Pecan Coffee Cake

Cody came home on Monday November twelfth at eleven-fifteen in the morning. I want to write the time down in pen because the time is going on the page in pen. The release procedures had taken until ten. Aunt Tammy had driven from the unit. The Cavalier rolled up to the curb at eleven-ten and Cody got out of the passenger seat in jeans and a t-shirt that had not been his when he went in. Mama and I were on the front porch in our jackets in the cold.

Mama hugged him for a full minute before he could come inside. I do not know what the two of them said to each other. I cried on the porch with my hands at my sides because I did not want to interrupt them. After the minute Cody came up the porch steps and he hugged me with both arms and he said, Kay, I am home. I said, I know, Cody. Aunt Tammy stood at the bottom of the porch steps with her hand over her mouth.

I made him biscuits and eggs at one in the afternoon. The buttermilk substitute from last weekend held up. The biscuits came out tall and tender. He ate four biscuits with butter and honey. Mama made coffee. The three of us at the kitchen table for an hour. Cody did not say much. He kept looking around the kitchen as if he was making sure the kitchen was still the kitchen. It was. The basil plant on the windowsill had two new leaves that morning.

Mr. Garcia called at three. Cody’s job at the auto-body shop starts Wednesday. Mr. Garcia told Cody on the phone that he had been holding the position for him.

The week was the week of getting Cody home into the routines of home. By Wednesday he was at the auto-body shop at six in the morning. By Thursday he had been to the probation officer for the supervised-release check-in. By Saturday afternoon I baked the pecan coffee cake from the A Family Feast recipe to mark the first weekend the three of us had been at the kitchen table together since January 2017.

The math on the cake: butter, sour cream, eggs, sugar, flour, vanilla, the cinnamon-pecan streusel (chopped pecans, brown sugar, cinnamon, butter). Total: about $6.40 for a 9-by-13 pan that lasted us four mornings.

The technique is the streusel-layering. Half the batter in the pan, half the streusel scattered over, the rest of the batter, the rest of the streusel on top. The streusel layer in the middle becomes a sweet pecan ribbon you discover when you cut into the cake.

The three of us at the kitchen table Saturday morning. Coffee in three cups. Pecan coffee cake on three plates. The sun coming through the kitchen window at the linoleum. Cody is home. The household is the household. The cooking is going to keep being the cooking. We are still here, three at the table again.

The recipe is below. The trick is the middle streusel layer — do not pour all the batter at once. Half batter, streusel layer, half batter, streusel top.