How to Bake a Perfect Life (43 page)

My head is hurting as I think about all the things I should be taking care of and I’m not. Katie. The bakery. Sofia. Every one of the failure tapes I’ve been hearing off and on through my life is playing at full volume in my head.

“I was remembering the day your mother came into the shop and was so upset. Do you remember?”

“Oh, yeah. I was so humiliated that she misunderstood everything, that she made me feel like such a slut.”

“And yet,” he says in that smooth amber voice, his fingers touching my bare neck, “she was worried for a reason. There was a lot of electricity between us. You were so lonely and I was”—he takes a breath, blows it out—“lost. Sad. It could have been dangerous.”

It is dangerous. It’s too dangerous. “Jonah, I’m sorry, but I think I need to be alone.”

He hesitates for a moment, then says, “Don’t make trouble where there is none, Ramona.”

“I’m not. Can you just give me a little space?”

“Absolutely.” He raises his hands in surrender. “Call me.”

When he’s gone, I carry the wine inside and up the steps. Katie has done all the dishes and left the house kitchen exquisitely
tidy. Seeing it, the action she took before she found out her father had attempted to kill himself—kill himself!—makes me furious. If he was close, I would shake him.

But anger will not help any of this. Squaring my shoulders, I head up to the third floor, where it’s stuffy enough that I go into Sofia’s bedroom first and open the windows. A breeze wafts through immediately, blowing away the scent of disuse.

Katie’s door is closed. I knock. “Katie? Can I come in?”

“No. I don’t want to talk.”

I let the words fade away completely before I say, “I need to talk to you.”

“No!” she cries, but I open the door anyway. As I come in, she screams, “Get out!” and flings a pillow at me.

I grab it and stop where I am. In here, it’s cooler, with the wind coming through the screened balcony. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

She rolls away, pulling the pillow over her head. “Go away.”

Merlin is sitting by the bed, guarding her. He’s panting softly, giving his face the appearance of a grin. I think about that day I had hysterics after my mother hauled me out of the record shop, remembered how exhausted and overwhelmed I felt, by the pregnancy, by hormones, by the whole wide unfairness of the world.

How much worse to be Katie right now!

“You don’t have to say anything, Katie, but I want to talk. Take the pillow off your head, please.”

She hauls it off, leaving her hair in a wild mess over her wet red face. I desperately want to put my hands on her, smooth away her suffering, but I dare not. Suddenly I am my mother, looking down at me in my misery, helpless to change anything, and it makes me ache. “I wish things were better for you, sweetie. I wish I could wave a magic wand. But I can’t. Nobody can make your life happy for you except yourself.”

She sits up, her arms behind her on the bed, and looks at me with utter disdain. Her eyes glow against the tears. “Really.”

“Sorry, that was stupid.”

She stares at me, then, with an old expression, she says, “I’ve already heard all that stuff. You can’t find a way to say it new.” Her voice goes singsong. “ ‘Things work out for the best. God has a plan. Life is what you make it.’ ”

I want to say I understand how it is to be exiled, to be alone with people you like but don’t feel entirely comfortable with, to face something that seems almost insurmountable. But—and this is the first time I have ever had this thought—I had advantages that have not been given to her.

Still, in the mothering arsenal, it’s about all I’ve got for this child in this moment. “How about, you didn’t do anything to make this happen? How about, your dad loves you, but he’s afraid? How about, you have a home here and you’re safe and I care about you?”

Her voice is absolutely calm when she says, “Whatever.” Her eyes bore into me. “Can I be alone now?”

My mother and Poppy tucked me into bed and left me to grieve. I can do the same for her. “Okay. Good night, sweetie.”

Katie

  A
fter Ramona leaves, Katie sits up against the wall and stares out the window while the fan moves air around. Pretty soon Ramona will go to bed.

All of a sudden it’s like she can see again after months of being in a bubble—a pink bubble where everything was all sweet-smelling and full of flowers and good clothes and the smell of bread. But tonight the bubble broke, and she can see that she has been really stupid. She’s gotten as soft as a cheerleader living in one of those big houses near downtown El Paso.
Houses like this
, she thinks.

No wonder.

Bad things happen when you let yourself get soft. Over and over Katie has had to learn that lesson, so many times you’d think she’d remember not to do it. Soft as a little girl in her happy family, before her dad went to Iraq. Then her mom deployed, too, and she had to live with her grandma. Then everybody was home again—a happy soft life, until her mom and dad started fighting all the time and they got divorced. That was when Katie had to really learn to fend for herself, because her mom started using for the first time. When she went to live with her dad and Sofia, right after they got married when her dad was at Fort Bliss, it was good. It took her a while to like Sofia, but
Sofia was a good cook and Katie was only nine then and really hungry, so she liked to eat.

Now she is soft again. And maybe her mom isn’t the greatest mother in the world, but she has been teaching Katie how to be tough all of her life.

And, honestly, who else does she have? Her coward of a dad, who tried to kill himself? Again the thought fills her with such a huge prickling of red spikes that she almost can’t catch her breath. How could he
do
that to her? Her emotions are making so much noise that she can hardly think straight, even after two hours of crying.

The one thing she keeps thinking is that she needs to see her mom. Just go see her at the rehab. She has been thinking about that for a while and has even looked up the cost of a bus ticket, which is sixty-three dollars.

She hears Ramona turn on the shower downstairs.

Katie begins to make a plan. Some parts of it she doesn’t like, but life has taught her you have to do what you have to do. Right now she has to see her mother.

Sofia’s Journal

J
ULY
13, 20—

It’s almost my mom’s birthday. I’ll have to remind Katie. If my grandmother is here, there won’t be anyone to celebrate my mom’s day properly, and after all the black balloons last year, she deserves something this year
.

I’ve slept for almost two days straight through, and it’s amazing how much better things look this morning. Oscar tried to kill himself, but he was not successful. I’m furious with him, but he’s just in pain and lost and can’t hear me. I’m not going away. I’m not going to let him down
.

I’m so pregnant now, though, that it’s kind of crazy. They sent me again for an ultrasound to make sure it wasn’t two babies, but just like last time, it was fine. I’m just super-big, super-pregnant. It’s a big baby. I think, more and more, that it’s a boy. A big, hearty boy with arms and legs he keeps stretching into the sides of my body. A rambunctious boy who dances around in there like he has his own private radio station. I can’t wait to see him, but once he’s here, the scary part starts. As long as he’s curled up there under my ribs, he’s pretty safe
.

It hit me last night as I was walking down to dinner that every single one of these soldiers was once a baby swirling around inside
his mother’s tummy. Every single one of them was a baby with a diaper, learning how to make noises for the first time and to spit SpaghettiOs all over the place
.

And not just these soldiers here in this hospital, but all the others out there in the fields, on our side and the other side. All those fierce, bearded extremists were babies, too. That freaks me out!

It’s starting to sink in that my mom is really not going to be here for the baby’s birth. I love my grandmother, but I wish my mom was here. I know she cannot be here for the delivery, but it would mean a lot to me if she was, since Oscar isn’t going to be there, either, unless I get wheeled into his room to go through labor. Which they probably wouldn’t do, considering all the risk of infection
.

Amazing how much better I feel after getting some sleep!

Later

I just had what my grandma Adelaide would have called a come-to-Jesus talk with Oscar. He was conscious again, feeling pretty sick, which serves him right. I stomped right up to the side of his bed and said, “Listen to me, Oscar Wilson. You are going to live, do you hear me? I need you. I love you. I am not giving up, do you hear me?”

He looked at me, his eyes so sad. “I can’t do it, Sofia.”

“Yes, you can.” I kissed his fingers where they stick out of the bandages. “Listen, your daughter sent an email.”

He swiveled his eyes up to the ceiling
.

“Are you listening, Oscar? This is from the daughter who was living with her mother the crackhead, until I managed to get her to safety with my mother. Remember all that?”

He looked at me but didn’t say anything
.

So I read him the letter from Katie, which I glued in right here:

Dear Dad,

It’s kind of a big day around here. I cut my hair, which everyone has been trying to get me to do for ages, and it looks good, I have to say, all these curls showing up.

My hobby this summer, as I keep telling you, is flowers. I’ve planted so many it’s crazy—geraniums and dahlias are summer flowers, and I love them. I also like the spring flowers that were blooming when I first got here (which is starting to feel like a different life to me!), which this old lady who visits says are lilacs. She’s a big gardener, and Merlin, my dog, likes her a lot. He acts like a puppy when she’s around. Sometimes I think she’s kind of touched in the head, because the only time she talks to me is when she’s in the garden, and she seems to forget things I’ve told her. But it’s not touched in a bad way, just kind of like being old, you know? She knows everything about flowers, though, that’s for sure.

Ramona got me a library card, so I’m reading a lot. I read seventeen books in June! That’s a lot, even for me.

I wish you would write to me. I miss you and I love you. GET WELL SOON! Love (x10!), Katie

I folded the letter up and looked at him, and there were tears running out of his eyes. Which I took as a good sign
.

“Next time somebody brings you some pills, you think about that daughter of yours when she hears the news.”

He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. I know the words went home
.

My grandmother is coming to take me to dinner, so I’d better get ready
.

Today is better. I don’t know if he’ll choose to live, but at least I’m back in the right place
.