The Cradle That Stood Beside the Cake

It was one of those March days we get on this side of the state. Gray sky down low off the lake, old snow in black heaps at the corners of the parking lot, and a wind that went right through my good coat.

The club has a circle drive and a portico with white columns. Earl pulled up under it in a 2009 Silverado with a ladder rack, and a young man in a vest came out to see if we were a delivery.

“We’re a grandmother,” Earl said.

We carried it in between us, him walking backward. Through the double doors, across a carpet so thick it tugged at my heels, and into a dining room that took my breath a little.

I will give Cynthia this, and I will give it gladly. It was beautiful. Round tables with white cloths. Pink and yellow and pale green balloons, since nobody knew which. Tulips in little glass jars, in March, on every table. At the far end was a tiered white cake, three layers, with sugar booties on top. Windows all down one side looked out on the golf course, which was brown and patched with snow.

I have decorated a church basement more times than I can count, with crepe paper and good intentions. I know what work looks like. That room was work, and it was love too, whatever else it was.

Cynthia saw us from across the room and came over fast in her heels.

She is a handsome woman, tall, silver blond, a cream suit that fit her like it had been told to. She kissed the air next to my cheek.

“Linda Faye. You made it.” Then her eyes went to the shape under the moving blankets. “And what is all this?”

“It’s from Earl and me,” I said. “For the baby.”

Earl set his end down and pulled the blankets off.

The light from those windows hit the cherry, and I am telling you, it glowed. Red and gold, like the inside of a peach pit. The room was noisy with women finding their place cards, and three or four of them near us just stopped talking.

Cynthia looked at it. She looked at the gift table, which was a six-foot banquet table already heaped with bags and boxes and a stroller with a bow on it. She looked back at the cradle.

“Oh,” she said. “Well. It’s very large, isn’t it.”

“It’s cradle sized,” Earl said mildly.

“It certainly won’t fit on the table.” She pressed two fingers to her collarbone, thinking. I could see her going over the room in her mind the way I go over a serving line. “I wonder if it might wait in the coat room. Just until we open gifts. The photographer is going to want the cake wall clear, and…” She trailed off. Her eyes had found the headboard. “Tucker,” she read.

“Yes ma’am,” Earl said.

“Well.” She smiled, a little thin. “There’s no mistaking whose that is.”

I felt that one. I will not pretend I did not. I felt Earl feel it, too, though all he did was fold a moving blanket in half and then in half again.

I opened my mouth to say the coat room would be just fine.

A girl from the banquet staff got there first. Her name tag said Kim, and she could not have been twenty-two.

“Mrs. Vandermeer, the coat room’s full, with the weather,” she said. “But I can clear that space right beside the cake. It won’t block anything. Honestly, I think it’d look nice there.” She looked down at the cradle and her voice changed. “Did somebody make this?”