Chapter 4 Taking the Cake
Taking the Cake
Margaret made four different appetizers for the book club: turkey and mushroom roll-ups, chicken salad in toast cups, pickled
asparagus wrapped in ham, and smoky salmon cream cheese spread—a bright pink concoction with the consistency of library paste
that she molded into a fishlike shape and decorated with slices of pimento-stuffed olives, overlapping the edges so they looked
like scales. Since she still had Viv’s punch bowl, she made punch too.
At the last minute, Margaret decided they needed dessert and baked a coconut ambrosia cake—white layer cake with a pineapple
filling, frosted with clouds of fluffy meringue, and decorated with shredded coconut, canned pineapple rings, and maraschino
cherries. Walt came home from the office just as she was finishing the decorating.
After tossing his navy jacket over the back of a kitchen chair, he loosened his tie and came to stand next to Margaret, wrapping
an arm around her waist as she painstakingly placed cherries into the exact center of each pineapple ring. “Wow! If that’s
dessert, I can’t wait to see dinner. Pretty fancy for a Wednesday night.”
Walt’s embrace threw off her balance, causing her to drip cherry juice onto the coconut. Margaret pushed off his arm and leaned closer to the cake, squinting and picking off garish pink shreds with her fingers.
“It’s for the book club,” she reminded him. “They’ll be here at seven.”
Walt took a step back, taking in the platters she’d just removed from the refrigerator. They were ringed with green parsley
hedges and red radish roses that were planted with frilled toothpicks to keep the Saran wrap from touching, like poles under
a cellophane circus tent.
“I hope you’re not expecting me to eat finger food for dinner. I’m starving.”
“There’s a cheese sandwich and some apple slices in the fridge. The kids already had theirs. Plate’s right in front of you,”
she said when he opened the refrigerator door, impatience creeping into her voice as he stood there, gazing into the depths
of the appliance with unseeing eyes and a grim expression. “Right there. Next to the milk.”
“A cheese sandwich. Gee. Hope I didn’t put you to too much trouble, Margaret.”
He reached into the refrigerator, bypassing the sandwich and pulling out a beer bottle. Margaret stepped back from the cake,
tossing the frosting palette she’d been using to camouflage the pink blotch against the countertop, where it landed with a
clatter.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Just this once, will it kill you to have a sandwich for dinner? I’ve been working all day, trying
to get ready for this party—”
“And do you know what I’ve been doing all day, Margaret? Actually working. Clocking another ten-hour day so we have money for the mortgage and the car loan and everything else around here,
including food to feed a bunch of gossipy housewives who have nothing better to do with their time than sit around on their
asses, eating cake and whining about how terrible men are!” He yanked open a drawer, pulled out a bottle opener, then wrenched
the cap off his beer and tossed back a furious swig.
The crack about “actually working” plucked the string of Margaret’s already taut nerves.
She felt like reciting a list of all the thankless, boring, unremunerated tasks she undertook on a daily basis, everything from washing his underwear and ironing his dress shirts to waxing the floors and defrosting the freezer.
But the petulance in his voice and his outrageous statement about a book she knew he’d never even read pulled her up short. Was he serious?
“You’re throwing a temper tantrum because of the book?” She rolled her eyes. “Wow. And you’ve got the nerve to say women are the whiny ones? For your information, it’s not about you! Of course I shouldn’t be surprised, because men always think everything is about them. But this time it’s not.
“It’s about us, housewives, women just like me,” she said, softening to near supplication. She pressed her open hand to her chest, afraid
she’d been too harsh, and wanting her voice to make him understand. She moved closer, placing her body between Walt and the
still-open door of the refrigerator. “It’s about the things we long for and have been denied, the soap we’ve been sold and
the lies we’ve believed, and the way we’ve been—”
As she spoke, he reached past her and pulled out the sandwich plate. Then he marched across the room and dumped the food into
a trash can with great ceremony, his posture ramrod straight, his face icily devoid of expression.
Margaret gasped, then shouted, “Dammit, Walt! Why are you acting like such a child?”
Giving no response, he pivoted on his heel like a sentry performing an about-face and walked away, leaving her ignored and
unheard, abandoned. Margaret followed him, feeling a cold flutter of anxiety as fury and frustration were replaced by the
fear that she’d gone too far.
“Where are you going? Walt?”
He smacked his beer bottle onto the kitchen table and grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair. “The club. Don’t wait
up.”
“For the third time this week?” she said, hating the neediness in her voice but relieved he was speaking to her again. “Walt, please. Don’t be like this. I’ll make you something hot, all right? How about scrambled eggs?”
He shook his head wordlessly and stuffed his arms into his jacket sleeves, frowning slightly when his hand touched his pocket
and he felt something inside.
“This came for you,” he said, tossing the envelope onto the table and retrieving his car keys. “If it’s another ad for a magazine
subscription, the answer is no. We get too damned many as it is.”
Walt drained his beer and Margaret tore open the envelope, heart pounding and fingers trembling, quivering with anticipation
and dread that made her feel almost sick. Only vaguely aware that Walt had walked to the refrigerator to get another beer
for the road, she pulled a thrice-folded sheet out of the envelope, staring at the back side of the creamy stationery for
a long and breathless, almost prayerful moment before unfolding the letterhead.
Had intensity of longing been enough to bend the universe in the direction of desire, Margaret would have seen her own name
written in the salutation of that letter, followed by words of congratulations and perhaps even a check with her winnings.
But that is not how the world works.
After scanning the “Dear Contestant” greeting and generic rejection, Margaret screwed her eyes shut and took a moment to berate
herself for forgetting that. There was little time for self-pity, and none at all for tears, because her guests would be arriving
any minute. Thank heaven she’d resisted the urge to tell anyone what she’d been up to. She didn’t want anyone, especially
Walt, to know she’d wasted time and money on such a quixotic endeavor. Margaret crumpled the letter into a tight ball, swallowed
hard, and opened her eyes.
Walt was gone.
He’d left the refrigerator door half open and a frosting-smeared knife on the counter. Before walking out, he’d hacked off
an asymmetrical triangle of cake, leaving a litter of crumbs and coconut on the plate and a cherry-red gash in the snowy-white
icing.