The Icing on the Cake

Grandma Grace had conveniently decided to die the day before Chloe’s winter break, which is why she now found herself spending the holiday in a small, chilly attic in an old farm house up North. She had been assigned the task of going through the boxes stored up there while her mother and Aunt cleared out the kitchen downstairs. She hadn’t really known her grandmother, so she approached the task with a sense of detachment but also curiosity.

Bright morning sunlight filtered in through the large, round window at one end of the attic. Dust motes danced in the shaft of light, mirroring the sparse snowflakes falling outside. While it was chilly up here, it was actually pretty well lit and it didn’t take Chloe’s eyes long to adjust. She looked around at the tiny storage space and the old cardboard boxes of varying sizes that were stacked in it.

None of them were labeled. That would have driven her mother nuts. The new plastic bins Chloe had been sent up here with were all labeled ‘donate’ or ‘recycle’ in her mother’s tiny, neat handwriting. Inside the stack of bins her mother had given her, she had also tucked three large black trash bags, a not so subtle commentary on how much she valued what Chloe might find up here. Chloe set them down in a semi-circle by the attic door, staging a work space for repacking things.

Chloe began popping the lids of the boxes and peering inside, ducking her head to avoid hitting the attic's slanted beams. Something had happened long before she was born which had caused her mother to become estranged from the rest of her family. It was only in recent years that she had started talking to her twin sister, Aunt Susan, again. Their father, Grandpa James, had passed away when Chloe was still a baby. Maybe she would find the answers her mother refused to give her in one of these boxes.

She was disappointed by the contents of the first few large boxes she peered into. They were filled with the sort of impersonal, forgotten things that end up in most attics. Stacks of old magazines and newspapers, an encyclopedia set, two large disassembled fake Christmas trees, a tangle of mismatched holiday lights, and boxes of cheaply painted plastic ornaments. Maybe her mother had been right in not sending her up here with anything to put family heirlooms in.

The medium sized boxes proved a bit more interesting, but not by much. A couple held what must have been grandpa’s old clothes, well worn denim and flannel that would have served him well on the farm. Chloe checked all the pockets hoping for some interesting remnant of the man she had never met, but all she found was lint. A few others had old linens and blankets in them, while another contained neatly folded winter wear, and another, carefully folded summer clothing. It gave her an interesting picture of how her grandmother must have dressed when she was younger, but nothing more. She did discover that her grandmother had been an avid fan of romance novels and had four boxes filled with them.

As disappointing as it was to not find any answers about the secret family drama, repacking the items for donation was a good temporary distraction from the conversation she was dreading having with her mother over the holiday break. Now that her Grandmother had died it was going to be even more difficult to bring up.

While her Aunt was a sobbing mess, Chloe’s mother had taken over the funeral planning and other arrangements with the usual detached, professional, business-like air Chloe had seen her use in her career as a lawyer. Even if her mother appeared completely emotionally removed from the situation, it still seemed pretty tacky to take this time to tell her that she had decided to drop out of the pre-law program she had been paying for.

And that against her mother’s wishes, she had taken a part time job at a coffee house while in school.

And that her employer, seeing how quickly the cookies she made sold out, had encouraged her to chase her real dream and turn in a formal intention of withdrawal.

Which she had already done.

Chloe grabbed her coat and began moving the newly packed boxes downstairs. She hurried past the kitchen door not wanting to get pulled into whatever was going on in there. All the cabinet doors were open and only about half were emptied. Partially packed boxes littered the counter and floor. Her sobbing Aunt had collapsed on the white tile and her mother was trying to comfort her and motivate her to get back to work at the same time. The fact that they were twins and looked nearly identical, made the whole situation not just awkward, but unnerving as well. Her mother had never mentioned that her sister was a twin until the flight up here.

Chloe wished her dad was there, he was the more sensitive one, he would have known how to help, but her parents were on the outs again. Dad had moved into an apartment at the start of the summer while they tried to ‘work things out’. She suspected her parents had only been trying to hold the marriage together until she went off to college and that, in fact, nothing was going to get worked out.

Chloe dumped the magazines and newspapers in the recycling bin and cut down the old cardboard boxes to fit. She continued to go back and forth, detouring through the living room to avoid passing by the kitchen, until she had placed all the donate boxes on a tarp on the driveway. A truck was scheduled to come by that evening to pick them up. The snow was very light and the plastic bins her mother had given her would protect the contents until they arrived.

She passed by the kitchen again and saw that the situation hadn’t gotten much better, so she decided to go back up in the attic and hang out there for a while. She grabbed her over-sized purse from the hallway which had her tablet in it and hoped that she’d be able to get WiFi in that part of the house.

Hours had passed since Chloe had first started on her task and it was now nearing noon. The light shining through the round attic window had narrowed into a thin beam as the sun made its way higher into the sky. And that was when Chloe saw she had missed a box.

A small shoe box to be specific. It was tucked all the way back in the angle where the slanted roof line met the floor. The narrow shaft of light still straining through the window just happened to fall on it like a spotlight.

Chloe’s heart began to thud in her chest. Why hadn’t it been stacked with the other boxes? Had it just fallen back there? Or had her grandmother purposefully hid it? Did it have something to do with what kept her mother and grandmother at odds for so many years?

Chloe ducked her head and then crouch-crawled to reach the box. She pulled it towards her body. The printed cardboard surface dry and powdery with dust. Reverently she carried it to the window and sat down beneath it where the light would be bright enough to see the contents clearly.

The lid came off easily and Chloe’s heart sank into her stomach. The box was full of photographs, or what was once photographs. A long, gone mouse had gnawed a small hole in the backside of the box and had made itself a nice nest out of the colorful bedding material it had discovered within. The photos had been so thoroughly shredded and riddled with mouse droppings, that there would be no recovering them.

Chloe decided to carefully paw through the mess just to be sure her Grandmother hadn’t hidden any jewelry or other items in the box with the photos. Her fingers brushed against something solid at the bottom. She snagged the corner and pulled it free from the tangled mess covering it. It was a photograph in a wooden frame!

The wood and glass had protected it from the mouse droppings and having found ample nesting material above, the pesky rodent hadn’t left a single tooth mark on the surviving photo. Chloe held it up to the window to get a better look.

Smiling back at her was a young woman, probably not much older then she was now. She was standing on some steps in front of a freshly painted shop door wearing a bright blue apron. The window to her right displayed intricately iced cakes to passersby, while the one on her left contained colorful plates tilted ever so slightly to show off rows upon rows of uniformly baked cookies and cleverly decorated cupcakes. The carved sign above the door read “Grace’s Sweets” and just below it hung a smaller plastic banner declaring it the ‘Grand Opening!’.

This was a photo of her grandmother! And her grandmother owned a bakery?! Chloe’s mother had always praised her cooking, especially her desserts, but she had never mentioned that her grandmother had also baked.

Chloe immediately flipped the framed photo over and began clawing at the backing to get it off. When was this taken? There had to be a date printed on the back. As soon as she pulled the back free from the frame she realized that she had discovered a lot more then just a date. The entire back of the photo was covered in tiny, crisp cursive. She recognized the handwriting from the yearly birthday card, and twenty dollar bill, she always got from her mysterious Northern grandmother. There was never a return address.

Behind the writing, a date in light gray ink could just barely be seen. It was taken just two years prior to her mother and aunt being born. She squinted at the tiny writing in the foreground. A recipe for icing was printed in blue ink. It was much more lengthy and detailed then any icing recipe she had seen before. There were at least ten ingredients in very specific, custom tailored measurements. There were also instructions on tinting and piping techniques. Down at the very bottom in the pea-sized amount of space left, a teeny tiny cupcake was skillfully doodled.

Chloe smiled. Surely this was a sign, her grandmother’s blessing. As soon as her aunt was gone for the day she would tell her mother she would not be following in her footsteps to join her law firm.

She put the picture frame in her purse and carefully scooped up the shoe box and its ruined contents to dispose in the trashcan downstairs. When she entered the kitchen she found the trashcan, but not her mother or her aunt. She went in search of them and was about to knock on the closed bathroom door when her mother pulled her into a nearby bedroom.

“Don’t disturb your Aunt, she’s finally stopped crying and is getting cleaned up.” Chloe’s mother spoke quickly and quietly. “I’m taking her out for lunch, then back to her house. The people from the thrift store are coming by early. I think its best if she isn’t here when they do. We still have so many rooms left to go through and she is barely holding it together. I don’t know how she will handle actually seeing the stuff leave.”

Chloe just nodded mutely, her own stomach growling as it realized the time.

Her mother chuckled. “I’ll bring you back something.”

***

As soon as her mother pulled out of the driveway, Chloe got to work in the kitchen. Her grandmother had all the ingredients she needed already on hand. About an hour and a half later she heard her mother’s rental car pulling back into the driveway. She quickly cleared off the kitchen table and set up Grandma Grace’s photo and the cake she had baked. The secret recipe icing was a little melted because the cake didn’t have proper time to cool, but it was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted.

A few moments later her mother came through the kitchen door.

“I’m quitting college and opening a bakery!” Chloe blurted out.

A second after that Aunt Susan came in behind her. She wasn’t supposed to be here!

Her mother stood in silent shock and set the bag of food she was carrying on the table. She blinked at the photo and the cake and then burst into tears.

Chloe looked between her mother and Aunt Susan expecting her to burst into tears next and having no idea what she was going to do when that happened. To her surprise Aunt Susan smiled at her and then helped her mother take a seat at the table. Her aunt motioned for her to do the same.

“Your Grandma loved baking too. She loved it so much she dropped out of high school and worked two jobs. She saved every penny she made until she could rent a space for her bakery.” Aunt Susan spoke in a soft voice, a wistful smile on her face.

“Then about a year into owning the place...it was so popular...she found out that she was pregnant, with twins. She married her boyfriend, your Grandpa James, and she sold her business to a lady from the city.” She rubbed her sister’s shoulder and handed her a tissue. “It was never that popular after that.”

Her aunt continued as she watched she sister cover her face. “But Momma and Pappa put their money together and made a down payment on this place. Pappa’s family helped out. They were farmers too.”

“I hated living on a farm.” Chloe’s mother whispered from behind the tissue. “I just wanted to go to college in the city. We fought about it a lot. Pappa thought it was a waste of money. I was so mad at Momma for siding with him.”

She looked up at her daughter and sighed. “A few nights after I graduated from high school we got into a real big fight about it. I packed my bags and left. Got a couple jobs. Put myself through college.” She looked over at her sister and started to choke up again. “I’m so sorry.”

Aunt Susan patted her on her shoulder. “You had to chase your dream and you worked real hard to get there. Momma knew that. She was proud.”

Chloe was stunned by this revelation. “All this time...over that one night?”

Her mom choked back a sob and steeled her jaw. “The harder I worked the angrier I got, the more I resented them. Then time just passed. Too much time. I was embarrassed and...and I couldn’t say I was sorry.”

She glanced back at the picture and then at her sister. “She gave up so much for us...”

Aunt Susan hugged her.

Chloe’s mom quietly got up from the kitchen table. She dug around in a box pushed up against the wall. Chloe hadn’t noticed it before with all the other boxes in the room, but now that she saw it was the only one labeled ‘Keep”.

Her mother handed her a scrapbook and an old blue apron. “You’re gonna need these.” Chloe recognized the apron from the photograph. She flipped through the pages of the scrapbook. They were filled with recipes, notes, doodles, and old family photographs. Most had a cake or plate of cookies in the foreground and younger versions of her mother and Aunt smiling behind them.

Her mother took a deep breath and clasped her hand. “Sweetheart, whatever you want to do in life I will support you. If you want to quit school and open a bakery then I will help you in anyway I can.”

Chloe felt hot tears running down her cheeks. “Thank you mom.”

In the meantime Aunt Susan had served herself a slice of the cake and was grinning from ear to ear. “Oh, people are going to love this! I don’t know how you did it, but this icing tastes exactly like Momma’s. I never could get her to tell me the recipe...”

Chloe just smiled. She decided she would keep this one between her and Grandma Grace.

***

Chloe stood in the back room wringing her hands, a bundle of nerves and excitement. It was finally opening day. Up front the display cases were all polished and filled with an assortment of cupcakes, cookies, and other baked treats. Soft music played over the store’s sound system and the air swirled with tempting, sweet smells.

The little bell on the shop’s door tinkled, announcing the first customer. Chloe hesitated in the back room, retying her blue apron for the hundredth time. It had a little cupcake embroidered over the left breast. She had given a copy of her grandmother’s doodle to an artist and the store’s insignia was designed after that. Over her right breast a white and red name tag proudly displayed her name in large block letters and in smaller lettering underneath the store’s name read “Chloe’s Cookies and Cakes”.

The bell sounded again and then twice more. Excited children’s voices mingled with their equally excited parents’. Chloe took a deep breath and pushed the curtain aside to step out and greet her first customers. Behind her, in a brand new gilded frame, her grandmother’s picture hung on the wall overlooking the store.

This was her dream. This was her grandmother’s dream. Chloe would go on to realize it for both of them. Then one day, when she retired, she would pass on the secret recipe on the back of that photograph to another young, aspiring baker.

And that was quite literally, the icing on the cake.