The Cake Therapist by Judith Fertig Page A

No big deal. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
    I was tempted to pry, to center myself and let the flavors lead me to the tale of what had happened. It would, after all, have been for her own good. Wouldn’t it?
    But how did I really know what her own good was? Jett wasn’t a client. She wasn’t a family member or a good friend who invited such intimacy. She was my young, scared, confused, and angry employee.
    So I soothed her as best I could.
    I didn’t ask any more.
    I couldn’t judge.
    I wouldn’t leave her.
    I startled awake before dawn from a dream in which I was chased by a man with a jagged scar down the side of his face.
    Jett’s blanket was folded neatly.
    She was gone.
    AUGUST 1932
    The little brick house seemed to exhale in resignation, its sharp sighs starting in the stone cellar where Gustaf Habig had first fermented vinegar in the 1840s when Millcreek Valley was still known as Gansdorf—Goosetown. The oak barrels were long gone, but the residual tang moved languidly up the wooden stairs, through the middle room, and out the back screen door when anyone came inside.
    Grace Habig, in her faded blue housedress, had drawn the shutters to help keep the interior as dark and cool as possible. Edward napped on the bed in the middle room.
    In the kitchen, she took the enamelware colander down from the shelf and sat down with a paper bag of green beans and a paring knife. She had the radio on low to her favorite program,
Ma Perkins
.
    She started to top and tail, then string each bean as the vibrato of the organ music swelled. She listened through several minutes of “deep cleaning,
deep
cleaning,
deep cleaning
” Oxydol detergent extolled by the announcer.
    Grace already bought Oxydol, so she wished they’d just hurry up with it.
    Finally.
    “Now for
Ma Perkins
 . . .” and this week’s story began. Trouble with Cousin Sylvester again. At least Ma Perkins, too, had her troubles. Grace plunked another bean in the colander.
    Most of the Fairview society ladies—at least those with still-employed husbands—had traveled north to their cottages in northern Michigan, resulting in scant seamstress work. But it was only a few weeks more until Labor Day. Then they would be back and Grace could count on back-to-school and cotillion dresses.
    Edward’s former boss dropped by yesterday to leave a twenty-dollar bill. That loosened, a bit, the tight clenching that Grace felt from the right side of her temple, down her spine, and into her hip. The tension also seemed to ease up a little, she realized, when she was listening to
Ma
.
    Later on in the morning, the ice man came around in his cart, using the large metal tongs to hoist a big block onto his burlap-covered shoulder. He hummed the bouncy tune “Whistling in the Dark.”
    At least the ice business must be good,
thought Grace.
    He brought it into the little kitchen and placed it in the top compartment of the metal icebox. He held out a few chips in his gloved hand for Grace—a treat on this hot day. She gave him a nickel and he tipped his hat as he left.
    Now that the icebox would be good and cold, Grace got out the rotary beater with the jade green handle. She whipped a can of sweetened condensed milk with lemon juice and a little grated lemon peel, and poured it into a graham cracker crust to make a lemon bisque dessert that would firm up as it chilled.
    A few minutes after the bisque was in the icebox, the insurance man came around to the back screen door, and Grace had another nickel for him—the weekly life insurance payment for her husband. Mr. Kellerman sat down on the painted kitchen chair, tired in this heat. He took out his limp handkerchief and mopped his brow. The few strands of hair he had left were plastered to the top of his head. Grace asked if he’d like a glass of water, but he declined. She recorded the payment in her narrow brown ledger, and Mr. Kellerman did the same in his. She hoped he left before Edward woke up and started