Wicked Sweet (19 page)

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Authors: Mar'ce Merrell

BOOK: Wicked Sweet
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Magnanimous.
I
t’s an out of the park, great day. The weather. The drills. The kids. Jillian’s brothers. Man. Oh, man.
I’ve got the speakers faded to the back of the van so I can talk to Jillian without the boys hearing us. I tell her what I suspect; her brothers could become hockey stars. They listened to the instructions, they stopped at the whistle, and they outperformed everyone else. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“They’re good at hockey?”
“No. They’re exceptional at hockey.” I study her profile. She’s got this elegance about her, so different from her mother. It’s incredible, really, what she puts up with. “You know, hockey could be the way out for them.”
“A way out?” She gives me a quick look that I can’t analyze, because it’s gone in the time it takes her to make a left turn. We’re headed for a slushie celebration at the convenience store. The one near my house is the best, seven flavors. No drive-thru. I promised we could go into the store for once.
“They’ll have something that they can be proud of, something no one can take away. Man, it’s so … phenomenal.” I am almost, literally, buzzing. This must be how Glen Sather thought about the Boys on the Bus. I watch the Hat Trick and Double Minor in the visor mirror.
They’re talking hockey. Jillian pulls into the parking lot of the convenience store. She turns to me.
“Just so you know, you are about to experience a nightmare. They will whine. They will beg. And then they’ll get mad. They will lie flat out on the floor and hammer their fists until they are bloody to get what they want. And Josh will scream over and over. You. Are. Not. The. Boss. Of. Me.” Her face transforms into Josh’s scrunched-up eyes, pouty lips.
“But what do they want?”
“Two things, but my rule is one thing only.”
“Because …”
“It’s the rule. My mother has no rules. I have rules.”
“And if your rule was two things, they’d want three.”
She smiles and I want to kiss her, but I know the boys are watching us.
“Okay …” If I were a kid again, how would I want this to go? “Okay … here’s a solution. Each boy gets one thing. If he behaves with good manners, he gets twenty-five cents in his account. Four times to the convenience store where he behaves and he has an extra dollar to spend.”
Jillian shakes her head. “Bribing them to be good? No immediate payoff?”
“Come on, Jillian. Let me try it. If it fails, it’s my rule that fails. Please. I’m getting carried away after our day at camp.”
“Alright.” She opens the door. “I’ll wait for the meltdown.”
I gather the boys in a huddle. I explain the deal as simply as I can and the Hat Trick are the first boys to go into the store. It takes me a long time to convince the Double Minor that twenty-five cents over four times is better than throwing a fit. Josh drags his feet as he walks away. Baby Ollie can’t be reasoned with, I decide. I tell him we’re going to shop together, we’ll each get one thing and I’ll share mine. I give the Hat Trick and the Double Minor five minutes
before I walk in with Ollie, enough time (I hope) to successfully choose without my supervision.
I see the five boys lined up at the cash register, each with a slushie. Jillian’s eyes are wide. Ollie and I give each one of them a high-five and I turn to take him to the back where the slushie machine waits. That’s when I see my mother. She looks at me. Then Ollie. Then Jillian. Then the five boys in the lineup. That’s why Jillian’s eyes were wide—she was trying to warn me. Everyone in school knows my mom from elementary school. She was the mom who couldn’t pass a kid in the hallway without telling him to tie his shoes, put on his mittens, and wear a hat. Everyone avoided her.
“Hi, Mom.” I wave. Ollie waves, too. Five steps closer and Ollie hugs me tight. Usually I’m okay with this sort of public display of affection from him. Now, I wince. I hope Jillian didn’t just see that.
“Parker. To whom does that baby belong?” If I could make anything happen right then, it would be to change my mother into someone else. The disgust in her voice, the distaste on her face, the way her eyes shift from Jillian to me as if she’s accusing us of something. It’s wrong. I want to tell her she’s wrecking one of the most perfect days ever. I want to tell her that I have found what it is to be magnanimous. Noble in mind and heart.
“Mom. Can we talk about this later?” I move close enough to her that Ollie reaches for the gold chain that hangs from her reading glasses. I grab his hand. I lower my voice, make sure that my back faces Jillian. “It’s not what you think. I’m doing some babysitting, that’s all.”
She looks up at me. “I’m glad to hear it’s temporary,” she whispers back and I know that she knows I am lying and that we are now both pretending, for Jillian’s sake. How noble is this. If I were a samurai I’d be reaching for my sword. “He’s a cute baby,” my mother says loud enough for Jillian to hear. “And those are well-behaved young boys.” She nods at me and at Jillian before she walks out. I have
no idea what she’d planned to buy, but she’s not carrying a bag out the door.
I help Ollie with a slushie and we find a chocolate bar to share. The boys, Jillian, and I are back in the van without a whine or a scream. I can’t look at Jillian. I kill off my half of the chocolate bar in one bite. “Great job following the rules, boys,” she says. “And Parker, I guess you schooled me.”
I allow myself a quick look in the mirror to see the boys high-fiving each other. Jillian starts the engine. With the music on in the back, she can talk to me. Just what I don’t need. “Well, that was awkward,” she says. “I don’t think your mother likes the idea of you with me and my brothers.”
“Oh, she’ll come around,” I say. I’m glad Jillian’s watching the road so she can’t see how I’m trying to avoid this. “Anyway, she’s not the boss of me.”
Jillian laughs and I hope that we can get back to normal. Soon.
Friday Night Cake
.
I
n our small town, just like all the kids go to the lake every day of the summer, Friday night is for hanging out with your friends. At least this is what I’ve pieced together from my research. If you’re old enough to drive and you have your own car—or your parent’s car isn’t too geriatric—you and preferably more than one friend drive from Pizza Shack at one end of town to the Dairy Barn at the other. You drive slowly, with the radio cranked, windows down, and sunroof open. Most Friday nights of my teenage life, Jillian and I babysat, watched movies, made caramel popcorn, and studied. We talked about how lame it was to cruise on Friday night, but I know she secretly wanted to be part of the crowd. She’s probably cruising in Parker’s car right now. Not that I have a problem with that. I’m sort of over it. I’ve got my own thing going on, after all.
This being my last cake, I am looking to exceed expectations. And that always means research. I pass up anything that is chocolate, anything with nuts (it’s too late to shop), and anything that looks too complicated. My final cake must be perfect.
I find inspiration in Nigella’s Forever Summer/White 1.
In a seaside house, Nigella’s children race ahead of her through the dining room to the kitchen where a close-up shows her in a sea-sky blue silk robe. She combines ricotta cheese, milk, and two eggs
that she separates by hand (not even wincing at the white goo-ing between her fingers). She adds flour and baking powder and mixes slightly.
When Nigella asks her children, Bruno and Mimi, to help her, the back of my throat begins to ache. Bruno whisks the egg whites while Mimi stirs the batter. And Nigella doesn’t stop them six times to tell them how to hold the whisk or ask them to stop being so loud or scold them for dipping their fingers in the batter.
Nigella. What makes it so easy for you to cook with your children?
Nigella would never understand a mother like mine; one who thinks that a clean kitchen is a happy kitchen. I think my mother would develop a heart condition if I suggested she make pancakes for breakfast instead of a bowl of fibre-added cereal.
The next scene shows Nigella in her silk robe with her hair wrapped in a white towel turban. “Cooking while I’m on a weekend away kind of reminds me of what it’s all about; having friends over, cooking with them, and eating with them,” she says.
I turn away from her.
I get it, Nigella, I’m just not there yet.
Two cookbooks later, I find what I believe will make my final offering the
pièce de résistance
: Perfect Party Cake. One of my favorite words is in the title. Not party, of course. Perfect.
I assemble the ingredients for a cool white four-layer cake with a tart-sweet raspberry filling and a decadent lemon meringue buttercream: the usual flour, baking powder, sugar, eggs, and vanilla, but I add lemons to the table and raspberry preserves and buttermilk instead of milk. I realize that the refrigerator is abundant in unsalted butter and buttermilk. I’ll have to get rid of the evidence tonight before my mother returns. And also the bars of fine chocolate in the cupboard, the extra-large bottle of vanilla extract, the cake and pastry flour, the large bags of sugars. I stack it all in the corner of the kitchen. Where it will go later is unknown. I’d hide it in my closet, but my mother has been known to go on cleaning sprees that don’t stop at my bedroom door.
I wonder if Will is going to grieve the loss of his secret admirer—especially when he realizes she wasn’t Annelise—the way I’ll miss my cake baking. I hope it’s worse for him. Pure misery. I will be breaking my own heart while at the same time embarrassing Will’s—the irony is not lost on me.
As Julia Roberts said in one of Hollywood’s best chick flicks, “I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.” Of course, I’m not about to die from kidney failure so that is a bit melodramatic.
I sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into one bowl. In the second, I whisk together the milk and egg whites. I put the sugar and lemon zest in the mixer bowl and add the butter. I’m beating it at medium speed, reaching to turn up the radio (I think Mitch is going to be on again tonight) when the phone rings. I turn everything off. Wait for the call display to flash the number.
It’s Jillian. This can only be bad news. She’s supposed to be out with Parker.
“Hello. Jillian? What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?”
“Why are you calling me?”
“We’re friends?”
“But … it’s Friday night. And …” And what? I’m busy?
“Do you think a guy’s mother not liking the girl he’s dating means the relationship is doomed?”
Life goes from strange to stranger; Jillian’s calling me for guy advice. And I’m such a pro. My response? “You can’t break up with Parker.” That would wreck everything. The story of Will being dumped by his secret admirer will be old news far too quickly.
“But maybe Parker will break up with me.” Her voice sounds rainy-day lonely. I know how she feels, in a way.
“He’s not going to break up with you!” I say. “This hockey camp is
his passion, other than you. And he loves hanging out with your brothers. Tell me he doesn’t.”
“He does, but …” She tells me about his mother. The way she was glaring at them over the top of her reading glasses. It was clear that this girl and her six brothers was not what she had in mind for her son.
“Jillian.” I reach for her rational center. “Parker’s going to say the right things to his mother to avoid the confrontation. And he’s still going to go out with you.”
“And what makes you the expert on parental deception?”
“You master the skills you have to master,” I say blankly. If she only knew what skills I’m developing. We talk long enough that she’s calm and then she tells me Parker’s coming over after the boys are asleep.
“See? He is so into you.” Our conversation ends. It’s incredible how easy it is to hang up with Jillian when I have a cake to make. I read the recipe over again. Twice.
I turn the mixer back on and turn the radio up. A classic Journey song is playing and I’m pretty sure Mitch is behind the mic at the radio station. Once the butter and sugar are very light, I add in the vanilla extract, a third of the flour mixture, and then alternate the milk-egg mixture with the remaining dry ingredients. After a couple of final stirs, I divide the batter between the two pans and put them in the preheated oven. I set the timer.
You and me.
And me and you.
I recognize the lyrics of “Happy Together.” Another classic. It’s the best summer anthem, a whole song of hopeful notes. I daydream about a guy who laughs at my jokes and makes jokes that I think are
funny. Like Jillian. But, I need something more, too. Not better, just different. Someone who wants to make the rules together, not change them on me. Mitch is the kind of guy who is smart but doesn’t have to prove it. And he can talk about important things without debating them until I agree with him. He’s the kind of guy who listens. And I’m listening to him, through his song choices. I stop making lists in my head of pros and cons and I let myself feel hope tingling. Mitch could be more than my radio friend.
I ignore the dishes that need washing. I fight for happiness in the right here and now with my back against the oven, the fan blowing in my face. I imagine that Mitch is thinking about me, too.

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