19
Baked Alaska
Joyce, the therapist who leads our group therapy at Bedford Hills, turned to me. “How are you coming with your forgiveness list, Dorothy?” she asked, inquiring after the homework she’d given the group.
“Good,” I said, a little surprised to be called upon. “It’s coming right along. Yes, making a list, checking it twice.” I tried to laugh, thinking that’s what normal people do. Sometimes I forget where I am.
“Do you feel like you can tell the group about your list?” Joyce looked at me and nodded, as if nudging my participation with her nose.
“Sure,” I said, searching my internal Rolodex for whom I might possibly forgive. “My parents, for one—or two, I suppose. My mother and my father.”
“Great!” said Joyce. The group was less enthused. Kaileen-Mae, one of the other murderers, openly smirked. Taryn, the hacker, looked out the window at the sullen sky. The arsonist, Luciana, twirled her hair around her fingers and stared blank-eyed at a spot on the floor. Two Asian inmates, new to the group, signed in secret code to each other, writing messages in their palms. There’s nothing like a group of felons for the swift detection of total bullshit. Our ability to sniff out mendacity is as keen as our abilities to lie to ourselves and, more important, to others.
“Actually, Joyce, you know who I forgive? I forgive Emma.”
“And who was Emma to you?”
“She was my best friend.” Luciana’s hands stopped twirling; the convicts ceased their signing. Even Taryn turned her attention from the gunmetal sky. “Yes,” I said, “Emma was my best friend. We were friends for years—decades.”
Joyce practically bounced with excitement. “And what do you forgive Emma for?”
“I think that she had, um—I thought that she had told secrets to some people. And then I found out she hadn’t. Or perhaps she did. I don’t know. She might have. Anyway, I forgive her.”
Joyce looked at me, her brows knitted together. “I’m sorry, Dorothy. I don’t understand.”
“I was afraid that Emma had told certain people some information that I’d told her in confidence, and I got angry at her,” I said, pausing before I continued. “I thought Emma betrayed me. But perhaps she didn’t. So I forgive her.”
Joyce’s face didn’t relax. “I’m terribly sorry. I’m afraid I still don’t get it.”
“She thought this Emma ratted to the cops,” said a tall, Black, middle-aged woman with close-cropped hair. “And she forgives her.
Because she found out this bitch Emma didn’t say anything.”
Joyce shook her head. “No, that’s not right.”
“Sure it is,” said Luciana, the girl who laughed as she burned her foster parents’ house to the ground. Our common arson conviction made her feel an affinity I neither shared nor wanted.
“No, no, no, no,” said Joyce. “That’s not right at all.”
“More or less, it is,” I said. “I thought Emma had gone to the police. Now, I’m not so sure. Maybe she did and maybe she didn’t. I thought she did, and I held it against her. I think I forgive her.”
“Good for you,” said the Black inmate who had nailed my
situation for Joyce.
“Thank you,” I replied.
“ACAB,” Taryn coughed.
“No,” said Joyce, her voice sharp. “This isn’t how forgiveness works.”
“Sure it is,” said Lizzie, another one of murderers, a skinny white woman with tattoos snaking from her chin down her arms. “Some
bitch do you wrong, you think about it, you forgive her. That’s how you do.”
“No,” said Laquisha. She’d gotten caught selling drugs to afford medical care for her chronically ill son—we’d often heard about her guilt. “You can’t forgive someone for something they didn’t do.”
“This is my point,” said Joyce. “Well said, Laquisha.”
“I don’t get it,” said the tall Black inmate. On the inside, I thanked her.
Joyce’s voice rose to that level of patience reserved for the very young, the very sick, and the very thick. “Dorothy’s friend Emma didn’t do anything, so Dorothy has nothing to forgive her for.”
“I don’t understand,” said tattooed Lizzie.
“Nor, for that matter, do I, and it’s my list,” I said.
Joyce took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling as if it would give her guidance. “Okay. Dorothy.” Joyce’s voice was both slow and clipped, equal measures of restraint and exasperation. “If Emma had gone to the police and given them information, then she would’ve hurt you. You don’t know if Emma went to the police, and you aren’t sure whether she gave them information. Therefore, she might not have hurt you. You don’t need to forgive Emma, Dorothy. You need to forgive yourself.”
“Whoa,” said Taryn in her thick Brooklyn accent. “That’s heavy.”
Around the age of nine, I grew obsessed with Baked Alaska. I’d read about the dessert in a novel, and I researched it. It was the early 1970s, well before the internet, so my research took the form of encyclopedias, cookbooks, and microfiche. A tour-de-force of misguided American cuisine, Baked Alaska was exactly the kind of thing to drive my mother around the culinary bend, and I was set on having a Baked Alaska for my tenth birthday cake. A slab of ice cream on a foundation of cake covered in meringue and cooked in an oven, the dish is fussy without being difficult. Anyone with a reliable hand mixer, a timer, and a relatively stable oven can make Baked Alaska—the question is why you would want to.
The answer is being a nine-year-old child. A Baked Alaska is, in many ways, the quintessence of what a child of a certain age would want in a birthday cake. It’s hot, it’s cold, it’s surprising, it’s messy,
it’s unusual, and it’s more than a little bit gross. A fluffy concerto of saturated sweetness wrapped in egg whites and delivered on a cake base, a Baked Alaska invites gluttony. You cannot have leftover Baked Alaska. Unlike an ice cream cake, the uneaten portion of a Baked Alaska can’t simply be popped into the freezer, because neither the cake base nor the meringue will both freeze and thaw well. And you can’t put it in the refrigerator because the ice cream will melt. A Baked Alaska, like cheese fondue, is a dish you must consume in its entirety. Naturally, my sister, then seven, and my little brother, then four and a half, were thrilled.
My mother was not. There is nothing elegant about Baked Alaska. There is nothing chic. If I wanted meringue, she asked, why did I not ask for œufs à la neige, individual lemon soufflés, or a nice raspberry dacquoise? Because, I said, I wanted a Baked Alaska.
Simple, American, and what my mind was set upon.
With great reluctance, my mom made it, and out of the oven appeared a swirly mound of caramel-hued egg whites, expansive as a Texan blonde, tempting as fresh-fallen snow. It was perfect. My mom stuck the Baked Alaska with candles, my family sang, I blew the candles out, and I made a wish. I almost quivered with anticipation as my mom set the plate of gooey, melting Baked Alaska in front of me. My research had paid off; my dream had come true, and everything I’d hoped for was on this plate. I delighted in my mother’s sweet, sweet capitulation to my childish obsession, all in the service of my special, special birthday.
“You only turn nine once,” my father said.
“I’m ten!” I cried.
“Bon appétit!” my mother said, as I lifted a fork, layered with the trifecta of fluffy meringue, yellow sponge cake, and chocolate ice cream, to my mouth. And you know, it was… okay. More an overblown homage to the idea of dessert than an authentic dish, Baked Alaska holds all the charm of a hotel lounge singer—it’s obvious, pandering, one-note. Lacking the satiny texture of lemon custard and the gritty crunch of piecrust, the Baked Alaska felt oddly viscous, and lacking the creaminess of frosting, the meringue didn’t augment the already superlative combination of cake and ice cream; likewise, the ice cream lacked the bright tartness found in lemon
meringue pie. In short, the dessert felt woefully out of balance. Every component in the Baked Alaska acted like a third wheel, a presence without a function. Even I had to admit that Baked Alaska was nothing but a dessert novelty act.
My sister and my brother soon grew bored and wandered away.
My mother swallowed a single mouthful and lit a cigarette. My father poured himself a glass of scotch. It was left to me to consume this monster of my own desire. So I sat, and I ate, and I ate, spooning one gelatinous, melting, crumbly spoonful after another into my mouth, hardly tasting, merely swallowing. My mother sat at the opposite end of the table, smoking. I glared and I ate. I ate it all. I even licked the plate.
I glare and I swallow here, at Bedford Hills. Every day, I glare and I swallow. The Baked Alaska was good training.
I got some mail today, a tiny stack of prison-vetted correspondence hand-delivered through a slotted cage. In the slender pile, I found a thin violet envelope addressed in black, spidery handwriting. A letter from Emma. I almost ripped the letter down its spine and tossed it into the garbage, as I’ve done twenty or thirty times before, tipped off to its sender by Emma’s tell-tale palette and her peculiar, spindly hand. But this time, I stopped. I held the cool envelope in my hand. I flipped it over and turned it over again. It was a flimsy thing, nearly weightless, almost inconsequential. I felt its flat weight in my palm. I rubbed my forefinger over the violated wax seal, a burnt blood red, and opened the envelope. Out drifted the scent of Emma’s perfume —Nahema, smoky sandalwood and dreamy ylang-ylang. I inhaled and my heart clenched. I could see Emma, small and perfectly dark under a lamp, seated at the Edwardian dining table she used as her desk. I imagined her holding her Rotring Rapidograph in her hand, her pen poised on the lilac paper as she pondered what she would write. I felt her fear (or anxiety or mendacity or ambivalence) shimmer off the page, uncoiling in spirals.
I slid my forefinger between the envelope and the seal and removed the letter’s single page and unfolded it. Just four lines written in Emma’s thin hand.
“Dolls,” it read, “you told me everything. I said nothing, and I never will. Love you to the end, Emma.” And there it is, Emma’s infinite, unflinching devotion in black and lavender.
I think of agoraphobic Emma, out there in the world, able to walk Manhattan’s gray-slick streets. Emma, free to choose an outfit from her expensively monochrome closet, fling open her front door, and wander lustily until she finds a hospitable café. Emma could, if she wanted, reject the café host’s offer of a dark table shoved next to the kitchen door, and point her manicured finger to demand the best seat in the house, the one near the window, with a view of the avenue, cars and pedestrians pulsating like blood in the city’s veins. Sitting comfily in her restaurant chair, Emma might scan the weighty, cream- colored menu to find the one dish that calls to her. A lobster roll, maybe. Duck cassoulet, perhaps. A sashimi tasting menu. A tomahawk steak—why not. The world is Emma’s oyster, and in my imagining, this is literal.
Out in the world, Emma is free to sloppily slurp a tower of shellfish or gnaw a rack of lamb, noisily sucking the delicate meat from each bone; she is free to press her delicate hand to her breast, breathlessly order a bottle of Champagne, and swill it with abandon.
Emma has liberties that I must dream about, yet she lives her life bound to her Hell’s Kitchen tower, a captive of her free-floating, ambient fears of the wide, wild-open world. Life is bitterly unfair, in short, and Emma’s untouched, unfettered freedom is evidence of it.
Shielded by her artist’s atelier, famous Emma is seen but not viewed. Secured in penitential Bedford Hills, infamous Dorothy Daniels is watched but not seen. Emma and I are separated by circumstance and choice, yet we’re united by experience. As aging Sisters in the Inescapable Order of the Corporeal Skin, we slip into the invisibility of menopause, our womanly faces growing lined, our womanly bodies succumbing to gravity, our flesh slumping, our wombs collapsing, our girlish selves dissolving into bony piles of wrinkles and dust.
The goddess of femininity is cruel to mature women, crushing our brittle bones in her silken, youthful grip. As a girl, when you grow up, you become delectable. As a woman, when you grow old, you turn immaterial—unless you bear children, unless you make art, unless
you leave a legacy. As she slouches toward menopause, Emma has her paintings to stave off irrelevance. My legacy is somewhat more fraught. The choices that we have, the choices that we make—these choices condemn us, constrain us, and create us. This is life at its most essential, a series of decisions that leads to your inexorable end and your desperate, muffled hope that you may be celebrated when it comes. I can live with my choices, as I will live with my legacy.
I write this knowing that I will grow old and die in this prison, and I write this so that no one will forget me. I have carved my place in your memory, cut to the quick of American consciousness. How many women—hungry as we are for immutability—can say the same?
