Chapter 1: Cookies & Spice
The girl in the green cardigan with the rolling cart makes her way down the main street in the village of Durbin. This is the Durbin of the out-of-the-way, of where Starbucks is unlikely to penetrate, a place pleasantly apart. Down the street she rolls, looking this way and that for where hope rests, a gathering expectation in the form of the Bella Rosa Bakery, a name that somehow struck her fancy. On the East side of the square her friend told her, just after she was forced to gently evict her, no longer having room for what is almost a vagrant girl, down now to her last few twenties. The girl, a baker of beautiful cookies, luxurious in their swirls and colors and in the overall heavenliness of their taste, has a talent that can sustain her, if only she can find a place to bake and hungry people to buy her cookies. In the cart, a book of glossy pictures show the work of her thin nibble fingers--the shiny-eyed wonder of her youth and imagination: Will anyone believe these pictures--what this slender, rosey-haired woman--still a girl really--all curls and freckles, radiant with hope and unquenchable enthusiasm, can do?
The little sign, a wood carving of a fat loaf of bread over which the words Bella Rosa curve, is hard to see nestled in the shade of a big red maple growing by the curb. She first sees the three or four small tables tucked in the niche of a storefront where two windows of gleaming glass angle inward to frame a green door in their center. Looking up, there is the sign, here is the bakery, dappled in shade, on this sunny auspicious morning in the first days of autumn: A big breath, a straightening of strong, slender shoulders, and in she goes.
"Hello!" She is greeted by a young woman and a skinny teenage girl, both grinning, standing side by side, looking at her expectantly. They saw her on their street, looking this way and that, rolling her cart, intent. Nellie thought vaguely of someone familiar; her niece Madeleine, of a long lost friend, although she would never have used those words for such a whimsical notion so quickly forgotten, just a fleeting wisp of something, a whisper in the wind.
"Hi!" the girl says, all smiles.
The teen runs over to her. "What a neat cart! The wheels are so cool!"
"I painted them myself, this is my little really 'green' car."
"What's in the cart?" the teen asks. By now the woman has joined them so that the three of them are standing together, comfortably, if not unaccountably, chatting like new found friends.
(How do strangers instantly know, just so, that there is to their meeting a destiny true, a place from which in hazy profile, by a tide true, where selves float back then forward into this real life, like these three souls chatting amicably, warmed by sun beaming through the shiny window of the Bella Rosa Bakery?)
"Come sit down!" The woman says, taking the girl's hand. "I'm Nellie--this is my niece, Snooky" and grins, "her real name is Madeleine."
"I was named after the cat I used to chase in the back by the storeroom." Snooky says and takes her other hand, leading her to a table by the window, where they sit.
The teen peaks into the cart. Nellie laughs, "Nosey!"
"My name is Janie, Janie Irving." The girl says and in playful formality shakes the teen's hand. "Want to see my cookies?'
"Cookies?" Nellie says, interested, as always, in all things baked. "I tried to make cookies--not too well, I'm afraid. They look so easy, but my brother, heartless bastard" she points her head to the back of the bakery, "never approved."
"Oh," says Janie, her shoulders unconsciously drooping, "too bad."
"I'm just not such a good cook--he isn't really heartless--or a bastard," she giggles.
Snooky has already dipped into the cart and is holding a red photo album, on whose cover, in a flourish of hand painted script curves, "Cookies to Die For."
"Snooky..." Nellie says.
"Let me show you!" Janie says. She takes the book from Snooky and opens it onto the table. The three of them gather around it, heads close. On the first page, row after decorated row of perfect cookies present themselves. On the next few pages, closeups show the beautiful detail of delicious looking cookies: corkscrews, swirls, towers, buttons, and bows, all of an original, if not, whimsical design. They are bathed in bright colors, a rainbow of cookies of all shapes and sizes, little works of art.
"I love cookies," Nellie says, wistfully, "If only I could make them better..."
"Nice designs!" A baritone voice says from over Nellie's shoulder. "Did you make those?"
"Yes!" Janie says, "It's my specialty!"
"You bake cookies..." Snooky says, her eyes flitting from Nellie to the baritone.
"Yep--all these, for a few years now." Janie says.
"Where do you work?" asks Nellie.
"I'd like to work here." Janie says simply, laying it on the line, heart aflutter.
"Oh, good!" says Snooky, wrapping Janie in an unabashed hug.
"Hmm," says the baritone as Nellie adds an encouraging smile, turning her head to the man behind her who now takes a seat at the table opposite them, his eyes moving between the pictures and the girl. Janie turns the book in his direction.
"So you bake," he says, as she narrates what the cookies are made of, how they are made, and what some of their unique ingredients are, including this secret ingredient and that, her phrasing very clearly a baker's shorthand that causes the man to smile.
"I'm Roscoe," he says, "and this" his eyes rest playfully on his sister, Nellie, and Snooky, his daughter, whom he introduces, ending with a wave that captures the room "and this is the family bakery."
"May I bake my cookies here?" Janie asks, holding her breathe.
Snooky takes her hand and squeezes it, big eyes looking up at her father. And Nellie puts a possessive arm around Janie's shoulder, "Cookies would go well with the coffee...'
Roscoe, liking the girl's spunkiness, is well aware of just how insistent his daughter and sister can be when they dig in, decides on compromise, "We can't eat a picture! Bake us some samples...but no promises."
"Right now?" asks Janie, excitedly, her mind already whirling through her favorite recipes.
"Why not, the bakings done for today and the ovens are still warm. Maybe Sis can show you were everything is." Roscoe says.
"I'd love too!" Nellie says squeezing Janie's shoulder.
"Me too!" Snooky says and they get up, almost skipping back to the ovens, leaving Roscoe to look at the pictures, shaking his head, wondering what he got himself into.
The girls spend half the day baking and laughing, giggles bounce off the walls, past the hot ovens, to careen around the long room painted in mauve, with highlights of purple and burgundy--a woman's touch that complements their chattering voices.
Nellie is telling Janie how they want to put in a classy expresso machine up front to bring in the morning coffee crowd and to add business throughout the day, hence the idea of cookies to nibble on. Janie is tasting one of the demi loaves of bread and telling Nellie how good it is, describing the crunchy texture of the crust and the mellow doughy smoothness of its center. "Hardly needs butter," she remarks as Roscoe smiles, recognizing a fellow connoisseur of well-baked bread. He is leaning against the counter as the first batch of decorated cookies is presented for inspection. Behind Janie her loyal troops are assembled--won over in a single exuberant session of fun-fun whirlwind baking.
Roscoe looks keenly at the plate of cookies. They are artfully arranged on a large oval platter on which a white paper doily lays. Along the edges are the button cookies in tricolor--American, French, Portuguese, Mexican and Italian colors (make the green brighter Snooky told Janie as they were mixing the food coloring for the Italian cookies). The tricolors frame more elaborate swirls, curlycues, wafers, and exotic ganaches, and madeleines (which Snooky took extra delight in). Taken together they form an appealing mosaic. Roscoe stares at the prodigious effort, impressed, "I hate to take one and ruin the design."
"It'll be OK," Janie says, and brings out another tray where many of the same cookies are arranged in uniform rows for easy picking.
"Ah, good," Roscoe says taking one of the cookies, "a madeleine, I believe, we don't see too many of these," winking at Snooky. He stops then to savor the swirling taste of cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, and butter combined with--what?--ah, he remembers now, a hint of anise. The cookie melts in his mouth, leaving a fine flavor without a hint of aftertaste. As he stands there savoring the light texture, out comes another tray--how could she have done all these cookies in such a short time? This tray is spectacular: Cookies combined to create the bakery's sign, the words Bella Rosa and the loaf of bread in remarkable detail, the cookies designed expressly for the sign.
"Wow," Roscoe says, "that was quick! The cookies are great!" and takes another one from the serving tray. "It's hard to put this together in just a few hours. Especially something as professional as this."
Janie nods shyly, the 'professional' bringing a big smile to her face and the faces of her helpers, who are now at her flanks clearly expecting good news.
"OK, then" Roscoe says, "lets talk pricing and profit sharing."
"Half!" Nellie says, "The girl's got to live."
"Half it is, then, but only of the profit. The cost of goods comes out first."
Janie nods her head, "You could have had more..."
"Naw" says Roscoe, "we want you to have a reason to bake good cookies day in and day out. After a while that could be a struggle if you're not making any money."
"That's great," Janie says, "I can probably afford to pay my able assistant, if she's not too busy with her homework" and nudges Snooky.
"Think of Snooky as your apprentice." Roscoe laughs, "She gets paid by the bakery to learn."
"Me, too!" Nellie says, "Free labor: Your overhead is just hard work and imagination. And maybe a little hourly wage until her cookies catch on...?"
"Fair enough," Roscoe says, "although it cuts into your profit Janie."
