This was perhaps the 428th lemon cake she had made
in her eighty-one years, and truth be told it looked
like all the others, but this one was different, a cake
altogether distinct from the procession before it, each
delivered in a white box she had charmed out of someone working
behind the bakery counter at the local grocery store,
then fitted with a piece of cardboard wrapped in shiny aluminum foil
and a paper doily, on which the yellow confection
sat like a jewel in a velvet box. As always,
she had tied the box in twine like an old fashioned
package from the bakery in her childhood neighborhood
in Toronto, at the corner of College and Clinton Streets in 1937,
back when they used string instead of scotch tape
or a computer printed sticker with the price and the bar code.

As with all the preceding cakes, she had started with a mix
and added four eggs, a box of lemon pudding, three-quarters cup
of fresh squeezed lemon juice and the zest of two lemons,
then baked it at three-fifty in a greased bundt pan
placed in the center of the oven for forty-five minutes.

She had let it cool, same as ever, right in the pan
instead of a wire rack. It was topped,
as they had always been since she made her very first cake
in 1966 for a bridge party at the Downing’s, with powdered
sugar. She didn’t believe in using icing—the cake was decadent
enough, no reason to get carried away. Her
mother had done it this way, except of course her mother never, ever,
used a mix, for a host of compelling reasons, not the least
of which was they cost too much money. But we digress. This
lemon cake was profoundly different from all 427 cakes
she had baked before because of the feeling of gratitude that
had welled up in her as she cracked the first egg into the bowl
and observed the rich golden hue of the yolk.

The grateful feeling had grown
as she broke three more eggs then whisked them
to a light, fluffy foam into which she added the zest of two
lemons. It was something in the color, or maybe in the
actual molecules of the egg yolk and the lemon zest,
that had expanded into an orb of dazzling grandeur, like
the sun, but not blinding or hot, just intensely magnetic and
potent, that had opened up and invited her in like a sultan
to his chamber, a lover who knew every note and nuance
of her unplayed heart, whose merest glance could open her up
like a treasure chest full of precious jewels. As she added the
oil and the mix, the scent of lemon wafted up into her
nostrils and the joy that swept through her then had nearly
caused her to swoon right there in her spotless white kitchen.

She had remained joyous all morning as the cake baked and cooled.
It was a certain lightness in her heart, as if her body was no longer
made of aging flesh and bone but of brilliant golden foam, lighter
than air itself, like a substance not of this earth at all. This was all
so strange and new, especially considering all the trips to the
emergency room and the doctor’s office she had made in recent
months, the shrugging answers she had gotten from her
doctor when she asked what might be done to make her
feel like her old self again. She had been feeling, even when
she went to bed last night, as if she were about to die. In fact,
she had been thinking about death far too much lately,
sitting in her recliner chair watching the news on television,
too tired to read a book or even get up for a glass of water.

It had seemed of late that she might never have
the energy to make another cake, much less to take one out
to a dinner party. All her life she
had felt half buried under a layer of grime, unable
to get fully clean, to rise up out from under the weight of her own
life and fully live as she knew, somehow, she was meant to
live. How strangely effervescent she felt as she tapped the powdered
sugar onto the cake, then tugged the plastic wrap out from under
it to reveal a perfect white doily on a sparkling aluminum foil sheet.

When she wrapped the twine tightly around the box and tied it
into a simple square knot, she felt that this cake, made
on November 4, 2007, was nothing short of a miracle.

Marlane Agriesti Miriello

Copyright 2007. All rights reserved

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