Where’s the fucking butter?
present
I’m trying.
I’m really trying.
But this domestic shit is for the birds.
Cooking and baking should be easy. I have an IQ of 155. It’s just reading a recipe and following directions.
Apparently I’m awful at following directions because almost everything I’ve attempted this week has been inedible. I do it while Seamus and the kids are gone because I don’t want them to know I failed. I hide the evidence in the dumpster out back and order take out instead.
Today, I’m trying again. Because Betty Crocker can kiss my motherfucking ass if she thinks I’m giving up. I’m going to make monkey bread. I saw it on Pinterest. Yeah, yeah, I know…Pinterest. The porn of housewives everywhere. I’m ashamed to admit I like it. I feel like I need to turn in my Gucci suits and Jimmy Choo peep-toe pumps for ill-fitting Target yoga pants and baby puke stained tank tops for the betrayal of good taste. But these damn recipes, they look so good. And they’re photographed and presented with the skill of Ansel Adams. The monkey bread is a work of art in a magnificent Bundt pan. Not to mention, just the thought of all that gooey goodness makes me feel gooey. I practically spontaneously orgasmed reading the recipe. Fuck me, I’m being warped by social media and stereotypical America. I need a job.
Back to the monkey bread. I went to the store earlier and bought the ingredients, a Bundt pan, and an apron because I figure maybe that’s where I’ve been going wrong. Maybe you have to look the part to play the role. The apron should help. It does on Pinterest anyway.
Everything is going smoothly. Success will be mine. Finally.
Until I figure out there’s no butter in the fridge.
Sonofabitch, butter is going to be my downfall!
Think. Think fast. What would Rachael Ray do? Would she give up on her monkey bread? Hell no!
I’m out the door and down the stairs in five seconds flat banging on the door of the apartment under Seamus’s. I’m looking at the number one on the door while I’m whispering under my breath, “Hurry up, this monkey bread is not going to make me its bitch.” When the door opens, I don’t wait for an introduction or to be invited in. “I need butter,” I announce as I speed walk toward the kitchen. When I open the fridge, I go straight for the little plastic door that always houses sticks of butter and pop it open. It’s empty. “Where’s the butter?” I ask exasperatedly. The owner of the fridge is standing on the other side of the open door. She looks a little sketchy, and she’s not answering my urgent plea quickly enough, so I ask again, “Where’s the fucking butter?”
“You shouldn’t swear. It’s a sin.” It sounds like a recording when she says it, a droning sound bite.
“Not having butter is the only sin here, missy.” I slam the miniature door shut before I slam the fridge door and put my hands on my hips. I’m frantic. This goddamn monkey bread has me worked up into a frenzy. “Where can you get your hands on some? Quick?” I rephrase, “I need it now.” It sounds like I’m trying to score illegal drugs instead of a simple dairy product.
She looks a little rattled, calmer than I would expect for a stranger bum rushing her home, but still a touch rattled. “Maybe Mrs. Lipokowski has butter.”
I pat her on the arm as I walk quickly past her to the front door. I don’t know who Mrs. Lipokowski is, but I need this woman to come through for me, so I’m talking to her like I’d talk to someone who works for me. It’s a flurry of pep talk mixed with get your ass in gear. You don’t give people time to think when you need something, you just tell them what they’re going to do. They usually never question it. Couple that assertiveness with my desperation and it’s a volatile mix that anyone would be crazy to challenge. “Good thinking. You run and get a stick of butter from Mrs. Lipokowski right now and bring it up to apartment three.” I’m talking fast, but watching her eyes to make sure she understands the importance of this mission.
“Okay?” she says it like a question.
I clap my hands, and she startles at the sound. “Come on. Chop chop. I need your head in the game. Mrs. Lipokowski. Butter. Now. Go.” I’m a coach barking out orders.
She walks out the door and I pull it closed behind me.
“Apartment three!” I yell at her retreating figure.
I race back up the stairs and leave the front door open so the butter can easily find its way in.
A few minutes later, the neighbor appears in the kitchen with a stick of butter. She’s out of breath and hands it off like a baton in a relay race before she drops into a chair at the table.
I accept it like a baton in a relay race, remove it from its wrapper, drop it in a mixing bowl, and stick it in the microwave. I look at her, because if she didn’t fail me with the butter, maybe… “Do you know how to bake?”
“I bake pizza sometimes.”
“Frozen?” I question. Warming a frozen pizza isn’t baking. Because frozen pizza isn’t really food.
She nods.
Damn.
I pick up my phone off the counter and tap the screen to bring up the recipe and hand it to her. “Do you think you can make this?”
She accepts the phone, and it takes longer than I’d like for her to read the recipe, but when she stands and starts opening the tubes of Pillsbury biscuits on the counter, hope erupts within me like Mount Vesuvius.
We take our time and when the Bundt pan is in the oven, I look at the woman I’ve been working with for the past thirty minutes and I extend my hand in celebration. “I’m Miranda.” I don’t say thank you because those are words I use sparingly. Most things we do during the course of a day are trivial, or are meant to propel our existence forward, they don’t require thanks. People do—it’s how we get through the day. It’s how we persevere. No thanks are needed for doing.
“I’m Hope,” she responds. She’s awkward now that we don’t have a task to focus on. Or maybe she was always awkward, and I didn’t notice because I was all hopped up on daydreams of monkey bread. She won’t look me in the eye.
“Do you want something to drink, Hope?” The monkey bread has to bake for thirty minutes, and I don’t want her to leave until I know if an emotional meltdown over dough is needed.
“You got any iced tea?”
Her incorrect grammar makes me my teeth grit and my eyes squint. “Do I have any iced tea?” I correct.
“Yeah, you got any iced tea?” She missed the correction.
“No. I have orange juice, Pellegrino, milk, or Coors Light.” I don’t care if she did just potentially save my ass, I’m not offering her my wine.
“Orange juice.”
I pour her a glass and then sit at the table with her. She fidgets like a child. Her mannerisms are all childlike. I wonder what her story is. I’m usually not interested in people personally, but she’s odd and it’s intriguing. “How long have you lived here, in your apartment?”
She thinks it over and then answers, “A long time.”
“One year? Five years? How long is a long time?” I press.
“I came when I was eighteen.”
“How old are you now?”
“Forty.”
Shocker. I would’ve guessed her ten years older. I want to tell her about dermabrasion, and chemical peels, and Botox, but I don’t think those words are in her vocabulary. And then I have an idea and run to the bathroom to retrieve my bag of tricks.
When I return, I hand her a hair elastic. “Put your hair up.”
She’s good with commands. I like that. She gathers back her long, tangled blond hair into a ponytail.
I do the same with mine.
Then I turn on the hot water in the sink until it’s steaming and wet two washcloths and wring them out. “Now tip your head back. I’m going to put this on your face. It’s hot, it will open up your pores.”
“Pores?” she questions.
“Just do it. Your skin is screaming for attention like a middle-aged woman in the front row at a Bon Jovi concert.” After I put the washcloth on her face, I do the same with mine. When it starts to noticeably cool, I remove them and set them on the counter. Hope flinches when I smear the mask on her face. “Sorry, I know it’s cold.”
“What is it?” she asks.
“It’s a mask. It contains lactic acid and beta glucan.”
“Huh?” I’ve lost her.
“It’s going to make your skin feel and look younger. You haven’t been good to your skin. It shows. You have to be friends with it if you want it to treat you well in the long run. Skin care is a marathon, not a sprint.” I’m not putting her down, I’m being honest. And I think she’s the type of person who can take it.
“Oh. It will make me pretty. When do we take it off?” See? She can take it.
“Twenty minutes,” I say as I slather a coat on my face.
I walk in on the most bizarre sight I think I’ve ever seen. Miranda and Hope are sitting at the kitchen table with green shit all over their faces, drinking orange juice, amongst a plethora of dirty baking utensils filling the sink and counter. Never mind that the entire apartment smells like heaven. When I reach for the oven handle, Miranda swats my hand away in a protective gesture that would put a riled up tomcat to shame. “It’s not done yet. Leave it alone.”
“What is it?” I ask.
No answer.
The kids all walk in behind me. “Hi, Hope,” Kira says.
“Hi, Kira,” Hope says.
“Hi, Hope,” Kai says.
“Hi, Kai,” Hope says.
The kids and Hope only met each other once and that was months ago, I’m surprised they remember each other’s names. It’s like a sitcom where everyone is oblivious to, or is choosing to ignore the weirdness.
Until Rory enters and keeps it real. “What smells so good? And why do you have that crap all over your faces? You look like freaks.”
I’m about to tone him down when Hope answers, “It’s a mask. It’s gonna make me look pretty. Me and my skin are gonna be friends.”
He lifts his eyebrows. “O-kay.” And he leaves.
Just then, the timer sounds on the oven and Miranda jumps out of her chair like she’s been stung on the ass and she shoos us away. “Everyone out.”
Ten minutes later Miranda and Hope enter the living room with clean faces and a plate piled with something sticky and doughy and sweet. Miranda is beaming. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her smile so wide. A toothy grin happens when joy can’t be contained.
And the monkey bread is the best thing I’ve ever eaten.