100 Days of Cake Page 3

  In the past two years his band has changed names at least five times. They’ve been Cyanide Six-Pack, Approximate Proxy, Bad Times for All (which they really liked but eighty-sixed when they discovered there was already a group in Chicago called that), Baggage, and something I can’t remember, other than that it had to do with cell phones and elephants, maybe Celo-phant or Ele-o-phone. They’ve never actually played a show under any name, but sometimes Alex will bring his guitar to the store, and if it’s really dead (pretty much always—it turns out that Charlie was wrong, and Coral Cove wasn’t really clamoring for saltwater fish), we’ll go to the roof deck on top of the building, and he’ll fool around with some chords and lyrics. It always sounds pretty good.

  “Thank you much,” I say.

  “Now you’re ready for our first show.”

  “Absolutely.” I wonder if a bunch of the Hot Topic girls will be there in these tees too.

  The Golden Girls block starts with the one where Blanche, Dorothy, and Rose accidentally book a Valentine’s Day vacation at a nude beach resort and spend their entire trip staring out the window at the nakeds, trying to work up the nerve to strip down and go out themselves. The fourth season wasn’t my fav, but this episode always slays me.

  With chopsticks he found somewhere behind the counter, Alex sneaks into my leftover lo mein stash, and smiles up at me when I catch him.

  On-screen the girls finally decide to go to dinner in the buff. Hiding behind giant heart cutouts, they drop everything when they make it to the dining room. Even though I’ve seen this episode a thousand times, I still laugh when the snooty waiter tells them, “Excuse me, ladies, but we always dress for dinner here. And in your case, we’d appreciate it if you’d do that for all three meals.” Alex is laughing too, and things feel normal and good, even if I still can’t shake all of last night away.

  We watch another episode and give directions to a guy who comes in completely lost, trying to get to the Disney parks in Orlando. That happens at least a few times a month. Just to be nice, sometimes people will buy one of the fish magnets we have up front.

  When the dude leaves, Alex points to my carton of lo mein and makes a face. “Not Wang’s best work, was it?”

  I shrug. “Definitely wasn’t the broccoli-rabe-sausage day.”

  “After we close, maybe I can take you out for a real dinner somewhere. No offense to Chuck, but this dump isn’t all that romantic.”

  That greasy pull in my stomach, and the uptick in my chest. Lowering my chin to my shoulder, all I can see is freaking T.J.’s annoying Captain America face. You’re just kind of different from what I thought before I got to know you.

  The sigh escapes before I can stop it.

  “So I’m guessing that’s a no?” Alex sounds more amused than disappointed, which just makes me wonder if he even means any of it at all.

  Luckily, I don’t have to flat-out shut him down.

  “I can’t.” I try to sound breezy. “I have to get my head shrunk.”

  When I first started therapy ADF, I tried to hide it from Alex, but after the third week in a row when I left early for a doctor’s appointment, he got worried I was dying of cancer or something, so I had to tell him. Never even fazed him.

  “Right, it’s Thursday,” Alex says. “Some other time, I guess.”

  “Yeah,” I say, but don’t offer up an alternate day/month/year, and he doesn’t push. Better this way, in our little aquarium without all that outside stuff.

  We watch more TV, and he eats my just-meh noodles until it’s time for me to leave.

  “Same time, same place tomorrow?” Alex says.

  “You’re on, A-hat.”

  It’s only a fifteen-minute bike ride to Dr. Brooks’s office in a converted old house downtown, but it’s so hot that I’m a liquefied version of my former self by the time I arrive. My tank top is soaked through with sweat, and even in the blurry reflection from the big picture window, my face is the exact shade of a ripe tomato. I’m a few minutes late already, but I don’t want Dr. B. thinking I’m any more of a whack job than I am, so I duck into the bathroom and change into Alex’s band shirt—which actually fits pretty well—splash some water on my face, and run my fingers through the knots in my nuclear-winter hair. I’m not a huge makeup person, but looking at myself in the mirror, I wish that I knew how that stuff worked, like V and her friends. I wish I could put on mascara without stabbing myself in the eye with the wand, or apply blush in a way that didn’t look clown-y. Finding a tube of tinted ChapStick in my backpack, I dot it on.

  Dr. B. is waiting for me at his office door, perfectly fresh in a light-blue polo shirt and khakis.

  “For a minute there I was worried you were standing me up,” he says, and I giggle.

  “Never!”

  Okay, I admit, I may have a teeny tiny crush on Dr. B. The guy has a jawline like a cliff and these little depressions by his temples that give him this seriousness with a dash of vulnerability. Obvi, nothing is ever going to happen. Beyond the ethical no-no’s that he’s my doctor and probably thirtysomething, he’s got a lovely strawberry-blond fiancée who works in TV news in Miami. (There’s a framed picture of the two of them on his desk.) But, hey, a girl’s allowed to look, right?

  He ushers me in and closes the door, and I take a seat on the leather couch across from his chair.

  I am sitting BTW, not lying down the way they do on TV. When I came in for my first session a year ago, I saw the chaise longue and asked if I was supposed to get vertical. “Some patients do,” Dr. B. said. “Whatever makes you the most comfortable.” As if anything about the situation was going to make me comfortable.

  To say therapy wasn’t my idea is a colossal understatement. When things started falling apart for me on the end of sophomore year, my mom dismissed it as typical teenage stuff at first. But then ADF the high school guidance counselor called Mom and me into her office and explained that, nope, there was nothing garden-variety about my running out of a swim meet after months of training, or about dropping advanced art, or my GPA tumbling from a 3.7 to a 1.7. Mr. Walton used the D word—“depression”—and that hurled my mom into this completely uncharacteristic panic. Mom is a go-getter, not a panicker. If I hadn’t already been totally lost and scared, seeing my put-together, perfect mother clutch her chest and blather hysterically about how she’d had no idea—well, that certainly would have done the trick.

  Mom took me to my geriatric pediatrician, Dr. Calvin (who’d been old when he was her pediatrician), and he wrote me scripts for a low-dose antidepressant and some anti-anxiety meds, offered me a toy from the chest of plastic trinkets for the little kids, and told us I needed therapy. Mom got Dr. Brooks’s name from one of her regular highlights clients. Apparently Dr. B. had helped the woman’s son, and the kid had gotten his act together enough that he’d been able to turn things around and had gotten into Florida A&M. This impressed Mom. My mother may not have gone to college herself, but it’s a very big thing for her that V and I go. I think it has to do with proving something to her own mother.

  Anyway, the first couple of sessions with Dr. B., I just sat there, arms and legs crossed (sitting was, it turns out, slightly less uncomfortable than lying down), and gave one-word answers to the questions he asked about my family and school and what might have changed for me. So much of what was going on was stuff I couldn’t even begin to explain to myself, even if I’d wanted to. Then one day Dr. B. noticed me tucking my earphones into my backpack, and he asked about what kind of music I listened to. We started talking about some of the nineties bands that I knew about from Alex or my mom, and it turned out that Dr. B. had actually seen a lot of them when he was in high school and college. For the next session he brought in some Stone Temple Pilots bootlegs, and we talked about those, and gradually, talking about other stuff got a little easier.

  Now I’m a total convert. The dude is awesome. And even though he knows all this crazy stuff about me, he doesn’t treat me as if I’m a Fabergé egg. ADF a lo
t of people in my life either cut me off or started talking to me in a syrupy voice, as though I would crumble into a billion pieces if they said something to upset me. But Dr. B. acts like I’m an actual human, not something that’s going to shatter.

  “What’s a Flaming Dante?” He points to my shirt.

  “Oh.” I blush. “It’s Alex’s band.”

  “Your friend from work, huh?” he asks, and I nod. “I take it he just read The Divine Comedy?”

  “Well, his friend did,” I mumble. “You’d like the band; they sound kind of nineties.”

  “You talk about him quite a bit, and now you’re wearing his shirt; is he becoming more than a friend?”

  I shrug. Even though I couldn’t wait to talk to Dr. B. about all of what happened with Alex and T.J., now it just sounds like high school drama.

  “Molly.” Dr. B. cocks his head. “You know this only works if you tell me what’s going on.”

  “I don’t know. I feel bad because I think he wants us to be more than friends, and I’ve been blowing him off.”

  “He asked you out, and you said no?”

  “Technically.”

  “And this has happened before?”

  “I think. It’s hard to tell sometimes.”

  “So you say, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ and he still keeps asking you out, and then he makes you feel as though you’ve done something wrong by rejecting him?”

  “It’s not exactly like that—” But I’m not sure how it is, the whole thing is such a swirl.

  “Molly, you don’t have to go out with anyone you don’t want to. You don’t owe any one that,” Dr. B. says. “At the very least his behavior sounds extremely immature. The fact that you feel bad about it just shows what a thoughtful person you are, but these are his issues.”

  I know it’s pretty crappy that I threw Alex under the bus like that, but I’m fighting a smile. What Dr. B. just said is a compliment, right? Am I supposed to thank him? Feeling myself turning tomato again, I look down, and suddenly, all that stuff with Alex and T.J. doesn’t seem like that big a deal anymore.

  So I change the subject. “You know, I think the reason I work at FishTopia in the first place is because of my father.”

  “How so?” Dr. B. leans in. He always seems really interested in talking about my parents.

  “When we lived in Miami, he used to take me to the aquarium all the time and show me the fish. It was very important to him.” For the rest of the session, I tell him stories about how my dad used to point things out to me—how he loved to talk about all the bright colors and weird shapes. “He always said he could spend days there.”

  “Does that make you happy, that you have that connection to him?”

  “Definitely. It’s great to feel connected like that.”

  At the end of the session, I hand him my co-pay, and he asks if we can meet on Monday instead of Thursday next week. “It’s my fiancée’s birthday, and I was hoping to get down to Miami and surprise her.”

  “That’s so sweet; of course.”

  Like I said, me crushing on Dr. B. = utterly harmless.

  I stop in the bathroom again on the way out, and Dr. B. must finish up a few minutes later, because he’s on his way into the parking lot when he sees me unlocking Old Montee.

  “You rode your bike here?” He points at Old Montee. “In this heat?”

  Shrugging, I tell him, “I’m a driver’s ed dropout.”

  He chuckles and asks if he can give me a ride home. “If you died of heat stroke, it would probably reflect poorly on my skills as a healer.”

  We put my bike into the trunk of his Honda Accord and slide into our seats. It’s a little weird, and I’m kind of jumpy, being alone with him in such a small space, but when he starts the engine, of course the nineties radio station starts blaring, which makes me laugh.

  And we talk about how he used to listen to all these songs on CDs and (gasp!) cassette tapes.

  “Those rectangles with the two holes in the middle?” I joke. “I think I saw one in a museum once.”

  “I’m telling you, Molly, you’re missing out.” Dr. B. shakes his head. “Making a mix tape for the girl you had a crush on was like a rite of passage in junior high.”

  “Did you make one for your fiancée?”

  “I might have burned her a CD when we first met.”

  We’re having such a good time, I almost forget to tell him when to turn onto my street of new houses, and into the circular driveway of the biggest one. It was the model home for the subdivision—the one builders show to potential home buyers, to demonstrate how great their house could be—and it has all these crazy upgrades, like a huge door and a three-car garage.

  “Now, that’s a house,” Dr. B. says, which is funny, since he’s the doctor and Mom is a single mother who cuts hair.

  “Thanks,” I say, even though I had absolutely nothing to do with it.

  After my dad died, Mom moved V and me back to Coral Cove so my grandma could help out (weird, considering most of what Mom and Gram do is bicker). We stayed with her for a while, and then got a little house on the same street as Gram’s while Mom worked at someone else’s salon. Eventually Mom started her own place—Dye Another Day (yeah, I know). Despite the cornball name, it really took off, and she moved to a larger, shinier location, hired more stylists, and added spa stuff like mani-pedis and massages. She even started a product line. Then she read something about needing your home to outwardly “reflect your inner success” or whatever. So she bought this five-bedroom monstrosity a few years ago.

  I thank Dr. B. for the ride, and he helps me lug my bike out of the car.

  “Good work today, Molly,” he says, and I smile, even though I realize that I didn’t even mention all the stuff with T.J. “I’ll see you next week.”

  “It’s a date,” I say, and then feel weird because I used the word “date.”

  Giving me a wave, he drives off, and I head in through the garage.

  Even after two years the house still feels strange. Since it was the model, the developers had it staged with custom furniture and decorations, a lot of it specific to the house. Most of the furniture in our old place was the type of semi-disposable stuff from Ikea that you assemble with that L-shaped wrench, so Mom got the developers to throw in all the furniture with the house.

  Now it’s like we’re living on a movie set or in a glossy add in a lifestyle magazine. Everything is beautiful and well coordinated, but clearly designed for people not us. Curved couches with mounds of throw pillows, sleek tables with brightly colored vases or bowls as “accent pieces,” neutral artwork that we don’t have any stories for. One of the extra bedrooms is set up as a sewing room, with a fancy Singer machine built into a table. (None of us would even know how to thread it.) Another bedroom is a really whimsical playroom for little kids, with murals from classic children’s books painted on the walls. There are giant stuffed animals and a cute wood dollhouse. Great stuff for some model other family.

  The second I park my bike next to Mom’s Audi and come in through the laundry room, I’m bombarded with the overwhelming smell of confectionary sugar, and I have to fight back the need to hurl. Apparently my mom is baking again . . . for the thirteenth day in a row.

  Our model-home kitchen appears to have been the loser in a confrontation with Chef Godzilla: cracked eggshells in the farm-style sink, a dusting of flour on the granite counters and hardwood floor; something that might be butter congealing against the subway-tile backsplash between the cabinets (a pricey upgrade). All of it tastefully illuminated by the recessed lighting in the ceiling (another upgrade).

  “Oh, sweetie, you’re just in time!” Mom hands me a giant slice of some golden-yellow cake that looks paradoxically burned and undercooked.

  “Hey, Mom. This is . . . interesting.”

  As much of a mess as her surroundings are, my mom is in the middle looking absolutely beautiful, because she’s always absolutely beautiful. Perfect shiny hair like V’s that som
ehow isn’t curling up in the humidity, perfect barely there makeup, perfect boobs—even the smudge of sugar on her high cheekbone is perfect. She looks like someone in a commercial who is supposed to sell you cake—not necessarily the defeated-looking cake she’s holding up, but some Hollywood version of it. If we didn’t have the same blue-green eyes and full lips, I would seriously question whether or not I was adopted.

  Forcing a smile, I ask, “So what’s on the menu today?”

  Up until thirteen days ago, the extent of my mom’s “cooking” was picking up sandwiches from Chubby Joe’s Sub Shop or sliding a frozen pizza into the oven. But she’s a big fan of self-help books and empowerment message boards. She has learned all seven steps of those highly effective people, she knows all about the different planets men and women are from, and she’s mastered the life-changing magic of tidying up—well, maybe she could use some help with that one right now.

  About two weeks ago, the wormhole that is the Internet led her to a website about spreading happiness with desserts. This lady in the English countryside blogged about baking a different cake every day for one hundred days and how much joy that brought people. Naturally, she got a book deal—How to Bake Friends and Ice People. (Okay, I made that up.) I suspect that the blogger was probably taking the cakes to nursing homes or hospital waiting rooms and not trying to fix a teenage daughter with depression, but Mom really latched on to this idea and decided to “put her mind to it” and recreate A Baker’s Journey: 100 Days of Cake (the real title). My mom is kind of like a one-woman cult.

  Today’s cake is Ooey-Gooey Butter Cake. It does not smell good, and I wonder if the blogger used another English expression that didn’t translate quite right for an American baker. (This led to an indelibly salty Caramel Sass Cake last week.)

  “Now, I know you thought the double chocolate was too rich, and the pineapple upside-down thing was too sweet, but I think that we might have a winner here.” Mom is talking in that singsongy voice she started using when my guidance counselor first uttered the D word. “It’s supposed to have some savory notes to it. I went ahead and tasted it, and I thought it was really different.”