“I remember, maybe about 1964, my grandmother had a tea party for one of her sisters,” she recalled. “I had gone down to the kitchen to help her. She had her back to me, getting dishes out of a china cabinet, when I asked her, ‘Whatever happened to Grandfather Baker?’
“She whirled around faster than I knew she could move, looked at me absolutely furiously, and said, ‘We don’t talk about him.’ ”
Here's quite a tale. It has mystery, movie stars, deep, dark family secrets, and the self-made prototype of the Perfect American Housewife-- and all of it served with a slice of airy, delicious cake! It could almost be an anti-climactic, Midcentury Modern Day of the Locust with a lemony glaze, and The Burning of Los Angeles displaced to a well-regulated oven! Well, maybe not, but it's still entertaining. I'm ready to forgive the Internet, for today at least.
Afternoon tantalized me with an overcast that didn't quite conceal the sun, but turned its light to a pearly glow. The same vapors scented the air with damp, as though rain would be forthcoming. Rain wasn't forthcoming, of course, and the swiftly clearing evening sky brought a crystalline view of bright Venus in the west. Tease of a Groundhog Day! The lawn is turning brown again, as though still parched by summer. If we don't get six more weeks of winter, we're well and truly screwed.
