How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [86]
I put my finger to my lips. “Katie worships the ground you walk on, Mom. She needs you.”
“Oh.” She looks over her shoulder, and when she looks back, tears glisten in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Ramona. I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s all right. Let’s just go fix it.”
But Katie has gone upstairs by the time we return to the yard. “She said she’d be right back,” Nancy says.
Of course she isn’t, and after a while, during which we hammer out a plan for Nancy and Poppy to head to Texas, my mother goes upstairs to see if Katie wants to spend the night. She declines.
A small wound, I think. She’ll heal quickly enough.
• • •
I’ve finished pouring white and wheat flour into the vast kneading machine for our first round of baking this morning when Sofia calls. It’s just past three, and I take the phone into the backyard again. “Hi, honey. How’s it going?”
“Not good, Mom. Oscar is awake, but he doesn’t want me here.”
“What do you mean?”
“He told me to go home. And it wasn’t even a nice kind of go home, where he asked me to go home and be safe or take care of Katie or anything like that. He won’t even look at me.” Her voice thins. “He’s so angry.”
I have no idea what the right thing to say might be. Listen, I think, just listen. “That must be crushing.”
“It is. I’ve been waiting and praying for him to wake up. I have been sitting right beside him and reading aloud and trying to be encouraging, and now he’s finally awake and he can’t even stand the sight of me?”
“I’m sure that’s not what it is, Sofia. He might be shocked and upset and angry, but not at you.”
“I know. I keep telling myself that, too, but it’s hard. I’m not tough, like you.”
I laugh a little. “I’m a real tough marshmallow, baby. What if I can send you some backup?”
“Are you coming?” Her voice is filled with hope.
It pierces me. “I can’t, honey, not if we are going to have any money at all. I can’t leave the business right this second, and there’s Katie.”
“I know. I understand. But I wish you were here. It would make it so much better.”
“How about a couple of aunties instead? Poppy and Nancy will come if you want them to. They’re so excited about it.”
Her voice is quiet. “I know you love them, Mom, but they are kind of eccentric and this is an Army hospital, and … I don’t know.” She starts to cry softly, then swears. “Damn! I keep telling myself that crying doesn’t help, but I can’t seem to stop anyway.”
For a minute I’m wondering about my choices. Would it be better to leave somebody else in charge of the bakery? Bring Katie with me to Texas to look out for Sofia?
No. Impossible. “I would love to be there with you, Sofia. I hope you know that.”
“I do. And you know I love the aunties. I just wish it was you.”
How did I get so lucky to have this child who likes my company? Who needs and wants me? In a deliberately upbeat tone, I say, “Remember, Nancy is a midwife, and it won’t be so bad to have someone with medical training around. Oscar loves Poppy, too. Maybe that will help.”
“Maybe.” She takes a breath. “When are they coming?”
“They have to get things arranged—maybe a week or two. I’ll let you know.”
“Okay. I guess I should let you get back to work. What kind of bread are you making today?”
I tell her the names of the breads, the oatmeal sunflower and millet whole wheat and the sharply sour rustica. But what she wants is distraction and a sense of normality. “Oh, guess what? I met a guy from a long time ago, from when I was pregnant with you.”
“No way! The sweater guy?”
I blush to the top of my bra. I’d forgotten that I told her all about the sweater, which I do still have tucked away in a trunk of things I’ve kept. Sofia loved to go through it with me and have me tell stories about each thing. My roller skates, a scrapbook I made at church camp one year, an autograph book and pictures. And the sweater. She used to like to put it on. “Yeah. How weird is that? He found Katie’s dog when he got out of the yard one day and brought him back.”
“So is he still hot?”
I should never have brought this up. It feels girlish and idiotic to be