How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [2]
The bakery is closed for the day. Late-afternoon sunshine slants in through the windows and boomerangs off the stainless steel so intensely that I have to keep moving around the big center island to keep it out of my eyes. The kneading machines are still as I stir together starter and molasses, water and oil and flour, until it’s a thick mass I can turn out onto the table with a heavy splat. Plunging my hands into the dark sticky blob, I scatter the barest possible amounts of rye flour over it, kneading it in a bit at a time. The rhythm is steady, smooth. It has given me enviable muscles in my arms.
“What do you want for your birthday?” Sofia asks, flipping a page.
“It’s ages away!”
“Only a couple of months.”
“Well, I guess as long as there are no black balloons, I’m good.” Last year, my enormous family—at least, those members who are still speaking to me—felt bound to present me with graveyard cakes and make jokes about crow’s feet, which, thanks to my grandmother Adelaide’s cheekbones, I do not have.
“A person has to suffer through only one fortieth birthday in a lifetime.” Sofia turns another page. “How about this?” She holds up an ad for a lavish sapphire necklace. “Good for your eyes.”
“Tiffany. Perfect.” At the moment, I’m so broke that a bubblegum ring would be expensive, though of course Sofia doesn’t know that the bakery is in trouble. “You can buy it for me when you’re rich and famous.”
“When I am that superstar kindergarten teacher?”
“Right.”
“Deal.”
I push the heel of my palm into the dough and it squeezes upward, cool and clammy. An earthy bouquet rises from it, and I’m anticipating how the caramelizing molasses will smell as it bakes.
A miller darts between us, flapping dusty wings in sudden terror. Sofia waves it away, frowning. “I hope we’re not going to have a crazy miller season this year.”
I think of a Jethro Tull song, and for a minute I’m lost in another part of my life, another summer. Shaking it off, I fold the dough. “It’s been a wet year.”
“Ugh. I hate them.” She shudders to give emphasis. Then she closes her magazine and squares her shoulders. “Mom, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”
Finally. “I’m listening.”
She spills it, fast. “I told you Oscar’s ex-wife was arrested in El Paso and Katie has been living with her best friend’s family, but Oscar really wants her to come and live with me. Us. She’s got some problems, I won’t lie, but she just needs somebody to be there for her.” Sofia has eyes like a plastic Kewpie doll, all blink and blueness with a fringe of blackest lashes. “She can sleep upstairs, in the back room. Close to me. She lived with us before Oscar went to Afghanistan. It was fine.”
“Hmmm. I seem to remember it differently.”
“Okay, it wasn’t fine. Exactly.” Sofia bows her head. Light arcs over her glossy dark hair. “She was pretty angry then.”
“And she’s happy now?” I scatter flour over the dough and table, where it is beginning to stick. “Because her mother is in jail and her father is at war?”
“No. I mean—”
The phone rings. I glance at it, then back to my daughter. Obviously there is no possible way I can say no. The child has nowhere to go, but—
To give myself a little time, I tug my hands out of the dough, wipe them off with one of the thin white cotton towels I love for covering the loaves when they rise. “How old is she?”
A second ring.
“Thirteen. Going into eighth grade.”
“Middle school.” Not the most delightful age for girls. Even Sofia was a pain at that age—all huffy sighs and hair-flinging drama. And tears. Tears over everything.
The phone rings again, and I hold up a finger to Sofia. “Hold that thought. Hello?”
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” says a deep, formal voice on the other end. “May I please speak with Mrs. Oscar Wilson?”
Every atom in my body freezes for the space of two seconds. Here it is, the moment I’ve been half dreading since Sofia came home four years ago, her eyes shining. Mama, he’s the most wonderful man! He wants to marry me.
A soldier. An infantryman who’d already done