How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [33]
“I get along with everybody.”
“Yeah. I hope you always do.”
I realized my statement was a lie. “I guess I don’t get along with everyone right now, though, do I? My mom is mad at me. Really mad at me. She hardly talked to me at all for the last three weeks and didn’t say a single thing to me on the way here.”
“Oh, honey.” Poppy moved toward me as if she would hug me, and I stepped back, putting up a hand to keep her away. She stopped. “Your mom is just sad for you. Someday you’ll understand.”
“If she’s so sad, don’t you think she could be nicer? That she would understand that I’m really sorry? That it isn’t helping to send me away from everybody for the whole summer?”
“She’s doing what she thinks is best for you and the family, sweetheart.”
I bowed my head, kicked at a clump of dirt. “Well, I hate it.” Some heated thing blistered through my chest. “Did something like this happen with you and Grandma? Is that why you never talk?”
“No,” she said with emphasis. “It was nothing like this.” She took a breath, looked over the garden. “Let’s just say that your grandma is a different person now than she was when my father was alive. Your grandma is not the same person who was my mother.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to get into details, Ramona. You have a good relationship with Adelaide, and she’s good for you. She wasn’t always good for your mom and me.”
“So, what, you never forgave her? My mom gets along with her.”
“Does she?”
At first I thought it was a real question, then I realized the tone of voice said something completely different. I met her eyes, thinking of my mother and her mother in a room together, a wall of icy politeness between them at all times. “Oh.”
“Let’s drop this, Ramona. Let it go.” She waved me out of the garden behind her. “I need to go to town this morning. Let’s have lunch at the B&B Café, shall we?”
“Yes! Can we go to the record store?”
“You can. I’ve got some errands to run.”
I’d been to the B&B with Poppy ten million times. Old men sat at the counter with knobby hands curled around heavy white coffee cups, their cowboy hats and baseball caps and coats still firmly in place. At the tables sat the other customers—church sisters having a sweet roll and a cup of coffee, couples who’d come in to town to go to the grocery store, a sprinkling of men in suits who were the accountants and bankers and lawyers in town. Everybody was always nice. They all gave a nod, and a lot of them recognized me even though I didn’t live there but only came in with Poppy.
What I had never done was go in anywhere pregnant. Until my mom found out, I’d been hiding it pretty well, so nobody suspected. After my mom put her hand on my belly that day, it was like the baby grew triple-time, stretching and unfolding like one of my grandmother’s irises. Almost overnight, I was huge. Truly, honestly, obviously pregnant.
And this was the first time I was in public. This was the first time I realized that everybody was staring at me, and not in a good way. They looked at my belly, up to my face, and then looked at one another with tight mouths or rolled eyes. I felt as if somebody had written SLUT SLUT SLUT right over the middle of my body in Day-Glo orange letters.
“I can’t do this,” I said to Poppy, and turned around to leave. Her hand on my waist pushed me back into the room.
“Yes, you can. Hold your head up,” she said in my ear. “Look right through them and take that seat there.”
Ears and face burning, I plopped down, hearing the hiss of whispers start up around us. My hands fell in my lap, below my big belly, and I jerked them up and put them on the table, scooting as close as I could. I didn’t look at anybody.
“How are you, Poppy?” the waitress said, putting menus down in front of us.
“I’m well, Marie. You remember my niece Ramona, don’t you?”
“I do. How are you, sweetie?”
I kept my head down. “Fine.”
“Bring me some coffee, Marie, and an orange juice for my niece.”
My ears were buzzing. My throat felt like it would close completely, and when I glanced out of the corner of my eye,