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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “Bridge” Down in the Dirt, v196 (the 6/22 Issue) Order the paperback book:

Order this writing that appears in the one-of-a-kind anthology The Final Frontier the Down in the Dirt May-August 2022 issues collection book		get the 420 page May-August 2022 Down in the Dirt 6" x 9" ISBN# perfect-bound paperback book:

Mix Gently

David Bradley

    She checked the clock twice. Ninety minutes until the school bus would arrive. More than enough time. She washed her hands with hot water.
    She placed the recipe, printed out long ago and annotated in her own hand, on the grey granite counter next to the stove. She had made her special scones a thousand times. But, some days, the steps could be hard to remember. It was important to get the order right. She always followed the rules, but rules needed to make sense. She smiled to herself each time she came upon one of her amendments in blue ink, remembering the day she had made each change. How she had debated with herself before altering the recipe. How she had argued with herself. How hard it was to decide.
    She pulled the large baking sheet from the drawer under the stove. She lined it with parchment paper. She liked that the paper fit the pan almost precisely.
    She poured AP flour until it reached the Two Cups line of her largest measuring cup. She jiggled the cup to settle the flour. Not too vigorously. Just enough to get a true measurement. The starchy hills and valleys evened out, and she added just a touch more to reach the line precisely. In a separate measuring cup—keep the ingredients pure and apart from each other until the moment they are to be mixed—she poured a half cup of sugar. Two teaspoons baking powder, and another half. A half teaspoon of salt. She washed her hands.
    She combined the dry ingredients in the big, yellow bowl, starting with the flour. Then the sugar. The baking power. The salt. Mix with wooden spoon. She washed her hands.
    She kept unsalted butter in the freezer door, just for this recipe, and a Microplane professional series grater, too. A coarse grater. And it must be cold. A warm grater will soften the butter. Not completely. Maybe no one else would know. How could they know? But she would know. She used the wrapper from the stick as a shield between her hand and the butter. No butter on her hand, no hand on her butter. She grated the butter and cut it into the dry mixture. Form a dough. Don’t overdo it. She cleaned the measuring cups and spoons and set them in the drying rack next to the sink.
    She ate four crackers. She took one Lexapro with chilled Chablis, and two Father John’s. Do not take on an empty stomach. She rinsed the wine glass with hot water, dried it with the kitchen towel. She set the glass back on the shelf.
    She cracked an egg on the flat surface of the countertop and poured it into the clear measuring cup. She dropped the broken shell into the trashcan. Do not put eggshells in the garbage disposal. She held the measuring cup to her eye and searched the contents for shell fragments. There were none. She poured a half cup of heavy cream into a measuring cup and emptied it into the bowl. She measured out a teaspoon of vanilla extract and—this was her secret ingredient—a half teaspoon of almond extract, emptying each into the bowl. Mix wet ingredients into the dry. Don’t overdo it.
    Cover bottom of pasta bowl with heavy cream.
    She washed her hands. Place dough on maple cutting board. Form into a disc without kneading it. Work quickly. Don’t overdo it. Cut into eight equal wedges, using large serrated knife. Place scones on lined baking sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. She washed her hands.
    She went to the master bathroom. She lifted open the top of the rattan clothes hamper. She stood on her side of the double vanity and watched herself in the mirror. She unzipped the front of her sports bra and dropped it into the hamper. There were lines from the straps on her shoulders, and another line from the bottom of the bra below her breasts. She peeled off the leggings and dropped them into the hamper too. She closed the hamper. There was a red line on her stomach where the top of the leggings had been. She stepped out of her panties, folded them side to side, and placed them on top of the hamper.
    She filled her palms with pale blue sunscreen. It smelled of saltwater and palm, and rum and cologne. She rubbed her hands together gently to warm the lotion. She lifted her right foot onto the lid of the toilet and spread the lotion over her leg, starting at her ankle and working her way to her hip, stopping at her thigh for more lotion. She repeated the process with her left leg. She coated her arms, her shoulders, her neck, her face. She wiped the remaining sunscreen once on the back of her left hand, once on her right, twice on her left hand, then twice on her right, watching the lotion disappear. She rubbed her hands over her cheeks again. She washed her hands with hot water.
    She pulled her panties on and walked into the bedroom. She opened the second dresser drawer from the top. She pulled out her red pleated tennis shorts and put them on. She pulled out her new, blue button-down polo and put that on. She went back to the bathroom and studied herself in the mirror. She ran the palms of her hands over her breasts and looked harder. I can tell, she told herself, but nobody else can tell.
    I can tell. But nobody else can tell.
    She pulled the tie from her hair and set it on the vanity. She pulled the strands of her ponytail loose and fluffed her bangs with her fingers. No time to brush it out. No time.
    She returned to the kitchen. She removed the baking sheet from the refrigerator and set it on the counter. She removed the plastic wrap from the scones. She brushed the scones with heavy cream from the pasta dish. She opened the oven door. Hot air blew in her face, stinging her eyes, lifting strands of her bangs. She placed the baking sheet on the oven’s middle rack. She set the timer for thirty minutes. She set oven mitts on the counter, next to the stove.
    She placed the measuring cups and spoons, the pasta dish and the brush in the sink and turned the hot water on over them. She opened the dishwasher. She rinsed each cup and spoon, including those left in the drying rack, and set them in their places in the top rack of the dishwasher. Cups on the outer rows, starting at the back and alternating sides. Spoons in the silverware basket, starting at the back. She rinsed the dish and placed it in the main section of the bottom rack. She rinsed the brush and placed it in the basket, in the first open spot from the back, with the handle pointed down. She closed the dishwasher. She washed her hands.
    She took a 17-ounce water bottle from the refrigerator. There was already a smell of butter and toasted flour wafting through the air. Like home.
    She left her running shoes by the hall tree. I want to feel it, she said to herself. She opened the front door. Looked up the street to the left. Looked down the street to the right. No one. She pulled the door closed behind her. She held her keys in her hand. She did not lock the door.
    The cement of the front step was pleasantly hot under her bare feet. The sun poured down like butter and honey on warm bread. She felt naked and alive.
    She left the house behind, counting her steps as she went. The bees flirted in the lilac, its perfume hanging in the air as she passed. The branches of the sugar maple, hanging under the weight of a million deep green leaves, swayed, silent. Its roots reached out beneath her, stretching toward its distant neighbors, an endless network entwined below her, all across the valley, under every other thing, stretching up into the hills and beyond. It spoke to her through her toes and her ankles, her hips, and all along the bones of her spine, as she walked.
    The doors of every house she passed were closed, locked and shut. They hid behind them. They watched and they muttered, and then they kept on watching.
    Or did they? Were they there, behind their pastel curtains and bamboo blinds, unseen but seeing her? Or did their quarter-acre extravagancies, temples built in worship to themselves, sit empty, their hairless cats and robot vacuums parrying across cold Italian tile, air conditioners purring, security cameras glaring at her as she walked?
    The lawns were massive forests of bluegrass, of fescue, of ryegrass, of zoysia, elastic plants bent or crushed under her heel, that stretching and rising again as she passed, hundreds and thousands and millions of them, a viridescent carpet of giving and forgiving elastic blades.
    She lay down in someone’s grass, friendly and cool on her hands and on her feet and on her face; prickling, tickling, alive and inviting.
    Great oceans of flowers turned their faces toward hers. The softest of zephyrs carried their pastel smiles, their pollinated wishes, their ageless memories, but mostly their perfumes to her, bathing her in the immensity of their fragrance.
    The air brought other smells, vibrant and alive, that unlocked in her moments, minutes, entire hours and days of life long forgotten. Smokey afternoons, leaves in one thousand hues of autumn, rakes turning the moldering mound, his fragrant pipe smoke, until shadows grew long and hard; meat on a charcoal grill, fat rendered and the yellow and white flame standing to meet the drippings; damp Saturday mornings on the pitch, her cleats matted with grass clippings drenched in dew, perspiration on the arms and legs of all the girls on the field, her mother’s eyes hidden beneath the brim of her sun hat and the black lenses of her glasses; daddy glaring, his hands on his hips. And the sweat at night, that Virginia steam, the feeling in her lungs and her head lost between her thighs.
    All the world was sun and light and warmth. From gravity’s core, ultimately dense and unforgivably hot, toward which all things were pulled, always and forever, skyward, the air cool and crystal, clouds of steam roiling, frozen, condensing, falling and rising, and on higher still. She felt the same vibration in her chest, the same thrum in her head, the same carbonation in her bloodstream.
    She closed her eyes and heard, from some untold distance, over the hill, around the bend, the mosquito-like humming and buzzing of lawn mowers and hedge trimmers. An army of men, she thought, muscled and wet, the hair on their legs and on their faces, and the smell on their chests and under their arms, men, loud and frightening and forceful, men, everywhere at once, hands gripping, her reflection in their dark glasses, cephalic veins and buzzed cut heads, predatory, leering and unforgiving. Hard and heavy, on top of her. Men.
    Her eyes opened with a flash. Above her now the blue sky was fading behind a shallow mist, as if a screen were closing across the world. She sat and watched a white line shoot across the infinity above her. The tip, silent, soaring, a speck of jet, so many miles above that there was no sound, no doubt, even, that as she looked at that spot, it was in fact further across the overarching sky than she imagined. It sped away from her, harder and faster and more brilliant that she’d known, and was gone, leaving only the fading trail of heavenly ice, while she lay, still, under that fading disc of blue.
    And now there was another smell. Wood burning, but something else, too. A thing gone off the rails, unnatural, out of balance. The sky had grown darker, and the leaves on the trees whispered to her of something gone wrong. What time was it? She had removed her watch, left it beside the cutting board. The shadows had fallen over her. How long had she been gone?
    There was a scream in the distance, a wail of pain and anguish that grew as it advanced upon her. She rose to her feet. The bus rolled past her, squeals of children rising and falling as it went. There was a dark cloud growing where her house had been. The sirens filled her head as she walked, and then ran, toward home.

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