Chocolate Give Me Bourbon Cake—
extra bourbon for all the reasons
My car rolls to a stop in the driveway of my parents’ house—a narrow two-story Victorian painted white with denim blue trim and a line of shaped shrubberies running along the side. Even though the property is small, everything on it is neat and tidy just like my parents, not a stray leaf on the lawn or a discolored shingle on the gray roof. I wince. My mom’s house, I correct myself. Even though it’s been almost a year, I still think of them as a unit. Charles and Eleanor, despite being distinct opposites—him a quiet baker’s son from the country, her a socialite from a well-to-do Boston family—they found commonality in the small things, like their love of baked ziti and their impossible expectations for their daughter.
I hesitate, falling back in my seat and exhaling, resistance building inside of me. But Spence is out of the car in a half second, bouncing in the driveway and yanking his duffel bag out of the trunk. “We’re here! Whoohoo!”
I desperately wish I could borrow his enthusiasm, and trade in my expectations of tension and inevitable disappointment for something less painful. But even in the best of times when I was a star student, my mother and I didn’t have an easy relationship.
Spence opens my door. “Mom,” he says like I’m holding up the fun.
For a split second, I consider pulling him onto my lap and throwing the car in reverse with a Harley Quinn celebratory getaway cackle. But instead, I find myself taking my coat and purse off the passenger seat and stepping into the chilled salty air that carries the scent of the ocean even in winter.
Spence yanks my cupcake-print suitcase out of the trunk with a plunk and drags both it and his duffel toward the door. I pluck it from his grasp, and he skips up the steps, pressing the doorbell two times fast. Unlike Jake’s sparse communication, my parents have called every Saturday religiously these past few years. I’d spend about thirty seconds on the phone saying some version of How’s the weather? and then Spence would take over. And while I’m glad that he has a relationship with my parents—Goddammit, I correct myself again, with my mom—that’s enriching, I share no such bond.
Before I can steel myself for the inevitable, the door swings open, revealing my mother in a burgundy knee-length skirt suit, hair blown into fluffy waves around her rose-tinted ivory cheeks, a single strand of pearls around her neck—a debutante out of place in her middle-class backdrop like a crystal glass on an otherwise informal table.
Her eyes flit from Spence to me. “You’re not wearing your coats,” she says with a frown. “It’s absolutely freezing.”
I consider explaining that the proper-lady etiquette she attempted to instill in me didn’t stick, but I don’t get a chance because Spence is already inside and hugging her.
“Grandma, did you see the lights in town? They’re everywhere. And—” he stops short near the door of the living room. “Is that your tree? It’s GIANT.”
My mother smiles, satisfied by his reaction to her tree, impeccably decorated in red and white—all non-matching sentimental ornaments stashed away inside the branches where they can’t muddy her aesthetic. It’s not actually giant, but it appears that way because the living room is small and the thing pushes up to the ceiling and out like a Hershey’s Kiss, exemplifying my mother’s best skill—making her very average means appear more.
I close the front door behind me, hanging up my coat in the foyer closet and kicking off my boots while she shows Spence the stack of presents intended for him. I join them in the living room, and she looks from my cupcake suitcase to my jingle bell socks, her eyebrows knitting together. I can almost hear her thoughts: Presentation is everything, Madeline.
“You must be hungry,” she says as Spence circles her living room ogling the monogrammed red velvet stockings hanging from the mantle.
“We ate on the way,” I tell her, aware that it’s hours past her designated dinnertime. She and my father have eaten promptly at 6:30 every day of my life.
“I saved you food,” she replies. “It’ll only take a minute to reheat.”
“Thanks, Mom, I appreciate it, but I’m stuffed.”
“You’ve had a long trip,” she says, her tone betraying her annoyance that I drove instead of flew, which I justified as an adventure for Spence, purposefully omitting that I couldn’t afford the last-minute holiday-adjacent tickets. “You should have something.”
We stare at each other uncomfortably, the simplest of conversations somehow turning sour.
“I’ll eat,” Spence announces happily, and I find myself grateful for his bottomless kid hunger.
“While you guys do that,” I start, “I’d love to take a quick—”
“You can sit with us, Madeline, even if you’re not hungry,” my mother says in a tone that leaves no room for disagreement.
“Sounds good,” I reply, resisting the urge to engage in our usual verbal chess.
* * *
I wheel my cupcake luggage into my little bedroom, exhausted from the drive, the worry, and the hour-long second dinner with my mother. Spence is still downstairs, giving Mom a detailed account of our recent trip to the aquarium. I figured it was best to exit before he got to the part where we reenacted Jaws so convincingly in the gift shop that one of the employees asked if we needed a medic.
I collapse onto the striped navy duvet, shoving a velvet accent pillow under my head. My room is like a time capsule of my life as a teen—outwardly perfect, a reflection of my mother’s good taste with antique furniture and a spotless beige area rug, the sentimental things hidden away, shoved in a box in the closet or closed away in a drawer, the only exception being the picture frame on my vanity. It’s one of me and my dad covered in flour in his bakery kitchen when I was eleven, our eyes practically squeezed shut from laughing so hard. As I stare at it, the memory hits me like an unseen wave, surprisingly forceful and disorienting. And before I realize I’ve made the decision to get up, I’m gravitating toward it, lifting the gold frame, my fingers grazing the velvet backing.
As reserved as my dad always was, he came alive in the bakery. Mostly, he was a man of few words; he’d state his piece and when he was done, he was done, so much so that I always wondered if his friends even knew him that well. But when he was teaching me the trick to pâte à choux or telling me the secret of his crème anglaise he could talk for hours, passionately rambling off the history of tarts and which piping tips yield the best flowers. And this was and is hands down my favorite picture of us, not posed like the others around the house, but real and messy. I immediately wonder if my dad saw it here, and if he thought about the fact that I didn’t take it with me, the realization pricking me with unease.
I put the frame back in its place, about to turn away. But the hook of nostalgia keeps me planted there, staring at my vanity where I once stashed my most precious things.
And despite my knowing it’s folly, a pang of anticipation zings through me. I carefully ease out the drawer with my stationery in it, and slide my hand to the back, popping out the false bottom. There, just where I left it ten years ago is my journal, chronicling my teen years with Wilder, the good and the bad. The leather cover is worn from being clutched to my chest in moments of high drama, and the pages are stuffed with pictures. When I left it, I cried big heavy hormonal tears. I even considered turning my Prius around halfway across the state and going back for it. But in time, I was glad I didn’t have it. Reading it in California would have been excruciating. It was hard enough that first year without a detailed reminder of all that I’d lost.
But now? It feels a bit like an old movie, the kind that people’s grandparents project onto their living room wall, flashes of compelling images from another lifetime.
I flip open to a page stuffed with notes, the ones that were once folded in elaborate shapes, and pull one out with a satisfying crinkle, edges rough from being torn from a spiral notebook. At the top of the page is Wilder’s handwriting and the sight of his familiar script sends off warning bells in my mind. Warning bells I do not listen to.
W: Go with me to the apple orchard this weekend?
I smile stupidly (aware that I’ll regret this later, much like the temptation of a second piece of cheesecake that is sure to sit like a rock of doom in your stomach) remembering when I got this in Mrs. Lemon’s math class in the fall of sophomore year—she was a notorious note shark, famous for catching them and reading them aloud, making it all the more fun to slip one past her. And on this particular day, we tossed this thing back and forth until we literally ran out of space, deeply impressed with our stealth.
M: You wasted a whole note on a question you know the answer to? On a day when Mrs. Lemon is clearly under-caffeinated???
W: Does passing notes with me make you nervous?
M: Are you flirting with me right now? Cause you can save that shit for your admirers.
W: Are you trying to tell me you’re not one of them? Ouch.
M: Pride goeth before a dick becometh, or whatever that expression is.
W: Pride? Nah. It’s actually super important I know where you stand on my admiration. Critical really. Can’t proceed without that info.
M: Nice baiting.
W: No worries. Silence is golden and all that. I guess I just won’t ask you what I wanted to ask you.
M: I will hurt you in all the ways.
W: It’s probably for the best anyway. Lets me off the hook from that big speech I was going to give.
M: I’m this close to kicking you from across the aisle.
W: Temper temper
M: It’s hard not to have one when your best friend is a sly fuck.
W: You heard I was sly in bed? Which of my admirers have you been talking to exactly?
M: Don’t get too worked up over there. We all know you haven’t made it past first base. Or at least I do. My God I hope Mrs. Lemon finds this note.
W: Go ahead. Throw it in her path. I’m not even a little embarrassed. I’ll hook up with someone when it means something, not before.
M: Okay now you’re just setting yourself up as the romantic. Can you feel me rolling my eyes right now? Cause I really really am.
W: You think I’m not?
M: Romantic? I don’t know. Maybe??? Should I ask one of the girls you took to the movies this summer?
W: That or you could just come to the movies with me and find out.
I remember hesitating then, a thrill shooting up my spine. A lot of our conversations had skirted up against this type of thing, something safe enough that it could be dismissed as friendly banter, but charged in a way that felt more like flirting. I could feel him watching me, noting the extra time I was taking to respond.
In a flash decision, I decided to push the envelope.
M: Okay, Wilder, I’m calling your bluff. Woo me.
He silently chuckled when he saw the paper.
W: With pleasure, Madeline DeLuca.
And he did take pleasure in it. He was always the type to hold doors open and offer to carry your bag, but all of a sudden it was like I came first in everything. He was aware of me wherever I was in the room, always anticipating me. He knew when I was cranky and when I really needed an ice cream pick-me-up. He brought me small presents—not showy things like flowers, but smaller and infinitely sweeter things like my favorite lip balm on a cold day, or a pen that had a secret compartment he could fit a note in. And my God, did it work. By the time he kissed me three weeks later, I was helplessly in love with him.
I fold the note up and place it back in my journal with a heavy sigh, promising myself that this was a one-time indulgence. I do not want to think about Wilder Buenaventura. Unless it’s to imagine kicking him in the shin. But I don’t have time to dwell because my door opens.
“I told Spencer I would make him up a bed on the couch,” my mother says, coming into the room, and I shove the diary back in the drawer. She eyes me as I take a fast step away from the vanity like Who me? Reading love letters? That’s just bananas. My lack of subtlety earns me a raised eyebrow. “But he said he wanted to stay in here with you.”
Spencer squeezes around her and plops his bag on the floor. He’s afraid of the dark, and while we have a routine at home that makes him feel comfortable in his own room, he always stays with me when we travel.
I grab him around the waist and pull him onto the fluffy comforter, blowing a raspberry against his cheek. “Gotta get the kid snuggles while I still can.”
He laughs and wipes his cheek. “Gross. You totally slimed me.”
My mother watches us, seemingly unsure if she’s horrified or oddly fascinated by our caveman behavior. She opens her mouth to comment just as a wet finger pokes into my ear. I yelp, which causes Spence to double over in laughter and my mother’s eyes to double in size.
“I’m headed to bed myself,” she says, fluffing the ruffles on her white blouse. “We’ll talk about the matter concerning your father’s will on Sunday.”
And just like that, I stop laughing. I know that’s what instigated this trip in the first place, but her sudden declaration feels off-putting. “Is it a good matter or a bad matter?” I ask before I can stop myself.
She was cryptic on the phone, leaving me to draw my own conclusions. As far as I ever knew there were only three major things in my father’s will—this house, his collection of antique leather-bound books, and the bakery. She mentioned it only once right after he passed, and I got the impression that it pained her to delineate the summation of their thirty years together in such plain terms. My mother came from old money and has always acted like it, even though she lives in no such luxury and hasn’t since the day she married my father and her parents cut her off. Which leads me to conclude that this will issue most likely concerns the bakery. Part of me wonders if she’s ready to sell, a thought that makes my pulse unsteady and my stomach sour with guilt.
“We’ll discuss it on Sunday,” is all she says. “10:00 a.m.”
It’s official. I’m back in Eleanor-Land, a totalitarian kingdom where you plan a meeting time for personal conversations.