Fifteen Candles (12 page)

She paused and remembered how Maribelle had told her that a
quince
should be much more than a party. Sarita's mom had volunteered to make the church arrangements, so Alicia hadn't given it a second thought. But now that she'd gotten to know Sarita, she was curious about how the religious ceremony would tie together all that followed.

“Do you and your mom go to church every Sunday?” Alicia asked as El Vez sewed in a row of long, silky extensions.

“Not really,” Sarita said. “My mom has her museum events on the weekends. But we do go to Saturday evening mass sometimes, and we both love it. My mom says no matter what you believe, it's a beautiful ritual—the singing, the candles, the communion. And rituals are what give our life meaning.”

Alicia thought about the rituals in her life: her parents' annual Winter Wonderland party; the Saturday movie nights they'd been having since she was a kid; and Christmas, when no one opened a single present until Maribelle made hot cross buns, which she called Jesus's birthday cake, and someone blew out the candle and made a wish on Jesus's behalf. Rituals
did
add meaning to life, and it was her job to make sure that Sarita's
quinceañera
was the most important ritual the girl had ever had.

“Have you written your vows?” Alicia asked.

In the old days, girls had merely repeated the church's vows. Maribelle said that when she was a
quince
, she had had to say hers in Latin. But these days, girls wrote their own, reflecting the people and the things that were most important to them. Of course, this whole write-your-own-vows thing did not always work out.

At one church ceremony Alicia had attended, the girl had used her vows to discuss the role of fashion in her life. It had been an absolutely idiotic speech about how when she was in middle school, she had worn a lot of Baby Phat and Harajuku Lovers, but now that she was a
quince
, and coming into her own, she was proudly wearing labels like Shoshanna, Tracy Reese, and Kors by Michael Kors. She then went on to say that she looked forward to embracing more fashion-forward designers like Narciso Rodriguez and Zac Posen. It had been the most superficial, name-droppy church ceremony Alicia had ever seen. She'd even overhead her dad talking about how the priest had taken the girl's parents aside and criticized them for not vetting her speech and making sure she understood the meaning of the vows. Alicia happily retold that story now, and Sarita laughed at the girl's fashion litany.

“Well, I won't be going that route,” Sarita said. “Mostly because my mom would tar and feather me, stake me to a canvas, and call it art. I'm just going to thank my mom for always sacrificing so I could have everything, even when that means she doesn't have as much. I'm going to thank my dad for teaching me that family is still family, even after a divorce. And I'll throw in some kiss-up remarks to my
tías
, because they're bitter and vindictive, and they'll do nothing but
chis
mear
about me if I don't.”

“That sounds great,
chica
,” Alicia said, standing up and giving Sarita a hug. “It looks like you are in great hands, and there is still lots to do. I'm going to jet, but I'll see you and your guy at dance rehearsal tomorrow night.”

“We'll be there,” Sarita said. “What about the cake-tasting? My mom's been asking about it.”

Alicia felt all the color drain out of her face. The cake!
She'd totally forgotten about the cake!
But no big deal, she thought. It was only a cake. Maribelle could make one in her sleep.

“I'm all over it,” Alicia said with confidence. “Today's Tuesday. The
quinceañera
is Saturday. How about we do the cake-tasting at your mom's job on Thursday?”

“Sounds good,” Sarita said. “And thank you for this.” She fingered her new raven locks.

“You're welcome,” Alicia said. “You deserve it.”

Alicia's confidence was quickly shattered.

“I don't do cakes,” Maribelle said when Alicia brought it up.

“Of course you do,” Alicia said. “You're an amazing cook.”

“Thank you very much. I know that I am,” Maribelle said. “Which is why I know that cooking and baking are not the same thing. Think about it. When have you ever seen me bake a cake?”

“You make flan!”

“Not baking,” Maribelle said.

“And crème brûlée!”

“I love the little blowtorch,” Maribelle said. “But that is not baking.”

“What about your famous chocolate-chip cookies?” Alicia asked. “That
is
baking.”

Maribelle looked guilty. “I follow the recipe on the Toll House chips bag, and I add shaved coconut to give it the Maribelle touch.”

“You don't!”

“I do!” Maribelle said. “Don't tell your brother.”

Alicia sighed. “So we just follow a cake recipe. We'll do it together. I can help. How hard could it be?”

Maribelle huffed. “Hard! I'm already making dinner on the beach for two hundred people. I will not be making the cake. I do not have the time, the energy, or the desire.”

“But our budget is stretched to the max,” Alicia said imploringly.

“Then you are going to have to crack open your piggy bank, because a professionally made cake is very expensive.”

Alicia sat down at the kitchen counter. “I know,” she said with a sigh. “I priced them. We're talking eight hundred, nine hundred bucks for a
quince
cake, and that's if we do a cake that feeds a hundred and supplement it with a sheet cake for the other hundred people.” Alicia looked up at Maribelle. “You know what? I'll just have to make it myself.”

Maribelle laughed. “Ha! I'm going to watch my
novela
, where the deluded women are played by real actresses, not ambitious teenagers.”

As Alicia went through Maribelle's cookbooks, looking for a cake recipe, she thought: It's my job to make sure that Sarita has the best
quince
Miami has ever seen. And that means the best cake—like a giant one in the shape of a rocket ship.

Unfortunately, Maribelle's cookbooks were a little short on rocket-ship-shaped cake recipes, so she flipped open her laptop and searched for a recipe online.

Hmm, she thought. Google has ninety-four thousand eight hundred results for rocket-ship cake. Sarita will be done with college and working at NASA before I get through all of these.

She went to her father's office and printed out a picture of the most realistic-looking one. Then she called Carmen, Gaz, and Alicia to ask them to scratch coming over that night. She needed them to come over in the morning instead and help. She found a recipe for an ambrosia cake that sounded delicious (coconut flakes, banana and orange filling,
yum
). Then she divided the grocery list among the crew, so that everyone could play a part, and sent them an e-mail. Gaz would go to the cake-decorating shop for sparklers, silver balls, and all the decorations they would need to make the cake's base. Carmen would head to the Coconut Grove farmers' market for butter, eggs, oranges, and milk. And Jamie would hit up Half Moon Empanadas for their bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast empanadas, so they wouldn't be eating batter all morning long.

The next morning, promptly at ten, everyone arrived. Maribelle sat at the kitchen counter with her cup of coffee.

“This is something I've got to see,” she said with a chuckle.

All of the
amigas
—and Gaz—moved around the Cruzes' kitchen as if it were their own. Over the years, they'd spent so much time there it felt like an extension of home. It wasn't just where they chowed down on Maribelle's greatest culinary hits; the Cruz kitchen was where they baked cookies after school in junior high, where they made popcorn on movie nights, and made Cuban pressed sandwiches with the family's thousand-dollar, restaurant-quality panini grill.

A sleepy Jamie reached for a square ceramic platter, her eyes still half closed, and put the breakfast empanadas on them.

“You're not going to warm them?” Maribelle looked genuinely horrified. “Who eats cold empanadas?”

“No te preocupes,”
Gaz told her, taking the empanadas and sliding them off the platter into a pan and then popping them into the oven, which he set for 350 degrees. “I'll warm 'em up.”

Jamie poured herself a cup of coffee from the old-fashioned silver pot that sat on the stove. “How many
amigas
does it take to bake a cake, anyway? Can't I go back to bed?”

Alicia, who was dressed in a turquoise one-shoulder T-shirt and orange cutoffs, shook her head. “All four of us,” she said. “This is more than a cake; it's a team-building exercise, a
symbol
of what Amigas really is, a
monument
to our swagger, made of sugar and flour. ”

Jamie sat down next to Maribelle at the kitchen counter and rolled her eyes. “Whatever. I'll take my slice of symbol or monument or whatever to go.”

“Escucha esta tontería!”
Maribelle giggled. “I love it.”

Carmen was studying the color printout of the rocket-ship cake. “This looks complicated, Lici,” she said. “Where'd you get this picture?”

“From the Web site of a bakery in New York,” Alicia explained. “Sylvia Weinstock.”

“She's a
very
famous pastry chef,” Jamie added. “I read about her in
New York
magazine.”

“So? What's the big deal, Miss New York?” Alicia said. “You're on butter-and-sugar duty. You should like that, because you can do it sitting down.”

Alicia plopped the family's cherry red mixer down in front of Jamie.

“I do like it,” Jamie said, perking up. “It even matches.” As Jamie was wearing a lipstick red Japanese-style obi belt over a ribbed white boyfriend T, this was absolutely and categorically true.

Carmen, who thought of cooking as analogous to sewing, was doing what she always did when she began a big project—arranging all her material. She was the only one of the
amigas
to be wearing a proper apron, which she'd made herself out of vintage fabric she'd found online. Alicia was pretty sure that her grandmother had wallpaper in the same exact blue and orange pattern. But on Carmen, it looked more than acceptable, it looked cool.

First, Carmen lined up all the ingredients for the cake: baking powder, salt, butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and whole milk. She raised an eyebrow. There were a couple of things missing. “We don't have self-rising flour,” Carmen told Alicia.

“No problem,” Alicia said, as she whisked together eggs for the filling. “We'll just add more baking powder.”

“Ha!” Maribelle said.

“And we don't have orange zest,” Carmen said.

“I don't even know what orange zest is,” Gaz said. He was engaged in the very manly task of buttering the pans.

“No problem,” Alicia said. “We'll use a little bit of orange juice.”

“Ha!” Maribelle said again.

“Are you going to be doing that all day?” Alicia asked, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice.

Maribelle nodded yes.

“Gre-e-e-eat,” Alicia said.

Then it all started to go horribly, terribly, regrettably wrong. In an effort to soften the butter, which someone had accidentally put in the freezer, Alicia microwaved it. For three minutes.

“Oh, my God, it stinks!” Carmen said, opening up the microwave and fanning the burning butter wildly.

“Open a door!” Gaz said.

Alicia ran over to the door between the kitchen and the pool. “Who knew that a little bit of butter could smell so bad?”

“I knew,” Maribelle said.

Alicia glared at her.

Jamie began beating the butter and sugar, but it quickly became apparent that the mixer was broken, because it made a huge clanking noise like the noise of a muffler dragging off the tail end of a very old car.

“The bowl's too big,” Gaz surmised after giving it the guy once-over.

“You think?” Maribelle said.

“But that's the bowl that comes with it,” Alicia said.

“Nah,” Gaz said, kneeling down to check the cabinets in the center of the kitchen island. “You need a wooden bowl, Jamie. My mom always mixes butter and sugar in a wooden bowl.”

Jamie scraped the contents of the metal bowl into the wooden bowl and turned the mixer on, and it splattered everywhere. The butter-and-sugar concoction covered every wall of the kitchen and landed in significant globs in Alicia's hair.

“Nice work, Jamie,” Alicia grumbled. She was getting crankier by the second.

They scraped what was left from the wooden bowl and added the other ingredients.

“How much do you think we lost on the walls?” Carmen asked.

“Not much,” Alicia said, mixing it all together. “It looks good. Who wants to lick the spoon?”

Gaz did. But the moment he tasted it, he made a sour face. “Needs more sugar. And it's kinda dry.”

“It probably needs more butter,” Carmen advised.

“Okay, fine,” Alicia said. “Jamie, can you microwave this stick of butter for thirty seconds?”

“Okay,” Jamie said. “But maybe I should do it on the stove top. The microwave still smells like burned popcorn.”

“Microwave is faster,” Alicia said. “Time is money.”

She added a cup of honey to the batter.

Maribelle, who had been very quiet for a while, said, “May I ask about the honey?”

“Well, Gaz said it was dry. So instead of adding more sugar, I'm adding honey.”

Jamie added the melted butter to the batter and mixed it all in.

“Okay, Gaz,” she said, handing him a fresh spoon. “Taste test.”

“Tastes good,” he said, nodding slowly. He had been expecting something inedible.

“Excellent,” Alicia said proudly.

They put the cake in the oven for twenty-five minutes, and then Jamie took it out.