Sofia’s Journal
MAY 21, 20—
I am writing this as I sit by Oscar’s bed. He is almost unrecognizable. No, that is not accurate. Not almost. He is unrecognizable. I would never have known it was him. There are so many bandages and tubes. I can see bits and pieces of his face—his mouth and chin are very swollen and red. His eyelids are a deep, terrible red, swollen and marked. His eyelashes are gone, but the nurse said he was lucky he kept his eyelids, a picture that gives me shudders every time I think about it.
He’s a mummy, really. A mummy with one leg. He hasn’t come out of the coma yet.
I thought they were going to fly us back to San Antonio yesterday, but he had a bad turn and then something else happened and … I don’t know. The chaplain is here often, making sure I’m okay, which tells me how worried they are that he’ll die.
He is not going to die. I keep telling him that he cannot give up, no matter what. Katie will be an orphan. Our baby will never see him. He or she will be here in less than two months, Oscar, I tell him. You can make it that long. I know you can.
And if he can make it two months, he can make it forever.
The other thing is, jeez, I am so pregnant! My ankles keep swelling, and I’ve got a backache that just won’t quit. A doctor is keeping an eye on me, and I like her a lot.
In my belly, the baby is doing somersaults or something, I swear! I can feel him banging on my ribs, jumping around, rockin’ out. I keep wondering—boy or girl? Boy or girl? I won’t let them tell me. It seems like opening a Christmas present too early. I think, though, it’s a boy. I’m carrying it high and forward, and one of the other teachers at school did a pendulum thing with a needle before I left. A boy with Oscar’s beautiful eyes. His thick curly hair. His hands, which are so huge and beautiful.
When it gets closer to time, I guess I’ll have to make some choices. It’s hard to imagine having the baby without my mom around, but it’s even worse to think of leaving Oscar’s side. If I think about it too much, I start to panic.
Which isn’t helpful in the least. One step at a time.
I haven’t heard a thing from Katie and must remember to send her an email and be sure to be in touch with her. I’ve been avoiding it because it’s so hard to think of what to say, how to tell the truth.
My stomach is growling. I need to go find something to eat. I wish I could find some of my mother’s French bread. It helps so much when my stomach gets unsettled like this.
RAMONA’S BOOK OF BREADS
EASY WHITE BREAD
Many people fret about undertaking yeast bread, fearing it will be complicated and mysterious. This is the recipe used for centuries to make classic French baguettes. Children love to make this loaf, and it will give any aspiring bread baker a swelling of confidence.
1 cup lukewarm water
1 tsp sugar
1 T dry yeast
3 cups unbleached white flour
1 tsp salt
1 egg white + 1 tsp cold water
Pour the water into a small bowl and stir in the sugar, then sprinkle the yeast over the top and let stand for 5 minutes. In a big bowl, measure the flour and the salt and stir together. When the yeast is foamy, pour the yeast-and-water mix into the flour and stir together until you can gather it into a blob. On a counter scattered with flour, drop the blob and sprinkle more flour over the top of it, then knead for 5 minutes or more, until smooth and elastic. (The dough should begin to have a texture that’s cool and “spankable.”)
Gather the dough into a ball and put it into an oiled bowl, turning the ball until it is oiled all the way around. Dampen a flour-sack kitchen towel and cover the bowl. Let rise in a warm place until it is doubled (this will not take as long at high altitudes).
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees, and put a heavy skillet or baking pan in the bottom of the oven with a few inches of water to reproduce the humid environment of a French oven.
Pat the dough down into a long, thin rectangle, then roll the sides toward the middle to shape into a baguette. On a baking sheet covered with scatters of cornmeal or a baking parchment, place the baguette with the seam down and let rest for 10 minutes.
Make 3 sharp diagonal marks across the loaf and bake for 30 minutes, then baste with egg white and bake another 5–10 minutes, until the loaf is hollow when tapped from the bottom. Cool on a wire rack, serve with dinner.
Ramona
The first task of every afternoon is to refresh the sponges. Turning the radio to a local pop station so I can sing along, I cover my hair with a cap and my clothes with a chef’s coat, then wash my hands as thoroughly as a surgeon.
Like any living organism, sourdough must be fed and tended regularly. It’s a simple thing, usually just adding flour and water and giving it a good stir to bring in fresh oxygen. Then it is allowed to grow for a bit, usually eight to twelve hours, before it is ready to use.
That means that our sponges must be fed in late afternoon, so we can bake with them in the middle of the night. We use a rotating system, using jars of aqua and clear glass, so that some sponges are resting while others are growing. When Cat helped me plan the kitchen, I designed a storage area specifically for this purpose.
The smell of yeast and vinegar rises as I stir flour into each of four jars with a heavy rubber spatula. Like all mothers, the sponges are unique in texture and flavor. The rye starter is powerfully, almost painfully sour, dark and thick and bubbly. I use it to make authentic German breads, for which I have an established contingent of German shoppers, mostly women who came to the city as service brides—some as long ago as World War II, others as recently as six months. They’re particular but friendly and gratifyingly loyal when they are pleased.
I do this work every afternoon, because I have a very small staff. One baker and two apprentices come in at two a.m., five mornings a week. Each afternoon I set things up for them, making lists and deciding upon loaves for the next day.
With my hands—at last—in dough, tension flows out of my neck, drips benignly to the floor. Thoughts, images, memories swirl without weight. I think of Sofia’s baby growing in her belly, and of Katie’s long hands, and of my mother’s reference to the summer I was fifteen, and of the broken pipe in the front yard, and of learning to bake with my aunt Poppy that fateful summer when bread saved my life. I wonder what passion lies sleeping in Katie’s breast.
Finally, the things that really do need my attention surface clearly. Cleanly. When the rustica loaves are ready to rest, I set them aside and wash my hands, then carry my phone upstairs and call Cat.
He answers with a smile in his voice. “Ramona! How did the work turn out?”
“It’s great, Cat. But you cannot pay for it.”
“Oh, come now. It’s nothing. I know you’ll repay me. The summer is shaping up to be a busy one, and I know you can’t get another bank loan yet.”
His voice is persuasive. As I think of my maxed-out credit cards, I’m desperately tempted to accept his offer, but even the thought makes me hate myself. “I appreciate the offer, but I need to take care of this myself.”
“Your pride is doing you no favors. We both know how close to the edge you are.”
“You’re the one who always tells me that it takes time for a business to get on its feet.”
“That’s true. You’ve had a lot of challenges the past year with the building, Ramona. Let me help you, just this once.”
“It’s not just this once, Cat. I owe you thousands and I need to pay you back, not borrow more!”
“Tesòro mìo, you don’t have this money.” He sighs. “I wish you would simply marry me. I could take care of you.”
For a long moment, I stand in the middle of my living room, looking down to the view of ancient sidewalks. It feels as if someone has slammed a bat into my temple. “Do you hear yourself, Cat?”
“You know that’s what I want. What I have wanted all along.”
“All along? From the start, when I came to you for help?”
A slight hesitation. “No, no.”
But in that pause, I hear the truth. He’s like the rest of them—my family, my ex-husband—patting me on the head, never seeing that I do have the brains and business sense to make a go of this. “Did you ever believe in me at all, Cat?”
“I believe in you completely, Ramona.”
I’m shaking my head. “I’ll send you a check. Don’t come by here anymore.”
“Ramona, you’re upset. Don’t be rash.”
“I’m not kidding, Cat. Do not come here. Don’t call me.”
I hang up the phone and stand in the middle of the room. My sinuses hurt. My chest is burning. I’m blinking back tears of—what? Betrayal? Loss? Anger?
All of the above.
From behind me, Katie says, “Ramona, me and Merlin are going upstairs, okay?”
I whirl, dashing tears off my face. The dog is sitting politely next to her, his dark eyes somehow wise. One golden ear is cocked to a point, while the other has a half fold in the middle, and there is a big freckle on his nose. For the first time I see that he’s beautiful. Gold and white patches of smooth short fur cover his body. His paws have gold spats. “Bring him in here for a minute. We haven’t properly met.”
“Come on, Merlin,” she says, and tugs on the leash. He trots over with her, coming to snuffle the hand I hold out to him, then he straightens, giving nothing away.
“Hello to you, too,” I say, putting the phone down on the coffee table. I sink down to his eye level, scratching his chest, which I can see earns me a few points. His gaze is steady and wise. I think of the teacher in Kung Fu, a TV show I loved as a little girl. “You’re an old soul, aren’t you?”
He lifts a paw and puts it on my forearm, then leans forward and very delicately licks a tear off my face.
“I can see why you fell in love with this dog,” I say to Katie. “He has a big heart, doesn’t he?”
She nods, petting his head.
“I guess we need to figure out how to introduce him to the cat, to start the process of getting them used to each other.”
“Maybe I can just feed him and then go upstairs? I’m super-tired.”
“Sure. That’s fine.”
As we pour some of the dog food we bought into a bowl, she says, “I don’t mean to be nosy, but I heard you crying. Is it about … my dad?”
“No. I’m mad at somebody, that’s all.” Merlin sniffs the food and starts to wolf it down. “I promise that I will tell you everything I know about your dad the very minute I see you after I find out, okay? Will that make it easier?”
“Yes.”
I draw a cross over my heart and hold my palm up in a vow. “Promise. Consider it done.”
Once I get the dog and the girl settled, I head back down to finish my breads, thinking about Cat, about my brother’s snide comments, about the rift in our family, and Dane and my sister Stephanie.
Dane is my ex-husband, a man I probably never loved. He came into the business as the operations manager for the entire Gallagher Group.
Until he arrived, the restaurants ran independently, more or less. Dane came in and reorganized the structure so that we could centralize ordering, personnel, storage, bookkeeping, and all that kind of thing. He brought us online, organized accounts, essentially brought the structure of the business into the twenty-first century, and it was a godsend. Within a year, profits were up 23 percent.
He was also good with my dad, jollying him out of his stubborn-mule-who-has-to-do-everything-exactly-his-own-way snits. My dad feels an obligation to make sure the Gallagher Group functions well. His father opened the first Gallagher’s, out on the highway to the top of Pikes Peak. It’s a tourist mecca, beloved, and it shows up on all the postcards—a time machine. My sister Sarah and younger brother Liam run it. They make their own ice cream and pies, and it’s bright and full of postcards and books about Pikes Peak and booths with lacquered things on the tables, the history of the area. It’s famous mainly because it’s a good place to stop on your way back down, when you’re tired and thirsty and want to absorb that terrifying drive.
The other two restaurants are the Erin Steakhouse, which my father opened in the sixties and built into one of the premier restaurants in the city, and The Banshee, Ryan’s pub.
I loved the business from the time I was a small girl, and I particularly loved the steakhouse, which my sister Stephanie now co-runs with my father. That was the position I wanted—to learn the business and work with the family—but when I got pregnant at fifteen, my father was so humiliated that it happened in his restaurant that he could never let me back in.
So I worked as a cashier in the summers at Gallagher’s Café and Gift Shop. I loved talking to people from all over, loved the pride I felt in being a native of Colorado Springs whenever people expressed their wonder over the beauty of it. Loved it in every way. But I did need to go to college, and there wasn’t time for Sofia, college, and a job like that, which was a bit of a drive from home, so I did part-time personnel work for the business. Office stuff, which my mother hated. I had a proficiency for it—not that anyone has ever come out and said that—and I did well enough that I studied business and marketing in school.
Somehow, I ended up managing most of the internal affairs at the restaurants—office work split between three sites, because by then Ryan had opened The Banshee. I was good at managing all the backstage stuff, and I liked it, but it wasn’t really what I wanted to do. I prefer the creativity of the food or the pleasure of being in contact with the customers.
But I was good. My title was Assistant to the Operations Manager; in actuality, I was doing it all myself. Then the old operations manager resigned, and, rather than put me in charge, my father hired Dane instead. He claimed I was too young—I was twenty-three or twenty-four, I can’t remember which—but it was really just a way to dis me again.
Big, hearty Dane, whom my father adored like a son. They’re a lot alike—charming, full of laughter, quick with a story or a joke. The difference is that my father is a one-woman man and Dane is a ladies’ man of the highest measure, a quick-tongued devil.
I did not like him at all when he came to work for us. I was furious that he’d taken the job I deserved and hurt that my father still didn’t respect me. So I did not exactly make Dane’s life easy. We spoke only in the most civil of terms for well over a year after his arrival, long after he’d charmed everybody in the family and the restaurants. To her credit, my sister Sarah never really liked him, for the same reason I had my doubts: Such a big personality probably didn’t have a lot of substance to it, and, at the very least, he was an egomaniac.
But we made a decent pair in a business sense, and together reorganized everything and eliminated thousands and thousands in repetitive costs. Little things like ordering in bulk and big things like eliminating superfluous positions that could be brought under the umbrella of the operations manager. Him. And me.
The person who adored him from the minute he arrived was Stephanie. He called her Petunia for no reason I ever understood, and she loved it. It’s possible that they might have slept together at some point. Despite the fact that I’m the one with the bad rep, Steph is the one who has slept with a few too many men over the years. It is something she used to confess to me at times, swearing me to secrecy, which I honored. Men love her—not that she realizes it. She’s been seen with a lot of movers and shakers over time, men with good cologne and clean-shaven jaws. Like Dane.
Not my type. I met a lot of men like that in school and they left me yawning. Which naturally meant Dane worked very hard to capture my admiration.
Three things happened all at once. Sofia got bronchitis one winter and couldn’t shake it. She was sick for weeks and eventually went to the hospital with pneumonia. My family, of course, rallied as they always do, and work was covered so I could be with her. Both of us were completely worn out by the end of it, and Dane offered us the use of his condo in the mountains. It was heaven-sent, and I liked him so mu
ch better for it.
A little while later, Dane made my father give me Employee of the Year, which I’d never won. He cited all the work I’d done, detail by detail, on the reorg, and two weeks later he said, “Your family does not appreciate you at all, do they?”
Which was exactly the right thing to say.
Then he invited Sofia and me to go skiing. I’d never tried it, and Sofia was desperate to give it a shot. He promised that it was strictly friendship, and I’d been to the condo so I knew there was plenty of room.
Whatever else I say about him now, he was so good with my daughter. Patient, funny, a good teacher. She could be aloof with people, but she let her guard down wholeheartedly with Dane. We had a great weekend, and I admit there were some sexual sparks. It would be hard not to have them around him—he’s just that kind of man. He knows how to look at you. Knows how to pick the things you’ll need to hear. The last night I let him kiss me, and he was—surprise!—a very good kisser. It had probably been, at that point, about six years since I’d had sex. I fell. And with Dane, it was sex like I’d not really had it before. Falling-off-the-bed sex. He knew what he was doing.
In the morning I was horrified, and he even knew how to manage that. He said it would be our secret. We’d never do it again. No one would ever know.
The trouble was, we worked together all the time. He’d bend over my shoulder and his breath would brush my neck, and I’d remember something. I avoided him.
I told myself that it would be a fling, that we’d have a good time and that would be that. But affairs are hard to keep secret in a restaurant, and when my father found out, he was not pissed off but thrilled. My mother adored him. Sofia loved him. For the first time in about a decade, I had the full approval of my family—maybe even Steph, though she was in the depths of a very tangled love affair herself and never had time to talk.
Dane and I got married. It seemed like the thing to do.
Katie
She awakens to the slow, patient wetness of a tongue moving over her fingers. When she stirs, Merlin jumps up eagerly and Katie says, “It’s the middle of the night! Go back to sleep!” and pulls the covers over her head.
How to Bake a Perfect Life Page 6
