Baking a birthday cake - Writer's Cramp entry (amended) |
Like a drunken sailor leaning lightly on a dockside wall it wobbled jauntily on the granite counter, good intentions warring with the inebriated insouciance of his sangria-slicked fingers haplessly layering frosted ballerina figurines and radiant, radioactively pink and yellow roses onto the slip-sliding monstrous mountain of sugar and cake, bedecked and bejeweled in a way only a newly nine-year old princess could love, patiently if haphazardly baked into submission by the clumsy care of a blacksmith’s hands, an attempt to fill the inescapable, inevitable yearning for a woman’s touch, a mother’s hug, through a confectioner’s artistry, to distance themselves from the dreadful days after her sudden death. She wandered into the kitchen, this creature of whimsy and joy who called him father, and broke into tears at the sight of it, the tilt pronounced, a cake on the verge, tears that broke the little good left inside him until she bounded into his arms, delight dancing across her plucked and painted face, whispering, “I really wanted a cake this year like mami used to make I can’t believe you did this I love you so much how did you this is amazing my friends will love it I can still have my party right,” hugging him fiercely, the words running together in a thickening stream of anguished happiness or happy anguish, the moment photo perfect. Of course it broke with him gasping and gesturing hopelessly, helplessly as the top-half of the cake completed its headlong dive, ballerina limbs and rose petals competing with chocolate to stain the counters, the floor, with sticky goodness. “Oh my god that was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen daddy look did you see how it just went boom kusplat and bam cake all over the floor,” her little hands gesticulating wildly, the sight pinching at the corner of his memories, of her mother doing the same, distracting him from the twinkle of trouble, the frosting she dabbed on his nose unexpectedly sweet, the convulsions of laughter that bubbled between them the best birthday gift he could have given her. |