Panem et Circenses

Stella set the cake down in the middle of the table. The delicate serving platter matched the two place settings that mirrored each other on either end of the small tea table. Crumbs gathered along the left rim of the platter and the cake sat slightly on the diagonal - Stella had scraped it from the plastic packaging onto the fancier serving dish quickly and without much thought.

“Doesn’t that look nice,” Nana said. 

“Yes,” Stella nodded. 

Nana gestured to the serving knife. “Go ahead.”

Stella leaned over and cut a wedge out of the chocolate cake. She carefully lifted it up and over to place it on Nana’s plate, using a single finger to steady it. Then she cut a smaller piece for herself and sat down.

“This is lovely,” said Nana. “Just lovely.”

Stella smiled and nodded. 

“It’s so nice of you to come and visit,” Nana commented. “Lovely,” she said again.

Stella’s cheeks felt stretched too tight by her smile. She nodded again.

“And this cake!” Nana exclaimed. “What a lovely cake.”

Stella did not think the cake was lovely at all. For starters, in contrast to her grandmother, Stella still had perfect eyesight, and the sad, slumped cake did not make a pleasing aesthetic statement. Secondly - and her grandmother might not know this yet - it was a four-dollar cake from the budget grocery store and whatever it lacked in appearances, it certainly wasn’t about to make up for in taste. Stella had run into the grocery store, late and in a rush as usual, and grabbed the first cake she saw. It was not a culinary masterpiece, but chocolate cake was Nana’s favorite. Stella had paid with four crumpled single bills, tips from last night’s shift at the ice cream stand. The bills still felt sticky as she handed them across the counter to the cashier. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Stella did not think the cake was lovely because chocolate cake was her absolute least favorite flavor of cake. She avoided it whenever possible, but she had been in a rush, and she knew it was Nana’s favorite. 

Nana shakily cut a small piece from the cake on her plate and lifted it to her mouth slowly. Stella watched as the cake disappeared into the dark hole of Nana’s mouth, lips caving in slightly where teeth were missing. The piece of cake on her own plate now looked even less inviting.

“How’s school?” Nana asked.

“Good,” Stella replied. “I’m doing set design for the musical. We’re doing ‘The Sound of Music.’ I’m building the von Trapp house.”

“Oh, isn’t that nice!” exclaimed Nana. “That must be fun. Building the set, how lovely. You’re having a great time building that set.”

Stella nodded. “Yes, it’s great.”

“Isn’t that nice,” Nana repeated. “And what about Billy Brown? How’s Billy doing?”

Small wrinkles creased Stella’s nose. Billy’s father had briefly worked with Stella’s uncle about ten years ago, and now Nana asked after him a good handful of times every year.

“He’s ok,” Stella said. “He’s in my math class. He’s good.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” said Nana. “Billy is a nice boy. He likes math.”

Stella wondered if she had ever given Nana the impression that she was close with Billy. All she had ever done was answer Nana’s questions about Billy - I have this class with Billy, I saw Billy at the soccer game last week, I heard Billy’s older brother is going to Yale. She did not think that any of her answers conveyed a particular closeness with Billy: she was polite, that was all. In reality, she knew Billy no better than any other student at her school, and she considered him, at most, a distant acquaintance. Yet with the frequency that Nana asked after him, you would think that Billy was her long-time confidant.

“What about your friend Nick?” asked Nana. With Nana, “friend” was code for “boyfriend.” At least, that seemed to be how it worked. Stella was never quite sure, because the word “boyfriend” was never actually mentioned.

“He’s good,” Stella smiled. “He’s playing Mr. von Trapp in the play.”

“Good for him! He must really enjoy that,” Nana said. “He has fun with that role.” Nana nodded her head, thinking about it.

“Mhmm,” Stella sighed. It dawned on her that talking with Nana was not a conversation, in the strict sense - after Nana’s first question was answered, she continued her train of thought to closing on her own.

Stella used her fork to squish crumbs of chocolate cake together on her plate. In elementary school, Stella had gotten food poisoning from a fast food chain, and unfortunately the vomiting had started very shortly after eating a slice of chocolate cake for dessert. Always small for her age, Stella had become severely dehydrated over the course of the night, and she was hospitalized the next day on an IV drip. Several years later, Stella sometimes still had visceral flashbacks of nausea and sweating when she smelled a cheap chocolate cake.

“You haven’t finished your cake,” Nana said.

Stella turned her lips up at the corners into a smile. She steeled her stomach and quickly put the last few bits of cake into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. 

“I should probably get going,” Stella said. “I have work in half an hour.”

“Alright,” said Nana. “Well, wasn’t this nice. It was lovely to see you.”

“Great to see you, Nana. I’ll put the cake away in the kitchen.”

Stella bent to hug her grandmother.

“Oh, you keep the cake,” Nana said. “I know chocolate is your favorite.”

Bemused, Stella gathered up the plates and platter of cake. What had she ever done to make Nana think that chocolate cake was her favorite? 

In the kitchen, Stella transferred the cake back into its original plastic container. 

“Nana said I should keep it,” she said to Mary, the live-in nurse.

Mary smiled. “She’s a generous lady.”

“I guess.”

“So did you end up getting on the set design team? Last time you said you were applying,” Mary inquired.

“Yeah,” Stella nodded. “I got on. We’re building the von Trapp house now.”

“Awesome,” Mary smiled. “Do you have to build it so it can rotate around? So it can be the indoors and the outdoors at the same time?”

“That’s the tough part,” Stella explained. “Everything has to go together perfectly…” She began to give Mary a detailed run-down of the mechanics of the set. After several minutes of theater talk, Stella glanced at her watch. 

“Oh no, I’m late!” she exclaimed. “If I rush I can get there just a few minutes after my shift starts.” She waved a hurried goodbye to Mary and flew out the door, forgetting the cake on the table. 

Mary picked up the cake in its container and tossed it in the trash. Nana didn’t like chocolate cake either.