Sara Oliver Gordus

Have Some Cake

When Rick’s wife died, his coworkers didn’t know how to react. An email went around with the title “Sad News.” Many didn’t even read it right away, assuming it was some hype from the marketing department about the loss of a major account or an announcement about the retirement of an executive from the Chicago office. They just didn’t expect to hear bad news about Rick. He was one of the most unassuming people at work—he completed his projects on time, dutifully attended company parties for the requisite forty-five minutes, and would put on a new pot of coffee if the old one ran dry.

Nelson scrolled through the obscenely high number of emails he’d accrued while out on vacation the previous week. Normally, he dreaded coming back to work after being out, but he and Laurie had spent the last day and a half in Maine fighting. Her maternity leave was ending and she just announced that she wasn’t planning to go back to work. No discussion about how their income would decrease by half. He was still stewing about this when he came across the “Sad News” email. “What now?” he thought. A weight settled over him as he read it and, without thinking, he pressed on the mouse, highlighting the word “wake.” He remembered that he hadn’t seen Rick in the kitchenette for their customary assessment of the previous night’s Red Sox game. The routine had become so expected and almost forced that Nelson occasionally went to the kitchenette on the fourth floor when he wasn’t in the mood to talk. All Nelson and Rick had ever talked about was the Sox. Nelson hadn’t even known Rick’s wife’s name.

Anne got up from her desk to talk to Celeste, who sat, like many people, looking stony-faced.

“Rick was the one who always made the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the lunchroom, right?”

“Hmm?” Celeste muttered, distracted.

“You know, he always wears that green sweater with the yellow stripe down the front. Short reddish hair.”

“Oh yeah. Isn’t it awful? He always seemed so sweet.”

Anne nodded, but since she didn’t really know him that well, she couldn’t say whether he was sweet or just quiet. She felt the two descriptions were often applied too loosely. She regretted that she didn’t really know him that well. He’d once helped her burn a CD and they said hello to each other in the halls for a time after that, but it began to feel weird when they never moved beyond the hello stage. It devolved from there into smiles and then nods.

As the day went on, some people discussed the email and others didn’t, but no one really knew what to say. John, carefully cloistered in his windowed corner office, sent another email to his staff around midday with details about the funeral service. He struggled in his wording to find the right tone. Empathetic yet controlled. Some people wrote the place and time down, telling themselves they’d try to make it—if their weekend didn’t get too busy.

In the end, no one from the office went to the funeral. It wasn’t that they were heartless—they felt pangs of guilt on Sunday morning over eggs and toast and then as the day came and went, but they just didn’t know how they would handle it—what they would say. Would they look phony? Or maybe not emotional enough?

“We ended up not going,” Della told Martin as they waited in the conference room for a meeting to begin. “It just seemed too hard. I didn’t really know her. Did you go?”

“No, I couldn’t make it either. Jennifer and I had the kids’ soccer practice,” said Martin, as he swirled a swizel stick in his empty coffee cup.

Della nodded soberly a few times and then they sat in silence until the meeting started.

***

Rick, of course, didn’t come back to work for several weeks. The mail piled up on his desk, but no one took to open it. Would that be right? No one wanted to intrude. Perhaps he’d welcome the stack of things to do upon his return, maybe some distraction would be good for him. People didn’t like going in there too much—there was that wedding picture to the right of the computer. The two of them just looked so hopeful and in love, so excited about the future. It was just so sad.

By the time Rick came back, life in the office had long since gone back to normal. Rick looked much the same as he always had—same loose-fitting khakis and leather loafers. Perhaps he was a bit thinner, maybe his walk was a little slower, observed the receptionist Martha as he walked by. She held the phone to her ear as though she was taking a call and gave him a tight-lipped smile and a sober nod. She hadn’t wanted to look unfriendly.

Rick came into the kitchen while Nelson was filling his coffee cup. Nelson started when he turned around to find Rick standing there calmly—holding his mug that said, “I drink this for your protection.” Nelson wished he hadn’t jumped like that—he’d wanted to act natural. Now here he was calling attention to the weirdness between them—to the fact that the man’s wife had just died. He had to say something to break the uncomfortable silence.

“Hey, man,” he said, sidling away to free up the coffee maker. “Glad to have you back.” But that wasn’t what he’d meant to say. Geez, he’d made it sound like Rick had been away at Disney World.

Rick stared at the floor for a moment, then up at the ceiling. He took a deep breath and tried halfheartedly to smile. “Thanks. It feels weird to be back. It feels like I’ve been gone much longer than I have.”

“I’ll bet,” said Nelson. He tried to nod sympathetically. He wanted to say so much more, say how sorry he was, but the words just didn’t come. He slipped away down the hall toward his desk. He’d go to the fourth floor kitchen tomorrow.

The weeks passed. Though sales had declined over the past month and a half, the official numbers from the last quarter looked good. Rick’s group had come in at the top. When John read over the numbers for the various divisions he managed, he concluded that such dedicated commitment must be recognized and rewarded. “Be the type of manager you’ve always wanted to have and the type of manager you’ve always wanted to be,” he told himself as he navigated through the various aspects of his job. He wanted to get results, but he also believed in rewarding hard work. Plus, he liked cake. He sent an email to the office announcing that there would be ice cream and cake in the 6th floor conference room at four on Friday. General good cheer was spread—the party essentially meant that they’d start their weekends earlier. Of course, they knew they’d have to listen to pontificating by the big wigs about sales numbers, but that could easily be suffered through, and at least there’d be cake. Everyone liked cake.

John asked his assistant, Colleen, to order the cake. She pulled out the file she kept with information on local vendors. Also stuffed into the file was the list of office birthdays. She glanced through it—had they forgotten anyone? Despite their grumbling, John really was a very good boss, even with his silly platitudes about his management style. Ordering cakes for people’s birthdays was a fairly regular occurrence and everyone looked forward to leaving their desks and heading to the conference room for a half hour of work-sanctioned idleness. As Colleen scanned the list, she realized with relief that she hadn’t forgotten anyone. But she did notice that Rick’s birthday was next week. Oh how sad, she thought, his first birthday alone. We’ll have to make it special here. And she called up Forgnullio’s—the local Italian bakery—and asked for two cakes—one chocolate and one cheesecake.

“And one should read, ‘Rick, Man of the Year,’” she said.

“Very good.”

That should do it, she thought. She sent an email to the entire office—minus Rick, the man of the hour—explaining that they would celebrate Rick’s birthday on Friday and that given all that Rick had been going through, it would surely mean a lot to him if they made every effort to be there.

Friday’s turnout was enormous. The lingering guilt from those who hadn’t attended the wake was a powerful motivation. Rick knew that cake was planned to celebrate the sales numbers, but didn’t know about the surprise birthday party for himself. He really didn’t feel like going. He was backed up with work from the weeks off. The job that he used to feel motivated by and enjoyed now seemed like a chore, but he knew enough not to blame that sentiment solely on his place of employment. It was the same place he had left a few months before. He was the one who had changed—or rather, the change was imposed on him. He missed Eileen. It sounded so simple, so ordinary to say, but it was the truth. No one saw him clearly now—they all tiptoed around him, as if he’d died too. “Died.” What an awful and permanent word. He really might never see her again. The religion that he’d grown up with, that over the years his family had remained part of out of tradition more than actual faith, taught him that he would see Eileen again. But he feared that that religion would betray him. After all, the same religion made the case that God had once regularly communed directly with humans on earth.

“You’re coming to the conference room, right?” asked Colleen, poking her head into his office.

“I don’t know.”

“You should,” her smiled faltered. “John asked everyone to be there.”

Rick said, “Well, I guess I better go then.” He put down the pen that he had been rapping against his desk and stood up.

There was tension in the room. All the chairs around the long oval meeting table were filled and people stood shoulder to shoulder several rows deep behind the chairs. A bar graph showing the company’s last quarter sales numbers in comparison to the competition was projected in a rosy color against the screen. The two cakes looked small against the white tables. There was a ricotta cheesecake with jellied fruit on top and Rick’s cake, which had his name in white icing against a chocolate frosting background. A lone balloon sailed up from the table, anchored by a two liter bottle of Coke. The balloon string had a piece of paper that said, “Oh, and by the way. . .” and the balloon itself said, “Happy Birthday!” When Rick and Colleen walked in there was a quarter beat of silence followed by a few tentative calls of “Surprise!” Others chimed in and the room echoed with everyone at different stages in the pronouncement of those two syllables. John marched over and grabbed Rick’s hand, simultaneously slapping him on the back.

“The numbers look great, Rick, really great,” he said, juggling Rick’s hand up and down. “Thanks for all your hard work this year.”

Rick nodded and smiled.

“It’s been a tough year,” said John, pausing to search for the right words. “Really tough. . . we’ve had to resort to more and more creative strategies to fend off the competition.”

Colleen felt shocked that John would offer a business model as the primary challenge that Rick had faced that year. Because she was a little older than John and had been with the company longer, she occasionally felt the right to put John in his place.

“And we know it’s been a tough year for you particularly, Rick,” she said. The room fell to a hush. “But we wanted to let you know that we all care about you and we’re all pulling for you. Plus a little bird told us it was your birthday and we decided to get you a cake.”

She extended her arm with a dramatic flourish towards the cake and the room burst into applause.

“It’s chocolate. Hope that’s okay,” Colleen added.

“Um, that’s fine. Thanks,” Rick said, his face having turned rather white. “Chocolate’s good.”

“And do you see what it says?” Colleen pressed. “We asked them to do that.”

Rick nodded. From off to the side, Nelson thought he saw a muscle twitch in Rick’s chin.

Colleen took out a large kitchen knife and aimed it high above the cake, the blade glinting from the late afternoon sun that streamed through the windows.

“How big a piece do you want?” she asked.

“Oh, not that much,” Rick said tiredly, pinching his thumb and forefinger together to indicate only a small amount.

“You’ll have to do better than that on your birthday,” she said and plunged the sharp knife into the yielding cake. The white icing letters of Rick’s name slid into the crevice. She pulled the knife upwards, its blade now smeared with chocolate icing and covered with clinging brown crumbs. She sliced the knife in again and deftly extricated a slice that was easily three inches wide at its widest point.

“Oh, that’s too much,” Rick said, holding his hand up.

“Don’t be silly,” Colleen said, shoving the cake toward him. “You deserve it.”

Rick grudgingly accepted the cake and Colleen went on slicing. Della pitched in and began cutting up the cheesecake and started handing it out to eager people, who put fork to cake and then fork to mouth straight away. The tension in the room began to subside once everyone had cake to focus on and the bottles of Coke were opened, sending Rick’s balloon sailing upwards toward the ceiling. Nelson told a few jokes, others discussed their weekend plans, and people ventured beyond their usual circle of colleagues to talk to someone new.

Rick remained motionless, staring out the window at the cars surging by on Huntington Avenue. The cake, as yet untouched, felt heavy in his hand. He marveled how all those racing cars had at least one passenger inside who was eager to get somewhere else, was expected somewhere else. Rick couldn’t think of anywhere else he wished to be, except outside of the conference room he currently found himself in.

“Well, go ahead,” John said, clapping Rick on the back. “Eat up. We don’t have an unlimited budget for cake you know.”

Rick stared down at the rich moist cake on the red plastic plate. Under other circumstances, it would have looked delicious to him, but now it looked like a molded piece of dirt—like a potted plant that had been overturned. He tried to stop his hand from shaking as he put the cake to his mouth. He felt the whole room watching him. The cake tasted dry despite the fact that it seemed to melt and dissolve on his tongue. Rick felt the sugar hitting his blood, causing him to feel light-headed. He could only taste overwhelming sweetness, which had never before tasted so bitter.

“That’s our boy,” said John, and he happily dug into his own piece.

Her work done, Colleen moved over to talk to Vera, the new web master. She really should try to get to know her better.

Rick tried to take another bite, but once he realized that no one was watching him any longer, he let the cake fall into the garbage can with a soft thud like dirt on a casket.

As softly as he could, Rick slipped out the door. Nelson saw him go. He thought about saying something, going after him, but held back. He really didn’t know Rick that well, after all. They’d catch up on Monday morning, the Red Sox were playing the Yankees—there’d be something they could get worked up about.

Rick considered stopping by his office to grab his coat, but decided against it. He really didn’t need it. He took the stairs down the six floors to the lobby and relished the sound of his feet clomping down the metal rungs—each step bringing him closer to the outside—far away from the prying eyes of sympathy. Rick emerged from the stairwell and crossed the marble floors of the lobby. At one point, he had been so proud to walk into that building every day, to earn benefits, to provide for the family he might someday have. It still glittered—in the late afternoon sun—but not in the way it once had.

The revolving door sucked him in and spat him out into the crisp air of oncoming autumn. The sounds of traffic were like a pride of wild lions, growling steamy air ahead of them. Rick liked the sound—it dulled the loud emptiness that thudded in his head. Instead of turning right towards the subway entrance, he walked straight ahead until the tips of his toes touched the edge of the curb. He could see across the street into the photocopy shop, where employees and patrons replicated documents. The replaceability of such an item, even if it was only paper, irked him. Nothing was replaceable.

Return to Volume 1.5

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