A Long Line of Cakes

by Deborah Wiles

  The Ford Econoline took on more and more weight and changed its shape as box after suitcase after bicycle was strapped to its luggage and bicycle racks front and back.

  Into the night they packed and readied themselves to go.

  No one turned on the radio.

  “We leave at first light,” said Leo.

  Emma kept checking her tree every time she walked out to the car with a box, a book, a tin of cookies for them to eat on their journey. The knothole was always empty. She put her hand on the cold, smooth trunk and felt no rough pulse, no smile, no warmth.

  Finally, the Cakes called it a night. Leo and Arlouin disappeared into their front bedroom after their good-nights. The boys would not allow their parents to kiss them and began to cry again.

  Gordon, who had slept on a pallet for weeks and had been so proud of it he had sung every night at bedtime the song his mother taught him, “Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor,” squished into bed with Roger. Roger moved over wordlessly to welcome him.

  Ben tried to talk to Emma. She was in her bedroom, sitting on her bed and staring at her Friend Atlas.

  “I’m sorry about the house,” he said. “I know you loved it.”

  Emma turned her face to Ben. It held no trace of ­emotion or recognition. It was as if Ben were a stranger speaking in a tongue Emma didn’t understand. She blinked and stared back at her atlas.

  “Well …” said Ben, not knowing what to say next, “I’ll see you in the morning. You can have my spot in the car, if you want it. It’s the best one.” When Emma didn’t answer, Ben left his sister and walked into the living-room bedroom to think his own sad thoughts and fall asleep with his brothers.

  Outside Emma’s open window a melancholic breeze dusted up from the sandy lane, the ball fields, the dirt roads around town, the woods paths, and even the paved Main Street that went through the heart of Halleluia, Mississippi. It was searching for someone or something.

  The rain had cooled the earth. The front that came in with the rain spooned up tiny tendrils of fog left over from the steaming of the day.

  But Emma didn’t see any of that. She only saw her Friend Atlas and the long succession of moves and more moves she had made and would make, for the rest of her life.

  She could not bear to hold on to her hope anymore. She could not bear to risk her heart, ever again. And she could not bear to remember.

  So she picked up the heavy black-handled scissors on her desk.

  She cut her Friend Atlas to pieces.

  Emma was still awake at midnight when she heard a clanging and got up to investigate. She tiptoed down the stairs, toward the light in the industrial kitchen, and found her mother up to her arms in cake batter.

  Arlouin blew a stray lock of hair from her face and said, “I’m making a Grand Closing Cake. Want to help me?”

  This was new. Emma put on her apron.

  In silence they chopped the dates and grated the coconut and rolled the seeds and toasted the nuts and melted the butter and whisked the eggs and measured the milk and flour and soda and sugar and salt and vanilla, and stirred the batter by hand instead of using the giant mixer. The metallic oven ticked its companionable heating-up tap-tap-tap as the room filled with the comforting sounds and sights and smells of what the Cakes did best.

  There was no recipe for this cake. Arlouin used what she had on hand and improvised. The fundamental mechanics of cake have been the same since the dawn of cakes. A grain, a leavening, a fat, a liquid, a binding agent, flavorings, air, heat, cooling. Baking is chemistry as an art form, and the Cakes had mastered it.

  They were mesmerized by it as well. Cake was different every time it was baked. It had so many iterations but was fundamentally the same thing, day after day, time after time, cake after cake.

  “I’m sorry, Emma,” said Arlouin as they shoved a full-sheet cake pan—enough cake to feed a hundred people, their biggest cake pan—into the gaping mouth of their widest oven.

  Emma began to fill the sink with soapy water while her mother wiped down counters. When she finally felt she could risk a few words without crying, she said, “Why, Mom? Why do we always go?”

  Arlouin started to give her daughter the stock family answer, We suit up and we show up, but then she changed her mind. She brought her dishrag to the sink and rinsed it, began to wipe more counter, and admitted, “I don’t know anymore, Emma.”

  Emma turned off the water. “There’s this house,” she began. “And a garden …”

  Arlouin shook her head. “You know what your father says about houses.”

  Emma turned to her mother. “No, I don’t. What does he say?”

  Arlouin checked on her cake through the window at the oven door. “He always says, ‘We’ll have a house of our own someday, Arlouin, when we aren’t needed elsewhere.’ ”

  “When will we stop being needed elsewhere?” Emma felt the tears. This would not do.

  “That’s a good question,” said Arlouin.

  “I haven’t even had the chance to say good-bye to my friends.” The tears were going to come.

  “I know,” said Arlouin. “I wish there was time.”

  Arlouin embraced her daughter, and Emma buried her face in her mother’s shoulder, but she steadfastly refused to cry. The cake baked. The breeze shifted. The world ticked on in time.

  * * *

  As the cake came out of the oven and cooled, Arlouin and Emma made chocolate frosting, did the dishes, then iced their Grand Closing Cake and dusted it with confec­tioners’ sugar.

  It was beautiful.

  Emma would not check the knothole again. There hadn’t been a note at ten p.m. or eleven p.m. or twelve a.m. or one a.m. Finding a note would hurt as much as not having one. She was done with that tree and with impulsive decisions, not to mention impetuous hope.

  “Let’s get some sleep,” said Arlouin. She sighed softly. “Tomorrow we’ll have a long drive.”

  They left their beautiful cake on the prep table in the industrial kitchen, turned out the lights, followed each other up the stairs, and finally climbed into their beds.

  It was four a.m.

  The lights clicked on across Main Street, at the Pine View Café.

  You-Won’t-Believe-This Edition! compiled and reported by Phoebe “Scoop” Tolbert

  This reporter was so shocked to receive a boycott flyer on her front porch yesterday that she rose at three a.m. this morning, dashed to the Pine View Café at four a.m., and forgot to take off her bobby-pinned-toilet-paper hat (excuse me, bobby-pinned-TP hat) that she wears on the back of her head at night to make sure she doesn’t wreck her Aquanetted hairdo.

  You cannot imagine how different we all look at four a.m., but that is another story for another column. Suffice it to say that, as I arrived, Jonetta James took me aside and helped my hair out of its bobby-pinned prison. I put my carefully constructed TP hat in my pocketbook and took out my notebook so I could report to readers from a bird’s-eye point of view the dramatic—

  PIE-OFF AT THE PINE VIEW.

  You’re welcome.

  Three Pie Contestants showed up at the Pine View: the aforementioned Jonetta James (who confessed to me that she really didn’t want the job, she just wanted out of the house), Luther Ray Vandross, and—you will not believe it, dear reader—Cornelia Ishee, known colloquially, locally as Aunt Tot.

  What you further will not believe is that Tot Ishee will be the new Pie Chef at the Pine View Café! I had to pull out my smelling salts at this news, but I must confess that one (hesitant!) taste of her piecrust was enough to convince me that some people just have to find the right venue for their talents and then they can soar.

  (Much like the way my talent is soaring! Thank you for writing in, readers, and thank you for the extra space, Editor Johnson.)

  Tot will not be making the pie fillings, it must be noted, as her fillings were inedible. (I’m so sorry to be so blunt, but this is a reporter’s job, you will understand.)

  The pie-filling job will g
o to Luther Ray Vandross! His coconut cream was a dream, his chocolate cream was the creamiest, and his lemon meringue made our tongues twirl. “I have plans for a banana cream as well!” he declared.

  Jerome Fountainbleu was beside himself. “Better than ever!” he crowed. “We are better than ever at the Pine View!”

  “But how on earth?” was the shared sentiment of the pie testers who had arrived in droves at six a.m. for the taste testing. “How on earth … Tot Ishee?”

  Misanthrope Watkins educated us:

  “There is an energy that flows from a baker’s heart through her arms and hands and fingers. It informs the dough. Anyone can measure and mix, but no one can replace your passion, your perfect-to-you energy, and the knowing that comes from years of practice. Tot Ishee has had years of cooking practice, this is true. She just didn’t know until today that her energy is a perfect match for piecrust.”

  Tot Ishee beamed, I tell you. Beamed. If you had stared at her too hard, her smile would have singed your retinas.

  “Furthermore,” Misanthrope continued, “I made those pies for the Cakes, in the first week they were here, in order to show them how to do it. Then the Cakes took over. And, well … as heavenly as they are at cakes, they are just not pie people. It wasn’t for lack of trying! They did their best! And they were not trying to siphon customers from the Pine View. They were doing us a service until we could find someone better.”

  Misanthrope glared at Jerome Fountainbleu, who mumbled something about having to take out the trash as he slunk out of the kitchen.

  Miss Mattie Perkins appeared at this point—doesn’t she always appear at the crucial moment? (I asked her this question and she snapped, “I always come into town early to open my store, Phoebe!”) Mattie bristled at everyone that they should be ashamed of themselves for spreading such malicious gossip about perfectly pleasant people.

  “You owe them an apology,” she fumed. “Put that on a flyer.” Well!

  I do apologize, dear readers. I am ashamed of myself for spreading such malodorous gossip in this very column. But wait. No, I’m not. But I want to be. I am hosting Pastor Merson for dinner this week, and we shall discuss it.

  In the meantime, we have had the mistiest weather this morning. An insistent little fog has found its way into my French twist updo. I must go re-pin my hair in its TP tent and get my beauty rest. I shall even take the phone off the hook. That’s how serious I am about taking good care of myself. You should be, too.

  Yours Faithfully, PT

  A soft rain sifted the earth as Emma fell asleep in the wee hours of the morning. The ground was covered in a dewy mist when she woke up. Spiderwebs were dotted with raindrops, and a gossamer fog blanketed the tops of the pines in the distant woods that enveloped Norwood Boyd’s house. It lay atop the majestic silver maple outside her window as well.

  It would be dawn soon.

  Emma slid out of bed and clicked on the overhead light. She opened her suitcase and gathered the shreds of her Friend Atlas from the floor and the desk and the windowsill, from under the bed, on the bed, and everywhere they had floated and come to rest as she had cut and cut and cut the night before.

  She gently spread the pieces on top of her folded clothes. They made a pile that completely covered everything under it.

  She couldn’t part with the atlas yet. But she didn’t regret her decision to cut it to pieces. She was done with regrets. She would only look forward now. Just like Leo Cake only looked forward. This is our home. For now. Finally, she understood.

  She came downstairs with her suitcase and her satchel, dressed for the long day’s ride. Her father was standing in the kitchen, confused.

  “Why are there baked goods down here? We’re not opening this morning!”

  Arlouin held her head high and said, “Emma and I made the cake. It’s our thank-you gift to a town that was good to us.”

  “They were not good to us!” said Leo Cake. He adjusted his glasses and peered more closely at the cake. He wondered what kind it was. He longed for a taste, to see if he could guess.

  “They were good to us,” said Arlouin in a matter-of-fact voice as she ushered the boys outside. “No town is perfect. No place is perfect. No day is perfect, Leo. We are not perfect people, either. And thank goodness.”

  Leo opened his mouth to say something and shut it instead. He looked around at the café they had created, in this town they had come to for reasons he had not understood. He shook his head and joined his family outside on the sandy lane, where the night was slowly slipping away and the sky was lightening from inkiest black to darkest gray to soft silver to a lighter hue the color of stones.

  It was time to move on. Everything was in place for their move.

  The Cake family folded themselves into their Ford Econoline and left, like secrets, in the night:

  Emma Alabama Lane Cake

  Benjamin Lord Baltimore Cake

  Jody Traditional Angel Food Cake

  Van Chocolate Layer Cake

  Roger Black Forest Cake

  and

  Gordon Ridiculously Easy No-Knead Sticky Buns Cake.

  Leo Meyer Lemon Cake was in the driver’s seat.

  Arlouin Hummingbird Spice Cake was in her place in the front passenger seat.

  Somehow there were also four dogs.

  The dogs slobbered and crammed and kissed and growled and scrabbled and shoved and collapsed themselves on top of their Cakes, who adjusted and shifted and accommodated them as best they could.

  Arlouin switched on the inside car lights—for it was not quite dawn—and pulled a map from the glove compartment. The road atlas was still missing. She handed the map to Ben.

  “Navigate, please.”

  Ben took the map with no emotion. He and Emma exchanged a look that said nothing. No one felt a thing.

  Leo Cake put the key in the ignition and the engine sputtered to life. He put the car in reverse and backed them onto the sandy lane, away from the silver maple tree. He put the car in drive and began to ease forward.

  And then Gordon, suddenly coming to life for all of them, said, “Hey! There’s something in that tree! In that hole, in that tree! It’s pink!”

  “I have to say good-bye to Ruby!” Emma was out of the car—everyone was out of the car. Even the dogs were out of the car.

  “We have no time for good-byes, Emma,” said her father.

  “I’ll make it short!”

  “Short, long, we don’t have time!” Leo had tried good-byes himself, when he was a boy. It was torture. He didn’t want to remember those times. He had done a good job of forgetting them. “We need to go,” he insisted. “We need to get on the road. We have hundreds of miles to cover today.”

  “Nobody got to say good-bye,” said Jody.

  “Yeah,” complained Van. “Nobody. And the team will be here soon. Can’t we wait until then?”

  “I want to stay here!” whined Roger.

  “Me too!” said Gordon. “I don’t want to move!” He began to cry.

  Gordon was wearing Eudora Welty’s old tutu. He had packed his white one in his suitcase. Arlouin picked him up and shushed him. She looked at her husband.

  Emma shook her head. “I’ll leave! I promise I’ll leave, Daddy. But you have to take me to say good-bye to Ruby. She’s done so much for me, and I didn’t even get to thank her. She’s helping me make a garden right now!”

  “What?” said Leo Cake. “You know better than to start something you can’t finish, Emma.” He was using his stoic voice, the one he used when he didn’t want to have a conversation. Yes, he remembered the times when he was a boy and wanted to stay, and he remembered how he learned to be dispassionate and matter-of-fact. The success of their moves depended on it. His father had taught him that.

  “Let’s go,” he commanded. “In the car.”

  Arlouin made no move to get in the car. “Where is this garden, Emma?” she asked, even though she had read the note and knew where the garden was. “Is it at Ruby
’s?” She would give her daughter a chance to make her case.

  “No,” said Emma, “but it’s not far from here. We could drive there on the way out of town. Please, Daddy! I’m not asking to stay. I’m just asking to say good-bye.”

  “No,” said Leo. He opened the driver’s door of the car.

  “Is it a secret garden?” Arlouin asked in her most pointed voice. She stared at Emma as if to say, I’m trying to help you here!

  Emma blinked. The Secret Garden was a book.

  “Yes!” said Ben, stepping in for his sister. Everyone looked at Ben. “Well, I know about it, too,” he said. “So it’s not so secret, I guess.”

  “Gaaaa!” said Leo Cake. But he hesitated at the car door.

  “And there are chickens!” said Emma, feeling her father’s hesitation. “They are over there now, eating up the weeds and fixing the ground so we can plant in the garden, and I don’t know if they’ll even keep doing it after we move, but it’s okay if they don’t. I just want to say thank you to Ruby—and Miss Eula!—thank you so much for trying, and … and … for being my friend, maybe my best friend ever, and … and …”

  Emma burst into tears. She had fought so hard not to feel anything last night, or this morning, but now she was lost in her feelings again, and in her chest was a pounding—Mine! Mine! Mine! Memories of her house—my house—filled her senses, and it was way too much for one eleven-year-old heart to endure.

  Arlouin started crying while holding the crying Gordon. She pulled from the waistband of his tutu an oversize Snowberger’s handkerchief that Mary Wilson had given him and wiped her eyes. Gordon took it and blew his nose.

  Leo shoved up his glasses with a moan. This leaving got harder every time they did it, and this time was the worst. It was insurrection, that’s what it was. And yet, these were his people and he was in charge. Just like his father, Archibald, had been in charge when it had been the two of them on the road for so many years. They were itinerant bakers! A noble and proud profession. Citizens of the World!

  Somebody had to be in charge. Somebody had to make the decisions.