How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [37]
“I have to ask my aunt when we’re coming back.”
“Okay.” The phone rang and he headed to the front. “Who’s your aunt?”
“Poppy Callahan.”
“I know Poppy. She’s good people.”
I never liked that expression, and it took some of the sheen off his glow. “Yeah.”
He answered the phone and I returned to browsing, wondering what I could possibly get now that I had a Stevie Ray Vaughan album in my hand. What could I pick that wouldn’t make me look like a little girl? I flipped through the stacks, looking at the Cure and U2 and the other bands I knew the alternative kids liked, but what I really wanted was Madonna. And some voice said, But he might think you’re an idiot.
I thought of my aunt, telling me to sit up straight at the diner. I took the Madonna album up to the register, thinking only as I got there about “Like a Virgin.” Which I wasn’t anymore, but that’s not what the song is about exactly.
The guy was still talking on the phone. By the way he was writing on a piece of paper, I thought he was taking an order or something. He repeated some names and prices back into the phone, spied me at the counter, and held up a hand, making a face to show that the person was talking and talking.
It wasn’t until he came over to ring me up that I saw his left hand was deformed. No, not deformed—messed up, like from an accident or something. The first two fingers were mostly stubs, and the remaining ring and pinkie fingers looked as if they had been shaved. I stared, shocked, then realized I was doing the same thing everybody did to me. And he hadn’t!
“I cut them off with a power saw last summer,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare. Everybody has been staring right at my stomach, so I know how it feels.” I couldn’t look at him.
“Hey, don’t worry about it.” He took the album off the counter. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“Ramona.”
He chuckled, the sound low and rich. “I’m Jonah. We rhyme.”
It made me laugh, and again that mortification faded. I tried to think of something to say so we could keep talking but couldn’t come up with anything.
He looked at the handwritten label on the front of the album and wrote the numbers on a notebook page with a carbon beneath it. I noticed he had perfectly arched eyebrows, dark brown, and they gave his face an elegance. Music played, something wistful with heavy, slow drums. He was quiet, focused on his task.
“What’s your favorite album?” I asked suddenly. “You must know a lot of music, working in a music store.”
“That I do,” he said. His face looked sad—sad enough to cry. “I’ll save that story for another day.” The bell dinged on the door behind me. “There’s your aunt.”
“Hello, Jonah!” she sang out. “I see you’ve met my niece.”
“We’ve been talking music.”
“Did you get my order?” Poppy asked. “The Doors?”
He shook his head. “Next week, probably.”
“Good enough. I’ll bring you some bread.”
“I’d like that.”
“You ready to go, my beauty?” Poppy asked me.
I nodded. “But I haven’t spent all the money.”
She put her arm around me. “It’s all right. Let’s go home and have a nap, shall we?”
On the way out, I waved to Jonah. He lifted his chin and sat back down at his table with his ruined hand.
After we came in from gardening a few days later, Poppy said, “I have to bake. I could use your help.”
“I was going to read.” I was reading Mistral’s Daughter for the third time. It never got old, and I’d just started again, so I was in the part where the first woman was an artist’s model in Paris. It was very romantic. It made me want to go to Paris and drink absinthe, whatever that was.
“Well, I really need some help, and you’re what I’ve got. You can bake this morning, then read later. Besides, it’s good for you.”
“Why? You can buy bread in the grocery store. Twenty kinds!”
“None of it tastes like the bread made with your grandmother’s sourdough starter.” She plunked a jar of the foamy, smelly stuff on the table. “This has been in the family for more than a hundred years.”
“I thought