Eat Cake: A Novel by Jeanne Ray Page B

peeled the apples with ridiculous care, taking the skins off in long, even ribbons that spiraled down to the floor without breaking. I didn’t think of any of them while I peeled those apples. I didn’t work anything out in my mind. I just relaxed into the creaming of butter and sugar, the sweet expansion of every egg. I had hoped the mixer wouldn’t wake anyone up. The last thing I had wanted was company.
    I cut off big, hulking slices and slid them onto dessert plates. The apples were soft and golden, the cake was a rust color. I hadn’t even cleared the table. I just pushed one course aside and made room for another, then I dropped into my chair and started to eat. I did nothing to help my father and Camille got up to feed him his cake. For a few peaceful minutes we said nothing to one another. We simply ate.
    “You always could cook, Ruthie,” my father said dreamily. “Especially cakes.”
    “She didn’t get it from me,” my mother said.
    My father shook his head. “Sure she did, Hollis. You were a fine cook. I remember you made the best lemon meringue pie.”
    “Ruth probably made it.”
    “This was before Ruth,” my father said. Suddenly there was so much kindness in his voice that everyone at the table lifted their heads and looked at him. My mother looked away.
    The truth was, my mother was neither a good cook nor a bad one. Her food was economical and nutritious. It reheated well. She did not believe in luxury or embellishment, so she saw little cause for baking.
    “Camille, did you know that when your mother was a little girl she baked her own birthday cakes?”
    “That’s weird,” Camille said.
    “At first she baked birthday cakes for all her friends in school and then one year, I think she was nine, I was having a party for her and she asked if she could bake her own cake. Nine was very young, I thought. It was a complicated cake. I don’t remember what kind it was now. I think she made it up.”
    “Do you remember what kind of cake it was, Mom?”
    I shook my head no, but of course I remembered. The first cake I ever made for myself was a landmark in my personal baking history. It was a lemon glow chiffon that I sliced into twelve half-inch layers, spread with strawberry jam, reassembled, and covered in seven-minute icing. Looking back, such a cake would appear to have been a monstrosity, but to a nine-year-old it was a glamorous, ambitious cake that had the aura of something very French, even though I had no idea what that meant at the time.
    “Well, that’s what your talent is, baking cakes,” my father said, his voice suddenly heavy with disinterest. “You never got very far on the piano, did you?”
    “Ruth plays nicely,” my mother said.
    “No,” I said. “I didn’t get very far.”
    I shaved off a few thin slices for seconds. I knew how to cut the cake in a way that no one would object to having a little bit more. As for the piano, my father was wrong. I could play, I just couldn’t play in front of other people. I may have inherited some of my parents’ talent but I got none of their stage presence. Some of the most soul-carving moments of my childhood centered around group recitals where I had to play “Clair de Lune” to a living room full of bored parents and restless children. The hours before thosesmall, humiliating performances were the only times I seriously considered running away from home. But I played in the locked practice rooms in college every night after I left the library, and the hours would slip by without notice. When Sam and I were married I played the piano whenever I got home from work before he did. I played when the children were little and then played even more when they were in school. Really, my father would be surprised. I was a pretty good pianist for a housewife. It really was when my mother moved in with us that I stopped playing because I couldn’t imagine playing in front of her and there never seemed to be a time when I was in the house