after Mom and I lost our house on the hilltop.

  His greetings were always brief. Just a “Happy birthday” or “I love you.” Never anything about how or what he was doing or where he really was. Or asking about me, either.

  He didn’t know I had graduated from college and pastry school, worked in small-batch bakeries and high-style patisseries, gotten married, and become a professional baker. He didn’t know his absence had been both an unlikely gift and an ongoing curse; I’d had to stand on my own two feet, but maybe I had taken that a little too far. He didn’t know that I now owned a business, and had recently bought Gran’s old house. He didn’t know his own mother was slowly losing her memory. What he didn’t know took up more than half of my life.

  As I held the card, I felt a conflicting mix of emotions—sadness, irritation, yearning, and, I was almost embarrassed to admit, still a little girl wanting her daddy.

  I debated whether to just pitch the postcard, but instead I started reading. And it took my breath away.

  It wasn’t the message: “Sorry for all this. Miss you. Love you. Dad.”

  It was the return address printed in the upper left corner.

  Project Uplift, a homeless outreach program.

  Homeless?

  MARCH 1932

  Two little girls in short-sleeved cotton dresses, ankle socks that just wouldn’t stay up, and scuffed saddle shoes held hands as they crossed the brick street—just as they promised their mama they’d do.

  The older sister, Olive, held the market basket and the money. As they walked into Amici’s on the corner of Pearl and Benson streets, the familiar glass case along the left side of the store displayed a meager selection of meats and cheeses. Along the right, tins of Worthmore’s and Stegner’s chili, Dinty Moore beef stew, and several varieties of Campbell’s soup lined the shelves. And in the middle, boxes of cereal and crackers, jars of Pond’s cold cream, and tubes of Ipana toothpaste all jumbled together.

  Young Frankie Amici looked up from his faded red wagon in the back of the store, two grocery bags packed up for delivery.

  A booming voice greeted the girls. “Well, if it isn’t Pickle and Olive, my two favorite young ladies,” Mr. Amici teased from behind the meat case.

  “My sister’s name isn’t Pickle,” Olive reminded him. “It’s Edie.” But he just chuckled. Olive, the short, pudgy, older sister. “Pickle,” the tall, gangly, younger one.

  “What is it going to be today, ladies?” he asked.

  “The Fairview lady paid Mama for her true show, so we get to have city chicken,” Edie piped up. Olive narrowed her eyes at her sister.

  “It’s not ‘true show’; it’s ‘trousseau,’ dummy,” she said.

  “So how much city chicken does your mother want?” Mr. Amici asked.

  “Two pieces for Daddy and one for the rest of us,” Edie said.

  “You mean you ladies have to share one piece of city chicken?” he teased again.

  “No,” said Olive, the literal one. “Edie means that Mama, Edie, and me each get a piece.”

  Mr. Amici grabbed five wooden skewers threaded with cubes of boneless pork and veal, and placed them on a sheet of white butcher paper, then on the scale. He wrapped up the package and tied it with red-and-white-striped twine. “That will be fifty-seven cents,” he said, and Olive pinched open the old red coin purse.

  Olive licked her lips, thinking about how her mother would soak the skewered meats in milk and egg, then roll them in cracker crumbs and fry it all in lard until crispy and tender as a real chicken leg. Then Mama would make gravy to go with the mashed potatoes and green beans.

  Edie drifted over to the middle aisle. While Mr. Amici gave Frankie his instructions, she turned the red, yellow, and green Rice Krispies box to see the back. “Snow White and Rose Red” was the Singing Lady’s new story. Edie hadn’t heard that one yet on the radio, and she had never tasted Rice Krispies—it was always oatmeal at home. She thought maybe she could read this one quickly before it was time to leave. “Once upon a time . . .”

  Mr. Amici watched Olive and wondered whether the girls were getting good food, not just something to fill them up. They were both
pale. Although he had plenty of customers who still owed him money and he couldn’t afford to just give food away, he wrapped up a couple of hot dogs. “For my two favorite customers,” he said, and pushed the bundle over the top of the glass case. Olive had to stand on tiptoes to reach it.

  Olive licked her lips. “Oh, Edie!”

  Edie turned the cereal box not quite all the way around and ran to her sister, who showed her the package. “Hot dogs!” Olive told her.

  “Thank you, Mr. Amici,” they piped up in unison.

  They held the door open for Frankie and his wagon. They all walked together until he headed toward the arched concrete bridge over the creek to Lockton. The girls went the other way to Goldberg’s Department Store on the corner. Olive remembered to hold Edie’s hand.

  Notions were in the back of the store. So was the formidable Miss Goldberg.

  She wore her long dark hair, with its wings of silver, in an old-fashioned style—high up on her head—and her eyeglasses on a chain. She patted her plum-colored wool gabardine dress, which was in the new drop-waisted style. Last week, she had made the long trip downtown specifically to purchase the chic new design. The ready-made clothing she and her father sold in the store was fine for their factory-worker customers, but Miss Goldberg required better.

  She raised her pince-nez to peer at the girls in their hand-me-down dresses, old shoes, and droopy socks, marching toward her counter, the chubby one holding tightly to the younger one.

  “Don’t you children touch anything. Your hands are probably dirty,” she said in her chilly voice.

  Edie shrank behind her sister. Olive ignored the slight. “Our mama needs . . .” Olive fished in the basket for the list, written on the back of a torn envelope.

  Miss Goldberg rolled her eyes. “We cannot put any more items on Mrs. Habig’s account,” she stage-whispered, but there were no other shoppers in the store to hear. “I thought I explained that to her last week.”

  Olive plunked the coin purse down and passed the list across to Miss Goldberg’s reluctant grasp. “We can pay for it all,” Olive said staunchly.

  Miss Goldberg sniffed as she removed a lined note card from the accounts box, then rang up the sale. Olive stopped to look at the costume jewelry in carnival glass colors, but Miss Goldberg glared and Edie nudged her away.

  The girls crossed Jefferson and walked toward the library, saving the best for last, Edie thought.

  Olive looked longingly at Oster’s bakery window and could almost taste the cream horns and cherry coffee cake with that crunchy topping, but there was no money for that.

  As they walked on, they muttered to each other—“Oh no.” Old Jimmy McCray limped toward them, but Mama said they mustn’t call him Jimmy, just Mr. McCray. Papa said he came back from the Great War and was “never the same,” but Edie was not quite sure what that meant because Papa came back all right and then married Mama.

  Jimmy McCray couldn’t even see straight, thought Olive, with one eye looking up and the other looking down, and that raised purple scar down the side of his face.

  “You ’fraid of me?” He asked the same question of every child he saw on the street, in the dime store, at mass.

  “No, Mr. McCray, we’re not afraid of you,” Olive said yet again, but hurried by him, shielding Edie, just the same.

  They escaped into the library, where it was dim and cool, smelling of dust and old paper. The low children’s bookshelves were near the front, while the adult section was up a few steps in the back of the long, narrow building. Edie skipped over to the fairy tales and sat cross-legged on the floor while she looked for a book. Olive, impatient already, walked around to see whether anyone they knew was here.

  Miss Phillips, the librarian, wished they would look through her new display of Newbery Award winners—books that no child had yet checked out. You’d think with times still so hard, parents would take advantage of things that were free, she mused. But many children had to help out at home, she reminded herself, as the ragman and his young son passed by the window in their horse-drawn cart. Even the horse looks down on its luck today, she thought.

  Just this morning as she brought the milk bottles in from the back porch, she saw a young man jump on top of a coal car as the train slowed to the station on Market Street. He knocked over as much coal as he could onto the grassy verge of the track, then jumped down again, gathered it all into in a burlap bag, and ran off.

  She pictured the coal bin in her cellar at home, three-fourths full, and the way the flames lit up her father’s craggy face when he opened the metal furnace door to shovel in another load. How she took her comfortable life for granted sometimes . . .

  Olive was too old, but Edie might like this one—Miss Phillips took Downright Dencey from her display. Hard times in Nantucket. Plucky little Quaker girl with a father away on a whaling ship, and a mother who finds it hard to cope. Dencey befriends the town outcast, Samuel Jetsam. Good story. Wonderful writing.

  Olive checked out yet another Nancy Drew—The Secret Staircase, which she probably would not finish, thought Miss Phillips. Olive just can’t concentrate. It must get her into trouble at school.

  It began to rain.

  “Why don’t you girls stay in here for a while, till it lets up?” suggested Miss Phillips. “Olive, would you help me put these books away? Edie, you can get started on your new book.”

  Edie plopped down like a rag doll behind the bookshelves where Miss Phillips couldn’t see her. The new book could wait. From her torn dress pocket, she took out her battered copy of The Princess and the Goblin that her father found by the towpath of the old canal. He was always finding things. He found Mama’s ring by the canal, too.

  The pages had browned with age and the type was small, but Edie didn’t care. As she started to read, the library faded away and she was once again in the wild mountains, with a little girl her own age—eight-year-old Princess Irene—and goblins who lived underground. Were goblins scarier than Jimmy McCray? wondered Edie.

  Edie loved the parts where the princess followed an invisible thread to find her beautiful great-great-grandmother in the tallest tower of the castle, the lady with blue eyes that seemed to have melted stars in them. Edie could just imagine how the lady looked with her black velvet dress and the long white hair that reached past her silvery lace collar.

  But she was not to that part yet. She was still at the place where the princess first gets lost. Ohhhhh, shivered Edie, thinking of the goblins and then, suddenly, of Jimmy McCray. What if Edie got lost and Jimmy McCray was chasing her?

  She snapped the book shut and quickly ran to find Olive.

  3

  When I got back to the bakery from the Schumachers’ wedding cake tasting, Maggie was in the middle of packing little boxes, each with a different kind of small cake: January’s mocha truffle plus our everyday cream cheese–frosted carrot cake, red velvet, almond-flavored blue suede, and, of course, rainbow cake.

  “I just couldn’t decide,” explained the customer, breathily.

  “Well, then you shouldn’t have to,” I told her, tucking a cellophane-wrapped snowflake sugar cookie into a bag as a little gift. “My treat.” Such a little thing—a sugar cookie—can be an unexpected kindness, if the expression on her face was any indication.

  As soon as she had gone and the bakery was quiet again, Maggie looked at me expectantly.

  “Well? How did it go?”

  I beamed.

  “I knew you could do it! I knew it!”

  “This calls for a celebration latte,” I said, and revved up the ol’ Marzocco. When I guided the froth with a long spoon, I tried to make a wedding cake shape, but it turned into a mountain.

  “Yep, that’s about right,” I muttered.

  “What’s right?” Maggie asked as she clinked her cup with mine. “Cheers!”

  “We’ve still got an uphill bat
tle,” I said, pointing at my artwork.

  “That’s not all we’ve got,” Maggie said in a conspiratorial whisper. “We’re gonna be slammed for Valentine’s Day. I’ve charted our foot traffic and our orders for the past two weeks, and they’ve more than doubled each week. We’re still not where we want to be, but we’re getting there. The upshot is that you better get some more help, unless you think Vampira back there is up to waiting on customers.” She gave me her skeptical look.

  Well, now, that’s a thought.

  I found Jett in the workroom, a scowl on her face and a chain from her nose ring to some nether region beneath her black T-shirt. She was fashioning delicate sugar-paste roses and leaves. Her hands looked clean, though it was hard to tell with her fingernails painted black.

  “How’s it going?” I asked.

  “Things are pretty fucked.”

  My eyes widened, but I collected myself. I saw beautifully rendered rosebuds, fully opened roses, and rose leaves in the pale colors of our next black-tie event, a charity ball for the Rose Family Foundation.

  My puzzled look prompted, “It’s not the work,” from Jett.

  “Well, that’s something.”

  I couldn’t even tell what her natural hair color was. Jett told me she dyed it “Deadly Nightshade.” On rainy days when she walked down the Benson Street hill from Millcreek Valley High on the crest of the hilltop—and she never seemed to have an umbrella—her hair dripped purplish black. I kept some old towels on hand now.

  I was convinced that somewhere behind all that Queen of the Dark was a fresh young girl. Last year, when I had gone to visit my old high school art teacher, Jett was the one I saw doing the most exquisite work—her clay modeling, charcoal drawing, and her sense of color all pointed to real talent. I was hoping she’d stay here after graduation and go on to art school in the area. But it wasn’t easy for anybody to get past her scary, hard-ass exterior. I couldn’t imagine her interviewing for another job and getting the notice she deserved.