The Late Bloomers' Club

by Louise Miller

  I snorted. “Kit Huckleberry is not in need of my approval.”

  “Of course she is. You’re her sister, Nora. She looks up to you.”

  Kit, who ran off to join a feminist burlesque dance troupe the summer she was seventeen. Kit, who made traveling to Nepal look like a trip to the White Market. Kit, who had made it through her first thirty-four years without ever having a full-time job. “I have a hard time believing she looks up to me when my life is so—it’s the opposite of everything that she has ever wanted.”

  “I don’t think you have to want the same things to admire someone. And I know she admires you. You’re the reason she’s a screenwriter.”

  “She’s a screenwriter because I run the family diner?”

  “She’s a screenwriter because she wants to be able to see the world the way you do. It’s her way of paying attention. Some people meditate, some people take walks, she writes and directs. You take photos. And she said you used to paint?”

  What he didn’t know was that the pictures I took were studies for future paintings, for when I started again. If I started again. “That was a long time ago.”

  “It’ll be there when you feel like it. That’s been my experience, anyway. Everything has a way of cycling back. Like baking cakes—when I left the Zen center, I didn’t think I would have a chance to bake again. And look what I’m doing right now.” Max dunked a spoon into the maple syrup, inspected the round back to see how thick the liquid had become, then turned off the flame. “Do you mind if I ask why you feel stoppable?”

  “Because I’ve—stopped?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s more like I’ve never begun.” I leaned against the kitchen counter. “Look around, Max. I’m forty-two. I’ve lived in Guthrie my whole life. I run my dad’s dream business. I live in an apartment complex for the elderly where I can’t even keep a cat due to the lease, and my marriage failed. I went from taking care of my mom, to taking care of Kit, to taking care of the diner, and then taking care of my husband, and then my father. I feel like I haven’t started my life.”

  “And why did you do all of those things?”

  Why did I take care of my sister, and my mom, and my dad? Why did anyone do anything? “Because it was the right thing to do.”

  “Come here for a sec. Time to make the burnt sugar.” Max put a cup of sugar in a deep saucepan and turned the flame on high. “First rule of caramel—never stir the caramelizing sugar—it can form sugar crystals, which chunk up and make the caramel grainy.” As the sugar began to melt around the edges, he swirled the pan. “Second rule—never walk away from caramelizing sugar. It takes forever to reach temperature, but it can turn into a smoky, burning mass in a matter of seconds.” He moved me by the shoulders so I was standing in front of the pot. “Third rule—do not touch the sugar, ever. It’s like napalm. It will adhere to your skin and burn. Promise me you won’t touch it.”

  “I promise.”

  “Okay, then. Tell me when it starts to brown.” Max unwrapped a stick of butter, pinched off pieces, and tossed them into the bowl of Peggy’s stand mixer. “So what would you do if you could do anything? If your life started right now?”

  “No one’s ever asked me that before. I don’t really know.” It’s not like I hadn’t thought about it. I spent hours at the diner wrapping silverware in napkins dreaming about what my life would have been like if I had been an ounce like Kit. If I had had her courage and her focus. Her talent, her clarity. Her determination. But I wasn’t Kit. And, being Nora, I didn’t know what I would do, so I did nothing. I said none of this to Max. It was one thing to admit that I felt like I hadn’t started my life. It was another thing entirely to admit I felt I never would. “It’s browning.”

  Max walked over to the stove. “Swirl it carefully! That’s it!” He turned off the flame. “Now we have to stop it from cooking—I should have set this up first. Mise en place, remember.” He reached into the cabinet, pulled out another bowl, and filled it with cold water. He set the caramel pan right into the water bath. It steamed and hissed angrily. He pulled it out again and set it back on the stove. “We’ll have to cool it a bit before mixing it into the cake or we’ll scramble the eggs.” He tossed the measured cup of sugar on top of the butter and set the mixer whirling. “Did Kit tell you I went to Harvard?”

  “You went to Harvard? Undergrad or graduate school?”

  “Both, actually. I was a philosophy major as an undergrad, and I went to the law school.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, trying and failing to stifle a giggle. “I cannot imagine you as a lawyer.”

  “Right?” Max said as he turned off the mixer. With a plastic spatula he scraped the butter and sugar off the edges of the bowl. “I couldn’t, either. My dad wanted me to be a lawyer.” Max pointed the buttery spatula at me. “He was a bricklayer. His dad was, too. He wanted more for his kids.” Max swiped a bit of the butter and sugar mixture with his hand and licked it off his finger. “So he worked overtime and made patios for people out in the suburbs on his days off and never took a vacation.”

  “That’s really sweet,” I said, thinking of how hard both my parents worked so that Kit and I could have a happy childhood.

  “It was. It was incredibly generous of him. The problem was I hated law school. Hated everything about it. I knew I should be grateful—here I was, in a prestigious school, working with my mind, not my hands.” Max held his hands out. They were bony and one of his ring fingers was bent at a funny angle. “Every day I felt as if I were one step closer to living this life I didn’t want. I tried talking to my dad about it, but he wouldn’t listen. So I went to see my meditation teacher, and I explained how miserable I was, but that leaving school would break my dad’s heart.” Max added an egg yolk to the mixture. “You want to add these one at a time, so it emulsifies, or the whole thing kind of refuses to come together.” Max stopped the mixer and handed me the spatula. “Here, scrape everything down. You can never do that enough.”

  I pushed the golden yellow batter down to the bottom of the bowl. It looked fluffy and pale, as if it had transcended the original ingredients and had become something new entirely.

  “And you know how my teacher responded? He just shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Okay.’ When I pressed him for more—I mean, none of it felt okay—he said, ‘Sometimes you have to be the person that makes someone unhappy.’ That was it. No big deal.” Max shook his head like he was hearing this advice for the first time, his shaggy brown hair drifting into his face. “My mind was blown. It was as if someone had just given me permission to be a human being.”

  “I don’t know exactly what you mean,” I said, resifting the flour. “Aren’t Buddhists supposed to not cause suffering? Or is that just doctors?”

  “That’s exactly it! I was trying to be good, but by dividing things, actions, feelings into good and bad, I was just creating more pain.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I dropped out, and headed west. That’s when I entered the Zen center.”

  “And was your dad upset?”

  “Oh, yes. We didn’t talk for several years.”

  “So letting your dad down did cause your dad more pain, right?”

  “But the question is, is that wrong?” Max held his arms up over his head. The spatula in his hand dripped butter, sugar, and egg onto his arm. “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. That’s Rumi. He was a Sufi, not a Buddhist.” Max scraped the batter off of his arm and plopped it back into the mixer. “I’m just saying, you’ve done a lot of doing what you think is right. Which is great. No judgment. But now you know what that looks like. Maybe it’s time for another option.” Max dipped a finger into the caramelized sugar. “Perfect. It’s cool enough. Let’s get this bad boy in the oven.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Charlie and Fern were hunched
over one end of the counter. When I went to see what they were up to, I found them hot-glue gunning yellow pom-poms onto green aprons to make them look like giant ears of corn—their uniforms for the Corn and Tomato Festival.

  “Did you finish the corn chowder?” I asked.

  Fern held one of the aprons up to my body. “Try this on.”

  I popped the loop over my head and tied the back.

  Charlie and Fern studied me with concerned faces. “It’s not really saying corn to me yet,” Charlie said after several moments.

  Fern balled up a fist full of pom-poms and balanced it on my head. “What if we added a headpiece?”

  After considering me for a moment, Charlie cut a bunch of pale yellow yarn into strips and tied them into the neck loop of my apron, so that they draped over my shoulders.

  Fern clapped her hands. “Tassels. Perfect!”

  Charlie had propped the door open to let the warm afternoon breeze in, so I had no warning when Sean walked in. He was wearing another new suit.

  I walked him down to the end of the counter, away from Fern and Charlie. “What can I get you?”

  “Coffee would be great, to go, if I could. Thanks, Nor.”

  I studied Sean while I poured the coffee into a Styrofoam cup. He looked tired. A little older, even. Maybe life as a public servant was wearing him down. “Charlie made a crumb cake.” It had always been Sean’s favorite.

  “I’ll take two.”

  I wrapped two pieces of the cake in wax paper, put them in a to-go bag, and placed it in front of him, next to the coffee. “Everything all right?”

  Sean lifted out a piece of cake and took a huge bite, crumb topping tumbling down his lapels. “This town council gig has got me working all hours. We have an emergency meeting tonight about a sudden spike in kindergarten students for next year. The schools are asking for two more teachers, but there’s no room in the budget.”

  I counted back, and confirmed that it was exactly six years ago that we had those back-to-back blizzards that had the town trapped for a solid week. “I knew that stormy winter was going to create a baby boom.”

  Sean raised his coffee cup to me. “You called it.”

  I leaned my arms on the counter. “Speaking of your new role in the town, I have a favor to ask.” These were not words that ever came out of my mouth. I especially didn’t like to ask Sean for anything because he was the kind of person who would bring it up over and over again. But I had said that I would. “Listen, about the agenda for the next town meeting.” I took a deep breath. “Mr. Danforth was hoping that you could move the vote on the zoning change for Peggy’s land to the top of the meeting.”

  “Did he fill out the paperwork?”

  “He did, but he was certain that some other articles were ahead of his, and he was concerned—”

  “You know the rules, Nora. First come, first served. Do you have any idea what Ben Smith is going to do to me if we don’t hear him out about his neighbor’s pigs?”

  “But, Sean, his vote got bumped after that new science teacher at the high school got everyone talking about Peggy’s orchard.” I said this casually, but I kept a sharp eye on Sean’s nose. It twitched. He did have a thing for that ecologist. “So isn’t it technically his turn?”

  “I thought you didn’t want to sell to HG.” Sean brushed the crumbs off his jacket, and folded over the edge of the bag, as if to stop himself from eating the second piece of cake.

  “I don’t. But without the zoning change I won’t even have the option.” I reached into my apron and pulled out a check pad and a pen. I quickly scrawled the price of coffee and the two pieces of cake and handed it to him. “We haven’t had any other offers. I’m going to need the money soon.”

  “Why do you need money?” Sean was the spender in our little family. He knew I’d have some savings to lean on.

  “I took a loan to help out Kit,” I said quietly as my stomach did a small flip. I had just signed the loan papers on Monday and transferred the money into Kit’s account the following day. My bailing out Kit from time to time had been a sore spot in our marriage. Sean thought I didn’t give him enough slack—that the slack I had to give all went to Kit. He was probably right about that. “Please, Sean. Just give him five minutes. Once the vote is in I’ll at least know where I stand.”

  “It’s not so simple.” Sean leaned over the counter, so close that the yarn tied to the neck of my apron tickled his face. “Let’s just say the town council has a way of fitting onto the agenda what they think should be on the agenda. Shaping the conversation, they call it.”

  “Could you just ask? Please?”

  Sean took the lid off the Styrofoam cup, swirled the dregs of coffee around, and drank them down in one shot. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said, slapping his hand down on the counter.

  I followed him to the cash register. He handed me a ten, and waved me off when I tried to give him back his change. A pity tip. From my ex-husband. Charlie raised his eyebrows but didn’t ask any questions. Kit had joined them at the counter. She had already glued three rows of pom-poms onto the headband she had been wearing. Sean leaned over and kissed her on the cheek before pushing his way out the door.

  “Where’s Max?” I asked, realizing I hadn’t seen him since we had baked the burnt sugar cake.

  Kit sighed. “Driving down to New York. He left late last night. We found a set of used lights we need for sale on Craigslist. Max wanted to see them firsthand. And he’s going to try out the cameras down at one of the pro shops before we put our money down.”

  I was grateful Max had a head on his shoulders about money. If it were up to Kit, half the loan would already be invested in a camera a friend of a friend of hers had sworn was perfect for the job.

  “When will he be back?” I found myself a little anxious to be alone with Kit, which was crazy since we had spent the first part of our lives sharing a canopy bed. Max had proved to be an excellent buffer between Kit and me, and I was pretty sure he had kept more than one conversation from turning into an argument. Now it would be just the two of us.

  “Tomorrow, Thursday at the latest, depending how it goes. He told me to tell you that the Grant birthday cake is in the walk-in, and that he expects you to help with the Browns’ wedding anniversary cake next week.”

  A group of teenagers came in wearing T-shirts and shorts and flip-flops, looking like they were just back from a day at Lake Willoughby.

  Phyllis the mail carrier followed them through the door. “Nice to see you two sisters together again,” she said warmly. “Nora, the lawyers said I should have Peggy’s mail forwarded to you, in case there’s something you need for the house. I have it with me. Do you want me to drop it off here or over at your apartment?”

  “Here is fine, Phyllis. I’m here more than there, anyway.” I took the thick stack of mail out of her hand. Most of it was junk—back issues of the Pennysaver, some gardening catalogs. The utility bills I put in a separate stack, as well as notices about property taxes and the refuse and water bills from the town. Two familiar matching green envelopes, one fat, one thin, caught my eye. I pulled them out of the stack. The Pudding Hill House, the return address read. The nursing home where my dad had spent the last couple of years of his life. I tore one of them open. It was a bill for $8,897, addressed to Peggy.

  “But Peggy wasn’t in a nursing home,” I said to myself. Charlie came to look over my shoulder.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, reaching for the fatter envelope. It was a bill for $17,794 and a letter.

  Dear Ms. Johnson,

  Your payment for the care of Elsie Cole is overdue. We are sure this was just an oversight. If you are in need of assistance, please contact our financial services specialist, Mary Beth Swindon, as soon as possible. We know the uninterrupted care of your loved one is of the utmost importance.

>   Sincerely,

  Sandy Pines

  Accounting

  The Pudding Hill House

  Senior Living and Long-term Care

  Guthrie, Vermont

  “Fuck,” said Kit.

  “Seriously,” I said, thinking she was reading over my shoulder, but she was looking at her phone and texting furiously.

  “Who is Elsie Cole?” asked Charlie.

  “I’m not sure,” I said, although the name sounded familiar. I removed my phone and car keys from my overalls pocket and shoved the letters in. “I’m sure it’s just a mistake.” I didn’t feel confident in this at all. I looked over at my little sister. “What’s up with you?”

  “It’s the Vanagon,” Kit said, her eyes fixed on the screen. “It broke down at the Massachusetts border. Max got a tow to a shop in North Adams. They think it might be the starter. Or the alternator. Or both.”

  “If he’s waiting for it to get fixed, there’s a cool art museum there,” Fern said. “Tell him to check out MASS MoCA.”

  “Oh, yeah, Max would love that,” Kit agreed, and started texting him the details.

  “What’s MASS MoCA?” I asked, but most of my attention was on the envelope in my pocket. It seemed to get heavier by the second.

  “They have space for huge installations,” Charlie added. “I heard there was an exhibit once that breathed, like you were inside a lung.”

  “And a whole room where Sol LeWitt works are painted right on the walls.” Kit showed us a mural in bold primary colors on her phone.

  “And trees that are planted upside down and hanging from the sky,” said Fern.

  “And there are music festivals, too, in the summer. Wilco has a big party there every year,” Charlie added.

  Fern, Charlie, and Kit all started making plans, dreaming up road trips when the Vanagon was fixed and their time was freer. I was half listening, but my mind was swimming with the things that no one wanted to think about, the details underneath the dreams—the bills that were mounting, the cakes that needed baking, where Kit and Max would go once their movie was complete, who would buy Peggy’s place, who would cover the grill and the counter if we all went away. And now this, this—I couldn’t even let myself imagine what the envelope in my pocket meant for me, and for Kit.