Eat Cake: A Novel

by Jeanne Ray

  There was a lot I didn’t know: which restaurants to go to, who to ask for, how much to charge if in fact they wanted to buy. When I thought about those aspects I wanted to just forget about it and go take a nap. But I kept Florence’s voice in my head. I was to take things one at a time, stick to what I knew. I knew how to bake. The first thing I was sure of was that this was all about cake. Pies, tarts and tartlets, a dozen different kinds of gorgeous cookies, soufflés—they all spun through my head and I dismissed them all. I was going to specialize. It also seemed to me that there was no single cake that could really represent what I could do. I got on my hands and knees and emptied out a low cupboard until I found a set of six-inch cake pans. With these it would be reasonable to take every restaurant three different kinds of cakes, one chocolate, one fruit, and one wild card, like the sweet potato cake or the scarlet empress. I had a Bundt pan that held about three cups of batter, and I thought of an almond cake surrounded by little marzipan birds, tiny yellow buntings asleep at the base. I was a fool for marzipan.

  “Sam and your father are going to be deaf within a month if they don’t learn to keep the volume down.” My mother was standing over me in the kitchen.

  “I don’t even hear it anymore.”

  “That could be a bad sign. Maybe you’re going deaf too. Why are you cleaning out the cabinets before dinner?” After all, I was sitting on the floor with pans going out in every direction.

  “I was just looking for something.” I held up the pretty little Bundt pan to show her. I had had this pan for years. Camille used to love to balance it on her head like a crown.

  “Dear God, Ruth, you aren’t going to bake another cake, are you?” My mother had changed since my father had moved home. She had gone from someone who seemed scattered and a little foggy to someone who was, well, overly sharp. I wasn’t sure which way I liked her better.

  “I am going to bake another cake,” I said. “In fact, I’m going to bake a lot of cakes. I’m going to bake until every surface of this kitchen is covered in cakes.”

  My mother looked at me as if she thought I had lost my mind. “We’re supposed to eat that much cake?”

  I crawled back into the cabinet and pulled out a few more pans. It was shocking to see how many of them I had. They not only represented a lifetime of what I had bought for myself, they represented years of gifts, from Sam, from the children, from my mother, from anyone who had no idea what to buy me for Christmas or my birthday or an anniversary. I found five springform pans. I was like one of those people who collected salt and pepper shakers and snow globes so that all they ever got were salt and pepper shakers and snow globes, except now I was going to need all these things, the cookbooks and the nutmeg graters and the industrial-size Cuisinart. I was going to be able to use them all.

  “Ruth, get out from under there.”

  There they were, all the way in the back. Four-inch pans. Six of them. “Do you have any idea how difficult it was to find a set of heavy four-inch pans?” There was dust in the bottom and I blew in them. I hadn’t made a really small cake in years.

  “I’m glad you found them. You’re worrying me.”

  Having tried the idea out on Sam, I wasn’t so inclined to tell anyone else in my family about my plan. It was very new and felt about as vulnerable as a day-old mouse, its eyelids still sealed shut. On the other hand, people tended to congregate in the kitchen and I didn’t know how long I was going to be able to keep it from them, either. “I’ve decided to try and sell some cakes to restaurants. It’s just an experiment. I want to see if I can make some money.”

  My mother studied the scene and thought this over. She looked at the little four-inch pans in my lap. “You’re going to sell them little cakes?”

  “I’m going to give them little cakes, to see if they like them. If they like them, I’ll have some work, if they don’t—”

  “Then all you’re out is a few little cakes. You bake too much anyway. You might as well give them to people.” My mother leaned over and picked up a huge iron Bundt pan. She strained a little at the weight. “This was mine, wasn’t it?”

  “For as long as I can remember.”

  “You really do hold on to things.”

  “So you don’t think it’s a terrible idea?”

  My mother sat down on the floor. The way she was cradling that pan, I was wondering if she was planning on taking it back to her bedroom with her. “When I was a girl there was only one thing in the world I was any good at at all and that was playing the piano,” she said. “I knew I was never going to be a soloist, but I was good enough to teach, so I went to school and worked hard and that’s what I did. I might not have been Nadia Boulanger, but I kept us out of the poor-house, I can tell you that much. I think if you have something that you really love to do, you’re already ahead of ninety-nine percent of the people out there in the world. Look at poor Sam. That’s what his problem is, you know. He doesn’t have anything that he really loves. At least you’ve got cake. I never thought of it as a moneymaker, but I guess it’s possible. People eat fancy cakes all the time and I suspect they pay good money for them. Why shouldn’t you be the one making the money? As far as cakes are concerned, you are definitely a soloist. You could be baking cakes in Carnegie Hall, if you get my point.”

  I felt a lump the size of a walnut come up in my throat. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “It doesn’t hurt to try, as long as you’re not going to be too disappointed if things don’t work out. You go out into the business world, you have to be tough. Do you know if you’re tough?”

  “Florence says I should just take it one step at a time.”

  “Fair enough.” My mother put the pan down and stood up again. She brushed the wrinkles out of her pants. “So, what about packaging?”

  “Packaging?”

  “Well, you aren’t just going to show up at the restaurants holding a bunch of little cakes, are you? You need something that makes a statement, something they’ll remember you by.”

  “I was kind of thinking they would remember me by the cake.”

  My mother shook her head. “Cover all your bases. There’s no sense leaving things to chance. I’ll make you some nice boxes. Nothing expensive. I’ll be in charge of presentation.”

  My father walked into the kitchen, his arms hanging down to his sides in their silver cages. I was trying to remember if I’d checked his pin sites today. “What’s she in charge of?” he said loudly. I wondered how he could hear us over the game. I guess my mother was wrong. He wasn’t going deaf after all.

  “Presentation,” my mother said. She put a snap in the word, as if to say that she had a job and he didn’t.

  “Why does she get to do presentation?”

  “Do you even know what we’re talking about?” my mother said. “Ruth, did you already discuss this with your father?”

  “No,” I said. “I just discussed it with Florence. It was her idea.”

  “Mrs. Allen is my therapist,” he said. “I don’t see why I can’t do a presentation.”

  “It isn’t a presentation. Are you telling me you’re going to make fabric-covered boxes?” my mother said.

  “I could. How hard could that be?”

  “You don’t have hands,” my mother said, her voice rising. “You have to have hands if you’re going to make boxes.”

  “Don’t tell me I don’t have hands. You can say I can’t use my hands. That would be true. But they’re not gone. They’re right here.” He lifted them up as best he could but the right one came up much higher. His left shoulder was still bothering him

  My mother closed her eyes. “You don’t even know what we’re talking about.”

  “Ruth!” my father barked. “What are we talking about?”

  “I’m going to bake some cakes and try to sell them to restaurants, that’s all.”

  Suddenly my father smiled and nodded, halfway raising up his arm again toward my mother in a gesture that this time meant something along the lines of Se
e? “Well, that was my idea. I was the one who told her to do that.”

  My mother glared at me, utterly betrayed. “This is your father’s idea?”

  Ah, yes, well. I suppose if you broke it down. “He mentioned it.”

  “Fine,” my mother said, throwing up her hands to show my father how it was supposed to be done. “The two of you work on your little project, then. Guy, you can make the boxes. You can market the cakes. You can lick the goddamn beaters for all I care.”

  This stopped us. My mother was not one for swearing. Sam came in from the den. “What are we yelling about now?”

  “Nothing,” my mother said. “Ruth and her father are going into business together. There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “What kind of business are you going into?” It had not been a half hour since we had spoken but Sam seemed to have forgotten.

  “Cakes!” my father said in triumph. “Ruthie is going to bake cakes just like I told her to.”

  “Oh, that,” Sam said, turning back to the den. “I knew about that.”

  “Everybody knew about it except for me,” my mother said.

  I lay down on the floor, stacking the four-inch pans on my stomach. “Look,” I said softly. Sam was already gone. I spoke to my parents. “The two of you may not realize it, but this ship is sinking fast. We’re nearly out of money and we have no clear prospects that I can think of except for cake. Now, cake might not be much to work with, but until someone else comes up with a plan, I think it’s all we’ve got. I don’t know what I’m doing, but at least I’m going to try and do something. If you want to help that would be brilliant. I need some help. You want to go at it like a couple of gang members from warring tribes, then please, love me enough to take it outside.”

  My parents were both silent for a while.

  “Really almost out of money?” my mother asked. “Because I have my pension and my Social Security. It isn’t a lot of money, but no one’s going to go hungry.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “So where are you going to sell the cakes?” my father asked. His tone was breathtakingly reasonable.

  “First I give them away.”

  “I like that. I got a lot of jobs in my life that way, walk in and tell them I’d work a set just for tips. Everybody loves a freebie. So where are you going to give them away?”

  I looked at the light in the kitchen ceiling and noticed there were a few dead bugs caught in the glass fixture. You never really know what’s going on with your ceiling until you just give up and lie down on the floor. “I don’t know.”

  “I’m thinking you might as well go for the best, if money is the object here. You make cakes that are works of art, you might as well sell them for the price of art, which means you don’t want them going to some home-style joint. You need to find the very classiest restaurants and then you need to find out which ones have good desserts and which ones just fired their pastry chef.”

  “That would be helpful,” I said.

  “So I will defer to your mother for presentation. She always wrapped up a pretty Christmas box, I will give her that.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw my mother give a curt nod of agreement.

  “I, therefore, will take marketing.”

  “How will you take marketing?” my mother said.

  “I know every concierge at every good hotel in this city, and most of them owe me a favor of one sort or another. I’ll make a few phone calls and put together a list. I’ll get you the names of the owners, the chefs, the managers, right on down the line to the busboys if you want them. I’ll find out who needs you and who would take your cakes and never call you again.”

  I sat up and put the pans on the floor. “That would be really helpful.”

  “But your mother is absolutely right. It isn’t enough to just show up with cakes. The whole thing has to be stylish. She’ll make them stylish and I’ll find out where they have to go. The only thing is I’m going to need some help with the phone. I might be able to push the buttons but I can’t pick up the receiver.”

  “Certainly if I can take you to the bathroom I can hold the phone for you,” my mother said.

  “Good,” my father said, and smiled. “Then we’re in business.”

  Chapter Eight

  SOMEWHERE IN MY LIFE I GOT THE NOTION THAT if you tried to make a business out of the thing you loved, then that thing would become a job, like standing in a factory all day putting beans into bags, and the love would be ruined forever. Maybe it was the fact that my mother, who had to play the piano for hours a day in order to make a living, so rarely sat down to pick out a song that she liked when she had a minute to herself. My father, of course, was an example of another way of looking at things. Every minute he wasn’t playing the piano he was hoping to get back to the piano. Even now I saw him standing in the living room running the tips of his fingers over the tops of the keys like a prisoner pushing his face through the bars hoping to feel sunlight on his nose. Maybe I was going to turn out to be like my father in this way, because the thought of having to bake cakes morning, noon, and night filled my heart with inestimable joy. I stayed up half the night poring over cookbooks, making notes. Which cake served into the neatest slices and looked best on the plate? Which frosting was both delicious and strong enough to stand up to decorating? What surprises could I put inside, thin slices of apricots or a layer of chocolate shavings on the bottom? My head was full of promise and possibility. Even my trip to the grocery store the next morning was met with real enthusiasm. I shouldn’t have gone until I picked out exactly which cakes I would bake, but I couldn’t help myself. Anyway, there were certain things you were always going to need. I piled my cart full of all-natural eggs laid by happy, free-range chickens. I hefted in ten-pound bags of King Arthur flour. I cut no corners. I bought Plugrá butter and Dutch-processed cocoa and the most expensive nuts in every variety, everything first rate. I bought heavy whipping cream in quart containers and nestled it down between enormous bags of sugar. I found myself smiling at everyone who peered suspiciously into my cart. I’m starting my own business! I wanted to sing to them.

  “Somebody’s doing some baking,” the dark-eyed check-out girl said to me as she ran the almond extract over the scanner, her twenty silver bracelets ringing over her wrist.

  “A little,” I said innocently. I thought that if this all went well I would give up the local grocery store completely. I would start shopping at members-only wholesale clubs, where the flour came in fifty-pound sacks. I would leave the small time behind.

  I stopped by the mall to pick up a few bottles of Madagascar Bourbon vanilla at Williams-Sonoma, something I had once considered an enormous luxury now seeming like an absolute necessity. I looked at every baking pan they had to see if there was anything I needed but found that, short of a couple extra cooling racks, I was better stocked than the store.

  The day was sunny and clear with just the slightest touch of warmth in the air. I whistled that song about whistling from The King and I. When I brought my first load of groceries into the house, I found my parents sitting close together at the kitchen table in a strange configuration. My mother was holding the phone to my father’s ear with her left hand and holding a pen on top of a pad of paper with her right hand.

  “It was the damnedest thing you ever saw, Lenny,” my father was saying. “I thought I was going to the john and I opened the wrong door and went right down the stairs to the basement. Smashed up both my arms in a dozen places.… No, I’m not kidding, both of them. You should see me now. I can’t do a thing.… No, I’m serious, I’m not even holding the phone right now. My wife’s holding the phone.… Sure I have a wife, an ex-wife, whatever. They all hold the phone just the same regardless of whether or not you’re still married to them.”

  My mother snatched the phone away and clamped her hand over the receiver. “Will you just get to the point?” She shoved the phone back against his ear, making a little clunk against the side of his head,
which caused him to turn and give her a dirty look.

  “Sure I can still play the piano! Of course, I’m not playing right now, but the doctor said I’ll be back one hundred percent. He even thinks my hand is going to be able to spread out wider when this is over.… That’s right. I’ll be playing things nobody else will be able to do. My plan is to try some dual piano stuff with me playing both parts. Wouldn’t that be wild? We’d have to do a show with two seatings every night, hundred bucks a ticket, just like Bobby Short.”

  My mother took the phone again and hit my father soundly on the top of the head and then put it back to his ear.

  My father glowered at her. “That?” he said to the phone. “No, that’s just the call waiting. Ignore it. It’s probably my agent again. The guy’s driving me nuts trying to get me back to work. He understands nothing about the healing process.… That’s right. But let me tell you why I’m calling, Len. My daughter … Yeah, I’ve got a daughter and a wife. You never know what’s going to come out in the wash, right? My daughter, she’s a big-time pastry chef, been living out in L.A. all these years making cakes for the stars. She’s come out to Minneapolis now, you know, trying to settle down, clean up her act a little.”

  Now I was reaching for the phone, but my father wrinkled his forehead and shook his head.

  “I want to set her up with some restaurants, the best of the best. She’s going to be sending some cakes around and I wanted to call you first. You’re going to know what would be good enough for my kid. Can you give me a list?… Brilliant. There’s a cake in it for you.… No kidding. You’ve got a wife, don’t you? Wives love cakes.… Sure I’ll come down and see you. Who’ve you got playing down there now? … That moron? You’ve got to be kidding me. The guy only plays about a third of the keys. I always thought he must have taken his lessons on an abridged piano.… Well, you’ve got to make do. I’ll be back on the circuit soon enough. You can buy me a drink when I bring the cake down. Listen, I’m going to put my girl on. This is Hollis. You can tell her anything. Buddy, I owe you. I’m not going to forget this.… Perfect. Here’s Hollis.” Then he nodded to my mother.