Diana Abu-Jaber - Birds of Paradise

A COOKIE, AVIS TOLD HER CHILDREN, is a soul. She held up the wafer, its edges shimmering with ruby-dark sugar. You think it looks like a tiny thing, right? Just a little nothing. But then you take a bite.

Four-year-old Felice lifted her face. Avis fanned her daughters eyes closed with her fingertips and placed it in Felices mouth. Felice opened her sheer eyes. Lamb slid his orange length against her ankles. Avis handed a cookie to eight-year-old Stanley, who held it up to his nose. Does that taste good? she asked. Felice nodded and opened her mouth again.

It smells like flowers, Stanley said.

Yes. Avis paused, a cookie balanced on her spatula. Thats the rosewater. Good palate, darling.

Mermaids eat roses, Felice said. Then they melt.

THIS MORNINGS PASTRY poses challenges. To assemble the tiny mosaic disks of chocolate flake and candied ginger, Avis must execute a number of discrete, ritualistic steps: scraping the chocolate with a fine grater, rolling the dough cylinder in large-grain sanding sugar, and assembling the ingredients atop each hand-cut disk of dough in a pointillist collage. Her husband wavers near the counter, watching. Theyre like something Marie Antoinette would wear around her neck. When she still had one.

I thought she was more interested in cake, Avis says, she tilts her narrow shoulders, veers around him to stack dishes in the sink.

But really look at this. Brian holds one on the palm of his hand; it twinkles with the kitchen light. Shame to eat them.

Avis had shopped for the ingredients two days earlier, driving to Fort Lauderdale, to an Italian import store, to buy the rock sugar and flour. The outlying regions of downtown Miami, Hallandale, Hollywood, seemed esoteric, scribbled over inscrutable as an ancient desert. She was offended by the ads painted on the sides of warehouses, hawking lamps and furniture, medical treatments and ice cream, a thirty-foot naked man reclining, selling God-knows-what.

Yesterday she crystallized the ginger, then mixed the ingredients slowly, not to disturb the dough. But even after one full days work, there were still more steps to complete this morning, including baking and cooling. Avis had hurried, not wanting Brian to notice how much labor has gone into this. Her assistant wont be in for another hour and theres a tower in the sink, open bins of pastry flour, the hair dryer on the counter (just a blast of cool air, to ward off the humidity, before slipping the cookies into tins). Brian slips one of the half-dollar-sized pastries into his mouth. Avis knows it will dissolve mid-chew, fleeting as a wink. Have I had these before? Do you sell them?

Not for years. Avis cant help boasting a little, Last time I made these, Neimans sold them for $4.95 apiece in their case.

Brian eyes the three remaining on his plate. We should stick them in a safe.

Avis admits, A little labor-intensive. Gingembre en cristal was Felices favorite cookie; Stanleys were homely, proletarian Toll Houses. Avis remembers toiling over the delicate ginger coins for Felices tenth birthday, only for her daughter to thank her politely and then refuse to eat them. Shed said, I just like the way they look.

Avis had felt singed by the rejection. Yet there was also a pang of admiration: the purity of Felices desires preferring beauty to sugar!

Avis had started baking because there was never anything to eat when she was a child. Her mother head lowered over Dante, Hegel, C. S. Lewis, reading Voltaire, Bakhtin, Avicenna, in French, Russian, Arabic would murmur, Go get yourself something. Avis would hang on the refrigerator door, staring at cans of tomato juice, sticks of butter, bags of coffee. She went for days at a time eating only jam and slices of bread. The women at the Redbird Bakery on the next block gave her free muffins and scones whenever she came in. Her mother was busy: she taught and wrote about private and cultural representations of Heaven, the phoenix, the transformation of base materials into gold. Instead of reading storybooks, Avis stood in the kitchen studying the pictures in cookbooks, a more immediate form of alchemy.

Avis asked about the identity of her father when she was ten: Geraldine waved her off, saying, Oh, who keeps track? When Avis persisted, she shook her head: No, no dont be tedious, dear.

The first time Avis knelt on a chair and stirred eggs into flour to make a vanilla cake, she had an inkling of how higher orders of meaning encircle the chaos of life. Where philosophy, she already intuited, created only thought no beds made, no children fed in other rooms there were good things like measuring spoons, thermometers, and recipes, with their lovely, interwoven systems and codes. Avis labored over her pastries: her ingredient base grew, combining worlds: preserved lemons from Morocco in a Provenal tart; Syrian olive oil in Neapolitan cantuccini; salt combed from English marshes and filaments of Kashmiri saffron secreted within a Swedish cream. By the time Avis was in college, her baking had evolved to a level of exquisite accomplishment: each pastry as unique as a snowflake, just as fleeting on the tongue: pellucid jams colored cobalt and lavender, biscuits light as eiderdown.

Brian edges in front of the sink, trying to stay out of her way. Like you dont have enough to worry about today.

Yes, yes. She glances at him: hes holding the counter as if it were keeping him steady. Hes in the kitchen, she knows, because theyd fought earlier or had what passes for a fight between them the dart of words: Why are you still doing this? I just dont think

Im aware of what you think.

Now he looms, big as an obstacle. Not sure where to put himself. She doesnt like having people in her kitchen, but she does feel a lilt toward him, grateful that he hasnt run out yet. Theyre trying to stop fighting, but cant quite leave each other alone.

That kid never ate anything anyway, he says darkly.

Avis begins the cautious and deliberate transfer of cookies to tin, using just the tips of her fingers. Yes, and Im crazy to go meet her.

Now youre angry again.

No Im not. Avis places the cookies in concentric rings on parchment layers inside the tin. I know just what my husband thinks, thank you very much, and Im not angry. Im fine.

Brian crosses his arms, the suit fabric bunching in fine soft ripples. She knows he cant stop himself. But, please, admit it. Its what? The first time all year we hear from that girl? Light of our lives. Youre already exhausted, at your wits end. Finally youll see herif she comes. I dont get why you knock yourself out even moremaking some impossible dessert that Im sorry, but she probably wont even eat. Am I wrong?

Avis touches the sides of the tin. Her ribs feel compressed, like a whalebone corset. No. No. Youre right.

He stares at her, a weight in his gaze. He turns and his eyes fall on the Audubon calendar hanging near the door the only ornamentation in Aviss kitchen. The month of August, Snowy Egret. He looks away.

Avis sees this and smiles. Her hands are steady and cool as she lays down another round of parchment. Felice never liked cakes, she says. Even for birthdays.

He tucks in his chin, silent.

Avis finishes the layer and fits the lid on the tin, inhales the kitchens gingered air. Flour and yolk and cream are all coarse of the earth. But sugar and air and vanilla are elements of the firmament. Avis used to tell her kids: Sweets should be an evanescence: cakes and pies represent minutes, cookies and mille-feuilles are seconds, meringues are moments. I actually havent made these since she left, Avis says. If a voice could be inspected under a lens, the first tiny crack of the day would be detectable. I thought these might be Shes gone too far pretending to be braver than she can manage right now and theres no good way to complete the sentence.