The Cake Therapist

by Judith Fertig

  I smiled wistfully.

  I understand that better than he realizes.

  In the small, drab room sat a tiny woman with an IV pole and a portable oxygen tank attached to her wheelchair. Olive listed a little to the left, her eyes closed, almost lost in a maze of plastic tubing and a hospital gown much too big for her. She had a thermal blanket tucked around her lap and hospital socks on her feet.

  I gestured to a chair for old Mr. Whyte. Sam, Ellen, and I would have to stand. I put the cake box on the rolling hospital bed table. I stacked the pale pink plates, napkins, and forks next to it. Then I pulled the drapes to let in a little more light. With people and color and sunshine, the room became more cheerful.

  I knelt down to take Olive’s hand, something I never would have attempted before her accident. It felt dry and cool. If I held it up to the light and spread her fingers, I thought I could almost see through her hand, like parchment paper. The line between here and not here was thinning, no question.

  “Your old friend Shemuel is here to visit you, Mrs. Amici. We’re going to have a piece of cake, and then we can talk.”

  A tall, white-haired lady in powder blue pants and an embroidered white sweater entered the room with the help of her walker. It took me a moment to realize who it was.

  “Sister Agnes,” I said, “you’re just in time for cake.”

  “How about that for good timing?” She smiled. “Sister Josepha usually makes the Sunday hospital visits, but she’s down with a bug, so I said I’d do it.”

  “I didn’t know Mrs. Amici was Catholic,” I said.

  Sister shrugged. “I don’t know if she is. Somebody must have marked that on her admittance papers. We offer spiritual comfort to Millcreek Valley patients in the hospital, whatever their faith.”

  I introduced Sister Agnes to everyone, and then offered her my chair.

  I opened the box and cut a slice of layer cake for each plate. “I think it might work best if I serve Mrs. Amici last.” I gave Sister Agnes and Shemuel a plate, a fork, and a napkin, then Ellen and Sam. And lastly, I laid a napkin over Olive’s lap and held a forkful of cake up to her lips.

  She couldn’t see the homemade colored sprinkles, the tender yellow cake, or the pale pink frosting made with strawberry syrup enhanced with a little rosewater. Although our local strawberries weren’t in season yet, I had conjured the aroma and taste of juicy berries warmed by the sun. I hoped this flavor would help the two old people return once more to their youth and the carefree feeling of a summer day.

  Slowly, with her eyes still closed, she opened her mouth. She looked like a hungry baby bird, ready for a worm. She took one bite after another, then smacked her lips like the ten-year-old Olive I had glimpsed.

  When I looked across at old Mr. Whyte, he, too, was licking the frosting from around his mouth, smiling like the Shemuel who had treasured the few precious minutes he had spent in the Habig home each week.

  “Would you like another piece?” I asked.

  “Yes!” the older people said.

  With each new bite of cake, the more years they seemed to shed.

  “Don’t let Shemuel eat it all,” Olive muttered, and suddenly her eyes snapped open. “He always got the last of the milk.”

  “Your mother was always feeding me, wasn’t she, Olive?” he said gently.

  “Peanut butter sandwiches,” Olive recalled. “I remember stirring the peanut butter in that tin container it used to come in years ago. The oil always separated at the top and you had to stir it together again. And Ovaltine, lots of Ovaltine.”

  “I always left your house with a cookie.”

  Mrs. Amici snorted. “Maybe too many. You grew up to be a lot bigger than me. Doesn’t look like you missed too many meals.”

  They each took another bite of cake.

  Sister Agnes’ face softened, the years falling away. “There was a bakery when I was a girl—Oster’s—and they had the best strawberry cake. Oh, we hardly ever got to have cake. We didn’t have any money. But every once in a while, Mama would be paid by one of her Fairview ladies and we’d get a treat,” she said in a childish rush.

  “You used to say ‘true show’ and not ‘trousseau,’” Mrs. Amici said, matter-of-factly.

  Poor Mrs. Amici was really confused. But then I looked at Sister Agnes, and back at Mrs. Amici. I gasped. Could this be?

  I searched the nun’s face for the little girl I had glimpsed reading The Princess and the Goblin in the library. There was something of little Edie in her pale coloring, her quiet demeanor. Smiling, Sister Agnes set her plate aside, took off her glasses, and pressed the napkin to her eyes. “It’s all right, Neely. I’m sure I said many silly things as a child.” She welled up again. “Memories,” she whispered. “After all this time.”

  Shemuel looked at Sister Agnes, too. Did he see what I saw?

  Ellen finished her cake and delicately wiped her mouth with the napkin before putting her plate and fork aside.

  “I’ve been thinking, Mrs. Amici,” Ellen said, in a kind and calm voice. “Sam and I are so happy together. And I love this beautiful ring that belonged to your family.” She twisted the sapphire ring off her finger and held it out in the palm of her left hand for the old woman to see. “But maybe this is not really mine to keep. If this will make you feel better, please know that it is yours. Again.”

  Sister Agnes leaned forward in her chair to get a good look.

  Mrs. Amici stared at the sapphire and seemed to consider it for a moment. “I forgot how beautiful it was.” She sighed, then shook her head and said softly, “Keep it, hon.”

  When Ellen moved to offer again, Mrs. Amici said a little more forcefully, “Keep it.” She paused a moment. “And wear it. Wear it every day. My mother didn’t wear it near enough.”

  “She didn’t,” said Sister Agnes, who began to cry, softly.

  I gave the nun’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. I wasn’t sure how to proceed with someone who was just recovering her memory, so I just went with how I would want to be treated—with kindness and compassion, but without drama. We would take this slowly.

  Ellen put the ring back on her finger, cradling it with her right hand. “Thank you,” she said, to both Mrs. Amici and Sister Agnes.

  “Won’t do me any good now anyway,” muttered Olive, snapping back to her old self. “What I want, I can’t have. Story of my life.”

  Olive’s eyes narrowed at Shemuel. “Diane’s in jail.” She turned to Sam and Ellen. “It was all her idea, to go after the ring. She dragged me along.” She turned toward me. “You talked to Bobby?” she asked. “What did he say about Diane? He hasn’t been to see me since Christmas.”

  Uh-oh. It was April and Mrs. Amici had only been in the rehab hospital for a short while. I wondered if she was beginning to slip again. I had better move this along.

  “Diane can’t post bail,” I explained. “Bobby says she could be charged with assault. They have to wait until you are more yourself to decide whether they will press charges or not. Her public defender isn’t sure when the preliminary hearing will be. The municipal court docket is pretty full right now.”

  Olive looked at Ellen. “Wish she had turned out more like you.”

  “I’m sorry about Diane,” said the old man, clearing his throat.

  “Well, that’s something,” said Olive, sarcastically.

  “I’m sorry, too, Mrs. Amici,” Ellen said.

  We reached another impasse in the conversation.

  “Ellen and I are going to step out now to give you a chance to talk,” said Sam.

  Olive watched them go, turning to Shemuel. “Are you happy now? You should be. You got everything.”

  “Yes, I’ve been fortunate, Olive,” he said gently. “Thanks to Edie.”

  “Edie?”

  “Yes, Edie.” He reached over and took Sister Agnes’ hand an
d joined it with Olive’s. “Your sister.”

  “Edie? Is that you?”

  The sisters faced each other, trying to see beyond the white hair, the altered faces.

  “You came back?” Olive said. “All these years, Edie. All these years.” She sobbed.

  “I didn’t know I had been gone,” said Sister Agnes, stroking her sister’s hand. “I don’t know what’s happening.” She looked as troubled as Olive.

  I firmly but gently touched her arm.

  “If it wasn’t for Edie, I don’t know how my life would have turned out,” Shemuel said to the two sisters. “Edie wanted to run away. It just happened to be on December eighth, 1941, when everything changed. That was the day we declared war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor.”

  Olive nodded.

  Edie looked confused.

  “Remember how people were running all around, not knowing what to do? President Roosevelt giving his speech? People looking for Japanese planes in the sky?” he continued.

  “No.” Edie shook her head.

  “I remember,” said Olive. “It was a Monday because I had to restock all the empty shelves that morning at Oster’s. I didn’t find out until somebody ran in the bakery late in the afternoon and made me drop a pan of sweet rolls,” said Olive. “Mrs. Oster said to just pick ’em up, dust ’em off, and put ’em back in the case. People would want something sweet after bad news. And she was right. We had a lot of customers. I could have eaten the whole pan myself after Edie didn’t come home that night.” She turned to Edie. “Why didn’t you come home?”

  “I don’t know,” Edie whispered.

  “Edie was sick,” the old man reminded her. “Remember, Olive? She was jumpy. Afraid of her shadow. Skin and bones.”

  “I wish I had known what was wrong with you. You just clammed up,” Olive said.

  They all sat quietly.

  “We didn’t really have a plan,” Shemuel explained. “We were just going to let the train take us somewhere far away.”

  “So what happened?”

  “It started snowing so hard, you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. I got on the first train car, and didn’t see Edie.”

  “How could you miss her?”

  “It was heavy, heavy snowfall. Like cotton batting dropping from the sky. Like someone holding up a white chenille bedspread to a window and you trying to look through it. I couldn’t see outside.”

  “Maybe you didn’t want to see.”

  “I don’t remember any of that,” said Edie, shrinking back inside herself.

  Shemuel breathed deeply. “I walked through the train, looking for you, Edie. By the time I reached the last passenger car, the train was moving and picking up speed. I found the ring on the floor, wrapped up in that handkerchief you always carried.” He took a square of folded, embroidered handkerchief from the breast pocket of his blazer and passed it over to Edie. “It’s still smells a little like you, I think.”

  Blankly, Edie passed it to Olive.

  Olive raised the hankie to her nose, closed her eyes, and sniffed. “Lilies of the valley. Our mother’s favorite.” Her breath shuddered, and I thought she was going to sob, but she held herself stiffly.

  “Can I keep this?”

  “Of course, Olive.”

  They sat silent for a moment, lost in their thoughts.

  “When I found the ring, I thought maybe you had changed your mind about running away, Edie,” Shemuel continued, “but still wanted to help me, just like your mother always did. I thought you left it for me on purpose. But just in case I had missed you on the train somehow, I got off at the Queen City terminal and looked for you, but you were gone.”

  “I don’t remember,” said Edie sadly.

  “You seemed to do all right for yourself since then, Shemuel,” said Olive angrily. “Even a new name. I changed my name, too, when I married Frank, but it didn’t change my luck.”

  “Things switched for us, Olive,” he said quietly. “You had what I wanted when I was a boy. You had parents who loved you and a meal on the table every night. You had a clean house and a real bed. You had warm clothes. I never had that. My old name tied me to that old life.”

  “Didn’t you care what happened to Edie? Didn’t you ever try to find her?”

  “Yes, Olive. Many times. After I got out of the Army and started doing well in my business, I hired private detectives to search for her, but they never found anything.”

  “They could have found me,” fumed Olive.

  “They did find you. But I didn’t get in touch. I thought Edie might have been running away from you, too, Olive.”

  Olive glared.

  “This is almost too much for me,” Edie said, sinking back into her chair.

  We sat in silence again.

  Now was my time to speak. This was going to sound strange to them, I knew. But maybe something would jog Edie’s memory.

  “As you said,” I began, gesturing to Shemuel, “Edie must have gotten off the train before it left the Millcreek Valley station. But where did she go? She didn’t go back home. She didn’t walk along the railroad tracks because she couldn’t see anything in the heavy snowstorm. But she could have walked up the convent hill,” I ventured.

  “Why would you do that?” Shemuel asked Edie.

  “I don’t know,” Edie said.

  “Maybe you thought you saw something on the train and got scared,” I suggested. “You could have jumped off at the last minute and started running away from the train, away from town. Up the convent hill. You might have seen the light through the stained glass window in Bernadette’s grotto, and walked toward it. I have done that myself.”

  “I pray there at least once a day,” Edie said. “Something about being there keeps my mind from racing. I can slow down my thoughts and just breathe.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It has had that effect on me, too.” I gently nudged her back in time. “That day after Pearl Harbor, you might have stayed in the grotto to get out of the weather. Do you remember being there?”

  She shook her head no.

  “Maybe you felt safe there,” I continued, “safe from something bad that happened to you. From what Shemuel and Olive have said, you might have had post-traumatic stress disorder.”

  “Edie?” exclaimed Olive. “Post-traumatic stress? I thought you only got that in war.”

  “You can get that after any sudden trauma,” Shemuel said. “War. Natural disasters. Domestic violence. I’ve known men who had ‘shell shock,’ they used to call it. And one of my employees developed PTSD after her husband beat her and her children. We tried everything we could to help her, but she eventually had to go on disability. She wouldn’t leave the house.”

  “You wouldn’t leave the house, either,” Olive said sadly. “Do you remember that, Edie? You locked us up like we lived in Fort Knox. I just didn’t know why.”

  “Maybe what happened to you was so painful, you had to shut down in order to keep going. Maybe you kept reliving this thing, like a terrifying nightmare. A nightmare you couldn’t fully wake up from. Maybe you had to forget everything in order to get over it.”

  Edie just shook her head.

  “How can you forget everything?” Olive asked.

  “I knew a guy who never drove a car again after he was an ambulance driver in the war. I knew another guy who never spoke after he got home. You see stuff. You do stuff. And it gets to you. Losing the past doesn’t sound far-fetched to me,” said Shemuel. “You do what you have to do to survive.”

  “Maybe she collapsed and someone found her in the grotto,” I continued. “A nun, perhaps, since she was on convent grounds. I don’t know. That’s all I’ve got.”

  “Well, that might explain how Edie became a nun,” said Shemuel. “But why didn’t anyone know that?”

  We sat in sil
ence again.

  Olive’s frail fingers curled around her sister’s hand. “You’re here now and that’s all that matters to me.” Tears rolled down her wizened cheeks. There was something about tough old Mrs. Amici crying that got to me more than her sharp words ever did. I took a clean napkin and reached over to gently dry her tears, sparing the precious handkerchief.

  “Where’s Barney? Where’s my dog?” she wailed. Olive’s eyes fluttered and then closed. “Pickle and Olive,” she whispered. “Pickle and Olive,” she repeated, getting louder.

  Shemuel pushed himself forward in his chair. “Don’t worry, Olive. I’ll post Diane’s bail. I’ll see that she gets a good attorney. Don’t worry about that. Don’t worry.”

  But Olive didn’t seem to hear. She started rocking back and forth. “Pickle and Olive. Pickle and Olive. Pickle and Olive . . .”

  I pushed the call button by her bed, then knelt by her wheelchair. Edie and I both stroked Olive’s hand until help arrived.

  MARCH 1964

  Sister Agnes climbed the big staircase of the academy, pausing on the spacious landing for a moment to admire the towering oil painting of God the Father high up in the clouds with the sun streaming behind Him.

  She loved the colors—blue green, salmon, gold. Not at all what you’d think the God of Abraham would favor. She would have guessed a dark, thunder blue and lightning-bolt yellow—sort of like an atomic blast. She squinted to read the artist’s name in the bottom right corner and said a silent “hello” to her friend and mentor, Ethel Parsons Paullin.

  When Agnes was working with textbook illustrators in New York, she had met Mrs. Paullin on a visit to the Church of Saint Vincent Ferrer on the Upper East Side. Mrs. Paullin was giving a walking lecture on the series of fourteen oil paintings, representing the Stations of the Cross, which she and her late husband, Telford, had completed in 1918. After the lecture, Agnes and the older artist had struck up a friendly conversation, for it turned out that Ethel had grown up in northern Ohio and had worked on a project in Lockton.