A Long Line of Cakes

by Deborah Wiles

  “Are you going to draw me, too?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “Maybe later.” Ruby pulled herself away from the Friend Atlas. “First things first.”

  She plucked a folded piece of paper out of her front overalls pocket. Hale-Bopp heard her unfolding it and came to her side.

  “Not so fast, buddy-boy,” said Ruby.

  Hale-Bopp gave Ruby a sad hound-dog look and slumped like a rag doll back on the floor, his angles and bones clattering against the old wood.

  “I made you a list,” Ruby told her friend. “Here’s how not to leave Halleluia. This is a list of things that make it hard to leave any place. I’ll read it to you.”

  Emma scrunched a pillow in her arms. “Ready.” Ruby pulled the desk chair over to the bed and sat on it. She cleared her throat.

  “Death.”

  Emma sat up straight. “What?”

  “Well, if you die, you don’t leave.”

  “What?”

  “It doesn’t have to be you. Snowberger’s Funeral Home does the best funerals in the county and Comfort Snowberger—she’s our age—writes the Life Notice for the paper …”

  “Out of the question,” said Emma flatly.

  “I didn’t say these were good things,” said Ruby, “just things that make it hard to leave. Next: getting married.”

  “What?”

  “Not you! But we could figure out who is getting ­married around here and we could make sure you are part of the wedding—you know, flower girl or bridesmaid or something. Does the café do wedding cakes? Your folks will stay here so you can go to the slew of ­weddings you’re in, and they will be so used to living here—and the cake business will be so good—they won’t want to leave.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” said Emma. Obviously, this girl Ruby was nuts.

  “How does it work, then?” asked Ruby. Obviously, this girl Emma had never learned to brainstorm.

  Emma turned on her dresser fan. The corner of her Friend Atlas flapped and she got up to tape it securely against the wall. The sketches of her friends bounced in the breeze as she considered her response.

  “We stay until we’re done with the job,” she said.

  “What job?”

  “The baking job, I guess. One day I’ll come home from school, or from my best friend’s house, and my parents are packing. It’s time to go. Job’s done.”

  “Just like that? How can that happen?”

  “I don’t know! It just does.”

  Ruby produced a pencil from her overalls pocket, put her paper on her knee, scratched through “Death” and “Getting Married” and began to scribble something new.

  “What?” Emma asked again.

  “I know what you need to do,” Ruby replied.

  “Tell me.”

  “You need to have a baby.”

  Emma rolled right off the bed and headed for her ­bedroom door. Hale-Bopp followed her. “This conversation is over,” she said. “I have soup to stir.”

  “No, no!” Ruby exclaimed. “I’m serious! I have chickens, I’m a chicken mama—do you see what I’m saying?”

  Emma stopped at the door.

  Ruby went on. “Your dogs are no good, because—like you said—they’re portable.”

  “And they belong to the whole family,” Emma pointed out. She let Hale-Bopp kiss her fingers. “To the boys, really …”

  “Well, I know the kind of babies that can’t go with you,” Ruby said. “And a good mother doesn’t abandon her babies.”

  Emma was frustrated now. “What? Spit it out!”

  “You need a garden,” said Ruby. “A garden that’s all yours, that’s full of flowers for the tables downstairs and flowers for Snowberger’s Funeral Home and flowers for the Pine View and flowers for teachers’ desks and church altars and for putting on gravestones in the cemeteries and for big parties and celebrations and flowers for no reason at all. Flowers.”

  Emma was unsure. “Flowers? A garden? I don’t know the first thing about making a garden.”

  “Me neither,” Ruby admitted. “But I know someone who does. My mama is the county extension agent for gardens. She’s got a huge garden. We can ask her how to do it. People are always calling her and asking her how to plant the peas and fertilize the zinnias and make stuff with their mounds of zucchini. And she could never take her garden with her if we had to move!” Ruby stood up and waved her note. “Ta-da!”

  Hale-Bopp helped himself. He ate Ruby’s note in one soft-lipped gulp.

  “Hey! Stop!”

  “He does that,” said Emma, amused. And then, “I don’t want to grow flowers. But I would grow vegetables! For my soups!” She felt hopeful, for the first time.

  “Vegetables! Even better,” said Ruby. “Vegetable babies!” She shooed Hale-Bopp out the door and stood in front of Emma’s Friend Atlas. She put a bright-red pin in Mississippi.

  “This is the last pin you’ll ever need for this atlas.” She crossed her arms triumphantly and smiled at Emma, a huge Ruby Lavender smile.

  “Now,” she said. “Draw me.”

  And Emma did.

  Ruby disappeared, to do “reconnaissance work,” as she called it. “We have a secret now,” she whispered. “Don’t tell a soul.” Then, as she exited the back door of the Cake Café with Hale-Bopp behind her, she hollered, “I’ll see you after the party!”

  The soup was scrumptious. Everyone said so. And everyone included Miss Mattie and the clutch of customers who came through the front door of the Cake Café for lunch that day.

  “Come in! Come in!” Arlouin welcomed each curious customer. The Cake boys walked the sidewalks like town criers with samples and invited folks to stop by, which they did. The atmosphere was festive.

  “It’s another experimental week,” said Leo Cake from behind the glass counter. “Pay what you can or want, and sample everything! Grand Opening next week! Or so!”

  Folks tried a bit of everything. Large slices of warm ­carrot cake with cream cheese frosting were consumed. Everyone chewed and nodded appreciatively. They sipped soup with the crusty rolls that Emma’s mother and father had made early that morning, rolls that sat in baskets at the glass counter next to slices of yesterday’s lemon pound cake and a few leftover homemade moon pies all waiting for customers to seize upon.

  Gordon—who could not tell time—had ridiculously seized upon a crusty roll for each sticky hand as he scooted out the back door of the café to meet Honey on the ball field for dance practice, only Honey would not arrive for another hour.

  “It’s time for the boys and girls!” he cried as he ran across the sandy lane too early after lunchtime for the gaggle of kids to reappear, but that didn’t matter; he was outside. Spiffy, Alice, Bo-Bo, and Hale-Bopp loped and galloped after him, hoping for some crumbs.

  Emma had two pieces of cake and a bowl of her famous chicken soup. After the lunch rush, she helped her parents make the enormous half-sheet cake that would yield fifty pieces of cake for the soiree at Pip’s later in the afternoon. “Plenty for a pot-luck party,” said Leo, “when there will be so much other food.” The cake was baking in the oven while her parents napped upstairs.

  Emma was already dreaming about vegetable babies in a garden bed, a solid place to cultivate every day—although she had no idea what that really meant. But it was a start. It was forward motion. It was a plan.

  When you were a kid, grown-ups could just pick you up and move you whenever they chose to go. But maybe now, now that she was eleven, she could make her own decisions about staying, and could convince her parents to stay as well. A plan that ambitious would require Ben’s help.

  So even though she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, she told her brother Ben. They were wiping down tables and locking the front doors, turning around the OPEN sign to the side that said, We close after lunch but DO come back in the morning for breakfast! You never know what you’re going to get!

  Jody, Van, and Roger had finished crashing the dishes
and were lying with Gordon under the chinaberry tree next to the schoolhouse, on the far side of the ball field, swatting flies and trying to feel a breeze after the lunch hour of helping-helping-helping and after too many slices of carrot cake.

  Spiffy, Alice, Bo-Bo, and Hale-Bopp flopped near them. They looked like a passel of puppies and people trying to survive the afternoon heat, panting and swatting and dozing in the shade.

  Gordon, who had the youngest and purest heart of all the Cakes, spoke first. “I want to stay here forever,” he said. His brothers looked at one another with surprise. For the first time, Gordon’s thought turned out to be the same thought they were having.

  “I like it here, too,” said Jody, sighing like the angels, declaring this place to be heaven.

  “We’re just going to have to move again,” whined Roger in his bleakest black-forest whine.

  “When will the boys and girls come back?” Gordon asked.

  “Later, when it isn’t so hot,” Jody informed his littlest brother. Then he sighed. “Maybe we could stay.” Jody was ten and knew a thing or two about moving. It had never bothered him before, but suddenly he found himself longing to stay right on this spot, in Halleluia, Mississippi.

  Roger had moved just enough times in his seven years to know that’s how it worked in his family. “We always move,” he said, his voice choked with gloom.

  Van held on to his eight-year-old confidence. “I don’t mind it,” he declared. But now, listening to his clutch of like-minded brothers, he wondered if he did.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, back in the café, Ben told Emma, “It’s just what we do,” as she poured them both lemonades in the kitchen and they sat at the prep table. “I never thought about whether or not I wanted to move, I just did it because that’s what we do.”

  “Well, I don’t want to anymore,” said Emma. “I like it here.”

  “You like it everywhere we go,” Ben pointed out.

  “Ruby Lavender thinks you’re cute,” countered Emma.

  Ben’s face turned watermelon red.

  “That’s the bossiest girl I ever met!” he fumed. “I’ve got to find a way out of that job at Miss Mattie’s. Maybe we will move soon!”

  “I thought she was a good ballplayer,” said Emma.

  “She is,” admitted her brother. “She’s a great ballplayer, actually.” His face colored more deeply, but Emma decided it was a blush of admiration.

  “And there are all the other kids,” said Emma. “Whenever we can’t find you, we know you’re at House’s house.”

  “I like him,” Ben said. “He can’t play right now because of his elbow, but he’s a good coach. We’re gonna trade baseball cards next weekend.”

  “And Gordon likes Honey,” said Emma.

  “And Van and Jody and Roger have made a lot of friends,” acknowledged Ben, wondering if he missed always being in sync with his brothers, always being Lord Baltimore, in command. He decided he didn’t. It was different, branching out on his own, but it was good, too. And there were so many kids! His brothers had hardly noticed his absence.

  “Won’t you help me?” asked Emma.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Help me make a garden,” said Emma. “Something permanent. Something that’s mine. Something I have to stay here for.”

  That didn’t sound so hard. And, Ben decided impulsively, he wanted something, too. He didn’t dare talk to his brothers about it. They would tease him. They would be merciless. But he had a sister—and she was a girl! Why hadn’t he thought of it before? She could help.

  “I’ll help you,” he said, “if you’ll help me with something.”

  Emma beamed. “Anything. What is it?”

  “There’s a party this afternoon at Mr. Pip’s barbershop, for Finesse’s uncle.”

  “I know,” said Emma. “I’m going. It’s a soiree.”

  “It’s a party,” said Ben, ever the realist. “I don’t want to go, but Mom says, ‘Cakes will make an appearance!’ so I need you to help me.” He picked up the broom and began to sweep the floor, even though it had already been swept.

  “With what?” Emma got up and hung the wet washcloths and dish towels on their pegs by the sink to dry. Her brothers never remembered to do this. She checked the timer for the cake.

  Ben stopped sweeping and held tightly on to the broomstick with both hands. “I need you to help me.”

  “Yes?”

  “With.”

  “With what?”

  “With a girl.” His gut hurt when he said it. He thought of running out of the room. Instead, he stared at his broomstick as if it was holding him to the spot.

  “Ruby?” asked Emma. This was too easy.

  “No,” said her brother. He took a breath. “Finesse.”

  “Oh!” Emma had been so fixated on her own problems, she had failed to notice her brother’s. But now she remembered what Ruby had said the night before. She’s already in love with Ben. She moons over him! I don’t know how he can stand it!

  This town was not the least bit mundane. But it would not do to let Ben know that she knew what everyone else knew.

  So instead she sat at the table again and asked, “Why?” in her most innocent voice.

  There’s no easy way to say it, thought Benjamin Lord Baltimore Cake.

  “She wants to be my girlfriend. She loves me,” he blurted. Now his face was on fire. He walked the broom back to its perch by the back door and bopped his forehead on the door three times.

  Emma choked on the last of her lemonade. But that was Ben. Direct. And, like Ruby Lavender, most likely misinformed.

  “How can you tell?” she asked when she could talk again.

  Ben walked back to the prep table. He would not ­elaborate. “You haven’t been paying attention,” was all he would say about it. “I’ll help you with your garden. Can you help me?”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Just steer her away from me at the party, will you?”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “I don’t know! Tell her I’m awful! Tell her terrible things about me.”

  “But there aren’t any terrible things about you, Ben,” said Emma. “I mean, you’re annoying, but you’re my brother. There aren’t any really terrible things.”

  “Then make some up!” Ben took their empty glasses to the sink.

  “I don’t know …” Emma wasn’t much good at making things up. She was good at being precise, at noticing details and presenting the facts—all you had to do was look at her Friend Atlas to see that.

  Ben kept his face turned away from his sister. “It’s embarrassing,” he said. Couldn’t she see that? He wasn’t ready for girls. He was ready for baseball.

  When Emma didn’t reply, he continued. “Everyone at the party will notice! The boys will make fun of me.”

  Emma scratched at an itchy spot and wrinkled her nose at the thought of running girl-interference for her brother. Since when did girls think her brother was cute? He didn’t look cute at all to her, but he did look like he was suffering, and she knew what that felt like.

  “Okay,” she said. “Consider it done. I’ll do it.”

  She had exactly two hours to figure out how.

  Schotz’s Barbershop—everyone just called it Pip’s—had been a town gathering place for many years. After all, when you’re eighty-eight years old and have been cutting the town’s hair for over fifty years, you know everybody. And everybody knows you.

  Pip’s was more than a barbershop, of course. It was big. It was well lighted. It was well informed. It was the most companionable place in Halleluia, Mississippi. People came to Pip’s to have their hair cut, colored, straightened, permed, spiked, and what-have-you by Pip or one of his hearty helpers.

  Lamar Lackey—who wore his hair in an Afro twist—was best at the old-fashioned shampoos and sets, because he loved everything that had to do with old Hollywood. All the women of a certain age in Halleluia asked for
Lamar. He had Phoebe Tolbert in his chair right now.

  Hampton Hawes—who wore his hair close-cropped and neat-as-a-pin—could snip and sculpt a beard better than any man alive. And a new hire, Carol Rose Booth, just out of beauty school and working part-time, was the absolute best at the latest lady’s cuts.

  But Pip! Pip was your everybody’s-hair man, your finger-curl man, your pageboy man, and your I’m ready for something different man.

  And he was as bald as a cue ball himself.

  It pained him that his only great-granddaughter, Frances Schotz (“Please, Poppy, call me Finesse!”), would not let anyone touch her hair this summer. She was a fan of the clip-and-dip, as she called it, and at the moment, her blue tips and clip at the top of her head were her artistic decision. It looked like a blue fountain. “I’m going through my blue period, like Picasso,” she’d told her great-grandfather. “C’est très jolie, n’est-ce pas?”

  No, no, it wasn’t pretty, Pip had wanted to tell her, but of course he didn’t, because he knew his opinion was that of a traditionalist, for one thing. For another, he knew his great-granddaughter’s hair would change soon enough. Last summer it had been cornrowed.

  “Poppy!” cried Finesse as she and Melba Jane came through the front door with streamers and helium balloons, all blue. Pip pushed aside the long curtains at the back wall of the store to reveal the party room. Finesse kissed her great-grandfather and sailed into the open back room with her provender, bopping Phoebe Tolbert on the head with the balloons while Mrs. Tolbert sat in Lamar Lackey’s chair with foils all over her head.

  Mrs. Tolbert was delighted—just one more thing to put in her column tomorrow. This reporter was attacked—attacked!—by helium balloons when …

  Finesse changed the radio station to the oldies station she loved and turned up the volume. “Fly Me to the Moon” morphed into “Land of a Thousand Dances.” “Naa, na-na-na-na!” Finesse sang.

  Melba Jane was right behind Finesse with a bag of ice and her clipboard. She put down the ice and made a note of the song change as “Land of a Thousand Dances” turned into “Do Wah Diddy Diddy.”

  Melba gave her hair a pat and sang. “She looked good! She looked fine!”