The Late Bloomers' Club

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The Late Bloomers' Club Page 9

by Louise Miller


  “Just like Peggy’s.”

  Max smiled in a satisfied way and took a long sip of the scotch.

  “I forgot you don’t eat animal products. Does it bother you to bake with them?”

  “I’m not into imposing my own choices on others. It’s cool. I’ve had some great vegan cakes.” He looked at me sideways. “But if I’m speaking strictly as a baker, nothing beats eggs and butter and sour cream.”

  I ate the piece I had cut for him, and then half of a third slice. I switched to milk but Max kept drinking scotch, which didn’t seem to be rushing to his head the way it had to mine.

  “I’ve filled Walt’s sheet cake and given it a crumb coat. I’ll finish decorating it tonight.”

  “You’ve given the cake a what?” I ran an index finger over my plate, coating it with just enough frosting that the crumbs left on the plate would stick to it.

  “A crumb coat,” Max said, picking up the abandoned half-slice of cake and dropping it onto my plate. “You put a thin layer of frosting on the cake and let it set to hold in the crumbs, so when you go to frost the final layer everything looks smooth and clean.”

  “So a crumb coat is like Spanx for cakes,” I offered, looking down at my cake-bloated belly. I pushed aside the last piece of cake.

  Max laughed. “More like a pair of stockings.”

  “We could all use a little smoothing over to look good.” I ran my hands over my face.

  “I don’t know.” Max reached his arm across the table for the saltshaker. “I’ve always been attracted to people’s imperfections.”

  I laughed. “Like what?”

  “Like Charlie’s eyebrows, how they don’t grow in one direction. Or the scar on Fern’s forehead.”

  “Her dad dropped her when she was a baby.”

  “Or the way that developer’s ears stick out—”

  “And they are always burning red,” I offered.

  “Yes, exactly. And your sister’s teeth. I fell in love with her the minute I saw her overbite. And the way those two little teeth on the bottom lean toward each other.”

  You’re in love with my sister, I wanted to say. Instead I asked, “Doesn’t that just mean someone couldn’t afford an orthodontist?”

  “It means they’re human.” Max shrugged. “I’m more interested in what a person thinks and feels anyway, but if we have to look like something, which we do, I’d rather look at someone whose face shows they’ve lived a little. That they’ve struggled a little. The people who look super smooth, they look . . .”

  “Creepy.”

  Max laughed. “Sometimes. I always wonder what they’re trying to hide. We’re all suffering. I guess I just relate to people who are willing to share more of themselves. A lot of pain in the world could be alleviated if we could all admit when we’re having a hard time.”

  “I’m having a hard time,” I said. The words were out of my mouth before I realized how much I meant them.

  “I am, too,” Max said, in a voice that conveyed that he was totally okay with having a hard time, and I was grateful for both his honesty and his comfort with it. He would make an excellent brother-in-law. I hoped Kit would make this one stick.

  “Do you think I could drop the cake off at the diner tomorrow? I don’t know how Peggy managed to store anything. There isn’t an inch of space in the fridge.” Max lifted his arms over his head and stretched side to side, like he was in a yoga class. His T-shirt rose up over his pale belly, revealing lines of black ink.

  “Sure, anytime. There’s tons of space in the walk-in.” I grabbed our dirty plates and brought them over to the sink. Peggy didn’t have a dishwasher, just an old enamel, two-basin sink with a built-in drainer. I plugged up the basin to the left, squirted it with soap, and ran the hot water. “I can’t thank you enough for baking these cakes,” I said over the sound of the water running. “I’d hate to disappoint so many people.”

  “You wouldn’t disappoint them.” Max appeared beside me. He moved the faucet to his side of the sink and adjusted the water temperature. I handed him a sudsy plate.

  “I really wasn’t exaggerating about my lack of skills in the kitchen,” I said, trying to get the sponge into the crevices of the hand-mixer beaters.

  “Nonsense.” Max took the beaters out of my hand and shook them vigorously back and forth under the soapy water. “You’re an artist, right?”

  “I’m, um, no.” I was a business owner. I was a sister. I was a friend. I was a divorcée. I was a gardener. I was a finder of lost dogs. “Where did you get that idea?”

  “Kit showed me some of the pictures on your phone.”

  I felt simultaneously horrified and pleased. The pictures were private. Not in a sexy way. They were just pictures of things I found beautiful. I had the suspicion that they said something about me that I wasn’t aware of, and that I may not want to reveal. But this wasn’t something that Kit or Max, who seemed to live so freely, would understand. I kept washing the dishes. “They’re just snapshots.”

  “Not snapshots. They’re so . . . deeply observed. I love that one of the half-eaten donut on the plate—you made me really see it.”

  I peeked up at him to see if he was teasing me, but he looked quite serious. The picture he was talking about was of a honey-glazed donut left on a pink Fiestaware plate. The light was hitting the glaze in a way that made me feel tender toward it.

  “Baking asks the same thing. If you pay attention to the ingredients, to the process—to the textures, just like you do in your photography—then everything comes out perfectly. I think you could be an excellent cake baker.” He smiled down at me. “You might take to it,” he said, poking me in the arm.

  “I doubt it.”

  “You never know. You might fall in love with it.”

  “I don’t really have that much free time, with the diner, and looking for Freckles—”

  “I can see it now.” Max held his hands up in the air as if he were praying to an ancient god. “After one bite of your cakes, the fine people of Guthrie will crown you ‘Nora the cake lady’!” Max held his hands to his mouth and made the whirring sound of a crowd cheering. “Nora! Nora! Nora!”

  “Stop it. You’re making fun of me.”

  “I’m not. I’m serious.”

  I felt a prickle of irritation bite at the edge of my mood. “Nora the cake lady” sounded close to Saint Nora and it bothered me that Kit could have given Max an impression of me that wasn’t true. “What makes you think I want to be Nora the cake lady?” I asked, wishing that the words sounded as breezy as they had in my head.

  “Why not? It’s an honorable thing to do. Being a part of your neighbors’ celebrations. Making people happy.” Max shrugged. “I loved being a baker. It was the only job I ever had where I felt satisfied at the end of every day.” He waved toward the disaster of ingredients that covered every flat surface of the kitchen. “Pay attention, follow the directions, use good ingredients, practice technique, share with friends, and voila! Happiness abounds!”

  I laughed and handed him the soapy mixing bowl I had been scrubbing.

  “And besides, if you do become Nora the cake lady, I’d be grateful for the help. If Kit casts her actresses as fast as she thinks she will, we could start shooting in the next couple of weeks.”

  “Oh.” Max, without any obligation to me, or my sister, or the town, had offered to give us so much of his time and talent. I should have thought to offer to help from the beginning. “How many cakes are there?”

  Max stepped away from the sink and returned with Peggy’s red leather datebook. “Sixty-seven. We’ve confirmed almost all of them,” he said, flipping the pages, “all except for one, but it’s a strange one.”

  “Strange how?” I grabbed a dish towel hanging on a peg and wiped my hands.

  Max leaned against the counter, opening the book to this week. “L
ook.” His finger pointed to an entry on Friday, August 11. It read Friday—LC—bsc/mi.

  “That’s tomorrow. They haven’t called? I’ve posted notices on the Front Porch Forum several times, and I hung a sign up by the cash register. Must be an old-timer who isn’t online.” LC. The first name that came to mind was Linda Cohen, the hairdresser who owned Locks by Linda over in St. Johnsbury. I made a mental note to call her when I got home.

  “And look.” Max flipped the page over and pointed to the following Friday, and then the next. Friday—LC—bsc/mi. “Same initials, same cake. It must be a standing order, every week.”

  “That is strange. Who would want the same cake every week? Maybe it’s a church or something, and not a person. Someplace that has a weekly meeting.” I turned the initials over in my head. “And no one has called?”

  “Not yet. I’ll wait until I get confirmation before I bake one. But if we don’t hear, I thought maybe we could make one sometime and then run it as a special at the diner. What do you think?” Max shrugged. “‘Homemade Desserts’ and all,” he teased.

  “Not nice,” I said, plucking the datebook out of his hands. “Have you figured out what cake it is?” Max had become an expert in deciphering Peggy’s codes and matching the orders up to her recipes. He had had a 100 percent success rate to date.

  Max stood up straight. “I think so. And I’m dying to try it.” He reached for Peggy’s recipe tin and flipped through until he found the card he was looking for. It was greasy and worn and covered in little brown flecks. “Burnt sugar cake with maple icing.” Max sighed. “That sounds delicious.”

  I leaned against the sink and smiled. “That’s an old one. You don’t see those cakes around much anymore, except occasionally at a bake sale. Mom always baked it in a Bundt pan. It was our dad’s favorite.”

  “Then you’ll have to help me make it. I’ve never had one. You can be the official taster, and I can teach you the basics of Cake Baking 101.”

  My mom wouldn’t even let me in the kitchen when she was baking. She said I’d make her bread dough sag in the middle if I got too close. “I’m not making any promises,” I said. “But I’ll try.”

  “That’s all a man can ask,” Max said, tipping an invisible hat.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I came home from work the next day, my arms full of groceries from White’s, to find Kit on my living room rug surrounded by sheets of paper, some stacked in piles, some sprawled across the floor. Industrial-sounding music was blaring from the stereo. The couch had been pushed against the windows, and she was leaning against it, eyeglasses propped up on her head, wrestling with a dull three-hole punch I hadn’t seen since my mother was alive. There were tiny paper circles everywhere, as though ticker tape had been released from the ceiling in celebration. Only Kit did not look to be in a celebratory mood.

  “Would you believe the copy store doesn’t bind things? What’s the point of a copy store if it doesn’t bind?” Kit jammed a too-thick pile of paper into the hole punch and squeezed with both hands.

  “Um, to copy things?” I dropped the grocery bags in front of the stereo so I could turn down the volume. I kept turning until my temples stopped throbbing.

  Kit looked up at me, her face stony. She held up a brass paper fastener. “Those fasteners that no one has seen since His Girl Friday were the only option they could offer to hold the script pages together.” She tossed the fastener on the ground and returned to punching. “This is going to take me all night.”

  I picked up one of the copies of the script. Side Work—screenplay by Kit Huckleberry was typed in the center in big bold letters. “Side Work.” I flipped to a random page. “Is it about a person with several jobs?”

  “In a way,” she said as she snatched it out of my hands.

  “Ow.” One of the sheets sliced my index finger. I popped it into my mouth to catch the blood.

  Kit’s face softened. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be so grabby. It’s just that it’s not finished yet. I’m not ready for anyone to read it.”

  “Then why the copies?” I waved my uninjured hand at the papers littering the floor.

  Kit gathered the fastened scripts closer to her. “These full scripts are just for Max and me. I’m putting together packets of a couple of scenes for the callbacks.” Kit waved a stack of thinner packets. “I’m not ready for feedback. I’ll probably have to do rewrites, depending on who we cast and what they can handle.”

  “Isn’t there something I could do to help?” Suddenly we were five and twelve again, and Kit wouldn’t let me have a role in the tap dance number she was putting on for the Cabin Fever Reliever. Despite being the little sister, she was always the director and I was always in charge of craft services.

  “Nope. We’re fine. I just need some privacy during this part of the process.” Kit returned her attention to the task at hand.

  I picked up the groceries and stepped over Kit’s legs to reach the kitchen. The sink was full of dirty dishes. I felt my shoulders creep up toward my ears. There were toast crumbs all over the counter. A half-full jelly jar sat open with a butter-slicked knife stuck in it. It was funny—I could look at people’s half-eaten food all day long, but there was something about food-crusted plates in my own home that made my skin crawl.

  “Kit,” I said, my voice tight.

  “I know, I’m sorry, I’ll get to it in a minute,” she said, chewing the words out around a red pen cap. She drew large sweeping strokes of the pen across one of the pages of the script.

  I placed one of my mom’s old Dutch ovens on the stove top, filled the pot halfway with water, tossed in a cup of rice and a pound of diced chicken thighs, and turned the flame on high.

  “What are you doing?” Kit asked.

  “Cooking,” I said, stirring the pot with a wooden spoon.

  “You don’t cook,” she said, and turned her attention back to her packets.

  “It’s for Freckles.” He had been eating God knows what. His stomach must be upset. I had read online that the best thing for a sick dog was chicken and rice. I planned on setting it out on Peggy’s porch, and waiting to see if Freckles came around.

  I wordlessly tiptoed over the stacks of papers and pushed into my bedroom. There I found Max, shirtless in black jeans, sitting cross-legged on my bed, eyes closed, palms open and resting on his thighs.

  “Oh,” I said, unable to not look at him. His chest and upper arms were covered in tattoos. They all seemed to be of Hollywood film stars of the thirties and forties. “Um, is that Barbara Stanwyck?” I said, trying and totally failing to sound nonchalant.

  Max peered up at me and smiled. “It is. Good eye.” He untangled his legs and slid off the bed, then turned around slowly, like a model on the Home Shopping Network. “Stanwyck, Bacall,” he lifted his arm, “Lupino, Bergman.” He looked over his shoulder and twisted his arm to point. “And back here we have Rogers, Lake, Harlow, and of course, Jean Arthur.” Max turned back to face me. “I regret having put her on my back. She’s my favorite and I never get to see her.”

  I nodded my head as if I thought this was something I, too, would regret, but really I was just trying to look casual, like it was perfectly normal to be talking to a half-dressed man in my bedroom. The truth was, I hadn’t been alone in my bedroom chatting with a half-dressed man since Sean left. And I had known Sean since we were playing four square at recess, so there was never a feeling of unease around him. Even though I was clear about the fact that I never wanted to kiss Sean LaPlante again, I couldn’t imagine kissing anyone else. Well, I could imagine it, but I wasn’t entirely sure I knew how to kiss someone else. It felt a lot like being a forty-two-year-old virgin.

  “She’s so spunky,” he continued, unfazed by my obvious discomfort.

  I pointed at my nightstand. “I was just coming in to grab my book.”

  “Sorry to invade your space. I haven’t had a c
hance to meditate in weeks.” Max stepped to the side, so I had just enough room to squeeze by him. When I stole a glance I was eye to eye with Myrna Loy. I grabbed the paperback and darted for the door.

  “No trouble. Take your time. I’m headed out anyway.”

  “Anything fun?” he asked as he pulled the T-shirt on.

  “To the tavern with Fern,” I lied. I would text her as soon as I got to the car. I needed a drink. “You two have a fun night,” I said, backing out of the room.

  Max’s eyebrows shot up as if in question, but his lips parted, revealing his white teeth, and he gave me a smile that could light up a theater marquee. “Burnt sugar cake. I’m getting psyched. We need to make a plan. Don’t forget.”

  “Burnt sugar cake. Maple icing.”

  I told Kit to turn the pot off in a half hour, and then bolted out the door.

  * * *

  The Guthrie town hall is a converted Gothic church building, complete with a functioning belfry. The bell was rung only on special occasions—Guthrie Day, midnight of the New Year, and the day that the sap starts running, to announce the beginning of sugaring season. A white sign that read GUTHRIE TOWN HALL in black painted letters hung over the large wooden door. The building always looked fresh, since the town manager hired teenagers to paint one side of the white clapboard building every summer, which gave it a complete paint job every four years. Rounded windows punctuated the walls, filling the hall with light and air.

  After too many nights spent in my tiny apartment, which Kit and Max had turned into the Baker’s Dozen Productions headquarters, I was happy to attend the town meeting. By 5:30 the parking lot of the town hall was filled to capacity. Cars were parked along the side of the road for what looked like miles. I hadn’t seen this many cars since the Coventry County Fair had featured a western swing band as its big Saturday night headliner.

  I parked the car on the shoulder and climbed out, Kit and Max trailing a few steps behind me. “If we don’t get a move on, we’ll have to stand in the back.”

 

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