The Cake Therapist

by Judith Fertig

  He climbed down from his perch and walked with his chin tipped into his chest. His situation must be written all over him—a poor kid getting into trouble and running away. But nobody gave him a second glance. He walked from one end of the terminal to the other, trying to figure out what to do next. There was so much commotion, so many people, that it was hard to think.

  Maybe he could ask someone. But ask somewhat what? Shemuel looked up and noticed the newsboys on each side of the tracks. People were practically tearing papers from the stacks, throwing their coins onto the pavement.

  He felt like he was drowning in noise—the shrill train whistles, the huffing and puffing of steam engines, the echoes of passengers that reverberated through the high dome of the terminal. Suddenly, it all seemed to part like the Red Sea for Moses.

  A woman was wailing. For a moment, he froze. She sounded like his mother.

  “Johnny!” the woman cried, and then whimpered. “My boy! My boy . . .”

  He walked quickly toward the sound. Closer and closer.

  When he found her, she had fallen to her knees with the front page of the Queen City Star clutched in one gloved hand. Her plum hat with the bronze feather trim had been knocked askew. She seemed to shrink inside her well-cut wool coat, her private grief now made very public.

  A man in a gray tweed overcoat and a fedora tried to raise her up by one arm, while another man stepped in to lift her other elbow.

  “Now, Marjorie, just calm down. It will be all right. John can take care of himself,” the man in the overcoat said, but he looked anything but calm.

  The two men guided her, sensible black heels shuffling, over to a bench where she collapsed to her seat, then started to keel over again. The man in the overcoat sat down hard beside her, catching her fall with his shoulder before he put his arm around her, and she leaned against his neck, almost knocking her hat completely off.

  “Johnny!” she wailed again.

  “Where’s a radio?” the husband suddenly asked in a loud, strained voice, looking around. “It’s about our son. We have to know. . . .”

  “The coffee shop,” someone yelled.

  But the couple didn’t move from the bench. She began to sob and he distractedly reached into his breast pocket for a handkerchief.

  “I’ll go.” Shemuel ran, looking for signs to the coffee shop, just off the grand hallway.

  “What’s going on?” he asked one of the people crowded around the soda fountain counter, six or seven deep.

  “He’s speaking at twelve thirty.”

  “Who’s speaking?”

  “Shhh. It’s coming on.”

  “Louder!” someone yelled, and the radio blared out from somewhere along the back wall of the counter.

  “We interrupt this program for a special news bulletin,” the announcer intoned in his sharp, dramatic style. “We take you now to Washington, DC, where President Roosevelt will be speaking to a joint session of Congress.”

  The static in the background lasted for a few seconds, and then they heard papers shuffle.

  The president began by addressing the Speaker of the House and members of Congress.

  Then his cultured voice:

  “December seventh, 1941,” he said, “a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. . . .”

  For several minutes, as the president spoke, no one moved in the coffee shop.

  When they heard “state of war,” several in the crowd gasped.

  Abruptly, the speech came to an end, and the announcer resumed.

  “That was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, speaking to an emergency joint session of Congress after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, yesterday morning. We will bring you more information as it comes in. And now back to our regular programming.”

  There was a scratchy pause, the static of the broadcast at high volume. No one moved.

  The local announcer smoothly continued, “Back at the WLW studios, we’re going straight to the top of the charts. The first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in B-Flat Minor with that big band swing in ‘Tonight We Love’ from Freddy Martin and His Orchestra.”

  As if nothing had happened, Shemuel thought, backing away.

  Should he go back to the wailing woman and her husband? They already knew it was bad for their son. If anyone asked, they might recall the tall kid who ran to get the news.

  He couldn’t afford that.

  He ran out of the station. Once again, he checked the inside breast pocket of his jacket. He couldn’t be absolutely sure the silk lining didn’t have a hole, as his trouser pockets had. But the ring was still there.

  There was only one person who could help him now.

  10

  Sleep? Who needed it?

  I was on a voyage of discovery. You’d never know the surprising places that were open at four a.m. if you were slumbering away like normal people. Who knew you could get a gallon of milk at the twenty-four-hour Valu-Save, drive through White Castle for cheeseburgers, or fill up at the gas station at the intersection of Millcreek Valley Road and Benson Street?

  Or visit Mount Saint Mary’s memory care wing.

  That was a very unlikely place, I had to admit. But I was restless and didn’t want to go into work just yet, even though Norb would already be there.

  If you were a family member who knew the security codes of the entrance and the memory care wing, you could visit at any time, even now. I wouldn’t go in and disturb Gran, but just being near her, knowing she was close by and still there, was comforting. In her lucid moments, she understood better than anyone else the turmoil in my life—and not only the fact that her son, my father, had been missing for years.

  She knew firsthand the baggage that went along with being able to “read” people. How sometimes you wished to hell that you could get rid of a bad flavor that lingered. When good flavors went bad, it meant that something was also turning negative for someone connected to you. So you suffered, too, without really knowing why.

  Before Dad left, Gran told me she kept tasting something dull and muddy like yesterday’s cold coffee. And we all knew how that situation turned out.

  I was fairly sure that the corrosive flavor I kept tasting didn’t come from Maggie, Jett, or anyone I saw at the bakery. I was even more certain it didn’t come from my family.

  I didn’t think it was reaching me from Luke, either. To my mind, he didn’t have anything to be angry about. After all, he had been the one who was caught, literally, with his pants down. And I had given him fair warning the last time that if it happened again, even one more time, I would leave.

  It happened.

  I left.

  End of story.

  Okay, so maybe I didn’t take his calls or answer texts or e-mails or respond to the flowers or perfume or anything else he had sent. I had told him I wouldn’t until I had decided what I wanted to do about our relationship. For the moment, he didn’t exist for me—and believe me, he understood why. For all his attempts to break through my vow of silence, I found it tough to believe he was doing so out of ill will. It just wouldn’t be very Luke-like to be so calculating.

  Because one of Luke’s great abilities as a quarterback had always been to shake things off. An errant throw, a bad offensive series, even a string of losses. He would shake this off, too. He didn’t want to feel bad for even one second longer than absolutely necessary.

  This persistent, escalating, angry flavor couldn’t come from Luke.

  I parked the car at Mount Saint Mary’s. When I left the house, I could still see the evening stars. Now low clouds were scudding in, and I could smell snow.

  I let my mind drift with the clouds. And then it came to me.

  It must be something to do with me. The ch
anging patterns in the latte foam were trying to tell me something, but as usual, I was much better at intuiting someone else’s life.

  Maybe stress had caused this terrible acidic taste that lingered no matter what I tried—mouthwash, sweeteners, incessant tooth brushing, acid reflux tablets. Better get that checked out first.

  I sat in the car and quickly texted my cousin who worked at my doctor’s office. Maybe they could squeeze me in today. Maybe she was up already. She always was a morning person. Okay, maybe not this much of a morning person, but you never knew.

  Sent.

  I relaxed back into the seat again and put the mobile device down.

  I looked around. I was parked right in front of the path that wound gently down the hill, to the right of the nursing facility where Gran lived. The path led to Bernadette’s grotto, where someone had left candles burning. Weren’t they worried about fire?

  If they weren’t, I was. I left the warmth of the car and tiptoed down the lighted path.

  The small, eight-sided chapel, built out of those old concrete bricks that were made to look like real dressed stone, had been there when Mom and Aunt Helen were in grade school here. It looked even older than that.

  I had visited the grotto with Mom, sort of her trip down convent-school memory lane. It was one of the few old buildings still left.

  Yellow light shimmered through the blue, rose, and gold stained glass panes in the small Gothic window.

  Maybe a little divine intervention wouldn’t hurt.

  I opened the door to the grotto.

  A statue of Our Lady of Lourdes, with a long rosary over her right arm, looked down from an alcove made of dark, rounded river stone. She had a long white veil and a gown of pale rose sprinkled with little golden stars. Her blue cloak stood out a little from her body and I could see faint colors of pink, lavender, and gold—like a sunset—in its lining.

  A statue of Bernadette, the French peasant girl who first saw this apparition of Mary in 1858, knelt before her.

  It was damp and chilly in the grotto, and I could see my breath. But the flowers in a vase at the statue’s feet were still fresh, so it couldn’t be as cold as I perceived.

  A stone balustrade with a padded kneeler enclosed the tableau. Wrought-iron risers filled with white pillar candles flanked either side of the kneeler. Several white candles still flickered in their tall glass containers.

  I lit a few more candles, put money in the donation basket, and watched as the candlelight softened the blue walls to the color of our bakery boxes. Maybe that was a sign.

  I knelt and said a prayer for Gran, for Dad, and even for me—all the souls who were lost in different ways—and just breathed in the peace.

  Before I left, I blew out all the candles, just to be safe.

  When I walked back up the hill, the snow was falling in thick clumps. It covered the roof of Bernadette’s grotto like lamb’s wool, then slid off the candle-warmed windows in thick sheets.

  Back in the car, I was amazed to see that it was six thirty already. It felt like only a few minutes had passed.

  At the bakery, Norb had finished the coffee cakes and was making a batch of sugar cookie dough. Jett would roll and cut the dough into bunny shapes later this morning after her classes were done, then ice them. I would also have her make the Easter basket cupcakes—yellow cake frosted with a lime buttercream and topped with sweetened flaked coconut tinted green. She’d use a green pipe cleaner to make the basket handle, then scatter a few jelly beans on the coconut. These cupcakes had been big sellers so far, even with Easter two weeks away.

  The big thing today, however, was the Whyte-Schumacher wedding. Again, I consulted my spreadsheet. Wedding cake layers—baked. Blood-orange mousse filling and the buttercream frosting—prepared. Wedding cake sugar cookies—packaged. Sugar-paste blossoms for the cake decoration—done. Silver cake stand and cake server—packed and ready to go.

  All that was left on the to-do list was to take everything to the reception at the country club and assemble the cake there.

  French silk ribbon in midnight blue would form a band around the bottom of each layer. The coral sugar-paste blossoms and pale green leaves would cascade down the layers in a meandering swag. Classic and chic, just like the bride.

  Ben said he would help me deliver it. Norb’s back was acting up again, or maybe Bonnie had had a fit about him working later than usual.

  Ben’s company had been hired to do security at the wedding. Even with an early-afternoon reception, one out-of-control guest could ruin a gathering like that, so the Schumachers chose to ward off the possibility. Prominent families like the Whytes and Schumachers often took similar precautions for parties and galas, Ben had told me.

  Mrs. Amici and Diane came in, blinking like they had come from a cave into bright sunlight.

  “Do you want takeout?” I sincerely hoped. But Diane shook her head.

  They had been coming in every morning for the past two weeks, but with Diane, good behavior was only temporary. I didn’t want today to be the day she fell off the wagon yet again.

  “There’s room over here.” I motioned to Diane. She took her mother’s arm and moved toward the table farthest away.

  I walked over to their table, as Diane stage-whispered to Mrs. Amici, “I don’t know how much more of this I can take, Mother. This stupid stakeout was a dumb-ass idea. We’re not getting anywhere.”

  Mrs. Amici tried to give Diane a “zip your lip” look.

  “What? What?” Diane flung her arms out, knocking another woman’s coat off her chair.

  Stakeout? What on earth were these two investigating? Our black-market cinnamon roll operation? Our high-stakes poker games in back? “I’ll raise you a sugar-paste rosebud and see you this stack of puffy thingies. . . .” Plus, I never saw two people who were more ill-equipped for surveillance work. If they had their own TV series, it could be called Sloven and Snark.

  But that didn’t mean they couldn’t cause problems.

  “Just a reminder that we don’t want any trouble,” I whispered to them. Diane narrowed her eyes and was about to snarl at me when Mrs. Amici handed her wallet to her daughter. “Get us both something.”

  I took their order, and then delivered two coffees with cream and two breakfast cupcakes.

  Maggie rolled in a little after eight looking livid.

  “You won’t believe this,” she cried. “They’ve sunk to a new low.” She threw what passed for an alternative “news” tabloid on the counter with all the contempt she had in her. The Valley Voodoo. She leafed through to a middle page and pointed emphatically.

  “Look at this!”

  I read the headline: “Whyte Trash Wedding.” Oh no.

  My first thought was that Aunt Helen had somehow been interviewed—that was her kind of humor—so I nervously read on.

  Samuel Whyte III, the grandson of Whyte Trash Hauling and Salvage founder Samuel Whyte and his late wife, Vera Cohen Whyte, will marry Ellen Schumacher in a morning ceremony at Plum Street Temple in Queen City.

  The elder Whyte started the business after rising to the rank of Army sergeant in World War II.

  Now the business has skipped a generation and changed its name to Whyte Industries. Whyte III, following in his grandfather’s footsteps, has taken over after the arrest of his father, Samuel Whyte II, on federal charges of tax evasion last year. Although no tax fraud was found in connection with the business, several municipalities told the “industrious” Whytes, “We don’t want your trash, er, hauling.” Whyte lost Fairview, Riverdale, and Jamesville within the past several months. Whyte III has been quoted in the Queen City Star saying that there has been no business fallout, nuclear or otherwise, from his father’s personal financial issues.

  Can the bride save the day?

  Miss Schumacher, the daughter of Steven and Rachel Goldfarb Schumacher, comes fr
om a family of attorneys and is a partner in the firm of Loggins, McCardle, & Fulmer. She couldn’t be joining the Whyte family at a better time.

  Let’s hope everyone will “compost” themselves at the afternoon reception, to be held at the Carriage Hill Country Club after the ceremony. Millcreek Valley’s own boutique baker Neely Davis is making the cake.

  “This reads like a Groupon ad.” I threw the paper down on the counter.

  “And it’s a hell of a thing to read on your wedding day,” Maggie added.

  “Maybe Ellen will be too busy to see it. They don’t seem like people who would read the Voodoo.”

  “Hand me that?” Diane gruffly asked, pointing to the Voodoo on the counter.

  “Sure. It’s a free paper. Take it with you if you want.” Please take it with you.

  The next time I looked up, they were gone, without incident, thank the Lord.

  We got pulled back to bakery business by a group of young women who ogled and then ordered the vegan cinnamon rolls, while I manned the Marzocco to get their coffees, with soy milk, of course.

  The Professor got his usual, specially delivered by Maggie, who chatted with him like an old friend.

  • • •

  When an appointment cancelled, I managed to nab a slot with my physician. It paid to know people.

  With the breakfast rush over, I put Maggie in charge and drove to their office in Kenwood.

  After the height and weight, blood pressure, and general health questions, I put on a stupid butterfly gown and waited for Dr. Bryant in the exam room.

  When he came in, I gave him the shorthand of what was wrong with me, the lingering bad taste that got worse, day after day. My sleepless nights. He checked all over the inside of my mouth with a wooden tongue depressor. He listened to my heart, thumped my lungs, looked in my eyes and ears. “I can’t find anything wrong, Neely. I think you’re probably just stressed and overtired, especially since you aren’t sleeping. Are you working a lot?”