How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [96]
Poppy arrived one Sunday evening, alone, and found us in the kitchen. She halted at the doorway. In her hands were two Bell jars of starter—one pale and smooth, the other brown and full of holes. She stared at her mother without moving for a long time, long enough that I wondered if she would turn around and leave. The only time I could remember them speaking was the day everyone came to Poppy’s farm when I was pregnant. I still didn’t know why, but I could guess it had to do with Poppy being gay, with Adelaide’s fearsome unhappiness as a mother, or both.
Adelaide was having one of her lost days. I’d given her a chunk of dough to press and fold, and it occupied her for hours. Like me, she seemed soothed by the smell of yeast and baking crust, and she loved the classical music I played. We often worked side by side in that kitchen for hours and hours without even speaking.
“Grandma, look who’s here,” I said.
She turned. “Hello, Poppy,” she said, with the surprising perfect clarity that could sometimes arrive. “Are you going to bake with us?”
My aunt, as mighty as any woman I had ever known, crumpled. She carried the jars to the table, put them down, and bent to hug her mother from behind. “I love you, Mom. I hope you know that.”
Adelaide closed her eyes. “You wouldn’t have been keeping my starter alive all these years if you didn’t, would you?” She curled a hand around Poppy’s arm and pressed her cheek into her daughter’s.
They rocked back and forth for a long moment, and Adelaide said, “Will you tell Lily that I’m sorry?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “But it doesn’t matter.”
“I ruined her dress. Never could get the stain out.”
“I know.” Poppy straightened and went out to the backyard. When she came back, we baked rolls with each of the mother doughs and tasted them all side by side.
Sofia’s Journal
SAN ANTONIO
JUNE 10, 20—
I’ve just come from the most depressing hour of my life. I sat with Mica Reed, one of the other wives, while she cried. Her husband didn’t make it. He’s been here longer than Oscar, but he was much more seriously injured, with burned lungs, which I think was the main problem, and a lot of internal injuries. It was always a very slim hope that he would make it, but he’s been hanging on for so long you know that’s what he was trying to do. Live. He never regained consciousness, so the mind was willing but the flesh was too wrecked.
What I hated was that, the whole time I was sitting with her, all I was thinking about was how bad Ralph’s wounds were in comparison to Oscar’s, making this mental list that was just horrible. Head to head, lungs to lungs, skin to skin, missing limbs to broken bones to lost digits.
You think, going into this, that you know how it will be if your husband (or wife) gets injured or killed. It happens all around you, so you start to get that it really could happen, but the only way to stand it is to keep believing in some strange protection that’s going to take care of your person. Keep HIM safe, above all others.
And there are all those crazy stories about soldiers who survive three deployments, then come back and get into a car wreck or a bar fight or get cancer and die at home. The truth is, any of us can die at any moment, but who can live with that, ever?
Oscar is alive. He isn’t talking to me still, but he’s alive, and he’s actually getting a little better. I see the faces of the nurses and doctors. They’re not as grim. They smile at me now, and not with pity like they were before.
Tonight I went back in there after sitting with Mica, and I told him that Ralph died, that he left behind five kids and a wife who can’t stop crying. That he tried to stay alive but he couldn’t get through it. I told him that his children are waiting for him to stop feeling so damned sorry for himself and get well.
Oscar just stared through his mummy bandages at the ceiling. Never even said a