The Slice Of Cake I Switched

Looking back, I can see the shape of it now the way you can see a design in a rug once someone points it out. Damon was not simply gossiping out of some private resentment. He was laying a case. If enough people in Alder Flat believed that Bernadine had not been herself since her mother’s death, that she was unstable, unreliable, maybe drinking more than she should, then it would not look strange at all when the co-op reconsidered handing her their most trusted seat six weeks before the vote. It would look responsible. It would look like the board was simply being careful.

And if the board reconsidered, there was only one other person in my family with the standing to take that seat instead.

I had no idea any of this was happening until the night of my own party, and even then I only understood the shape of it because a woman who had spent a year being asked to help build it finally could not carry it for one more hour.

The Cake Comes Out

The party had been easy up until the cake. String lights ran the length of the deck my neighbor and I had put up together the week before. Somebody’s kids were chasing the dog around the side yard. Darrell stood near the drinks table in a clean flannel shirt, holding a paper cup of coffee he refilled himself every twenty minutes, the way he always does at gatherings, a habit our mother used to say kept his hands busy so his mouth would not have to.

When Bessie carried the cake in from the kitchen, she held it the way you hold something you are afraid of dropping, both hands flat under the plate, eyes down. I remember thinking, even then, before any of the rest of it, that she looked like a woman bracing for something rather than a woman proud of what she had baked.

“Did you make it yourself?” somebody asked her.

“Mostly,” Bessie said, glancing at Damon before she looked at me. “We wanted tonight to be memorable.”

Damon took the knife from her hand before she had finished setting the cake down. He cut with a kind of ceremony, handing out plates in an order that only made sense to him, and he saved my slice for last, the thickest one, the one with the whole rosette still sitting on top like a little crown.

He put it in my hands and did not step back.

“Eat,” he said, smiling wide enough for the whole table to see. “We made this one just for you.”