The Treasure story -- chapter 3

The wind that had "vacuumed" the door shut used lilac branches to scratch at the siding and the screens. It offered a pleasantly jazzy percussion behind my afternoon's activity: creating small boys in life vests, out of marzipan, and painting them to resemble the sweet dark-haired children who were my friend Carol's grandsons, Noah and Nathan.

I make a moderate living as an artist, but I recently started to augment my income with a small catering business called Grandma's Bowl.  The most popular part of the enterprise has been the baking and decorating of theme cakes at the request of those 50-something grandmas who were raised with Betty Crocker mixes and canned frosting, or who have careers and too little time to personalize treats.

Me? I was lucky enough to have spent countless hours at my grandmother Kate's kitchen counter, learning how to make just about anything with a pinch of this and a dash of that -- usually in the treasured ceramic bowl in which I had stirred the morning's batter for a cake which now looked like a miniature swimming pool.

Carol's boys love the pool in her apartment building. My task was to populate the pool-blue cake with little almond-paste boys.  I was forming the blue marzipan life vest over the edible version of Nathan when the wind seemed to give a violent shove to the old maple tree outside the kitchen window.  With a miserable groan and slow, staticky crack, the tree dropped one of her branches through the window, across the kitchen table, diving into the blue swimming pool cake.

What would have been louder, I wondered later.  The suffering tree? The shattering window frame? My howl of surprise at my ruined morning's work?

Whichever clamor was her invitation, Olivia bolted into the room with every hair on alert and her eyes big and round as canning lids. "Monsters!" she screamed. "Be gone, monsters! She knows NOTHING!"

She suddenly realized I was standing unharmed by the counter. As if a switch flipped,  she non-chalantly rubbed herself against the refrigerator as if she'd just wandered in for a post-nap snack.

"The maple tree is in the kitchen," she observed. "When did you invite her in?"

"I didn't invite her in. The wind invited her, and I'm quite sure she would have preferred to remain in one piece out in the yard.  That, Olivia, was the big crash that brought you racing in here talking about monsters again."

She sat and fixed me with a non-committal stare that silently said "Monsters? What monsters?"

"In fact, Olivia, you were shouting AT the monsters. You said, 'She knows nothing'. Could you have been referring to me?"

"I'm not..." she began
"... at liberty to say," I finished.

"I should go out and speak to the maple," said Olivia, nimbly changing the subject. "She and I have been great friends over the years, and she could probably use a good purr."

"You haven't gone outside for... I don't know... a year? Two years?"

"It's time," she said softly.

I turned toward the back door to open it for her, but instead she leaped from chair to countertop to the maple branch lying somewhat guiltily in the mashed cake.  She marched up the branch, compacted herself to manouver through the torn screen, and continued on up the bough into the many arms of the old maple.  The wind keened through the branches, and the tree swayed as if to make herself feel better.

Olivia's grey hindquarters disappeared in the leaves. I scraped the cake and its pool-blue icing out from under the debris and dropped it in the trash with a sigh. I lit the oven, took out Grandma's ceramic bowl and the necessary ingredients, and began concocting another cake.  Only when it was in the oven did I pick up the phone to call my all-purpose cousin Louie to come remove the branch and fix the window.

He had not yet arrived when Olivia materialized like grey smoke through the screen and strolled back down the branch.

"Was she glad to see you?" I asked Olivia. "Surprised to see you out and about?"

"We've spoken through the window," Olivia said. "We keep each other informed."

"Informed? About what? Is this still about monsters and secrets and things I'm not allowed to know about?"

"Certain things are on a 'need to know' basis," Olivia replied, and I took her attitude to be a bit smug.

"What things? I need to know? This is MY house we're talking about. Things are happening in MY house!  Monsters may be throwing tree branches into my kitchen and ruining my cakes. THAT is a 'need to know' situation!"

Olivia pierced me with a green, one-eyed stare.

"OUR house. Of course, I meant OUR house. But I still need to know."

Olivia was silent for a full minute, staring into space. Finally she looked at me and said, "I'll take it up with the others."