GERALD
I wasn’t surprised when I got the call, though my heart rate did accelerate rapidly. I know this because my watch lit up and gave me one reward point for exercising. And I wasn’t surprised at all when they told me I’d been accepted as a contestant on Bake Week because I am an excellent baker. Anyone can be an excellent baker if they’re disciplined enough. It’s just chemistry. To make a perfect cake, all you need are the right equations. Measurements must be precise to yield a crispy mille-feuille, a lacy Florentine, a perfectly chewy pie crust. Temperatures must be controlled and deliberate, if you want to make a soufflé rise or chocolate glaze shine like glass. You can find equations everywhere in life, if you look in the right places.

Say you want to take public transportation all the way from your apartment in the Bronx to a country estate in Vermont for a televised cooking show, as I am doing now. You just need to be fully acquainted with the timetables. You’ll take the D subway line to 34th Street, exiting out of the northwest entrance and coming out onto 34th Street. Then you’ll walk two avenues west to the northeast entrance of the Moynihan Train Hall, leaving you exactly eleven minutes to wait for the Vermonter train, which departs at 8:15. That will get you into Brattleboro at exactly 3:45. There, you’ll have time for a coffee at a café across from the station before you hop on the shuttle you’ve scheduled to drive you out to the entrance of Grafton Manor.

I’ve mapped Grafton Manor out using blueprints I downloaded from the Vermont Historical Society’s online database. It’s an enormous house, but I feel like I know the place now, which brings me some comfort as I do not generally enjoy being in new places, particularly not with strangers and for an entire week. I’ve memorized routes from the guest rooms to the dining room, the dining room to the tent, and calculated the length of time it will take me to get to each.

I’ve gone over the variables of my journey so many times that I barely need to look at the schedule I’ve made up for myself as I get off the subway car with my bags and walk briskly down the platform. A man is playing the violin on the platform, Bach. I recognize it immediately as Violin Sonata No. 1 in G minor. As I was able to get an express train, I allow myself two minutes to listen. I close my eyes. The music carries me away from the filthy station back to my childhood kitchen table. I remember every detail, every nick in the wood, every tear in the vinyl-backed chairs my mother would make me sit at until I finished my homework. She would switch on the radio, filling the tiny kitchen with grand symphonies. Classical music was good for studying, she said. While I solved mathematical equations, she would bake, the air becoming thick with the fragrance of cakes in the oven, melted chocolate, sugary fruit reducing on the tiny stovetop.

My mother was an immigrant from Grenada. She’d been trained as a chemist, but when she came to the United States she was unable to use her degree, so she took a job cleaning for a rich family in Manhattan. When the wife got wind of her cooking ability, she was tasked with providing meals for them as well. It was her cakes that garnered her the most attention. Soon all the families in Tribeca were asking for my mother to make treats for their children’s school birthdays or their evening cocktail parties. My mother took baking very seriously and practiced at home, and often in the middle of the night I would wander out and she’d give me a glass of warm milk and a taste of whatever she was cooking. Finally, the year I turned fifteen, after nearly two decades of patiently practicing and saving, she opened her own bakery. I begged to work there instead of going to school, but she never relented. My baking education was to be done after schoolwork if time allowed. I explained all this in the application video, plus my expertise in hand-ground flours.

Filming falls during my school’s summer break, so I am not bound to my teaching job right now. Of course, I still have a routine I adhere to when school is not in session. I’ve broken down the benefit-to-detriment ratios, though, and the numbers always come out in favor of going. If I win, which I have at least a one in six if not higher chance given my expertise, I will have proven to myself that I am what I think I am, that my calculations are correct. If I lose, I will return to my normal schedule in just a week’s time.

I give the violinist ten dollars and carry on to the exit, emerging into the bright New York morning. I make my way down 34th Street, jostling with tourists and pedestrians, dodging men on the sidewalk selling knockoff sunglasses and flavored ices. I’ve allotted time for them in my schedule. Finally, I arrive at the northeast entrance to the train station. I check my watch: 8:04.

I feel the warm assurance of being on time, of having gotten it right. I carry my bags into the central hall, scanning the timetable to be sure, though I know it by heart.

I look for the Vermonter, but it is not listed where it should be, right between the Northeast Regional and the Acela service to Washington. I instantly scan and find it farther down the list flashing in red: Delayed, stand by for more info.

A cold dread descends on me. Things never go well when they don’t go according to plan.