The Cake Therapist Read online

  “You know we’re glad to have you with us, don’t you? And at least you’ll never go hungry working here,” I said.

  “Yeah. Everything else sucks, but I like it here.”

  “Good.” What else could I say? But Maggie was right. Jett wasn’t ready for prime time.

  I was going to have to get more help. But I didn’t want to hire anyone else full-time unless I knew the business could sustain an additional employee.

  My mom would come in if I were desperate. And maybe Norb’s wife. Poor Norb.

  My phone rang and I grabbed it from the pocket of my trousers.

  “Come over for dinner tonight,” Mom wheedled. “Before you tell me you don’t have time, think about this: We’re having cottage ham and green beans.”

  “Are you making dinner or is Aunt Helen?”

  “I am.”

  “Sure, Mom. And I’ll bring dessert. What time?”

  “Whenever you’re finished. I’ll just keep everything warm until you get here.”

  I tapped my phone off and felt as if I had just been enveloped in a warm, familiar sweater. My mom’s home cooking.

  If it were Aunt Helen’s turn for dinner, I would have found some excuse, not that I didn’t love her, of course. But she was too fond of taking cooking shortcuts that didn’t work out most of the time. Her exploding cottage ham that covered the kitchen in dark pink shreds was a disaster we still talked about.

  Cottage ham, that cured and hickory-smoked pork shoulder that Millcreek Valleyites loved, needed long, slow cooking with green beans and onions. To go with it, Mom would make real mashed potatoes, while Aunt Helen would have grabbed a box of instant flakes and turned them into a gluey mess.

  When I finally finished up about seven p.m., the parking lot was dark and cold. I didn’t feel like walking over to Mom’s small house on Church Street, so I drove the short distance.

  As I passed Mrs. Elmlinger’s dark brick bungalow where I used to take piano lessons, I saw her concrete goose dressed up like Lady Gaga, safe from snow and sleet on her front porch. Her students must still think she was really cool. Mrs. Elmlinger always chose a musical theme for her goose outfits—Mozart, John Philip Sousa, even Elton John—so she had to sew many of them herself.

  If you wanted your goose dressed up like a high school graduate, a nurse, a pirate, or a football player, you could find ready-made outfits at any gift shop. But the whole point to this yard art was to have a little fun and make your own statement. If you didn’t sew, you could always buy a wackier goose outfit at the craft and antique mall farther down on Millcreek Valley Road.

  Mom’s goose nested under the overhang of the front stoop of the small brick workman’s cottage that she shared with Aunt Helen, Dad’s sister. Mom always stuck to the tried and true; her goose was dressed like Cupid, complete with a bow and arrow slung over its wing. She must have just changed its snowman outfit in the past few days. If Aunt Helen had been in charge, the goose would have morphed regularly into Indiana Jones and Han Solo—like her other sixtysomething friends, she still had the hots for Harrison Ford.

  Inside, Mom puttered in the kitchen while Helen watched Jeopardy! I gave them both a peck on the cheek, then slung my coat over the back of the sofa.

  “Want a whiskey ssshhour?” Helen asked. “I’m ready for one.” She sounded like she really meant “another one.”

  One of Helen’s cocktails actually sounded good. She did know how to mix a drink. But as I took a sip, I grimaced. “I think you put a little too much lemon in it this time.”

  “Here, I’ll just shhtir in a little shhugar and it will be fine.”

  “Mmm.” I sipped again. “Perfect, Helen. A toast to my first big wedding!” We clinked our glasses together.

  “Who? When?” Mom and Aunt Helen asked at the same time, then laughed.

  “Well, it will be at Carriage Hill Country Club. Ellen Schumacher is the bride and Samuel Whyte the groom.”

  “Society people?” Mom asked.

  “How would we know if they were or not?” asked Helen.

  Mom gave her a look.

  “The Schumachers were lovely and gracious people,” I said, hoping to nip the quarrel in the bud, “society” or not.

  “What are their colors for the wedding?” Mom continued.

  “Cobalt blue and pale coral.”

  “Ahhh,” Mom sighed. “That will be beautiful.”

  “I think I’ll be pretty busy this April,” I added.

  “You’re pretty busy now!” Mom said, looking at me with motherly concern. “You’ve worked so hard, maybe too hard, honey.” I guess she couldn’t help that her eyes darted to the ring finger of my left hand, newly bare. “Is everything . . .”

  It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought the same thing, over and over again. Maybe if I hadn’t been so set on making my own way, maybe if I had been home more, maybe . . .

  I shook my head and flicked my hands to deflect that question. I hadn’t allowed myself to think much about Luke. I didn’t want to think about Luke. And I left my rings locked up in my jewelry box because I didn’t want to lose them when I washed my hands for the umpteenth time.

  I had other things to occupy my thoughts. Like the troubling message from Dad that I was not about to share, either.

  I couldn’t do anything about Luke or Dad, but I could do something about Rainbow Cake. I wanted to focus on what was going well.

  “I’ve had a very good day and that’s all I care about right now,” I said in a tone designed to quash the mini-inquisition.

  Mom and Aunt Helen looked at each other knowingly. “Another drink, anyone?” Helen offered.

  When we sat down at the table, Mom made the sign of the cross. “Bless us, oh Lord, and these thy gifts. . . .”

  Then we all began talking about our days—Mom as the elementary school secretary at Saints Peter and Paul a block away, Aunt Helen as the power-behind-the-pump at a water sprinkler company.

  “Sister Mary Alphonse has been sick with the flu all week and her sixth-graders were almost uncontrollable,” Mom began. “You could hear the ruckus all the way down the hall.”

  “You mean Brenda Jean Overbeck, don’t you?” Aunt Helen commented, adding a dab of horseradish to her cottage ham.

  “That’s ancient history, Helen, and you know that. Brenda Jean has been Sister Mary Alphonse for over thirty years!”

  “That long.” Aunt Helen looked at me and winked. “I guess I keep expecting her to cut and run. She never seemed like nun material to me, anyway. In high school, she used to have that hard orange line of makeup around her face, and she always wore fluorescent blue eye shadow. Remember when she was caught with Joey Ashbrock behind the bleachers and—”

  “Helen,” Mom warned. “We’ve all heard that story at least fifty times.”

  I laughed because we really had heard that story fifty times.

  “By the way, I’ll have extra cupcakes that I can take up to the nursing home and maybe to the convent tomorrow,” I said, changing the subject. That was sure to smooth things over. My mom was Catholic to the core and the one person in the Rosary Altar Society who never, ever missed a meeting. She also never missed seven a.m. mass before she walked on to work. Mom would have made a great nun. Maybe my dad had come to that conclusion, too. . . .

  “Speaking of goodies, Doreen at work gave me a new recipe for a ‘quickie,’” Helen said with a knowing smile. I looked at my mom—did she even know what a quickie was?

  No.

  Nun material. Poor Mom.

  Helen, however, sure did. “A quickie is a pie that only takes three minutes to make. Can you believe that? You use a graham cracker pie shell, instant vanilla pudding, a little milk, a can of cherry pie filling, and some frozen whipped topping. I might make one tomorrow.”

  Note to self: Have other dinner plans.

 
I kissed Mom and Helen good night and went back out in the cold. As I stopped for a red light, I caught a glimpse of something just behind me in the rearview mirror. For a moment, it seemed as if the warm exhaust from my tailpipe had morphed into a gaggle of wispy white geese, waddling behind me in the frigid air.

  That was what I wished I had seen.

  Otherwise, how could I explain the figure in the white hoodie and dark jeans that tumbled out the door of a pickup truck as it turned left from the alley onto the street? The ghostly figure got up on hands and knees and crab-walked to the sidewalk. The hood fell back and I could see that it was a young woman. A scared young woman.

  “Leave me alone!” I heard her yell.

  When my light turned green, I didn’t go forward. Still looking in the rearview mirror, I fished around in my purse for my cell phone, just in case I needed to call 911. I locked my doors.

  The truck fishtailed to a stop. The driver got out, stomped around the front of the truck, then walked around to slam the passenger door shut.

  The girl staggered up from the pavement into the dark shadows just out of the streetlight’s weak glow.

  The driver, a stocky young man in jeans and work boots, lumbered back to her, yelling, “Shit. Shit. Shit!”

  But she had a head start. And then a light came on in the second-story window above Bliss Honeymoon Travel, right above her. The curtains parted. The angry man looked up, then seemed to change his mind, coming to a swaying halt.

  “You asked for it, bitch,” he bellowed, raising his fist. “You asked for it.”

  He wheeled around, still unsteady on his feet. He kicked the tire a few times. “Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!” he yelled, almost falling over with the third kick. Then he threw himself in the truck and slammed his dented door shut. He gunned the engine and peeled off down the street, laying a zigzag patch of rubber across the two-lane bridge to Lockton.

  The light had gone red, then green again, but I still waited. Luckily, every sane person was home and warm on this cold and dreary night in January.

  I could see the girl, holding her stomach with one arm, limping toward my car.

  Her face was turned away from me, but I saw the dark stain blooming on the front of her white sweatshirt. There was also something in the way she held her head up, as if wounded pride was even more painful than any physical harm. I knew that girl.

  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.