The Cake Therapist

by Judith Fertig

  And who knew that years later, as the college party wound down and people were passed out or pairing up, someone would play “Something” and Luke would ask me to dance, his eyes lighting up in recognition. That girl from the bakery. I was more than the girl whose father left her. I could be special in a different way. There was something about me, after all. And I would step away from my old life into his arms, thinking, This is where I belong.

  At home, I opened the upstairs windows to let the warm, soft air in, but still keep me safe—this part of Millcreek Valley was more urban than suburban. As darkness fell, I paced from room to room, not knowing what to do with the disquiet I felt.

  My cell phone rang. It was Daniel. “Just wanted you to know, Neely, that we caught Sean Mooney, the guy who assaulted Jett. He’s in custody now.”

  “Oh, that’s a relief,” I said, breathing out the tension I had held. “Where did you find him?”

  “We located a ping on his cell phone. He was hiding out in an old warehouse being torn down in Lockton. He didn’t put up much of a fight,” Daniel said. “I was kinda looking forward to rearranging that guy’s face without any police brutality involved. His great-grandfather was a cop. My dad knew him. Hate to see his legacy tainted by having a scumbag relative.”

  “Does Jett know yet?”

  “Just coming back from the hospital. They’re going to press charges. She’s a brave girl.”

  “Yes, she is,” I said. “You need anything from me, you know where to find me.”

  When it was time to meet Roshonda, I walked across the street to Finnegan’s. I looked around the front room. She wasn’t there. I walked back to the bar area and saw her talking to a guy. A big guy.

  Even in dimmed light, with his back turned to me, dressed in a custom suit, I knew.

  Luke.

  My heart took an unwelcome plunge.

  Better get this over with, I thought and willed myself to be strong. With Luke, I needed every bit of backbone I possessed, even now.

  “What brings you here? To Finnegan’s, of all places?”

  “Great to see you, too, Cupcake.”

  Roshonda got up from her barstool and stood between us. “I tried to call you, Neely, but you had your phone turned off. Luke and I were just chatting about the TV commercial he’s in talks about doing.” She looked over at Luke. “Deep pockets, he says.” She raised her eyebrows like she was impressed. “They want him to tell his fans how much he loves the food at this chain of family restaurants.” She looked back at me meaningfully.

  I got it.

  “If you don’t want to see him, you don’t have to, you know,” she said with steel in her voice.

  “You should have been an offensive lineman, Roshonda. You’ve got what it takes to protect your quarterback,” Luke said with a grin. He fanned out his hands in front of him like the peacemaker he wasn’t. “I’m just here to talk to my wife. She is still my wife, you know,” he said with an equally determined smile.

  “Not if she doesn’t want to be,” Roshonda said, pulling herself up to her full height. Even so, Luke could have crushed her like an empty soda can.

  I sighed and knew it was time for a decision. “It’s all right, Ro.”

  “You’re sure? I’m just going to talk to some people in the other room, but I’m here if you need me.” She gave Luke the look she used when Nickel and Dime had asked for a discount—after not showing up for several appointments. You didn’t want to mess with Roshonda.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” I said.

  Reluctantly, I turned my attention back to Luke.

  He did that thing he did so well. He looked deep into my eyes as if I were the only person in the whole world for him. I didn’t flinch. I looked back, steady and calm. I wasn’t going to be mesmerized this time. I can do this. I can be strong.

  But my other senses started to betray me. He smelled like Luke. Like clean shirts and that aftershave he had worn since college. He looked good.

  He tenderly slipped a stray curl behind my ear. Slowly, seriously, he bent to kiss me.

  “Luke,” I protested, and took a step backward.

  I sat down on the barstool that Roshonda had just vacated, changing tactics. “I’m serious. What brings you all the way from New York to Finnegan’s, of all places?”

  “Shhh.” He sat down on his barstool, but leaned in and placed a finger on my lips.

  “Luke, I’m not—”

  “Shhh,” he whispered again, stroking my cheek with the back of his big hand that can be oh, so surprisingly gentle. “I need to talk to you, Claire. Okay, Roshonda was right. I am up for this commercial and they do want a guy with a wife and, preferably, a kid or two. But if I don’t get it, there will be others. That’s not why I’m here.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and waited.

  “The Whyte Trash Wedding story was in the New York Daily News this morning.”

  “What, in a ‘News of the Weird’ column, strange goings-on in the hinterlands?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that when I read your name, it hit me. ‘Claire Davis. My wife. My wife who is living a life without me. Who is doing things that I don’t know about unless I read the goddamn newspaper.’ I got the first flight out. And here I am.”

  Neither one of us said anything for a moment.

  Luke’s temper always flared hot, then cooled down fast.

  The new bartender came back from the kitchen and served a cheeseburger and fries to a customer at the other end of the bar. “Another beer?” he asked the guy, but eyed us.

  “Can we go somewhere quiet?” Luke asked, throwing a hundred-dollar bill on the bar.

  Somewhere quiet. I wasn’t letting him in my house. I didn’t want to be alone with him in his car. I just wanted to get this over with. “Let’s walk. It’s nice out for March.”

  As we left Finnegan’s, I gestured to an alarmed Roshonda that it was all okay.

  For two lovers just starting out, the soft air and the moonlight would have worked its magic. But we weren’t starting out.

  “I can’t do this anymore, Claire. It’s not working for me,” he said, looking at me with that same green-eyed intensity I remembered so well. We had stopped at the corner under a streetlight. I was grateful for the traffic noise and the glare from the headlights.

  “It’s not working for me, either.” Maybe this was going to be easier than I thought.

  “I’m sorry I was such a jerk. I’m sorry I caused you pain.” He leaned down and tried to kiss me once again, but I turned away. “You’re not making this easy. But I probably deserve that.”

  I was just getting ready to say, “I can’t be married to you anymore,” when he turned toward me and grabbed me by the shoulders.

  “I love you.”

  Those magic words.

  Not “Love ya,” the offhand good-bye he usually tossed my way. This sounded serious. This sounded real. I felt myself soften. I tried to put my invisible shield up again, but he got there first.

  Maybe . . .

  He wrapped himself around me and kissed me like there was nothing else in the world, nowhere else to be. I felt the lean, muscled contour of his body, the passion that had always been Luke. My thoughts looped around again. I shouldn’t do this. I don’t love him anymore. I don’t. We’ve been through this before. They’re just words to him.

  In the old days, the “no” in my head would have gotten fainter as those old, powerful feelings swept everything else away. This was what love with Luke felt like. We’d back into the indigo shadows, entwined and needy again, just like the first time. And it would start all over again.

  But those were the old days.

  This didn’t feel right.

  I pushed Luke away. Now I understood what people meant when they said “estranged.” He felt like a stranger to me.r />
  “I can’t do this anymore. Any of it,” I said.

  “But I love you. You love me. We can work this out.”

  “We can’t work it out this time because I don’t want to.”

  “You can’t forgive me one last time?”

  “We both know it wouldn’t be the last time. I just don’t have it in me anymore.”

  Luke crushed me to him, trying to kiss me again, but I moved my head from side to side.

  “Stop. Stop.” He loosened his grip on me and I pulled away, breathless. “Just stop. I can’t do this. I mean that. I don’t love you like that anymore. It’s over.”

  He stepped back from me, his shoulders slumping. I saw a look on his face that I had never seen before—sadness.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m different now and I can’t go back. I’m sorry,” I said again as I turned away, running toward home.

  I thought he might run after me, begging, pleading, cajoling—all of his old tricks that I used to fall for. I let myself in the front door, locked it behind me, barricaded myself in. I had to grip my phone with both shaking hands to read the text from Ben: OK to come over?

  Ben. Was it just a few hours ago that I wanted him in my bed? How could I smell spring in the air, hear an old song, and almost fall for Luke again? What was I doing?

  I texted him back: Luke stopped by. I need to be alone right now.

  Ben replied: Take care.

  After a long soak in the tub that still left me feeling restless, I thought about taking a sleeping pill and falling into welcome oblivion again.

  But I needed some kind of closure.

  The old-fashioned way.

  In my robe and slippers, I grabbed my iPod from its charging station.

  What was on my Spotify playlist that sounded like I felt? I started my heartbreak hit parade with Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” and the raw pain in Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” I churned up all the old “he done me wrong” feelings.

  At my desk upstairs, well after midnight, I took out paper and pen and wrote Luke a long letter, crossing out words, underlining others. I could have used the computer, but I needed the physicality of pressing pen to paper. Tapping on the keyboard was too gentle for heavy-duty venting.

  Luke also deserved more of an explanation than what he had gotten tonight. I needed to explain it to myself, as well, and I wasn’t doing a very good job. I crumpled another sheet of paper and threw it in the wastebasket.

  As the music played, I had imaginary conversations with him, envisioned scenes in a movie with us as characters, he as the charmer, me as the wronged woman.

  What it came down to, in practical terms, was this: Luke couldn’t be faithful. I couldn’t be with a man like that anymore. God knew, I had tried. But he wouldn’t change, and I couldn’t. So somebody had to bow out or we’d both continue with this old sad song, this broken record.

  I sat back in the chair and sighed. I searched Spotify for “Something” and played it. The memories, the yearning, came drifting back. But I realized something as the song finished. What I yearned for wasn’t Luke. It wasn’t Luke. I didn’t want him, but more important, I didn’t need him.

  So, what had I clung to all this time, if it hadn’t really been Luke? Why had I let myself get so stuck?

  The last question made me think, somehow, of my dad. I rummaged in the desk drawer and took out that snapshot from my fourteenth birthday again, the one with Dad’s arm around my shoulders. He had the look of someone pulling away. I could see it clearly now.

  My dad hadn’t left us all at once, although that was how it had seemed at the time. He had left us by degrees. It had started with the silent treatment at home. He had seemed wrapped up in his thoughts, as if he were miles away. Then he’d had a couple of “lost weekends,” when Mom didn’t know where he had gone; when he returned, he had acted as if nothing had happened. At first they had argued about it, but then Mom got really scared. She didn’t know what to do, so she didn’t do anything. Pretty soon, Dad was gone for good.

  In a subconscious way, I must have been determined not to repeat family history. I must have dug in my heels to prevent Luke from leaving, as my dad had left. When Luke strayed, it must have brought back all of Dad’s lost-weekend stuff. That fear of abandonment. Unlike my mother, I had held on. I hadn’t been helpless.

  No. That seemed logical, but it didn’t resonate.

  That wasn’t it.

  What felt true was this: It had been hard to stay in my marriage, the hardest thing I had ever done. After our head-over-heels courtship and early married days, it had hurt like hell to be the un-fun person in a romantic triangle, the ball and chain. It had taken everything I had to weather the tears, recriminations, frosty silences, and then the slow thawing and getting back to normal. Three times that I knew about. How many more that I didn’t?

  The easy thing for me would have been to call it quits after the first, or even the second time that Luke had played around. A clean break. Admit the mistake. Move on.

  So why had I stayed?

  I didn’t want to repeat our family story. That felt true.

  And then I realized: I had the story backward.

  I hadn’t been keeping Luke from leaving me. I had been preventing myself from leaving him. I had been trying so, so hard not to be the one who was gone for good.

  But, like my dad, it happened by degrees. First in my mind, when I said enough was enough. Then in body, when I moved back here. And, finally, in my heart.

  Whew.

  I put the pen down, then sat back in the chair and sighed with relief.

  My emotional cupboard was bare. I had cried it out of me, written it out of me. Now I had room for whatever or whoever was coming next.

  I was beginning to taste it. Something bitter, but warm.

  A flavor that woke me up and let me see things clearly. A flavor that made me feel safe, so I could let those things go. A flavor that held my hand and walked me across to the other side of loss, and assured me that one day, I would be just fine. A flavor for a change of heart—part grief, part hope.

  Suddenly, I knew what that flavor would be. I padded down to the kitchen and cut a slice of sour cream coffee cake with a spicy underground river coursing through its center, left over from an order that had not been picked up today.

  One bite and I was sure. A familiar flavor that now seemed utterly fresh and custom-made for me.

  Cinnamon.

  The comfort of sweet cinnamon. It always worked. I felt better. Lighter. Not quite “everything is going to be all right,” but getting there. One step at a time.

  Back upstairs, I texted Ben: Breakfast? Late morning? I hoped the ping of my message didn’t wake him from a sound sleep.

  And there was one more thing before I was finally ready for bed.

  I took down the postcard from the memory board above my desk and read it again: “Sorry for all this. Miss you. Love you. Dad.” I brushed my fingers over the signature and tried to imagine what my father looked like now. I wondered whether he was still in Kansas City.

  Maybe my father had been having a change of heart, and I just hadn’t realized it. This was the first postcard from him that had a return address.

  He had left a trail that I could follow.

  Maybe it was time for me to be the grown-up who reached out instead of the child left behind.

  I took out another piece of paper.

  “Dear Dad . . .”

  16

  “Thanks so much for meeting me here. I’m glad Sunday afternoon worked for us all.”

  I shook hands with Sam and Ellen Whyte, just back from their honeymoon, and old Mr. Whyte. We gathered for a moment near the nurses’ station on the fifth floor of Queen City Rehabilitation Hospital.

  Since the flood of insights that hit me on the night of Jett�
��s assault two weeks ago, I hadn’t experienced the tiniest glimpse of someone’s story, an unpleasantly sour taste in my mouth, or a bad night’s sleep.

  I felt much better. But I was still recovering from an intuitive’s hangover. It took a while for the energy overload to dissipate.

  Now only one lingering shadow remained.

  Edie. The former Shemuel Weiss and Olive Habig needed to connect again. Maybe something lodged in their memories—or my visions—could provide a clue to her disappearance. And bring them both some sense of closure.

  “Marriage agrees with you,” I said to Ellen and Sam.

  They smiled at each other, then looked at me expectantly.

  “I’m glad you all agreed to visit Mrs. Amici—Olive Habig, as you knew her growing up,” I said to the older Samuel. “After the disruption she and her daughter, Diane, caused at your reception, I wouldn’t have blamed you for saying no.”

  “I still don’t understand what all of that was about,” said Sam.

  “Maybe Mrs. Amici can tell us,” I said. “I spoke with her grandson, Bobby. She is dealing with head trauma and still goes in and out of consciousness. The doctor told Bobby she has delirium—when an older person has been in one hospital after another and is disoriented. But when she is lucid, she can remember the past.”

  “Maybe we should wait out here, then,” said young Sam. “Grandpa was the one who knew her a long time ago.”

  “No. There are things we all need to get cleared up,” the elder Whyte said.

  “Let’s have a piece of cake together in Olive’s room,” I suggested, holding up a pale turquoise cake box tied with chocolate-brown ribbon. “And then maybe Sam and Ellen could wait out here until you and Olive have finished.”

  As we walked to room 522, Shemuel mused, “I’ve been thinking about Frankie Amici. He was a quiet, unassuming fellow. Pretty shy. I don’t think I ever said five words to him the whole time I lived in Lockton. And to marry someone like Olive . . . Opposites attract, I guess.”