It Was Me All Along: A Memoir (2 page)

By now I’ve changed dramatically. I can, I want to, I choose to eat a full slice of this cake and love deeply all the many bites I take. I linger on the cocoa flavor, the suede texture, and, when one piece has reached its clean-plate end, I don’t look for another to replace it. I share this cake. I eat it out in the open, in a loud and proud manner. I take pride in having baked something so rich, so true and divine. I won’t eat until I can no longer feel anything but the stretching of my stomach, the growing of my guilt.

Every year since losing all the weight, I’ve baked this sour cream fudge cake. And every year, I’ve felt different about the finished product. How has one innocent cake transformed from abusive lover to healthy companion, while I’ve continued to bake it just the same?

Has the taste changed, or, perhaps, have I?

SHE ALWAYS LET ME LICK THE BEATERS FIRST
.

I grasped the spindly handle of the beater, top-heavy with slick sand-colored dough, and brought it to my mouth as I might an ice cream cone. I grinned into each lick, the corners of my mouth widening into a smile and my tongue extending around each curved silver wire. Gritty brown sugar dissolving; the velvetiness of feather-light flour beaten into softened butter. Of all the tastes I’ve stashed in my memory, that of my mother’s chocolate chip cookies may linger longest. Like her, the flavor is assertive and distinct. As definitive as her Boston accent.

I continued licking, noting her signature doubling of chocolate chips. She looked down and ran her fingers—rough as sandpaper from years of cleaning the homes of others—through the chaos of black curls sprouting on my head. And with her touch I was somehow bothered, mostly by the disruption of such happy licking. I returned her gaze, just in case she was considering taking that
precious beater from my pudgy right palm, and I saw her own hair, wet and as ebony as mine, sneaking out from under a towel. Moments out of a nearly sterilizing hot shower, she was always trying to get four things done at once.

When my eyes caught hers, she puckered her lips and leaned down to kiss me. She pulled back, lingering a moment to remind me, “Francie, I love you ever ever over, even under dirty filthy water.”

I never knew exactly what that phrase meant. Not the name she called me, certainly not the rest. But I understood that this was her way of telling my brother and me we were her lifeblood. It was her unique way of saying “I love you more than anything in this world.”

I smiled and returned my focus to that battered beater.

“What else do we need for the party?” she asked earnestly.

She twirled around, assessing the platters, plates, and trays covering every last centimeter of tiled counter space. The table unable to be set with linens or silverware because the food couldn’t spare the space. The chairs, each with a sweet on its seat. Stacks of plates, cloth napkins rolled and ringed with gold, coolers of cubed ice studded with cans of soda and beer.

“Just cake!” I said, and squealed with delight.

She always made birthdays a grand affair, with balloons and big, boisterous decorations. Never one without an eighteen-inch triple-layer cake from Daniel’s Bakery, our then-favorite cake shop, an hour away. This year’s party was no different, Mom reminded me. “Of course we’ve got cake, baby.”

The very thought of more sweets sweetened me. Still working my tongue through sugar-meets-butter pre-cookie, I looked around at the spread she’d prepared with me at her side. Deli platters
sat coupled with their fluffy bakery rolls, meatballs stewed in marinara with links of spicy sausage bulging like panty hose around an overflowing thigh, trays of lasagna so piping hot, the cheese blistered and the sauce bubbled beyond each pan’s border. Freshly baked bread with seven sticks of butter softening alongside. Bowls heaping with grated Parmesan cheese set beside soupspoons for sprinkling. The hors d’oeuvres—the homemade crackers cut into precise squares, chicken pâté, a dip to plunge every chip in—were kept quarantined in the breezeway. And then, the dessert. No fewer than three fruit pies, each a deep blue, mauve, or red staining her homemade all-butter pastry; two dozen of her thick-like-fudge brownies; custard-filled mini éclairs from the New Paris Bakery in Brookline; those relentlessly chewy chocolate chip cookies; and that special layer cake.

It seemed a reasonable buffet to serve thirty of our family members.

Ever the beloved party-thrower, Mom stayed true to her three trusted modes of catering: massive, more massive, and most massive.

But we’re a family of eaters, all of us, and eaters eat well. We like multiple options. We take comfort in knowing we can always cleanse our palates with deep-dish apple pie before moving on to birthday cake. We think about parties first in terms of menu, followed closely by dessert buffets. I trace this obsession with abundance back to Mom’s mom—a collector. She held on to used wrapping paper as tightly as she did grudges. She saved food, possessions, and incidentals. Her tendency to keep a well-stocked fridge and freezer packed with wartime-like rations years after all her nine babies had left the nest was likely the result of a gene trickled down from an ever-starving Irish family. And my mother, the
second oldest of nine, is forever scared of scarcity. It’s knitted into the fiber of her warm woolen soul to gather and provide for anyone who needs providing.

To this day, Mom serves food in the manner she loves: in heaps and sloppy gobs and spilling surplus. She pays no mind to amount or frequency or even what slight portion she may be able to save for herself; she just gives. Unconditional and fierce, she works optimally with excess. She hugs tightly, presses a kiss on your lips like a heavily inked red stamp, buys bulk in bulk, speaks and acts with Broadway-stage gusto, smears butter on her bread generously, and, if you ask her for anything—anything at all—she’ll make it so.

My fifth birthday party was a classic example of her aim to please. She’d made every dish that I—a food fanatic at five—knew existed. The scale of platters alone minimized all the buffets we’d ever seen. I truly could not think of an item she hadn’t already prepared and plated.

And still, she bit the side of her lip, unsure. “You think this is enough?” Her hands clamped at her waist as she swiveled once more to assess the food.

“Yep,” I replied.

“Have a cupcake while you wait.”

Without hesitation I marched to the table, three giddy breaths away. Tippy-toeing so that my eyes just surfaced over the table’s wooden ledge, I looked lovingly at the plate she had carefully assembled that morning: pale pink parchment cups polka-dotted with lavender, each puffed with dainty coconut cake. I scanned the dozen, determined to find the one with the fullest frosting cloud.

I knew what kind of standards one should uphold with baked goods: frosting on cupcakes should sit no less than two finger-widths
high; cookies should be crackled across their tops to reveal gooey, barely baked centers; the best piece of sheet cake is always the corner and, of course, sporting a frosting rose. I had a discerning sweet tooth—several of them, I imagine.

At this age, I was sweetly appled, cute, and roly-poly, standing three-and-a-half feet tall and weighing sixty pounds. I remember my fondness for that appropriately garnet-hued January birthday dress. The stiff collar of ruffled velvet, the empire waist and poufed hoop skirt. A twirl and a polite curtsy every few minutes emphasized how regal, how happily fancy-schmancy I felt at the time. I pirouetted in front of the hall mirror and saw my brother at my back, heading toward his room.

At eleven years old, Anthony was constantly running around. From sunup to sundown, he was outside, playing sports with his friends, while I was inside, mostly sitting and often alone. People told him he took after Mom’s side of the family. “So tall and skinny!” they’d say. And then they’d look at me—big and round—and note my resemblance to Dad.

I picked up my coconut cupcake—the one heaviest in buttercream love—and made my way to the next room. There on our navy floral couch, still pajamaed and groggy, sat Dad. I surveyed him carefully, knowing how sour his moods usually were in the morning and early afternoon.

“Hi, baby.” He smiled, motioning for me to sit beside him. I was relieved and surprised that he was so upbeat so early in the day.
He must be making today special because of my party
, I thought as I took a seat.

“Happy birthday.” He bent toward me to press a big smooch
on my temple. He squeezed me in his bearish way, and I smiled a closed-mouth smile, leaning into him. I peeled the oily paper lining from my cupcake and set about savoring it.

He had just gotten up, half an hour before the party guests were due to arrive. Twelve thirty in the afternoon wasn’t an unusual wake-up time for him. Nights spent drinking beer can after beer can after beer can after beer can, can, can, can, can don’t lend well to early rising the following day. I didn’t know that all dads weren’t consistent in buying two six-packs of those red-and-white cans at the liquor store up the street and coming home to drink and chain-smoke in front of
M*A*S*H
until the sun came up. It was normal for us. Still, I wondered why he was so thirsty all the time. I wondered if it was just so delicious, he didn’t want to stop. One time, when he left the room and I saw his beer can open on the counter unattended, I rushed up and took a swig to see if it tasted as good as Nesquik. It didn’t.

Weeks before, Mom had told me that Dad had lost his job. Understandably, he was crushed. He moped around the house even worse than he’d done regularly. For years, he’d held a meaningful, well-paying position as a technical illustrator at Wang Laboratories, a computer company close to where we lived in Methuen, Massachusetts. Always an artist, creative and dramatic, he was brilliant. I remember going to work with him on days before school started and sitting at his desk, coloring in the black-and-white illustrations of the many small parts inside a computer. Even as an adult, reading instruction manuals whenever I get a new camera, computer, or phone and seeing those precise pictures of the inner technology and parts, I’m reminded of the contentment I felt in his office with a box of crayons, working away at what you’d think must have been the driest of coloring-book material.

“Almost party time,” Dad reminded me.

“Uh-huh,” I mumbled through my cupcake, dropping crumbs in my lap.

He ashed his cigarette and turned forward.

As I neared the end of the cupcake, I thought of the big cake in the dining room. I felt relieved that my birthday cake sat still intact and safe. Just six months earlier, Dad had eaten Anthony’s the night before the party, drunk and with his bare hands. I thought of how devastated I’d be if that cake were mine.

From the kitchen, Mom hollered, “Rob, you should get dressed, honey. People are going to start showing up any minute.”

Dad exhaled a cloud of smoke. He stubbed his cigarette into the translucent green glass bottom of one of the four heavy ashtrays we kept around the house. He rocked back and then forth, rising on the upswing to heave his 350 pounds to standing. The weight proved to be all he gained after losing his job.

“Whooo boy!” he exclaimed emphatically. “Let’s get ready, baby.” He smiled at me.

I stuffed the last of the cupcake into my mouth before I repaid his exuberance by getting up myself. As I rose, I watched him—a solid five-foot-ten frame stretching outward in an all-encompassing yawn. He had silky jet-black hair, golden skin, and almond eyes that cracked open as he smiled. He barely had a top lip. The pronounced structure of his face—high cheekbones, deep-set eyes—was so handsome, it proved striking, unforgettable.

He bent to kiss my forehead, hard and purposeful, once more. I trailed him as he headed into the kitchen.

Coming up from behind Mom, he wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, pressing his nose to her hair, breathing her in. Her body softened, nuzzling backward into his chest. She craned
her neck back, turning so that she could smile looking into his eyes. He glanced down, assessing her lips before planting a kiss squarely upon them.

They loved each other, of that much I was sure. As the story goes, they met in high school, the day he hopped into her car with a big group of friends. She eyed him from the rearview mirror, unsure what to make of him. He was overwhelming, taking up nearly all of the car with his ego. Joke after joke spit from his mouth at the expense of their mutual friends in the backseat. Mom glanced back, unamused. By the end of the drive, she thought he was a jerk, she tells me now, and she’d written him off after that first afternoon.

Weeks later they saw each other at her all-girls-school dance, each with a date. What made it hard to completely dislike him was the fact that she found him gorgeous. Toward the end of the evening, Mom found herself staring toward the left of the dance floor, where a classmate of hers stood all alone. The girl looked uncomfortable, less a wallflower and more a weed in olive-green taffeta. Seeing her there, swaying by herself without even a single suitor all night, with her gaze wandering the room for someone—anyone—Mom’s heart felt heavy. She thought to ask the girl to dance herself, and before really mulling it over, Mom picked up the hem of her dress and took a step toward her. Suddenly Dad passed in front of her, headed straight toward the girl. Mom watched as he approached. Something he said into her ear made her laugh, made her nerves gently unravel. A smile spread across Mom’s face as she realized he’d asked the girl to dance. And she couldn’t peel her eyes away as they swayed there on the dance floor to Marvin Gaye.