Handle With Care (29 page)

That would change, I vowed. Carrying through with the step I’d taken
when I went to Booker, Hood & Coates meant that I would actively spend more time with you. I’d get to fall for you all over again.

Just then, the wind whipped through the open window of the truck, wrinkling the wrappers of the baked goods and reminding me why I’d come back here tonight. Stacked in a wheelbarrow were the cookies and cakes and pastries that you and Amelia and Charlotte had been baking for the past few days.

I’d loaded them all—easily thirty wrapped packets, each one tagged with a green string and a construction paper heart—into my truck. You’d cut those out yourself; I could tell. Sweets from Syllabub, they read. I’d imagined your mother’s hands stroking pastry dough, the look on your face as you carefully cracked an egg, Amelia frustrating her way through an apron’s knot. I came here a couple times a week. I’d eat the first three or four; the rest I’d leave on the steps at the nearest homeless shelter.

I reached into my wallet and took out all my money, the cashed sum of the extra shifts I’d taken on at work to keep from having to go home. This I stuffed, bill by bill, into the shoe box, payment in kind for Charlotte. Before I could stop myself, I tore the paper heart off one packet of cookies. With a pencil, I wrote a customer’s message across the blank back: I love them.

Tomorrow, you’d read it. All three of you would be giddy, would assume the anonymous writer had been talking about the food, and not the bakers.

Amelia

On the way home from Boston one weekend, my mother reinvented herself as the new Martha Freaking Stewart. To that end, we had to detour totally out of the way to Norwich, Vermont, to King Arthur Flour, so that we could buy a crapload of industrial baking pans and specialty flours. You were already cranky about spending the morning at Children’s Hospital having new braces fitted—they were hot and stiff and left marks and bruises where the plastic rubbed into your skin, which the brace specialists tried to fix with a heat gun, but it never seemed to work. You wanted to go home and take them off, but instead, my mother bribed us with a trip to a restaurant—a reward neither one of us could turn down.

This may not seem like such a big deal, but it was, to us. We didn’t eat out very much. My mom always said that she could cook better than most chefs anyway, which was true, but that really just made us sound less like losers than the truth: we couldn’t afford it. It was the same reason that I didn’t tell my parents when my jeans were becoming highwaters, why I never bought lunch although the French fries in the caf looked so incredibly delicious; it was the same reason why that Disney World Trip to Hell was so much of a disappointment. I was too embarrassed to hear my parents tell me that we were too broke to afford what I needed or wanted; if I didn’t ask for anything, I didn’t have to hear them say no.

There was a part of me that was angry my mother was using the baking money to buy all those pans and tins when she could have been buying me a Juicy Couture cashmere hoodie that would make other girls in school look at me with envy, instead of like I was something
stuck to the bottoms of their shoes. But no, it was critical that we have Mexican vanilla extract and dried Bing cherries from Michigan. We had to have silicone muffin pans and a shortbread form and edgeless cookie sheets. You were totally oblivious to the fact that every penny we spent on turbinado sugar and cake flour was one less cent spent on us, but then again, what did I expect: you still believed there was a Santa Claus, too.

So I have to admit it surprised me a little when you let me choose the restaurant where we’d eat lunch. “Amelia never gets to pick,” you said, and even though I hated myself for this, I felt like I was going to cry.

To make up for that, and because everyone expected me to be a jerk and why disappoint, I said, “McDonald’s.”

“Eww,” you said. “They make four hundred Quarter Pounders out of one cow.”

“Get back to me when you’re a vegetarian, hypocrite,” I answered.

“Amelia, stop. We’re not going to McDonald’s.”

So instead of picking a nice Italian place we probably all would have enjoyed, I made her stop at a totally skanky diner instead.

It looked like the kind of place that had bugs in the kitchen. “Well,” my mother said, looking around. “This is an interesting choice.”

“It’s nostalgic,” I said, and I glared at her. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, as long as botulism isn’t one of your long-lost memories.” After glancing at a Seat Yourself sign, she walked toward an empty booth.

“I want to sit at the counter,” you said.

My mother and I both looked at the rickety stools, the long drop down. “No,” we said simultaneously.

I dragged a high chair over to the table so that you could reach it. A harried waitress tossed menus at us, with a pack of crayons for you. “Be back in a minute for your order.”

My mother guided your legs through the high chair, which was an ordeal, because with braces your legs didn’t move that easily. Right away you flipped over your place mat and began to draw on the blank side. “So,” my mother said. “What should we bake when we get home?”

“Donuts,” you suggested. You were pretty psyched about the pan we’d bought, which looked like sixteen alien eyes.

“Amelia, what about you?”

I buried my face in my arms. “Hash brownies.”

The waitress reappeared with a pad in hand. “Well, aren’t you just cute enough to spread on a cracker and eat,” she said, grinning down at you. “And a mighty fine artist, too!”

I caught your gaze and rolled my eyes. You poked two crayons up your nose and stuck out your tongue. “I’ll have coffee,” Mom said. “And the turkey club.”

“There’s more than one hundred chemicals in a cup of coffee,” you announced, and the waitress nearly fell over.

Because we didn’t go out much, I’d forgotten how strangers reacted to you. You were only as tall as a three-year-old, but you spoke and read and drew like someone much older than your real age—almost six. It was sort of freaky, until people got to know you. “Isn’t she just a talkative little thing!” the waitress said, recovering.

“I’ll have the grilled cheese, please,” you replied. “And a Coke.”

“Yeah, that sounds good. Make it two,” I said, when what I really wanted was one of everything on the menu. The waitress was staring at you as you drew a picture that was about normal for a six-year-old but practically Renoir for the toddler she assumed you to be. She looked like she was going to say something to you, so I turned to my mother. “Are you sure you want turkey? That’s, like, food poisoning waiting to happen…”

“Amelia!”

She was mad, but it got the waitress to stop ogling you and leave.

“She’s an idiot,” I said as soon as the waitress was gone.

“She doesn’t know that—” My mother broke off abruptly.

“What?” you accused. “That there’s something wrong with me?”

“I would never say that.”

“Yeah, right,” I muttered. “Not unless the jury’s present.”

“So help me, Amelia, if your attitude doesn’t—”

I was saved by the waitress, who reappeared holding our drinks, in glasses that probably were see-through plastic in a former life but now just looked filmy. Your Coke was in a sippy cup.

Automatically, my mother reached out and began to unscrew the top. You took a drink, then picked up your crayon and began writing across the top of your picture: Me, Amelia, Mommy, Daddy.

“Oh, my God,” the waitress said. “I have a three-year-old at home
and let me tell you, I can barely get her potty trained. But your daughter’s already writing? And drinking out of a regular cup. Honey, I don’t know what you’re doing right, but I want to get me some of that.”

“I’m not three,” you said.

“Oh.” The waitress winked. “Three and a half, right? Those months count when they’re babies—”

“I’m not a baby!”

“Willow.” Mom put a hand on your arm, but you threw it off, knocking over the cup and sending Coke all over the place.

“I’m not!”

Mom grabbed a stack of napkins and started mopping. “I’m sorry,” she said to the waitress.

“Now that”—the waitress nodded—“looks more like three.”

A bell rang, and she left to go back in the kitchen.

“Willow, you know better,” my mother said. “You can’t get angry at someone because she didn’t know you have OI.”

“Why not?” I asked. “You are.”

My mother’s jaw dropped. Recovering, she grabbed her purse and jacket and stood up. “We’re leaving,” she announced, and she yanked you out of your chair. At the last minute she remembered the drinks and slapped a ten-dollar bill on the table. Then she carried you out to the car, with me trailing behind.

We went to McDonald’s on the way home after all, but instead of making me feel satisfied, it made me want to disappear underneath the tires, the pavement, all of it.

I had braces, too, but not the kind that kept my legs from bowing. Mine were the ordinary kind, the ones that had changed the whole shape of my head during the progression from palate expander to bands to wires. This much I had in common with you: the very second I got my braces, I began counting the days until they would be taken off. For those who’ve never had the displeasure, this is what braces feel like: you know those fake white vampire teeth you stick in your mouth at Halloween? Well, imagine that, and then imagine that they stay there for the next three years, with you drooling and cutting your gums on the uneven plastic bits, and that would be braces.

Which is why, one particular Monday in late January, I had the biggest, soppiest smile on my face. I didn’t care when Emma and her posse wrote the word WHORE on the blackboard behind me in math class, with an arrow that pointed down at my head. I didn’t care when you ate all the Cocoa Puffs so that I had to have Frosted Mini-Wheats as a snack after school. All that mattered was that at 4:30 p.m. I was getting my braces off, after thirty-four months, two weeks, and six days.

My mother was playing it incredibly cool—apparently she didn’t realize what a big deal this was. I’d checked; it was right on her calendar, like it had been for the past five months. I started to panic, though, when it was four o’clock and she set a cheesecake into the oven. I mean, how could she drive me into town to the orthodontist and not have to worry if her knife slipped out clean in an hour when she tested it?

My father, that had to be the answer. He hadn’t been around much, but then again, that wasn’t radical. Cops worked when they had to, not when they wanted to—or so he used to tell me. The difference was that, when he was home, you could cut the air between him and my mother with that same knife she was using to test her cheesecake.

Maybe this was all part of a calculated plan to throw me off. My father was going to show up in time to take me to the orthodontist; my mother would finish baking the cheesecake (which was my favorite anyway) and it would be part of a big ol’ dinner that included things like corn on the cob, caramel apples, and bubble gum—all forbidden foods that were written on the reminder magnet on our fridge with a fat X across it, and for once, I’d be the one everybody could not take their eyes off.

I sat at the kitchen table, scuffing my sneaker on the floor. “Amelia,” my mother sighed.

Squeak.

“Amelia. For God’s sake. You’re giving me a headache.”

It was 4:04. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

She wiped her hands on a dish towel. “Not that I know of…”

“Well, when’s Dad going to get here?”

She stared at me. “Honey,” she said, the word that’s a sweet, so that you know whatever’s coming next has to be awful. “I don’t know where your father is. He and I…we haven’t…”

“My appointment,” I burst out, before she could say anything else. “Who’s taking me to the orthodontist?”

For a moment, she was speechless. “You must be joking.”

“After three years? I don’t think so.” I stood up, poking my finger at the calendar on the wall. “I’m getting my braces off today.”

“You are not going to Rob Reece’s office,” my mother said.

Okay, that’s the detail I left out: the only orthodontist in Bankton—the one I’d been seeing all this time—happened to be married to the woman she was suing. Granted, due to all the drama, I’d missed a couple of appointments since September, but I had no intention of skipping this one. “Just because you’re on some crusade to ruin Piper’s life, I have to leave my braces on till I’m forty?”

My mother held her hand up to her head. “Not till you’re forty. Just until I find you another orthodontist. For God’s sake, Amelia, it slipped my mind. I’ve obviously had a lot going on lately.”

“Yeah, you and every other human on this planet, Mom,” I yelled. “Guess what? It’s not all about you and what you want and what makes everyone feel sorry for your miserable life with some miserable—”

She slapped me across the face.

My mother had never, ever hit me. Not even when I ran into traffic when I was two, not even when I poured nail polish remover on the dining room table and destroyed the finish. My cheek hurt, but not as much as my chest. My heart had turned into a ball of rubber bands, and they were snapping, one by one.

I wanted her to hurt as much as she’d hurt me, so I spat out the words that burned like acid in my throat. “Bet you wish I’d never been born, too,” I said, and I took off running.

By the time I got to Rob’s office (I’d never called him Dr. Reece), I was sweaty and red-faced. I don’t think I’d ever run five whole miles in my life, but that’s what I had just done. Guilt is a better fuel than you can imagine. I was practically the Energizer Bunny, and it had a lot less to do with getting closer to the orthodontist than it did with getting away from my mother. Panting, I walked up to the receptionist’s desk, where there was a nifty computer kiosk to sign in. But I had only just settled my fingers on the keyboard when I noticed the receptionist staring at
me. And the dental hygienist. And in fact, every single person in the office.

“Amelia,” the receptionist says. “What are you doing here?”

“I have an appointment.”

“I think we all just assumed—”