Chapter Two
Spring passed. Caught up in the daily rhythms of work and her children’s needs, Sinead barely noticed. The local baseball fans worked themselves into a fever-pitch of anticipation as the season began, then sagged back into lethargy as both the Cubs and the White Sox face-planted yet again. Sinead sniggered as the result of a pasting at the hands of the Cardinals flashed across the screen as she watched the Sunday news one night, and thought Jim would have been happy to see it. And she herself rolled giggling through a pile of schadenfreude as the Northwestern football team, embroiled in scandal, found new and completely novel ways to embarrass themselves, while Illinois, lately roused from three decades of mediocrity, thumbed their noses at their upstate cousins.
It was a Monday evening, the month half over, when Kathleen strode up to her, her small face unwontedly serious.
“We have scouts tomorrow, Mom. And you said you would make snacks.”
Sinead blinked. “I…I did, didn’t I?”Crap.
“Did you make anything?”
“Not…not yet.” And why was she intimidated by a second-grader, for the love of God? She was the adult here. “But I will.Good snacks. Do you think the other girls in your troop would like brownies?”
“Brownies?” Kathleen’s eyes widened. “Yes!”
“Good.” She eyed her oldest child. “Do you want to help?”
Kathleen stared, amazed at such a novel concept. “Can I?”
“Yes.” Sinead cocked her head. “But it’s hard work. Are you ready to work hard so all the girls in your troop have a good snack?”
A stubborn little chin lifted. “Yes!”
“Good.” Sinead led her into the kitchen. Kathleen followed. Molly, hating to be left out of anything, trailed in her sister’s wake. Luckily, Sinead had all the ingredients to hand. Cooking and baking had always been a comfort and a hobby, and even more so since Jim had died. She had whiled away many a lonesome, unhappy hour by making cookies or cakes or muffins or good, thick, home-made bread, so much better than that crap you got at the store, which was about as nutritious as a marshmallow.
Almost without thinking she set out a pair of heavy mixing bowls, then began to pull down items from the fridge and the cupboards. “Flour,” she said, setting the glass container she had inherited from her grandmother on the counter. “Cocoa powder. Regular sugar. Granulated sugar. Chocolate chips. Sea salt. Eggs. Olive oil. Vanilla.”
She boosted Molly up so she could sit up on the counter and watch. “Okay,” she said to Kathleen, who had pulled up a stool. “Here’s how we do it. One bowl,” she pointed, “is for all the dry ingredients. Flour. Cocoa powder. Sugar. And theother bowl,” her finger shifted, “is for all the wet ingredients. Eggs. Water. Oil. Vanilla.” She handed an egg to Kathleen. “Crack it.”
Her daughter took the egg, her expression dubious. “How?”
“Like this.” She cracked an egg neatly on the rim of the bowl. She wished her hands were big enough to do the trick one-handed, like her father had, on those rare Saturday mornings when he cooked a huge breakfast for her and her brother and her mother. Still, the egg split and spilled the yolk into the bowl without dumping a lot of fragmented shell in to boot. “Your turn.”
Kathleen tapped the egg gingerly on the edge of the bowl. “Harder.”
Her daughter repeated the motion, with barely more force. The egg didn’t even crack. “Come on. It’s an egg, Katie. Not a baby’s head. You have to hit it harder than that.”
Her daughter scowled at her, but then slammed the egg on the edge of the bowl. The egg shattered, bits of shell and yolk splattering all over. Kathleen shook her fingers, which were covered with runny bits of egg, as Molly laughed. “Yuck! Gross!”
“Here.” Sinead handed her a washcloth. “Wipe your hands.” She peered into the bowl. By some miracle, most of the yolk seemed to have found its way into the bowl, rather than the counter or the ceiling. “Pick out the eggshell,” she instructed, pointing. “Unless you want the other girls saying you make the worst brownies ever.”
Grimacing, Kathleen did, her face screwed up as if she were baiting a fishhook with a live worm. When the last splintered bit had been dredged out of the bowl, Sinead began to add the other ingredients, emphasizing to her daughter why it was important to do it in the right order and with the correct amounts. Time and again she stopped Kathleen, making sure she understood the need to measurecarefully, to mix the ingredientsproperly.
“No, Katie,” she sighed. “That’s too much vanilla. Does two and three make four?”
“Two and three is five,” her daughter said with a scowl, as if she were the stupidest mother ever.
“Right.” Sinead tipped the extract back into the bottle, then remeasured. “If you use too much, or not enough, it’s the same as thinking two and three make four. It’s just wrong. If you want food that tastes good, you do itproperly. Otherwise it’s just a mess. There.” She dribbled the vanilla over the rest of the wet ingredients. “Now we stir.” She handed Kathleen a wire whisk. “You do this one, and I’ll do that one.”
Her daughter stood on the stool her father had made for her, which brought her up to the level of the counter, and bent to the task, her small face creased in concentration. Sinead could have used the electric mixer, true. But sometimes the older ways were the best. After a few minutes, she took a look at the results. “That looks good. Great job, honey. Now we mix it all together.” She poured one bowl into the other and began to beat the mixture firmly, her whisk churning the batter. “Oh. I almost forgot.” She brought down a pair of trays and got a can of shortening out of the fridge. “Spread some of that on the bottoms of the trays. That way the brownies won’t stick to the bottom when they’re done cooking.”
“Cooking ishard,” Ka
