The Butterfly Cake

The Butterfly Cake

 “My mom is over there, she’s that lady in the green t-shirt,” I say.

The bakery lady nods as if she knows who my mom is and then we start talking parties.  I tell her that I’m having a big birthday party and she offers me extra samples.

“You sure only twenty-five people?” The bakery lady asks.  “I thought you said you invited all the junior and senior girls in your school.  And that’s a lot of cake, if they all show up.”

The woman in the green shirt with a dragon on it and the name of a town I’ve never been is going to stop by and fix the fake party mess I’ve made.  She’s going to come over right now and convince this cake boss that what I meant to say was that I need enough cake for twenty-five people, but all those people are celebrities (at least that’s what I heard at lunch, the talk at the table, the gossip of other girls and how superstars actually do show up for one of Gitt Robert’s birthday parties.) 

I stand at the counter and stuff another cake sample into my mouth, a big sample with a ton of frosting.

“There you are,” Don says.  “I’m so sorry.”

“I need a cake," I say.   "Remember about big food?”

He glances down at the display case and asks me, "Which of these cakes did you want?"

I point to a giant butterfly covered in powder blue frosting.

“You sure that’s going to be enough?  I’m not sure how many people she means, twenty-five or two-hundred and fifty?”  The bakery lady asks.

Don doesn’t seem to mind the confusion.  He glances at me and then he says, “That cake will be fine.”  And he doesn’t cancel the order when the bakery lady and I talk about writing “Happy Birthday Emily” on the cake even though I imagine he knows my birthday was months ago.   I get that I’m not his daughter and he’s at most my aunt’s younger than her, live-in boyfriend.  But unlike other pretend fathers, Don asked if I had enough bread for lunch and he just ordered me a huge butterfly cake.

On the way home I ask how he likes the new Publix and he goes on about the new deli and tells me next time I should try the meat samples.  "You might start bringing your lunch," he says.   It isn’t until we arrive that I understand about the cake.

“If Ally asks, don’t say I asked you to buy it.  I heard from Grizzly how she gets.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says.  And I think what a great guy Don is.  I haven’t thought much about my rotten first day at Denman and how Big Sister warned me about all of it.

“Let me help you put the groceries away,” I say.

I open the fridge and see two full gallons of unopened milk, fresh bread, and plastic bags from the deli stuffed with meat and cheese. 

“You already put them away?”  I ask.  And that’s when he tells me that I had been forgotten, that he actually drove home before realizing I was still at the store.  “I got distracted,” he says.   

It isn’t hard for me to picture this.  “Was it the samples?” I ask.  He doesn’t say anything to this.  Maybe he doesn’t want to fight.   But I get why he bought that giant butterfly cake without any questions.