Eat Cake: A Novel (20 page)

For the first time since my mother moved in with us more than a year ago, Sam and Camille and I ate dinner together alone that night. We were oddly shy around each other, no one really knowing what to say and all of us wanting to say, Gosh, this is kind of nice. We were thrilled to have them gone and yet they were the only thing we could talk about.

“So I’m kinda getting used to the whole pin-through-the-bone thing,” Camille said. “At first, I didn’t think I was going to be able to stand it. Now I hardly notice it at all.”

“And he’s getting more flexibility in his fingers,” Sam said. “Those exercises that Florence gave him have really been working. You’ve got to hand it to the old guy. He’s doing really well.”

“I’m surprised at how well my mother is doing, really. I know she despises him but they seem to be doing okay. I mean, they fight constantly but at first I didn’t even think she was going to speak to him.”

“Oh, that first night when Grandpa came? I thought she was going to go the whole time without saying anything.”

And then we pretty much ran out of things to say. I had thawed out some frozen vegetable soup I found, some frozen French bread. It wasn’t bad. There was cake for dessert. I started to wonder how the family was going to be reconfigured in the future. Wyatt was in college and might not ever live at home again except for summer vacations. In all probability, one, if not both, of my parents would still be in the house until Camille went off to college, making this evening the rarest thing in the world. Would one—and God, please, not both—of my parents live with us until they died? I didn’t want them to die and yet I wondered what the time line was we were talking about. Would they live to be a hundred? Would I be taking care of my parents when I was nearly eighty? And then there was the biggest question of all: Would Sam always be here, or was he really thinking about sailing off and leaving his responsibilities behind him? I felt a terrible sadness come over me. I knew there was no sense in trying to hold on to anything in life, and yet I wanted to keep everything just like this. Just the way it used to be. I would be better this time. I had learned how to appreciate what I had.

That’s when my parents came in, my mother’s arms full of cardboard boxes and various packages, my father trailing behind her with empty arms.

“Behold, the wanderers,” Sam said, and raised his water glass to meet them.

“Did you have a good time?” I asked.

“I’m just going to put these things down in my room,” my mother said.

“You’ve got two minutes,” my father said. “I don’t want you in there cheating.”

“What do you think? I’ve got sheet music stuffed under the mattress?”

“You’re tricky,” my father said. “And you’re cheap. You’d do anything to win your bet.”

“
I’m
cheap? Who paid for dinner?”

“You picked a cheap restaurant.”

“Mom told me today that I was adopted,” Camille told my father.

“That’s great, sweetheart, but your grandma and I have a little bet going. There’s money involved. It’s a very serious business.”

My mother came back into the kitchen with her jacket off. She was curling and uncurling her fingers the way I had seen her do a million times when I was little, the way she always made me do before I sat down to play the piano.

“What’s the bet?” Sam said.

“Your father thinks I can’t play ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ without sheet music.”

“Now, let me tell you, in all fairness, the second half is her fault. What I said was that she couldn’t play ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ if her life depended on it. She threw in the no-sheet-music part herself.”

I was a little concerned about this one because I had no memory of my mother ever playing “Rhapsody in Blue” and I certainly had no memory of her ever playing anything without sheet music.

“Okay,” she said without a care in the world. “Let’s do it.”

“I’ll warn you,” my father said. “She had a drink.”

“I had a glass of white zinfandel. That hardly means I’m impaired.”

We all filed into the living room, where really no one ever went unless it was to play the piano. My mother’s baby grand Steinway, which she had brought with her from Michigan, had
taken the place of my upright, which had been squeezed uncomfortably into the den. We did not need two pianos in the house, but neither of us wanted to be the one to give ours up.

“Take a seat. Everybody take a seat,” my father said, dropping himself down into the most comfortable chair. Sam and I sat together on the sofa and Camille lay down on the rug even though there were plenty of seats left. My mother took her place on the piano bench.

“I used to play this piece two or three times a night,” my father said. “It was my opener. I remember there was one night back in Denver—”

But my mother had no interest in the story.
Dum-dum-dum-dum … dum-dum-dum
, she flew into the keyboard, her hands springing up higher than her shoulders. She attacked the Gershwin. She got so much energy out of that piano you would have thought there was an entire orchestra in the room. Her back stretched and flexed with the power of a sixteen-year-old Olympic swim champion. She tore the keyboard apart, evoking Manhattan at night, the sweeping skylines of brightly lit windows, the syncopated energy of the crowds in the streets. I had seen my mother play all my life and I had never seen her play like that before. Camille rose up on her elbows. Sam and I leaned forward. My father, speechless at last, had tears in his eyes. It was no abridged version, either. She knew the whole thing, every surprise turn, every crescendo. When she roared through the final notes we were clapping like crazy, my father was stamping his feet and whistling, his poor useless arms immobilized and envious. My mother stood up and made a light comic bow from the waist.

“Ten bucks!” she said.

“I had no idea you could do that,” Camille said.

“Anybody can do that if they practice long enough,” she said casually.

“You never told me you could play like that,” my father said. “I think you’re a ringer.”

My mother crowed. “I’ve been telling you I could play like that all night. You-never-listen-to-me.” She smacked the back of her left hand into her open right palm to punctuate each word. “That was always the problem. He never listened.”

“I would have listened if you had played like that,” my father said.

“Where did you learn that?” I asked her. “I don’t remember you playing that at all.”

“Play it? I played that thing so much that when I’m in my casket you’ll be able to pull me out and set me in front of a piano and I’ll still be able to play it.”

“But where was I?” I asked.

My mother sat down backward on the piano bench and relaxed. “Oh, you were a little girl. You were only two. Even at two I’m surprised you don’t remember it. It was right after your father and I broke up and I took on a bunch of extra piano students. There was this boy, Jimmy Depriest. He was a mediocre piano student until one day he heard Gershwin on the radio. He was so obsessed with Gershwin his parents came to talk to me. They thought there was something wrong with him, like he wouldn’t be a regular kid again until he learned this music and could shut up about it. They wanted me to teach him Gershwin, which was more than a little bit out of his league. But they were insistent. Well, you can’t teach what you don’t know, so I learned the piece. I played it a hundred times. Then I started teaching it to Jimmy and I played it about a thousand times more. He wanted to
come for a lesson every day and his folks paid, so what was I going to say? It drove the neighbors batty. They would bang on the walls every time we started. That song got so stuck in my head I couldn’t have gotten rid of it with shock treatments. After a while I wanted to run screaming from the room every time it came on the radio. I was never so sick of a piece of music.”

“And you’re telling me you hadn’t played it in all that time?” my father said.

“Why would I have to? I know it.”

“But you always have to have sheet music,” I said, trying to make sense of what I knew and what I had seen.

“That was an old habit. I never look at sheet music anymore.”

It was a piece of music I have always loved, and now I knew why. It was the theme song of my childhood.

“Well, you would think this would be the moment when I would say that if I had two good wrists I would get up and show you how it’s done, but that’s exactly how it’s done. I couldn’t do any better than that, Hollis. My hat’s off to you.”

“That’s awful sweet talk,” my mother said. “But you still have to pay me the money.”

That night Sam and I lay down beside each other in the bed, not talking about cakes and not talking about boats. “Your mother,” he said. “Who would have thought it?”

“Amazing,” I said.

We rolled toward each other and kissed in the dark, sweetly, chastely. No matter what happened there was always that kiss at the end of the day, and I wondered what it would be like to try to go to sleep without it, not like I went to sleep without it when Sam was
out of town. I was thinking of sleeping without it as in never again. I wanted to turn to him and grab him in the dark, but I didn’t know if I wanted to pull him to me or smother him with my pillow, so I stayed on my side of the bed and went to sleep.

While I was asleep, I dreamed of all my little cakes in the water, buoyant as ducks. To every cake there was attached a small sail, every one a different and beautiful color. It was a regatta of cakes, and they left the dock and the rocky shore of the lake and headed out toward open water, which I worried was dangerous. But the cakes seemed to be having a wonderful time. They were finally going someplace. Their sails puffed out with the wind. They picked up some speed. I thought, This is it, I’ve lost my husband and my cakes. And I stood alone on the dock and I cried.

When I woke up it was four o’clock in the morning but I knew that I was finished sleeping for the night. I watched Sam for a while. He was probably dreaming of boats too. I remembered the day we met at the library, our first awkward dinner, the second date in my courtyard, where we ate cake and knew we were in love. I thought of our marriage and the birth of our children and I loved him. I loved him so much that for a minute I wondered if I could sell everything so that he could have a boat.

I picked up my bathrobe and headed to the kitchen. All of the cakes from the day before were tightly wrapped, unfrosted, and sitting in a row. They looked so beautiful, golden and full of promise. I would bake another dozen this morning, and then when they were frosted and glazed and tweaked with powdered sugar and scattered raspberries, I would take them out on the road. I was measuring out the flour for the day when I heard the creak of a door. It was then that I realized I hadn’t turned the kitchen light on. I was working by the back porch light and the little light put
out from various glowing kitchen clocks. My mother came down the hall from the direction of my father’s room, robe unbelted, smiling to herself. When she saw me she let out a little scream.

“Ruth! Heavens! Are you trying to kill me?” She had her hand over her heart.

I held out my measuring cup. “Do I look like I’m trying to kill you?”

From down the hall I heard a door creak open. “Hollis!” my father called in a stage whisper. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she whispered back loudly. “Go back to sleep.” My mother turned around to look at me. It was as if I were the one sneaking around at four in the morning and she wanted an explanation.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” I said. “I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to do some baking.” I held up the bag of flour to show my good intentions.

“You don’t need to bake twenty-four hours a day,” she snapped.

I looked down the hall. The light was off. “Is Dad okay?”

She pulled the belt on her bathrobe tight and then knotted it. “He’s absolutely fine. He had to use the bathroom.”

I started to ask her how she knew that at four o’clock in the morning, and then suddenly thought better of it. “Oh,” I said.

“Good-night,” she said.

And I said good-night.

WHEN SAM WALKED IN THE KITCHEN THAT MORNING
he turned around three times and whistled. “Will you look at all these cakes!” He was wearing a suit.

“It’s a lot of cake,” I admitted. “What’s with the suit?”

“I have a meeting this morning. Not exactly a job interview, but I don’t know, maybe a job interview.” He picked up a small chocolate espresso cake by its cardboard cake round and whistled again. “This is gorgeous. I mean, even by your incredibly high standards this is a work of art.”

I had put two rings of chocolate-covered espresso beans around the rim. It practically vibrated with caffeine. It wasn’t a cake you’d want to eat at bedtime. A job? “Thanks.”

He put the cake down and dipped his finger into a bowl of cream-cheese frosting. “
Fiori di Sicilia
. God, I love that stuff.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I didn’t get it, Ruth.”

“Get what?”

“I didn’t get the
industry
of what you wanted to do. I thought you were talking about a couple of cakes. I didn’t know you had such big plans.”