Happily for Now, page 3
Great-Uncle Timothy didn’t say anything. Maybe he needed to think about it, or maybe he was still feeling shy around me. Or maybe he just didn’t like to talk that much.
But Aunt Becky answered right away, like she’d been waiting her whole life for someone to ask. “Pistachio-oatmeal bars with raspberry jam.” She folded her arms, like she was daring me to make something of it.
“I’ve never had those,” I said, wondering what they said about a person. “Are you going to make them next?”
Her shoulders slumped, and she let her arms fall back down by her sides. “We only make chocolate chip and oatmeal-raisin. Mother says that’s all people want.”
I looked out at the empty bakery. No one had come in, not even for coffee. “What people?”
“Business is bad,” Aunt Becky said with a sigh. “Mother says we can’t afford to try something new. Not now, when we might lose the bakery.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I told her. “My fairy—I mean, my…uh…friend—Ms. Davis says that if what you’re doing isn’t working for you, you have to try something else, not keep doing more of the same.”
Aunt Becky just shook her head and sighed again.
I put the last paper in the muffin pan. So was Aunt Becky unhappy because the bakery was in trouble? Or maybe because she baked the same boring stuff every day? I wasn’t sure how to fix all that. But Lesson 1 just said to encourage her to make one small change.
“Can I try making your cookies?” I asked.
AUNT BECKY TURNED the Enormous Mixer of Danger off. She looked at me—really looked at me—like she was trying to figure out if she could trust me.
I didn’t rush her, and I didn’t push. I just waited as she scooped muffin batter into all the muffin papers.
But when she handed the pan to Great-Uncle Timothy, I asked, “Can I at least see the recipe?”
For a minute, I thought maybe she would just say no. We both watched Great-Uncle Timothy add three blueberries to the top of each muffin, in a little cluster design. He pushed them around with a toothpick until they were right where he wanted them.
When he was done, Aunt Becky slid the muffin pan into the first oven and set the timer.
Then, slowly, she went to the very last cabinet in the row. She knelt down, moved a pile of dish towels aside, and reached way back into the darkness, where I couldn’t see.
When she stood up, she was holding a box. It was plain wood, nothing special. But she held it like it was her treasure chest. She flipped through the index cards inside, chose one, and handed it to me.
I read the recipe. It was a little like my mom’s oatmeal-cookie recipe, except it called for pistachios instead of chocolate chips, and you put half the dough in a big pan, then jam on top, and then the other half of the dough, and then cut them up after they were baked instead of using a spoon to plop them on a cookie sheet. I never did that before. But I know how to measure and mix things, so how hard could it be?
When I looked up, Aunt Becky was watching me. Kind of like it was a test. Only she didn’t look like the teacher—she looked like she was taking the test.
“Where’s the pan?” I asked.
While she got it out, I found a bowl that wasn’t Enormous Mixer of Danger–size. I looked in the tall cupboards for the chopped pistachios and the oats and one of the big jars of jam, and set out the measuring cups and spoons I was going to need. I lined everything up on the long counter in a way that made me happy. I like things to be organized. It makes me feel like I can get my work done without any unexpected problems getting in my way.
Aunt Becky brought me a big glass pan and a sheet of special paper called baking parchment. She showed me how to line the pan with it so the cookies wouldn’t stick. You don’t have to put butter on it or anything. Then I started measuring my ingredients.
The timer went off, loud in the quiet air, scaring me half to death. Slowly, Great-Uncle Timothy went over to the oven. He turned the pan around and set the timer again. Then he started washing the dirty dishes.
But Aunt Becky stayed right where she was, watching me.
I measured everything very carefully, and mixed it all together. Her face was kind of frowny, but she didn’t look mad at me. Just concentrating, maybe. And maybe waiting? Hoping for something?
I dumped half the dough in the big glass pan and started pressing it down with a spoon, like the recipe said to.
“Let me show you a trick for that,” Aunt Becky said. She took a drinking glass and used the bottom to flatten the dough. Then she handed the glass to me and watched as I did the rest of it. I was careful, and I squished it where I wanted it to go, so the whole thing ended up almost even. (I kind of wanted to remind Aunt Becky that her other cookies weren’t going to make themselves, so she’d stop watching me and making me nervous. But that didn’t seem like a fairy-godperson thing to do.)
Measuring and then spreading the jam was easy. Dumping the rest of the dough on top was harder, because I didn’t want to mess up the jam underneath. Aunt Becky taught me how to take a spoonful of the crumbly dough and kind of shake it over the pan, so it scattered more evenly. She said it was okay if it wasn’t completely even, because these were “rustic-style” cookies. But I pushed the topping around a little bit, very carefully, so you couldn’t see any big patches of jam anymore.
Then Aunt Becky showed me how to turn one of the huge timers until it started ticking, like an alarm clock in a cartoon. We set it for half of the baking time, so we could turn the pan around in the oven and make sure it baked evenly. Aunt Becky said cookies that you’re selling have to be as perfect as you can make them, not burned on the edges at all, and even though we couldn’t sell these, because they weren’t chocolate chip or oatmeal-raisin, I should still do it right.
While we waited, I got out another muffin pan and started to put the papers in.
“Not white papers,” Aunt Becky said. “White papers are for blueberry muffins. Chocolate cupcakes have yellow papers.”
I checked the clock. “Who wants cupcakes before eight in the morning?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you make more muffins?”
She shook her head. “One batch of blueberry muffins, one batch of chocolate cupcakes with—”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, cutting her off. These people were really not into mixing it up. Like, at all. “So, one pan with yellow papers. And one pan with pink for the other cupcakes?”
Aunt Becky nodded and started measuring ingredients into a bowl.
So I put the white papers back in the package and got out the yellow papers instead. The timer went off, startling me all over again.
“Muffins,” Aunt Becky said, not moving. I could see that the timer over the oven with our cookies was still ticking.
Great-Uncle Timothy opened the first oven and pulled out the pan of muffins. After they’d cooled a little, he tipped them out onto a big wire rack on the counter. As he turned each one right side up, he arranged them into a pattern, like a wavy circle. Then he frowned at it, pulled one out, and rearranged them some more to fill the gap. He brought me the muffin he’d pulled out on a napkin.
“Thanks,” I said. I peeled off the paper and took a bite. The muffin was warm and sweet. But it didn’t taste any different from the ones at the grocery store. I didn’t know why anyone would bother to come buy one here.
Great-Uncle Timothy waited until Aunt Becky turned the mixer back on. Then he leaned over and whispered, “Banana bread with chocolate chips tomorrow.” His voice was scratchy, like he hadn’t used it in years.
I grinned at him. I hadn’t pictured him as a rebel. But if he was up for it, so was I.
Finally, my cookies’ second-half timer went off. Aunt Becky hovered over me as I put the oven mitts on and pulled out the pan. “Are these done?” I asked.
She closed her eyes and took a long sniff, like she could smell if they were done better than she could see it. They did smell amazing, nutty and oaty, fruity and sweet.
She nodded and told me to put the pan on a rack on the counter to cool. She went back to her chocolate cupcakes, and I put the pink papers in the next pan.
After Aunt Becky put the white-cupcake batter into the pink papers and popped them in the oven, she said the cookies were cool enough to cut up. Unfortunately, my cutting lines wiggled, and some of the cookies ended up a little bigger and some a little smaller. Worse still, the first one broke into three pieces when I tried to get it out of the pan.
I took a deep breath and reminded myself that it’s okay to make mistakes as long as you learn something from them.
Aunt Becky glanced over at me and saw the broken cookie pieces. But she didn’t frown. “That always happens with the first one,” she told me. “It’s another reason we can’t sell them here. We can’t waste ingredients like that.”
I put the pieces on three small white napkins. I took the first one to Great-Uncle Timothy, who stopped rearranging muffins in the bakery case long enough to taste it. I watched him carefully.
When he put it in his mouth, his eyebrows shot straight up, like hairy white caterpillars jumping. He looked at Aunt Becky, but he didn’t say anything. Then he smiled. It was a small smile, but it was real: the first real smile since I got here. It gave me a warm feeling in my stomach. Like maybe things would be okay, even if they weren’t perfect.
I gave the next piece to Aunt Becky, but she just set it down on the counter without really looking at it.
I tried not to be disappointed. Sometimes people don’t notice right away when you do something nice for them. Sometimes you have to do your own thing and let people do theirs.
I took a bite of my piece.
I’d known for years I was an oatmeal-cookie-with-chocolate-chips kind of girl, with a brownie now and then. But this pistachio-oatmeal bar almost changed my mind. The sour-sweet jam and the buttery, nutty cookie, which was still warm…It made me smile, even though I still felt kind of sad.
Aunt Becky was watching me. Her hand reached out, almost like it was doing its own thing, and broke off a tiny piece of her cookie. She put it into her mouth and closed her eyes. For a moment, her face relaxed into a smile. And then her shoulders slumped again, and she pushed the cookie away and turned back to the muffin pans.
“This is one of the best cookies I’ve ever had,” I told her. “No wonder they’re your favorite.” It was true, even if I still liked my mom’s better. Also, Ms. Davis says that sometimes people need to be reminded of what their strengths are. I carefully lifted the rest of the pistachio-oatmeal bars out of the pan with a spatula and arranged them on a tray.
But Aunt Becky’s shoulders didn’t get any less slumpy.
I put parchment paper on cookie sheets for one batch each of her boring old cookies and thought about what else I could do, and Aunt Becky mixed oatmeal-raisin batter in the Enormous Mixer of Danger, and Great-Uncle Timothy changed the coffee in the coffeepot, even though no one had been in to buy any of the old coffee.
And then the door opened, and the big jingle bell jangled, and a lady with bright orange hair and emerald-green sunglasses and fuchsia lipstick and about fifty pins on her jacket brought the mail in. She saw me and stopped. “Well, then, who’s this?” She plopped the mail down on the counter.
Great-Uncle Timothy opened his mouth and turned a bit red, but no words came out. Aunt Becky didn’t look away from the mixer. I’m not sure if she couldn’t stop right then or couldn’t hear anything above the noise.
“I’m Fiona,” I told the lady. “I’m staying with my relatives this summer, so I’m helping out here.”
The lady tipped her head and studied me. “Let’s see….Are you Sheila’s daughter?”
I nodded and felt my stomach twist, waiting for her to ask why I was here instead of with my mom.
But she didn’t. “Nice to meet you, Fiona.” She grinned at me. “I’m Renee, the downtown postal carrier. I deliver the mail and let people know what’s happening.”
I studied her. Her uniform was plain old navy, but everything else she was wearing was a different bright color. She even had on two different socks, one orange with lime polka dots, one yellow with turquoise stars. I couldn’t tell how she was going to fit into this story.
She saw me looking and grinned. “I like to keep things interesting.”
“Then you should try one of these,” I said, and handed her a cookie. “Aunt Becky says we can’t sell them, so it’s free.”
Renee started to shake her head. Then she stopped and sniffed as the freshly baked cookie smell hit her nose. “Is this what smells so good?”
“It’s a pistachio-oatmeal bar with raspberry jam. From a secret recipe,” I told her. “We might never make them again.”
She took a bite. She chewed slowly, staring at me. “Where did you learn to bake like this?”
“It isn’t my recipe,” I told her. “It’s Aunt Becky’s.”
Renee straightened up. “Becky Jean Starke, you’d better make as many of these as you can, right now, because I’m going to tell the whole town about them.”
Aunt Becky stared at Renee like she’d just turned into a dragon.
Actually, Renee would make a pretty good dragon. They like shiny, colorful things, too. And they’re not at all shy.
“But my mother—” Aunt Becky began.
Renee frowned at her. “Don’t give me that nonsense. You’d better stop worrying and start baking. And no more handing them out for free, either. Do you want to pay your bills or not?”
I decided I liked Renee. “Thank you,” I told her. “I’m glad you like Aunt Becky’s cookies.”
“And I’m glad you’re here,” Renee replied, smiling. She finished her cookie, wiped a big smear of lipstick onto her napkin, and marched out the door, jingle bell clanging.
Now that’s more like it, I thought.
Great-Uncle Timothy was still smiling, even if he did look kind of dazed.
Aunt Becky wasn’t. I watched as she set the Enormous Mixer of Danger bowl aside, next to the cookie sheets that were waiting. She bent down and got another huge bowl out of a cupboard, fitting it onto the mixer. Then she picked up her special cookie recipe and read it through. As she measured oats and pistachios and dumped them into the bowl, I grinned. When dragons appear, things have to change. Apparently, even Aunt Becky knew that.
I found another pan for her special cookies and got it ready for her. Great-Uncle Timothy wandered over to the sink and started washing more dishes. Aunt Becky watched the mixer bowl like it was a crystal ball. No one else had come in.
Well, if they were good for now, I had other things I needed to do today. “Where’s the library?” I asked. It was time to send some emails and do some research.
* * *
—
It turned out the library was right down the street. The tall white guy at the desk helped me fill out the form to get a library card for the summer and said it was no problem when I told him I needed to go back to the bakery to get it signed.
He looked at me thoughtfully. “Are those new cookies as good as Renee said?”
Huh. Dragons move fast. “Yeah,” I told him. “Want me to bring you one?” I didn’t see anyone else there to help him, and I know librarians can’t just close the library every time they want a cookie.
His face lit up. “Would you?” He pulled out his wallet and handed me a five-dollar bill. “Tell Becky that…um…Kevin says hi,” he said hesitantly.
“Be right back,” I told him.
Great-Uncle Timothy was at the bakery counter, selling the cookies I’d made to a line of people. They all stared at me as I ducked behind the counter. But then the lady buying a cookie turned and took a bite, and everyone watched her instead. She concentrated while she chewed, and then she smiled, and everyone’s eyes followed her as she got back in line again. Aunt Becky was busy in the kitchen, spreading jam on the next batch of cookie dough.
I picked up a pen and put my form on the counter. “I need this signed to get my library card,” I told Great-Uncle Timothy. “And Kevin at the library wants to buy a cookie. He says hi, Aunt Becky.”
Aunt Becky froze for a minute. Like maybe she wasn’t sure how to do basic friend stuff anymore.
“Do you want me to tell him hi back?” I asked. Fairy godpeople have to be patient with people who are working stuff out. Even if it’s really obvious stuff they should know.
Slowly, Aunt Becky nodded.
Great-Uncle Timothy didn’t make me wait in line. He rang me up while a lady was looking in her purse for her glasses and gave me Kevin’s change and a cookie in a little paper bag. He looked at the library-card form and hesitated for a minute, like he wasn’t sure if he was authorized to decide whether I should get my own library card.
“You don’t have to worry—I know how to keep track of my books and be a good library user,” I explained. He’d only just met me, after all. “Just sign it, and then you can get back to helping people.”
He looked at the long line of people, sighed, and signed it.
“Thanks,” I said, and headed back to the library.
I gave Kevin his change and his cookie and my form, and told him that Aunt Becky said hi back. He said thanks and gave me my library card and a copy of the library’s rules.
With that out of the way, I decided it was time to get some real work done. “I need to check my email, and I need to know how to get cookies like that out of a big pan without the first one breaking,” I said. “Can you help me? And do you have any books about how to become a spy if you’re an old lady? Or about fairy godpeople or baking magic? Or how to break curses? Oh, and do you have any of the Hamster Princess books?” Those books are my favorites, even though the fairy godpeople—er, the fairy godmice and godrats—were totally incompetent. They’re funny, and they don’t pretend that life’s not hard work, even in fairy tales. I feel better every time I read one, no matter how many times I’ve read it before. And even though things were going pretty well so far, it seemed like a good idea to have one ready, just in case.
