How to Eat a Cupcake

by Meg Donohue

  “Good morning, mi amor,” she said, holding eye contact for a long beat before turning back to the stove. “Eat breakfast and then I will put you to work. Your first job is to wake Annie or she will sleep all day long.”

  I dropped into the breakfast booth in the corner of the kitchen, stabbing drowsily at pieces of melon with my fork and half listening to the steady flow of conversation between my mother and Lucia.

  “And how is Mrs. von Dreiden?” Lucia asked. She’d managed to slide the cutting board of herbs away from my mother without her seeming to notice and had begun expertly gliding her knife in a silent rolling motion through the green stems. “I haven’t heard much of her lately.”

  I perked up. Judith von Dreiden was part of my mother’s social circle and her daughter was a couple of years behind me in school. There were few topics that intrigued me more than adults’ opinions of one another.

  “Oh, I saw Judith last week,” my mother said. “She had the usual litany of complaints—fatigue, sore joints, headaches. I can’t imagine how long her visits with her actual doctor must be considering how long she’ll rattle on about that nonsense to me—she must have him on a special retainer! I keep telling her she needs to take up a cause—it’s not healthy to think about yourself too much.”

  “What a shame. She is such a nice lady,” Lucia said. She transferred the cut herbs from the cutting board to a small bowl. “Maybe she can join you on a committee at the museum? She collects art, doesn’t she?”

  My mother thought about this for a moment. I expected a biting comment from her, perhaps something about the “housewife disease” she was often accusing her friends of suffering from—symptoms included acute laziness and addiction to shopping. Instead, she shrugged and said, “She does love art. It’s a good idea, Luce. I’ll ask her.”

  The back door to the kitchen swung open and Annie trudged into the room, her hair tangled and her eyes still sticky with sleep. Her step faltered for a moment when she saw all of us, but then she grunted a greeting and shoved me playfully deeper into the booth so she could slide in beside me.

  “At last, our fourth wheel,” my mother said jauntily. For a woman whose daily life always seemed to me to pitch steadily forward on a wave of brisk, self-propelled momentum, she seemed unusually relaxed and cheerful today.

  “Buenos días, mi amor,” Lucia said, crossing the room to hug and kiss Annie. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

  “Morning, everyone,” Annie said. “I hope you’re all feeling particularly thankful for my big hair and unbrushed teeth today.”

  “Gross!” I said, laughing.

  Lucia looked at my mother and shook her head, lifting her hands in front of her. “I take no responsibility for this. I know I taught her better.”

  “Oh, our work here is done, Luce,” my mother answered. “These young ladies are responsible for their own actions.” She shook a finger at Annie, who was biting lustfully into an oversized muffin. “Just promise me you’ll reintroduce yourself to some soap before we sit down to eat this afternoon.”

  Annie grinned, and, though Lucia and my mother generously ignored the crumbs that dropped from her mouth as she did so, I fell into the sort of fit of uncontrollable giggles that only Annie seemed capable of eliciting from me.

  We were still in the kitchen a couple of hours later when my father and Curtis returned from the driving range. It was barely eleven a.m. and my father was really more of a martini man, but he reached into the fridge and pulled out four beers. The sight of my mother’s thin hand clasping a beer bottle was enough to set Annie and me giggling again, and Lucia and Curtis and my father all seemed to be having a hard time keeping a straight face at the sight as well.

  “Just look at you all!” my mother rasped. “You’d think you stumbled into Mother Teresa sipping gin at the racetrack!” She tipped the beer bottle back for a long drink and we all erupted into laughter.

  As much time as we each spent with one another, it was rare that we found ourselves all together in the same room. Curtis was his usual man-of-few-words self, but Lucia set him to work mashing potatoes and he appeared to loosen up a bit. I’d noticed that Annie always seemed to gravitate toward him, teasing him relentlessly and badgering him into conversation; he tolerated her needling that day in his typically unflappable style and even cracked a smile every so often.

  As the morning wore on, I found myself feeling increasingly disconcerted by our strange six-some. Looked around, it dawned on me for the very first time that two of the four adults in the room were on our family’s payroll. Did they even want to be there? I looked at Lucia, my heart aching with love for her. While my parents and I enjoyed ourselves, was she glancing at the clock, wondering when her workday would be over? I suddenly felt sick. Lucia was paid to ask my mother about her friends. Curtis was paid to join my father on the golf course on a national holiday. Worst of all, Lucia was paid to love me. I watched her pull Annie tight to her side as they passed each other by the fridge, watched Annie wriggle away, feigning irritation, and felt the unfamiliar tremors of jealousy and loss rattle within me.

  Later, we all showered and changed into more formal clothes for the Thanksgiving meal and reconvened in the dining room. After Lucia set the last steaming dish on the table and took her place beside Annie, my father lifted his wineglass.

  “To being home for Thanksgiving,” he said, adopting the serious voice he used for such occasions, “and to the countless ways each one of you contributes to making this house a home we all want to be in today. Your efforts are always appreciated.”

  I noticed Lucia and Curtis exchange an indecipherable look, and felt a stinging in my eyes that I blinked quickly away.

  “Here, here!” my mother rasped, apparently oblivious to any undercurrents of discontent at the table. “Happy Thanksgiving!”

  We clinked glasses and dug into what would turn out to be the one and only Thanksgiving we all celebrated together. The next year, with little discussion and zero fanfare but with much relief on my part, my mother, father, and I boarded our usual flight to Maui for turkey among the coconut trees.

  Chapter 13

  Annie

  It had been a very long time since I’d baked anything in the St. Clair kitchen, but rummaging through the cabinets for the various tools I needed felt disturbingly familiar. Some of what I found in those cabinets was new—a spotless stand mixer, for example; other things, like the set of scratched steel mixing bowls Julia handed to me from an upper shelf, were objects that I remembered my mother using regularly. I was trying hard to interpret my mother’s lingering presence in the room as something positive, something to be savored, but it was hard not to feel overwhelmed by darker, more melancholic thoughts. Julia and I had checked every one of the many cabinets and each corner of the pantry, but my mother’s recipe book still hadn’t turned up, not that I’d entertained much hope by then.

  “Finding everything?”

  I looked up from where I was crouched at a low cabinet to see Tad St. Clair grinning down at me. I hadn’t crossed paths with him yet, having ducked out early from the Save the Children benefit that June, and I was surprised by how little his looks had changed. His hair had already turned white by the time I left for college; other than a slightly paler undercast to his perpetually tanned skin and a couple of extra inches at his waistline, Tad was exactly the same. He pulled me up into a warm embrace complete with a couple of hearty whaps on the back.

  “Wonderful to see you, Annie! Just wonderful!” he boomed. “You’ve been sneaking in and out of here as stealthily as a cat these last couple of months. Glad I’ve finally caught you!”

  “It’s good to see you, too,” I said. I meant it. Tad was always a benevolent, if sporadic presence in my childhood, swooping into the kitchen early in the morning to tuck a newspaper under his arm and press hard kisses to our foreheads before hurrying out to the enormous black Bentley that Curtis had id
ling in the courtyard.

  “Annie’s going to bake a new recipe she’s working on for the cupcakery,” Julia said from where she leaned on the white marble island at the center of the kitchen. She glanced up from the cell phone in her hands. “We’re deciding on the menu today. She brought a few kinds that she baked at home earlier if you want to weigh in.”

  Tad opened the box on the counter and gazed down at the cupcakes. “Weigh in, indeed,” he said, patting his stomach. Still, he pulled out a mint-chocolate cupcake with dark chocolate icing that glowed richly under the kitchen lights and took a huge bite. Few things in life made me happier than watching someone aggressively devour one of my desserts. Julia’s meticulous, OCD-like manner of eating a cupcake, on the other hand, drove me crazy. By contrast, my method of eating a cupcake was quite straightforward—step one: gobble it down one large bite at a time until there’s nothing left. That’s it. I was forced to practice dainty nibbling all day long as I tasted various recipes and cupcake batches, so when I sat down with a cupcake to eat for the pure pleasure of eating, I meant business.

  “Annie!” Tad said when he was finally done chewing. “Where have you been hiding yourself? This is a show-stopping cupcake. I don’t have a clue what I’m eating, but it definitely gets my vote.”

  I laughed. “You haven’t tried any of the other flavors!”

  “How could they possibly be better than this one? Lucia, my dear, you are without a doubt the best baker in San Francisco.”

  I opened my mouth, but didn’t speak.

  “You mean Annie,” Julia said quietly, looking at her father.

  “Hmm?” he asked.

  “Annie is the best baker in San Francisco. You said Lucia.”

  Tad waved the hand that held the cupcake in front of him, sending a sprinkle of dark crumbs down to the counter. “Annie! Of course I meant Annie. I’m sorry.” He seemed flustered for a moment, looking around the kitchen. “But Lucia’s baking skills are . . . were . . . second to none. Do you remember that cake she made for my fiftieth birthday? I’ll never forget it.” He said this in a wistful voice that did not sound at all like him. Julia and I exchanged puzzled glances.

  “Anyway, girls,” Tad said, squishing the cupcake liner into a ball in his hand, “please remind me again—when is Treat’s opening party? I want to be sure I don’t miss it, and you know how Lolly likes to stack our social calendar.”

  “Dad!” Julia said. “It’s October fifth. I’ve told you a million times. I sent you the invitation by e-mail. And the printed invitation is on your desk. I even entered it on your online calendar.”

  Tad looked indignant, running a hand through his floppy white hair. “Since when do you have access to my online calendar, young lady?”

  Julia looked at me, rolling her eyes. “Since forever, Dad. Since the world began.”

  “And on the seventh day God said, ‘Let there be online calendar access!’ ” I said cheerily.

  “I see,” Tad said, an amused glint in his eye. “Fine. Then I shouldn’t miss it, should I?”

  “You better not,” said Julia.

  Tad turned to me. “She’s very bossy, isn’t she?”

  “Oh, I know,” I said. “She should be leading armies in a jungle somewhere, bamboozling impoverished peoples into relinquishing previously untapped natural resources.”

  Tad laughed. “Well, try not to let her drive you crazy,” he advised. “She is, unfortunately, often right. Which makes her more like her mother than any of us would care to admit.”

  Julia watched her father silently.

  “It was good to see you, Annie. We’re all very glad to have you back in the fold. I’m off to lunch now, but I’ll see you October sixth.”

  “Fifth!” Julia cried.

  “I’m kidding!” Tad said, hiking up his pants. “Sheesh!”

  After he left, Julia was quiet for a bit while I finished gathering all of the ingredients I needed. I’d brought a small crate of Gertzwell Farm’s Twentieth Century pears, and they glistened like Christmas balls in a strainer in the enormous farmhouse sink.

  “Did he seem weird to you?” Julia asked finally.

  I turned off the faucet. “Weird how?”

  “I don’t know. Different.”

  “I haven’t seen him in more than ten years, Julia. I’m probably not the best judge.” I was tempted to leave it at that, to move on to the task at hand, but Julia looked pale and I could see the shadow of bluish circles under her eyes. “Are you worried about him?” I asked.

  “Maybe. He’s my dad, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I said, though of course I was the last person to ask about how one was supposed to feel about one’s father.

  The door opened then and Curtis walked into the kitchen. His step faltered when he saw me, but then he nodded and waved.

  “Hi, Annie. Didn’t expect to see you here.” He took in the kitchen’s state of disarray, looking from one end of the room to the other, his craggy face impassive. “Hi, Julia.”

  “Hey, Curtis,” we both said, and the synchronicity of our two voices in well-worn harmony, the feeling of both of us hanging out in the kitchen with Curtis, was enough to twist my stomach. All we were missing was my mother. Impulsively, I stepped forward to hug him. He still had the same smell he’d always had when we were kids—a sharp peppermint scent mixed with the faint cling of cigarettes, though I’d never seen him smoke.

  Curtis gave my head an awkward little pat and then rocked back on his heels. “Have you seen Mr. St. Clair?” he asked Julia in his stiff way. Curmudgeon Curtis, I thought, but resisted the urge to poke fun at his formality. Some things never changed.

  “He was just in here,” Julia said. “Why?”

  “I’ve got the car ready. He wanted to go to the driving range.”

  Julia’s brow furrowed. “Maybe he forgot? He wasn’t dressed for golf.”

  Curtis shrugged. “He must have changed his mind. I’ll find him.” He wandered off into the hall with a vague wave.

  I looked over at Julia, but she was studying her phone. She seemed distracted and sad and, I realized, hadn’t read from her ever-present cupcakery to-do list once that day. Don’t get involved, I warned myself. A big part of me wanted to ignore her obvious sadness and pretend that everything was fine. Since when did I care if Julia St. Clair was having a bad day? I had to admit that over the past months of working together—watching her take the odd hiccups we faced (a second deep key gauge in Treat’s just-repaired and freshly painted front door was our latest setback) in stride—the wall between us had slowly been coming down, one solid gold brick at a time. I figured the wall was at about shoulder height by then, low enough that I could see Julia’s facial expressions, but still not the rest of her body—and who knew what sudden moves she was capable of? She’d been an athlete and a queen bee, after all. A dangerous combination. And so even though I was tired of carrying around that ancient grudge—bored of it, really—I still got the sense that where the St. Clairs, and Julia in particular, were concerned, I needed to be careful. Who was going to look out for me if I didn’t look out for myself? I was on my own.

  But really, when it comes right down to it, aren’t we all on our own? Even Julia St. Clair? As I watched her flick through her phone, pausing every so often to run her hand distractedly down the length of her glossy blond hair, I realized that in all the time we’d spent together over the past couple of months, I hadn’t heard her talk to, or about, a single friend. Or even her fiancé, for that matter. Where was he, anyway? Hadn’t he returned from yet another business trip recently? I’d thought his return would improve her mood, but, in the moments she let her guard down, I still saw that shadow of sadness behind her eyes. I had no desire to try on Julia’s shoes, and not simply because they looked like the kind of designer flats that bit into your ankles and slowly sawed off your pinky toes. But before I knew it there
I was, putting myself in her Miu Mius.

  “Julia!” I said, tossing a pear at her. She looked up from her phone and caught it easily, as gracefully athletic as ever. “I think it’s time.”

  “For what?” she asked.

  “For you to learn how to make the world’s best cupcake.”

  October

  Chapter 14

  Julia

  I was surprised to find myself jittery with nerves as Treat’s opening party kicked off to a start. Work? Parties? Were there two things in the world that usually came more easily to me? After a lifetime under my parents’ tutelage, I should have been the picture of calm efficiency and easy charm. Instead, I was plagued by an uncomfortable tightness in my chest. When I touched my finger to my forehead, it felt slick. Me! Of the perpetually matte T-zone! Maybe it was the fact that I was still mildly hung over from the night before—one too many glasses of wine at dinner with Wes, to whom I still hadn’t, somehow, brought myself to tell the truth. Or maybe it was the fact that there were about fifty people crammed into a space zoned to hold half that number, and when it came right down to it, I was not a fan of tight crowds (there was a very good reason why I never jumped into the mosh pits at Pearl Jam concerts like my Devon Prep peers, and it was that I was never really in the mood to be crushed to death). Or maybe it was that the entire night I felt dogged by the disquieting sense that I was being watched—hunted, almost—fifty pairs of eyes trained on me, an attention that I would normally bask in, but tonight just added to my anxiety. Or maybe it was the simple fact that I was launching the first business I’d ever owned, and I hoped, mostly for Annie’s sake but as a point of pride as well, that Treat would be a success.

  Reasons aside, I found myself exceptionally thirsty, and the abundant champagne was doing a bang-up job of making me feel less anxious. At least at the beginning. It was only much later that I wished I hadn’t drunk so much—and wondered if I would have been able to keep Annie and myself out of harm’s way if I’d been sober.