Eat Cake: A Novel (21 page)

“I didn’t try very hard to explain it.”

“I should have asked some questions. I should have known that if you had plans they’d be big.”

“I haven’t exactly been a fountain of understanding myself. I feel terrible about the boats.”

“The boats look very suspicious. Even I can see that.”

“So we can both try a little harder to understand what the other one is doing?” I felt so hopeful.

“Starting now,” Sam said. “What can I do to be helpful? Could I drive you around, anything?”

“Not in that suit.”

“I can change the meeting.”

I shook my head. “I’ve got everything under control. Who knows, maybe we’ll both land a job today.”

Sam kissed me. “Don’t get your hopes up about me. Just get your hopes up about yourself.”

Camille walked in the kitchen and made a brief inspection of the cakes.

“Have you ever seen anything like it?” Sam asked her.

“Even by the standards of our house this is a lot of cake.”

Sam looked at his watch. “I’m going to be late.” He kissed us both good-bye. “Are you sure you don’t need me?”

“I’m going to be fine,” I said. But as soon as he left I wished I had said it another way. Yes. I need you.

“Good luck today,” Camille said. The timer rang and I went to take two more sweet potato cakes out of the oven. There was a pot of sweet potatoes simmering on the stove. The kitchen was a warm and steamy place that smelled of cinnamon and nutmeg. A tropical rain forest of baking.

“Thanks a lot.”

“Remember, nobody out there bakes a better cake than you.” She held out her hand and gave me a thick stack of small cards.

Beneath that was our address and phone number and Camille’s e-mail address. I wiped off my hands and then I touched the little cards with the tip of my finger. “Oh, Camille. They’re so beautiful.” I had never had a card in my life. I had always watched other people exchanging cards and wondered what mine would say if I had one. Now I knew. I was getting a little teary and Camille held up her hand to indicate that these were only business cards and I should pull it together.

“I thought we should keep it elegant,” she said. “Less is more.”

“I agree. You did these yourself?”

“Actually, the computer did them. It’s nothing once you understand the program. I really am going to be late if I don’t leave right now.” She leaned forward to give me the briefest of kisses on the cheek. “You’re going to do great.” She waved to me and was out the door. I ran after her and gave her an apple and the cucumber-and-herb-cheese sandwich I had made for her lunch, and for once, she took it.

Two minutes later my mother zipped through the kitchen, avoiding eye contact.

“How are the boxes going?”

“Fine, fine,” she said. “I worked on them all night. I should have started a month ago. Of course, a month ago Sam still had a job and you didn’t know it was going to come to this. It
smells great in here, by the way. I’m just going to check on your father.”

I thought of how overwhelmed I would have been by so many mixed messages a mere twenty years ago. I was glad that I was finally old enough to deal with my mother.

She was down the hall and back again not five minutes later. I only had time to butter and flour the next set of pans. “Back to work!” she said. “Lots to get done.”

“Dad’s okay?”

“Fine, fine. Everybody likes to go to the bathroom in the morning. I was only brushing his teeth.”

I wondered if my mother wasn’t protesting a little too much.

Gently boiling potatoes make a sound not unlike a small stream moving quickly over rocks. I thought it would be perfect for one of those ambient-noise tapes: The Ocean; Wind in the Pine Trees; Boiling Potatoes. It was very soothing. I measured baking powder to its dulcet tones.

When the doorbell rang I thought it was probably another delivery for Sam, but when I opened the door it was not to the roaring engine of the idling FedEx truck. It was Florence, her dear and immaculate self, coming by on her way to work to wish me luck. I brought her back to the kitchen to show her the production line.

“They’re darling,” she said, picking up one of the wrapped chocolate layers. “The little cakes were a great idea.”

“Oh, wait. This is even better. Here, have a card.” I handed her one of my new business cards. “Not only are you the first person I’ve given one to, that was the first time I ever got to say that sentence.”

“This is very classy.” Florence slipped the card into the pocket of her uniform. “So if you have cakes and you have cards, why don’t you look any happier than you do?”

I put down my measuring spoons. There are some things that all the cinnamon and boiling sweet potatoes in the world cannot hide. I poured us each a little of the espresso I’d made for the chocolate cakes. “Sam’s been getting FedEx packages from boat dealers. He even showed me some pictures of boats. We talked it over and I know we’re okay, but every time the doorbell rings my heart stops. Do you think they ever just deliver a boat to the house?”

“I used to wonder about that,” Florence said, putting her coffee cup down on the table. Her face was stricken with the memory.

“That isn’t all. My father has arranged appointments at fancy restaurants today by telling them I am a recovering drug addict. So I’m a little nervous about going over to meet the managers.”

“I can see that.”

“And on top of everything else, I have the distinct impression that my parents are having sex.”

“Sex?” Florence raised her eyebrows. “Sex isn’t bad.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against sex. I just think that if someone is having sex in this house it should be me.” I shook my head. “It’s more than that. My parents hate each other. I mean they despise each other. If they’re having sex, then, I don’t know, it’s like there’s no order in the world anymore.”

“Oh, there’s order in the world all right. It just might not be the order you want.”

I got up to flip the last set of cakes out of their pans. If you left them in too long, the crust got tough and they ran the risk of sticking. “Maybe you’re right. There are so many things I should be worrying about now that it’s hard to hold them all in my head.”

Florence nodded. “I know what you mean.”

I cut her a piece off the almond apricot loaf. There was always time to make another one. As long as cake didn’t have two inches
of frosting on it, I thought it was perfectly reasonable breakfast food. “Are things getting any better at the hospital?”

“Things are getting so much worse. I’m eight years away from retirement and I have no idea how I’m going to make it.”

“Well, it hasn’t been very long since the takeover. Don’t you think it could get better once everything settles down?”

“It’s a whole new mentality over there. It’s all about money. Nobody cares how you do your job just as long as you’re doing it faster.” Florence sighed and looked down at her own perfectly operational hands. “It seems like overnight we have half the staff and twice the patients. I never wanted to work in a factory. I just feel like I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Can you go to work someplace else?”

“All the hospitals are going to be the same. It’s the wave of the future. I’d need to figure out a whole new career for myself and I am too old to do that. When I tell my husband about it, it just makes him feel bad. He thinks he should be making more money so I don’t have to work, and that’s not it at all. I don’t want somebody to take care of me, I just want to be working someplace that makes a little more sense.” She took a bite of her cake, thought it over, and then smiled at me. “Have I mentioned to you how good these cakes are?”

“Don’t change the subject. Why do you get to tell me that I should be willing to change everything in my life if you’re not willing to change everything in yours? That doesn’t seem fair.”

“Nothing’s fair,” Florence said. “Anyway, it’s different. You needed a job. I already have a job.”

“But not one you like.”

“Well,” she said, cutting herself another bite. “My cakes aren’t as good as yours. Maybe I still haven’t figured out what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.”

My father shuffled down the hall in his bathrobe, his hair sticking up in a hundred different directions. He needed a shave. “Hey, good morning, Mrs. Allen. Is it time for us to work so early?”

“I’m not here for you this morning, Mr. Nash. I was just stopping by to check on your daughter and her cakes.”

“Aren’t they something?” my father said. “Her mother and I are so proud of her. We’re thinking this is going to be a booming business.”

I was too old to be going over the major issues of my childhood, but the phrase “Her mother and I are so proud of her” meant a great deal to me.

“Are you working your fingers?” Florence asked him.

“All the time. I do it every hour. I wake up in the night and stretch them. You were right about that. Look at this.” He held out his hands to her and very carefully spread his fingers to the side. That wasn’t something I had seen before.

“Wonderful work,” Florence said. She managed to sound genuinely impressed. From here she would go to work and teach people how to pick up cups and hold forks and all day long she would find it in herself to sound impressed when they managed to do what she had asked. That’s the kind of person Florence was.

“I’ve been working on that as a little surprise. I’m thinking I’m going to get back to the piano soon.”

“Why not now?” Florence said. She polished off the end of her espresso.

“Now? I don’t know if I could do it yet. I haven’t even tried. I haven’t even had a cup of coffee.”

“You didn’t think you were ready to pick up the fork, either.”

“A fork is not a piano.”

“Well, I’m here for about—” She looked at her watch. “Another seven minutes. You couldn’t wear yourself out too much in seven minutes, right?”

I reached over and combed my father’s hair down with my fingers. “Why don’t you give it a try?”

My father shrugged, pushed up from his chair, and walked into the living room as if he were going to the gallows. Florence and I followed him. There it was, my mother’s piano on which she had played so brilliantly the night before. He sat down on the bench and gave an enormous sigh. “It’s not going to work,” he said. “I can’t get my right elbow to bend.”

“Try it standing up,” Florence said.

I pulled the stool away and my father stood in front of the piano. They seemed to be squaring off for a fight.

“Don’t try to play something,” Florence said. “That’s not what this is about. Just press some keys. Get the feel of it.”

For all the times I’d seen my father brushing over the tops of the keys, I hadn’t heard him push one down. He put a finger on C sharp. He pressed. The note rang out clearly on his command. My father winced as if the sound hurt him. “Oh,” he said sadly.

“That’s great. Try again,” Florence said.

He tapped at a few more keys. It wasn’t a tune, but there was an order to what he was doing. He closed his eyes.

“Try to use all your fingers,” Florence said. “Try to play scales.”

“I’ve never played scales in my life.” He kept on hitting keys. I could almost make out the sense of it. It was almost like a melody.

The sound of the piano, however disjointed, was enough to bring my mother out of her room. She stood in the doorway and
watched quietly. Suddenly I could follow the tune: “What’ll I do—when you—are far away?”

“Go away,” my father said, his eyes still closed. How was it he always knew where she was?

“You’re doing fine,” my mother said.

“Says the woman who plays Gershwin.”

“Just play,” my mother said. “It’s good for your hands.”

But at that my father’s hands slipped off the keys. He walked past all of us without saying a word and went back to his room, kicking the door closed behind him.

We just stood there, the piano so helpless and silent. Finally my mother exhaled, a long, slow breath. “Poor Guy. Can you imagine how terrible it would be not to be able to play the piano?”

“I can’t play the piano,” Florence said.

My mother looked at her with inestimable sadness. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I had no idea.”

“Maybe I’ll learn later,” Florence said.

“If you ever need some help, call me. After all you’ve done for us, the least I could do would be to give you some lessons.” My mother looked at her watch and shook her head. “I need to get back to work. Thank heavens your father insisted on me buying the boxes ready made. I’m barely going to be able to finish them as it is. If I were in there cutting cardboard, I’d never make the deadline.”

“Are you going to go talk to Dad?”

“If it were me I’d just want to be alone for a little while,” my mother said. Then she said good-bye to Florence and left.

“Don’t worry too much about your dad,” Florence told me. “He doesn’t believe it but he’s coming along right on schedule. This stuff is hard on everybody. You’d think it would be harder on
him being a pianist and all, but the truth is we’re all awfully fond of our hands.”

“Maybe that’s what’s so hard about it. I think of what I would feel like if I were him. I don’t imagine I’d hold up very well.”

Florence looked down at her own hands for a minute, wondering what they were capable of. “Maybe I should take your mother up on her offer,” Florence said. “Do you think it would be too late for me to learn to play the piano?”

“At this point I don’t think it’s too late for anything.”

I wrapped up the rest of the almond apricot cake and sent it along with Florence. I tried to go back to work after she left, but I couldn’t help worrying about my father. My mother may have wanted to be alone in such a circumstance, but if it were me, I would hope that someone would come and find me. I went and tapped on his door.

“No,” he said.

“Just for a second.”

“Well, I can’t turn the damn lock, so I guess I can’t keep you out.”

He was sitting on the edge of his bed, still in his bathrobe and pajamas. Of course he was. No one had come in to get him dressed. His eyes were watery and red. His arms were resting in his lap. He looked at me blankly. “So I’m sitting here feeling sorry for myself and you’ve come to talk me out of it. Okay, I feel better. Thanks.”