CHAPTER 7
Baking is a science, as rigorous as chemistry or physics. There are rules that must be followed. Too much of one thing and not enough of another can lead to ruin. I find comfort in this. Outside, the world is an unruly place where men prowl with sharpened knives. In baking, there is only order.
That’s why Quincy’s Sweets exists. When I graduated college with a marketing degree and moved to New York, I still thought of myself as a victim. So did everyone else. Baking seemed the only way to change that. I wanted to pour my runny, sloshing existence into a human-shaped mold and crank up the heat, emerging soft, springy and new.
So far, it’s working.
In the kitchen, I spread twin lines of bowls across the counter, sized according to what they contain. The biggest ones hold the base—powdery mounds of flour and sugar heaped like snowdrifts. Medium bowls are for the glue. Water. Eggs. Butter. In the smallest bowls are the flavors, the tiniest amounts packing the largest punch. Pumpkin puree and orange zest, cinnamon and cranberry.
Sam stares at the array of ingredients, uncertain. “What are you going to bake?”
”We are going to bake orange pumpkin loaf.”
I want Sam to witness firsthand the formula behind baking, to experience its safety, to see how it’s helped me become more than just a girl screaming through the woods away from Pine Cottage.
I want to impress the fuck out of her.
Sam remains still, looking first at me and then our surroundings. I think the kitchen is cozy, done up in soothing greens and blues. There’s a vase of daisies on the windowsill and kitschy pot holders hanging from the walls. The appliances are state-of-the-art but with a retro design. Sam eyes it all with barely concealed terror. She has the look of a feral child dragged suddenly into civilization.
“Do you know how to bake?” I ask.
She laughs. A raucous, throaty one that fills the kitchen. I like the sound. When it’s just me in the kitchen, all is silent.
“It’s easy,” I tell her. “Trust me.”
I position Sam before one row of bowls and take my place before the other. I then show her, step by step, how to fold the butter and sugar together, combine them with the flour, water and eggs, layer in the flavors one at a time. Sam forms the dough the same way she talks—in short, haphazard bursts. Tufts of flour and blots of pumpkin rise from her bowl.
“Um, am I doing this right?”
“Almost,” I say. “Be gentler.”
“You sound like all my ex-boyfriends,” Sam jokes, even though she’s started to follow my advice and mix the ingredients with slightly less force. The results are immediate. “Hey, it’s working!”
“Slow and steady wins the race. That’s the tenth commandment on my blog.”
“You should write a cookbook,” Sam says. “Baking for idiots.”
“I’ve thought about it. Just a regular cookbook, though.”
“What about a book about Pine Cottage?”
I stiffen at the sound of those two words pushed together. Individually, they have no power over me. Pine. Cottage. Nothing but harmless words. But when combined they obtain the sharpness of the knife He shoved into my shoulder and stomach. If I blink, I know I’ll see Janelle emerging from the trees, still technically alive but already dead. So I keep my eyes open, staring at the dough thickening in the bowl in front of me.
“It would be an awfully short book,” I say.
“Oh, yeah.” There’s a false ring to Sam’s voice, as if she’s trying to make it sound like she’s only just considered my memory loss. “Right.”
She’s staring, too, although at me and not her bowl. I feel her gaze on my cheek, as warm as the afternoon sun coming through the kitchen window. I get the uneasy sense she’s testing me somehow. That I’ll fail if I turn to meet her stare. I continue to look at the dough, now a rubbery ball in the bottom of my bowl.
“Did you read Lisa’s book?” I ask.
“Nah,” Sam says. “You?”
“No.”
I don’t know why I lie. Which is itself a lie. I do know. It’s to keep Sam slightly off-balance. I bet she assumes I’ve read Lisa’s book cover to cover. Which I have. There’s nothing so boring as being predictable.
“And the two of you never met?” I say.
“Lisa never got the pleasure,” Sam says. “You?”
“We talked on the phone. About how to deal with trauma. What people expect of us. It wasn’t quite like meeting in person.”
“And sure as hell not like baking together.”
Sam nudges my hip with hers and gives another laugh. Whatever test she was giving me, I think I’ve passed.
“It’s time to put these in the oven,” I announce.
I slide my batch of dough into a loaf pan using a spatula. Sam simply tips her bowl over the pan, but her aim is off, and the dough plops halfway between pan and counter.
“Shit,” she says. “Where can I get one of those flat things?”
“You mean a spatula? In there.”
I point to one of the counter drawers behind her. She tugs the handle of the one beneath it. The locked drawer. My drawer. Inside, something rattles.
“What’s in here?”
“Don’t touch that!”
I sound more panicked than I intend to, my voice lightly dusted with anger. My hand flutters to my neck, feeling for the key, as if somehow it had magically vanished and found its way into the drawer’s lock. It’s still there, of course, flat against my chest.
“It’s recipes,” I say, calming. “My top-secret stash.”
“Sorry,” Sam says as she lets go of the drawer handle.
“No one can see them,” I add.
“Sure. I get it.”
Sam raises both hands. Her jacket sleeve rides down her wrist, fully revealing the tattoo there. It’s a single word, etched in black.
SURVIVOR.
The letters are capitalized. The font is bold. It’s both declaration and dare. Go on, it says. Just try to fuck with me.
An hour later, all the cupcakes are decorated and two orange pumpkin loaves sit cooling atop the oven. Sam surveys the results with weary pride, a smudge of flour across her cheek like war paint.
“So now what?” she says.
I begin to arrange the cupcakes on chunky Fiestaware, their orange icing popping against the pale green of the plates.
“Now we design a table setting for both desserts and photograph it for the website.”
“I meant about us,” Sam says. “We met. We talked. We baked. It was magical. So now what?”
“That depends on why you came here,” I say. “Is it really just because of what happened to Lisa?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“You could have called. Or emailed.”
“I wanted to see you in person,” Sam says. “After learning what Lisa had done, I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“And how am I doing?”
“I can’t tell. Care to give me a hint?”
I busy myself with the cupcakes, trying out different arrangements as Sam stands behind me.
“Quincy?”
“I’m sad, okay?” I say, whirling around to face her. “Lisa’s suicide makes me sad.”
“I’m not.” Sam examines her hands as she says it, digging dough out from under her fingernails. “I’m pissed off. After all she survived, that’s how she died? It makes me mad.”
Although it’s exactly the same thing I had said to Jeff last night, irritation ripples over me. I turn back to the display. “Don’t be mad at Lisa.”
“I’m not,” Sam says. “I’m pissed off at myself. For never reaching out to her. Or to you. Maybe if I had, I—”
“Could have prevented it?” I say. “Join the club.”
Although my back is still turned to Sam, I know she’s staring again. This time a faint cold spot blunts the heat of her gaze. Curiosity, left unarticulated. I want nothing more than to tell her about the email Lisa sent me before she died. It would be a relief to talk about it, to let Sam shoulder some of the burden of my possibly misplaced guilt. But it’s partly guilt that has brought her to my door. I’m not about to add to it, especially if this visit is some unspoken rite of atonement.
“What happened to Lisa sucks,” she says. “I feel like shit knowing that I—we, actually—might have been able to help her. I don’t want the same thing happening to you.”
“I’m not suicidal,” I say.
“But I wouldn’t have known it if you were. If you ever need help or something, tell me. I’ll do the same to you. We need to look out for each other. So you can talk to me. You know, if you ever need to.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m happy.”
“Good.” The word rings hollow, as if she doesn’t believe me. “That’s good to hear.”
“Really, I am. The website’s going well. Jeff is fantastic.”
“Will I be allowed to meet this Jeff?”
It’s a nesting doll question, concealing other, unspoken ones inside. If I crack open Will I meet Jeff? I’ll find Can I stay longer? Within that is Do you like me? Out of which pops Are we becoming friends? Inside that is the most compact, most important question. The heart of the matter. Are we the same?
“Of course,” I say, answering them all at once. “You have to stay for dinner.”
I finish the table setting, the cupcakes angled so their frosted spiders will fill the frame. For the background, I’ve chosen a swath of fabric with a bold, fifties pattern and vintage ceramic pumpkins picked up at a flea market.
“Cute,” Sam says, the wrinkling of her nose indicating it’s not a compliment.
“In the baking blog biz, cute sells.”
We stand shoulder to shoulder, studying the display. Despite all those minute adjustments, it’s still not right. There’s something missing. Some intangible spark I’ve neglected to include.
“It’s too perfect,” Sam announces.
“It’s not,” I say, when, of course, it is. The whole display is flat, lifeless. Everything is so pristine the cupcakes might as well be fake. They certainly look that way. Plastic frosting atop a Styrofoam base. “What would you do differently?”
Sam approaches the display with an index finger on her chin, lost in thought. She then goes to work, tearing through it like Godzilla stomping Tokyo. Some of the plates are cleared of cupcakes and hastily stacked. A ceramic pumpkin is knocked on its side and a napkin is crumpled and casually tossed, bouncing into the middle of the scene. Wrappers are torn from three cupcakes and dropped into the mix.
The once-pristine display is now chaotic. It resembles a table after a raucous dinner party, messy and satisfying and real.
It’s perfect.
I grab my camera and start taking pictures, zooming in on the disheveled cupcakes. Behind them sits an uneven stack of Fiestaware, some bearing globs of orange icing bright against the green.
Sam grabs a cupcake and takes a gargantuan bite as crumbs drip and cherry filling oozes.
“Take my picture,” she says.
I hesitate, for reasons she can’t begin to understand.
“I don’t put pictures of people on the blog,” I say. “Only food.”
Nor do I take pictures of people, even ones not intended for my website. No Lisa-esque selfies for me. Not since Pine Cottage.
“Just this once,” Sam says, faking a pout. “Pretty please? For me?”
Hesitantly, I look into the camera’s viewfinder and suck in a breath. It’s like peering into a crystal ball and seeing not my future, but my past. I see Janelle, standing in front of Pine Cottage, striking wacky poses with her too many suitcases. I didn’t notice the similarity earlier, but now it’s obvious. While Sam and Janelle don’t physically resemble each other, they share the same spirit. Vivid and unapologetic and startlingly alive.
“Something wrong?” Sam says.
“No.” I click the shutter, taking a single picture. “Nothing’s wrong.”
Sam hurries to my side, nudging me until I show her the photograph.
“I like it,” she says. “You definitely need to put it up on your blog.”
I tell her that I will, which pleases her, even though I plan to delete the picture the first chance I get.
Next, it’s time to arrange and photograph the pumpkin bread. I let Sam saw away at one of the loaves, the uneven slices unfolding off it like pages torn from a book. The ceramic pumpkins are replaced with vintage teacups I found a week earlier in the West Village. I fill them with coffee, varying the amounts in each. When a splash of coffee hits the table, I leave it there, letting it pool around the base of a teacup. Sam finishes things by lifting the cup and taking a long, slurping sip. Her lipstick leaves a mark on the brim. A ruby kiss, mysterious and seductive. She stands back to let me photograph it. I click away, taking more pictures than necessary, drawn to the chaos.