by Meg Donohue
“Dad would spray these fields down with pesticides when the bugs hit, never bothering to question whether those tiny living organisms were needed by the land they lived on, whether they—the bugs, the land, the season, the fruit—were all tied together in some harmonic balance.” Ogden released a dark, hard laugh. “ ‘Harmonic balance’—two words my father would not have used, together or alone.
“Anyway,” he continued, “lucky for the land, he died young. That was about twenty years ago. Mom took over, got rid of the pesticides, moved some fields around. She was like a chess player, moving apricots to the back ten, sliding pears up to the southern slope. Within a couple of years, we had rich fruit with layers of flavor that were at once delicate and robust. But that’s because we had become self-dependent, which is what every farm should be. The organic compost that feeds our trees is created right here on the farm. We use enzymes that are cultivated . . .”
As Ogden launched into what might as well be the tree-hugger national anthem—a little ditty I liked to think of as “Our Compost ’Tis of Thee, Sweet Poop of Piety”—my mind wandered. What was Jake Logan up to at that moment? We’d seen each other once every week or two since that surfing excursion, and the lulls in between our dates were punctuated by the ironic little gifts he sent me at Valencia Street Bakery—Mylar balloons with the words “Get well!” scrolled in drippy pink, a mixed cassette tape I couldn’t listen to because I didn’t have a tape player (who did? Jake Logan, apparently), one of those ridiculous baskets of fruit cut to look like an arrangement of tropical flowers. Compared with Jake, who was full of quirky surprises, Ogden seemed solid and predictable. Just your run-of-the-mill bore. Well, maybe not run-of-the-mill. It wasn’t all that often I met a farmer. Still, he didn’t have that spark in his eye I found myself looking for when I met a guy. I didn’t need, or even want, to be with the best-looking man in the room, but the one who inevitably got my attention was the one whose eyes held a glint of something magnetic—humor, mischief, curiosity, a sense of adventure. It was harder to find than it sounded. Ogden, who seemed tiresomely earnest, was yet another man whose eyes did not have that spark. Jake Logan’s eyes, on the other hand, could practically start a forest fire.
“Suddenly, we had the kind of persimmons that editors like to cut open and put on the cover of Bon Appétit magazine alongside a scoop of vanilla gelato,” Ogden was saying. “The kind that makes your neighbors jealous. They started calling Mom ‘the Land Whisperer.’ That whole ‘whisper’ thing is trendy now, with ‘the Horse Whisperer,’ ‘the Dog Whisperer’ . . .” He paused here and looked at me pointedly. “I’m sure you know all about that dog guy with your little side business. But this was back when you didn’t really want folks saying that you walked the fields at night, whispering sweet nothings to your trees—”
“I didn’t realize you knew I walked dogs,” I interrupted. The snide comment about my “little side business” had pulled me from my reverie. “You’ve been checking up on me.”
He shrugged. “You have to understand that Gertzwell Farm is a growing brand at a crucial moment. We’ve got to be careful about who we sell to at this point. We only have so much fruit,” he said, gesturing around him, “so if we sell to businesses that don’t succeed, we’re not doing ourselves any favors.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” I said, though I had a sinking suspicion that I did follow, and just didn’t like where he was headed.
“Well, you’re a baker. A somewhat unproven one, if you don’t mind me saying. And a dog walker. The two professions don’t exactly go hand-in-hand, do they? And now you’re opening a . . . what did you call it again? A cupcakery? It’s not exactly like selling our fruit to the pastry chef at Chez Panisse, now is it?”
I couldn’t believe what was happening. Was I really standing in the middle of bumblefuck being dressed down by Ogden Gertzwell? It appeared I was.
“Listen,” I said. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m going to stop walking dogs the day the doors of Treat open. Until then, I have to pay my rent, and every little bit helps. It doesn’t make me any less talented or committed. Anyway, if you’ve already decided you’re not going to sell your fruit to a silly little cupcakery, why the hell did you drag me out here?”
“I haven’t decided anything,” Ogden said simply. He put his hands at the small of his back and leaned into them for a long stretch. His back cracked and two small birds skittered out of the tree overhead. “I’m just glad to hear this isn’t some lark.”
So I’d been summoned not to evaluate the farm, but to be evaluated. I was usually all for eccentrics—freak flags were, after all, my thing—but this guy was too much, even for me. “Maybe it’s time we head back to the city,” I said.
“Not quite yet,” Ogden said. “I haven’t finished telling you about what I’ve done since taking over the farm from my mother five years ago. I need to explain how biodynamic farming merges the scientific and the spiritual.”
“I’ve read your Web site, Ogden,” I said, shaking my head. “I can assure you it’s sufficiently . . . verbose.”
On the walk back to the truck, I enjoyed the first stretch of quiet I’d experienced since Ogden had picked me up in the city. A light breeze ruffled the leaves on the trees. A dragonfly soundlessly darted and hovered by my side for several steps. The sun warmed my skin and, slowly, melted away some of my exasperation. As we neared the truck, I saw an older woman sitting on the front steps of the cottage. Her long gray hair was swept into a ponytail and she wore a navy hippie skirt that dusted the ground, a white T-shirt, and a necklace of yellow beads. When she stood and smiled and waved, I saw she had Ogden’s funny beak of a nose under bright, dancing, brown eyes.
“You must be Ms. Quintana,” she said, kissing my cheek. “I’m Louise Gertzwell.” Her skin felt soft and papery and warm, like a cupcake liner that’s just spent a few minutes on the cooling rack. “I’ve been so excited to meet you ever since Ogden told me about your new business. Gertzwell Farm fruit in cupcakes!” she cried, clapping her hands together. “Isn’t that something?”
“It is,” I said. “It is something.” I shot Ogden a needling grin and his cheeks reddened. Still, it wasn’t this lovely, cupcake-liner-cheeked woman’s fault that she’d given birth to a jerk. I turned back to face Louise. “Please, call me Annie. We just finished up a tour of the orchard. It’s even more beautiful than I expected.” From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Ogden’s fleeting, satisfied smile.
Louise looked back and forth between the two of us. She sighed. “Oh, Ogden, honey! You told Ms. Quintana we’re just thrilled to supply her shop with our fruit, didn’t you? We talked about it just this morning, didn’t we?”
I was surprised to hear Ogden emit a good-natured laugh. “We sure did, Mom, and it’s all under control.” An affectionate, amused grin spread across his face as he looked at his mother. It was clear from their body language—Louise gazing up at her son with gentle admonishment, his large body angled down toward her slight one—that they were not only a mother and son, but also friends. I thought of Ogden growing up on the farm with his mother as his closest companion, felt the reverberations of my own relationship with my mother in the easy, effortless way they spoke with one another, and experienced an all-too-familiar pang of loss.
“You know what, Louise?” I said. “I think Ogden was just about to tell me exactly how thrilled he would be to supply our cupcakery with fruit when we ran into you. Isn’t that right, Ogden?”
Ogden looked at me, the hint of a smile still on his lips. His voice was calm and sincere when he answered, “Actually, yes. I think it’s just the sort of partnership Gertzwell Farm’s been looking for.”
“Well,” I said. For one rare moment, I didn’t know what to say. Then I remembered. I walked over to the truck, swung open its heavy door, and pulled out the shiny box I’d stuck in the shade under the seat. I walked back to Ogden and Louise
, took a moment to show off the deep red Treat logo sticker that was hot off Julia’s fancy branding team’s press, and then slipped the lid off. At the sight of the dozen assorted cupcakes, as bright and optimistic as party hats, Louise’s eyes lit up.
“How wonderful!” she said, clapping her hands together again.
I handed her one of the red velvet cupcakes that I’d made in the old-fashioned style, using beets instead of food coloring. I’d had to scrub my fingers raw for twenty minutes to get the crimson beet stain off them, but the result was worth it: a rich chocolate cake cut with a lighter, nearly unidentifiable, earthy sweetness, and topped with cream cheese icing and a feathery cap of coconut shavings. For Ogden, I selected a Moroccan vanilla bean and pumpkin spice cupcake that I’d been developing with Halloween in mind. It was not for the faint of heart, and I saw the exact moment in Ogden’s eyes that the dash of heat—courtesy of a healthy pinch of cayenne—hit his tongue, and the moment a split-second later that the sugary vanilla swept away the heat, like salve on a wound.
“Oh,” he said, after swallowing. He looked at me, and I could see it was his turn to be at a loss for words.
I smiled.
Louise, on the other hand, was half giggling, half moaning her way through a second cupcake, this time a lemonade pound cake with a layer of hot pink Swiss meringue buttercream icing curling into countless tiny waves as festive and feminine as a little girl’s birthday tiara.
“Exquisite!” she said, mouth full. And then, shrugging in her son’s direction, her eyes twinkling, “What? I didn’t eat lunch.”
Chapter 12
Julia
“Julia, my dear, you seem content,” my father pronounced, apropos of nothing, from his end of the dining table one morning that September. I looked up from my tea to see him peering at me, looking quite pleased himself as he brushed coffee cake remnants from his hands.
On some level, he was right. With the sun-soaked chandelier throwing tiny rainbows across the table, a flaky croissant oozing chocolate onto my plate, and the soothing rustle of my father’s newspaper in the background, I had been feeling—if not content, exactly, at least sufficiently distracted.
“Who wouldn’t be happy with this perfect fall weather? I’d forgotten how dreary the foggy San Francisco summer could be.”
“We both know it takes more than fog to slow you down,” my father chided, releasing one of his hearty laughs. I shrugged, smiling, relieved that he didn’t seem to expect more of a response from me. “I think it’s that cupcake shop that’s put a swing back in your step.”
“It’s keeping me on my toes, that’s for sure.”
“How so?”
“Oh, nothing really. It seems we have some neighborhood vandals to contend with. Nothing we can’t handle.”
Earlier that week our contractor, Burt, had arrived at the shop to find a deep key gauge in the new front door. To me, the gauge looked more like the work of an ice pick than a key, but the precise tool of choice seemed hardly worth splitting hairs over. The door had been repaired and repainted by the end of the day and, after filing yet another complaint with the police, none of us mentioned it again. I probably should have taken the incident more seriously, but frankly, to my newcomer’s eye, the Mission seemed like the sort of neighborhood where that kind of thing happened all the time. I figured it was par for the course and added another zero to the maintenance column of the cupcakery’s projected monthly budget. Anyway, it’s all too easy to retroactively kick myself for not seeing the pattern that was developing; at the time, each incident seemed isolated and unworthy of too much concern.
“Be safe,” my father said, lifting his coffee cup into the air in front of him, “but give ’em hell! Don’t let it get to you.” He lowered the cup to his lips and took a loud, satisfied sip.
“Of course not.”
“You and Annie together are unstoppable. Any fool could see that a mile away. I’m just . . .” He hesitated, clearing his throat. I felt the skin on the back of my neck begin to prickle. It wasn’t like my father to have to search for words, and I suddenly felt anxious about where this conversation might be headed. “I’m really proud of you, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m glad to see you rekindling your friendship with Annie. I know it’s not always the easiest thing for you to fully open yourself up to people, but there’s such a thing as too much independence. It’s not in our nature. Everyone needs a best friend.”
I stared at my father as he took another long sip of coffee. I bristled at the thought of him, or anyone, really, observing me like this, formulating theories about me. “I do have a best friend,” I said. “I have Wes.”
My father shot me an indecipherable look but didn’t say anything.
“Well, who’s yours?” I asked, irritated.
“I have two,” he answered without hesitation. “Kip Shanahan, of course.” Kip was my father’s Stanford roommate and my godfather—a loud, good-natured orthopedic surgeon who shared my father’s affection for Kobe beef and Bordeaux. “And Curtis. He knows all my secrets.”
“What about Mom?” I asked quickly. I had no interest in hearing my father’s secrets.
“Three!” he bellowed, laughing. He cast a comically exaggerated nervous glance over his shoulder. “I meant to say I have three best friends! And you’ll never get me to admit I ever said otherwise.”
“No,” I said, laughing. “I meant, who is Mom’s best friend?”
“Oh. Your mother’s best friend? That’s a tough one. She knows absolutely everyone, of course. Ten years ago I would have said Lucia. Now, I’m not so sure. I guess she’s had trouble filling the slot lately.”
I was quiet as I took this information in. I’d always known that my mother and Lucia were friends, but I’d never assigned quite such a level of importance to the role Lucia had played in her life.
“Those were good years in this home,” my father said softly. He picked at the crumbs on his plate, suddenly subdued. “We had a solid run.”
The shift in my father’s mood was unsettling, but he was right. There was a period of time when our home felt perfectly in sync. My mother had Lucia, my father had Curtis, and I had Annie. It occurred to me, as it somehow never had before, that I had caused the first fissure in those happy times by abandoning my friend.
“Do you remember that Thanksgiving when we invited Lucia and Annie and Curtis to join us?” my father asked. “It must have been fifteen years ago. I can’t for the life of me figure out why we didn’t do that every year. It was a wonderful holiday.”
This nostalgic streak was so unlike my father, the faraway look that momentarily glazed his eyes so different from his usual alert, jovial gaze that I didn’t know how to answer. I felt a twist in my stomach and kept my eyes trained on the table. I didn’t like the idea of age changing my father, making him a softer, vaguer version of the strong man he’d always been. He must have noticed my discomfort because he laughed, and the familiar, booming sound relieved me.
“Don’t look like that, my dear,” he barked amiably. “All I’m saying is that I’m glad to have you back! The house feels better with a little more life in it. And please keep in mind that just because you don’t remember that particular Thanksgiving doesn’t mean I’m a dotty old fool.”
I didn’t answer, but the truth was I did remember that Thanksgiving, just not in the same sentimental, soft-focused light that my father seemed to.
Our family had a tradition of spending the long Thanksgiving weekend at the Four Seasons in Maui, but for some reason my mother decided we would stay home that year. I had no idea why we were breaking with such a faultless tradition—I’d always loved returning home from Hawaii to endure San Francisco’s rainy winter months with a nice bronze glow and sun-brightened streaks in my long hair—but my mother had insisted on Thanksgiving at home for once, and had extended the invitation to Lucia and Annie and even Curtis. Looking back,
I suppose the change of plans might have had something to do with the fact that Annie and I were in eighth grade, safely ensconced in our small middle school yet less than a year away from entering the decidedly more adult world of Devon Prep. Who knows—maybe my mother had a crystal ball that told her that our happy little home dynamic was about to irrevocably shift. I wouldn’t have put it past her.
As it turned out, our strange little six-some spent nearly the entire day in the kitchen together. We were drawn there, of course, by Lucia, who had devised a Thanksgiving menu so aggressively American you would have thought she was born in Massachusetts, not Ecuador. By the time I made it downstairs that morning, the air was already thick with the mouthwatering aromas of sweet potatoes and cranberries and turkey and pumpkin pie. I expected to find Lucia alone when I pushed open the kitchen’s swinging door, and so was surprised to see my mother perched on a stool at the center island, slowly chopping herbs between sips of ice water.
“Hello, darling,” my mother rasped, waving the knife in the air. “Isn’t this fabulous? The Four Seasons could learn a thing or two from our Lucia—if I ever let them get their greedy paws on her.”
Lucia’s hair was pulled back into a neat bun at the nape of her neck, but her dark cheeks were blotchy and her hands fluttered in constant motion from one task to another. I could see she was teetering on the edge of that rattled state she worked herself into whenever she was cooking for a special occasion. Still, she looked happy—those blotches on her cheeks seemed to flare more in response to my mother’s compliment than any agitation she was feeling. She paused from work long enough to give me a tight squeeze; she’d always seemed allergic to the idea of a greeting or farewell that didn’t include some physical demonstration of affection. Due to my recent growth spurt we’d had to renegotiate how our bodies fit together for these hugs and had settled into a new configuration in which Lucia’s chin rested for a moment on my shoulder, her brief kiss grazing my jawline. When she released me, she gestured toward a heaping platter of pastries and an enormous crystal bowl of cut fruit on the counter.
