How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [43]
When I brought the coffee back, Poppy was talking, so I put the cup on the table and waved to her. When I turned around, there was my mom. It was such a shock to see her that I almost coughed up my orange juice. She wore a white culottes set with a jaunty scarf tied around her neck and gold buttons in her ears. “Mom!”
“Hi, Ramona,” she said, and hugged me. I smelled hairspray and cigarettes and Juicy Fruit gum, and the combination nearly made me burst into tears.
But then I remembered her stony face when she dropped me off four weeks ago and stiffened, pushing her shoulder away from me. “What are you doing here?”
“Your birthday is coming up. I thought we could go to Denver and do some shopping.”
“Today?” I glanced at the record store. “Like right now?”
“No, we can go later. Poppy said you might want notebooks and art supplies, so I brought a few from home, but maybe you’ll want new ones, too.”
Against my will, my spirits lightened. “Can we get crêpes at La Creperie?”
She smiled and looked like my mother again. My real mother, who wasn’t always so sour. “Of course.”
Poppy finished with her customer and came to hug my mother. Poppy seemed happier than my mother did. Easier in her skin. She was wearing a sleeveless pale-green paisley dress that made her complexion and hair appear warmer. My mother noticed, too. “You look great, Poppy. What’s going on with you?”
She shrugged. “I’m just feeling good. It’s nice to have company this summer.” With a wave over the decimated goods on the table, she said, “I’m ready to go get a snack somewhere, if you want to join me. Ramona wanted to hit the record store before we left today, right?”
Gratefully, I nodded. “You can come get me there later.”
“Go.”
I ambled down the sidewalk and across the street. Sunlight burned the part of my hair, and the air smelled of cinnamon rolls, and somewhere children were playing, their laughter ringing out like the ultimate sound of happiness. The baby inside me moved, somersaulting as if she was happy, too, and something about it put a knife through my heart. She would laugh with somebody else. I would never hear the sound.
I stopped dead on the sidewalk, struggling to keep from crying. I managed not to sob, but tears leaked out of my eyes and down my cheeks and I dashed them away, pretending I was getting something off my mouth. A woman in jeans and a sturdy pair of shoes looked at me in concern, but I moved by her quickly. If anyone offered sympathy, I’d never be able to pull it together.
How did this happen? How was I in this place? How would I decide what do to?
I slowed. What to do? Was there more than one answer?
I thought of Poppy’s stories of India, of rambling around with her friends, working at an ashram, learning about elephants and saris and things nobody else in our whole family knew. I thought of Nancy’s stories the past few weeks about Paris. She was teaching me how to make levains, which were a slow way of making bread. I had thrown away two starters already because they didn’t catch enough yeast to grow, and just last night I had started another one. It was sitting in a jar on the counter in Poppy’s kitchen, where the sun would warm it, but not too much. Maybe this time it would work. Poppy said I couldn’t add any yeast, that I had to let it be. So I was trying.
Last Monday we’d gone to the agency for my interview, which they put on videotape for prospective parents to look at. Nancy said to be natural, to tell the camera what I wanted for the baby, and to say whatever else I wanted. I told the truth—that I was too young, that I had to go to college and wanted to travel someday, so it would be better if the baby went to a home that was ready for it.
On the street in Castle Rock, I faintly heard the sound of music and realized that I’d walked almost to the door of the record store. I felt dazed, as if I’d been crying for a long time, and