Page 16

Emily Bond

Sort of Seeing Someone

Olivia leaves herfront door unlocked for me. I twist the handle and make my way into her foyer, which smells of sugar and butter.

“Did you get lost?” she asks, not taking her eyes away from her beloved stovetop.

“Sorry, I was…out shopping.”

To avoid further questioning, I decided to spare the details of, you know, starting a business that is in the complete opposite order of what I moved home to do.

“Shoes off! Shoes off! Shoes off!” she repeats three times in quick succession like she’s chanting “Bloody Mary” into a mirror at a childhood sleepover party.

Grilling averted due to her neat freakery, as I take a minute to unlace my boots.

“Are you gearing up for deployment with those things?” she asks.

“They’re Dr. Marten’s, Liv. It’s October. Pretty sure ‘fall boots’ are an acceptable wardrobe choice, especially now that I’m back in a city with actual seasons.”

“Hmm.”

I may have missed crunchy leaves, but I haven’t missed Liv’s infamous Hmm .

“The apartment looks great,” I say, attempting to change the subject entirely.

“Thanks. It’s a condo actually.”

I have no idea what the difference is, but I know Liv does. I know she has researched it, studied it, and is fluent in it like absolutely everything else in which she takes an interest.

Being sisters with someone likeLiv is tough. The attention and adherence to detail is off the charts. But the more I can remind myself it isn’t about her always being right, so much as it is about her always being exact , the less offense I take to her overall personality.

Before Liv set her sights on baby-making, she was uber-focused on renovating her charming vintage unit.

Aesthetically, it’s the complete opposite of Nora’s Crate & Barrel showroom-inspired place.

Liv’s condo is filled with a montage of cheap thrift store finds and expensive mid-century modern furniture.

Telling the difference between the two is the HGTV series we’ve all been waiting for.

When I sense that Olivia is done correcting my every move for the moment, I formally greet her with a kiss on her cheek.

Of the three Miller sisters, Liv is the only naturally dark brunette.

She looks like Emilia Clark from Game of Thrones with the same porcelain skin, a slightly pointed nose, and eyes that can get really small when she genuinely smiles—a gesture that lately comes very infrequently.

But right now, she doesn’t look like a television star.

She looks like a 1950’s housewife in her light blue apron adorned with bright yellow lemons.

At first glance, I can’t tell if this is one of those thrift store buys, or a limited-edition Anthropologie splurge. Either way, it looks fitting on her.

“Is there something I can help with?” I ask.

“Flour doesn’t bode well with an all-black wardrobe and all my other aprons are in the wash, so no. You can sit this one out.”

“I can get your laundry going for you,” I suggest in an effort to earn my one-night keep.

“Do you really think I keep dirty clothes just sitting around? The cycle is running now.”

“Okay. How about—”

“Moonie, just give me five minutes and then we can chat. Sorry, I can’t take my eye off this pot. Homemade caramel sauce is an art. The difference between heavenly and burnt is half a second. Literally, half a second,” she reiterates.

At least I heard a ‘sorry’ peppered somewhere in there.

“What are you making? Smells amazing.”

“Oatmeal Carmelitas,” she says back as I give myself a tour of her living room, just on the opposite side of her kitchen island.

“Or as I like to call them, Scrumble Bars . Key ingredient: caramel. Most people make these with a store-bought jar of sundae topping. Not me. From scratch, or forget it.”

I can’t quite tell if she’s talking to me, or if she’s filming something for her baking blog. She sounds so rehearsed, so polished. Then again, that’s Liv for you.

“God fucking dammit!” she shouts.

Scratch what I said about rehearsed and polished.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, immediately putting down a coffee table book that definitely belongs to her veterinarian husband— The Encyclopedia of Dogs: Sixth Edition.

I rush over to Liv in the kitchen, fully anticipating a third degree burn on her hands. Instead, my sister is getting redder and redder, but only in the face.

“I don’t understand. I’ve made this a million times. I pulled the butter off the heat at precisely the right time, and it still clumped. It was bubbling a second ago, and now it’s separated and tough. This is bullshit.”

“You can’t…I don’t know…whisk it back to life?” I stare at the amber-colored concoction and make a swirling motion with my hand.

Liv stares back at me, says nothing, then bursts into unexpected tears.

“You think it’s that easy, don’t you? God, everyone does. You all just think I can…wave my magic whisk and something so simple—like a homemade biscuit—just pops right out of the oven.”

And we’re officially not talking about baking anymore.

“Well, listen Moonie. Let me be the first to tell you, it’s not always that simple.

Sometimes you have to…freeze the butter before you can bake them.

Or…preheat the oven a little longer than you anticipated.

Sometimes you have to inject it…with other flavors.

Sometimes…people will tell you to give up on homemade biscuits altogether and just buy some pre-packaged rolls instead—like that’s what you’ve been dreaming about your whole life.

And sometimes…you can follow all the steps of a recipe you’ve made a hundred times and it still turns out… awful.”

At that, Liv stomps her foot onto the opener of her stainless-steel trashcan and drops the pot of burnt caramel into the trash. Not just caramel itself, the entire pot. I have a feeling that was the Le Creuset Nora and I went halfsies on for her thirtieth birthday.

“Is Ted home?” I ask, ensuring the coast is clear for my sister to be a blubbering mess without her nose-in-a-textbook husband coming into frame.

She shakes her head no and tells me he’s at a conference about dog flu.

I love Ted, I really do. And I love Ted for Liv.

But if he can’t look something up in the index of an encyclopedia, he’s generally not able to offer free flowing compassion about it. It’s best that he’s not here right now.

“How about we finally sit down and talk?” I gently suggest, gesturing toward the velvet green sofa I was sitting on just moments ago.

Olivia closes her eyes, sniffles, and nods. I put my hands on her shoulders and usher her into the living room, plopping her on the couch. I don’t know where her tissues are, so I double back to the kitchen and grab a square of paper towel and rip it into fourths.

“Here you go,” I say, handing her a rough square. She blows hard and her face is a blotchy red mess. All I can do is stare and wish I could absorb some of her pain.

“Did Nora tell you?” she asks.

“Yeah. She mentioned some…biscuit issues.” I dance around the word fertility in hopes to avoid another stream of sobs.

“It’s so stupid,” she says. “I just don’t know what’s wrong with me. I wish I could snap my fingers and make my body do what women’s bodies have been doing since the beginning of time.”

“It’s not stupid,” I reassure her. “And there’s nothing wrong with you. Plenty of people want to be parents and go through the same struggles before they get there.”

“Not Nora.”

“Well, Nora is an anomaly.”

“With bad design style.”

“With bad design style,” I concur, mostly because I have to in this moment. Liv cracks the faintest of smiles.

“This is why I’ve thrown myself into baking,” she says.

“Everything is so precise. I put X in, I get Y out. I like that. I like seeing the fruit of my labor. I like having confidence in a process. It’s what’s supposed to happen with making a baby, but obviously that hasn’t been the case for me and Ted.

Which is why I lost it with the caramel sauce just now—well that, and the hormones I’m taking to stimulate ovulation, but that doesn’t count. Does it?”

“Definitely not,” I say, having virtually no clue what she was talking about. Does she need a tampon?

“I just can’t have my recipes fail me now, too.

You know, infertility is a really lonely journey—especially when Ted’s working sixty hours a week at the vet’s office.

Baking has kept me sane through all this.

It’s been something to do when I want to take my mind off another invasive transvaginal ultrasound, or when I’m feeling lightheaded from my fifth blood test of the week.

Most of all, it helps me pass the time when my period comes and I know we have to gear up for another round of trying.

My period came this morning, in case you can’t tell. ”

I’m not sure what to say to that, so I say nothing, which feels right.

“This isn’t my first rodeo, Moonie. We’ll try again this month with another IUI. And if it’s negative again, that’s fine , I’m used to it by now. But I’ll tell you what won’t be fine. If all of a sudden I start to suck at baking and then that stops being a source of hope and joy.”

“Hey, do you have any more butter?” I ask.

“I always have butter.”

“Then let’s give it another go,” I suggest. “I’ll help. I don’t care about my clothes getting dirty. Maybe this needs to be a two-woman job. I pour, you whisk, Operation Scrumble Bars: Complete.”

Olivia lets out a big breath and blots her eyes again with another piece of the ripped-up paper towel.

“I don’t know if I have it in me,” she laments.

“You do. I know you do. You’re strong. All of us Miller girls are. We can do hard things,” I remind her—and myself.

At that, I grab both of her hands and pull her up off the couch, making a note that I see nothing.

Not an ounce of head pain, not the slightest palm tingle, not a single vision.

Maybe my woo-woo gift doesn’t work on people who live and breathe exactness.

I really need to dive into those books from Angeline.

Alas, I drag Olivia to the kitchen and roll up my sleeves—not to help whisk, but to first go dumpster diving for the Dutch oven she pitched just moments ago.

“You don’t have to do that,” Liv says. “There’s like, egg shells and salmonella there.”

“I fished a Lego out of Nora’s toilet earlier today. I’m fine with a little salmonella,” I say.

Liv’s couch is as stiff as her personality. But still, before retreating to bed, she provided me with an oversized patchwork quilt from Anthro and a glass of C?tes du Rh?ne to cozy up the place that still smells like lingering sweetness.

I’m toasty warm under the covers as I sip on the nice red wine.

Liv said she opened it earlier for a bourguignon , but I think it was in response to Aunt Flo’s untimely arrival.

Regardless, she went to bed in a good enough mood since we nailed the Scrumble Bars recipe the second time around and—gasp!

—actually had fun baking them. (Though not as much fun as inhaling half the pan with two spoons while doubling down on Nora’s tacky styleafterward.)

Noting that it’s just about midnight, I set my wine glass on a coaster and revisit my phone for the first time since arriving at the condo.

I was a bit preoccupied watching the butter and sugar on the stove in order to avoid another Liv meltdown, I did not get a chance tocheck if Shereé made good on her promise to post about me, let alone if Yas was able to get her guy to make some progress on the Moon Batch Apothecary website.

But as a soon as I pull up my email and see that there are tons of new messages, all order confirmations, I know everyone kept their word.

I spring up from under the blanket and continue scrolling. One hundred and fifty new customers want a piece of MBA, and two thousand new followers have come along for the ride. The Shereé Effect is apparently in full swing.

I get that I’m supposedto be the woo-woo one, but what is this sorcery?