#anskeanske

So when she was offered a position in the Silicon Valley, she spent maybe ten minutes going over the pros and cons of uprooting to California before deciding to take the job. (Con #1—pulling the girls from school and moving thousands of miles away from their friends. Pro#1—girls get the incredible opportunity of living in a different country and are immersed in English while their brains are still like little sponges—The decision was simple as far as she was concerned).

Okay, so maybe she made even major life decisions with her girls at the forefront of her mind. But that still didn’t make her a Mother with a capital ‘M’. She wasn’t a PTA mom; she’d never volunteered after school or gotten overly involved with the other mothers. She just didn’t dothings like that. Which was why she couldn’t quite believe that at 7:00pm on a Tuesday night, she was pulling out flour, eggs and milk to bake, instead of kicking back and watching TV with her girls, all on account of the fact that she had agreed to bring in cookies for the Christmas party the girls’ class was having the next day.

And why were the girls not helping her? Because she’d agreed that they could spend the night at a friend’s house as a special treat, seeing as the next day was a half-day, and the only thing happening at school was the Christmas party. But that didn’t mean she had any intension of braving this project alone.

There was a knock at the door.

“Oh thank god! Come in!” Lotus shouted in the direction of the door, as she arranged what she presumed were the necessary ingredients for cooking baking on her kitchen island.

“Hey!” Alice called as she entered, slipping her shoes off. “I’m sorry I’m a bit late. I decided to stop and pick up a bottle of wine.”

“No, not at all, I think we’re going to need it.”

“That bad, huh? How’s it going in here?”

“Ugh, I haven’t really started. Why did I agree to this again?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

“Well that one dad whose name I can’t remember had already signed up to bring drinks, and apparently their teacher’s bringing plates and cups and things, so cookies seemed like the next easiest option.”

“Yeah, You’re probably right.”

“And then that blonde bitch, Sheryl. She looks me straight in the eyes and says ‘Hazuki, have you ever made cookies before? Will you be okay?’”

Alice laughed at the high-pitched simpering tone Lotus had affected and the look of outrage on her face. “She probably just thought she was being nice.”

“I’m not sure that makes it any better. I mean they’re cookies! How hard can it be?”

“Well, it’s definitely easier if you preheat the oven.” Alice responded with a smile, coming over and setting the oven for 350 degrees.

“I was getting to that…” Lotus muttered, folding her arms. “How are your exams going?” She turned to get two glasses down from the cupboard.

“Ugh, please! This is my mental health break. I don’t want to think about any of the papers I’m writing or tests I’m prepping for. I will give you a full update once I’ve handed everything in.”

“Understandable. Well, let me know if you need me to read over anything though.”

“I will. Thanks.”

“Here.” Lotus said handing Alice a glass of wine and taking a sip of her own, “So what’s the first thing we need to do?”

“’In a medium bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, and salt’. Have you measured out the ingredients yet?”

“No, I guess I’ll do that now.”

“I guess you better.”

“Hmm. I have baking powder. It looks like baking soda. Is it the same thing?”

“Oh, honey, no. Not the same thing. Not at all. Baking soda’s probably in a box.” Alice started going through Lotus’s cupboards while Lotus measured out the other ingredients. “Here you go! Baking powder!”

“Thanks.” Lotus liked working with Alice—even if they were only working on simple things like making cookies. It was nice to have a friend she considered on the same intellectual footing…well, that wasn’t quite true. She knew that despite her best efforts to tone it down, Alice was light-years ahead of her intelligence wise. Perhaps what she really liked about Alice was the fact that Alice treated her like an intellectual equal. Which was more than she could say for most of her peers in her male-dominated field.

“Alright, next we want to mix the butter and sugar. Please tell me you have a mixer.”

“Believe it or not I think I do.”

“Is it still in the box?” Alice asked with a smirk.

“I know you’re joking, but actually, yes it is.” Lotus said, pulling the box from the island cupboard.

Alice laughed. “Why do you have it?”

“Oh, somebody gave it to me when we moved in…Do you think we need to wash it first?”

“No, it’s probably fine. Though we could rinse the metal mixing bits with warm water.”

“Yeah, alright.”

Mixer assembled and whirring away at beating together the sugar and butter, Lotus looked up from the bowl and said to Alice, “So you don’t want to talk about school.”

“No, it’s my night off. No school.”

“Okay then. What have you been up to? Any clandestine encounters with gentlemen?” Lotus asked suggestively.    

“First off, way to sound like my mother—“ Alice wished she could have captured the look on Hazuki’s face at her words“—and secondly, yes, but not in the way you’re thinking.”

Lotus raised an eyebrow. “Ladies then?”

Alice grinned like the cat who got the cream. “That’s neither here nor there. I’m not talking about romantic encounters.”

“What kind of encounters are you talking about then?” Lotus said with a frown.

“These weird men keep showing up to interview me for something.”

“Weird how?”

“Oh you know, creepy, mysterious government agency types. Like spies: black ties, black suits, dark sunglasses, the whole nine yards.”

“And they want to recruit you?”

“Presumably. But I can’t tell if they’re CIA or FBI or what.”

“Odd. And you think it’s okay to tell me about this?”

Alice shrugged. “Well they didn’t tell me not to.”

Lotus clicked off the mixer, butter and sugar thoroughly mixed, and looked at Alice. “And do you think you’ll take a job with the government?”

“Well, that depends on what they can do for me.”

Lotus chewed her bottom lip. Alice was so incredibly mature in many ways. It was often easy to forget that she was a whole decade younger than Lotus. She was smart, but despite her maturity, she could be a little reckless. Especially when she got focused on something.

“Alice, I’m not your mother, so I’m not going to tell you what to do, but just be careful, okay?”

Alice looked away. “Yeah, I know.”

Lotus nodded. “Now these eggs, do they just sit here or are we going to mix them in?”

“I guess they could just sit there, but then we would without a doubt have made the shittiest cookies ever.”

“And I can’t have Nona and Ennea showing up to school with the shittiest cookies of all time. What kind of mother would that make me?”

“Probably exactly the kind of mother the other moms suspect you might be.”

“I’ll drink to that!” Lotus said, bringing her wine to her lips.

Eggs cracked and stirred in with a splash of vanilla, they moved on to mixing in the wet and dry ingredients.

“So, secret government agency interviews. What are those like?” Lotus asked, stirring while Alice held the bowl and periodically added more of the flour mixture to the batter.

“Secretive. I don’t know. They asked a lot of questions about me and my family. Which I suppose is to be expected. But then they asked a lot of really strange questions.”

“What kind of strange questions?”

“Like, ‘what did I know about the works of Sheldrake?’”

“Who?”

“Yeah, I’d never come across him either, but I did some research after my interview.”

“Is he a scientist?”

“Pseudo-scientist.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean his field is parapsychology.”

“Like telepathy kind of things?”

“Actually, yes.”

“You’re kidding me!”

“Not at all–It’s not really telepathy the way we usually think of it. But he has this theory about ‘morphic resonance’. It’s this idea about humanity having a shared memory—a consciousness that we could all potentially tap into.”

“That sounds like bullshit.”

“Yeah, I kind of thought so, too.”

“So why do you think they were asking about Sheldrake?”

“I don’t know. Maybe if I’d known a lot about him, they’d have figured I was crazy and written me off as a potential candidate.”

Lotus laughed. “Yeah, most likely.” She stopped mixing the cookie dough. “Does this look good enough to you?”

“Yes, I think we can go ahead and start putting them on the tray.”

“Alright and then only fifteen minutes in the oven!”

“Sounds good!”

“You know,” Lotus said as she slid two trays of cookies into the oven, “when I first moved in here I couldn’t get over the size of the oven. I couldn’t imagine what I would need with an oven this big. And then I realized all of the houses here have ovens this size! But now that I have to bake all these cookies I’m so glad we have an oven this size.”

“What can I tell you, we Americans love our baking.”

“Are you going home for Christmas?”

“Yes. I’ll be heading home as soon as exams are over.”

“That’ll be nice.”

“Yeah, I’m looking forward to seeing my mom.”

“I bet. And I’m sure she’s looking forward to seeing you.”

Alice grinned, “Yeah, definitely.”

Lotus looked around the kitchen. “Well we could clean up this mess, but I vote we watch a movie instead.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” Lotus said, nodding. “Did you bring ‘Love Actually’?”

“Of course I did! I’m not going to let you get away with having never seen it.”

“Alright, alright.”

All in all it was an excellent evening, Lotus thought. The cookies didn’t burn and were not only edible, but delicious, and she enjoyed the movie a lot more than she’d thought she would. Alice’s description hadn’t made it sound nearly as interesting as it was. It was nearly midnight by the time Alice left.

“Bye, sweetie!” Lotus said, seeing her off, “If you need anything, call! And tell your Mom I said hello!”

“I will. And I’ll see you when I get back! Merry Christmas, Hazuki!”

“Merry Christmas, Alice.”