Delicious!

by Ruth Reichl

  “Was Mom that beautiful?” In the old pictures you couldn’t tell, and I had no memory of Mom. People said how sad that was, but I had Dad and Aunt Melba. And I had Genie.

  “She was.” Dad splashed toward me. He studied my pale skin, brown eyes, and straight hair as if seeing me for the first time. He outlined my face, his fingers gentle on my cheeks. I dove into a wave; when I surfaced, he was still looking at the place where I’d gone down. “I know you won’t believe this,” he said, “but one day you’re going to be beautiful too. More beautiful than Genie.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “but nobody’s more beautiful than Genie.” Why would he say something so absurd? I dove down again, opening my eyes to find a school of jellyfish floating through the murky underwater greenness. From a cautious distance I watched them suspended in the water like delicate parachutes, thinking that beauty was only part of it. Genie was good at everything and so outgoing that our teachers never could believe we were related. I surfaced and looked over at the beach. Genie was lying on the sand, her eyes shut now.

  We went home sun-drunk and drowsy, trailing sand through the hall and up the stairs. I went off to shower, and as I toweled myself dry I stared into the mirror, trying to see myself as Dad did. I wanted to believe him, but a sturdy ten-year-old in glasses was looking back at me. Boring. Ordinary. She had no waist, no hips, and hair so short she might have been a boy. I put on a white cotton dress and slipped into sandals. In the next room Genie was singing a Randy Newman song, and the lyrics drifted toward me: “Got some whiskey from the barman, Got some cocaine from a friend, I just had to keep on movin’, Till I was back in your arms again.” She had a nice voice, and I hummed along as I waited for Aunt Melba to signal us that she was ready.

  When she called, Genie ran down the hall to Dad’s room. “Quick!” she said. “Aunt Melba’s oven’s on fire. We have to go help!” Still pulling a shirt over his head, Dad raced down the stairs, with Genie and me sneaking quietly behind him. When he disappeared behind the hedge next door, we heard thirty people shout, “Surprise!” We squeezed through just in time to see the little tremor of shock run up his back.

  “Why didn’t you warn me?” he asked Aunt Melba; he was looking down at his rumpled cotton shirt, torn jeans, and bare feet. Dad didn’t like surprises. I thought about the gingerbread, wishing we’d made something that seemed more like a birthday cake.

  “C’mon, Bob,” she said, stroking his arm, “you didn’t think I would ignore your fortieth birthday?” Then she began to apologize. “I know Barb would’ve made paella or roasted a whole pig. Something exotic. But I did my best.”

  “You did great,” Dad assured her, making a visible effort to adjust his attitude. He leaned down to kiss her cheek, and it hit me for the first time that Mom must have been a lot taller than her sister. I was already as tall as Aunt Melba, and Genie had a couple of inches on her.

  It was a wonderful party. We ate grilled steaks, Aunt Melba’s perfect hash browns—crisp on the outside and almost melted inside—and salad with blue-cheese dressing. She served daiquiris to the grown-ups, pouring them out of her own colorful ceramic pitchers, and the party grew a little raucous. As dark began to fall, she took a torch and lit the candles in the paper lanterns she had strung through the trees circling her yard. It was beautiful, and as I looked around I thought how hard Aunt Melba tried to do things right. But it was a lot like Genie and me: No matter what she did, Aunt Melba thought Mom would have done it better. Then I remembered the cake, and a little wave of anxiety rippled through me. Dad was going to hate it. It couldn’t possibly live up to Mom’s.

  When it was time to sing, Aunt Melba called us all inside. I could tell the guests had been hoping for something decadent—or at least chocolate—because there was a moment of disappointed silence when Genie and I carried the gingerbread into the long living room. I glanced at Aunt Melba, who seemed both terrified and excited, and then at Dad, who had the oddest expression on his face. I’d never seen that look before, and I knew, with absolute certainty, that we’d made a mistake. When “Happy Birthday” ended, he blew out the candles and Aunt Melba cut the cake. Dad took a bite, sitting so still I felt slightly sick. There was a kind of electricity in the room—everyone could feel it—and then Dad reached out to us, gathering Genie on one side and me on the other, hugging until it hurt.

  “My girls,” he said. “Thank you.” But it was Aunt Melba he was looking at, over our heads. It was a solemn moment, almost scary. Then Dad smiled and said, “You know what? This is even better than your mother’s gingerbread.”

  The room had been alive with tension, but now it broke and everybody started talking all at once, giddy with relief. “What a cake!” said one of Dad’s law partners, while another asked for seconds. Three women clamored for the recipe.

  “It’s got fresh ginger—” Genie began, but Aunt Melba stopped her.

  “That recipe’s a secret,” Aunt Melba said, hustling us into the kitchen, with Dad close behind.

  “Why?” asked Genie.

  “You never know. You shouldn’t give your recipes away. You might want to go into business.”

  Dad put up his hands, as if he was trying to end this conversation. But it was too late. “Why would anyone want to buy a cake made by kids?” asked Genie.

  “Because it’s made by kids.” Aunt Melba was looking into my eyes, and when she spoke, she was talking to me. “A cake is just a cake, but a cake made by kids is something special. Especially a kid as talented as you. I bet you could make a lot of money.”

  “You don’t mean it,” Dad said.

  “Yes.” She looked at Dad’s face. “I do. If your housekeeper doesn’t want them messing up the kitchen, they’re welcome to use mine.”

  To everyone’s surprise (except Aunt Melba’s), Cake Sisters took off. Aunt Melba kept scrapbooks of it all. The first clipping was an embarrassing one from the Santa Barbara News-Press, which went on about how young and adorable we were and how we’d re-created our late mother’s gingerbread to start our business. It made me cringe. The next one was better, a spread from the Los Angeles Times about an improbably tall angel-food cake we’d named for Mom. The reporter also admired the Melba, a small dark devil’s-food concoction filled with cherry-studded chocolate ganache.

  As you turned the pages of the scrapbook, the cakes became increasingly elaborate. In our second year Genie dreamed up the Giant Hostess Cupcake Cake, and I worked out the most amazing recipe. That was a huge success; Food & Wine magazine called it “incredible edible pop art.” The next year Genie came up with Melting Cakes and I figured out how to create them. But the wedding cakes were what really made us famous. There were dozens in the scrapbook, each one unique. For a few years, every Santa Barbara bride considered a Cake Sisters creation her natural birthright, and we were very busy.

  Aunt Melba threw herself into our project; she even went to New York to take a course in sugar arts.

  “I thought it would be a lot like ceramics,” she told me, showing off some fantastic sugar flowers she’d made, “and I was right. I had so much fun; there’s nothing quite as wonderful as imagining something in your head and then making it come true.”

  “I wish I could do that,” I said wistfully.

  Startled, Aunt Melba asked, “But doesn’t it feel like that when you invent a cake?”

  “No. That’s so easy. I taste it in my mind and then all I have to do is find the flavors. I’d much rather be able to draw like Genie.”

  She gave me a long, searching look, but all she said was, “I hope you don’t have to wait as long as I did to find out you’re wrong about what you think you want.”

  I expected to close the bakery when Genie went to college, but as I watched her dressing for her senior prom (she was going with the class president, Eli Pierce), she said offhandedly, “How would you feel about keeping Cake Sisters open next year? I could really use the money.”

  She pirouetted in front of the mirror, pleased with her reflection.
“Should I wear these?” She held up a choker of baroque pearls that had once belonged to Mom, bent her head, and pulled the hair off her neck. “Help me put them on?” She smelled like lilacs, brown sugar, and nutmeg.

  “How would it work?” I kept my voice flat and turned my head so she couldn’t see my face. I’d been dreading the thought of life without Genie. “The bakery, I mean. You’ll be up in Berkeley.”

  “It’s not like I’m leaving for the ends of the earth.” She gave the mirror a final satisfied glance. Downstairs, Eli rang the bell. “I could come home on weekends.”

  I didn’t think she’d do it, but I was wrong: Genie came home so often, it was as if she’d never even left. Aunt Melba was surprisingly cross about it. “It’s not natural,” she grumbled halfway through Genie’s freshman year. “Kids are supposed to go away to college and stay there. It would be nice if she gave you a little breathing room.”

  “But I like having her here.” I was loyal. “And you know she needs the money. She likes nice things.”

  Aunt Melba sniffed. “That sports car! And all those clothes. She’ll be sorry; by the time you’re thirty her money will be gone and you’ll just be getting yours. You’re going to be happy you had your dad invest yours in that trust. By then it should have doubled at the very least.”

  “So I’ll be rich and she can borrow from me.”

  Aunt Melba looked disgusted.

  She was still grumpy a few months later, as I began to receive college acceptance letters. She urged me to choose Reed or Stanford—anywhere but Berkeley.

  “Why?” I asked, unable to understand why she didn’t want me to follow in Genie’s footsteps.

  Her answer was not what I’d expected. “I know what it’s like, having a big sister like Genie. Barb was always better at everything. I got good grades, but hers were perfect. She beat me at every game we ever played. I was pretty enough, but she was gorgeous. And in the end?” The words were catching in her throat. “She got your father.”

  She didn’t mention it again until the weekend I left for school. We’d decided to close the bakery, since Genie and I would both be up north now. Aunt Melba helped me pack up the equipment, seeming slightly dejected as we stacked cake pans in a box. “If you were going to school around here,” she said, “you could keep the bakery open. You don’t need Genie; cooking’s your gift, not hers.”

  “But without her it would be no fun.”

  Aunt Melba took the big roll of duct tape, closed the flaps of the box, and firmly taped it shut.

  WHEN I GOT to Berkeley, I was glad I’d ignored Aunt Melba’s advice. I loved having Genie there, was grateful when she forged a path for me. She told me what classes to take and what clubs to join. She took me to parties, introduced me to her friends, and occasionally fixed me up with a discarded boyfriend (although they were so disappointed to get second-best that it never worked).

  In the spring of my junior year, I was sitting on Telegraph Ave., drinking iced green tea with a boy I’d been dating from my English class, when a shadow fell across our table. My date looked up, and for just a moment I saw Genie through his eyes. She was wearing a short, tight black skirt, a pale-pink T-shirt, and silver sandals, her hair curling loosely around her face. He was nice enough, and we had decent sex, but we’d fallen together mostly because we were the two nerdiest kids in the class. Now I heard him gulp and watched him put his hand up to shade his eyes.

  “This is Owen,” I said.

  Genie glanced at him briefly, sat down, and took a sip of my tea. “Aunt Melba called.” She took another sip. “Beverly Jackson’s getting married on June fifth, and she wants us to make her cake.”

  “But we closed the bakery.”

  “Aunt Melba told her. But you know Beverly. Stupid rich and always gets her way. She called me.”

  “No problem,” I said. “Go to plan B.”

  “Yes problem,” replied Genie. She was twirling her hair around her fingers, and I saw Owen’s eyes follow her hand. “I did.”

  “What’s plan B?” he wanted to know.

  Genie gave him her quicksilver smile. “When we don’t want to do a job, we demand an absurd amount of money. I mean, no kidding, crazy. An amount so huge, no sane person could possibly say yes.”

  “I’m assuming that Beverly said yes?” He looked straight at her. “You obviously didn’t ask enough.”

  “Thirty grand?” She gave him back his own cool look.

  Owen choked on his iced tea.

  “No way!” I said.

  “Way.” She was still tugging at her hair. “She said she doesn’t plan to have a second wedding, and she couldn’t care less what this one costs. So I told her we’d get back to her. What do you think?”

  “It’s an awful lot of money.… ” There was no way we could possibly live up to it.

  “That’s what I thought.” Genie unfurled a radiant smile, and I realized she had misunderstood me. She sprang up, threw a quick “Nice meeting you” in Owen’s direction, and floated off. I stared after her in dismay.

  Owen exhaled, as if he hadn’t breathed the entire time she’d been there. “That’s your sister?” He watched the rosy rectangle of her shirt recede into the distance. I shrugged; I was used to it.

  HOW COULD A CAKE be worth thirty thousand dollars? That night I stayed up late, trying to reach Genie. I wanted to tell her we had to back out, but she’d obviously expected that: Her phone went right to voice mail.

  In the morning I walked across Sproul Plaza to the apartment Genie shared with three roommates. She opened the door wearing nothing but underwear and a T-shirt. Little red lines were running through her eyes, and there was mascara on her cheeks. From behind her came loud snoring, and I saw a half-naked guy sleeping on the lumpy sofa, surrounded by empty bottles and overflowing ashtrays. “Sorry.” She followed my eyes. “Hard night.”

  “I’ll make some coffee.” I stepped through the debris. “But we can’t do this cake. I’m sorry, but thirty grand is insane.”

  Genie went into the bathroom and began brushing her teeth. “It’s for three hundred people.” Her mouth was full of toothbrush, and the words were thick. She rinsed. “I looked up the big guys—Ron Ben-Israel and Sylvia Weinstock—to see what they’re charging. They get that kind of money for special orders all the time.”

  “Have you seen their cakes?” I had to shout over the coffee grinder. “We’re not them. They really know what they’re doing. We’re just two sisters from Santa Barbara who like to bake.”

  “If it doesn’t bother Beverly,” she went into her bedroom and called through the closed the door, “why should it bother you?”

  I didn’t have an answer. “It just feels wrong” was all I could come up with. “Embarrassing.”

  “Not to me.” She emerged from the bedroom in a lavender silk robe, looking suddenly wide awake. The smell of coffee filled the air, erasing the smell of beer. “Put a lot of milk in mine,” she added, “and sugar. I need the energy.” I sniffed at the milk—not quite gone—and poured it into her cup. I stirred in three teaspoons of sugar and handed it over. She took a huge sip and sighed. “Better.” She took another sip. “Graduation’s in May, which will give us three weeks after to go home and concentrate on the cake. Think about it, Billie; we won’t have to work this summer! I can take time off before starting law school.”

  “Why don’t you start now? Do you even sleep anymore?”

  “Not much.” She took another sip of coffee. “I’m not about to blow my GPA at the very last minute.”

  “You’ve already gotten into Yale Law. Would one random A-minus really matter?”

  Genie gave me a scathing look. “Don’t change the subject; we were talking about the cake. I’ve had an idea.”

  She went over to her desk and began rummaging around for a sketchbook. She took a deep draft of coffee and began to draw. As I watched her pencil skip lightly across the page, I wondered, again, why she was going to law school. To be even more like Mom? Beneath her
fingers, an edible landscape was taking shape, hundreds of individual cupcakes, each topped with a different flower. As I watched, she layered the little cupcakes until they formed a perfect eighteenth-century garden.

  “Start thinking about flavors,” she said. “Rosewater, lavender, orange blossom … You’ll figure it out.”

  “Are you sure we can pull this off?” I asked.

  “Of course!” She gave me her most persuasive smile. “It’s going to be fantastic!”

  GENIE GRADUATED AND WE WENT home to Santa Barbara. For the next three weeks we lived and breathed that cake. Genie and Aunt Melba fiddled with designs, while I experimented with rosewater, orange oil, and saffron, trying to figure out the precise flavor of each tiny cupcake. One morning I brewed an infusion of saffron and stirred it into the flour, milk, and eggs, watching as the color captured the batter, turning it a vivid gold. I stuck my finger in and licked. Too strong? Mesmerized by the spreading color, I called, “Somebody come taste this.”

  Aunt Melba’s finger dipped into the batter and disappeared into her mouth. “You’re a genius. It tastes even better than it looks.” She dipped again.

  “Where’s Genie?”

  “In the bathroom. She says she’s not feeling so well.”

  “She’s been working harder than either of us.” Why did I feel the need to defend her?

  “She always works hard.” Aunt Melba dipped her finger in again and licked it thoughtfully. “This is fabulous.”

  “What’s fabulous?” asked Genie, coming into the kitchen. I held out the spoon and she took a tentative lick. I noticed that her cheeks were flushed.

  “You okay?”

  “Fine,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  As the wedding grew closer, our days grew longer. Aunt Melba and I would quit, exhausted, at midnight, but Genie seemed tireless. She’d gotten us into this. We’d come down in the morning to find the kitchen filled with the fanciful flowers she’d produced while we were sleeping.