Strings Attached

Missing Ingredients

81 Missing Ingredients 1. cable girl Surfing through the channels I stop to watch a girl with badly dyed yellow hair pulled into a ponytail, blackened eyebrows, teeth uneven, and her tongue studded in silver. She’s sitting on a bed in her own bedroom showing viewers her “wacky finds” for the day. I’m more interested in her quirky imperfections, how she speaks with a pronounced lisp, and how she’s packaged what may have been unattractive features into something oddly fascinating. Today there are back-to-back episodes of her show, and my husband, overhearing her, joins me. We follow the host to a tiny kitchen where she holds up a box of Duncan Hines Pineapple Cake Mix. She claims to know nothing at all about baking but thinks it would be fun to make. Searching through her spare cupboards she finds most of the ingredients, is missing the oil, and decides rather than mess up several dishes, “I’ll just mix it in the pan,” adding an extra egg to make up for the oil. Studying the box again she notices the actual pineapple on top of the cake, removes the soggy rings from a can and lays them over the batter, and then proceeds to bake it, or broil it, at some unknown temperature but one that will severely burn the surface and give the cake an appearance of having attacked itself. When the cake comes out of the oven it matches her dark eyebrows and yellow hair, but she is not dissuaded as she peels away the charred surface, proudly holding the cake alongside the box to show the “amazing similarity.” Upon slicing it, the undercooked center oozes a little before it reaches her mouth, as she gushes with a Martha Stewart “yummm.” My husband’s brow freezes, resembling the Gateway Arch when I sigh, “Wish I could be like that.” 2. cover girl My mother blazed her own trail, called the shots. Working to support our family in the late fifties after my father was gone, she saved to buy a modest home in Detroit, and later homes in the suburbs. Mom possessed a wind-in-your-face air, a redconvertible glamour she earned at a job formerly reserved for men. I remember standing in front of her closet, imagining myself going to work in the polka dot dress with matching coat. I marveled at her neat rows of stilettos and pumps, jewelry boxes of pop beads and pearls, and the way she applied her makeup—back when rouge was an art. Each morning she created a flawless image that seemed 82 “perfect,” a word she used to describe how things should be done. Yet smart as she was, there were moments she fell into a quirky Stepford trap. A place where the lipstick line smudged in the sand. It made me wonder, what’s a cover girl covering up? Her yellow cake with peanut butter frosting was the best thing I ever tasted, but each time she prepared any of her delicious dishes she’d tell us what was missing, how it could have been better, ignoring the praise— as if cake perfection was unattainable. I was confused by these Betty Crocker wanna-be moments. Betty was real to millions. The ultimate cover girl whose picture on the box was a combination of women of all ages and backgrounds so that everyone could become her. My self-image grew to include my father who was interested in how things worked more than how they were packaged. But even now, when Mom says, “Why don’t you put on a little red lipstick?”—I struggle, trying not to feel like a cake that can’t rise. ...