Irene's Chocolate Cake

“I know it’s in here somewhere,” Jeanne cried hysterically. “It has to be in here.”

Jeanne’s father, Nick, looked at her in disbelief. “Here let me help you,” he said.

“No. I don’t need your help. This was ours. This was something we did together. Just ours. Please go, it’s probably not even here. She never even needed it, she knew it by heart,” Jeanne whimpered.

With a low sigh, Nick headed towards the door. Nearly stumbling on a dusty wheelchair, he looked back at his daughter hunched over abandoned recipe cards and faded pictures and wondered what Irene would do.

As he passed the kitchen, he couldn’t help but remember a cold night he had spent with Irene. Long before Jeanne. Long before the sickness.

The windows were glazed with frozen dew and Irene was examining the contents of their fridge when Nick came up behind her.

“Hey love, want me to order some takeout? The fridge may be a tad empty right now,” he said.

“How about we make cake. We have eggs, butter, sugar, oh and chocolate. We have chocolate too,” she said mischievously.

“Cake, for dinner?” Nick said with a perplexed look on his face.

“C’mon Nick, I won’t tell if you don’t. My mother and I used to make this chocolate cake all the time and I haven’t made it since we moved away. It’ll make this place feel like home,” she said. Irene always knew what to say to get her way, especially with Nick.

“Alright, alright. But I’m warning you, I burn everything I bake,” he said.

“Well in that case, you just sit right there and watch,” she said smiling.

Nick could see it all so vividly before him. The way she cracked each egg, one after the other. The way she broke apart the crystalized lumps of powdered sugar. When she chased after him with frosting on her fingers in hopes of smearing it on his nose.

A single tear grazed his cheek and before he knew it all the ingredients to make chocolate cake, Irene’s chocolate cake, were right in front of him.

He closed his eyes before every step and mimicked her every movement, replicating every hand gesture he remembered from that night, all except the frosted fingers. He sifted the flour and cocoa just like Irene had. He buttered the oxidized heart-shaped mold, just as she had. And as he placed the cake in the oven, he stumbled across one last memory.

“You know baking, it’s actually like life. You get handed all of these ingredients, and what you make with them is entirely up to you,” she said.

Irene always said things like that. She always tried to find meaning in the most trivial acts, even if Nick mocked her.

“Don’t look at me like that, I’m serious. I mean I could have made a cookie or even a brownie, but I chose to make a cake. Maybe the best part about baking isn’t the baking part but the fact you get to choose what you make,” she said.

“I thought the best part was eating it,” Nick said jokingly.

“Fine you win, this time,” she said while pointing a batter-filled spoon at his face.

There were papers scattered all over the floor. Old medical bills, tattered recipe cards, outdated takeout menus, but none were what Jeanne was looking for. She desperately opened more and more boxes until there were none left. Defeated and exhausted she sat there looking at an old picture of her and her mother. She traced the twists of her mother’s untamed curls using her index finger. And before she could remember where the picture was taken her thoughts were interrupted by the smell of cake. The cake her and her mother would make together every Hanukkah. She wondered if the hours of searching had put her in a state of delirium.

She rose to her feet and began to follow the scent. Her feet dragged behind her as she moved closer and closer to the kitchen. When she got to there, she saw the chocolate cake mold her mother always used in the sink, empty and still hot to the touch. Then she saw a chocolate cake with frosting melting off its sides and a note beside it. I miss her too, it read.