It’s late, late enough to watch Milton Berle
on The Tonight Show.
Davy is young enough to think
Uncle Milty is hilarious.
Richie puts his arm around me.
It rests on my shoulder.
Davy groans.
“Not here, Richie,” I whisper.
Milty gets pie in his face.
It’s always funny somehow.
Richie and Davy both go off the deep end laughing.
They take one look at me—
my face is stone—
and that cracks them up even more.
Seeing Richie laugh, though, is catching.
So now it’s Richie and me
having the hilarities.
We can’t stop even after Davy
recovers and changes the channel.
The oven timer finally goes off.
I remove the baking pan
and inhale the buttery aroma,
place it on top of the stove.
When I hear the front door buzz,
I gasp for air.
Which way will this go?
“Hi, Mrs. Meyers,” says Richie
as she walks into the kitchen.
“Grandma was tired and went home,”
Judith explains, and just stands there
as if she doesn’t comprehend English.
“This was Maisie’s idea,”
says Richie proudly.
“It was supposed to have orange flavor,”
Davy adds,
“but we only had lemons.”
Finally her eyes settle on our masterpiece.
Then, in front of our eyes,
the center of the cake
begins to crack, shrivel, and sink,
as if gravity itself
suddenly turned against us.
Now Mother is sinking, too,
down into a chair, her body dense,
as if she’s going to fall
right through the kitchen floor,
descend into the core of the earth.