Chapter 10 - The Taste of Meringue
The sixty-sixth birthday was not quiet.
The garden wall was hung with paper lanterns that swayed in the salt breeze, casting round, amber moons across the new flagstones. Martha was there, wearing her best lavender linen dress, her silver hair pinned up with tortoiseshell combs. Bradley Vance sat by the rebuilt fire pit, his seersucker trousers slightly rumpled, sipping an old-fashioned and arguing with the rector of St. Jude’s about the proper translation of the Greek testament.
There were sixteen people in the garden—neighbors who had known Arthur when his knees were good, women who had brought me casseroles when the house was too quiet to bear, the young boys who had helped me reset the stones, now laughing and drinking ginger beer by the hydrangeas.
At seven o'clock, the iron gate at the end of the driveway clicked.
The sound was so small that only I heard it above the low rumble of laughter and the clinking of glasses.
I turned from the trestle table.
Walking up the crushed-shell drive was a man who looked like Arthur, but moved with his own balance. He wore a clean, pressed white linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms—forearms that were brown from the sun and roped with new, lean muscle. His hands were scrubbed clean, though the small scars around his knuckles showed where the structural steel had bitten through the leather work gloves.
He carried a cardboard bakery box, tied with a simple piece of jute twine.
The garden talk didn't die instantly, but it slowed, like a breeze dropping at twilight. Bradley Vance looked up from his drink, nodded once, and deliberately turned back to his conversation with the rector.
Harrison walked up the flagstones. He didn't look at the ground. He looked directly at me.
He stopped two paces from the trestle table, the box held steady in both hands.
"Hello, Mom," he said.
"Harrison."
He looked around the patio—at the clean stones, at the lanterns, at the garden where the dwarf Meyer lemon tree now stood tall, heavy with six bright, perfectly ripe yellow fruits that smelled like sunshine and cedar.
"I brought something," he said.
He set the cardboard box on the table. His fingers were steady as he untied the rough jute twine. He folded back the cardboard flaps with care, his scarred thumbs tucking the edges inward.
Inside was a cake.
It was not Martha’s fourteen-hour masterpiece. The sides were slightly uneven, the meringue topping had three peaks that had browned a bit too dark in an oven that clearly ran hot on the left side, and the blackberry curd in the center had seeped slightly through the lower sponge, making a dark, purple ring around the base.
On top, stuck firmly into the center of the meringue, was a single, fresh Meyer lemon leaf, green and glossy, with a tiny white blossom still attached to the stem.
"The pastry chef at the riverfront hotel let me use their prep kitchen between shifts," Harrison said, his voice dropping into that quiet, gravelly tone that had belonged to his father. "It took me five tries. The curd kept separating because I was whisking too fast. He told me that if you rush the eggs, you get scrambled sulfur instead of cream."
He looked up from the cake, his blue eyes clear, steady, and entirely free of the fog that had hung over him for eleven months in this house.
"It’s not twenty-five hundred dollars, Mom," he said softly. "It’s about nine dollars of butter and flour, and sixty hours of learning how to keep my hand steady."
Martha stepped forward from the shadows of the pergola. She peered into the box, her sharp, bright eyes assessing the sponge, the seeping curd, the slightly charred meringue. She reached out with the tip of her little finger, touched a tiny speck of curd that had dotted the cardboard rim, and brought it to her tongue.
She chewed her lip, looked at Harrison, then looked at me.
"A little heavy on the zest, Harry," she pronounced. "But the structure holds."
A great, ragged laugh broke from Harrison’s chest—a sound that was so completely Arthur that Bradley Vance turned his head toward the garden wall to hide the sudden moisture in his eyes.
I stepped forward. I didn't take the silver cake server. I didn't reach for the ivory knife Arthur had left in the drawer.
May you like
I reached out and took Harrison’s hand. His skin was rough, hard as seasoned cypress, smelling of clean soap and the salt mist from the docks. I pulled him down until his forehead touched my shoulder, and for the first time in thirty-five years, I felt my son lean on me not because he was falling, but because he was strong enough to stand beside me.
"Come inside, Harrison," I said into his hair. "The tea is on the stove, and it’s time to light the candles."
