While I helped Jesse scoop ice onto the round silver oyster trays, I started thinking about how everyone at table three was probably making practice butter right now, and soon they would be eating it on delicious French bread. I could see them in what Miriam calls my “mind’s eye.” And I could also see the little box of cream I’d bought with Lizette that morning, sitting next to a plastic plant in the nurse’s office at school, where I’d left it.

Everyone who knows me agrees that I’m no good at hiding how I feel. Dad says I wear my heart on my sleeve, and that means when I’m sad or mad or happy, you can tell it just by looking at me. Sometimes the person looking at me knows how I feel even before I do. But then I catch up.

When I pictured my carton of cream next to that fake plant in the nurse’s office at school, Jesse said, “Bea, what’s wrong? You look sad.”

Five seconds later, I blurted out, “I’m sad!” And told him the whole story.

“Let’s see that recipe,” Jesse said.

I got out my colonial-breakfast folder and showed him my butter recipe:

BUTTER

You will need:

1. Heavy cream
2. Empty jar with tight-fitting lid

Instructions:

1. Put cream in jar.
2. Shake jar.*
3. Keep shaking.

*Make sure lid is on tight before shaking!

And because Jesse is Jesse, he went straight to the gigantic Beatrice fridge and found some heavy cream, and we made butter. We used an electric mixer, because Jesse didn’t have time to do it by hand, the way the colonists did.

There are four different kinds of bread baked at Beatrice every morning, and I picked my favorite, which is pumpernickel. Jesse cut us each a slice, and we smeared our butter all over them.

Right when I was about to take a bite, Jesse yelled, “Wait!” He reached for a bowl of salt (at Beatrice, they use a lot of salt), and he pinched out a little for each of us, sprinkling it on top.

“Now. Ready? On three. One, two…”

Imagine the most perfect bread and butter in the world.

—

On Thursday afternoons, Mom taught the math teachers of the future until two o’clock, and then she picked me up at school and we went to Miriam’s office together.

At 2:45, she walked into the restaurant, kissed my plastic-wrapped foot, and gave Jesse a hug. She told him congratulations about getting married, and said yes to a piece of pumpernickel butter-bread.

“Dad told you?” I asked on the way to Miriam’s.

She nodded. “It’s great, Bea. Right? I mean, Jesse is wonderful. Dad is happy. Are you happy?”

“Yeah. And I guess now Sheila will be like—my aunt?”