Bliss

“My mother isn’t here,” Rose said, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt.

Aunt Lily walked over to her motorcycle and unhooked a small tweed suitcase and a smaller bag in the shape of a log, made of crushed crimson velvet that changed colour depending on the way you looked at it.

“Looks like I arrived at just the right time, Rose!” said Lily. “What better way to show your parents I want to heal our troubled relationship than to help their children out when they’re away?”

Rose thought that the whole thing sounded fishy, at best. She prayed that her parents would suddenly waltz back into the driveway and announce that they’d forgotten their underwear.

But there was no waltzing.

“Maybe you should come back when my parents are here.”

Lily made a face like a wounded dog. “I just thought I could help. With the bakery.” She picked up her suitcase and bag and gingerly hooked them on to the back of her motorcycle. “But I can see that you’d like me to go.”

“Noooooooo!” Sage yelled. “Rose, what are you doing? You can’t send a family member away! I mean, she has the ladle!”

Rose looked at the glamorous professional baker who was offering to help her for a week. Then she looked at Sage, her only sous-chef, who chose that moment to pick at his nose. There would be too much work that week for her and Chip to do by themselves, and she had a feeling that Ty and Sage and Leigh were not going to step up to the plate. Besides, there was something about this woman that made Rose unable to look away from her – even if she was fishy, at best.

“Wait!” Rose called to Lily. “I guess… we really could use the help.”

“Wheeeee!” cried Lily. “I know exactly what we’ll make for dinner tonight!”

What we’ll make for dinner tonight.

Rose couldn’t help but happily notice Aunt Lily had said we.

Mrs Carlson shuffled into the back garden later that afternoon. She had her short blond hair in curlers and wore a sequinned top and white leggings that were too tight. In one hand she carried a portable TV, and in the other hand she carried a box of porridge and a thing in a clear plastic bag that looked like a stomach, and smelled like worse.

Sage pinched the end of his nose. “What is that?”

“I’m going to make haggis,” Mrs Carlson said in her thick Scottish brogue. “Haggis is porridge boiled in the stomach of a sheep. It’ll put hair on your chest.”

Sage clutched at his chest.

“That’s very kind of you, Mrs Carlson, but it won’t be necessary,” Rose said nervously.

Mrs Carlson tilted her head sideways to look at Rose. “Why?”

“Well,” Rose began, “our aunt has come for a visit, and she’s already started making dinner.”

Mrs Carlson grunted. “Your father didn’t say anything about an aunt!”

Rose looked around nervously. “He… forgot she was coming. But she’s here now. And she’ll do all the cooking this week.”

Mrs Carlson shuffled over to the metal rubbish bin by the back door and dumped the sheep’s stomach inside. “Good. I didn’t really want haggis anyway.”

Since the entire first floor of the Bliss house was the bakery, the family spent most of their time in the evening crammed round the table in the kitchen. It wasn’t so much a table as a booth, like one you’d find at a diner – two high-backed benches of dark wood with red leather cushions facing each other, separated by a varnished cherrywood table and a medieval-looking cast-iron chandelier above. The family ate breakfast, lunch and dinner in the booth, and often gathered after dinner to resume a never-ending game of crazy eights, trying their best not to elbow one another as they picked cards up and slammed others down.

The boys banged the end of their forks and knives on top of the table and shouted, “Li-ly! Li-ly!” as they waited for dinner. Leigh perched on top of the table like a frog, her knobby knees flanking her ears. Mrs Carlson sat squished between Ty and Sage, clutching her leather purse to her chest. “A family of animals!” Mrs Carlson exclaimed.

Rose shrugged, feeling invisible compared to her louder-than-life siblings.

Aunt Lily had been puttering around in the background of the kitchen for the last hour. She had changed out of her black leather motorcycle outfit and into a flowing white cotton dress, which made her look impossibly tall and clean and elegant, even as she worked in the hot, cramped kitchen. After a while, she set a giant orange serving platter in the centre of the table.

“Paella valenciana!” she shouted. “This is a rice dish from Spain. I learned to make it while I was studying classical guitar outside Barcelona.”

It was a pile of fragrant rice stained the delicate orange colour of saffron, with pieces of chicken, spicy red sausage and a slew of edible sea creatures.

“This looks delicioso, Tía Lily!” Ty exclaimed, even though he normally refused to eat anything but buttered noodles and liquorice. Tonight he was wearing a crisp button-down and had spiked his hair with gel. Rose guessed it had something to do with the gorgeous woman puttering around the kitchen.

“I just think seafood is so much fun!” Lily said. “My father used to bring mussels and shrimps and clams home all the time. He was a fisherman.”

“So your side of the family aren’t bakers?” Rose asked, thinking that maybe the birthmark on Lily’s shoulder might actually be a fishhook instead of a ladle.

“They tried to be,” Lily began, “but they didn’t have the right… stuff. So they all moved to Nova Scotia and became fishermen instead. But I didn’t want that kind of life. So I bought a motorcycle and ran away to New York City to be a glamorous actress!”

“I went there once,” croaked Mrs Carlson through a big gulp of orange rice. “Someone stole my purse, and then a pigeon dropped a you-know-what on my head.”

The Bliss kids burst into laughter.

“Sounds like New York City to me!” said Lily, fanning herself. “When I arrived, I soared down Broadway on Trixie – that’s my motorcycle – and I felt so desperately, magnificently alive! Then I realised I had nowhere to live, and only enough money for a few hot dogs! So I bought myself a few hot dogs, and I ate them in Central Park.”

“That’s exactly what I would have done, Tía Lily,” said Ty in his deepest voice. Rose had never seen her brother try so hard to be friendly. And now he was calling this strange woman Tía Lily like he’d known her all his life.

“Yes!” Lily cried. “Sometimes one must have a hot dog! In any case, I was wandering west on Seventieth Street, and it was getting dark. I looked over and I saw a little cupcake shop with white shutters and adorable yellow curtains, and a sign in the window saying they needed an assistant. So I marched right in there and I said, ‘I will assist you for free if you will let me sleep in the kitchen.’ And they did! And that is where I learned to bake.”

“Can you take me with you when you go back?” said Sage.

Leigh stood up and began bouncing up and down on the table. “New York City! New York City!”

“Maybe I will take you to New York one day,” Lily said, placing a hand softly on Leigh’s back to still her while Mrs Carlson just sat there grimacing. “But I won’t be going back for a while. I’m going to host my own TV show, you see. It will be called 30-Minute Magic. So I am travelling around looking for the best recipes in the country, recipes that are wonderful enough to share with the world.”

“Rose!” Sage exclaimed. “Let’s show her the book!”

Rose stiffened. “What book?” If Lily was hoping to learn magical recipes, she had come to the wrong place. “Oh, you mean the books! The accounting books. Sage thinks you might be interested in our business model.”

Lily smiled and shrugged. “Oh, that’s OK! I’m a cook, not a mathematician!”

Rose glared at her little brother, who just stuck out his tongue in return.

The next morning, Rose arrived downstairs to find Ty mopping the front room of the bakery, wearing crisp black slacks and a black shirt and vest. He looked like a waiter.

“You’re up!” Rose exclaimed. “And you’re – what’s wrong with you?”

Ty looked around nervously. “Nothing. I’m cleaning up.”

“Since when do you even know how to use a mop?”

“I’m just trying to help the new lady of the house,” he said.

Rose wondered if she should have tried harder to look slick that morning. Unlike most of the girls at school, who wore brand-name jeans and fancy jackets with rhinestones on them and expensive-looking tops in bright colours, Rose never much cared about what she wore. For one thing, anything on her body eventually got dirty – with butter or grease or flour or whatever other ingredients were lurking in the Bliss kitchen. And anyway, a new blouse wouldn’t make her look like a movie star. It wouldn’t make Devin Stetson notice her. It would just make her look like she was trying too hard.

But standing next to Aunt Lily, with all her fabulous clothes, Rose felt like a dirty street urchin and wondered if she shouldn’t run out to a store and buy herself something bedazzled.

Rose pushed through the saloon doors that separated the front room from the kitchen and found Chip standing in the corner of the kitchen, beating egg whites in the stand mixer. “The marines!” said Lily, fanning her fingertips in front of her mouth. She was standing at the counter kneading some dough, and had exchanged her black leather for a red sundress with white polka dots. “You know, I was a pastry chef on a cruise ship for a year!”

Chip looked up from the mixer and strode towards Rose. “Morning, Rosie!”

Lily touched his shoulder. “Chip, darling, Rose and I need some girl time. Go and have a cup of coffee and relax!”

Chip sighed deeply and happily, then skipped out.

Rose stood with her mouth agape. What exactly had this Aunt Lily done to smooth the gruff crankiness of Chip? Why was her older brother cleaning? There was something electric about Aunt Lily, something that made you want to dress your best and wear a smile, but Rose couldn’t put her finger on it.

“Help me with these?” Lily asked, removing the bowl of whipped egg whites from the stand mixer and offering Rose a spoon.

The two of them plopped heaped spoonfuls of egg white on to a lined baking sheet. Lily worked quickly but effortlessly, like a twirling ballerina. Her face was a picture of easy concentration: lips pressed together, brow slightly furrowed.

“So, Rose. What is it you’d like to do with your life?” asked Lily.

Rose stared at the ceiling. No one had ever asked her that before. Sometimes all she wanted to do was bake, and sometimes she thought she’d scream if she ever saw a muffin again. Sometimes all she wanted to do was run away from Calamity Falls, and sometimes she thought that if she ever left, her heart would shrivel into a black nut inside her and stop beating altogether.

“I’m not sure,” she answered finally.

Lily set the tray of meringues in the oven. “I want to go everywhere and meet everyone in the world. I just don’t see how a person can do the same thing day after day, go to the same places, see the same people. I would just die.”

Rose bristled. Aunt Lily had just summed up her entire existence.

“Well, there’s something comforting about doing the same things and seeing the same people,” Rose said, peering over the saloon doors into the front room. Ty was just changing the front sign from CLOSED to open, and there was already a line round the block. “See those people? I know all of them.”

“Tell me about them,” said Lily gently.

“OK, see the man in the frog sweatshirt, standing at the counter? The first one in line?” Lily nodded. “That’s Mr Bastable, the cabinetmaker.” Mr Bastable had stringy white hair and a black moustache, and had always looked to Rose like a cousin of Albert Einstein. He wore a sweatshirt with a dozen frogs printed on the front. “He gets a carrot-bran muffin every morning.”

Lily peered out of the door. “What about the little woman behind him with the pointy hair?” The woman was so short, Rose knew, that Lily could only see her hair, which was a greyish tower that came to two peaks on either side of her head, like the ears of a wolf.

“That’s Miss Thistle, my biology teacher. And she is in love with Mr Bastable. And I think he is in love with her too. But they never speak.”

Lily gasped. “A secret love! How do you know?”

“One day, Mr Bastable came to our biology class to show us a slideshow of his frogs, and Miss Thistle stared at him the whole time with this very peaceful smile on her face, and he kept looking away from her, but you could tell it was because he didn’t want her to see how he felt.” Rose was well acquainted with this technique – she used it every time Devin Stetson walked past her in the hallways.

Lily looked at Rose with a shiny wetness in her eyes. “I have a secret.” She leaned forward. “I’m not really from Nova Scotia. My father was in the army. We moved to a different place every year. I’m not really from anywhere. So I don’t understand what it’s like to live in one town your entire life.” Lily shook her head and squeezed her eyes closed. When she opened them again, her bright smile had returned. “It just seems so boring! Like everyone here is stuck in their ways and can never change.”

Rose stiffened. “Are you talking about my mother too?”

Lily put her arm round Rose. “I don’t mean it in a bad way,” she said. “It’s just… your mother made a choice. She had gifts. She could have been famous. But instead she ended up here.” Lily smiled widely. “You have gifts too, Rose. I can see it. It’s just a matter of what you choose to do with them.”

Rose blushed. No one had ever called her gifted before. No one had ever called her anything but Rose.

She was beginning to understand the bizarre spell that had fallen on Ty and Chip. There was a grandeur and a magnificence about this woman that rivalled even unicorns. Either that, or Aunt Lily just always knew the right thing to say.

Ty called back from the kitchen. “Tía Lily! More croissants!”

Lily picked up the Betty Crocker cookbook with the ordinary cherry pie on the cover. “Is this your usual recipe book? I’d have thought your mum would have been cooking from something more… special.”

“Nope, this is it,” Rose said nervously. “Ordinary recipes. My mum just adds love.”

Time flew smoothly by with Lily at the helm: Leigh bounded through the kitchen as usual, but instead of tripping over her and spilling all the ingredients, as Purdy had, Lily gracefully danced around Leigh and even got her to sit and concentrate: “I need you to count out groups of ten raisins, Leigh, into each muffin tin. Can you do it?”

Leigh nodded her head and sat on the floor, slowly and deliberately plopping raisin by raisin into the muffin tins until she couldn’t think any more, then curled up in a ball and fell asleep by the refrigerator.

Ty smiled at all the ladies from town at the front counter, who oohed and aahed at how handsome he was in his shirt and vest. Chip ferried back and forth between the kitchen and the front room like a waiter at a five-star restaurant, standing as tall as he could and nesting one hand in the small of his back as the other held trays of cookies and cakes high above his head. He looked so mournful when five o’clock rolled around and his shift ended that Lily invited him to stay for dinner.

At dinnertime, Mrs Carlson was dismayed to find the family sitting Indian-style on a quilt in the backyard, Chip and Lily carving a leg of lamb the size of an air conditioner.

“So. What strange thing will we eat for dinner tonight? Curry?” she spat.

“No, ma’am!” Sage cooed. “This is a leg of lamb with that zeekee!”

“Tzatziki,” Lily corrected, laughing. “It’s a Greek yogurt sauce.”

Leigh sat on Chip’s lap and gnawed on the same piece of lamb for a long time, Sage and Ty wiped the juicy yogurt sauce from their mouths with their sleeves, and Mrs Carlson could barely contain a smile as she sucked down pieces of lamb, which were tender as butter. All the while, Rose stared in disbelief at her aunt, who in less than two days had transformed the knitted brows of the Bliss clan into easy smiles.

Leigh lifted the Polaroid camera that was permanently strapped to her neck and snapped a picture of Aunt Lily.

After everyone had finished their lamb, Lily sneaked off into the kitchen and reappeared carrying a shallow tart with a pale crumb crust, filled with yellow custard. “I made you all something wonderful for dessert!”

Rose’s face fell. She hated lemon tarts.

So did Sage. “Ech! Lemon!” he winced, puckering his mouth like a fish.

“No, no!” Lily cried. “There’s no lemon! I absolutely detest lemon tarts! No, I guarantee that this is unlike anything you’ve tried before!” she said, doling out slivers with a long knife. “This is a recipe from my great-great-great-grandfather Albatross.”

Rose looked at the slice on her plate. Only the top layer was yellow custard – beneath it were layers of swirling crimson and blue and even something that shimmered like the skin of a fish. When she bit into it, she tasted thick, buttery goop that was sweet and a little salty and, indeed, unlike anything she’d ever had.

The Bliss bunch sat in silence, nibbling on tiny bites of the sublime tart, trying to make it last all night.

“See, this is the sort of special recipe I’ve been travelling around trying to collect,” Lily explained. “Truly unique recipes.”

The phone rang from inside the kitchen, but everyone was too engrossed in the tart to notice – even Mrs Carlson, who sat quietly nibbling, a look of rapture on her face.

Only Leigh, who lost interest in the tart after one nibble, ran into the kitchen and stood on one of the red leather cushions in the booth to answer the old black rotary phone. She called from inside, “Mama is on the phone. Ty, talk to Mama!” She left the receiver dangling from the wall in the kitchen and ran outside to rejoin the group on the picnic blanket.