How to Eat a Cupcake

by Meg Donohue

  After what felt like an eternity, I finally caught my breath. In the visor mirror I saw that bluish circles had appeared under my eyes and the skin on my cheeks looked sallow and dry. I noticed a freckle near my temple that I’d never seen before. And on top of everything, I’m aging. I sighed. What would my mother say if she saw my skin in this condition? Lolly St. Clair, who had a standing monthly appointment at the dermatologist and had every freckle, every mole, and every minuscule spot removed immediately upon detection? My mother accused these skin imperfections of being scouts for the Grim Reaper. Who wants to see little calling cards from Monsieur Death all over her body? she’d ask, shaking her head with disdain when telling me about a friend of hers who didn’t take care of the spots that appeared along her décolletage.

  Clearly, I was in no state to see my mother. But if I didn’t go to the meeting with the photographer, where would I go?

  The 500 Club was a dive bar on the corner of Guerrero and Seventeenth streets that Jake Logan recommended when I told him where I was. It was dark and nearly empty, without even the remotest possibility of anyone I knew walking in. In other words, it was perfect.

  “We have to keep meeting like this,” Jake said when he slid into the seat across from me. I could smell the sweet, earthy scent of the scotch in his hand as he leaned across the table to kiss my cheek. We hadn’t seen each other since that day at the Balboa Café in June; the padding of a few weeks’ distance between meetings contributed to an unplanned, casual vibe that I welcomed. “Which appointment are we dodging today?”

  “Photographer. My mother can handle it, though. She knows what I want.”

  Jake’s blue-green eyes narrowed. “Do you?”

  “Hmm?” I sipped my drink and scanned the bar. An enormous, bearded man in a leather biker jacket sat on one of the farthest stools, a fluffy white shih tzu panting happily on the seat beside him.

  “Do you know what you want?” Jake asked. “It doesn’t take a detective to figure out that you’re avoiding everything related to your wedding. Don’t get me wrong—I love seeing this side of you. Down-and-out Julia St. Clair is”—he grinned—“very, very sexy.”

  “Easy, tiger,” I said. I’d forgotten that sometimes he could be a bit much. When I drained my drink and set the glass back down, the arm of my sweater stuck for a moment to the table.

  “Seriously, is everything okay?” he asked.

  “Everything’s fine.” I sighed. I waved my hand at the bartender, but he shrugged and turned away. Apparently, there was no table service at the 500 Club. Jake took my glass up to the bar for a refill and when he returned, slid into the bench beside me. “Thanks,” I said, wrapping my fingers around the ice-cold glass.

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “Let’s try this again. I feel like I need to act the part of a concerned bridesmaid here. Let’s pretend I just plunked down two hundred bucks on some hideous yellow taffeta number that gives me pancake boobs and a mare’s ass. You now owe it to me to tell the truth. Are you having second thoughts?”

  “What? No,” I said. My voice sounded a little high, even to my own ears. “Anyway, you know I would never make anyone wear taffeta.”

  Jake smiled. “I’m sure having your handsome first love back in the picture isn’t helping whatever bit of turmoil you’re finding yourself in.”

  “Ha-ha,” I said dryly, but couldn’t help looking at him with affection. He was like an exuberant puppy that somehow managed to appear adorable even when he was piddling on your brand-new carpet. Had we ever talked about getting married? I couldn’t remember. There’s a bullet dodged, I thought to myself. Still, he reminded me of a time when my life had seemed remarkably happy and simple. And that, I realized, was why I’d wanted to see him again. If only life had turned out as easy as it had seemed it would be when we were students at Devon Prep.

  Of course, Devon Prep hadn’t been easy for everyone. Crossing through those doors freshman year, I’d immediately sensed how difficult it would be for Annie to be there. It was a small school and I knew nearly all of the kids already; we’d shared intersecting childhoods of horseback riding, skiing, ballet, and ballroom. Even though the faces were all familiar, something new fell into place inside of me as I walked through Devon’s doors that first time. I slowed my step, studying the girls with their plaid uniform skirts rolled just so to reveal several inches of smooth thigh, the boys with their ties loose around their necks, their hair spiked jauntily. I felt at once utterly on edge and perfectly comfortable in those halls—it was a feeling I bit into and savored, the sweet rightness of the whole scene warming my body. That night, I convinced my mother to take me to Union Square and we spent hours searching for the perfect coat—a sky-blue Searle peacoat with silver toggles that the girls in our class fingered breathlessly the next morning, wide-eyed with envy. The next week, two girls showed up to school in ivory and camel versions—they swore, of course, that they hadn’t realized it was the same coat—but it didn’t matter; by then, I was wearing a black cashmere capelet with my grandmother’s enormous Tahitian pearl brooch on the lapel. No other girl stood a chance.

  Looking back, I suppose it would have been relatively easy to pull Annie along with me as I negotiated Devon’s ranks. And maybe I would have, but it honestly never seemed, right up until the end of our senior year, like the social politics at Devon really affected Annie—she remained her freewheeling, funny, outspoken self while the rest of us did everything in our power to fit in. I’d have been the first to admit that I needed friends and their validation like a bee needed pollen, but Annie? She was so independent, and at the same time so close with her mom. It wasn’t like she needed me.

  Right on cue for my little mental time warp, Will Smith’s “Gettin’ Jiggy wit It” suddenly filled the bar. I looked at Jake and laughed.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “What is this, high school?”

  “I wish!” Jake said, wagging his eyebrows. It was the kind of music that the radio had played nonstop during our senior year at Devon—the year Jake and I first slept together. He was the first boy I ever slept with and he claimed that I was his first, too, but even then I knew better than to trust him in matters involving bedrooms and body parts.

  Before I’d even realized I’d finished my drink, Jake had wandered off to the bar for another round. I took the moment to text my mother that something had come up at Treat and I wasn’t going to make the appointment with the photographer after all. I knew she would consider receiving this information via text message adding insult to injury, but I was already feeling a bit too blotto to call her and risk having to actually speak with her on the phone.

  The last thing I remembered clearly from that night was taking a shot of tequila—my third?—with *NSYNC’s “I Want You Back” blaring in the background courtesy of the fistful of change Jake had dumped into the jukebox. It was dusk by then but the bar hadn’t flicked on its lights yet and everything seemed pleasantly out of focus, like looking through the old, warped windowpane of a Victorian. After the shots, Jake lifted a finger to my lip to wipe away some trail of liquor. Then he leaned in as though to kiss me, and I pushed him away, shaking my head and laughing. The alcohol made me feel almost giddy; my heart felt bigger, more expansive and inclusive, more capable of joy. After that, the night just melted away with me.

  Sometime later, I woke up in a bed in a pitch-black room. I bolted upright, then groaned and clutched my throbbing head. Fumbling to find the lamp on the bedside table, I groaned again when I found it and light pierced the room. I was alone. And, thank God, fully dressed.

  I looked around slowly. The room was tastefully furnished with dark, Asian-influenced wood furniture and a few oversized 1960s-era photographs of surfers and beaches. There were no personal photographs, and I’d never been there before, but I was sure I was in Jake Logan’s bedroom.

  I rose gingerly and made my way to the door. In the living room, Jake was stretched
out on the couch watching Top Gun on a large flat-screen television. Diet Coke cans littered the black leather ottoman, and three surfboards leaned against a navy accent wall. It was the quintessential bachelor pad, if you happened to be a bachelor with a trust fund. Three walls of windows revealed the bay, black and still, Sausalito twinkling in the distance.

  “Sleeping Beauty awakens!” Jake called, making room for me on the couch. “I’d nearly forgotten how gorgeous you are when you’re vertical.”

  I grimaced, collapsed on the couch beside him, and waved away the can of soda he held out to me. He shot me an amused smile.

  “I’m afraid,” he said, “you’ve come down with a serious case of tequila-itis. The only known cure is eggs, coffee, and sleep.”

  I groaned. “What time is it?”

  Jake glanced at the glowing cable box and laughed. “Midnight. You’re a cheap date. Passed out by nine.”

  I hung my head in my hands, unable to look over at him. “We didn’t do anything, did we?”

  Jake, cruelly, let a beat of silence pass before he answered. “Would it be so terrible if we had?”

  “Don’t be an asshole,” I said, feeling tears prick my eyes.

  “Ouch. Don’t worry, Jules. Nothing happened.” He sat back on the couch, sounding petulant. “Anyway, it’s not like you’re married yet.”

  I looked at him, wondering how he could be so dense and still so endearing. “No,” I said, softly. “But you are.”

  Jake looked surprised. He shrugged, rubbing the base of his left ring finger, where a tan line was still in the process of fading.

  “Only in the eyes of law,” he said at last, dimples flashing across his cheeks and then disappearing like stones skimming water ever so briefly before they sink.

  September

  Chapter 11

  Annie

  “Farm’s just ahead,” Ogden Gertzwell said. He somehow managed to say this while pointing and nodding and stuffing another long strip of beef jerky into his mouth, all while steering his 1980s pickup truck with his knee.

  “Can’t wait,” I said, eking out a smile through my clenched jaw.

  Ogden looked over and held the bag of jerky out to me for the seventh time. As he did, the truck swerved into the opposite lane and then squealed back into place. He grunted, shifting in his seat.

  “Death by jerky,” I muttered. Even if the jerky was locally produced and organic, as Ogden had assured me it was, it wasn’t exactly how I wanted to go.

  “What’s that, Anita?”

  “You really can call me Annie,” I said. “Everyone does.” Over the course of the drive, I’d told him this nearly as many times as he’d offered me that bag of jerky.

  “Not your grandmother,” Ogden said, chewing thoughtfully. “Bet you a million dollars your grandmother calls you Anita.”

  I rolled my eyes but didn’t bother to explain that I’d never met either of my grandmothers. I peered down the road, waiting for the Gertzwell Farm sign to appear and put an end to the trip from hell. The truck, while remarkably tidy and rust-free given its age, had no shocks whatsoever. After an hour of driving, my ass felt like Mike Tyson’s sparring partner’s face must have felt after a few rounds in the ring. Add to that the fact that Ogden had hot-boxed the truck with the uniquely pungent, dog-breath smell of beef jerky and then bored me nearly to tears with his Top Ten Tales from Life on an Organic Farm, and I was more than ready for some fresh, quiet country air.

  In San Francisco, where any self-respecting chef was on a first-name basis with her fishermen and farmers, the name Ogden Gertzwell held a certain cachet. If you worked in the culinary microcosm that was the Bay Area, you knew that Gertzwell Farm’s figs, apples, pears, persimmons, and lemons were the best of the best, but I’d never met Ogden in person until he picked me up in his truck that day for a tour of his Sonoma farm. Gertzwell produce was far too pricey for the Valencia Street Bakery; Treat, on the other hand, could afford biodynamically grown Asian pears for an exorbitant price. Or at least that’s what I’d decided. It filled me with rebellious glee to phone up all of the purveyors I’d been coveting the previous six years working in small restaurants that couldn’t afford such high-end ingredients. I figured no amount of fancy fruit could put too much of a dent in Julia’s bank account.

  I’d heard through the culinary grapevine that Ogden Gertzwell was a bit of an eccentric, but I hadn’t anticipated his requirement that prospective buyers tour his farm before he would sign a supply contract. I didn’t mind though, at least not at the outset. It was a gorgeous fall day, sunny and still in the city, hotter as we headed north and off the coast—perfect weather for a drive and then a walk among fruit trees. Or it would have been perfect, if my companion hadn’t proven to be so bombastic and beef-dependent. Ogden, big and muscular with sandy-brown hair and a prominent nose that was bronzed and peeling like a ten-year-old’s, appeared to be in his early thirties, but he barreled his way through conversation like a lonely old man who was thrilled to find himself with a captive audience beyond the usual fruit trees and dirt. He seemed incapable of not moving his mouth—if he wasn’t eating, he was talking, though one didn’t necessarily preclude the other. Each time he broke his monologue to take a breath, I’d make some minor, throwaway comment about something he’d said, just so he’d know I was listening. But before I could even finish the thought, he’d steamroll over me, passionately disagreeing with each and every benign comment I made. Finally, I gave up and let his words fill up the bouncing, jolting truck cab, feeling pummeled on all ends.

  “Here we are!” Ogden said suddenly, wrenching the wheel to swing the truck off the road and onto a dirt driveway.

  The abrupt turn sent me on a collision course for the door and I rubbed my shoulder as we bounced down the long driveway. We pulled up in front of a small, neat, buttercup-yellow cottage crowned with solar panels that sparkled blindingly below the bright blue sky. Before the dust had even settled, Ogden hopped out, walked in long strides around the truck, and pulled open my door. Apparently, the sight of the old homestead sent him into gentleman-farmer mode.

  “Welcome to Gertzwell Farm,” he said, and offered one of his large hands. “Time for me to show off the fruits of my labor.”

  Ah, I thought, climbing down. Fruit farmer humor. I stretched beside the truck and attempted some surreptitious butt kneading.

  Gertzwell Farm covered more than sixty acres, of which we walked at least six. I got the sense that if it were up to Ogden we would have walked the entire property. In the hot sun, the soil looked too dry to support anything at all, but we walked down row after row of low, knobby, gray-barked trees studded with apples in shades of deep burgundy and pale green. Ogden pointed out fruit that had a beautiful, rosy, sun-kissed blush, and others that had a smattering of black freckles—a not aesthetically pleasing but harmless mold that apparently became inevitable when it rained in June.

  “You can have black specks like these, or you can have apples that have been doused with twelve layers of pesticide,” Ogden said. His voice was arrogant, but I heard a hint of defensiveness in it, too. “That’s your choice. But if you have a taste for perfect-skinned, toxic apples, Gertzwell Farms isn’t for you. We focus on flavor and sustainability, which, we’ve learned, go hand in hand.” As he spoke, I imagined organic farmers up and down Sonoma stamping their feet like frustrated children when the air turned ominously heavy and wet in June.

  Pears speckled and huge as dinosaur eggs weighed down branches in the next row. Ogden reached up and in one surprisingly graceful motion twisted a pale green orb off the tree, expertly leaving behind its precious stem to allow for regrowth, as he’d instructed me earlier. As he reached up, the unbuttoned cuff of his sleeve flopped back for a moment and I noticed an old scar snaking up the topside of his browned, muscular forearm. I wondered where it stopped. He pulled out a pocketknife and cut a slice of pear.

  It wa
s crisp and refreshing, more like an apple than a pear. “It’s delicious,” I said, letting its layers of subtle flavor reveal themselves before commenting. “Sweet, but still earthy.”

  “Earthy? Not really,” Ogden said, his brow furrowing. He took a bite. “I think you’re tasting a hint of citrus.”

  I managed to not roll my eyes, but just barely. I was beginning to get used to Ogden’s contrarian, superior way of conversing, which wasn’t to say I liked it. He was obviously one of those insanely annoying, ever-blithering foodies, which I realized was a ridiculous complaint coming from a baker who was shopping for biodynamic fruit. In any event, I couldn’t deny the excellence of his product.

  “It’s a Twentieth Century,” said Ogden. Somehow, he deigned me worthy of trying another slice. “My favorite Asian pear.” Even as he spoke, I was concocting a recipe for a pear and cinnamon cupcake filled with a molten burst of vanilla-bourbon cream.

  “The farm was my father’s way back when,” Ogden explained as we continued walking. “But he nearly ran it into the ground. He expected too much of everything and everyone. He wasn’t what you’d call a nurturing type.”

  I looked over at Ogden, puzzled by this admission. Not a nurturing type. Was he giving me the history of the farm, or the history of his childhood? In his mind, they were probably one and the same. In the blaring afternoon sunlight, I noticed a few grays threading through the sandy-brown hair that tufted out of his shirt at the top of his broad chest. His eyebrows were thick and blonder than the hair on his head and were set low over brown eyes lined with lashes as long as a cow’s. In another life, he could have been a football coach at some suburban high school, preppy and tan and gregarious instead of dirt-flecked and sunburnt and serious.