by Ellie Hall
“Really? This is what you call fun...and dinner?” She wrinkles her nose as she gazes at the box of macaroni and cheese then me sitting in silence with my book.
“I usually get take out.”
“Then read while you eat?” Her eyes flicker. “In all honesty, I do the same thing, but not if I have company. That’s rude.”
She flips my book over, cracking the spine, and says, “I’ll make the macaroni and you can entertain me.”
“Entertain you?”
“Yeah, tell me stories about the Ice Palace. Sounds fancy.”
“It was anything but.” I drum up a hooter about my fifteenth birthday. I’d made the team—youngest player ever. They made sure I didn’t forget it either with a slew of pranks that made me think I’d been passed over when really it was more of an initiation.
When the water in the pot rolls, Lottie pours the noodles in and stirs them just as the package instructs. I read the directions over her shoulder once more to be sure she hasn’t missed any steps.
“I know how to do this,” she says, elbowing me out of the way.
“Just checking. I’ve eaten my share of macaroni and cheese, but I’ve never made it. In my Manhattan apartment, I never bothered to get any pots or pans. The microwave was good enough.”
“That is so sad.”
I shrug then finish my high school hockey story, concluding with a hockey puck made out of chocolate that left brown smears on the ice...and being blamed for it.
All of the sudden, the fire alarm blares and lifts me from my chair. I turn off the burner, run to the sink, back to the stove, and back to the sink, not sure if we can save the pot or the contents. A plume of smoke rises from the charred paste that were once noodles.
My grandmother stands in the doorway with her hands on her hips. “First day home and you’re ready to burn the house down?”
“I’m sorry. I got distracted,” Lottie says, taking the fall.
Oma glares accusatorily at my book. “When cooking, no distractions,” she says in stern English as if to make it clear she doesn’t want the house to go up in flames.
I get a spoon to try to salvage dinner. She swipes it from me, douses the former-macaroni with water, and then with gnarled and knobby fingers works it free from the pot and into the trash.
I stand there, my hands at my sides, my stomach and face burning—hunger and embarrassment, respectively. It’s like I’m a fumbling teen again.
She nods dismissively then to Lottie she says, “You don’t know how to cook?”
“I can make macaroni, but, um, wasn’t paying attention. Your grandson is so engaging.” She gives me a Betty Boop wink.
Oma’s head slides back and forth. “A shame.” She gathers some containers from the fridge and sets to work, pouring, heating, stirring, and adding a dash of something all the while tsking and muttering to herself.
Lottie and I both sit at the table like Oma put us in time out. However, Lottie’s lips press flat like she swallows back laughter.
Ten minutes later, Oma sets bowls of steaming stew in front of us along with thin slices of brown bread.
“Thank you,” Lottie and I say in unison.
Oma’s lips form a thin line of disapproval.
I clear my throat. “I mean, paldies.” I correct myself in Latvian before taking a bite.
Memories of flavor return, bursting in my mouth. The soup is simple: carrots, potatoes, parsnip, celery, and meatballs, but all the same, my eyes mist at the faint image of my mother at the stove in the yellow kitchen in Europe.
“You like it?” Oma asks Lottie.
“It’s delicious. It tastes like something my mother makes.”
“No,” my grandmother replies sharply. “Not the way I make it.” She tears her bread in half with fingers like branches of a brittle tree. Through the liquid in my eyes, the amber ring she’s always worn gleams on her finger.
We finish the meal in silence like we so often did.
I clean up, Lottie feeds Magnolia, and Oma returns to her knitting, the TV silent now. After I’ve decrusted the pot I nearly ruined and say goodnight to Oma and Lottie, I cross to the hall, pausing at the photo of my mother and me only long enough to note a small vase of daisies, freshly picked.
A bed with crisp linens and just the right amount of warmth from a down comforter is a wonderful thing. But the sea breeze coming through the window and feathering across my skin is even better. The events of the previous days hurtle me across the miles and only stop at the ocean’s edge, where I was thinking about the past and present, about change and possibility—then Lottie proposed we have some fun.
As I turn thoughts over in my mind, her bright smile, quirky personality, and ability to look her unlucky status in the face and laugh causes something to bubble inside of me.
A creak comes from the hall. The ninth step? No, not loud enough. It came from the direction of the spare bedroom.
Wearing only drawstring pajama bottoms because getting a shirt on with this cast is a hassle I only attempt once a day, I creep out of my room.
Shouldn’t Magnolia be on guard?
Lottie stands in front of my door with her arm lifted as if ready to knock. Her hair is in its usual braided arrangement and she wears an adult-sized onesie with a rabbit with bows around its ears that says Funny Bunny.
“I packed in a rush and,” she lifts and lowers one shoulder, “I like to wear seasonal pajamas and it’s close to Easter.”
She’s too cute for her own good. “Oma said no hanky panky.”
In the low light, and at this late hour, it’s easier to slip into flirtation—a state we both tap in and out of.
Lottie nods. “Right but she didn’t say anything about having a whale of a time being off-limits.”
I cock my head in question. “A whale of a time? This isn’t the nineteen hundreds.”
“But we’re near the ocean. Let’s be footloose and fancy-free.” She rolls her eyes in the dim light and they sparkle. “I want us to have fun, you square.” She grabs my hand then looks me up and down, pausing around my midsection.
“Wow,” she loudly whispers.
I clutch the cast to my chest. “You know I broke my arm.”
“I didn’t know you had abs. Not like that.”
I glance down and my eyebrows bob. “Yeah. So?”
“Wow,” she breathes again and then shakes her head, causing a few wisps of her hair to come loose from the milkmaid braids. “You may want to grab a shirt or I might keep saying wow.”
I take her hand in mine and press it to my abs as heat rises to the surface—I can’t resist teasing her. I struggle between the old, carefree me and the reined in doctor.
She yelps and then pulls away as if she’s been shocked. “Ow,” she says.
My lips quirk. I put one arm in a sweatshirt and zip my broken arm in as she hovers on the stairs.
“Avoid the ninth step from the bottom,” I whisper shout.
“What step is that from the top? If you didn’t notice we’re going down.”
“I never thought about it that way. I got downstairs by going like—” I slide down the railing like I did every time I snuck out before I went to college—thanks to Oma keeping it polished. At the bottom, I gesture for Lottie to follow.
She hesitates.
“Come on. You said you wanted to have fun.”
Her cheeks puff on an exhale. “Good thing you’re a doctor in case I break my body. Here goes,” she says.
In a blink, she’s hurtling toward me. Not putting on the brakes, she collides into my chest. I just barely moved my arm out of the way.
“Sorry.”
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah, you and that wall of cement. Abs and pecs.” She points.
“My pectoralis major muscles?”
“Yes, Dr. Koenig. I’m talking about your man meat.” At that, she bursts into giggles. “Sorry. I was channeling my friend Hazel. She’d totally say something like that.”
Taking me by the hand, she hurries us toward the door.
“Where are we going?”
She doesn’t answer as we streak across the lawn and into an open space where the stars twinkle overhead.
“Living in New York, I rarely get to see that when I look up.”
Under the dome of the sky, I start to follow her gaze and then pause at the sight of her chin tipped up, her lips gently parted, and her eyes reflecting the starlight. Something tugs inside. It tightens, wrapping like a ribbon around my heart.
An obscure word comes to mind nodus tollens. This is what it means when my favorite authors pull a plot twist. When nothing makes sense anymore, big change happens. The stories I’ve told myself hush, making way for a new one, much like Lottie said earlier about starting a new chapter.
Bathed in the soft light of the crescent moon, she’s so beautiful that my breath catches. I lift my hand and cup her cheek and trace my thumb over the scar. I want to tell her how stunning she is but words flee.
Her eyes meet mine. My pulse throbs. This is an unexpectedly bigger moment and goes deeper than anything I could express in English or Latvian. Does she feel it too?
She stacks her hand on top of mine and shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I want to tell her that it’s okay. She doesn’t have to. Instead, I say, “You’re a special cupcake.”
She smiles against my hand and her eyes twinkle.
The next morning, I wake to Oma and Lottie in the kitchen. “A girl should know how to make a proper meal. When I was your age, I had to help feed seven. On what? Little more than water, cabbage, and soft potatoes. You are very lucky. We do not take the good fortune of abundance for granted.”
Lottie nods dutifully, casting an SOS in my direction.
“You said you wanted to have fun.” I pour a cup of coffee.
She casts me a dark look in response.
I forgot Oma is a morning person. Maybe Lottie is not.
“We will make pīrāgī. Little bacon pies. You will help too, mazdēls.”
“That means pierogi and grandson, respectively,” I translate and get to my feet.
As if we came here to learn how to cook and not acquaint my grandmother with her new dog, she says, “Roll up your sleeves. Take out the milk, eggs, yogurt, and butter.” She continues to instruct us on how to make the dough, getting the water to the right temperature for the yeast, and measuring the flour precisely.
With only one hand, I knead for what seems like a year. While the dough rises, from her perch at the table and with a second cup of tea, Oma tells us how to prepare the filling. “The caraway is to taste. Shake in as much as you like.”
I open the container and the smell transports me to an afternoon when I spilled a small bag of seeds all over the kitchen floor and my mother scolded me. The memory stings.
Oma nods approvingly like we’re doing a good job, but Lottie has flour in her hair. Her very presence smooths over the rough edges of memory. I move to wipe the flour away, but she swipes a dollop of butter on my nose. I’m about to lunge playfully at her with a puff of flour when Oma sternly clears her throat.
We exchange a stolen glance, swap a smile.
“Right. Back to work,” I mutter.
My stomach growls as I roll out the dough, cutting perfect circles using an aluminum ring. Oma watches smugly while we fill and then struggle to shape each circle into a crescent, attempting to seal the seam so the filling doesn’t leak out.
She grunts me out of the way, demonstrating with her arthritic, practiced hands exactly how to pinch and curve the dough into little arcs. “Try again. Like a crescent moon. Like in the sky last night.” It’s an order, not an invitation. Maybe even an accusation.
Lottie’s gaze slides to mine.
Are we getting away with something or does Oma know we snuck out?
I fight off a smirk and the laughter that simmers below the surface.
“Mine looks like a pale, lumpy sausage,” Lottie says.
The dam breaks. I howl with laughter.
With a disapproving shake of her head, Oma says, “When you’re done, put them in the oven for twenty-five minutes, not a second longer. And this time, don’t get distracted.” Then she leaves the room.
Lottie works beside me and pieces of her hair tickle my arm. I haven’t laughed this much in years. I set my finished tray by the oven.
“Look at you, hotshot. You’re already done.”
“I’ve done this before. Not very well, but often enough.”
“And yet you hardly know how to make macaroni and cheese.” She shakes her head like I’m hopeless.
“You’re the one who burned the pot.”
“I can bake, but I never said I could cook...or whatever this is. Also, I’m probably breaking a health code with my hair down. I never wear it down. I’m surprised Oma didn’t chew me out. But my hands are all goopy and I still have five to go. Could you take that scrunchie off my wrist and pull my hair back, please?”
“Scrunchie?” I ask.
“Yeah. The elastic covered with fabric.” She juts her dough covered hand to her slender wrist.
Like skating laps around the rink, my pulse races as my fingers graze her skin and then smooth along her scalp as I gather her soft hair. I might need to recline, breathe into a paper bag, or pull out the defibrillator.
“Good job, Dr. Koenig.” She smirks. “Now, please help me make these crescent moons.” She winks.
“Do you think she knows we snuck out?” I rasp.
Lottie giggles. “That’s the fun of it.” She hip checks me before returning to her task.
Warmth travels through me that has nothing to do with the oven or the sun outside.
“By the way, I like your hair in braids, but I also like it down.” This time, I wink.
While I start to tidy up, the sweet and savory scent of the buttery, bacony pīrāgī fills the air, transporting me solidly back to the yellow kitchen in Latvia, again I try to force away the liquid memories.
Lottie pops the trays in the oven and smiles at me. “Spring break fun, here we come.” She takes the container of flour out of my hands and calls, “Oma, it’s my turn to teach you how to make dessert,” she calls.
Somewhere between Latvia and here, I constructed a little village in my heart, a safe and quiet place to live. The roofs cave in. The walls crumble. Glass shatters.
That one look from a woman still wearing an adult-sized onesie with a funny bunny on the front and the declaration that she’s going to teach my grouchy grandmother how to bake makes me wonder where home is now.
Live Free and Bake
Lottie
While standing under the stars last night, I realized something important about living with bad luck for so long—at this point, I have very little to lose. I don’t want to tempt fate, but what’s the worst that could happen?
I step in a dog turd? Been there. Done that.
I get lost and wind up in New Hampshire instead of New Jersey? Live free or die as the state motto says.
I earn the wrath of a crabby old woman? Doesn’t sound like spring break kind of fun, but I have a feeling my charm, if not my lack of fluency in Latvian, will win her over.
If the way Rusty looked at me last night is any measure, my cupcakes worked their sweet, fluffy magic on him. His ice-blue eyes, gazing at me sent swoops through my belly, unlike anything I ever felt. If he were a cardiac doctor, I’d have had him check my heart health.
The little glances we’ve exchanged, the smiles, the mini laughs aren’t a full-blown party. Not yet. But it’s better than the serious and aloof guy I met at the blood bank.
Oma is not enthusiastic about our visit, the cupcakes, or Magnolia, or anything other than sitting in her chair and knitting. I’d encourage her to join us on our spring break escapades, but when I mention taking the dog on a walk, she closes her eyes.
Rusty meant well by reaching out to Home-Hunds, but because he hadn’t visited in so long
, I don’t think he realized she’d slowed down a beat. I don’t blame her. Check back with me in forty years, and we’ll see if I have this kind of energy or if I’m content sitting and knitting.
Stuffing some pierogis and cupcakes in a bag I find in the kitchen, I add a couple of cans of raspberry-flavored sparkling water and some napkins.
“Dr. Koenig, you and I have an appointment with the beach. Wear shorts and sunscreen. Shirt optional.”
“Am I going to have to contact Tim in HR? That hardly sounds professional.”
I poke him in the stomach, practically breaking my finger. Even though they’re hidden, that package of perfectly sculpted muscles was tattooed on my brain. I can’t unsee those abs. It’s hard to believe he hides them under his starched shirts—an injustice to humanity, really.
“Fine, Rusty. You. Me. Magnolia. Beach.”
I sigh as he heads upstairs to get ready. Magnolia doggy sighs.
Here’s the thing about my relationship with dogs. I don’t dare get close. Not necessarily because I’m afraid of being attacked. That’s not exactly what happened all those years ago. Rather, I’m afraid of getting attached...getting let down.
There is only one letter difference between attacked and attached and it changes everything. Huck and I were best friends. He was always there. But then everything went sideways, including the knife.
My finger brushes my cheek where Rusty traced the line of the scar.
He appears in the hall and takes Magnolia by the leash. Relief washes through me. I’m failing at helping this animal bond...with everyone but Rusty and me.
“Ready?” he asks.
He wears a hockey T-shirt and loose-fitting board shorts. No chicken legs there.
The excitement for our picnic faded while I stood in the kitchen of the lonely house, recalling my own isolation. But I started us on this silly quest for spring break fun and I have to see it through.
The tension in Magnolia’s gate suggests she wants to run so I start at a trot and we don’t stop until we reach the shoreline. The tide isn’t as low as yesterday. We scramble over the rocks, and I leave my flip-flops in the sand, walking in the water as deep as my shorts allow without getting wet. I want to dive in and let the past wash away and let the tide carry it out to sea. It’s a constant, big, blue, ceaseless mass of ebbing and flowing. But the depth of the tide, the hue, the size of the waves are ever changing.
