I felt a stab of anxiety when I read this week’s challenge, because it seemed to imply, whether the judges intended it or not, a cozy story about family, about kitchens, about moms and things homemade. And my mother was a terrible cook. Well, she still is a terrible cook, but this obviously matters to me less now than it did when I was a little kid. I remember feeling this terrible sense of something being just wrong in my house when I would come home from my buddy Eric’s, with chocolate still clinging in the creases of my mouth from the warm cookies his mother had served us. My mother would give me a glance and shake her head. When I asked once if she would make me chocolate cookies, she bought a roll of dough at the grocery store, whacked it into slabs with my dad’s carving knife, and shoved them in the oven. They were awful.
But I do remember another experience with cookies. It also involves my mom, although I’m not sure that means anything. It was a couple of days after my grandmother had died and one of her friends came over to pay her respects. She brought a big plate of bakery cookies with her, the kind shaped like leaves and flowers, sandwiched together with thin layers of chocolate. My mom took the tray and they went into the kitchen together. I went to my room to play for a while, but I really wanted some of those cookies, so I went back downstairs and stood in the doorway. My mother was sitting at the kitchen table with her back to me and the old lady—my grandmother’s friend—was sitting across from her, holding her hands.
“I just want you to know, Sylvia,” she said, that you can take comfort in the fact that she adored little Daniel. Adored him, however she felt about you.”
“What are you talking about?” my mother asked.
“Well, you know how disappointed she was in you,” the lady said. She uncrossed her fat ankles under the table and re-crossed them the other way. “I mean, I’m sure you know. She spoke of it often. The decision to go to college, for heavens sake, and then to marry that man—”
My mother stood up. “Thank you so much for coming,” she said.
She stood there, and I stood behind her, until the woman left, and then my mother went over to the counter, got the plate of cookies, tore the wrapping open, and shoved the cookies, one by one, down the disposal. The grinding noise hurt my ears, and pink and green crumbs flew up out of the sink like confetti.
When she was done, my mother looked over at me.
“I’m sorry you didn’t get any cookies, Danny,” she said. “But they weren’t worth it. Believe me.”

The little French bakery was just right. Not too big, not too small, but just big enough for the smells to waft out of the ovens in back and transport Ally back to that day thirty years ago when she realized her life would never be the same again. The petite palmiers are perfect; flaky, sweet and buttery just like she remembered. Tucked into a small corner, Ally took in the inevitable changes around her. Thankfully, nobody recognized her with swollen eyes, red from crying. She was crying then too. Ally was so buried in her memories that she didn’t even notice the crumbles of butter and sugar littering her chest and settling into her cleavage.

Mommy let me wear my favorite green polka-dot dress with pink tights and little brown leather mary janes with pink blossoms on top that day. I thought it was a special day, but I was wrong. It was mommy and daddy’s court day - their divorce day and I was going to pick who I wanted to live with. I knew they weren’t happy and daddy hadn’t been around much, but I wasn’t expecting to choose between them. I chose mommy, for a lot of reasons, but mostly because she didn’t scare me as much as daddy did. Afterward, mommy took me by the hand and walked me right out of the courtroom. She didn’t even let me say goodbye to daddy. Together, we walked down the street and around the corner to Boulangerie.

Mommy bought one petite palmier from the lovely woman at the counter and a cup of tea. We walked toward the back and sat down at the little wooden bistro table in the corner. It was hidden from the main hustle and bustle of the busy bakery and a little quieter. She handed me the cookie and set her tea on the table and then she started to cry. I was scared and I didn’t know what else to do, so I started to cry too.

Here I am again, three decades later Ally mused to herself. At thirty-five, she had taken the same path from the courthouse to Boulangerie, only today had been her divorce day. Jonas had turned into an asshole, almost immediately after they were married, but she always thought they would sort things out eventually. Disappointed, things had only gotten worse and Ally was forced to file for divorce eight months ago. Thankfully, they had never gotten around to having children and so there was no little girl forced to choose between mommy and daddy. Still, it didn’t make today a piece of cake. Ally had done very well as a romance novelist. Her books were on the best-seller list and she was now very wealthy. And naturally, Jonas wanted a piece of everything. Her lawyer had done a good job which meant that Ally was walking away relatively unscathed, at least financially. Emotionally, she was a wreck.

The little bell on the front door of the bakery rang, snapping Ally’s mind back into reality. Looking down she realized she had eaten not one cookie, but ten. Rising from her chair, Ally decided it was time to go home. She wrapped up the last two cookies from her dozen and carefully tucked them into her green polka-dot handbag.

with much regret, i must beg use of the emergency lifeline this week. i've been incredibly sick all week, and my parents arrived this evening for sky's shower is on saturday. so, phone in the ambulance. but, judges willing, BILL will be back next week for some killer, caffinated prose like you haven't seen since week 1. and believe BILL when he says that he fully intends to win his next challenge. and when it comes time for the boardroom, there'll be nowhere to look but to BILL when spotting the next Top Novelist. by the way, did we climb a bit on Google? i've been searching the crap out of "top novelist" and picking Cts&Dma each time...

When I was seven, I took these swimming lessons at the local rec. center. My relatives had tried to teach me to swim two years previously with the “throw the kid in the deep end and see what happens” method, and I, needless to say, sunk like a stone. So my mom signs me up for these lessons, and I go, every week, to a pool that smells strongly of chlorine and faintly of urine, to learn to swim.

It was the beginner’s class. I wasn’t very good. I never quite got the hang of the whole putting my face down in the water between strokes and lifting my head up to breathe periodically. This is why the backstroke was my favorite – my swimming stroke of choice. The feeling of floating, gliding over the water – and not getting water up one’s nose – it was fantastic.

At the end of the class, there was this whole exhibition thing, you know? And it was for all the different levels of swimmers, and each class was going to have different students demonstrate the strokes that they’d learned and dives and things. I was in the backstroke group, and I was really excited. And on the day of the exhibition our teacher put water-proof make-up on us, like the synchronized swimmers wear, and we all waited for our turns to show off what we’d learned.

Well, my group – the backstroke group – waited and we waited. And we waited some more. And then my teacher called us over. In her hand, she had a container filled with homemade cookies. After each of the other groups had taken their turn in the exhibition, she had rewarded them for jobs well done with one of them. I looked around. Why was she calling us over? Why was she carrying the cookies? “I’m really sorry but the exhibition is running long. We’re not going to have time for your group to do the backstroke. Here’s your cookie.”

And that was it. No swimming, just “here’s your cookie.” And she walked away after as if it were completely normal to give us a cookie and that a cookie somehow compensated for the crushing disappointment of the day. I bit into the cookie. It was a Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie with walnuts. It was a little burnt on the bottom, and without something to drink it was dry. I looked up in the stands, and I saw my mother looking over at me, confused. I started to cry.

Suffice it to say, if I’m feeling blue and looking for comfort, I never eat chocolate chip cookies. Give me ice-cream; give me cake; give me a cigarette and a glass of chardonnay, but cookies will only make me feel worse. I suppose there was no way that Bryce could have known, when he brought the cookies over after I called him sobbing to tell him that I’d been fired, but I still couldn’t forgive him for it. Just like I couldn’t forgive my swimming teacher.

First the word was husky. Then stocky. "Big-boned" was already in scare quotes when I was a teenager. So I was fat.

My parents aren't small people either, and my mother, emotional cripple that she is, believed that any problem could be solved with a plate of cookies. Often enough, that problem was my father's rage.

I had foolishly tried out for the Junior Varsity football team, hoping my size would for once, be an advantage. Learning quickly that I needed to actually sweat, I gave up and was quickly cut. I was morose, my father was furious. The evening I brought the news home had us in three corners--I buried under my covers with a book, my father banging around his workbench, and my mother frantically producing batch after batch of chocolate chip cookies.

Sometime around midnight, there was knock at my bedroom door. I answered it, and though no one was there, the cookies and milk awaited.

If consuming every last crumb of the guilt, the shame, the rage, and the fear that circulated around our home that evening was somehow an act of love, then it's no wonder that we find a way to call what I carry in my gut "love handles."

With Caleb, Caron, and Corey finally tucked into bed, the last glasses of milk slurped down, stuffed animals tucked under the covers, Carrie finally made her weary way into the kitchen. With the school's Halloween party the next day, and three kids' classes to bake for, she had some serious work to do. "Time to make the cookies," she mumbled. Reaching deep into the honeypine wood pantry, she began pulling out flour, sugar, baking powder. "Vanilla, vanilla, vanilla...where was the blasted vanilla? Why did nothing ever stay where she put it," she mused absently. There were the walnuts, at least. Grabbing that bag, she stepped backwards and stepped on her son's Luke Skywalker action figure. "Ouch," she yelped, hopping up and down on one foot as the walnuts scattered over the floor. "Damn lightsaber!" she cried and reached for the dustpan. Well, at least she'd get the dust bunnies before they got any bigger. Dumping the mess into the trash, she turned back to the pantry, only to see the vanilla staring out at her from the shelf right in front of her eyes. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and leaned back against the counter, remembering all the Saturdays she'd baked cookies with her mother as a child, the pleasure of dumping the chocolate chips into the smooth batter and seeing them folded in and blended, the satisfying thwap of the batter as she would place the rounded teaspoonfuls onto the cookie sheet. Smiling, she opened her eyes and reached for the bowls, grabbed the measuring spoons. Four dozen chocolate chip, two dozen sugar, and three dozen peanut butter cookies later, she plunked down in the kitchen chair, weary but satisfied. The rotund little Dunkin Donuts man had nothing on her, she figured.

Cookies? I know you don't want me to win, but couldn't you be a little less overt with your bias? I thought you were more cunning than that. First, there was that "problem" with my laptop, cleverly disguised to look like a routine blue screen of death but clearly a subtle bit of sabotage. Then there are the persistent thumping noises and moans from the room adjacent to mine in the suite, which awaken me at all hours and have left me a frazzled shell of a man. Not to mention the snide comments and sidelong glances of the other contestants, and the conversations that break off as soon as I enter the room. You all think I don't know what you're talking about, but I know. I know.

Anyway, what is there to say about cookies? I'm taking a pass this week, not that I think it will help. I'm sure next week you'll just make up a challenge about butterflies, or puppies. Well, do what you want. Then you can kick me out so you can all laugh at Perry all you want.