Chantal
When I wake in the morning, the scissors remain open-mouthed on the floor. The sheets and blankets twist into a rope that points toward the door. Jillian’s gone. The air is dried out and filled with dust.
My cell battery is so low I can’t make a call. I’m forced to go searching for a cordless phone.
The phone waits for me on the breakfast table, mere inches from my mother’s hand. I mumble good morning and reach for it, but it disappears into my mother’s lap.
“Chantal. I was hoping you’d be up soon. I’ve got some great news.”
“Can it wait?” I squint at the brightness of her smile. “I need to make a phone call.”
“Sweetheart. I’ve been sitting here waiting for you to get up.”
“I understand. Seriously, though, can it wait a few minutes?”
My mother frowns. My dad sets down his cup of coffee hard enough for me to know that my phone call will wait. I slide into the chair opposite my dad to form their preferred triangle, the equilateral.
While my mother begins her monologue on the current status of her job as lab supervisor at the hospital, I nod to indicate interest, but I can only think about how miracles happen. More specifically, how I can make a miracle happen with Jillian. “So,” my mother reaches to hold my hand. “You and Dad are going to have a wonderful summer at Lettuce Loaf.”
“Lettuce Loaf? You always go by yourself.” I stare at my dad. Crud. I missed something serious here. I hope this isn’t about to turn into the we-need-our-space talk.
“Chantal, you weren’t listening, were you?” he asks.
“I have to make a phone call.”
“You know …” My mother leans in and my father follows her lead, creating a triangle nearing acute proportions. “Most of the time we are fine with the world revolving around you, but, honestly.”
“Your mother has been promoted to hospital administration.” Dad repeats that my mother’s job as lab supervisor has been changed. Now she’ll be dealing with budgets, hiring, and firing (oh … those poor slackers won’t last long). She’ll have an office with a big desk, a view, and an administrative assistant. I act like it matters to me and my dad continues talking. They’re sending my mom on a week-long training course in Oregon. She leaves tomorrow. So that means I’m leaving town tomorrow, with Dad, for the next four weeks. He’s staying longer than usual, he explains, because it’s his year to pitch in on the cottage landscaping and maintenance.
“Well.” I push away from the table, forcing an obtuse shape. “I’m really glad you both gave me some advance notice on this one.”
“I only found out, for sure, Friday.” My mother’s bob is perfect. She’s probably been up since 5:30 A.M., already gone for her run and read the newspaper.
“Chantal. What is going on?” That’s my dad. Intersecting the angle.
“I can’t go away. Not right now.” I hate that my voice is wobbly. So revealing.
“You have no choice.” My mom leans back in her chair, crosses her arms.
“Why do you feel you can’t get away for a month? It’s the summer. And your cousins would love to see you.”
“I know it’s going to disappoint you guys, but I have a life. One that’s independent from you two.”
“Well,” Dad says. “There’s a lot of power behind that statement.”
“I told you we’ve spoiled her.” My mom specializes in discussions about me, right in front of me.
“I’m not spoiled.”
“The facts would indicate otherwise.” My mom ignores my dad’s attempts to interrupt while she lists the ways in which I am spoiled: I don’t do any chores, I don’t have a job, I don’t even have the courtesy to listen to her when she tells me something important about her life.
I push even further away. Top student isn’t enough. Not for my mother and not for Jillian. But it should be worth something, right? Any molecules of self-confidence that might have been clinging to me have been stripped away. “I am going to die of suffocation.”
“Drama.” My mother lifts an eyebrow as she looks at Dad. He rubs his chin. This is his I’m-not-sure-how-to-tell-you-I-disagree-with-you gesture. I pick up on it though. All I need to know is that one of them is on my side.
“I’ll stay home to do the chores. It’ll be a test. You’ll only be gone a week. If I pass, you can let me stay home while you’re working this summer. And if I fail, I can take the bus out to Lettuce Loaf.”
My mother’s response is swift but expected: all the reasons I can’t stay home after she returns from her training. She’ll be working long hours at her new job, she won’t have time to cook for me, and she can’t be responsible for what happens during my days.
“Seriously? I need you to watch me at all times?” I remind her that next year I’ll be off to college where she won’t be able to protect me. “You only think you know where I am anyway.” She needs to know I’m serious. “I could be anywhere when I answer my phone.” My dad’s eyebrows indicate I’ve gone too far so I shut up and let him talk. Our triangle refigures, becomes more of a right angle, with my mother at 90 degrees.
The negotiations consume four hours of my life. They involve grilling me about what to do in an emergency (no matter that tornadoes are unlikely in the mountains), and the essential vitamins and nutrients (not found in cakes or cookies, even if they’re homemade, my mother stresses). By the time my parents have gone out for coffee so my mother can decompress, it’s late afternoon. The phone at Jillian’s house rings but doesn’t get picked up.
Three lonely cupcakes call out to me from my bottom dresser drawer. I cradle their package in my arms to the living room, remove a paper wrapper from the chocolate cake with the pink fluffy frosting and tiny pale green sprinkles.
I stare at the television screen wondering if this will be my summer occupation. Without my parents or Jillian, my active brain will disintegrate from lack of motivation. I wonder if a summer of under-stimulation could jeopardize my chances for top student next year. I wonder if it’s going to matter. If Jillian and I can’t get past this, I’ll probably home-school my final year. I couldn’t face going to school alone. Not my senior year. Not after it, either. I try Jillian’s phone again. And her cell. Four more times each. She’s avoiding me.
The second cupcake seems a bit off, the frosting grainy and, actually, unlikable. And the cake is dry. I shut the lid on the half-eaten second cake and the untouched third one. Really. Unless I’m totally desperate, I’m not going to eat any more of those things. It’s probably the preservatives that make them taste strange.
Nigella comes to the rescue. I calm as she cooks. She’s setting out to make her late-night dessert, Caramel Croissant Pudding. The gas stove clicks as she sets a wide pan on the burner. She adds a small pour of water and a third of a cup of sugar while she talks. “I don’t like to do this in a kind of sensible, quiet way.”
Me, neither. I replay what I said to Jillian last night. I know I can’t take it back now. Like the only precalculus test I didn’t ace, I’ve got to live with the consequences.
Nigella adds double cream, whole milk, bourbon, and eggs to the boiling sugar. “What I want, what anyone wants, is a luscious, smooth, flowing caramel.” She pours her caramel over croissant chunks in an iron skillet and slides the dessert onto the middle oven rack. The camera stays at the oven door until Nigella’s hands reach out to open it again, and now she’s wearing black silk pajamas. She plunges her fork into the center of the pan, feeds her open mouth, and moans. Fade to black.
I click the TV off. I wonder if it’s strange to read messages into Nigella’s TV shows, as if she talks to me. Nigella said what anyone wants is smooth, flowing caramel and I agree. Caramel is divine. Isn’t caramel exactly what you need when you’re wondering what you’ve said?
I will prove to Jillian that I am not a social retard. I’ll bake the most luscious cake anyone has tasted. And deliver it. On Monday night. To the barbecue.
A cake between frie
nds can only be a good thing.
Jillian
Alone.
The walk home from Chantal’s house takes me over an hour in my party heels. An RV driver slows and stops to ask me for directions to see the bears. I tell the bald guy and his small wife how to get to the bear statues downtown but they insist they want to see the real bears. We’re a small resort town, I tell them, we don’t have a zoo, but I suggest that they might see some at the dump right outside town.
“No. We want to see them in the wild,” they complain.
I point out that the dump is the fast-food restaurant for bears around here. Guaranteed sightings. When I pass the Information Center twenty minutes later, the RV is parked at the booth and the bald guy is leaning out the window, shouting questions. I’m beginning to think the world is full of people who don’t give up until they get the answer they want.
It’s only 8:27 A.M. when I walk in the front door and the first thing I see is my mother. Awake. Folding laundry.
“Hey,” I say carefully. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh, you’re home early. I thought you’d sleep in after your party. How did it go?”
We have a conversation that lasts ten minutes but doesn’t include the details of Chantal’s puking or the reason I’m home early. I focus on the stellar bits: the Cranium game and a little about Parker.
The boys must have had a late bedtime last night because they are all still asleep. Mom and I hardly spend ten minutes a week alone together so I sit back and relax as if things are right in the world. She appears to be in redemption mode—her hair is freshly washed, she’s got on mom jeans and a clean T-shirt; she might even make pancakes. The sun catches her skin and I get a vision of her when she was younger, freckles and an easy laugh and no bra. She is still so proud of her body, still willing to dance on the edge of anything. I remember once a weather balloon was flying over the house on Columbia Street and she told Dad 2 that we were going to track it down. She had on her hippy skirt and hiking boots and we got into Dad 2’s truck and followed it for ten minutes until it dropped near Mount Begbie Falls. We never found it, but we looked for an hour and I collected moss and rocks and sticks while she told me about the time her parents drove her out east and she saw a hot air balloon take off. “I’ve always wanted to float in a hot air balloon,” she told me. “Imagine the freedom.”
My mom talks about the nursing home, mentions that she’s got a few days off in a row, as she folds T-shirts and underwear. And then I realize a pattern. A laundry pattern. Those are her T-shirts and underwear. And her socks. And her jeans.
Before I ask her what’s going on, she tells me, “Dad Three left for Vancouver last night to meet up with his brother and look at this house they’re talking about flipping.”
“Yeah …”
“And he’s coming back in a few days to get the rest of his stuff. And I thought it would be good for me to get away. You know, clear my head before I see him again.”
“So you’re meeting up with someone else …” I shake my head. Take a deep breath and hold it.
“Jesus, Jillian, you do not have to give me that attitude.”
I don’t even ask her what attitude she’s referring to.
“I’m not sitting around feeling lousy. That’s not me. I know women who obsess over being left and you know what? They’re not happy. Me? I’m going to be happy.”
There’s no use talking to her when she gets like this. I’m supposed to tell her now that she deserves whatever it is her heart desires, but I’m not going to do it. Not this time. My mother is an only child. Just like Chantal.
“So … who have you got lined up for day care?” I ask.
She drops the black lace underwear she’s holding. “I told you I didn’t need your attitude. You know I need you to help me. And I’ll pay you.”
Right. I’ll put it on her tab.
“What if something goes wrong?”
“Jesus, Jillian, nothing is going to go wrong.” But she’s never left them with me alone overnight.
She carries her clean clothes out of the room, singing a country music song about a woman going after what she wants. I want to stop her and tell her to get out. Before the boys get up. I also want her to know that when she leaves I’ll stay in my bedroom because the worst part is watching her shut the door behind her. What my mother will never understand is that, like the boys, I have separation anxiety, too.
She’s gone within thirty-five minutes. The last I see of her she’s concentrating on getting her lipstick on straight. She promises she’ll be home by Monday at 4 P.M. since I’ve got a party to go to.
Chantal
A Social Retard Cake.
My mother’s crystal bowls cradle flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, salt, unsalted butter (2 sticks), sugar, eggs, egg yolks, vanilla, buttermilk, and bittersweet chocolate (melted and cooled). I am surrounded by sparkle in the kitchen spotlight. I am a cake princess.
What makes me a top student also makes a confident baker. It’s all about precision and focus. As I take on the first step, buttering the cake pans, dusting the insides with flour, tapping out the excess, and lining the bottoms with wax paper, guilt begins to creep in. My parents left this morning, but it’s as if my mother is still here, trying to protect me from the evils of sugar.
On Sunday afternoon Mom and Dad returned from the coffee shop as I finished my shopping list. I sat on the ottoman to hear their final statement. “Your father has convinced me that giving you responsibility in stages is a good thing. This next week will be a trial period. We can revoke your privileges at any time.”
I nodded, though I had no choice.
“And. This is a request.” She looked at my dad for approval. He shrugged. “No junk food. It’s only a week.”
“Request heard,” I answered. I don’t even ask her anymore why she’s so freaked about sweets and cookies and cakes. It’s one of those off-limits topics. I don’t want to endure her lectures about sexual abstinence and she doesn’t want to discuss dessert with me. The deal works.
I whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
The stand mixer I borrowed from Mrs. Ellis next door (my mother-in-case-of-an-emergency) is a beautiful machine. Pale yellow with silver bling, it sparks sunshine.
I slide the slab of butter into the mixer bowl and beat on medium speed until soft and creamy. Sugar falls in. More beating. A yellow color forms; a color that is difficult to describe as anything but hopeful. Next come the eggs, one at a time, then the yolks. I beat in the vanilla.
“One could be no more happy if one had won the lottery,” I say to my invisible television audience.
I turn the mixer down to low and add the dry ingredients alternately with the buttermilk, mixing sparingly.
Socially delayed individuals would probably eat the cake with their mouths open, crumbs spilling out. Or take the last piece instead of cutting it in half and offering someone else the rest. Or taste the cake and announce that it tastes disgusting. Or worse, spit it out. If I am a social retard, then this cake will redeem me. I may be different from the rest of the crowd but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
I divide the batter between the two cake pans and it nearly doesn’t fit. There’s only a quarter inch of space left at the top. I read the recipe over and over to make sure I measured correctly and I do what I have to do—slide the pans into the oven and hope for the best. I set the timer.
The ganache part of the instructions for the Double Layer Chocolate Buttermilk Decadence with Chocolate Caramel Ganache and Toffee Accessories is six paragraphs long. I stir sugar, water, and a cinnamon stick in a saucepan on medium-low heat until the sugar dissolves. (As a chemistry princess I have mastered the dissolving of a solid into liquid.) Now I increase the heat, and boil, without stirring. The mixture bubbles out of control. I poise my spatula over it. Lift the pan, observe the color. I’m supposed to cook it until it turns a deep amber color. What is the color
, exactly, of deep amber, I wonder? More boiling bubbles. And more again. I consult my recipe. It’s supposed to take from five to seven minutes. I don’t know how many minutes it’s been and I think maybe I should have adjusted all the cooking times for a higher altitude. The bubbles are definitely brown though so I move on to the next step: adding cold cream to hot sugar.
I am caught in the crossfire. The mixture bubbles, scalding cream splatters violently, the dark sugar seizes into a ball of goo. “This is not the moment to panic.” I try to channel Nigella. “Baking chemistry requires trust on the part of the baker.”
I whisk and heat and whisk more. Finally the thick gooey stuff looks mostly like caramel sauce. I pour it over the bowl of twelve ounces of chocolate I have set aside. I stir, the chocolate melts, and, eventually, smoothes to a glassy lake of loveliness. I think I’ve survived baking disaster, but then, the timer beeps and I look through the oven door.
My cake batter has overflowed the pans and pools of cake smoke on the oven floor. The cakes themselves are domed but collapse into a well of boggy batter.
This is what happens when you break the rules, my conscience speaks to me in a small squeaky voice that’s a mash up of my mother and Jiminy Cricket. I ignore it. I tell myself any independent choice will result in an infraction of some sort. And for every misstep a solution exists. I babysat Jillian’s six little brothers and I survived. Heck. I did better than survival—I was an optimized thinker. This cake baking dilemma is another opportunity to prove myself. And after cake baking, maybe on to Jillian and our knotted-up friendship.
I consult my recipe, Google my problem. I turn to Nigella’s Web site and on a forum I discover a solution. Though my cake will not be as pretty, it will still be edible, the writer assures me.
I test the center of the cakes for doneness every two minutes, until, twelve minutes later, I pull them from the oven, the edges dried and nearly burned. Failure has never looked this bad. I feel my eyes sting and I recite the elements of the periodic table, starting with hydrogen, the element with the lowest atomic number and, arguably, the greatest potential for everyday explosions.
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