The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender(35)

On the last day it had rained — a seemingly normal day in February as it turned out — Emilienne got up, as she did every other morning, at exactly four o’clock. She looked out at the dark, wet sky and sighed. She pulled her boots from the mudroom and wrapped a rain bonnet around her hair, musing that it was something old ladies did. Because of the rain, it took Emilienne longer than usual to reach the bakery’s door. Wilhelmina was already waiting for her when she arrived. Penelope too.

After the war, Emilienne had found herself competing with the growing availability of prepackaged treats — Jell-O instant pudding, Minute Tapioca, Reddi-Wip — not to mention the return of sliced bread. In desperation, she’d brought out her French maman’s recipes and replaced the jars of preserves and slabs of salted meat she’d sold during the Depression with mousse au chocolat, feuilletage, and poire belle-Hélène. In 1951 she purchased an old Divco truck once used to deliver milk and had Gabe paint Emilienne’s Bakery in elaborate script across its side. She continued to use the old-fashioned brick oven, insisting that it was the brick that gave her bread its distinctive flavor. She ignored Wilhelmina’s claim that a newer metal oven wouldn’t make a lick of difference. The success of the bakery grew.

When Penelope Cooper was hired, she was just a young mother with very little baking experience, but the bakery needed the help and she needed the work. After so many years of working as a pair, it took a while for the two older women to get used to their new team of three. In time the three women could perform their morning schedule flawlessly; without words or even gestures, they knew what was needed. Hiring Penelope Cooper also proved to be a wise business decision. No man within walking distance could resist a daily dose of the blond woman’s infectious laugh. When they bought a box of chocolate éclairs for their wives, they fantasized about licking a swipe of custard from the crease between Penelope’s lovely breasts, of hand-feeding her every creamy morsel.

After stomping the water from her boots on that last rainy day of February 1959, Emilienne moved to the back to roll out the cheese rolls and knot the brioche, to shape the sourdough loaves and baguettes. Penelope mixed the dough for the scones and whole-grain breads. By seven AM, the specials of the day were written on the blackboard behind the counter, the smudges wiped clean from the windows, and the first loaves of the day rising in their bread pans. With a razor blade, Emilienne scored each one, listening for the audible sigh that came with each slice, as if the bread had been holding its breath. Emilienne slid the loaves into the oven, then sprayed the hot oven bricks with water to create the steam that helped form a perfect crust on each loaf.

Once the display cases were lined with paper doilies, and the breads and pastries put out for sale, Emilienne left Penelope to mind the front counter and joined Wilhelmina in the back, who was busily preparing le dessert du jour. Wilhelmina pulled out a flour sifter, a mixing bowl, and a baking pan. She quickly whipped up batter for a chocolate cake, poured it into the pan, and stuck it in the oven, where it would bake until perfect, the knife coming out clean on the first try.

The secret to a good chocolate cake had nothing to do with the actual cake. No, the secret was in the icing, and caramel frosting was Emilienne’s specialty. It was the cream, the cream that could make it too heavy or too thin. With just the right amount of cream, she could make the frosting so enticing, so divinely rich and sweet, that it caused people to laugh out loud with just one lick off a finger.

On that last day of rain, while the chocolate cake was baking, Emilienne was pouring the cream for the caramel frosting with one hand and whisking with the other when she heard the jangle of the bells on the door. Marigold Pie had come into the shop for one of her regular penitential visits.

A devout member of the Lutheran church, Marigold Pie was always the first to dutifully welcome new neighbors. When the Lavenders moved onto Pinnacle Lane (before the whispers of witch followed my grandmother wherever she went), it was practical Marigold Pie who helped the baker’s young wife get rid of the fire ants in the pantry and remove the hornet’s nest from the porch eaves. In church Marigold read along from her red leather Bible with the weekly Scripture passages, and for longer than anyone could remember, she had been in charge of the confirmation classes. Helpful, capable, but hardly known for being personable, she objected to interfaith marriage, coffee stains on white gloves, and any form of appetite, food-related or otherwise. Fellow parishioners used to joke that Marigold slept in a position that vaguely emulated the Crucifixion. And they were right.

The night before her wedding night, a young Marigold painstakingly embroidered the nuptial sheets with tiny indecipherable doves and lambs, hoping to evoke Ines del Campo, Catholic saint of betrothed couples, bodily purity, and rape victims. She was intimate with her husband only while using that sheet, revealing to him only the parts of her body necessary for such an act. They never had any children.

After her husband’s death, Marigold lived on a diet of oatmeal, which she ate raw, and tall glasses of skim milk. She never licked the spoon after making cookies or dipped her finger in the frosting of a child’s birthday cake. She weighed a whopping seventy-five pounds. She shopped for her own clothing in the children’s department at the Bon Marché downtown and weighed her shoes down with pebbles on windy days.

Emilienne considered her own shape. She’d always been tall and thought she’d grown quite nicely into her height with age. Her once-pointed chin had developed a slight roundness, and her arms had become nice and soft, which she easily maintained with the occasional cinnamon bun or sugar cookie. She wouldn’t give up that ripeness for anything, especially not Marigold’s teacake-size breasts.