A sudden gust of wind catches me mid-fantasy. “Chantal.” Will is next to me, squeezing out Mitch. The smells of vanilla and sugar disintegrate, overpowered by hot peppers and rotting wood. “I just wanted to talk to you about Tuesday night.”
“Uh …” I’m trapped. I can feel my skin losing the glow of happiness.
“I’ll be at your place at six thirty P.M.”
“Uh …” I already told him I’d meet him at the Moose Hall, but I can’t speak. I look at Mitch, who doesn’t hide his look of disgust. He can’t believe I’d be going out with Will. He thinks I should know better. I should know better. I hang my head.
“So. Tuesday night.” Will leans into me and kisses my cheek. “Can’t wait.”
I can’t look up. I’m trapped by a deal I never should have made and now I’m paying the price. My armpits start to sweat. No. I’m fighting back. With cake. I’ll turn Will’s humiliation right back at him.
When I finally look up, Mitch has gone and Jillian and Parker are off again with the boys to the hockey field. Annelise is throwing away the empty cardboard platter of the I Like Him, I Like Him A Lot Cake. That leaves …
Will. He’s in his usual pose, hands behind his head, sunglasses on, chin up to the sun as if it’s shining solely on him. He thinks all he has to do is sit on the hill and a cake will show up. I think it’s time for a new set of rules and a new way of doing things. He wants to be the king of the cake. Well, he’s going to have to earn the privilege. I’m the one who sets the price.
Parker
The Non-Fight.
Jillian and I are united on this: we are here for the Hat Trick, Double Minor, and Ollie. Now that the boys know the whole town will be watching them play hockey, they’re motivated. I think the Hat Trick have convinced each other that talent scouts are going to show up because, you know, scouts are always watching seven-year-olds. And I’m not about to burst that bubble. Kids like them need hope in their lives.
About Jillian and me. We haven’t argued. She hasn’t broken down crying. She doesn’t demand that I explain where I was last night when I stood her up. We are the perfect couple, really, focused on a goal. Everything is okay, I tell myself. Extraordinary.
I don’t know why I feel so uneasy then, like I forgot to turn the lights off in my car and I’m going to go out to a dead battery. I focus on the hockey drills; this is where the improvement happens. You have to put in the time every day to build your skills, get the passing and the communication moving. Playing the games is just about seeing how the practice is working.
Jillian
Dad 4?
I blame the heat when Parker and I pull into the driveway.
I need to cool them off, I tell him.
I’m worn out, I say, from the heat.
I wouldn’t be much fun.
No, I don’t even want to watch a movie.
I stop short of saying the truth; I want to be alone. I kiss him good-bye as if nothing is wrong because, really, it’s just me. I’ll get over it. I simply need some time by myself. Normal, I tell myself, this is normal.
I send the Hat Trick to take showers, give the Double Minor a package of saltines and a DVD in my room, and set Ollie in his playpen with a bowl of O’s. I’m on my way back to the kitchen but I stop in the living room, in front of the fan. I meditate to the oscillating blades.
“Need some help?”
I follow the trail of a man’s voice.
A man with blown-back hair, wide-set eyes, and a shadow of a beard sits at the kitchen counter. He’s the sort of man you see on a Harley at a stoplight and you wonder if he’s ever been in prison. I’ve never met this guy, but I know who he is and I don’t want anything to do with him. Main resolution of this debate: this family does not need a Dad 4. This family needs a Mom 1.
“The name’s Keith.” He raises his coffee cup as if offering up a toast to me. “You must be Jillian.”
The coffee cup is mine, created for me by Chantal during our summer pottery project. I walk to the kitchen. I wish I hadn’t. This close I see that Keith is naked from the waist up. Dark hairs curl on his chest and his stomach is mostly flab free. My mother goes for the fit muscle men.
“You … uh … need something?” He sits back, sets his hands in his lap. He’s only wearing boxer shorts. His right shoulder is tattooed with notes playing across a musical staff. Not a musician. Please, not a musician.
It would make sense for me to walk away. But I hope I can scare him off. “So … you know my mother.”
“We work together.” He runs his hands through his hair. Once. Twice. Trying to use that blown-out hair to get him out of this mess. He doesn’t look like the type who’d work at a nursing home.
“Doing what?”
“Uh … assessments … mostly.” His too-wide-set eyes remind me of a bulldog’s. What does she see in him? What does he see in her?
“You know she has seven kids, right? From three different fathers?” I count us off my fingers, Jillian, Travis, Thomas, Trevor, Josh, Stevie, Ollie.
“We’ve been friends a long time.” He winks at me and takes another sip of coffee.
What? My debating skills aren’t prepared for … what is he saying? How does he define a long time? Or friends?
“Jillian. What did you need?” My mother walks, no, she floats, toward us in her hippy dress—no bra, a loose and flowing skirt. When I’ve told her she can’t wear that dress around my friends, she says she won’t get rid of something that transforms her into a princess.
“You’re not working. And Keith’s here. Just met him.” My brain is telling me to calm down, but my mouth is in charge. “Did they close the nursing home down? Ebola? Bird flu? Send you guys home with strict orders to avoid cavorting with the outside world?”
“Jillian.”
“I … uh … better go.” Keith walks past me to the sink with my coffee mug.
“I’ll take my mug.”
He hands it over. “Sorry, I didn’t know.”
“You can only use that excuse once around here,” I say.
“She’s a teenager,” my mother calls after him on his way to the bedroom to find his clothes. “It’s a good excuse for almost anything.”
I wash my cup in full-on-hot tap water, keep my back to them as they kiss their good-byes at the front door. Finally, my mother shuts the door.
She leans against the closed door with her eyes lowered to dreamy. She sighs. I don’t want to think about what she’s been doing with him. Today. While I’ve been taking care of her other kids.
“Couldn’t you have at least made dinner?”
“Relax. We’ll order pizza.” She grabs her hair into a ponytail.
“I don’t want pizza.”
“Chinese, then.”
“I don’t want to order.”
“No.” She wraps the elastic around her hair three times. “You want to be unhappy.”
I grip the countertop; let the sharp edges dig into me. It is happening. Again. “I don’t have a choice.”
“You have a choice, darling.” She comes toward me. Her hand trails the side of my face. She stares into my eyes, trying to hypnotize me. “You always do.”
Chantal
Two Days. Two Cakes.
It has been easier than I expected to disappear for several hours each day and to slip out of the house unnoticed after my mother has gone to bed. Altogether too easy. How could she not, for instance, hear me trip down the stairs right outside her bedroom at midnight last night? And she doesn’t even come into my bedroom in the morning to tell me to get up and start my day. Since she got home from her training she hasn’t once asked me what productive activities I have planned. I’m suspecting brainwashing occurred in Oregon. I’m not complaining per se; but I’m the type of girl who wants to know if it’s a category 3 or category 4 hurricane well before it hits land.
I snoop. I look in her desk first. I find a card from my mother’s mother. Unopened. Birthday cards from three of her siblings are si
mply signed: love, Bill; xox, Jenny; Happy birthday, Stephen. I haven’t seen any of them since the summer after third grade.
Her underwear drawers hold only underwear and bras, no love letters. The shoe boxes in her closet, only shoes. Her bedside table, a book, lip balm, and a square card, printed on one side with a complex labyrinth and on the other side, some words: when you are truthful with yourself, you start to see everything as it is, not the way you want to see it. What the hell? I position the card exactly as I discovered it and close the drawer. I swear the temperature drops by at least five degrees. I almost leave, but I know one more place to look. The medicine cabinet in the bathroom where I find two bottles of medication. Google search reveals that my mother is taking an antianxiety medication and a sleeping pill. Bingo. That’s why she didn’t hear me, the elephant on the stairs.
I transform into Nancy Drew on a bike as I try to solve the Secret of My Mother. What is happening to her? I lean over my handlebars and address the roadside grass. The grass does not answer. Cake might very well help the subject in question, but she would be resistant. I’ll have to call my dad tonight, after the worst night of my life, the date with Will. Maybe I’ll talk to my dad about more than my mother and the hot weather. Maybe I’ll tell him that his office kitchen is now a bakery of delicious revenge.
I’m fairly certain that while my dad would question the wisdom of keeping my secrets from my mother, he would find the idea of the Cake Princess amusing. Everyone else has. Except Will. Objective reached. We’re now a group of about thirty regulars and Annelise is in charge. No better way to keep the spotlight off me. She’s taken over my clipboard and I doubt I’ll see it again. Kids check in with her for their specific jobs: hockey camp support staff, Ollie duty, photographer, Twitter assistant, lunch preparation and cleanup, and of course, cake spotter.
I check the time. I’m five minutes away from the hill and about ten minutes away from today’s cake delivery. Annelise has requested that each cake recipient arrive at the lake at 10:30 A.M. to present Will’s cake. She even noted that she would be happy to pick up the cake and/or the cake recipient to get him/her to the lake on time. It makes me wonder if she’s just a little bit more excited about acting as the Cake Princess’s manager than in stoking Parker’s jealousy. He is so busy with the hockey camp that he only joins us to eat cake or lunch. Which means I hardly see Jillian because the two of them are inseparable. I miss her.
I lock my bike in the stand near the snack shack, and start the hike up the hill. I can only stay for a couple of hours today—I’ve got to bake the next cake early. Ugh. My stomach aches at the thought of the date. The crowd has swelled to forty today and I’m glad I made a Bundt cake; it’s easier to slice. Tina’s not here yet, so I know the cake hasn’t arrived.
I sit on the blanket, making small talk with Annelise, even when I see Tina shyly walking up the hill. No one notices her yet; she’s not someone they’d expect since she just moved from the Philippines last year and she may have spoken to two or three people, tops. Since Mitch, I’ve decided that the quiet people deserve a spotlight. If I like getting attention, maybe they will, too. Sunday was Cheryl’s turn with the Puppy Love Cake (chocolate cake with a vanilla buttercream spotted with chocolate circles). Jason delivered the Bliss Is You and a Banana Cake yesterday.
Finally, the crowd parts and Tina stands in front of Will, who has remained seated on his towel throne. “I believe this is for you.” She holds out the cake. The crowd laughs at her careful pronunciation, at the way she sort of bows, at her shy smile. “I’m not late, am I?”
“No. No,” Annelise takes the cake from her. “You’re perfect. Hey, you’re the new girl, aren’t you?” I wonder if this nice Annelise has been hidden or if she’s been influenced by all the sugar love. “Do you have the card?”
“She can keep it.” Will’s intimidating eyebrows, his unmannered jaw, his thug posture tells it all. The frustration. The embarrassment. The anger.
“‘I’m Coconuts for You,’” Annelise reads. “‘Wear your specially made chest protector out to the floating dock. Get a picture of you, going coconuts for me, once you’re out there. From: Your Secret Admirer.”
“Chest protector?”
“Oh, yes, wait. I have it.” Tina reaches into her beach bag and takes out a bra made from coconuts and string. I’m so handy with a hammer and an awl.
“No way,” Will says. “I’ve done enough keeping everybody entertained.”
The crowd disagrees. They’ve enjoyed it too much, the price that I’ve been extracting from Will each day. On Sunday, he had to find a dog to lick him on the lips—and have a piece of cake in the picture. On Monday, he had to stand next to a tourist (he chose a gray-haired man in long black socks with sandals), strike a monkey pose, and stick a banana in his ear. I’m getting almost as much enjoyment from the pictures on Facebook each day as I do from delivering the cakes. Both feel productive; giving a quiet person a chance to shine and giving a jerk an opportunity to show he’s an ass.
Once we are down to the sole piece of cake that Will has to display in his photo of the day, he takes off his shirt and Annelise helps him into the coconut bra. The gray cloud that normally travels over Will’s head darkens to black with intermittent lightning bolts.
I break away from the crowd as they make their way to the beach; even Parker, Jillian, and the boys have joined in for the jeering. I wonder what Jillian thinks of the latest development in Will’s cakes. She’s been so busy with Parker and the boys we haven’t talked. Against all predictions, my life is Hollywood-starlet busy even if no one else knows: I have a cake to bake, a video to film, a mother to worry about, and the thing that any celebrity should not have to deal with: an obligation for a disaster date.
Will
The Cake Bitch.
This whole photo thing is about as funny as a fart at a funeral. I pull Annelise aside, after the photo shoot of me in the coconut bra, and demand that she cease and frickin’ desist.
She tells me it’s hot that I’m not threatened by a little fun. No more, I say. She says she doesn’t know who the Cake Princess is so she can’t do anything about it. Right.
We both know that making me the center of attention is all part of her plan to make Parker jealous enough to dump Jillian. I wonder how dressing up like a hula dancing monkey could make Parker jealous.
Parker sees me arguing and gets in the middle of it. “Relax, man. It’s just for fun. Look, the Hat Trick and Double Minor are lovin’ the pictures.”
“So why don’t you do it, dude?”
He comes right up into my face, just inches away and I know he’s trying to shut me down. I’m so close to shoving him away. “You’re the secretly admired, not me. Keep your eyes on the prize.” And he winks. The prize. I’ll be the top guy soon, the one that Annelise will put on speed dial. I want the next ten days to be over. Over.
Chantal
Dilemma100
The dilemma: I must pretend to like Will through an entire date at the Moose Hall to increase his stock value from his parents’ point of view.
The dilemma3: Meanwhile, I am on a private campaign, that will soon become public, to embarrass him. I can only imagine how angry he’ll be when I back out on this date and worse, when he realizes our original agreement was all a sham.
The dilemma100: It’s 5:22 P.M. and I haven’t found a cake to bake. Accidental? I think not. It will be impossible, now, to bake a cake and meet Will at 6:30. Impossible. I have to give up one or the other. I need to make a decision.
And yet, I continue to read cookbooks. Here I am with Nigella Christmas. I flip to the index and toss out the idea, none too soon, for a yule log cake I would title I’m Burning Up for You. Some other Cake Princess will have to choose that one. I’m about to close the book when I stop at the introduction. Nigella’s cookbooks are so much more than recipes. I want to spend time with her. So I read.
“Everything I believe in—essentially, that warmth and contentment and welcome
and friendship emanate from and are celebrated in the kitchen …” she writes.
That’s the secret to solving my baking block.
Nigella’s words tell me, instantly, what is wrong. The kitchen is about warmth, contentment, welcome, and friendship. Here I’ve been focusing on Will, who brings the opposite feelings into my life. No wonder I can’t find a cake. When I think of the messenger—Cheryl loves dogs, Jason dressed as an ape for Halloween two years ago, and Tina, well she’s new and I thought this might help her break the ice—I find the perfect cake for that person. That’s why I’ve been able to do it. Today I’ve been so worried about this awful date that I can only think of Will, and he blocks out everything.
That’s enough of that.
Will is unimportant. I’m going to forget about him. Avoid him. Starting tonight.
Darling. You’ve come round to good sense now, haven’t you?
Nigella? I stare at the photo in front of me. She’s in her crimson sweater set holding a red bowl, about to scoop flour into her KitchenAid. I half-expect her to look up at me. I detect the smell of vanilla and a citrusy sweet perfume and, if I’m not mistaken, sugar carmelizing on the stove.
Jillian
Sinking.
As I’m hiding out in my bedroom, the fan blowing the last droplets of water from my shower dry, my body is sinking. I could talk to someone about this. Correction. I could listen to someone talk, let the wind of their problems paralyze my own and stop the spinning pinwheel in my head. The issue, of course, is that during the listening, I would be tempted to reveal the facts I’m facing. Better to wait. Usually things improve. The longer I do nothing, though, the lower I sink into my plaid comforter and the more I can feel the atmospheric pressure threatening to crush my skull. I could be depressed.
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