Bliss (5 page)

“Ahhhhh!!!” the woman exclaimed. “Fresh air! A small town! I
love
a small town!” She tossed a throaty laugh to the sky, then undid the metal clasps on her black leather jacket and tossed it onto the bike. She was wearing a lacy blue shirt underneath, much like the one Rose was wearing.

“You must be Rosemary!” she said, sauntering toward the swing set. She indicated her shirt. “Look at us! We're twins!”

When the woman in the black leather got close enough, Leigh bolted into the kitchen, leaving Rose clutching the rusty metal chains of the swing.

“Don't look so frightened, pet! I'm your aunt Lily!”

This woman, whoever she was, was smiling ear to ear with all of her gleaming, fancy white teeth. Could Rose really be related to someone so … beautiful? She looked more like a fashion model than an aunt.

Rose conjured up a mental image of the Bliss family tree she'd made for an assignment on genealogy back in the third grade—it was a short, very wide piece of white poster board on which she'd drawn her and her siblings' names: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, Thyme; and above that, her parents' names: Albert Hogswaddle, Purdy Bliss. Her aunts and uncles: on her father's side were Aunt Alice, Aunt Janine, and weird Uncle Lewis. On her mother's side: no one. There was no Lily. The name did ring a bell, but Rose couldn't remember why.

“Is your mother here?” she asked. “Oh, I hope I came at a good time! I miss old Purdy Bliss!”

Rose spoke cautiously. “My mother never told me she had a younger sister.”

Lily laughed again, her long neck arched back. “She doesn't!”

Rose must have looked confused. “I'm not your
aunt
, per se,” Lily said. “Your mother's great-great-great-grandfather Filbert Bliss had a brother named Albatross, and that was my great-great-great-grandfather, so I believe that makes us … fifth cousins once removed! But
Aunt Lily
has such a nice ring to it, don't you think?”

Rose pictured the family tree in her mind's eye, trying to remember if there were any Albatrosses or Filberts, but the tree morphed into a twisted, overgrown thicket.

“Anyway, I heard my dear Purdy had a baby! And started a bakery!”

“Four babies,” said Rose, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand.

“Well! Seems I'm a little late!”

Lily sauntered back to the motorcycle and began removing her gloves, finger by finger. “You see,
I
am a baker as well! I've published a cookbook—well, I published it myself. But it's the same difference! I even had my own radio show for a few months,
Lily's Ladle
! Surely you heard about it!”

Rose had never heard of a radio show called
Lily's Ladle
, but she suddenly remembered where she'd heard the name
Lily
. It was several years ago. One night after dinner, Rose was helping her father clear the dishes while Purdy took a phone call. It was the kind of phone call where her mother didn't do much talking, but just leaned against the kitchen counter, speechless, wrapping the cord around her finger, then unwrapping.

When she hung up, Rose and Albert stared at her, waiting.

“It was
Lily
,” she said. Albert's eyes went wide. “She found us. She wants to come for a
visit
.”

Albert winced. “You said no, right?”

“Of course,” said Purdy.

“Who is Lily?” asked Rose.

“No one,” said Purdy, heading upstairs.

Rose snapped out of her memory, then walked up to Lily and tapped her on the shoulder. “Come to think of it, I have heard of you. My mother talked to you on the phone a while back. She didn't want you to come for a visit,” Rose said, her heart beating thunderously. “Why didn't she want you to come for a visit?”

Lily raised her eyebrows. “A long time ago, my great-great-great-grandfather Albatross had a terrible fight with your great-great-great-grandfather Filbert, and now Purdy won't speak to me, and it's such a shame. So I've come here to mend old fences!”

“You mean … old bridges?” said Rose.

“Exactly!” Lily smiled. “Look, darling, I know you don't believe me, but I am your cousin! Or your aunt! Same difference! I have the family mark to prove it!”

Lily turned around and pulled down one side of the back of her blue shirt, revealing her shoulder blade, which was as elegant as an angel's wing. Rose squinted and saw a strange birthmark, a blob with a long handle of dark trailing off it, the end hooked.

Rose had one just like it on the side of her leg. Leigh had one on her neck. Purdy had one on her arm. Ty and Sage both had one on their stomachs. They all had one.

“See, darling?”

Sage ran out from the kitchen to investigate the black bull that had landed in the driveway. He saw the mark on Lily's back and shouted, “You've got the ladle!”

Lily spun around and tried to hoist Sage's hefty torso up in her arms, then thought the better of it and set him down. “You must be Sage!”

Sage giggled and squirmed. “Who
are
you?”

Lily pressed a finger to his nose and rubbed it back and forth. “I'm your aunt Lily!” she said, and curtsied with a flourish. “And I've come to rejoin my family!”

CHAPTER 4

Aunt Lily Helps Out

“
M
y 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 color 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 onto 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 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 backyard later that afternoon. She had her short blond hair in curlers and wore a sequined 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 garbage can 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 around 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 ends 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 center 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 color 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 other than buttered noodles and licorice. 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 realized 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 traveling 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!”