by Naomi Niles
Sam’s face broadened into a smile; she loved it when I got on my soapbox like this. Aunt Trish had made the mistake of giving me a copy of Walden to read when I was eleven, and I had never recovered. Before very long, I had acquired a reputation around middle school for being the girl who wanted other girls to be educated and think for themselves. “Nothing is more dangerous to the world,” I had said, “than a woman with a brain who isn’t afraid to use it.” My teachers had all loved me—my classmates, not so much.
“Anyway, sometimes it’s hard to keep my opinions to myself during work,” I told Sam. “Like when I see a guy trying to get the attention of a girl who has headphones on and clearly doesn’t want to talk. Or the times I’ve seen a mom being mean to her kids. But like you said, we’re running a business, not a crusade.”
“I usually just go home and vent all my rage to Twitter at the end of the day,” said Sam. “And you, of course.”
“I have to remind myself that there are always going to be people who are rude, and controlling, and sexist, and who have terrible opinions. There’s not much I can do about it during work hours, but as long as you’re here, I’ll bake you a pie and try to sell you on whatever book I’m reading at the moment.”
“I’ve been thinking we ought to get a bookshelf for the dining area.” Sam put on her gloves with a loud snap. “And maybe talk some of the local libraries into donating their used and discarded books. That was how I first ran across The Feminine Mystique: in a coffee shop I had ducked into to get out of the rain in Jersey.”
“Oof, you’re making me wish we had a bookshelf standing over there already.” I turned and stared into the corner where the shelf would presumably go. Already, I could picture kids gathered excitedly in front of it, fighting over the last copy of Frog and Toad Are Friends. There were few things that made me happier than the sight of kids reading. “And then maybe once a week we’ll bring someone in from the library to read to them.”
I was still making plans and pondering how we could get the libraries to contribute when the store opened at nine. We had an unusually boisterous crowd that morning. As if the sight of Old Joe pulling into the parking lot in his red Corvette wasn’t bad enough, he was soon joined by Alvin Barclay and Cheryl Cartwright, a woman in her fifties who gave tarot readings and was slightly batty. She had an obsession with prophecy and ghosts and was convinced that the spirits of the dead could talk to her.
“My dear woman!” she cried in a fervent tone, grabbing Sam by the arm as she walked by. “I perceive that you have lost something, something that was of great value to you.”
Sam shook her head. “Not recently, though if you find what’s left of my sanity, you’re welcome to return it.”
But Cheryl wasn’t going to admit defeat so easily. “When’s the last time you saw your purse? Are you sure it hasn’t been…stolen?”
“Unless you’re trying to tell me that you stole it, then no, it hasn’t,” she replied with unflappable calm. “It’s still sitting in the back office where I left it this morning, under lock and key.”
Cheryl sat down at the front counter with a resigned shrug. “I’ll have a raspberry muffin to start with,” she said in the same loud tone, still keeping an eye on Sam.
Old Joe, who had watched the altercation with a look of undisguised glee, turned to me and said, “It’s a lot of nonsense what the women get up to these days. Liberated from home and husband, woman will indulge her maddest instincts.”
“You best be careful, Joe,” I said in a warning voice. “Remember who you’re talking to.”
But Joe didn’t appear to be paying attention. “I can still remember the scandal Nancy Reagan caused when she brought an astrologer into the White House. Why does it seem like it’s always the woman who gets hoodwinked with Ouija boards and tarot cards and all this other flim-flammery? The man has more sense.”
“You obviously don’t know much about Abraham Lincoln,” said Sam. “He consulted with mediums before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.”
“And wasn’t it Arthur Conan Doyle who got tricked by a couple of teen girls who claimed they had photographic evidence of fairies?” I added. “Men get fooled all the time; you just never see it because you don’t want to.”
Old Joe’s ears turned slightly pink. It was clear he wanted to scold me for talking back, but he knew better than to do it in my own shop.
Fortunately for him, though, Alvin came to his rescue. “Joe’s right, though. These days it seems like half the town is obsessed with the occult. Just last night, I caught you in church reading a book about magic.”
“It wasn’t a book about magic; it was a book of myths,” I said in exasperation. “They are not remotely the same thing.”
“It’s because the spirits are restless,” said Cheryl in her spookiest voice. “There are dark times ahead for this country, and they know it. They’ve seen the portents. Those of us who are spiritually sensitive have all felt it: a great wave of fear and bigotry and hatred in which love will grow cold and a man’s enemies will be his next of kin.”
“Cheryl, people have been saying that for forever,” I pointed out.
“No, but she’s right,” said Alvin—words that I never thought I would hear from his mouth. “We’re heading into the last days, and things are only going to get worse and worse.”
Cheryl beamed, pleased to have found some support from the unlikeliest of allies. “Last night, I had a dream. I saw a geyser of blood erupting out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, rising and rising until it covered the tops of the Rockies. The whole country from the Jersey Shore to Big Sur was buried beneath it. No one was able to escape.”
I slid her plate across the counter. “And here is your muffin.”
I had hoped that eating might distract her, but in this, I was disappointed. She continued, “And you know who are going to be the leaders when the day of reckoning comes? The prophets. The mystics. The visionaries. And everyone who doubted us and everyone who made fun of us and laughed us to scorn will be looking to us for wisdom and protection.” She cast a beady eye on Sam as she said this. “Soon, even you will marvel at my foresight!”
Sam laughed lightly. “Cheryl, I doubt that.”
Just then, the front door was flung open, and Jamal came running into the room. “Sweetie, you left your wallet.” He flung a brown leather wallet across the counter toward Sam. “I found it this morning when I was cleaning up.”
“Aha!” Cheryl cried in a shrill voice of triumph. “You see!”
“Weird, I didn’t even know it was missing,” said Sam. She came out from behind the counter and gave Jamal a hug. “Sorry I can’t kiss you, but people are eating.”
“It’s okay, I’ll get kisses later,” said Jamal. “This is my planning period, and I need to hurry back before class starts.” Jamal taught eleventh grade English literature at the high school. “Where do you want to eat after work?”
“I’ll think about it and let you know.” Sam gave him another hug, this one longer than the last. “See you.”
With a trace of reluctance, Jamal turned around and left, casting a single glance back at Sam as he went.
The silence was interrupted by Old Joe.
“See, this is what happens when traditional gender roles are called into question,” he said in a tone of irritation. “You have a man running in here to deliver a girl her missing wallet. How humiliating for him! Might as well have brought you your purse while he was at it!”
“My purse is in the back office,” Sam said again, “and gender roles have got nothing to do with it. It was an act of kindness, the sort of thing people do when they love each other.”
Old Joe merely shook his head darkly. “Women wearing pants and men carrying women’s wallets. If General Sherman were alive to see what’s become of this country, he would weep!”
While they argued, I stood at the counter feeling increasingly perplexed. “I don’t—what does a man bringing a woman her wallet have to do with anyt
hing?”
“I think Old Joe thinks it’s emasculating,” said Sam as the door opened again, and a couple of young guys entered the store. “Like, he must feel like some kind of pansy for having to carry that thing.”
“Shame,” I replied. “What were you thinking, forcing him to treat you with respect?”
“Yep, that’s me, the destroyer of men’s masculinity.”
“Where does it end?” shouted Old Joe. “He’ll be buying your feminine products next!”
“Oh, Joe,” said Sam, hardly able to contain her laughter. “He already does.”
Chapter Five
Marshall
“How close were you to your grandmother growing up?” asked Sean as we stood together in the bakery lobby.
“Which grandmother?”
“Either of them.”
“Okay, because my dad’s mom lived in Florida, and I barely saw her. I was much closer to my mom’s mom.”
When I had gone out to the lumberyard that morning, I had found Mr. Wood sitting alone in his office playing solitaire with a deck missing one card. Sean was nowhere to be found. Mr. Wood said he was out trimming the elms at the edge of the property and asked if I would be participating in the tournament. I was still thinking over my answer when Sean came in carrying a twig in one hand (“I shaved one of the elms too close”) and asked if I would accompany him to the bakery. His grandmother was throwing a party that night—she would be turning sixty-five on Saturday—and he had ordered her a lemon-scented pull-apart coffee cake.
But when we got to the store, we found no one behind the counter. Figuring they must have stepped out for a moment, we stood at the front and waited.
“My mom’s mom lived on a ranch out in West Texas,” I said. “Me and my brothers spent so many summers there growing up. It could get really hot, but we didn’t care. We’d spend hours outside playing hide-and-seek and spraying each other with Super Soakers. Darren was always catching and trapping small animals—possums, lizards, toads, armadillos, you name it—while Curtis spent most of his time riding horses. As we got older, we would bring our girlfriends out there for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Mamaw was a fabulous baker in her own right, and during the holidays, the aroma of baked pies filled the whole house.”
“It sounds like your mamaw and my granny could have been friends,” said Sean. “Her peanut butter fudge brownies are still the best I’ve ever eaten, and she used to make a cake every Friday night up until a couple years ago when she had her stroke. That’s why I came here, because this place has a reputation for making excellent cakes. My parents always went the cheap route and bought the cruddy store-made cakes from the bakery section at Wal-Mart, the kind that taste like foam in your mouth.”
“Ugh, I hate those,” I said with a shudder. “I tried one once and swore never again. Mom would never let us eat them because she said they were filled with ‘unwholesome ingredients.’”
“Between your mom and mamaw, it sounds like you were raised right,” Sean replied. “Do you ever feel like you were born into the perfect family?”
Sometimes, it certainly felt like that. But before I could respond, the door leading into the hallway opened, and into the kitchen stepped the nerdiest-looking woman.
She was wearing a floral-patterned red and black silk shirt and a pair of faded, old blue jeans. A white-yellow apron hung loosely over her waist, tied in a double knot around her neck and covered in flour and batter. Traces of grape jelly formed purple stains around the edges. She wore a pair of black thick-rimmed glasses that reminded me irresistibly of a librarian. If she had come over and asked us to speak in our inside voices, it wouldn’t have seemed remotely out of place. She had braided her long blonde hair into a flower crown.
Strangely, my first impression was to wonder what she was doing in Summerville. Every intelligent person I had known in high school had escaped to the big cities the moment they were able. Perhaps she was a college student; she couldn’t have been any older than twenty.
As soon as she came through the door, Sean let out a low whistle. “Damn,” he murmured, just low enough that only I could hear it. I nudged him in the ribs—not because I thought there was any chance she might hear us, but because she wasn’t exactly a model. Physically, she was the opposite of what I liked in a woman: small-breasted and wide in the hips, not much taller than the counter she was standing behind. And the whole “schoolmarm/librarian” look did nothing for me. Maybe it was a different story when she took off her apron and glasses. But for now, it was hard to know what exactly Sean saw in her, unless he was whistling in sympathy.
Seeing us standing there, she stepped forward. “Can I help with you something?”
Sean spoke up, sounding oddly shy. “Yeah, I’m here to pick up a cake for my grandmother?”
“Name?”
“Wood.”
She turned and disappeared through the door again. As soon as she was gone, Sean let out a deep breath and clutched his sides.
“You know me,” he said, laughing. “I don’t usually get like that around women—but man, that girl is something else!”
I stared at him in confusion. “Are you under some kind of spell? What happened to my friend Sean?”
“Don’t know, but I can tell you where his heart is—it’s there in the back with that little gal back there. When’s the last time you saw a woman that looked like that?”
I was glad to say I didn’t see them often. “I don’t know if we’re looking at the same girl. Give me a woman who’s slender and leggy, tall enough that I can fold her under my chin and don’t have to bend down if I want to kiss her. A girl who wouldn’t look out of place onstage in a swimsuit, wearing a white sash with the name of her state on it.”
Sean glared at me as though I was insane, and for the first time, I began to wonder if I might be. “What you’re describing is passé,” he said. “It’s old hat. Guys don’t want to date supermodels anymore. Hell, even Playboy has started cashing in on the whole ‘girl-next-door’ trend. Flipping through one of its magazines now is like being on Instagram. And honestly, I kind of prefer it that way. I want the girls in my porn to look like they could be my neighbors. I want them to look like teachers and babysitters. That’s where the money’s at because I think guys have had enough of the spray-tanned, fake-boobed porn stars of yesteryear. The men of today crave something more natural and authentic.”
This was, by far, the strangest speech I had ever heard Sean give, and for a moment, I was forced to contemplate the horrible possibility that I didn’t know my friend as well as I thought I did.
There was, of course, one other possibility—that he was trolling me—but that hope was abruptly extinguished by what he said next.
“And THAT girl,” he concluded, pointing toward the back room in an emphatic gesture, “that girl DELIVERS!”
I couldn’t stand it anymore. Placing a hand on his forehead, I said, “Sean, are you okay?”
Sean glared at me in confusion, as if I was the crazy one. “Yeah, why?”
Just then, though, the door opened again, and the nerd-girl reappeared carrying the most magnificent-looking lemon pull-apart coffee cake.
“I’m actually kind of impressed we were able to get this done on time,” she said in a breathless rush, her face fervent and sweaty. “My sister and I have been swamped for the past week baking pies for the festival, and I haven’t been able to give the cakes the amount of attention I usually give them. I made an exception for this one because I love your grandmother.”
“Oh, do you know her?” asked Sean, sensing an opening for conversation.
“I do,” she said, smiling. “She comes in all the time to buy macarons and talk about cakes. She knows a lot about baking—I remember telling her jokingly that she should be behind the counter instead of me, because half the time I don’t have any idea what I’m doing, but I’m sure her cakes are lovely.”
“They are,” said Sean. “The cake she made me for my tenth birthday party is, t
o this day, the best cake I’ve ever eaten. Sweet Polish cherry cake with almonds in it—sometimes I still dream about that cake. What about you?”
“The best cake I’ve ever eaten?” She brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “The first year I lived with my aunt in Pittsburgh, she made me the most amazing ginger carrot cake with cream cheese frosting for my birthday. I had had such a miserable year, and I was having a hard time settling into my new home, but when she brought out that cake, I started bawling, I was so happy. Sometimes we’re so starved for love and affection that even the smallest act of kindness will send us over the edge, you know? It was just a small gesture, but I felt so loved.” She wiped a stray tear from her eye. “I’ve never forgotten it.”
We paid for the cake and left. On our way through the parking lot, Sean could barely contain himself. Motioning back toward the bakery, he said in a stage whisper, “What an intelligent and remarkable woman—kind, respectful, professional. You don’t meet girls like her every day.”
“Well, if you like her so much,” I said, “you should ask her out.”
But Sean shook his head emphatically. “Out… of… the question! A man like me is not fit to tread the ground she walks on. No, she awaits someone nobler—someone purer—someone who can give her all the things that I could never give.”
I paused at the car and turned to look back at the shop. Through the kitchen window, I could see the girl bent low pulling a pie out of the oven. Maybe it was Sean’s raving about her, or maybe it was the angle, but from out here, she didn’t look so bad. I supposed a man could get used to a face like that.
“Well, we had better get going,” said Sean, glaring at his phone. “My grandpa will not stop texting me.” With a final glance through the window, I climbed into the car, and we drove off.
