The Cake

Nico's alarm wouldn't go off for another ten minutes, but he was already awake. He lay there for a moment in the dark, listening to the house wake up: the radiator ticking, somebody's dog barking two streets over, the sound of his own reluctance. Then he got up slowly.

The morning ached with old familiar pains. The hot water ran cold before he was finished. He burned the toast and ate it anyway, standing over the sink. His left boot had a crease that bit into his ankle, and he knew it would become a real problem later.

But before he left, he opened the refrigerator just to look at it. There it was. A three-layer slice of chocolate cake with dark frosting that Margaret saved for him from the birthday party he missed. She had wrapped it and written Daddy on it so no one would touch it.

Tonight, he told himself. Then he closed the refrigerator and went to work.

The day seemed to move more slowly than most, as if it sensed his agitation. An accident on the highway forced him to take a detour, which made him late. Nico hated being late because his supervisor was always looking for a reason to chastise him. He nodded, said, "Yes, sir," and went back to work. The morning wore on like a stone being dragged.

By eleven his body was sore and his joints were swollen. By noon, he was ravenous.

Lunch was a thermos of soup. It was good soup, Margaret's soup, thin and mostly broth, with half a sandwich that had gone a little soft. He sat on an overturned bucket in the shade of the building and ate slowly, trying to make it count. Around him, the other men talked about a game, somebody's new car, and taking their families on vacation. Things Nico couldn't afford. Too many kids. Not enough money.

He thought about the cake. Sitting and waiting to be devoured.

The day had its teeth in him, sure. The supervisor had his complaints. The ankle was doing what he knew it would do. The soup was thin. But there was cake. Three layers of it. Dark frosting. And it was his, not because he'd made it, but because he'd earned the day that would end in it. He'd paid for it in hours of hard labor in the blistering sun.

By three o'clock the heat was bad and his back was yelling at him. He kept going. There's cake, he thought, and almost smiled.

By five he was finished. Nico didn't linger about talking nonsense with anyone. He hurried to his truck and drove off.

Dinner was rice and beans, which was fine. It was good, even. Margaret had put something in it, some herb or other, and the kids ate without complaint, which was its own kind of miracle. The table was loud as the four children talked over one another. They played drums with the silverware and tested their mother's patience, but Nico was unbothered.

He was tired. He was genuinely and thoroughly tired. But underneath it, quiet and warm, was the thought of the cake.

After the dishes, baths, bedtime story, and the glasses of water and the final negotiations of bedtime, Nico stood in the kitchen in relative silence and opened the refrigerator.

He took out the cake. He set it on the table. He got a fork. He sat down. In his excitement, he remembered the boots and removed them for optimal comfort.

As he forked up a generous piece of the cake that would erase the morning traffic, atone for the mouthful from the supervisor, and reward the long painful hours in the sun, Nico heard little footsteps skittering on the wood floor. His four children appeared at the kitchen doorway in their pajamas and watched him hold the fork to his lips. For a long moment, they froze. He looked at his four children as they looked at the cake on the plate.

A voice grumbled inside of him originating from the stomach and passing through the heart up to his brain, "I have been waiting for this since before the sun rose. I endured unfair treatment. I ate the brothy soup and did the dishes and all of it. This cake is mine. The crumpled wrapping paper has my name on it!" He said none of it but heard it loud and clear. He looked at the wrapping paper with Daddy written on it with love.

He was Dad because they were his children. They didn't know about the boot biting into his ankle or the hours he'd spent on the bucket thinking about this exact moment. They were just children who had woken up and followed their curiosity. They hadn't been calculating or scheming. They had simply appeared as children do and encountered cake.

Who said that wanting something longer makes you deserve it more? he thought. Then he looked down at the piece on the fork and back to his children.

"All right," he said. "Sit down."

They descended on the table like a small and joyful catastrophe. He cut large pieces for all four of them and he slid the plates across and watched them eat. They ate it fast and gleefully. Nico watched as the grief in his empty stomach was hushed by the fullness of his heart.

"You can have this part, Daddy." His youngest daughter offered him the rest of her frosting.

He leaned forward and took it. It was the best thing he'd tasted all day.

Once they had finished, Nico put them back to bed and pulled out his dusty old acoustic guitar from behind the couch. He played them a song that hadn't been sung for many months. Margaret came and sat beside him and listened. He played until the house settled. The cake was gone, but the house was full.