Bliss

by Hilary Fields

  There, big as life, and big with life, loomed the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, their rounded, wrinkled peaks stained shades of rich, variegated brown by layer upon layer of dense mineral deposits, dotted all over with neat puffs of fragrant green sagebrush. Almost like sprinkles, Serafina had thought, smiling to herself. There arched the achingly blue sky and the endless horizon. Discrete, meringue-like swirls of cloud only served to accent the vast cerulean dome—a ludicrous wealth of sky for a woman from a city whose idea of a decent view was a gap between brick walls. In her mind, Sera was already whipping up batches of sky blue buttercream, picturing herself crafting a confection that captured all the airiness, the lightness and intensity of what she was witnessing. Perhaps a lemon curd or passion fruit layer at the center, with just a hint of crisp wafer for balance… or maybe something with cinnamon, an earthier note…

  She hadn’t felt this inspired in ages.

  Serafina had laughed aloud in tickled disbelief as swaths of flat, undeveloped high desert whizzed past the windshield, the wind restlessly sifting what grass and scrub managed to cling to the rocky terrain. Then came a momentary disappointment—a long, commercial strip of big-box stores and auto dealerships, motels and cheap eateries as they approached the outskirts of town. But as the little car eased through the congested artery that was Cerrillos Road and into historic Santa Fe proper, she’d been enchanted all over again by the low-slung, sun-baked adobe shops and residences with their rough-hewn, weathered wooden beams and the gnarled yet noble piñon trees they nestled among. Other trees Pauline identified for her as larch, willow, and cottonwood lined the riverbanks of the narrow Santa Fe River, while juniper and ponderosa pine proliferated in the drier side streets Sera glimpsed along the way. And as they neared the end of the journey, wildflowers and hardy grasses were overshadowed at last by the aspens blazing bold yellow with autumn color on the mountains above winding Artist Road, where her aunt’s home stood.

  “Santa Fe is every bit as beautiful as Aunt Pauline always said,” Serafina told Margaret, a wistful smile in her voice. “I just wish I’d taken her up on her offer to come out here and visit sooner, while I still had a chance to meet Hortencia. Now, instead of the three of us eating green chile cheeseburgers and shopping for souvenirs like we always talked about, we’ll probably be busy planning Hortencia’s memorial service and tying up her affairs. I hate seeing my aunt this way—it’s like she can’t even focus on next steps, she’s so devastated. One minute she’s her old self, brash and ballsy as ever, the next she’s gone all subdued. She’s having a hard time even speaking of her life partner in the past tense, let alone wrapping up her estate. Whenever I bring up anything related to the issue, she just goes silent or changes the subject. Poor dear.”

  A lump formed in her throat, and she couldn’t attribute it to the subpar cupcake. Sera took a gulp of tea from the mug that had been steaming on her aunt’s colorfully tiled kitchen counter, pausing to appreciate the delicate herbal blend as well as the hand-thrown pottery mug in which it had steeped. The taste of her aunt’s signature blend brought a wave of fond nostalgia. How many times had Pauline brewed her a cup of strong, fragrant tea when she’d had some teenaged angst to get off her chest? Tea and sympathy, Pauline-style, had been a ritual that always eased Sera’s pain. Could she offer her aunt the same solace during this time of loss? Sera blew out a breath and continued. “I’ve done my best to be a comfort, but I didn’t really know Hortencia—we’d only ever spoken on the phone, and she never tagged along when Pauline came back to New York to see me. Afraid of flying, I think.”

  “I still think it’s kind of funny that your aunt ended up with a woman,” Margaret said. “Didn’t you tell me once that she used to be kind of a femme fatale when it came to men?” Sera could hear the gentle amusement in Margaret’s voice. “They must have been quite the couple, if Hortencia convinced your aunt to start batting for the other team.”

  “I think they were, even though they only got together two or three years ago. From everything Aunt Paulie told me, it sounds like, after a lifetime of flitting from guy to guy, my aunt finally found happiness with the right lady. I just feel bad that I never...” Sera made a frustrated sound.

  “What, that you never made it out West before this? C’mon, Sera, I think you’re being a little hard on yourself.” Margaret made a reproving noise that managed to be simultaneously gentle and slightly impatient. “You’ve had a tough road of it. Getting sober is no picnic. Most of us addicts never manage it. And you did it while enduring one of the most vicious smear campaigns a woman’s career ever suffered through because of that dipshit ex-boyfriend of yours. Just keeping your business afloat and staying away from the sauce are enough to keep anyone busy. I think your aunt and Hortencia both knew you had too much on your plate back in New York to be taking time out for a visit. From everything you’ve told me, a guilt trip is the last thing they’d want this trip West to be.”

  “Now you sound like Pauline,” Sera said, smiling into the phone. It was true, though. From the moment she’d left culinary school, her life had been a whirlwind of ninety-plus-hour weeks, racing to meet Blake’s expectations and her own high standards, medicating herself with alcohol when it got to be too much. By the time she’d bottomed out, Sera had been in no condition to scrape herself off the bathroom floor and hie herself off to parts unknown. Instead, Pauline had dropped everything to come to Sera, gotten her into a program, and stayed long enough to make sure it stuck. In the year since then, all of Sera’s nonrecovery energies had been spent on trying to salvage some semblance of a career—no easy feat with Blake Austin still actively out to ruin her. But now there was a glimmer of hope for something better…

  Serafina cleared her throat, her voice strengthening a bit. “Margaret,” she began cautiously, “Pauline floated a bit of a radical idea my way tonight, and I wanted to run it by you.”

  It had seemed more than a bit radical when Pauline had broached the subject over the homemade chile rellenos she’d prepared for their dinner. Yet Sera had liked the taste of the idea even better than the flavor of the traditional New Mexican dish. “What would you say if I told you I’ve been thinking of not coming back to New York for a while? Of… of… actually staying out here and trying something different with my life?” She spoke hesitantly, ninety percent sure her sponsor would trot out the “no major changes” mantra she’d drilled into her head so often during her first year of recovery.

  There was a bit of a silence.

  “I actually think it could be a great idea, hon,” Margaret said at length.

  “Because, quite honestly, lately, when I think of the future, I’m just really unenthused. You know how slow things have been for me. I make a decent enough living letting restaurants and cafés sell my stuff under their own labels, but my career’s never really recovered from what happened, and I don’t see how that’s ever going to change so long as He Who We Don’t Deign to Name is around to keep the rumors fresh.” Sera tried to keep the bitterness from her voice as she plowed on. “Anyhow, Carrie practically runs the catering business on her own these days—or she could; she’s been angling for more responsibility for a while now. And what else do I have tying me to New York? I mean, shit, my social life consists of stitch ’n’ bitch parties with the crocheting circle from our AA fellowship and walking my neighbor’s nine-thousand-year-old pug while she whoops it up salsa dancing with our superintendent. I don’t have kids, houseplants, or pets of my own to worry about, and it’s not as if I couldn’t find someone to sublet my loft…”

  Belatedly, Serafina’s ears caught up with her tongue. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  Margaret’s laughter tickled her ear. “You’re how old now, honey? Twenty-eight?”

  “Twenty-nine, but I’m stopping there,” Serafina joked cautiously. Had Maggie really said…

  “Twenty-nine. Old enough, now that you’ve got your feet firmly under you, to make these kinds of big life decisions for yourself. If you want to
investigate a new possibility—follow your ‘Bliss,’ as it were—well, that’s what the whole process of getting healthy has been about.”

  The knot of anxiety Sera hadn’t even known she’d been holding on to began to loosen in her chest. Maggie was the person she most trusted to tell her if her secret hope—a hope of a future that looked nothing like her past—was a mere pipe dream, or something worth pursuing.

  “So you think it makes sense to stay out here?”

  “Well, I mean, obviously you’re going to need some kind of a plan, a job, and a structure to keep you on the straight and narrow. But there’s no reason not to investigate the possibilities while you’re already out there. What ideas have you and Pauline been tossing around so far?” Maggie inquired.

  Sera set her mug down and toyed with the errant lock of hair which, ever since she’d allowed her stylist to cut it into what he’d promised was a très chic angled bob, never stayed tucked away for long. Twisting it between her fingers, she spoke hesitantly. “Actually, Aunt Paulie’s got a whole lot of ideas for me, if I agree to stay. And I’m starting to get the feeling I’m needed here more than I knew. I think, for the first time in her life, she’s feeling less than confident, not so independent as before. Hortencia’s passing really seems to have shaken her, though she’s still avoiding talking to me about it.” Sera glanced guiltily through the doorway leading from the kitchen to the bedrooms on the other side of the house, but Pauline hadn’t stirred since heading to bed awhile earlier. “She’s lonely, and who can blame her, after the loss she’s just had? She’s offered to have me come live with her, and I’d like to support her during this tough time. It’d be nice to be able to give back a little after all she’s done for me. And I think maybe it’d be okay for us both to stay here together for a while. The house is plenty big.”

  Boy, was it ever. Compared with Sera’s tiny Tribeca loft, the house was practically palatial, if more homestead than showplace. From cobwebbed rafter to crocheted rag rug, her aunt’s three-bedroom adobe fairly screamed “rustic.” But the kitchen… ah, that was a cook’s haven of wide countertops, airy open spaces, herb-lined windows, and pot racks clanking with heavy-bottomed copper cookware. There was even a kiva-style fireplace big enough to bake her own wood-fired pizzas, should she ever manage to get the dough to cooperate in these high-and-dry climes. Next stop, a bookshop for some books on high-altitude culinary techniques. Pauline had mentioned there was an excellent cooking supply store in the downtown area…

  Serafina pulled herself back to the present, aware that Margaret was waiting for her to continue.

  “So I'm covered for a place to stay as long as I want—or as long as I can take a daily dose of Pauline Wilde.” Sera’s lips turned up at the prospect. “Aunt Pauline had some great suggestions for what I could do out here, careerwise. Honestly, I think she’s been plotting a life for me here for quite some time.” She chuckled. “Her plans are a wee bit grandiose, but the first practical hurdle is going to be scoping out the shop and deciding what to do with it.”

  “Shop?” Maggie sounded surprised, then belatedly enlightened. “Oh, right. You mentioned your aunt leases some sort of a storefront in town. But I got the impression it was on its way out of business or something?”

  “Pretty much,” Sera confirmed. “I don’t think they get a lot of customers, and I doubt it’s providing much income for Pauline. It’s just about defunct, as far as I can tell. But the lease is paid through the end of this year, which gives me a few months to decide if I want to make something of it.”

  “Like… open a bakery of your own?” Maggie's voice rose excitedly. “Oh, hon, if anyone could do it, it’d be you. And I know you’ve always dreamed…” Her sponsor was practically beaming over the phone.

  Now it was Serafina’s turn to be the voice of caution. “Well, I haven’t seen the space yet. Pauline’s really eager for me to take a look and see if it might be suitable for my needs. She tells me it’s fairly roomy, but it may not be equipped—or zoned—for anything like that. And I haven’t done any market research… Still.” Sera choked up. “Ah, hell, Maggie. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve this. It’s like Pauline is handing me my wildest dreams, gift-wrapped. She’s as much as said that, if I like it, the store’s mine to do with as I want. Who does that?”

  Pauline Wilde, that was who.

  “What’s the space used for now?” Maggie wanted to know. “I don’t think you ever told me what your aunt does for a living.”

  Color stained Sera’s normally ivory complexion. “Um, no… I didn’t.” There was no way to put this delicately, but damned if she wasn’t going to try. “Pauline was big in the seventies’ feminist movement. But, ah… she kind of took women’s lib in a different direction than a lot of her contemporaries. She had a bit of a following, back in the day. Started a movement that had about fifteen minutes of fame, and she’s been living off it ever since.”

  “A movement?” Margaret sounded curious.

  “Yeah. It was called, um…” Serafina blushed harder, closed her eyes briefly, and blurted it out.

  “Ourgasms.” She cringed, anticipating Maggie’s reaction. “It was supposed to be sort of a tie-in with Our Bodies, Ourselves, I think,” she rushed to explain. “Pauline is very much a believer in the importance of the female orgasm, and empowering her liberated sisters to have them on demand. Her followers were called the Pink Panters.”

  A strange yipping sound came through the phone’s earpiece. After a moment, Serafina recognized it as her sponsor’s wild, uncontrollable laughter. “Oh my God, I remember that! I think I had one of her books, or maybe it was a lecture recorded on an old eight-track tape. It was right around the time The Joy of Sex came out, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, that's right. There were books and lectures and seminars and videos that, um, Pauline kind of… ‘starred’ in. Like, ah, ‘how-to’ videos.” Remembered embarrassment made Sera’s voice faint, and to cover it, she busied herself rinsing the cupcake pan in the deep, chipped porcelain sink. It wouldn’t do to leave crumbs and crusty pans around for her aunt to deal with when she got up in the morning, Sera told herself, running a worn linen dishrag around the pan’s cups and laying it in the dish drainer to finish drying. She’d probably plop herself down on the counter and end up getting gunk all over her voluminous skirt tails, trailing crumbs for the rest of the day. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  “So what’s the store all about?” Margaret interrupted her mental nattering. “A feminist book shop or something?”

  “I’m not a hundred percent positive, but I think it might be some kind of a… sex shop,” Sera confided in a pained whisper.

  More laughter sounded from faraway New York City, and Sera relaxed at the sound, picturing her sponsor leaning up against her own scarred kitchen counter, absently twirling the cigarette she never lit while she scratched through a junk-heaped drawer in search of a menu for some Vietnamese takeout.

  Margaret was about twenty-five years Serafina’s senior, and far less squeamish about all things bodily. It was one of the things that had first attracted Sera to Maggie when she’d seen her around in meetings—her no-apologies, no-prisoners self-confidence. “We used to pass those Pink Panter pamphlets around in study hall when I was a teenager and think we were so risqué,” Maggie reminisced, still chortling. “There was one called She Stoops to Climax that we particularly relished. Too bad our male counterparts weren’t nearly as interested in what your aunt had to teach. Ah, well.”

  “Ah well, indeed,” Sera muttered, rolling her eyes. She was glad one of them could laugh about Aunt Pauline’s proclivities. But then, Maggie hadn’t had Pauline for a guardian while she was growing up, nor suffered all the awkwardness that had entailed.

  When Pauline Wilde had first had occasion to get acquainted with her painfully shy preteen niece, her women’s lib heyday had already been over for many years, though she continued to run “clinics” and write guest columns for various media outlets. Royalties
from her seminal books had continued to subsidize her freewheeling lifestyle, which had taken her from Amsterdam to Bangkok, Brazil to Berlin and back, pursuing a career in cultural anthropology with a specialty in women’s sexual norms. Sera vividly remembered her first encounter with her “hippie-dippy aunt,” as her dad had teasingly liked to call his big sister. It had been both an awkward and an intriguing moment in her adolescence. Had she known that, less than a year later, the woman who had asked her point-blank if she’d ever examined her “love-bud” in the mirror would be her sole guardian in the wake of the senseless car accident that had claimed her parents’ lives, Sera would probably have run screaming into the night.

  But Pauline’s generous heart had more than compensated for her total lack of filter on word and deed. Upon inheriting her thirteen-year-old niece, she’d put a screeching halt to her travels and settled down in Serafina’s home city to carve out a niche as a women’s studies professor at New York’s New School for Social Research. And she’d done it all, Sera knew, so that she could raise the orphaned girl and give her some much-needed stability. It wasn’t until Sera was safely off to culinary school that Pauline retired from teaching and followed in the footsteps of another female sexual pioneer, Georgia O’Keeffe, absconding to New Mexico.

  Enmeshed in her own mishagos, Sera hadn’t really had much idea of what Pauline’s life out here looked like. Apparently, she’d made some pretty wise business decisions for an aging hippy. This three-bedroom house and the store in town weren’t even the whole extent of it. Pauline’s book royalties still brought in a fair chunk of change to this day—and now, it seemed, she wanted her favorite niece to take advantage of all this largesse by helping her get started with her very own bakery.