This Cake is for the Party

by Sarah Selecky

  The people who really piss me off at candle shows: the ones who come up to my booth and say in breathy voices, Oh, yes, I love your work. I bought one of your candles three (or five, or ten) years ago and I love it. I ask them, So? Do you like how it burns? And they say to me, I would never burn it! I keep it in the china cabinet, or on the dresser.

  It’s insulting.

  I spend a lot of time making sure these will burn properly. One of the reasons I work with wax is because it’s a consumable product. Do chocolate makers have this problem? People are so afraid. They hoard their things. Don’t they know that it’s all going to be gone one day anyway? None of this is going to last.

  Is your mother still alive? Yes? Good. Pay attention to her while you still have her. Listen to me. When my mother died, it felt as though I’d shrunken inside my own skin. I sat for hours on the couch feeling like I was crouching down in the folds of my own body. Mum is gone, Mum’s dead, I’d repeat to myself in my head, as though I would recover from the sadness if only I could become well acquainted with the information. I felt like I was little again, stripped naked and curled up in the shell of an old man I didn’t recognize. It was not like this when my father died. I grieved for my dad, but losing my mum turned me into a baby. We are never old enough to lose our mothers.

  One day, when she thought enough time had passed, Robin sat next to me on the couch, put her arm around me, and said, Welcome to the no-mo-mama club, Keane. She said it tenderly. She rubbed my back.

  I have a theory about Robin. Maybe she lost her mother when she was still too young to know that when we lose the people we love, we brush against our own death too. She was only thirteen. When you’re faced with big grief like that, it’s like a two-hundred-year-old cedar tree is falling towards you, creaking and smashing through the forest on the way down. You look up, you see the trunk coming down, and you know it’s one of the most frightening things you’re going to see in your lifetime. Grief is like that. Maybe, when Robin was little, and she looked up and saw that tree falling, she didn’t know to be afraid. Maybe she saw something new coming, something new about life, and she moved right into its path without knowing that the weight of what was coming down would crush something inside her forever unless she got out of the way. She was only thirteen when it happened to her. I know, I said that already.

  The accident happened on Robin’s thirty-ninth birthday. Thirty-nine: that’s thirteen times three. She didn’t tell me this. I worked it out on my own.

  I called her. I dialed the number the nurse gave me.

  Oh, Keane, she said on the phone. I’m at the hospital.

  I know you are, babe, I said. I took you there.

  I couldn’t help but notice: the last four digits of the number were 1976. The year Robin’s mother died. Wicked coincidence, right? I’m sure it didn’t slip past her.

  Our bestselling product came from the Candle Escentuals catalogue: Plastic Candle Mould Item #2383987— Buddha. The mould was just two sides of plastic, one with a bulging belly and one with a bulging butt. You ran a wick through the centre, taped the sides together to seal it, slid the bottom into a stand to secure it, and poured the wax in. Left it overnight to cool, and then popped it apart. The edges had to be filed and then smoothed with a blowtorch, but there he was, almost perfect every time, smiling at you. We had ten of these moulds, and we tried to make ten Buddhas every day, five days a week, all spring, summer and fall, preparing for the Christmas rush. We sold at least a thousand Buddhas every November. All of our other candles were hand-carved. Robin did the pouring and all of the administrative work. I did the carving: I did faces, I did abstract, I did shapes like sunbursts and stars. They were pretty things. But they were labour-intensive, especially with the new soy wax, which was crumbly compared to paraffin. Was it worth it to make that switch after all? Beats me. One carved star candle cost twice as much to make as a poured Buddha.

  We were married on February 3, 1983. We lost Julie on September 18, 1987. Candle Escentuals catalogue: Plastic Candle Mould Item # 2383987—Buddha. I want to tell Robin: I can read the signs now too.

  We had a brief and uncommon heat wave earlier this summer, and the humidity made me cranky. I was packing a box of cubes and the tape was sticking to itself and I lost my temper and threw the tape gun at the box so hard that it dented one of the candles inside. After I calmed down, replaced the damaged candle with a new one, and taped the box up smoothly, I said to Robin, I hope Manitoulin Transport won’t fuck up our boxes with their forklift this year.

  She said, You mean, you’re afraid we’re going to lose our candles again.

  I said, No, I just hope that they’re bloody careful with our candles this time.

  She looked at me and said, But Keane, hope and fear are the same thing.

  Now I think I see what she’s getting at, but what? If we stop hoping for anything, aren’t we just giving up on life? What’s the point?

  We talk about this stuff when she’s in a good mood. Like I said before, she can be very philosophical when she’s feeling calm. That day, when I was packing, she asked me to remind her the next time she was feeling anxious that the feeling will pass. She said that the reminder might snap her out of it. She said, Please tell me that it’s okay to feel whatever it is, when I’m feeling it. No matter how uncomfortable the feeling. I said, Even if you start hearing messages from the television? She didn’t answer that. It was a mean thing for me to say. I said it in a nasty way. To make up for it, I said, Okay. I’ll remind you.

  I wish I’d just asked her about the mileage. I could have just said it: What do the numbers mean? Why is ten o’clock important? I could have asked her. She would have let me in. But I was too afraid.

  Did I tell you that we lost the whole studio? Everything. All of the equipment, the computers, the stock. I’m still going back and forth with the insurance company, but it doesn’t look promising. They don’t think they can call it an accident. I know what it must look like to them. How would you explain what happened?

  Okay, I lied when I told you I lost everything. I have some moulds left. They’re salvageable. And you know what else survived? A crappy Crock-Pot we used to melt small batches of colour in, for dipping. But to be honest, I don’t think I have it in me anymore. Maybe this is a bona fide sign. Maybe I should just start growing tomatoes or something. Oh, I know I’ll probably end up making something and selling it again. Who would ever hire a crusty old guy like me? People like to see their craftsmen shaggy. It’s part of the mystique. How could I ever work for someone else again? I’d have to shave, buy new clothes.

  I don’t care much for religion. I was raised Anglican, but I haven’t set foot in a church since I was a kid. I think it’s amusing that everyone buys Buddha candles for Christmas. What do Christians like about Buddha so much, anyway? Is it because he’s fat and jolly, like the other familiar face of the season? But it’s so good for retail, this fusion of shopping and Jesus. It’s what Robin and I lived on, of course. So we didn’t let our cynicism harden up too much. And we got presents too: every year, we stole some of the cash sales from our own till—made it tax-free— and spent it on a January holiday in Hawaii or Mexico. Forgive us.

  Robin’s not like me. I would say she’s more spiritual than I am. And she can be very philosophical about life, when she’s not stressed. No, she’s not a Buddhist. Well, she has some meditation books, some Dalai Lama books. She does her yoga. But that’s kind of like stretching, isn’t it? It’s not a religion. Oh, I don’t know. There’s probably something to it. It’s hard to argue with all of that serenity.

  Here’s a good story. You know Björk, that freaky Icelandic musician? Well, she was asked to play at a Free Tibet benefit concert. She refused to play. Do you know why? Because she said she didn’t agree with Buddhism. She said all of that dogmatic denial of pleasure and forced simplicity drove her crazy and that she wanted nothing to do with it. She wants to live life large, with lots and lots of pleasure, and she’s proud of that. I
f that woman ever starts a church of her own, let me know.

  When I married Robin, I knew she had a nervous stomach, a tendency for insomnia. And she always watched for numbers and signs. Did I think it was strange? Of course. Was I ever frightened? Of course not. She was the most deliberate thinker I’d ever met. She noticed things that nobody else would notice. We moved into our first apartment together on May 5. It was on 5 Almer Road. She said, Five five five five. When I asked, she said, May is the fifth month, it’s May fifth, Almer has five letters, we’re at five five on five five.

  I gave her a high-five.

  I never thought I’d be able to see the world the way she did.

  There have been many drugs. Robin has tried antidepressants and antipsychotics and all of today’s new Valiums. There was a nurse at the ward after the Spiral Jetty day who told me that a half dose of Xanax seemed to help her very much. I didn’t know what Xanax was, but it sounded strong and modern and I thought of Robin with bandages on her ankles from the broken glass and I said, Okay.

  Xanax, it turns out, is an anti-anxiety pill that, paradoxically, sometimes causes insomnia. On Xanax, she said that her thoughts felt calmer, but she stayed up all night, watching the walls like they could tell her what she was supposed to do next. The doctors took her off some of the other drugs because she reacted poorly. Citalopram made her ramped-up and angry. She’d slam doors and snap at her therapists. Something else—the yellow and black capsules—made her move like a zombie. Rocking like a patient with Parkinson’s disease. She was moving through oatmeal. I couldn’t breathe when I saw her like that. I made her stop taking those too.

  Yes, I made her stop. I’m not trying to control her, I’m trying to take care of her. She wasn’t living anymore. She couldn’t sleep on the Xanax. Sleep is the one thing I know she needs for sure. Now you probably think that I’m part of the problem. Listen, I spoke to her every day on the telephone when she was there. Every day. Once I asked her, what were her group therapy meetings like? Were they helpful at all? She told me, Well, a woman played a song by Tori Amos. Then she asked us how it made us feel. When it was my turn, I told her it made me feel sad. She said, Why? And I told her because it was a sad song, and because Tori Amos has a sad voice. So, that was one day of music therapy.

  Look, if I thought the drugs were helping her, I wouldn’t have stopped them. And I wanted to believe that the therapy in the hospital would be enlightening for her in some way, that she’d get to the bottom of something when she was there. But Robin just spent four weeks in a psychiatric ward with a bunch of crazy people. That’s all. Until she figured out on her own how to make her fear go away. That’s how she’s done it every time. You’re obviously not going to agree with me when I say this, but I think the problem is, she’s more intelligent than her doctors.

  I told you before that we turned the lights out at exactly ten o’clock, right? Well, that night we left the bedroom window wide open because the air was nice and warm. In the morning, I woke up chilled and feeling damp. There was a thick layer of fog outside sitting like a mattress on top of the ground. Robin was still asleep beside me. She must have found an extra blanket during the night—she was rolled up in fleece under the duvet. I got out of bed, slipped on a jacket and my work shoes, and was on my way out to the studio to get the wax melting and get things started for the day when I was stopped at the front door. There, on the welcome mat outside, I found three dainty squirrel parts: the snout, a paw, and the heart. They were arranged elegantly, in a straight line.

  Maggie left you a birthday present, I called to Robin.

  She slipped out of bed and found me at the front door. She was in that green shirt and sleeping socks. I got a strange feeling as I watched her. Like a glass door slid shut between us. I watched what she did next like I was watching television. Robin bent down and picked up each of the pieces. She cradled these bloody squirrel bits in the palm of her hand and started to cry.

  I should do something, I thought. I should step in there, I should take that nasty shit out of her hands, calm her down, do something. But I didn’t. I just watched her cry and cup the pieces of dismembered squirrel in her hand and I watched her rock, shifting her weight from foot to foot. She was so upset. I am a horrible husband. I couldn’t feel anything.

  You know this uncomfortable feeling you’re having right now? I said to her.

  She cried and shifted her weight from foot to foot.

  It will pass, I told her.

  They say they have to monitor the skin graft. It was taken from her thigh. Apparently sometimes the graft doesn’t take. They might have to do it again. Her lungs are okay. That’s really good. That’s lucky. Maybe because of all of that clean soy wax smoke. It’s remarkably stable. Ha ha.

  I don’t know what I’m going to do.

  The clouds didn’t lift all day and the dusk felt like it came early that evening. Robin couldn’t stop worrying about Maggie. We live close to the main road, but behind us was a forest. I told Robin that she would have gone into the forest, not along the road. I just wanted it to be a good day. I kept saying, I’m sure she’s fine, she’s hunting and exploring. She’s a cat.

  She never goes, Robin hissed. She wasn’t hissing at me, she wasn’t even looking at me, her eyes wouldn’t rest on anything. She looked back and forth along the ground in the backyard as though there were a patch of lichen-covered rock that she’d missed.

  The way Robin’s eyes were moving. Like she was reading very fine print, back and forth across an invisible page. Her eyes were hectic and charged with static.

  Babe, I told her. Let’s go finish work. I’m going to make us something special for your birthday dinner. Just try to relax. Maggie was just here last night. She caught that squirrel.

  She looked up at me, but I don’t think she saw me. Her pupils skittered across my face.

  We were leaving for Toronto in less than a month. I needed Robin to work as hard as I was working, so we would meet our production deadlines. But she was messy when she was distracted. She hadn’t sealed the moulds tightly the day before, and the pale turquoise Buddha wax had leaked all over the pouring table. We had to scrap all ten of them. When I saw the spill, I thought, Ten moulds spilled equals two hundred and fifty dollars lost. It’s something my father would have said. I felt like I was turning into my father. I felt like an asshole.

  We tried to work for another hour. I dismantled all of the ruined turquoise Buddhas and dropped the wax in a pot to re-melt it, knowing I’d have to go into it later to pick out all the wicks with a fork. I counted up our Buddha stock. Then I left her in the studio and told her, Come in the house in twenty minutes. I’m grilling you halibut. Happy Haliburthday!

  She said, How many are there?

  Just two pieces, I told her. She didn’t answer me.

  I made it quickly on the grill, with lemon and garlic and a drizzle of oil. I covered the patio table with a blue cloth and cut a few stalks of foxglove, put them in a mug on the table. I struck a long wooden match and lit a thick white pillar candle. The body of a leggy mosquito-eater that had flown into the fire at the beginning of the summer was preserved in the well of cooled paraffin.

  I thought, Why isn’t she here yet? Why isn’t she coming inside?

  When I went out to the studio to see, she was in the back counting the Buddhas.

  After dinner, I told Robin to take a hot bath and relax and get ready for a birthday massage. I was going out to look for Maggie. It was dark. If she was hunting, that would be the time to find her. I headed out for the woods behind the house, shaking her canister of tuna treats. Thrumpity-thrumpity thrump. The sound made no sense when she didn’t come running for it. It just fell onto the tree roots and made the night feel empty.

  Once I was deep in the woods, I switched my headlamp off and stood for a minute until my eyes adjusted to the dark. I could see where the path was by looking at the treetops—there’s a line, a clearing—and I could stay on the path easily if I kept looking up. The star
s poked out at me. It was clear and quiet. I walked along the path, trying not to make any noise, and I got this feeling that everything was okay. I can’t describe it any other way: just that everything that had happened up to now was good and was supposed to have happened.

  I made kissing noises with my mouth, calling for Maggie, and I heard a rustle in the salal beside me. I stopped breathing. Cougar. Now, I knew it wasn’t a cougar, but my body reacted. My muscles hardened, my heart pumped like someone turned the dial to ten. I felt full of rushing blood. My mind does this to me in the woods. A twig crunches and I freeze, ready for attack, even if it’s nothing but a mouse or a shrew. Maybe a beetle. It happens to everyone.

  Cougars have infrared vision. If a cougar wanted to hunt me, I’d feel claws at my throat before I’d hear a slip of paws in the bushes. I tensed up anyway. The body of a big cat was right there, beside me, this dark shape. I knew it was a boulder. I shook the can of tuna treats. Thrumpity thrump.

  Then I saw her. She was on my path, standing about five feet away. My joy surprised me. She was Robin’s cat— I just pinched the ticks out of her fur, mopped up her accidents, disposed of her dead things. But there she was in front of me, and I was so stupidly happy. I lurched for her and she ran, of course, back into the salal. I caught a flash of her white fur as she ran away, a white flag waving surrender. She was running back in the direction of home.

  I could smell it before I saw it. The smoke was sour and pungent. I ran after Maggie and the dark smell of scorched plastic got stronger and stronger. It stung to breathe it. Even though it was a cool night, my face started burning. I heard blood rushing in my ears, the sound of a jet engine. I ran out of the woods with cymbals crashing in my chest. And in that moment, before I really saw it, I had such an awful thought. I thought, Doesn’t the studio look beautiful, all lit up with warm light?

  Maggie knew what was happening. I know what you’re thinking, but I’m telling you, she was there. She got to her first. Up on her hind legs pressing her paws at the studio door. What kind of cat would do that? When I opened the door, she ran inside. She got too close. Her whiskers were entirely singed off. She walks into things now. They say she’ll do that until her whiskers grow back. That’s how cats find their way around, did you know that? I thought it was all in the tail.