A Long Line of Cakes

by Deborah Wiles

  A dog howled from the direction of town.

  “Hale-Bopp,” guessed Ruby. “Howling at the moon!”

  “Sounds like it,” said Emma.

  Lights winked on inside the Pink Palace.

  “I should go home,” Emma finally said.

  “Me too,” said Ruby. “I live next door with my mama.”

  But instead of going home, Ruby walked to the back porch of the Pink Palace and sat on the steps. Without a word, Emma joined her. They weren’t ready to leave each other. They didn’t even need language to say so. That was the mark of a true friend.

  A billowy breeze played across Emma’s shoulders. She let her thoughts wander. “I’ll bet you’ve lived here all your life,” she said. “I’ll bet you were born here.”

  “That’s the truth of it,” said Ruby. She scratched at a mosquito bite on her big toe.

  “I’ll bet you’ve only lived in one house your whole life, the one next door.”

  “Yep,” said Ruby, “although I live plenty in the Pink Palace, too.”

  “I think it’s magical, to belong to one place,” said Emma. “A place. Some place. Any place.”

  Ruby hooted. “There’s not one thing magical about Halleluia, Mississippi! It’s mundane, Emma. Not comatose, but definitely mundane.”

  “I don’t think it’s mundane at all,” said Emma. “You’ve got chickens and a Pink Palace and you work in a store, and you play baseball, and you know all the kids and all the stories of this town and you have friends you miss who come visit you, too!”

  Ruby shook her head. “But I never go anywhere, or do anything. It’s the same old thing, day after day.”

  Emma sighed. “That sounds perfect.”

  Ruby laughed. “You must be from a town even smaller and more mundane than Halleluia, and that’s saying something. You must think this is the big city!”

  “It’s not that,” said Emma. She made her voice very quiet. “The truth is, I’ve moved so many times, I don’t know where I’m from.”

  Ruby sat up straight. “Don’t you have people? Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins?”

  Emma stared at her feet, not sure how much to tell. Should she recite the names of the many great-greats whose names were on the itemized grocery lists and lined index cards her family carried from place to place, and who were the originators, many years ago, of the Cake family’s most treasured recipes?

  Mavis Oatmeal Raisin Muffin Cake. Willa It’s-So-Dusty-I’m-Exhausted Cake. William Macaroons-Out-Your-Ears Cake. And that was just the beginning. She couldn’t explain why they had no choice but to keep moving, because she couldn’t understand it herself.

  “We are itinerant bakers,” she said softly. It was a risk, to say it. Kids laughed. She and her brothers had learned not to tell.

  “What is that?”

  Emma sighed. “I can’t explain it. We move and we bake. We come to a town when it needs us, and we leave when it doesn’t need us anymore. Bakers have moved from town to town for ages, baking and selling their goods. It’s just what we do, what we’ve always done. Our specialty is cake. And mine is soup—for some reason I love soup more than cake. We never stay anywhere long, and we never live anywhere twice.”

  “Like the Vikings!” said Ruby.

  “No,” said Emma. “We don’t plunder.”

  “Marco Polo!”

  “We’re not explorers.”

  “Like the Thousand and One Arabian Nights!”

  “Not exactly,” said Emma, “although I have an ancestor named Scheherazade Moroccan-Date Cake who baked for the Arab sheiks.”

  “Really!” said Ruby. She sat up very straight and tried again.

  “Like Wayfaring Strangers!”

  “Actually, not far off,” said Emma. She had an ancestor, Ethelinda Chocolate Bow-top Caravan Cake, who had lived in Greece. Or was it old Macedonia?

  “Cowboys!” said Ruby. “They went everywhere, on cattle drives, like the Old Chisholm Trail. I love cowboys.”

  Emma brightened. “Actually, we have a family story about Lucky Pete Chewy Cowboy Raisin Cake. Cowboys couldn’t take chickens on their cattle drives, so they soaked raisins and used raisin water instead of eggs to leaven their cakes. Lucky Pete invented that!”

  “You’ve got amazing ancestors!” Ruby was delighted to have a delicious scrap of family history from her friend. “Your life is more exciting than mine will ever be. The next time you move, take me with you!”

  Emma shook her head. “I’m a prisoner of my family’s destiny,” she said, falling into the melodrama of her life. “You’re so lucky, Ruby. You can finish a school year and you have friends and a real house of your own—two houses! I’ve never had one house of my own, not one room of my own! No furniture of my own. No house to paint, no room to stuff with treasures, and my friends can’t come visit me—I’m too far away and I move too much. You can’t appreciate what it’s like to move and move and move without knowing where you belong! I can’t even keep a chicken!”

  “Good thing,” said Ruby.

  Emma had to laugh, even though tears stung the back of her nose.

  “Well …” Ruby said, trying to think of something helpful. “You have four dogs!”

  “They’re portable,” sniffed Emma. “We’re portable, all of us.” She stood up to go.

  “Why don’t you just stay here, in Halleluia?” asked Ruby. “It’s mundane, but you’ve got a great café now, and a great kitchen, and a great job, and a—”

  “It’s always great!” Emma interrupted. She raised her hands as if she was trying to stop Ruby from extolling all the virtues of her new temporary home and fixing ­everything for her. “And then we leave.” She gave Ruby a lopsided smile. “So it’s not even a good idea to be friends. I’ll just have to leave when my dad decides it’s time to go.”

  But Ruby wouldn’t hear of not being friends, especially after all she’d had to go through to get this one.

  “We’ll have to change that,” she said. “What can we do to make sure your parents never want to leave Halleluia?”

  “Nothing,” said Emma. “I’ve tried everything I know. I’ve asked, I’ve begged, I’ve cried, I’ve written letters to my dad, nothing works.”

  “We need a plan,” Ruby said. “That’s all. We need a plan that will make your parents want to stay. Meet me here in the morning, as soon as you wake up.”

  Emma shook her head. “I work in the morning, first thing. I’m making soup.”

  “What kind?”

  Emma hesitated. “My specialty,” she said, as quietly as possible.

  “Chicken,” said Ruby with only a hint of accusation in her voice.

  “Sorry,” said Emma. She walked to the gate and let herself out. Still friends, she thought. I think so. “See ya,” she said, as she clicked shut the gate.

  “See ya,” said Ruby. And she meant it.

  Ruby knew she was a welcome back-door visitor and not a customer who needed to use the front door. She appeared in the Cake kitchen early the next morning as if she had been expected. The smell of onions, celery, carrots, spices, and herbs sautéing in olive oil in a giant pan on the giant stove greeted her.

  “Just smell all those vegetables!” she crowed to no one in particular.

  Arlouin Cake didn’t seem surprised to see her. “Good morning, dear,” she said with a smile. “Come be of some use, will you?” She led Ruby to the colossal mixing machine. “Just stand here with the mixer and make sure the batter doesn’t careen out the bowl. I’ll mix in the nuts and raisins and grated carrots next. First, this batter needs to mix for two minutes.”

  Arlouin went back to the stove and kept sautéing the vegetables Ruby had smelled. “These will make a good soup starter,” she called to Ruby as the mixer filled the room with its noise. Ruby watched the batter swirl and dip and cascade up and down in the big metal bowl.

  “What do I do if it tries to escape?” she shouted.

  “Use the rubber spatula to make it behave!” called A
rlouin over her shoulder. “You can do it!”

  Ruby found the rubber spatula on the counter and poked at the batter as it tried to climb up the sides of the bowl. “Back!” she yelled at it. “Down, boy!”

  Emma came into the room with a huge tub of raisins in front of her. “Found ’em! They were in the upstairs kitchen on top of the fridge.” Then she saw Ruby and laughed. “See? You come over here and we’ll put you to work!”

  “Cream cheese!” called Leo Cake. He came through the back door with enough cream cheese and confectioners’ sugar to ice four huge carrot cakes.

  Emma took over the sautéing for her soup and Arlouin took over the batter patrol from Ruby. “Thank you, sour-heart!”

  Emma’s father pulled cake pans from the cake pan drawer and yelled “All Cakes on Deck!” Like magic, the Cake boys appeared.

  Jodi and Van cut round circles from paper grocery bags and put them in the bottoms of the cake pans—they needed eight giant paper circles inserted into eight giant cake pans to make four giant layer cakes. Roger opened the raisins and measured them into four equal piles. Ben grated carrots and supervised his brothers.

  More carrots, more paper-bag circles, more raisins, and all while Arlouin stirred and Leo poured and Ruby—who saw an opportunity—opened the wide oven doors so the eight round cake pans filled with batter could slide into the ovens and become carrot cake. There wasn’t one whine, one shove, one argument. The Cakes worked together like they were in an elaborate ballet—or maybe it was more like a circus act—never in one another’s way, hardly speaking, knowing just how much to measure and when to add, stir, pour, and pop into the oven.

  It was not the least bit mundane. It was thrilling.

  “Well done!” said Leo Cake.

  “Soup’s on!” Emma announced. She sounded happy, and she was. Her sauté had gone into the soup pot, along with the stock and the chicken she had taken care to make sure Ruby didn’t have to see. Now to simmer the soup for a few hours. She’d add the cooked noodles last.

  The boys moved to the sink to crash the dishes in order to be released into the day. Their parents would take it from here, and the boys knew when to be back to help with the lunch shift.

  “Move over!” whined Roger as the empty metal mixing bowl slipped out of his hands and clanged on the counter.

  “Butterfingers!” snarled Jody.

  “Stop torturing the whiner,” said Van.

  “Am not!” whined Roger.

  “Are so!” challenged Jody.

  Then the pushing started. The cake-making, working-together spell was broken.

  Emma took off her apron and caught Ruby’s eye. Ruby patted her overalls pocket and mouthed the word plans. Emma invited Ruby up to her bedroom.

  “Good! Good!” said her father, unable to hide his happiness that his daughter had found a friend. “Excellent!”

  Emma gave him a half smile. “I’ll be back to stir the soup.”

  “No need!” said Leo Cake. “I’ll stir!”

  “You’re making cream cheese frosting,” Arlouin reminded him.

  “I can stir and mix at the same time,” he informed her. He shoved his glasses up on the bridge of his nose and waved Emma out of the kitchen.

  * * *

  So much can happen before nine in the morning. The rolls were in their baskets, the soup simmered, and the cakes baked. Bread was rising on breadboards near the ovens and breakfast muffins filled the muffin basket. Arlouin had made her signature pimento cheese, so there would be pimento cheese sandwiches at the Cake Café for lunch, along with soup and rolls and carrot cake until they ran out of everything.

  And that’s not counting the lemon meringue, coconut, and chocolate cream pies that Leo and Arlouin had taken across the street to the Pine View Café earlier in the morning. Leo and Arlouin were pooped. And the Cake Café would start serving lunch in three hours.

  So Arlouin and Leo made themselves pimento cheese sandwiches with day-old bread and poured glasses of lemonade and sat in the lawn chairs out back, under the shade of the silver maple, while the boys played ball and Emma and Ruby schemed upstairs in Emma’s bedroom.

  Hale-Bopp left the pack of dogs and boys and trotted past Leo and Arlouin and to the back door of the Cake Café. Leo got up to let him inside. It was hot, even for nine in the morning, and Hale-Bopp did not like heat.

  “Emma has made a friend,” said Leo Cake when he returned. Then he took another bite of his sandwich. “Good batch of pimento cheese!”

  “Thank you,” answered Arlouin. “And yes, she has.”

  “I always hate to tear her away,” he began.

  “She gets so attached,” agreed Arlouin.

  Leo sighed and took another bite of pimento cheese.

  “Didn’t you ever get attached when you were a kid, Leo?”

  Leo chewed and thought. “Yes. No. I don’t remember.” But there was a sizzle in his memory that pricked at him.

  The boys were hooting and waving now at the arrival of more of their friends.

  “Have you ever seen so many kids in one place right outside our back door?” asked Arlouin.

  “I don’t believe I have,” said Leo. “But then, we’ve had lots of back doors in our time.”

  “That we have,” agreed Arlouin. She watched Gordon and Honey take off Eudora Welty’s tutu so Gordon could put it on. The dog seemed relieved to relinquish it.

  “The people here are so friendly, too,” said Arlouin.

  Leo nodded.

  “The first itinerant Cake,” said Arlouin. “Tell me again—what was his name?”

  “Theopholus Bardito Cake,” Leo answered with pride. “He blew in with a warm wind—and a wispy Cake fog—generations ago somewhere in the ancient Ottoman Empire. Constantinople, I think. I don’t remember. He baked bread for the sultan! He was married to Marvella the Magnificent, who made the first cakes.

  “I wonder if they had children,” Arlouin said, as an afterthought, as she watched Jody hit a line drive to second.

  “Well, of course they did,” said Leo, “or I wouldn’t be here.”

  “How long do you think we’ll stay?” asked Arlouin, finally.

  “Well,” said her husband. He drained his lemonade. “Weather patterns are stable and we’re just getting started. It’s clear we’ve got good work to do with the Pine View, but I’m not sure this town needs two cafés.”

  “So I’ve heard from several visitors this week,” said Arlouin.

  “I might have mixed up our destination,” Leo confessed.

  “How so?” asked Arlouin. She sat up straight in her lawn chair.

  “Well,” said Leo, thoughtfully, still trying to figure it out himself. “I thought I was answering one letter, but somehow I must have mixed up the addresses—we’re here, and this place feels so familiar to me. But we never go anywhere twice. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was here before.”

  “That’s because we move so often it’s hard to remember,” said Arlouin. “I can tell you we’ve never been in this town before. But we do move more and more frequently now, Leo, and honestly, family lore notwithstanding, it sometimes feels as if you’re running from something.”

  “I don’t run from anything. I run to.”

  Leo took off his glasses and cleaned them with his napkin. When he put them back on, he shoved them up on his nose with his index finger and said:

  “Day by day and night by night we were together. All else has long been forgotten by me.”

  “Oh my,” said Arlouin. “What is that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Leo. “It came into my head as we set off on this move, like it’s something I’m supposed to remember.”

  Upstairs in Emma’s bedroom, Hale-Bopp plopped himself on the wood floor in order to take advantage of the breeze from the attic fan in the hallway. It was a hot breeze, but it was something.

  Emma offered Ruby her desk chair while she flopped across her bed on her stomach. Ruby examined the items on Emma’s desk: pads of d
rawing paper, thick and thin; a Composition Book notebook with green rubber bands around it; a mayonnaise jar of sharpened colored pencils; a stapler; a heavy, oversize pair of black-handled scissors; various erasers, fat and pink and brown; a pile of good-bye notes from Emma’s friends, tied with a ribbon; a small pile of pushpins for the world map and the US map on the wall; and a clutch of four-by-six-inch lined index cards.

  There was also a wooden recipe box spilling over with recipes for Emma’s best soups. The box had a chicken painted on it. Of course.

  But the Friend Atlas was the star of the room. Ruby needed to get closer to it. She stood so close she could touch it, but out of respect she didn’t. There was a sketch of each friend that Emma had left. They were pushpinned onto a handmade map along with descriptions of that friend—her favorite food, their favorite thing to do together, favorite phrases and places and songs and so much more.

  “Good garden of peas,” said Ruby, awe in her voice. “You really believe in detail! This is … I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “I keep adding to it when I think of more,” Emma said softly. “That’s what the index cards are for.”

  “I’d really like to know this Marcy,” said Ruby. She read from Marcy’s index card, pinned under her sketch: Knows seventy-four riddles. Got sixteen stitches when she fell off her bike. Gave me a lizard for Christmas. Sleeps with her head at the foot of the bed. Once ate my liver for me. (I hate liver, so no recipe.)

  “She was great. IS great,” said Emma.

  Ruby stared intently at the sketches. “You told me you make soup and you help in the bakery. You didn’t tell me you’re an artist.”

  “I’m not an artist,” said Emma. “Not really.”

  “Well, you’re good with a pencil. And you sure have moved a lot.”

  “Yeah,” said Emma. “And thanks.”

  Ruby’s hair slopped out of its ponytail. She pushed it out of her face. There were all colors and shades of faces and hair in Emma’s colored-pencil sketches; all shapes and sizes of noses and eyes and chins.

  “But nobody with red hair,” Ruby observed. “Not until now.”

  “That’s right,” said Emma.