The Icing on the Cake (14 page)

Frankie stirs our confectioners' sugar, corn syrup, lemon juice, vanilla, and very hot water in a small bowl until it's smooth. She's really focused on smooshing out any little sugar lumps. Lately, everything Frankie does needs to be absolutely perfect. “Franks,” I murmur, trying again. “Seriously, what else can I plan for my mom and dad?”

“Well, hmm,” she pushes her hair behind her ear and wrinkles her brow like she does when she's really thinking. I feel better already. “What makes my parents
happy is when we're all together. My mom says it all the time, she just loves it when we're all in the same place. It doesn't really matter what we're doing, just that we're all doing it. You know?” She looks over at her mom and Lillian as they struggle to smooth the lumps in Theresa's fondant. I'm guessing her water wasn't actually hot—Chef says that's the trick—but who knows.

Frankie sighs and leans forward. “What if you did all the normal things that your dad is probably missing? Go wherever you always went, show him the everyday things that make you guys you? You could even make a slideshow of photos on your computer and act like you're just catching him up, but then really try to show him everything he's missing out on.” She gives the fondant another stir and then shrugs. “Or you could just lock all four of you in the apartment for the week and tell your mom and dad they can't leave until they're engaged again.”

“Ha-ha,” I say, giving Frankie a shove.

We divide the fondant into two bowls, adding
cocoa powder to one to make it black while leaving the other one just vanilla. When the cookies come out of the oven, we flip them over to ice the flatter side. Lillian manages to make her fondant halves perfectly even, a razor-sharp straight line separating the black from the white. Frankie's and mine are more wobbly-looking, but still pretty good. Poor Theresa's look like one of Cole's finger paintings, with the colors blurring together—more gray than anything else. First she seems irritated and frustrated, kind of hissing at them under her breath. Then, despite the mess, she just laughs and calls them melting pot cookies (because, as we all learned in Mr. Mac's class last semester, when it comes to cultures and flavors, New York is like a melting pot).

Now that I'm in a better mood, I think I can handle Mom's half-moon pies. I know I've seen her make them before, but not in a long time. They're different from today's other treats because they are actually made with pie crust and filling, so they truly are mini pies.

“Last but not least, huh?” my mom says as Frankie, Lillian, and I gather around her table. It looks like everyone else has made theirs.

She tells us about growing up smelling these little pies baking all the time, like after school, or on Saturday mornings. When there was overripe fruit, her mother or grandmother would whip some up so she'd have a surprise in her lunchbox. I've always loved Mom's stories, and now that Operation Reconciliation is getting underway, I can relax a little and enjoy them again.

Mom points to a big bowl of fruit and tells us to chop up whatever we like. Since we're the final group, there are just a few apples and pears left, so we grab those and get started. When we're finished slicing and dicing, we cook the fruit on the stove with a sprinkle of sugar and cinnamon and watch it soften. I tell Lillian about Frankie's idea while we stir.

“So, I'll just remind my dad—over and over—about how great our normal family life used to be,” I explain. “And then at some point, he'll suddenly
realize all that he's missing. Simple, yet elegant, right?” Lillian looks at Frankie and then back at me.

“Yeah, definitely,” she says, sounding less than convinced. I was expecting her to be more positive about my plan, but I decide that it's just that her family isn't into “togetherness” the way Frankie's is. I can't exactly picture Dr. Wong, Lillian, Katie, and the other Dr. Wong all hanging out on a couch together watching TV—and they definitely don't do pizza night.

When our fruit is ready, we cut circles in our dough and plop the warm mush in the center. Some fruit oozes out of my pie when I fold over the edges, but I wipe it off with my finger and sneak a taste. Yum. Problem solved.

Mom watches carefully as we fry our pies in vegetable oil, because it's easy to get burned. Actually, the popping, sizzling oil does sting me a couple of times, but who cares? As I place my little pies on paper towels and watch the oil soak in, I picture making them for Dad as we enjoy a family breakfast. And that makes Nana Silver, the party, and a few pops of oil totally worth it.

“Should we feel guilty sitting here eating while Frankie's out there running?” Lillian asks. We're munching on the seriously delicious leftovers from whatever Dr. Wong made for dinner last night, and attempting to do our homework while Frankie is at the first official day of track team training. Apparently, before you even try out for the team, you have to do two whole weeks of training, which means that our Frankie-less afternoons have started even sooner than I expected.

“Nope,” I say, spooning some wide, flat noodles onto my plate. “More for us.”

I'm trying to be a supportive friend and “keep an open mind,” as my mom would say, about Frankie's new obsession with track and raw vegetables. But it's hard to watch your best friend suddenly morph into someone you don't recognize.

Lillian pours us each a glass of iced tea that's been brewing on the counter. It tastes like flowers, in the absolute best way. “Do you think Frankie will make the team?”

I shrug, smelling and tasting the incredible tea all at once. “You know Frankie—when she gets an idea into her head, she just goes for it.”

“Yeah,” Lillian says with a sigh, “it would be nice if that were contagious.”

I slurp down my final noodle and push my plate away. “Don't tell me you wanted to join the track team too. I thought that was Katie's deal.”

“Ha! No way.” Lillian laughs. “But, I don't know,
I wish I could be more like Frankie around . . . you know . . .”

“Boys? As in Tristan?”

Lillian nods. “It's like she's not even nervous around him. And he's in high school!”

“But don't you think Frankie sometimes acts, I don't know, a little
too
confident around him?” I ask. “You know, talking to him nonstop, never taking a breath, hitting him on the shoulder whenever
she
says something funny . . .”

“Maybe, but at least she doesn't start blushing every time he's even remotely nearby,” Lillian says, absently twirling a noodle around one of her chopsticks. “Do you think Javier even knows I exist?”

“Of course, Lils!” I'm not sure
I've
ever called her Lils before, but I kind of like it. “Javier's not exactly a major talker, but I'd say he definitely likes you at least as a friend.”

“So what do I do if I want him to like me as more than a friend?”

“I'm not really an expert, but I don't think the Francesca Caputo method is the way to go with Javier. If you went full-Frankie on him, I'm pretty sure he'd spend the rest of our cooking classes hiding out in the corner with my brother.”

Lillian and I both crack up at the thought of Javier dancing and playing patty-cake with Cole and Angelica. Of course, perfect Katie picks the exact moment when we're laughing like dorks to float in through the kitchen door. She's in her workout gear, as usual, chugging—in the most elegant way possible—from a bottle of spring water. For someone who plays three sports, you'd think she'd have discovered refillable water bottles by now. If she went to Clinton, I'd sign her up for the Green Club's Reduce, Reuse, Recycle workshop ASAP.

“Whew!” Katie sighs, tossing her empty bottle into the sink. “Today's practice was killer. Coach Ryan was clearly in a mood.” I've heard from Lillian that Katie always carries on about the strictness of
the high school coach. I guess she thinks it makes her accomplishments all the more superior. She looks from Lillian and me to the bowls of leftovers and our practically licked-clean plates.

“You must be starving,” Lillian says, pushing the noodles across the table toward Katie. “There's still a lot left—have some.”

Katie shakes her head and flashes a big photo-worthy smile. “I can hold out until dinner, thanks. But I hope you two enjoyed your feast.”

Lillian rolls her eyes. “It was just a snack—we've been working since we got home from school and you know dinner's not till seven, at least. Just take some already.”

“No time, Lillian. These books won't crack themselves, as Mama likes to say. I'll just grab a couple of grapes . . . unless you girls are still hungry. ”

I give Lillian a look. If my mom were here, she'd say Katie's “a piece of work,” just like Nana Silver. The thought of Nana and Katie together makes me
laugh—if I end up inviting the entire Wong family to my not-mitzvah, I'll definitely have to sit them at a table together so they can try to out-snob each other.

Katie pulls one giant textbook after another out of her bag and piles them up on the table, just in case we've forgotten that she takes a hundred advanced classes. “Oh,” she says, when the pile is at least five books high, “I almost forgot—I saw your friend Frankie at the track. It looked like she was working really hard. I'm impressed.”

I'd forgotten that the middle and high schools share a track. So of course Katie would see Frankie.

“Today was the first day of preseason training. Do you think she's good enough to make the team?” I ask, knowing that no matter what she says, part of me will be happy and the other part, well, not so much.

“I didn't spend my entire practice assessing the middle school hopefuls,” Katie says, taking the two biggest books off the pile and tucking them under her arm, “but I did notice her keeping up with the
pack. That's not an easy feat for someone who hasn't been in training. And she seemed pretty determined, which is something coaches look for.”

“That's good,” I say, glancing at Lillian, “I guess.”

Lillian shrugs. “Good for Frankie. Lonely for us.”

With her free hand, Katie digs a doodle-free notebook out of her backpack. “You know, Lillian, it wouldn't hurt you to try out for an athletic team too. It's not like you have a packed schedule or anything.”

“Actually,” Lillian says, “I just joined the Clinton Poster Club. So I'll be pretty busy this spring.”

“Right,” Katie says, giving us one of her half smiles. “Sounds exhausting.”

With the bunch of grapes balanced delicately on her pile, Katie waltzes out of the room. Perfect is definitely
not
the word I'd use for her right now!

What's that expression about a body at rest staying at rest? Mom likes to say it when The Goons are parked, well, anywhere: their beds, the couch, the floor, the kitchen chairs. Sprawled out, legs and arms flopped all over the place, no sense that other people might need to get by or exist in the same space, they do it all the time. As annoying as they are, crashing through the house leaving a trail of destruction in their wake, The Goons seem to irritate Mom more at the opposite
end of their very limited spectrum—teenage boy limbs draped everywhere. So she claps at them in her second-grade teacher way, proclaiming something about bodies staying at rest and urging them to remove themselves promptly and go do “something productive.” Of course, I find them unbearable in either state, but that's just me.

Right now, my own body is screaming to be at rest. The first day of training for the track team was pretty killer and maybe not quite as cool as I thought it would be. I mean, since I've essentially been running since right after I learned to walk, honestly, how hard could it be? Instead, we do long laps where my lungs don't ever fill with the necessary oxygen, and then short sprints where my legs never seem to extend far enough that my thighs will stop screaming in pain. I'm panting like Rocco on a hot day and my hair is everywhere I don't want it to be—strands sticking to my neck, pasted to my cheeks, poking in my eyes—even though it started out crammed into a
fat pink elastic. So much for my bouncy, effortless jog!