So it should
come as no surprise that we ordered an ice-cream cake for my little sister Oakley’s
sixth birthday.
Oakley’s
birthday was on a Wednesday that year, so her party with her friends was going
to be the Saturday after. My mom is a
big believer in celebrating on the actual day, so she made a point of making
dinner reservations at our favorite restaurant for the five of us. She had my step-dad meet us at there so that
he could go to Baskin-Robbins to pick up the cake first without Oakley seeing
it.
The plan
worked perfectly. He arrived at the restaurant
before us and had already spoken to Phyllis, the manager, about the cake. He winked at my mom and whispered, “They’ll
take care of everything.”
By “everything,”
I assumed he meant that Phyllis would put candles on the cake and walk out of
the kitchen at the appropriate time. By “everything,”
my mom assumed that no one would ruin the surprise for Oakley. By “everything,” Phyllis assumed that is was
a regular cake (albeit it a very cold one), so she stuck it on a side counter in
an out of the way spot in the kitchen.
I shouldn’t
say, “out of the way spot.” I should
say, “directly under the heat lamp.”
We ate our dinner,
blissfully unaware of the melty tragedy taking place behind the swinging
kitchen door.
When we
finished our dinner, Phyllis came over to our table and sweetly asked if we
would like dessert. My mom shook her
head no, then said dramatically, “No, sorry, we are all much too full for
dessert!”
Just then, a
troop of waiters, waitresses, cooks, and underage dishwashers all came out of
the kitchen cheering and singing “Happy Birthday” to my sister. She loved being in the spotlight, and she
clasped her little hands together in glee and anticipation. The server
gently set the cake down in front of Oakley.
It
was cake soup.
I’m not sure
if it was the excitement of the day or the fact that 20 people were hovering
around us, but Oakley seemed to not notice that her cake was no longer a solid,
but a liquid. She blew out her crooked candles
(reminiscent of the Leaning Tower of Pisa), and everyone clapped. I felt like we
were on stage in a strange play where one of the props malfunctions and the cast
ignores it and goes on.
My mother,
however, could not ignore it. While my
step-dad cut into the cake with his spoon and my toddler brother reached for a straw, my mother left the table to speak to
Phyllis. “What happened?” I could hear
her imploring.
In the end,
there of course was nothing we could do except eat the hot cake with sticky
creamy sugar fossilized around it. My brother licked his plate clean.
On the drive
home while my brother slept and Oakley chattered on and on about her Barbie
wish-list for her party on Saturday, my parents bickered quietly in the front
seat. My mom blamed my step-dad for not
explaining to Phyllis that the pink box with brown dots and the words “Baskin
Robbins Ice-Cream” emblazoned on the top actually housed a frozen confection. “I didn’t think to tell her, because I
thought she would just know!” he hissed through clenched teeth.
We arrived home and changed into our pajamas, Oakley still oblivious to the cake drama that swirled
around her. My mom came into our room to
say goodnight, and Oakley asked:
“Mommy, for Saturday’s party, can we have more of
that ice-cream soup?”
MOV
