When Noni gave her a puzzled look, Caroline added, “His promotion? I told you about it last week. We’re having a party to celebrate.”
“Congratulations!” Noni said. “I’m so pleased for Nathan. How nice of him to host his own party.”
Caroline felt her pulse elevate. “We’ve both been working very hard for this,” she said, and then she excused herself from the room.
The kitchen was full of the insistent smell of a cooked quiche. Caroline pulled it from the oven, and her index finger slid past the pot holder and touched the hot metal of the pan. She yelped in shock, dropped the pan onto the stove top with a clatter.
“Are you okay?” her mother called from the dining room. Caroline heard a murmured comment from Danette. “Can we help?” Noni added.
“I’m fine!” Caroline called back. She sucked on her finger, the burned spot raw and tender in her mouth, and she began to cry in a hot, childish way. Why had she let her mother come here today? She should have told her to eat lunch at the airport. She should have ordered food from Pepe’s.
Danette appeared in the doorway. “Caroline, what happened?”
“I’m fine,” Caroline said. “Just a little burn.”
“Oh, dear. What a shame,” said Danette, and she reached to examine the finger. She said nothing about the tears but abruptly enveloped Caroline in another paralyzing hug, this one longer and fuller than the one bestowed at the door. This embrace went on and on, and Caroline breathed in Danette’s scent (gardenia? or was it lily?), felt the tangy, sweaty heat of her, and found it all strangely and deeply comforting. This near suffocation by her mother’s unknown friend was the most comfort she’d accepted in years.
Danette at last released her, and Caroline stepped back. “I’ll be right in with the quiche,” Caroline said, wiping at her eyes.
“No, let me,” said Danette, and she carried the dish into the dining room.
* * *
They ate lunch. Danette and Noni told Caroline about their plans, the hotels they’d be staying at, the sights they’d see. After clearing the quiche away, Caroline checked on the girls (still sleeping) and made coffee. Another half hour remained until she needed to pick up the table linens. She returned to the dining room with the coffee pot and mugs on a tray.
“Laurie loved, I mean loved, linzer torte,” Danette was saying. “I have to tell you, Antonia, that’s really why I put Vienna on our list. I mean, it is a beautiful city, you will just adore it, but we are going to eat us some serious amounts of linzer torte.”
“Joe’s cake is more cinnamon,” Noni said. “He never really liked sweet sweet, but my God, he could have eaten that cake breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The first time I made it for him, he ate nearly half the thing in one sitting.”
Both Noni and Danette were smiling, talking about their dead children in an easy way that made Caroline uncomfortable. It was like talking about God, like talking about love: you needed to do it with a certain amount of reverence, in hushed tones, or on your knees. Caroline didn’t care for her mother’s breeziness. Plus, Noni was wrong.
“I made that cake the first time,” Caroline said. “Remember? That Christmas, I wanted to make something new?”
Noni tilted, then shook her head. “It was Easter 1984. Joe was ten years old. You were eleven then—I don’t remember you being a baker at that age.”
“I was. I was always a baker—I always made cakes,” Caroline said, feeling irritated and righteous. “I started when I was . . . I must have been seven or eight.” Caroline began to bake during the Pause, following the recipes printed on the backs of yeast packets and sacks of flour. Renee would prepare all the family meals, but she said that dessert was too much work. Memories of scorched cookies and undercooked cakes came back to Caroline, blistered fingers, struggles to reach the oven knob. “Noni, you weren’t there when I first started,” she said. “You wouldn’t remember.”
Noni narrowed her eyes and gazed at Caroline as though she were a distant figure whom Noni was trying in vain to identify. “No, Caroline,” she said finally. “I think you’re remembering wrong. It was Easter. I made the cake.”
There was a beat of silence, and then Danette remarked with great good cheer, “Well, whoever made it, it must have been a doozy of a cake. I need to get down that recipe. Laurie was never much of a baker herself, though she did like to eat the results. That girl had a sweet tooth, just like her mother.” Danette spooned sugar into her coffee, looking to Noni with raised eyebrows. And Noni nodded once, a short downward clip of her chin, and a look of understanding passed between them.
“I need to use the bathroom,” Noni said, and left the room.
“I did make it,” Caroline said weakly to Danette. “I did.”
“It doesn’t matter. You both made it,” Danette replied. “You all made it, really. You all made that cake for Joe.”
Danette’s tone was soothing, and Caroline wondered if Danette would hug her again, which she both longed for and feared. But no, Danette stayed where she was, gazing at Caroline across the crumby tablecloth with a look of frank pity. “Your mother’s told me that you’ve taken it the worst. Joe’s death.”
Caroline bristled. “Me? I think Fiona’s still a wreck.”
“You know, I don’t have any other children,” said Danette. “Laurie was it. As much as her father and I hated that—I mean, we lost everything when we lost her—I did think it was easier, in a way. Her father and I took it all. We didn’t have to worry about anybody else. Your mother, she’s got to get on without Joe, and she’s got to watch you and your sisters get on without Joe.”
Caroline had never looked at it this way before. She had always thought of us as Noni’s greatest consolation; Noni had lost her son, but at least she still had three daughters. And Caroline was taking care of Noni. Ever since Joe’s accident, Caroline had grouped Noni alongside Louis, Beatrix, and Lily, the four of them crammed into a sack that Caroline slung over her shoulder and carried around. It was heavy, but there was no safe place to put it down.
“Caroline. Listen to me. You have to decide what you love,” Danette said. “Joe wasn’t the only one. You have to decide now and hold on. Start small. Begin with the small things and work up from there.”
Noni’s soft-soled shoes entered the room with a small sucking noise. “Is Danette telling you about the place we’re staying in Paris?” Noni asked, still standing in the doorway. “It’s got a view of the island, that tiny one? Caroline, we will have to go next time. Next time I’m taking you to Europe.”
Caroline looked from Noni to Danette and then pushed herself away from the table. It was as though a deep, dark secret, the secret of her life, had been suddenly revealed to all, the curtain pulled, and Caroline stood there alone, naked and shivering. She recognized what was happening here, and she was exhausted by it. Maybe Danette was telling her the secret to overcoming one’s grief. Maybe Danette’s own acute suffering (every time Caroline began to think of that girl in the car, she shuddered and shook her head and sang a little song to clear away the image) made her wise, and she was sharing this wisdom with Caroline, the most precious gift Caroline would ever receive. Yet even if that were the case, Caroline could not muster the strength to focus. To file away Danette’s words in some empty drawer of her socked-out brain for later reference. The little things? What did that even mean? Everything was big. Everything was monumental.