For sugar I reduced the last of the orange juice until it thickened into a syrup, then whipped in a thread of honey. This would have to do, because I needed the last of the sugar for frosting. I liked to feather it on lightly, then comb it up while hardening it with the medical cold blower, as if the cake had a fright wig.
The frosting I colored silver with a bead of food-grade aluminum.
When she was younger, Esther preferred black frosting on Fez cakes, and she liked these cakes tethered by rope candy. Or, if not rope candy, then string, dipped in food coloring and pan-seared inside a thin jacket of sugar. When she was ten we’d cooked, cooled, and braided her own rope candy, but left it clear.
“Color is vulgar,” she said, quoting somebody.
Once we’d built trails with jelly beans, linking the baby cakes by candy cobblestone. Esther discovered that the jelly beans could be cut smaller and arranged so densely, it seemed the entire gathering of cakes rested on a pebbled surface.
Instead of a candle Esther would have me soak the perimeter of the cake with a squirt of kerosene, which flamed a perfect halo. When she was nine we strung a wick between two pieces of wire that bordered the cake. The laundry line, we called it. We lit the wick from both ends while singing “Happy Birthday” and watched it fall into the frosting. The two little balls of flame found each other in the center of the cake, burned out, and left a dark, charred circle.
“The burnt part is the best,” declared Esther. “I get the burnt part!”
Today I had no candle, no sweets. I did have a placebo smoke purse, which I’d billowed with safe vapors early in my experiments with Claire. The purse had cured—the plastic must have been tainted—yielding a reddish smoke inside.
I rolled an egg of wax, scooped it hollow, then linked it by drinking straw to the red smoke purse.
The smoke drained from the purse through the straw, filled the ball of wax, clouding the inside of it, turning it dark.
I removed the straw and quickly sealed the ball of wax. With a potato peeler I set about shaving the ball, thinning its surface to transparency. Then Esther could see the red smoke trapped inside. Perhaps she’d pierce the ball with her teeth, let the smoke release into her mouth.
A birthday smoke should be red. It’s the prettiest color for smoke.
When I was done I placed the wax ball on top of the cake. It sank slightly into the silver frosting, and that was that. It didn’t symbolize anything. This was the point. It was interesting to look at and I thought that Esther might have fun holding it up to the light, wondering how the dark red smoke got in there.
I found Claire beneath her linen shield and helped her into the hiding place under the stairs. Her body was light in my hands these days, but if I pulled the comforter she was resting on, I could drag her as on a sled from room to room, interrupted only by the thresholds, which offered a small obstacle Claire didn’t seem to mind.
I did not speak, did not tell her where we were going, but she’d want to see this, her daughter’s birthday. Together we could watch safely through the hole in the door our own little girl. It would be safe. Esther would come home and have some cake and we could watch her together.
I left a trail of Post-its that would lead Esther to the cake, which I’d positioned on a pedestal table within view of the peephole. We’d bored a hole into the crawl space door and now this was our little shelter beneath the staircase.
Next to the table I pulled up the children’s chair she used when she was younger. Surely she could still fit into it. And at this height she’d be right in our line of view, provided she didn’t move the chair and turn her back on us.
Inside our heads Claire and I could sing “Happy Birthday.” No one would have to hear. Esther wouldn’t even know we were there. She could enjoy her cake and it would be nice to be together again.
I pushed Claire into our cave beneath the stairway, tucked her all the way back, then crawled in myself. Claire did not rouse herself or show much interest. When the time came, when Esther returned, walked through the house, and then found the cake, I would wake Claire and help her see.
We settled onto our cushions, pulled shut the door, and waited. Claire leaned against me, seemed to whisper something, but I think she was speaking to herself.
From where I sat I could see perfectly through the peephole. That was a pretty cake on the pedestal, its little wax ball starting to sweat from the smoke. I was just fine to wait here.
It was dark and late when I woke beneath Claire’s damp body. Someone was in the house. I pressed my face to the peephole.
The footsteps shook the floor. Esther must have been wearing boots. She clomped through the house as if she were old and slow. I could hear every move as she walked near to us, then far. All I saw through the hole was the little silver cake on the table.
The steps drew closer, and then a voice called hello. A man’s voice.
Hello and hello and hello. He called out the name Steven? Steven as a question. He asked if Steven was there. Walked through, opened and closed doors. Was Steven home? Anybody?
“Hello?”
It was Murphy.
I held my breath.
He was bundled for the cold. He stood huge in our little house. The room was doll-size with him in it.
He stopped next to the cake, let a finger drag through the frosting. He turned and looked at the door that sheltered Claire and me.
I stared at him through the peephole and did not move.
The wet rattle of Claire’s breath seemed suddenly loud. I could not shush her. Even placing my hand over her mouth would not work. The sound didn’t come from her mouth, but from her chest, her whole body. Our hiding place vibrated with Claire’s gasps.
Murphy walked off, resumed calling out hello, but in a lifeless, obligatory way, as if he couldn’t turn off his voice.
I waited for Murphy to leave, but he took his time. He went upstairs, came down, went back up. At one point it seemed that he pulled up a chair, sat for a while, before scooting out again.
In our bedroom Murphy seemed to move some furniture.
Finally the front door closed and his steps retreated.
I kept on waiting, pictured Murphy walking to his car, opening it, getting in, and driving away. Then I pictured the same routine again, over and over, until I could be sure that he was far away.
Except I could never be sure of that.
Claire’s weight was stifling, a wet pressure. I pushed her off me and climbed out of the crawl space to survey the damage.
All throughout the house everything seemed as it was, except upstairs I discovered that the hut repair box was missing from my drawer. The little tools meant to fix the listener at the Jewish hole, tools I’d never needed to use. This box was all that was missing. For all of Murphy’s raucous rummaging he hadn’t taken much.
But the cake had been disturbed. Not eaten, but violated, the ball of wax collapsed, smokeless. Something had been dropped on the cake, then removed. I made a fist, held it above the ruined cake. This was too large.
The size of the crater was just right for Esther’s hand, I reasoned. Balled up, punching down.
I couldn’t believe she would destroy her own cake. Certainly the cake had collapsed because I had baked it poorly, failed to follow a recipe. It was stupid to think I could go in the kitchen and improvise like that.
Perhaps Esther was not hungry. Perhaps she came in and saw the cake and decided she might have a slice later on. Only not now. After dinner, maybe.