Eat Cake: A Novel

by Jeanne Ray

  My mother headed off to the den and I was glad. I would take a moment by myself over practical assistance any day. There was a time when Camille used to pop out of her room at five-thirty, eager to mince onions and stir sauce. Then again, there was a time that a wall divided the east and west of Germany. Life was not a static experience. We shouldn’t expect things to remain the same.

  I held four chicken breasts in my cupped hands. I stared into the cold, translucent flesh, wondering how I could make them sing. I got tired of cooking dinner. Everybody gets tired of cooking dinner. There’s too much responsibility. Did we eat this last week? Is this good for you? Is it balanced, is it green, will he like it, will she eat it, do I have the right ingredients, enough time, will this new recipe fail me? Camille wouldn’t eat red meat anymore and had recently informed me as I set a plate of chops on the table that pork, so widely advertised as “the other white meat,” was in fact as red as a flank steak. “Pigs are more intelligent than dogs,” she said. “Why don’t we just eat Benjy for dinner?” Lately she had been talking about giving up chicken and fish, maybe even becoming a vegan, which would reduce me to coming up with fascinating ways to cook broccoli every night without benefit of cheese sauce. My mother clipped chilled-salad recipes from women’s magazines and taped them onto the refrigerator to voice her own preferences. Sam was deeply suspect of anything that he hadn’t eaten before and had been known to pick dishes apart until he could clearly identify each of their elements. Wyatt, my vacuum, the only truly brilliant eater in the family, was a junior in college and enjoying the deep, hot wells of cafeteria food that could be ladled onto a tray. As for me, I couldn’t have cared less. I think I would have been happy with a carton of lemon yogurt every night if it meant I didn’t have to cook. Dinner, I think, would be fascinating if I only had to do it once a week. Dinner could be riveting if there was a way to make it cake.

  I washed the chicken breasts and stripped out their tendons with pliers. As I was beating them flat between sheets of wax paper I started thinking about making a carrot cake. I had plenty of carrots. I had been planning on making glazed carrots for dinner but there was no reason why I couldn’t shred them instead. My family tended to grumble when there was too much cake in the house. As a rule, they liked to see cakes go right out the door, to school bake sales, to sick friends, for someone’s birthday. When Camille’s friends came over they told her she was lucky. “My mom wouldn’t know how to bake a cake if you threw a box of Duncan Hines at her,” her friend Becca said as she lobbed off a hunk of chocolate chiffon, but Camille only snarled. Still, if I made the carrot cake without frosting, if I put a minimal amount of sugar in it and baked it on a sheet pan so that I could slice it into squares, I could practically pass it off as cornbread. It hadn’t been a great day, and no one ever objected to cornbread. I left the chicken for a minute and got out the flour. There were raisins and walnuts. I held two cold eggs in one hand and felt the knot between my shoulders start to unravel the tiniest bit around the edges.

  An hour later Oprah had said her piece and my mother came into the kitchen and sniffed the air. “That’s a cake.” She pushed the oven light on and peered inside.

  “Carrot bread.” I pulled the pot holders out of their drawer.

  “There is no such thing. Really, I’m going to be the size of a house if you keep baking this much.”

  “I’ve always baked this much and you’ve never been heavy a day in your life.”

  “That isn’t true,” my mother said, pouring herself a vodka and orange juice. “I looked like a snowman when I was pregnant with you.”

  “That was a long time ago. Nobody remembers it.”

  “I remember it,” she said darkly.

  I picked up the phone in the kitchen and called Camille’s room. She had her own line with call waiting. No matter how remote Camille could be in person, she always answered the phone, which is why I strictly forbid her to have caller ID.

  “Dinner,” I said.

  “Is Daddy home?” She wanted to know so that she wouldn’t get stuck waiting in the kitchen. That was my other rule after no caller ID: We all ate dinner together.

  I was about to answer truthfully when I heard the back door open. “Yes,” I said, and she hung up.

  The rain had not abated. Sam came in with sleek tributaries pouring off his suit jacket. He looked nearly drowned. He leaned toward me and I thought he was going to whisper something in my ear, but instead he pulled me to him and held me tightly in the great, wet walls of his arms. I hadn’t been dry so long myself but I felt oddly dazzled by the spontaneity of his gesture. The water off his coat soaked through my blouse, and once he had kissed me and pulled away, I looked like someone had dumped a bucket of water on my chest.

  “I’m sorry,” Sam said. “I’ve ruined you.”

  “I dry very quickly.”

  “Hollis!” Sam said to my mother. “You have a drink. Be a pal and fix me one of those.” It was my father who had started the tradition of calling my mother Hollis, her last name, rather than Marie, her first name. She said it was the only thing from their relationship that had stuck, other than me.

  “It isn’t orange juice,” she said with some embarrassment.

  “I didn’t think it was orange juice. Did you think I thought you were drinking orange juice every night?”

  “I did,” my mother said. She looked a little confused and I wanted to tell Sam not to tease her.

  He shook his head. “I know what you’re drinking and I want to join you.”

  “On a Tuesday?” she said.

  “This Tuesday.” My soaking-wet, handsome husband seemed to be a bundle of life this evening. “Ruth, are you having a drink?”

  “I wasn’t planning on it.”

  “But you would,” he said. “Things happen you don’t plan on.” Sam’s blue eyes looked all the brighter for the rainwater still clinging to his lashes.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Never better,” he said, but his voice didn’t convince me. “Hollis, we want two of whatever you’re having.”

  So my mother returned to the cabinet where the vodka was kept and assumed the role of bartender. She went back to the dishwasher to retrieve the shot glass. My mother believed that mixing a drink without a shot glass was tantamount to putting the bottle to your lips and tipping your head back.

  Camille shuffled into the kitchen and for a second I thought I saw Sam’s great good mood crumple a little at the edges. He seemed so moved to see her there that if it weren’t for all the rain he was wearing, I would have thought he was tearing up. I held out a dish towel but he ignored it. He went to Camille and folded her in his arms.

  “Daddy!” she cried, and wrenched away from him with some effort. “Are you insane? Look what you’ve done to me.” Camille was wearing a T-shirt and some sweatpants and as far as I could see he hadn’t done any real harm.

  “Your father is in a hugging mood.”

  “He hasn’t hugged me,” my mother said to herself as her steady hand took the vodka right to the rim of the jigger.

  Sam made an easy turn in his puddle of water but my mother took a giant step away.

  “I’m soaked.” Camille put a hand on either side of her head. It was as if she had been sent to live in a house of friendly chimpanzees and she was constantly astonished by the indignity of it all. Then she turned around and was gone again.

  “Well, now you’ve done it,” my mother said, handing Sam his drink. “You frightened her off. You know it’s going to take at least a half an hour to get her to come out of her bedroom now. We could starve before she changes clothes.”

  “What are we doing here,” Sam said, “taming the little fox?”

  “I only try to hug her when she has a fever,” I said. I was joking, of course. I was sort of joking.

  Sam looked at the door through which our daughter had disappeared. “I think we should be more affectionate. That’s one of the things we need to work on.”

  “W
ork on it yourselves,” my mother said. She gave me my drink. She’d thrown in a splash of cranberry juice to make it pretty. I have to say it wasn’t bad.

  Sam hung up his coat on the back porch, where it could drip without consequence, and I put the chicken on the table. Camille came back in record time wearing a blue cotton sweater and a pair of low-slung jeans. She pointed at her father. “Don’t.”

  He raised his hands to show that his intentions were honest.

  “Doesn’t this look good?” my mother said to the plate of chicken, which is what she said every night regardless of the meal.

  “Chickens are shot full of antibiotics,” Camille said. “And it’s not just that. Girls are starting their periods at, like, seven now because the chickens have so many hormones in them.”

  “Everything is a health hazard if you want to look at it that way.” Sam speared a piece of meat and put it on Camille’s plate, where she looked at it as if it were a squirrel hit in a mad dash across the road. “Walking across the street is dangerous. Driving a car, very dangerous. Think about what’s in the water, or in the air for that matter. For all we know we’re sitting on top of the biggest source of radon in Minnesota. Did you ever think about that?”

  “You’re so morbid,” Camille said morbidly.

  Sam shook his head. “Not at all. I’m just sticking up for the chicken. My point is, you never really know what’s good for you or what’s bad for you. Have you done the right thing or the wrong thing? You never know what’s going to get you until it’s too late.”

  I put down my fork. My mother and daughter put down their forks as well. We all stared at Sam. “What in the world happened to you today?”

  Sam sliced, chewed, reflected. “Nothing much.”

  “May I be excused?” Camille said to no one in particular.

  “You haven’t eaten,” my mother said.

  “I ate something,” Camille said, though she must have meant she ate something for lunch because clearly she hadn’t eaten her dinner.

  “Stay put,” Sam said.

  “At least have a piece of cake,” I said.

  “Cake!” Camille cried. “You know I can’t have cake. Why do you keep making cakes? This isn’t a bakery.”

  “This isn’t a bakery,” Sam repeated quietly, as if it was news to him.

  “She can’t have cake if she hasn’t eaten her dinner,” my mother said.

  But I was already on my feet, already heading over to the pan on the kitchen counter. The debate was still raging but I had a knife in my hand. It was carrot cake, after all, which is practically a serving of vegetables.

  “I’m going to be the size of a house,” Camille said.

  “You are currently the size of a coat hanger. A house is a long way away.” Sam reached forward and pulled her plate toward the middle of the table and I smoothly set the cake down in its place. Usually he would complain about the cake too, but tonight he backed me up. Camille was grumbling, but up came the fork and she took a delicate bite.

  “Cake when she hasn’t had any dinner at all,” my mother said. It was wrong. It was the moral equivalent to pouring vodka without a shot glass.

  Camille’s eyes fluttered and then closed. The cake was warm and her fork went down again. “Oh,” she said quietly.

  There was a time I cared: a meat, a vegetable, a starch, some cake. Life had an order, but now the point only seemed to be eating. Here was my daughter, eating, devouring, she was almost through with the cake.

  “Did you make this with honey?” Camille said. There was something in her voice I nearly recognized. It sounded like interest, kindness.

  “I did.”

  “Because sometimes—” She couldn’t finish her sentence without stopping for another bite. “You use brown sugar?”

  “It’s another recipe.”

  “I like the honey.”

  “The problems they’re having with bees these days,” Sam began, but I held up my hand and it silenced him. There was too much pleasure in the moment to hear about the plight of the bees.

  My mother took a long, last sip of her drink and then went to the counter to get the cake, the knife, and three more plates. “First the two of you are having a drink on a Tuesday, now we’re all eating cake before we finish our dinner.” She cut four pieces and gave the first one to Camille, whose plate was empty.

  “It’s madness. Anarchy. It must make you wonder what’s coming next,” Sam said.

  My mother handed me my plate. I don’t eat that much cake, but I never turn down a slice.

  The four of us ate, pretending it was a salad course. Camille was right to pick up on the honey. It was the undertone, the melody of the cake. It was not cloying or overly sweet but it lingered on the tongue after the bite had been swallowed. I didn’t miss the frosting at all, though it would have been cream cheese. I could beat cream cheese longer than most people would have thought possible. I could beat it until it could pass for meringue.

  When we were finished with our cake we were all as happy as babies.

  “Well,” my mother said, laying down her fork.

  “Perfect,” Sam said, and ran his fingers over his plate for the crumbs.

  Camille reached forward to her dinner plate and cut off a small piece of chicken.

  So what if it hadn’t been such a good day? There we were, having a good moment. A good moment is all that anyone should ask for.

  “Sam,” my mother said. “I’m sorry to bother you with this, but could you look over some insurance forms for me after dinner? Ruth did her best but I want to make sure that they’re right. It never hurts to get a second opinion.” It was her little medical joke and she made it often.

  It wasn’t such a serious question. My mother asked Sam to double-check her papers at least twice a week, but Sam mulled it over for a long time.

  “I’m not sure I’m the best person to ask,” he said finally.

  “Of course you’re the best person to ask.”

  Camille seemed to smell some impending family conflict and stood up from the table, but she wasn’t quick enough. Sam told her to stay for a minute.

  “I was going to wait until later. I was going to tell Ruth first.”

  “Tell Ruth what?” my mother said.

  “Just tell Ruth,” Camille said. “Don’t tell us now.”

  “But we’re all together, and you’re going to find out sooner or later.” Sam took Camille’s wrist gently to stop her; she was edging toward the door.

  “We aren’t all together. Wyatt’s not home,” she said. “You should wait.”

  “Wyatt won’t be home until summer vacation. That’s still two months away.”

  “ ‘Don’t be in such a rush.’ Don’t you tell me that six million times a day?”

  I realized I was holding my breath and I forced myself to exhale. I have to say, I was with Camille on this one; whatever it was, I wanted to push it off for a little while, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Something had been set in motion and now there was going to be no stopping it. We all looked at Sam.

  “I lost my job,” he said.

  “Fired?” my mother said.

  Sam scratched the back of his neck. “Fired sounds very personal. This wasn’t personal. You see, it was everyone, really, almost everyone.” He looked at my mother, who was listening to him with extreme concentration. He tried a different approach. “Yes, I suppose you could say I was fired.”

  Sam’s Lutheran hospital had been bought by a huge for-profit chain two weeks before. We had sat up at night talking about what could happen. In our worst-case scenarios we imagined a pay cut or even a transfer. Camille would have to switch schools in the middle of her junior year. She may never speak to us again. Those were the things we had been worried about. We had been thinking in terms of inconveniences. Turns out, our fears hadn’t even been in the ballpark.

  “We’re going to have to sell the house, aren’t we?” Camille said. “I’m going to have to go to public school.”
/>   “I don’t think we have to worry about that right now.”

  Camille’s eyes welled up with tears. She had a tendency to take things personally.

  My mother stood up and came over to Camille. “We should let your parents talk.”

  Then plink, plink, one giant tear rolled down each of my daughter’s porcelain cheeks and fell onto the empty cake plate. She and my mother put their arms around each other and left the room.

  Sam picked up his glass and went to fix himself another drink. “That went badly.”

  It did go badly. I wanted to ask him, What was with the levity, the jovial attitude? Wouldn’t the news have been easier to take if he had limped in the back door holding a handkerchief to his forehead? Maybe not. Maybe he was trying to give us all one last good time. Certainly this wasn’t one of those moments we had any training for. My father had lost his job, my father lost his job every week. But as a musician, losing his job was just part of the cycle, like leaves falling from the trees but more regular. I thought of Willy Loman. I tried to remember what Willy’s wife had said, if she had been supportive. I had no memory of her at all. “You seem to be taking it really well,” I said. My voice was kind.

  Sam leaned over and took my hand. He kissed my fingers. “To tell you the truth, I have no idea how I’m taking it. I think I’m in shock. This big group of corporates that have been there all week going over the books started calling people into the office, and one by one they’re going in, Steve and Jordan and Diane—”

  “They fired Diane?” She was always so nice to me at the Christmas parties. She had three kids.

  “They went in like lemmings going for a swim. It was everybody. And I sat at my desk watching all of them and I’m thinking, This is criminal, this is awful, but, Ruth, it never once occurred to me that I was on the list. Even when they called me, I went in there thinking they wanted me to help the others with some sort of transition. I just went right on in, and everybody was watching, and everybody had figured it out except for me. What kind of ego is that? I never saw it coming.”

  “Well, there wasn’t any warning.” Not any warning for him or for me. Sam was home now and he didn’t have a job.