5. Crew
I t smelled like burned sugar and poor decisions in here.
Here being my mother’s kitchen where I all but begged her at their door to show me exactly how any of these old family recipes were supposed to work. She clapped her hands together and squealed like a teenage girl before throwing an apron with a cartoon bikini-clad woman printed on top over my neck and pulled her Kitchen Aid out onto the counter.
And for a brief moment, possibly because I had on this apron, I had some hope. After my talk with Winnie this morning I felt rattled, anxious to get things going sooner. She was an excellent baker, unfortunately. I wasn’t allowed to deny that, my mouth literally couldn’t form the words together. But she was also desperate. Desperate enough to feel the need to come to my truck and watch me cook so she could steal an entree. Which meant one thing, she would find someone else to steal from and if it was someone better than me in any regard, I was screwed.
I closed up shop as soon as I could and raced here with begging eyes on the verge of a break down, and like she always would, Mom welcomed me with open arms.
Something she was probably beginning to regret two hours later.
“Well,” She eyed the countertops surrounding us. Powdered sugar and flour were dusted across every surface and four failed, disgusting looking desserts sat on the stove. “Let’s look on the bright side…we gained a lot of experience tonight.”
I sighed, my shoulders slumped as I took in the disaster.
“Maybe it’s the recipes?” Mom offered up at my defeated look.
“It’s not the recipes, Mom.” I mumbled and slid into one of her bar height counters. There was no less than twenty recipe cards on the counters and each one felt like too much for my brain. Every measurement had to be just right, every temp, every whisk, every fold, everything had to be one hundred percent perfect or it wasn’t even worth trying to make.
Cooking never felt like perfection for me. It was fun, like painting, or working in a garden. It wasn’t meant to be like chemistry, all specific measurements and timed flawlessness. When I cooked, I measured with my heart. And it never steered me wrong. Except baking with your heart means you’ll have a coconut cake that never rises or a cheesecake that melts in its mold. Or a burned creme brulee- which wasn’t the whole point to end up kind of burned? Nothing added up. Nothing made sense. Only chaos piled on top of more chaos. It felt like a brief glimpse inside my head.
Four different desserts around us, but none of them remotely even right. It was me. I was the problem and even worse? There was no fixing it. I couldn’t be fixed. Because I was Crew the funny one or Crew the wild one. I was never Crew the one to perfect something. Never the one to be the calm in the storm that baking must have needed.
My shoulders felt heavy along with the heart beneath my chest. It ached, everywhere. This knowing that even when I tried my hardest, truly tried, I wasn’t enough.
Geez, was I going to cry? In my mother’s kitchen? Over…burned desserts? This was a new low, even for me.
“Crew, honey…” Her hand reached to my shoulders and gave a gentle pat like I was seven years old again, crying over scraped knees.
“I’m broken, Mom.” I let out and it felt good to admit it. To let a small sliver of the secrets I held out just enough.
“You are not broken, stop that.”
Easy for her to say. She didn’t understand. She had no clue how my `brain worked, no one did. Psychologists, therapists, my siblings, my parents, everyone. Not a single one of them could comprehend just how messed up I was. How my logical sense would tell me to go one way and my brain formed another. The brain won every single time.
I could let it all out and just tell her everything. That my ADHD can’t let me just do the thing that makes the most sense. I understood the need to follow the recipe but it was like there’s something in there just…broken. I know she’d try her best to accommodate for me when I told her. But that was just it, I didn’t want accommodation or special anything. I wanted to be looked at in this family and feel normal, like I belonged here entirely on my own. Any added treatment would only solidify everything I already knew to be true.
“It’s true.” I pathetically choked. “This is just like that time you got us that beta fish and I overfed it and it died.”
“You killed Kirby?”
I sniffed. “It was bound to happen eventually. I loved him too much.”
Mom hesitated only a moment before moving past Kirby, God rest his soul. “I think we just haven’t found the right recipe for you yet. Why don’t we keep looking?” She stood and went to her old lady drawer full of old lady things.
“No more cards, Mom. I’m done for the night and so are you.” I lifted my head to search for my keys.
“Come on, let’s give it one more go.” She balled her fingers in a fist and swirled it at the dirty pans mocking us. “Show them exactly how it’s done, huh?”
My eyes snagged on my car keys across the way near the coffee maker, also covered in flour. I waved a dismissal hand, “No need. They can sense fear.” Blood thirsty, stainless steel devils.
“Well, then come back tomorrow night. Maybe we can steal an old recipe from Margaret next door?”
I paused mid- falling out of my chair. “What did you say?”
“Margaret…next door? You know, owns the parrots? Makes really great key lime pie? Her mother was a baker way back when-”
“No, no.” I groaned, gah, could she not keep up? “Not Margaret. What did you say before that?”
“Oh, well, she’s quite old now but you could ask her to make something, taste test it and then replicate it in your own way?”
Taste test…replicate.
My mind rushed back to Winnie this morning, trying her hardest to conjure some entree out of watching me cook. A slow smirk pulled at my lips.
“That’s a great idea, Mom, thanks.” I stood all the way, gave her a quick hug and peck to the hairline, before grabbing my keys and heading to the back door.
“So…do you need me to call Margaret.”
I shook my head and yelled over my shoulder as the door closed behind me. “No need.”
I had someone much better than Margaret, a girl I owed some revenge on.