Eat Cake: A Novel

by Jeanne Ray

  She looked over her shoulder. “Come sing this, Guy.”

  My father got up without a word and sat down backward next to my mother on the piano bench. It took him just a minute to find his place in the song and when he saw his opening he stepped inside, his voice effortless and sweet.

  “Beside the garden walls, when stars are bright—you are in my arms …”

  It was worth everything, that moment, that song. It did the very thing that music can do when it is at its best: It elevated us and healed us and showed us how to be our better selves. My parents were happy together and they made something so heartbreaking and beautiful that no one in the room so much as touched a glass for fear of disturbing it. When they came to the end of their song the room demanded they do another, and then another. They did four songs together and then got up at the same moment and said good-bye.

  Sid was wiping tears from his eyes. “I’ll hire you on the spot. Right now, the two of you just as you are.”

  “As we are?” My mother laughed. “My dear, you have no idea what you’re saying.”

  We were thanked for the cake and returned to our car with promises extracted to come back and sing immediately, maybe tomorrow. I was so included in Sid’s praise that I felt as if I’d been at the piano too. When we went outside the sun was weak but still shining. I couldn’t believe it. I felt like it had to be after midnight.

  My father fell into his seat, exhausted, and my mother buckled him up. “This may have been too big a day for me.”

  “You’re not used to being out,” I said.

  “I’m not used to being out,” my father said. “That’s a laugh. My problem has always been that I wasn’t used to being in.”

  “We’ll just drop the other cakes off at the front,” my mother said. “We’ll have the bellboys take them inside. Then if you want to go back another day, that would be nice.”

  “Who knew you played so beautifully?” My father closed his eyes and rested his head back against his seat.

  “You used to know,” my mother said. “You’ve just forgotten.”

  When we got back to the house Camille was beside herself. “Don’t you people ever leave a note when you go out? Where have you been?”

  “We’ve spent the afternoon in a piano bar,” my father said.

  “Well, that’s nice for you but meanwhile I’m home fielding phone calls.”

  Sam came in the kitchen with a handful of notepaper. “The phone has been ringing off the hook around here. We may have to get call waiting.”

  “What did they say?” I asked. I was afraid to hear it, even though it was good news. I could see good news written all over Camille’s face. I never knew that people could be afraid of good news too. I realized that good news took you places you didn’t know anything about. It changed everything as much as bad news did.

  “Ten restaurants, ten orders!” She threw her arms around my neck and screamed the kind of scream that was reserved for best girlfriends telling secrets about boys and class elections.

  “Ten cakes!” I said.

  “Ten cakes from the first one, that’s over a week.” Camille started flipping through her notes. “Then eight cakes from the second place. The third one wants fifteen, they’re having some sort of massive party.”

  Sam hugged me and kissed my neck with an enormous smack. “I think my new job is going to be as the booking agent,” he said.

  I felt dizzy, but I didn’t know if it was from business or pleasure. “How many cakes the first week?”

  “Um, let me see. Dad, where are your numbers?” Sam gave Camille his sheets of paper and she ran through the numbers. She tapped the papers with her fingertip. “One hundred twenty-eight cakes this week.”

  “They all want you to call them back too,” Sam said. “They need to talk about kinds of cakes.”

  “One hundred twenty-eight cakes?” my mother said. “Full-sized cakes?”

  “This week,” Camille said cryptically.

  “And money?”

  Camille raised her eyebrows at me. “Don’t you think I held the line?”

  “Forty?” I sat down in the kitchen chair.

  “Five thousand one hundred twenty dollars, gross,” Camille said.

  “Forty dollars a cake!” my mother said. “That’s robbery!”

  “I heard that already,” Camille said.

  In a moment of sheer bluff my daughter had doubled our earnings.

  “I love this girl,” Sam said, and kissed Camille, who didn’t even flinch.

  “I can’t make that many boxes,” my mother said. “I’d need to buy a factory. I’d need to hire every child in Camille’s school.”

  “The boxes are what pulled them in,” my father said. “The cakes are what keep them. You need to make new boxes for new clients. I’ve got some ideas for some other people I can call. There’s no reason why we have to stay local. We can target a few cities nearby, places we could drive to in a couple of hours. Then we hire a few teenaged kids and get a delivery service going.”

  “I don’t have a plan,” I said. “I don’t have the ingredients. I don’t have enough pans. I’m going to need more ovens. Where are we going to put extra ovens?” For a second I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I put myself inside the cake.

  It was good.

  When we got into bed that night I put my head on Sam’s shoulder. “Big surprise,” I said.

  “No surprise at all,” he said. “Once I saw all those cakes, I knew there would be no stopping you.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “You’ll figure it out. Look how smart you are, getting all of this going.”

  “It just happened, you know that. It’s like all these years we’ve been living in a house full of cakes not knowing what to do with them and now, all of the sudden, there aren’t nearly enough cakes to go around. It’s crazy. I never thought the day would come when I wouldn’t have enough cakes.”

  Sam kissed the top of my head. “You’re going to be great.”

  I wanted to tell him I was scared and absolutely thrilled to death. I wanted to talk about what a wonderful job Camille had done, how proud I was of her. I wanted to tell him about my parents at the piano and about Sid and how they could go back any time they wanted and play at that club and probably make a fortune, but I didn’t say any of it. I was afraid it would only seem like I was doing well when Sam wasn’t. I wanted to be closer to him and yet all the things I could think of to say were things I was afraid would drive us apart. I didn’t know how I had let things come to this and I didn’t know how to get out of it.

  “I was thinking of flying out to Newport, just for a day or two. I want to talk to some people, look around.” Sam’s voice was tentative. I knew somehow he had been trying to find the right time to tell me this for days. “Ever since I talked to that guy about the state that hospitals are in, I’ve thought I should go and look at boats. I could get a better idea about whether or not I have any chance trying to do something with this if I could talk to some people face-to-face.”

  I was determined to sound supportive. “Sure, that makes sense.”

  “I thought I’d check out some hospitals too. Just to see. Maybe I could do some sort of combination of the two things. Something practical, something impractical. That way both of your parents would be happy.”

  “Do you think you might want us to move to Newport?” Now? When I might have a chance at something big?

  He patted my shoulder in the dark. “I’m sure it won’t wind up that way, but I just thought it wouldn’t hurt to look.”

  “Sure. It’s like you said, you have to think things through. When would you go?”

  “Maybe soon. Maybe even in the next day or two. I got a really good ticket on the Internet.”

  “When would you go?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said.

  There was so much I had to tell Sam. I need you to stay. I want you to stay and help me mix batter and deliver cakes. I have to have yo
u stay so that you can help me and be proud of me. Please, I thought. Please stay. But what I said was, “I can drive you to the airport.”

  “You’re going to be so busy tomorrow you won’t even know I’m gone. I’ll just leave my car at the airport. It’s only going to be a night or two.”

  It was then, on one of the best days of my life, that I started to cry, but not so anyone would notice.

  Chapter Eleven

  THIS TIME WHEN SAM CAME THROUGH THE KITCHEN in the morning carrying an overnight bag my mother didn’t even blink.

  “Did you pack your sunglasses?” I asked him.

  “They’re in the car.”

  “And a life jacket. I don’t want you falling overboard without a life jacket.”

  “I’m not going sailing. I’m just going to look at some boats.”

  “Someone might ask you to go sailing. I want you to be careful.” I want you to stay home.

  “I promise to be careful.”

  There was no other way to drag it out. The time had come and I had to let him go. “Have a good time.” I gave him a kiss. “I’m going to miss you.”

  “You’ll be up to your neck in cakes. It’s probably better that I won’t be underfoot.”

  “Sam,” my mother said, reading over the order lists for the eighteenth time. “Could you pick up some things at the grocery store while you’re out? Not the big list, just enough to keep us going for today.”

  “I’m not coming right back,” Sam said.

  My mother didn’t look up. “No problem. We should probably just do it all at once anyway.”

  Sam kissed the top of my head and was gone. For a minute I thought I should cancel every cake and go with him.

  “I don’t see how we’re going to do this,” my mother said. I was standing at the back door watching my husband drive away. It wasn’t that I thought he wasn’t coming back, but just seeing him drive away with so much left unsaid made me inestimably sad. “We’re going to need to start buying things, that’s for sure, and you’re going to have to get on the phone and talk to these people about what they want and when. We’re going to have to hire somebody, at the very least a driver to make deliveries. We can’t have you out driving around the city when you should be home, baking.”

  “I know,” I said. All my life, whenever I had had a crisis I had turned to cakes, so at least I knew what I had to do. I felt like my heart was breaking and so I turned on both ovens and tied a dish towel around my waist.

  “Don’t you think you should call the restaurants first?” my mother said.

  “It’s too early for that. I just need to bake for a while.”

  There were a lot of lemons in the house and so I started there. I went to work on a batch of lemon cakes. I got out the electric juicer Sam had given me three Christmases ago and felt a pang of gratitude every time I pushed a lemon half down and watched it spin out lemon juice into a cup. I had thought it was such a silly extravagance at the time. I never minded squeezing lemons by hand, but Sam said he thought it would be so efficient. We vowed to drink fresh-squeezed orange juice every morning and then gave it up by New Year’s.

  As I started to cream the day’s first butter into the day’s first sugar, I realized that cakes really could solve a lot of problems. Maybe this could be a real business. Maybe cakes could make tuition payments and mortgage payments. I didn’t mind the thought of working hard. I had been working hard all along. But what I found to be so scary was accepting the responsibility of taking care of people financially. What if the cakes sold really well for a couple of months and then everyone got tired of them? What then? I had had this job for a few hours and already I was wondering how I would feel if I lost it. Suddenly I understood what my father had been saying to Sam about taking some time off and figuring out what he wanted to do. There was a lot of pressure being the person who took care of the children and made the meals and kept the house running, but there was also a lot of pressure if you were the one who had to come up with the money. I wished that Sam had stayed around so I could tell him that. I wasn’t sure I had ever made it clear how much I appreciated all that he had done.

  When the phone rang, I thought that maybe it would be Sam calling from the airport. I turned off the mixer and dried my hands.

  It was a man’s voice, but not my man. “Ruth, dear, it’s Sid.”

  “Sid? Oh, Sid.” The beautiful hotel lobby, the sparkling green drink. Was that only yesterday? “Thank you for being so kind to my parents.”

  “Your parents were wonderful.”

  “I thought they were. Do you want to talk to my father? I could have him call you in just a minute.” I didn’t think my father was up but I could get him up quick enough.

  “I always want to talk to your father but actually it’s you I’m calling for.”

  “Me?”

  “I loved the cake. I had to tell you. As soon as I had a piece I took it into the restaurant, and as soon as our chef had a piece he called the president of the hotel. We had some very good luck on that one. He’s here this week. The chef called him and said, ‘Come downstairs and have the best piece of cake you’ve ever had in your life.’ It melts, Ruth. It’s like magic. I’ve never even imagined cake like this.”

  “I’m glad you liked it.” I felt nervous. I had a terrible suspicion there was more good news on the way.

  “Liked it? No, I loved it.”

  I realized this was one essential difference between raising a family and having a job: the praise factor. “I’m glad you loved it.”

  “So, of course we want the cakes for the restaurant. We’ll start them out as specials, and once we get a feel for which ones are doing the best, I’m sure that the chef is going to want to add them to the menu. I should have brought you in to meet Azar yesterday. He says you are extremely gifted.”

  “That’s wonderful.” I was feeling a little sick.

  “Wonderful, yes, but that’s not even the wonderful news. Mr. Sanders, the top man, the president, he’s very interested in your cakes. He’s wondering if you can get that sweet potato cake into the mail. He likes the whole package—the cake, the box. He’s thinking about using them as gifts.”

  “For his family?” I asked hopefully.

  “Corporate gifts, V.I.P. guests. He thinks they’re completely unique. This could mean a lot of cakes.”

  I put the phone against my chest for a minute and took one good deep breath. I was going to try for a version of honesty. At this point it was my only hope. “Sid? I think this is all great. I’m really appreciative, but I’m going to need to talk to the girl who’s managing the business. I want to find out how many cakes a day we can handle right now, realistically.”

  “Of course. Give yourself a couple of weeks to get the whole thing up and running and then we’ll talk corporate. In the meantime I want to put you in touch with Azar. I want you to come up with something that’s just uniquely us, a cake that we’re not going to see anyplace else in town.”

  “Sure, I can do that.”

  “And you’ll bring your parents back?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’d like to see your whole family working here. I think you’re geniuses, all of you.”

  After I hung up the phone I sat at the kitchen table and held my head in my hands. Two seconds later the phone began to ring again and I got up and switched on the answering machine.

  No one is here to take your call right now, Camille’s voice said. But if you leave your name and number—

  I knew that the call was going to be somebody wanting more cake and right now I didn’t want to talk to them.

  My father walked into the kitchen just at the sound of the beep. “Guy,” a man’s voice said. “It’s Lenny. I’ve called to talk to your daughter about this cake.”

  “It’s Lenny from the Four Seasons!” my father said. “Pick up the phone.”

  I held my finger up to my lips, as if maybe Lenny could hear us on his end.

  “I don’t know why
I told you to go to restaurants. We want her cooking here. At the very least we want to buy these cakes. Guy, I want a lot of these cakes.”

  “Why aren’t we picking up the phone?” my father whispered.

  “Too much cake,” I whispered back. I looked over my kitchen. It was covered in cooling racks and half-empty cartons of eggs. I was already out of baking powder and I hadn’t even started on what needed to be done. I didn’t even understand what needed to be done.

  Lenny finished his message, leaving his phone number and an emphatic request for a return call. When he hung up the phone it rang again. I went to turn off the volume on the answering machine.

  “What’s wrong? Are you suddenly afraid of success?”

  “I don’t think I’m afraid of success but I have no idea how to bake that many cakes. Don’t worry, I’m going to call everyone back. I just need a second to think.”

  “What’s there to think about?” my father said. “All you’ve got to do is cook.”

  “Sam,” I said. “I’m thinking about Sam.”

  “Is he having a problem with the cakes?”

  I shook my head. My father sat down at the table and rested his arms on top of the newspaper. “I don’t think so. I don’t know. We haven’t exactly talked about it. We haven’t talked about anything. Something’s happened. He’s in his world dealing with his problems and I’m in my world dealing with mine and I feel like we just keep getting farther and farther apart.”

  My father leaned over to look behind me. “So talk to him. Where is he?”

  “He went to Newport this morning to look at a boat. He wants to sail. I want to bake cakes.”

  “And you want to be married to Sam?” my father said.

  “Of course I do. Don’t you think I can have a business and be married?”

  “Sure you can. You have to remember, I’m the one who suggested this business in the first place, and you’re always getting your nose bent out of shape because I like Sam so much, so I must think that they’re both good ideas, the business and the marriage.”