How Sweet It Is - Alice J. Wisler [64]
“I take cash or checks.”
“I’m sure you do.”
And no expired coupons, I want to add, but resist.
I’m ready to hang up, but Mrs. Marble Angelica Gray isn’t. “One more question.”
“Yes?”
“How will I carry my cakes home?”
What does she mean? She’ll be driving, won’t she? She can put them in her car like other people do. Confused, I ask, “What do you mean?”
“Won’t they slide all over the seats? I don’t want my leather seats covered with icing!”
“Boxes,” I say quickly. “I have cake boxes, and they’ll keep the cakes safe.”
Grunting, sounding like a pig rooting in the trough for a corncob, she says, “Are they those white boxes?”
I go over to a large box by the desk in my room that is half filled with the pastry boxes. They are flat and can be opened and assembled to hold any size cake, round or square. I look at the box on the top, as though viewing it will help me with my answer. “Yes, they’re white.”
“Do they cost more?”
“No, Mrs. Gray. The boxes come with your cake order.”
“Well. That sounds nice.”
Downstairs I hear the front door opening and the bark of another dog. “Deena! Where are you? We need to go!”
“What?” I end my conversation with Marble Gray and look over the banister at my distraught aunt and a slobbery Giovanni.
“Jonas fell off the church roof!”
“Jonas?”
“He’s been taken to the hospital.”
I grab my purse and sail down the stairs. My first cake order now seems insignificant.
“I tried to call your cell, but I just got your voicemail,” my aunt says, her voice heavy with urgency.
At the bake sale I learned that Jonas is the church plumber and sometimes spends time at the church on weekday mornings long before my classes start. But what was he doing on the roof? As we get into my aunt’s truck I ask her what happened. I sit in the back of the cab; Giovanni never gives up his cushy passenger seat for me.
She backs out of the driveway with the ease of a woman who has lived in these mountains for a long, long time. “He was getting a badminton birdie.”
“From the roof? Why did he go up there?”
“The preschool girls got the birdie stuck on the roof and asked him to get it down today. He was busy. You know Jonas. He had to check some pipes first.” She speeds down the looping road as I close my eyes. “He was admitted over an hour ago after first being in the ER. Jo-Jen got the phone call while we were playing Scrabble.”
I can’t bear to think of Jonas being in the hospital. As we pass homes, I note their roofs and think that the distance between a roof and the ground is a long one.
The next thing I know, my aunt is asking if I know how her dog got his name.
Perhaps this is a trick question, or something that has to do with Jonas? Softly, I say, “No.”
“Ah, I never told you.” She puts on her brakes when we reach the end of the road and takes a right into the heart of the town.
“I guess not.”
“Well, about six years ago, one fall, I was driving on the Parkway in my truck.”
I want to laugh at how bizarre this is. Jonas’s life could hang in the balance and my aunt uses this moment to tell me about her dog.
Regena Lorraine continues, “Mozart’s Don Giovanni was playing in my CD player. I was enjoying the day but feeling a bit lonely. Out of the woods came this bounding mass of fur. I stopped my truck in time, or I might have hit the happy critter. Then he walked over to my window, which was down, and licked my hands. Just jumped up and gave me a kiss. His tail was wagging, Mozart’s opera was blaring. I parked my truck, saw that there was no collar on him. I took him home, and the rest is history.”
Giovanni lets out two happy barks.
We are now at the hospital’s parking lot. “Nice story.” Then I sneeze; I am still allergic to dog fur, yet my aunt hasn’t seemed to catch on after all these months. Some dog lovers, as well as parents, just can’t grasp that not everyone adores their babies.
My aunt is still clueless about why I’m sneezing. With all the excitement of a parade, she gushes, “His name is so appropriate, Shug. The opera about Giovanni combines comedy, drama, and the supernatural. That was