Read Online The Icing on the Cake by Deborah A. Levine - Free Book Online Page B

video game controller.
    Chef brings us all our chilled balls of dough. “Let’srock and roll, amigos !” he yells, handing out rolling pins to each table. Javier slumps farther down on his stool. I wonder if Chef tells those corny jokes just to make him squirm.
    The two tables working with the regular dough (ours and the apple pie group) start dusting our work surfaces and rolling pins with flour. Then we start rolling. The table making graham-cracker crust presses their dough into shape in the pans instead of rolling it out. Chef gives us all pointers as he crushes some little limes in a fruit press.
    â€œSlow and steady wins the race,” Mom tells our table as we roll out our dough—it’s one of her favorite expressions. Dad says that’s one way you can tell she’s not a native New Yorker. “Just long, even strokes with the roller. Don’t whack at it, Theresa—oh my . . .”
    Frankie’s mom is attacking her dough more than rolling it, and it’s falling apart in ugly hunks. But the rest of us are making some pretty impressive-looking slabs of dough. As she shows us how to drape theminto the pans, my mom talks about cooking with her grandmother and how family occasions at Granny Fran’s house meant tables piled high with homemade delicacies.
    â€œThat’s why I’m excited to make the desserts for Liza’s big day,” she says, “because it’s what the women in my family have always done. I haven’t had time for much baking lately, so I really want to do it up now!” Seriously? Not this again.
    To discourage my mom from saying anything else about the party, I turn my attention to the apple-pie table, where Lillian is making the most beautiful top for her pie. Chef calls it lattice, and it looks like something from a magazine. The Newlyweds are making theirs together—Margo places her pie-crust strips one way, and then Stephen layers his on top of them, so that they crisscross over each other. Margo must have bionic ears or something, though, because as soon as my mom mentions the party again, she turns and looks right at us.
    â€œThat is such a wonderful idea, Jackie,” she says in her perpetually blissed-out, breathless way. I wonder if she talked like that before she and Stephen got together. “I had a big Sweet Sixteen party, and it was so lovely. There was a pink balloon tower and a disco ball.” She literally sighs as she remembers it, I am not kidding. “But no one in my family is a baker, so my mom just ordered one of those big tacky cakes from the grocery store. The cake decorators even spelled my name wrong. Your plan sounds so much more personal!”
    We’re crimping the edges of our piecrusts now, and I’m glad to have something to focus on other than party talk. I’m using a fork like Mom told us to, but Theresa has given up and is basically just shaping her crust into the pan with her knuckles. Mom tries to show her how to rub a little water into the dough to fix all the holes and tears, but Theresa just grabs little pieces of dough and smooshes them over the problems.
    â€œI loved my Sweet Sixteen.” Theresa sighs as she attempts to sloppily patch another hole. “I danced with Joe all night. I’m sure Mama and Nonna cooked up a storm for the party, but I don’t even remember the food. At the time it was the most romantic night of my life . . .” She actually starts humming that song from The Sound of Music about being sixteen going on seventeen.
    Okay, hold up. I’m turning thirteen, not sixteen, and I’m definitely not looking for a magical night of romance. Unlike my two best friends, I don’t even have a crush! Suddenly everyone is reminiscing about their favorite birthday bashes—Errol’s sister had one, Henry’s cousin, even Dr. Wong has some stories about parties back in San Francisco. Lillian and Frankie shoot me