The Second Cake on Mom’s Dock

The toast

By two in the afternoon the sun was high and hot, the three pontoons were tied up together in the cove, and the kids had been in and out of the water so often their lips were blue.

Uncle Dave had his radio on the Twins game, low. Glenn was in the back of Dave’s boat with Rex, the two of them talking about whether walleye were deeper this year with the heat.

My daughter, Tess, who was ten, kept swimming up to the ladder to ask if it was time for cake yet. I kept telling her not until Grandma did her toast.

Mom had written the toast on an index card. She had worked on it for a week. She told me on the phone she was afraid she would cry and lose her place, so she wanted it in writing.

At about a quarter after two, Uncle Dave turned the radio off and whistled through his fingers. Everybody on all three boats got quiet. Mom stood up, holding the rail with one hand.

“I’m not going to talk long,” she said. “I just want to say some thank yous before I lose my nerve.”

People laughed. She looked down at the card.

“First, I want to thank Allison for this cake,” she said. “In seventy years, nobody ever made me a cake. I don’t know what to say about it except thank you, honey.”

I felt my face get hot. A couple of the aunts said, aw. Tess, hanging off the ladder, yelled, “I helped with the pearls,” which was true, and everyone laughed again.

“Thank you to Dave for bringing his boat,” Mom said, “and for not sinking it, which is more than he managed in 1978.”

More laughing. Uncle Dave took a bow from behind the wheel.

“Thank you to all you grandkids for coming, and thank you to the Lindgrens for letting us tie up to their buoy,” Mom said, and she pointed across the cove to the Lindgrens’ dock, where Ted Lindgren raised his coffee cup.

Then Mom stopped. She lowered the card. Her eyes had filled, the way she said they would, and she reached into her pocket for a tissue and turned a little away from everybody.

And Rex started clapping.

I do not blame Rex. He thought she was done. He is a kind man, a big quiet man who drives truck for the co-op elevator, and he only wanted to help her through the moment.

So Rex clapped, and then everybody clapped, and Uncle Dave hollered, “Let’s cut that cake before it melts,” and the whole raft of boats started moving at once.

That is when Kate stood up.

The rail

I was turned toward Mom. I did not see Kate walk to the table. I only heard Rex say, “Katie,” in a low voice, the way you say a dog’s name when it is about to go after a skunk.

Then Kate had the cake board in both hands. Three tiers. It weighs close to fifteen pounds, a cake like that, and she lifted it like a casserole dish and tipped it over the rail.

That is all it took. One motion. I have thought since then that it must have looked almost graceful from the shore.

The slap on the water. The cake floating on its board, white against the green, all three tiers still standing straight up like it had no idea anything was wrong.

And then that silence, with thirty people in it.

Mom sat back down on the bench. She folded her hands over the index card. She looked at the water and did not say anything.

Kate said, “Mom thanked her first,” to Rex, and sat down on the cooler.