How to Bake a Perfect Life

by Barbara O'Neal

  “Today?” I glanced at the record store. “Like right now?”

  “No, we can go later. Poppy said you might want notebooks and art supplies, so I brought a few from home, but maybe you’ll want new ones, too.”

  Against my will, my spirits lightened. “Can we get crêpes at La Creperie?”

  She smiled and looked like my mother again. My real mother, who wasn’t always so sour. “Of course.”

  Poppy finished with her customer and came to hug my mother. Poppy seemed happier than my mother did. Easier in her skin. She was wearing a sleeveless pale-green paisley dress that made her complexion and hair appear warmer. My mother noticed, too. “You look great, Poppy. What’s going on with you?”

  She shrugged. “I’m just feeling good. It’s nice to have company this summer.” With a wave over the decimated goods on the table, she said, “I’m ready to go get a snack somewhere, if you want to join me. Ramona wanted to hit the record store before we left today, right?”

  Gratefully, I nodded. “You can come get me there later.”

  “Go.”

  I ambled down the sidewalk and across the street. Sunlight burned the part of my hair, and the air smelled of cinnamon rolls, and somewhere children were playing, their laughter ringing out like the ultimate sound of happiness. The baby inside me moved, somersaulting as if she was happy, too, and something about it put a knife through my heart. She would laugh with somebody else. I would never hear the sound.

  I stopped dead on the sidewalk, struggling to keep from crying. I managed not to sob, but tears leaked out of my eyes and down my cheeks and I dashed them away, pretending I was getting something off my mouth. A woman in jeans and a sturdy pair of shoes looked at me in concern, but I moved by her quickly. If anyone offered sympathy, I’d never be able to pull it together.

  How did this happen? How was I in this place? How would I decide what do to?

  I slowed. What to do? Was there more than one answer?

  I thought of Poppy’s stories of India, of rambling around with her friends, working at an ashram, learning about elephants and saris and things nobody else in our whole family knew. I thought of Nancy’s stories the past few weeks about Paris. She was teaching me how to make levains, which were a slow way of making bread. I had thrown away two starters already because they didn’t catch enough yeast to grow, and just last night I had started another one. It was sitting in a jar on the counter in Poppy’s kitchen, where the sun would warm it, but not too much. Maybe this time it would work. Poppy said I couldn’t add any yeast, that I had to let it be. So I was trying.

  Last Monday we’d gone to the agency for my interview, which they put on videotape for prospective parents to look at. Nancy said to be natural, to tell the camera what I wanted for the baby, and to say whatever else I wanted. I told the truth—that I was too young, that I had to go to college and wanted to travel someday, so it would be better if the baby went to a home that was ready for it.

  On the street in Castle Rock, I faintly heard the sound of music and realized that I’d walked almost to the door of the record store. I felt dazed, as if I’d been crying for a long time, and almost didn’t go in, but there was Jonah, putting a sign in the window. He gave me a kind smile and waved me inside. I pushed the door open.

  “You look like you’re having a rough day,” he said, putting a light hand on the place between my shoulder blades. It was brotherly, friendly, I knew that, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t send a big shiver right down to my hips. Which didn’t do as much as you might think to loosen up the thick knot of disaster stuck in my throat. “You want a Dr Pepper?”

  I nodded. “Thanks.”

  There was no one else in the store this time, and we sat on stools by the counter. Jonah gave me a can of soda and opened one for himself. Before he sat down, he changed the music to something somber and moody, and immediately my emotions crowded right up through my throat into my sinuses and eyes. “I think this music is too sad!” I said, and tears spilled over my face. Embarrassed, I stood up, hiding behind my hair. “Sorry. I’m just in a mood.”

  He reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you sit down and drink your pop? I don’t care if you cry. Seems to me a girl like you has a lot of things to work out.”

  I looked at him. “Why are you so nice to me?”

  He didn’t look away. His gaze was as calm as morning, direct. “Because you seem like you could use a friend or two.”

  I bowed my head. “Oh.” I had hoped for a better answer, but that was silly. “I guess I do. Need a friend, that is. None of my friends at home are talking to me right now. I don’t know if they’ll talk to me when I get back, either.” The sadness that hit me out on the street returned. “And I feel so mixed up.”

  “I bet,” he said. “Sometimes I am, too.”

  “What are you mixed up about?”

  That sorrowful smile again. “You first.”

  I turned my can around and around in my hands. The smell of prunes came out of it. “I guess I kept thinking that I could just have the baby and then go back to my life and it would all be the same.” I waited a minute for the tears to go away, then said, “But I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen. At all. Like, I’m not going to be the same person I was.”

  He nodded.

  “I messed things up so much, you know? And now I don’t know how to fix them.”

  “Maybe that’s the wrong approach.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, what if it isn’t a big mistake? What if this is only something that happened, something that’s different from the things most of your friends are doing but not bad. Maybe it’s extraordinary, to help you become an extraordinary person.”

  A flare of hope burned through my mind. “I never thought of that.”

  He half smiled. “Does it feel better to think that way?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’d say go with it.”

  For a long minute I just looked at him, very aware of his hair shining in the light coming through the window, and the hollow of his throat, and his hands lying on his thighs. “Your turn,” I said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You said you feel mixed up sometimes. Or did you say that to make me feel better?”

  “No, it’s true,” he said, and picked up his can. He lifted his left hand to display the mangled fingers. “Last summer I lost these fingers in an accident. It was the most ordinary accident, an ordinary summer day. We tried to keep them, you know. Everybody put the pieces on ice, but we were way up in the mountains, and—” He shook his head, put his hand down. “It didn’t work out.”

  I nodded. “And that makes you feel mixed up?”

  “No.” He inclined his head, as if he was weighing how much to say. “The only thing I ever wanted in my whole life, from the time I was five years old, was to play guitar. I love music like a crazy man, and if I can’t play my guitar, I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself.”

  My heart ached for him. “Wow, that’s really hard. At least I’m pregnant for only nine months.”

  He chuckled, and there was such resonance in the sound that I found myself sitting straighter. “But like you said, it changes everything.”

  “Did you play guitar in a band or something?”

  “I just finished Berklee two years ago.”

  “That’s a good school?”

  His smile was soft. “Yeah. One of the best guitar schools in the country. Spent the winter touring with a band, and came home for the summer. And here I am, a year later, running the local record store.”

  I was so much younger than he was that it seemed there couldn’t be anything I could possibly say, but I couldn’t leave it at that. “Maybe it’s just like you told me, though. It’s something extraordinary.”

  He nodded, but sadly, as if he’d said that to himself before and hadn’t figured out how to believe it. “Maybe.” He started to say something, stopped.

  “
You can say it.”

  He leaned forward on the stool, propping himself on his palms, his elbows cocked outward. “Sometimes it feels like there’s no point. Why did I have that big dream, just to lose it in a single second?” He snapped his fingers. “Everything gone in the amount of time it takes to fill your lungs with air one time. Years of study and practice. Gone.”

  I looked at his right hand. Whole. He had made adjustments. “Can’t you play guitar with your other hand?”

  He went very still, and for a long minute he frowned at me. I worried that I’d said the wrong thing, and began, “I’m sorry. What do I—”

  Jonah put his finger to his lips. “Don’t apologize. My heart is pounding so hard I think you must be an angel talking for God.” There was something so fierce in the air, so strange and brilliant and wild, that I felt it dancing on my scalp and the nape of my neck and over my hands, which wanted to press themselves into his face. He wasn’t handsome. I could see that. He had a big nose and a broad forehead and a long throat with an Adam’s apple that was too prominent. It was a face I really liked anyway. The honey color of his eyes, his full bottom lip, the thoughtfulness over that high brow. He stared at me intently, and I could see he was thinking very hard about what I said.

  “Didn’t you ever think of that before?” I asked quietly.

  He shook his head. “No.” And then he smiled and took my hand. “Thank you, my friend.”

  The door swung open and in came my mother. I yanked my hand away instinctively, but she’d already seen. “What are you doing, young man?” she said, storming up to the counter. “Do you know how old she is?” Without stopping for an answer, she turned her fury in my direction. “What are you doing, Ramona? Didn’t you learn anything?”

  I stared at my mother in horror, my entire body frozen with surprise and humiliation. Jonah slowly came to his feet, a quizzical expression on his brow. Before he could say anything, my mother spewed out more of her fury.

  “Is there something wrong with you, Ramona? Are you—”

  “Lily!” Poppy shouted from the door, hurrying so much that she had to put a hand on her big chest to keep her breasts from bouncing too much. “Mind your tongue, or you’ll say something you don’t mean.”

  My heart pounded. “Too late,” I said, standing up. My face and my ears were burning, and my knees shook with humiliation. “Sorry,” I whispered to Jonah.

  He glanced at her, raising his good hand in a peaceful gesture, and said, “I think you misunderstood, Mother. We were only talking.” His mild, resonant voice brought a quiet into the room. “She’s just helped me figure out something important.”

  My mother looked as if she might cry. “Let’s go, Ramona. We have some shopping to do.”

  I glanced at Jonah. He gave me a single, nearly imperceptible nod. As I put down my Dr Pepper can and rounded the counter, it felt as if every bone in my spine was on fire; I could barely walk. I didn’t look at my mother, who put her hand on my back as if to hurry me out the door. I shook her off, shooting her the purest look of hatred I could muster. When we were outside, I said it, too. “I hate you.”

  Her chin came up and she marched down the sidewalk, stiff as a broom. “We will discuss it in the car.”

  “Oh!” I cried. “You can humiliate me to death, but I can’t embarrass you? Is that it?”

  “Ramona,” she said, in a deadly quiet voice, taking my arm in a firm, sharp grip that brooked no resistance. “Don’t make me slap you in front of all these people.”

  There was no stopping the tears then. They poured out of my eyes in a hot, steady stream, piling another humiliation onto the rest until I was pretty sure my heart would stop. It didn’t. Instead, my mother marched me down the sidewalk in front of the entire universe, my belly swaying back and forth, so obvious, tears on my face, my mother’s hand clutched hard around my upper arm.

  When we finally got to the car, I yanked free and flung myself onto the hot hood of the car, not caring that it burned my skin.

  “Ramona, stop it. You’re hysterical.” My mother touched me gently. “The world is not ending, baby. I promise.”

  “You don’t know. You just don’t know.”

  Poppy joined us. “Come on, sweetie, get in the car. Let’s go home and you can have a nap. Everything will look better when you get out of this hot sun.”

  “But I thought we were going to Denver! For my birthday!” I straightened, feeling my hair stick to my wet cheeks and neck. “I was only talking to him, Mom! And I only had sex one time. One time! It’s not like I’m having sex with every guy in the universe, ripping off my clothes if they just look at me!”

  “I know that, Ramona.” Her voice was completely calm, and she opened the door. “Get in the car. We’ll go back to Poppy’s and have a rest, then figure out the trip to Denver. Okay?”

  As quickly as it came, the fury drained out of me. I felt completely empty, exhausted. Like a doll, I fell into the backseat and covered my face with a sweater. In seconds, I was asleep.

  At Poppy’s, they took me upstairs. My mother set up a fan while Poppy washed my hot face with a cool cloth. I felt about three years old but had no energy to resist.

  I slept for a long time, cocooned by the oscillating fan, and dreamed Alice in Wonderland dreams—enchanted apples, and honey dripping from the trees, and bread rising with alarming steadfastness until a baby popped out, laughing.

  When I woke, I was starving and thirsty, and I could tell the afternoon was spent. I jumped up to see if my mother’s car was still there, but it was gone, which crushed me all over again. I slumped against the wall, tears leaking out of my eyes once more.

  But the urgent need to pee took over. I ran into the bathroom and peed like a big horse, on and on and on and on. My disappointment seemed to drain right out of me, and I felt as if I’d eaten that enchanted apple in my dream. My head was filled with gauzy splashes of color.

  Poppy was in the kitchen, drinking a glass of tea with floating mint. “Well, hello there, stranger!” she said.

  “Did my mom leave?”

  “She did, sweetie, but she will come back on Saturday. I think you needed sleep a lot more than you needed a trip to Denver.”

  I slumped in the chair. “I guess.”

  Poppy folded up her newspaper. “This gives you both a chance to calm down, too.”

  “She humiliated me.” I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes. “Completely.”

  For a long minute she didn’t say anything. I could hear the drip of water in the sink. “Even mothers have wounds, Ramona. Your mother—”

  “What?”

  Poppy inclined her head. “You must promise never to let her know that I told you.”

  “I promise. What, was she pregnant, too?”

  “Not until later, and you know about that already, little love child.” It was true—I knew that my mother had been pregnant with me when she married my dad. It was a romantic story.

  “What, then?”

  “Promise?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “You know those scars on her thigh? She says they’re a burn, right?”

  Something in me felt sick suddenly. “Yeah.”

  “Our mother found out she’d had sex and beat the holy hell out of her. She was fifteen, and it left a scar on her heart, too, baby. She was worried about you today. She’s been worried about you all year.”

  “Wait. My grandmother did that?”

  Poppy nodded. “I told you, she was a different person then.”

  My stomach felt upset. “That’s terrible.”

  “It was terrible, and you will hurt your mother if you let on that you know, okay?”

  “Okay. I promise.”

  “Don’t be mad at Adelaide, either. Her life was no sweet walk in the park, either.”

  I loved my grandmother. I didn’t want to be mad at her, but I would have to think about this. It was almost impossible to imagine her in such a fury that she would beat her d
aughter. “With a belt?”

  Poppy stood. “I bet you’re starving. How about a grilled cheese and a salad?”

  “That sounds good.” I rubbed my eyes, and the afternoon flooded back to me, erasing anything that happened to my mother a million years ago. “How am I ever going to look Jonah in the eye again?”

  “Well, it might not be much of an issue, because she doesn’t want you hanging out there.”

  “He’s just my friend.”

  “You’re really vulnerable right now,” she said. “And, honestly, sweetheart, so is he. Let it be.”

  I fell forward, dropping my forehead against my arms, tears flooding the space below. With misery, I asked, “Why can’t I stop crying today?”

  She came over and rubbed my back. “You’re pregnant, honey. It sometimes makes a person kind of crazy.” She gave me a paper towel, then pulled out the skillet and a loaf of hearty, grainy bread and the cheese I liked—Gouda, with a hard brown rind. She fixed the meal and I poured a giant glass of water to drink with it. When I demolished every crumb, Poppy said, “You know what I think would make you feel better? Bake some bread.”

  And for the first time all day, something like relief worked through my limbs. I nodded.

  She gave me a recipe and helped me gather the ingredients, then turned the radio to the station I liked. “I’m going to watch TV. Holler if you need anything.”

  In the purpling evening, with crickets whirring and the radio playing Top 40 songs, I started the bread. My thoughts fluttered around my brain like crazy moths, banging into one another, then flying away, and I let them. I didn’t chase a single one.

  Instead, I measured. I stirred. I gave the bread space to rise while I sat on the back porch with a barn cat, who leaped on crickets in the grass and then came over and sat on my foot, purring. Soft.

  Darkness fell. I went back in to knead the dough, and I could feel that the whirling insanity in my blood was slowing. I pressed the heel of my palm to the fold of the pale-brown speckled ball of dough, over and over, in a steady pattern that worked the stiffness out of my neck as it worked the stiffness out of the dough. Everything crazy drained away, and I was just me again. Ramona.