Heavy Cakes
Luke Rolfes
The woman at the small town coffeeshop made cakes for my grandmother’s memorial. They were heavy, three-tiered cakes. You could tell she worked hard on them, and that she had crafted them with pride, and that the cakes had gone through more than one draft. It was her moment to shine. I imagine the girls working with her had said, “Leave it alone, Bev. Those cakes are good enough.” But the woman who owned the coffeeshop responded, “They have to be perfect. They’re for a funeral.”
I picked the cakes up and carried them to my car one by one. An old woman in the coffee shop watched me travel back and forth, as if a shaggy-haired guy carrying cakes between a refrigerator and a Highlander was one of the more interesting things that had happened in January. “Twenty years ago, I would have helped you,” she said after I loaded the last cake and returned for a tray full of coffees.
On the top of the pink box—carrot cake, my grandmother’s favorite—the woman who owned the coffeeshop had written in marker, “Please keep these in the fridge until ready to serve,” and then signed her name. I don’t know why, but when I read the cake box, I thought about how my kids—aged 4 and 7—liked to stand on the Union Station footbridge in downtown Kansas City and wave at passing trains. I thought about how every now and then, you could see a gloved hand, through the double-paned glass, waving back.
Luke Rolfes is the author of the novel SLEEP LAKE (Braddock Avenue Books), and the short story collections IMPOSSIBLE NAKED LIFE and FLYOVER COUNTRY. He teaches creative writing at Northwest Missouri State University and edits LAUREL REVIEW.
Table of Contents for Flaw and Favor