A Hint of Mint
If you’ve ever done something impulsive that you regretted a minute later, you’ll know exactly how I felt as I stood in our kitchen beside my sister’s mixing bowl.
A bit of background will help you understand why I did what I did.
It takes all sorts to make up the world, as my grandmother is fond of saying. Unfortunately, I belong to the sort that makes a mess out of just about everything I touch. My family calls me “Slapdash Sari,” for obvious reasons.
“If you’d only stop and think first,” Ma often says, trying to keep the exasperation from her voice as she prepares to deal with the fallout from yet another of my less inspired acts.
“If you’d only move more slowly,” Daddy begs, gazing in dismay at the lamp or vase I’ve just rendered into a thousand small pieces.
“Lock yourself in your room where you can’t do any more damage,” growls my younger brother, Gershon, when some thoughtless remark or act of mine embarrasses him in front of his friends. “Preferably in a straitjacket!”
Rena, my older sister, doesn’t say anything — but then, she doesn’t have to. When you’re as near perfect as Rena is, you can afford to overlook even as disastrous a sister as I can be. But that Thursday night, as she took out the mixer and started reaching for the flour and sugar, she was clearly in no mood for my company.
“Baking a cake?” I asked brightly.
She nodded.
“Can I help?”
“I think I’ll be fine,” she said quickly. “Thanks anyway, Sari.”
I should have left it alone, but some perverse instinct of self-respect impelled me to assure her that I was a fabulous baker. “I could be a real help, Rena. Just tell me what to do.”
“A fabulous sister, maybe,” she said. “But a baker? The last cake you made looked like an old boot — and tasted like one, too.” As my face fell, she said contritely, “Oh, I’m sorry I said that, Sari. It’s just that I enjoy baking by myself. Okay?”
“Okay,” I muttered. But I didn’t leave the kitchen. I stood to one side, watching my sister measure out ingredients into the bowl. I was eleven and a half and she was fourteen, but there might as well have been decades between us. Rena was everything I was not: poised, confident, and, most of all, capable. I was, as the saying goes, all thumbs. Rena didn’t want my thumbs getting in the way of her cake, and, frankly, I didn’t blame her.
Then the doorbell rang. Gershon called, “Rena, Bassy’s here!”
Rena gasped, “She must have come to return my notes!” and dashed excitedly out of the kitchen to greet her friend. There I was, alone in the kitchen, face to face with temptation in the guise of my sister’s mixing bowl.
The recipe card sat propped up against the tiles, written in block letters that even a slapdash cook like me could decipher. I’d watched Rena pour in the eggs and the sugar and the oil. Glancing at the card, I saw that the next ingredient on the list was vanilla.
I can do that for her, I thought in an obscure desire to prove that I could, too, bake a cake. I told myself that I was being helpful. Why in the world I thought Rena would be pleased to have me do exactly what she’d said she didn’t want me to do, I haven’t a clue. Impulsive as always, I peeked through the kitchen door to make sure my sister was still chatting with her friend out front, then grabbed the vanilla from the spice rack above my head.
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