Little Deaths by Chocolate

Brittany slid three cake pans into the waiting oven. Each filled to exact level, and shaken before to settle and lessen the air bubbles, the chocolate batter bakes for 90 minutes each before setting and cooling and construction. She already beat two different mousses, one dark and one light. Only two components remained, the ganache, which consisted of melted chocolate and cream, and the meringue, which she would pipe into shapes on the top of this spectacular dessert. To turn the other moms at the Girl Scout meeting green with envy, that’s the goal, she thought to herself.

Considering the ganache comes together quickly, Brittany left that for last; On to the meringue. She needed to work fast, efficient. Her lithe hands deftly separated eggs for the base of the meringue and started the mixer at a slow speed to warm up the eggs enough to take the sugar. Just focusing her attention on the mixer calmed her mild anger at the judgy little perfect wives and their horrible children. Her thoughts traveled as far as her murky gaze , out the sunlit bay window and off to the mountains in the distance.

A cake like this to turn those sad, empathetic “poor thing” glances into jealous glares. What do they know? Brittany thought. Like their lives are sewn together so perfectly into a rose bloom. Lucianna’s husband regularly vacations with a woman from his restaurant, Jenna’s new boyfriend rocked three DUIs, and Tara, the queen bee, sees two different therapists and three bartenders to calm her random emotional outbursts. 

“Hi Mom, I’m home!” cried Anita from the living room. Brittany heard Anita throw her bag down. 

“Hi, honey, how was your day?” she shouted back, and her focus on the mixer slid back into place. She gasped as she realized her wispy delicacy transformed into an egg white scramble. “Shit!” she yelled as she shut off the mixer.

“What happened?” asked Anita, in a sing-song voice.

“Nothing, I’m just flaking off.”

“Do you need help?” 

“No, just get started on your homework,” Brittany answered as she shoveled the sugary egg mixture into the disposal. She ran the water and rinsed out the bowl and breathed in and out for a long moment. She felt her stuttered wheeze soften into smooth exhalations, and her heartbeat ceased its quickening. She turned the water off and ungripped her hands off the counter and brought them to her side. A quickened glance at the clock told her she still could do this.

Brittany turned again to the mixer. She started the process again, and out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed Anita, headed to her room for a change of clothes. She accommodated the upheaval that her parent’s separation created better than Brittany; almost like she welcomed the change. Brittany downed sleep gummies and cried herself to sleep; Brittany shook in the afternoons in expectation of the lonely weekend screaming in; Brittany hid a punching bag down in the basement and pounded the thing for an hour like a Mike Tyson wet dream; Brittany -

“Oh my lord, what’s wrong with me?” Brittany cried as she smelled her meringue turn. Again, her smooth fluffy mixture converted into an egg-smelling scrambled mess. A harsh loud growl from her brought Anita, now in a loose shirt and leggings, into the kitchen with a concerned look on her face.

“What?” Brittany shot back to her considerate daughter.

“You growled.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, we don’t own a bear, so yes, you growled.”

“I didn’t growl,” she growled.

“Okay,” she mocked. “I’ll be in the living room if you want some salmon.”

Brittany glared at the empty doorway and dropped the mixing bowl into the sink with a bang. Call me a bear, will you, I’ll show you a bear. She knelt down near the mixing station and brought out a green glass bowl and a hand mixer. She rooted through a drawer for beaters and connected them to the appliance with a scowl to match her mood. New appliance, new bowl, easy meringue. Her grandmother bequeathed her the bowl and Brittany found that it always mixed whatever she wanted easily.  All these bitches better recognize this achievement, I’m busting my ass to impress, I mean, inspire these women. Brittany slowed her breathing again, which took some time to bring it from the ragged gasps of a small panic to a picture-perfect confidence she expected from herself. 

The timer went off on the cakes and she brought them out to cool. The cooling left her time to pull off the meringue, but not much if she was going to get the ganache on the cake before piping.

She started to hyperventilate as soon as she separated the eggs. The beater started to whip them, and she could see the peaks beginning to form; her mind raced to try and calm herself as tears began to form on the edges of her eyes. She loathed her weakness as much as she loathed her life. She spent her nights trapped in her daydreams, sad to be laying alone in silk bedsheets and her duvet covering her naked, first-class body and caressing and longing for the strong chest that once lay within reach on the bed and cried herself to sleep and wished for one more night with him and she’d show him what ecstasy was and just feeling this burning. Her breath turned ragged as her body burned… burned… burn-

Something’s burning?!

The motor on the hand mixer sounded like a feral horny cat and the beaters froze in what had become another hard, eggy mixture.

Her confusion flipped to anger. The tears threatened again.

It’s this meringue, it’s this god-damned meringue! This is the third time I’ve tried to whip the egg whites in and they just won’t form peaks! She threw the bowl across the room and with a clang, dented the stainless steel dishwasher door. I’ve made this cake a dozen times before and it’s been fighting me this whole time! And now I’ve burned out one of my favorite beaters! This day isn’t going to be happy until everything goes wrong!

“Mom, my laptop isn’t working,” Anita called from the living room. “Is the internet down?”

“Why don’t you ask your father?!!!” she screamed, and her hands started to shake. “Why don’t you go to his lake house, with his pretty new girlfriend, and ask him why the internet doesn’t work?!! Why don’t you ask him why this fucking merin-” She slammed her hands down on the counter and her measuring cups clattered beneath them and her  ingredients exploded like shrapnel and she just cried in a guttural howl that drained the anger and the responsibilities and the longing from her quavering body.

She collapsed against the counter behind her, and her back slid down the cabinet door as the dam holding her emotions in check broke inside her. She sobbed, and as she slowly hit the floor, she curled into a ball and wept tears she thought too old and crusty to still flow. 

I have to finish this cake, she thought. The world is not right if I don’t finish this cake. She knew it was a lie and a fallacy, but that didn’t stop the thought.

Time stilled to a funeral dirge and the floor cooled her head. Shame flooded her body as she heard the shuffle of her daughter’s slippers on the kitchen floor. Anita lowered herself to the floor, lifted Brittany and slid her skinny legs under the sobbing head. A hand glided through Brittany’s hair in soft strokes; Brittany stared off through the cabinets and heaved into another bout of tears.

“It’s alright, Mom,” Anita sang in rhythm with her stroking hand. “Let it all out…”