Solomon's Oak (5 page)

Juniper walked by, carrying a buffet tray of potatoes to replace the empty one. Under the pins and barbells, she had a pretty face. Someday she’d take the metal out and wonder what she’d been thinking. Glory watched her serve, taking care not to spill anything even though the pirates weren’t exactly the neatest diners. Soon everyone had a full plate and a flagon. The Sterno cans stayed lit and the hurricane lamps flickered. Joseph moved through the crowd taking pictures as if he did it every day. There was plenty of turkey and gravy. All during the meal the musicians continued playing, and Glory was on her way to fetch the cake when Gary called her back, panic in his voice. “Mrs. Solomon!”

“What?” she said. “They’re married, they’ve got food and drink, and pictures have been taken. We’re in the home stretch.”

“Except that we’re out of the tankards.”

“We can’t be. We had three full cases.”

“I think the pirates are stealing them. Seriously, they’re disappearing and people are asking for more.”

Glory sighed. What was she supposed to do? Frisk the guests? “I’ve got a few more in the house.” She nabbed Robynn as she walked by. “How’s the cake?”

“I’m on my way to get it.” She grinned. “The duel was crazy, wasn’t it?”

“It was.”

“How come you didn’t tell us about the gunman? That was kind of scary.”

Glory smiled, pretending it was part of the script. “Oh, just some last-minute silliness. How’s Juniper doing?”

Robynn looked back through the crowd. “All right. Kind of keeps to herself, doesn’t she?”

“I only met her a few hours ago. Tomorrow she goes to a foster home.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. I thought she was staying with you. Remember Christopher? I saw him downtown the other day. He said you were the greatest mom ever.”

Christopher, one of their recent foster sons, had been in high school the same time as Robynn. He was on his own now, attending college and working. “Thanks,” Glory said. “It’s easy when you have such a great kid.”

They stepped over the threshold into the kitchen. It felt like time travel, going from swords and scarves and buckets of medieval booze to kitchen timers and appliances. When Glory saw her cake, she fell in love with it all over again. A fondant pirate’s ship on a buttercream sea. Could anything be more beautiful?

After a week’s worth of trial and error, she saw the cake as a turning point in her life. Even if she never booked another wedding, she knew she could make one-of-a-kind cakes to sell. But if today succeeded, there would be other weddings, and that would be twice as good. A way for her to earn a real living. She’d shaped Rice Krispies Treats into a hull shape, then “dirty-iced” it with buttercream, followed by fondant, into which she had pressed hundreds of cuts to resemble planks. Using food coloring made especially for pastry, she painted the hull to look like wood grain. It rode high on waves of sculpted chocolate, crested with giant sugar crystals and luster dust. The wooden skewers for the masts were coated with chocolate, and the sails—oh, my gosh—the sails of fondant were rolled so thin you could almost see through them. The pirate figurines she found at the craft store were anchored by icing to the fo’c’sle, standing one behind the other. That was what marriage was really like, Glory thought, lovers standing one behind the other, facing into a gale-force wind.

Glory and Robynn carried the cake to the cleared buffet table and set it down. “Where did the cop photographer go?” Glory asked Juniper, who’d come over to see the cake. “Can you find him before they cut this?”

“He’s right behind you,” Juniper said. “Dude? Are you really a cop?”

“Formerly,” he said.

“So what do you do now?” she asked.

“This,” he said, and took Glory’s picture.

There was no time for Glory to tell him she didn’t appreciate that. She cleared space at the buffet table for the bride and groom, handed them the knife, and watched her baby be cut into pieces. After the couple had rather messily fed each other, Robynn stepped in to dish up the cake for the guests.

“Can I have a piece?” Juniper asked, hovering.

“If there are leftovers,” Glory whispered. “Stand here and help Robynn, okay?”

Besides the fake smile, Juniper was good at pouting. Glory’s headache perched over her left eye like a buzzard. Nearby she heard the faint whirring of Joseph’s camera. When he looked her way, she mouthed, “Thank you.”

A half hour later, the Topgallant Troubadours set down their instruments and stood together to sing another song a cappella. “Barrett’s Privateers” was the story of the last survivor recounting the battle that cost them the war. Glory thumbed away the tears in her eyes so the guests wouldn’t notice the thirty-eight-year-old widow with the migraine becoming sentimental over a Stan Rogers chantey. She smiled the way Juniper did, fake and polite, and thought, interesting, already she’s taught me something.

When the moment came to “scupper the grog,” the pirates were busy dancing to a Nirvana song. Glory watched Angus pour a pitcher of drink over his thwarted rival and dreamed of her bottle of Percocet, left over from the dentist. It numbed everything. She sometimes took it on those nights when she couldn’t stop crying. Puddles of sticky alcohol, smashed cake bits, and the odd turkey bone were on the flagstone, and instead of fretting about getting it clean, she thought, oh, I’ll hose it down tomorrow. The loser/rival accepted his scupper with dignity, squeezed out his long hair, set his tricorn hat back on his head, hugged Angus, and returned to dancing.

This was it. Every planned moment had been pulled off. When things had seemed on the verge of falling apart, Joseph the gun-toting photographer had come to her rescue. Now it was time for her surprise, a gift to the newlyweds. Juniper passed by with a tray of dirty dishes.

“Having fun?” Glory asked.

“Fifty-one percent of marriages end in divorce,” Juniper said.

Glory silently wished Caroline luck in finding a place for this one. “You might as well start enjoying yourself because when all this is over, there will be a great deal of cleaning up. Right now I need you to come help me with the butterflies, so let Pete bus those dishes.”

“There are going to be bugs? Do I have to touch them? Eww.”

“Seriously? I’ve never met a person who didn’t like a butterfly.”

“There’s a first time for everything.” Juniper handed her tray off to Gary, who headed toward the kitchen.

Glory was momentarily speechless.

Inside the greenhouse the air was steamy and thick. In addition to the potted orchids Glory grew year-round, there were maidenhair ferns, crawling vines, and butterfly feeders, flat-sloped dishes suspended from the greenhouse beams. Each dish was filled with nectar and fruit past eating, giving the place a sweetish scent. The butterflies preferred orange slices. Proves they’re Californians, Dan once remarked.

“Oh, man,” Juniper said. “How can you stand it in here? Even my hair is sweating. Open a window.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“The greenhouse is temperature-controlled for the butterflies.”

“Don’t they drown in their own sweat?”

Glory laughed. “Funny you should say that. They’ll sometimes land on you if you’re sweating, to drink the salt from your skin.”

Juniper immediately looked around. “One better not land on me, or it’s toast.”

“We won’t be in here long enough for that to happen.”

On the slatted wooden shelf were ten baskets covered with cheesecloth. Glory loaded up Juniper’s arms like a waitress so she could carry them to the reception. “I can hear them creeping around in there. They can’t get out, can they?”

“Not until we take off the cheesecloth.” Glory took the other five, and they started toward the reception tables to hand out the net-topped baskets. “Thank you for your help,” Glory said. “Can you place one on each table?”

Juniper looked at her stonily. “I think I can manage that.”

As soon as the baskets were delivered, Juniper walked away and Glory found herself wondering where the girl had gone. Back to the horses, to feed more carrots? In the house to pick over the food in the kitchen? Maybe she just needed a quiet moment, and Glory certainly couldn’t blame her for that. The migraine headache had moved in, begun decorating, and was about to invite friends over for a party. Were it not for the promise of quiet soon, Glory would have taken off her apron and gone to the fridge for an icepack. “If I can have your attention,” she said, clacking a ladle against one of the pitchers. Each clank reverberated inside her head, but the guests quieted down. “Everyone please take a moment to think of your good wishes for Angus and Karen. Then, on the count of three, gently peel back the net on the baskets, and we’ll send those wishes up on wings. One, two … ”

On three, sixty painted-lady butterflies, one per guest, emerged. Some perched tentatively on the underside of the netting; others quickly climbed the rim of the baskets, tasting freedom. Without encouragement, the pirates lifted the baskets high and the butterflies began to use their wings. “ ‘Happiness,’ ” Glory read from a card she’d tucked inside her pocket, “ ‘is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.’ From Nathaniel Hawthorne, circa 1860. Congratulations, Karen and Angus. Many happy years together. Thank you for the privilege of hosting your special day.”

Angus stood up. “Here’s to Mrs. Glory Solomon for allowing us to hold our kick-ass wedding here. Solomon’s Oak rocks!”

Pirates clapped and cheered, and whether it was the bright orange spots on the fluttering, dusky wings, or too much drink, or the single butterfly that for the longest time perched on the bride’s dress, Mrs. Brown began to cry. “I hope those are happy tears,” Glory said as she handed her tissues.

Mrs. Brown said, “You were right. It was a beautiful Thanksgiving
and
a beautiful wedding.”

Glory squeezed the woman’s hand. “I’m glad to hear it.”

By nightfall the butterflies would be in the hills in search of pearly everlasting, a summer wildflower that often continued on past the season in California’s warm climate. They’d mate and lay pale celadon eggs. A week later, eggs turned to caterpillars. The caterpillar’s job was to eat, spin the web, form a chrysalis, then rest inside its papery walls and transform. When it was time, out came another butterfly. Each cycle moved the butterflies farther south. Lorna had once told Glory a story from her childhood, of standing with her great-aunt early in the morning, looking at the Nacimiento River literally covered with butterflies drinking. Sometimes, when Glory couldn’t sleep, she called up that image, a body of water covered with orange-and-black wings. She imagined them lifting in unison, as close as anything could get to a flying carpet.

When the painted ladies had flown away, the guests began leaving. Glory looked for the ex-cop photographer to give him his money.

“He already left,” Juniper said. “I gave him ten slices of turkey, a container of mashed potatoes and gravy, and six apples. He didn’t want the cake, so can I have his piece?”

“Darn it. I didn’t get his phone number.”

“Don’t stress. He left his e-mail address and said he’d send the pictures in a ZIP file. So all you have to do is e-mail him. And it’s not like he doesn’t know where you live.”

“I just wish I’d had the chance to thank him before he left. I don’t know anything but his first name, Joseph, right?”

Juniper picked a fondant plank from the edge of the parchment-covered cake plate. “Joseph Vigil. That’s a Mexican last name in case you’re wondering. He’s here visiting from Albuquerque and staying in a cabin on the Oak Shore of Nacimiento Lake. He was married once but he isn’t married now. No kids. He has a permit to carry a gun because he was a cop once but isn’t anymore.”

“Wow, Juniper. You could be a private investigator.”

The girl stopped the finger that was about to go into her mouth and flicked the icing away. Her mouth went from relaxed to thin-lipped. The hoop in her upper lip seemed to vibrate. “He said he would send you the pictures.”

“Good,” Glory said. “If I don’t deliver the candids, I’m in breach of contract.”

“Yeah, well, tough luck. Cops lie all the time.”

Juniper had sharp edges for a fourteen-year-old. Glory wondered if Juniper’s father had been a policeman, or if it was her arrest for shoplifting that had left her so bitter. “I have the mother of all headaches, Juniper. Excuse me while I get a pill. Soon as I get back, we’ll get started on cleanup, together.”

Three hours and several dishwasher cycles later, the servers had been paid and had left, the patio was hosed down, and Juniper and Glory sat alone in the kitchen. When Glory couldn’t find her Percocet, she’d taken two Advil but it wasn’t working. She held an icepack to the back of her neck, but that wasn’t helping either.

“The cake was a big hit,” she said.

Juniper didn’t respond.

“Do you think I should make two cakes for the next wedding? They do that in the South,” she said. “It’s called a groom’s cake. Usually it’s something the groom likes, you know, like a football, or
Star Wars
movies characters. The exact opposite of a frilly wedding cake.”

Juniper poked at her turkey stuffing. “This was out for hours. How do I know I won’t get food poisoning?”