Eat Cake: A Novel by Jeanne Ray Page A

girl!”
    But we all just kept looking at him, staring in exactly the way that one would try very hard not to stare if he were a stranger you were passing on the street. There was just something so unfinished about it all, as if the doctors had realized he only had Medicare halfway through the surgery and so had chosen to just walk away. I gave my husband a helpless glance, but Sam looked pretty washed out himself. Someone just coming in on the story might have thought that whatever they had been through, they had been through it together.
    “Dad,” I said. “Are you okay?”
    Behind me I heard the fast scrape of my mother’s chair pushing away from the table.
    “Hollis,” my father said. “Not even a hello for your old husband?” He turned his body toward her and his arms leaned out for their embrace.
    “Go to hell,” my mother said. I had never seen such a look of fury on my mother’s face. She was completely unmoved by the obvious display of physical trauma. In fact, for a minute I thought she was going to go in to break his leg.
    And so the kitchen became paralyzed, the women on one side, the men on the other, my father reaching out for us, Sam holding him up. I wanted to go to them, to kiss them both, but I was afraid that would be the very thing that would send my mother into theabyss. To my deep amazement, it was Camille who crossed the linoleum, put her arms around my father’s neck, and kissed his scratchy cheek. “Hey, Grandpa,” she said.
    He looked at her and then he looked at Sam. “Don’t tell me this is Camille. Don’t tell me you’re little Camille?”
    “I’m little Camille,” she said.
    “You’re a butterfly,” he said. There was no bravado in his voice. “Hollis, did you see how beautiful this child is?”
    “I see her every day,” Hollis replied, every word an ice cube thrown at his head.
    Camille leaned forward and whispered something in her grandfather’s ear that made him smile hugely. “I would ruffle your hair, dear child, but I am completely unable.”
    “That’s all right,” she said lightly. “I’m pretty much over the hair-ruffling thing.”
    I couldn’t even remember the last time I heard Camille make a joke. “She’s getting back at me,” my mother whispered to me. “It’s because I yelled at her this morning.”
    “That looks like it really hurts,” Camille said, peering down at the place where the pin met the skin.
    “It would, my love, were it not for pharmacology.”
    Finally my own feet became unstuck from their place on the floor and I went over and kissed my father. He still smelled like Bay Rum. I wondered if one of the nurses had put it on for him or if he had such a buildup in his system over the years that he would smell like Bay Rum in his grave. For a moment I touched my face against his neck while he held out an arm on either side of me. “Welcome home,” I said.
    “Ruthie, you’re a champion, taking your old man in like this. Sam was telling me on the ride up that you two have problems ofyour own. I was sorry to hear about that. Sam is a fine man. Hard to imagine what kind of ninny would fire him.”
    I saw Sam look queasy. Something told me it had been a long drive. “We’re all going to be fine,” I said.
    “Fine!” my father said, his voice so glad you would have thought I had actually said something of substance. “That’s right! You’re a champion, Ruth. She’s a champion, isn’t she, Hollis? You did a fine job with this one.”
    “Camille is a butterfly and Ruth is a champion,” my mother said. “You’ve got it all figured out.” The configuration in the kitchen had changed. Now Sam and Camille and I were standing with my father and my poor mother was left over by the plates of half-eaten lasagna.
    “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of your letting bygones be bygones?” my father said.
    “Not one chance.”
    He nodded. “Okay, then what are the chances of getting a glass of Wild Turkey? Des Moines is in