Grandma Wallace's Coffee Cake

My sister smacks the card down on the table, next to my bowl of cereal. She stands, not speaking, arms crossed, staring at the side of my head.

“What’s this?” I ask, even though I know. It would be impossible not to know; she posts a daily countdown to her wedding on Instagram. I haven’t liked any of the posts. She has friends for that. But I ask anyway because it’s fun to get a rise out of her, to see her jaw clench and her eyes narrow. I’m sure there’s some rule, written in an ancient dusty book or on an internet article about how to be a good bridesmaid, about not teasing the bride-to-be, but whoever wrote that rule probably wasn’t thinking of a bride as insufferable as my sister.

“It’s an RSVP. Not that you would know, considering you haven’t sent yours in yet.”

I put another spoonful of cereal in my mouth, shrug, swallow. “Guess I forgot.” I hadn’t.

“Do you know who else ‘forgot’?” she asks. She actually does the air quotes. I shrug again. “No one. Not even a second cousin. The only RSVP I haven’t gotten is yours. And if you were anyone else, I could put you down as an automatic no, but I can’t do that, because you are my sister and my bridesmaid.” I open my mouth to say something in my defense, but she holds up a hand. “Don’t. Just fill it out. By tonight. Or I swear to God I’ll replace you with Debbie.”

She leaves, and I finish my cereal before picking up the invitation. Debbie is her fiancé’s younger sister, who rides horses, sells shampoo on social media, and was furious about not being in the bridal party.

It’s not that I don’t want to be in my sister’s wedding. I mean, it’s not on my list of top twenty life experiences, but I didn’t mean to be this difficult about it. The truth is, I don’t have a date. That wouldn’t be a huge deal, except for the fact that my family thinks I have a boyfriend named Cameron.

It started small, as all big lies do. I was feeling insecure when my sister got engaged, so I said I was seeing someone. No one cared; they were wrapped up in my sister’s news. But then, a day or so later, my mom brought it up, and how was I supposed to fabricate a breakup in one day’s time, when I hadn’t even left the house, hadn’t been on the phone, hadn’t shed a single tear?

That was a year ago, and I never came clean. There were plenty of opportunities, but this wedding loomed, and everyone fawned over my sister and her fiancé. I couldn’t let them think I was alone. I should have realized they’d expect to meet him eventually.

I should stage a breakup. Have a friend call me and pretend to be Cameron. Make it messy. But I’m already in hot water because of this RSVP thing, and if I do anything else to draw attention to myself, I think my sister will kill me. So I do the only other thing I can think to do: I make myself a profile on a dating app, one of the popular ones, and I write this in my bio:

Seeking wedding date, preferably named Cameron. If not named Cameron, must be willing to go by Cameron for duration of the wedding. Yes, I’m serious.

I swipe right on anyone who doesn’t look likely to murder me and am surprised at the number of matches I rack up. A few ask me if I’m serious. I reply to ask if they can read, and unmatch them. Finally, though, one of them says, My name’s not Cameron, but I am a great wedding date. I scrutinize his pictures. He’s attractive, but not so attractive as to raise suspicions. He will have to do.

***

Not-Cameron meets me outside the venue at the appointed time, mercifully wearing a suit and looking generally respectable, not like a man I found online and have never met before now. “Great,” I say, linking our arms and pulling him through the doors. “I have to go back upstairs and help my sister with something, but you can just hang out in the lobby. Nobody in there knows each other. You’ll be fine.” He gives me the easy smile of someone who lives up to their claim of being a great wedding date, someone who is good at small talk.

The ceremony is fine. My sister looks beautiful, as beautiful as someone can look when they’re clenching their jaw and glaring over their shoulder at the photographer for being two millimeters too far to the left. Not-Cameron plays his part and I play mine, and no one suspects a thing.

We make it to the reception, and I’m more nervous now than before. No one cared about me during the ceremony, but I might have to answer questions now. Aunts and uncles, their tongues loosened by champagne, wondering how we met and how long we’ve been together. Eagle-eyed cousins analyzing the space between us and the placement of his hand on my elbow when he guides me to the dance floor.

Most of the food is catered, but my sister insisted on having the guests bring dessert. It was the only idea of hers that I fully supported, and I’m just as excited now that I see the spread on the dessert table. “You have to try this,” I say to Not-Cameron as I load up his plate.  

We sit down at our assigned table and I watch him try my aunt Caroline’s peach cobbler, my cousin Laura’s apple cake, my mother’s red velvet cupcakes. He savors each one. But I’m most interested in the last dessert. Grandma Wallace’s coffee cake. It’s a famous family recipe. No one has ever eaten a piece without going back for seconds. No one. And I’m not sure why I suddenly care so much about Not-Cameron enjoying my family’s traditions, but here we are. I watch him closely. The other guests at our table do, too. Everyone knows to watch when a newcomer tries the coffee cake.

He chews, closes his eyes, nods a little. “Mm, this is good,” he says, and the table breathes a collective sigh of relief. Me, out of relief that I will not embarrass my family today; the rest of them, because our family doesn’t have faith in much of anything besides that cake. He takes another bite, swallows, wags his finger like he’s trying to figure something out. The finger stops, his eyes go wide. “I really like the hint of cocoa.”

The table goes silent. Eyes that were focused elsewhere, suddenly on us. I’m forced to be the one who speaks, and I splutter, “The what?”

A puzzled look passes over Not-Cameron’s face. “The cocoa. In the streusel. It’s just a little, but it elevates the cake from just good to extraordinary.”

No one is supposed to know about the cocoa. The only reason I know about the cocoa is because I caught Grandma Wallace adding it on Thanksgiving when I was 8. We were supposed to do Thanksgiving with Grandma Paulsen that year, but there’d been some mix-up, some fight I wasn’t privy to, and my parents had dropped me off at Grandma Wallace’s while they drove off with my sister and went to visit Grandma Paulsen. I think it was because Grandma Paulsen lived two hours away, and I was going through a car sickness phase. I’d been playing outside, in the treehouse that had belonged to my father, but I got too cold and wandered into the kitchen, where I caught Grandma Wallace with a teaspoon in the jar of brown powder and asked, “What are you making, Grandma Wallace?”

She turned around and her eyebrows sprung up so high they passed the tops of her glasses. She looked at the teaspoon, at her mixing bowl, at me, and she said, “I’m making the coffee cake, dear.”

“But there’s no chocolate in the coffee cake.”

“This isn’t chocolate,” she said, holding the jar out to me. I dipped a finger in, pulled it out, and popped it in my mouth, only to gag at the bitter taste. “It’s unsweetened cocoa powder, and you’re to tell no one about this.”

My lips were sealed with bitter cocoa, and I nodded. For 20 years, I’d never told a soul. People always speculated about the secret ingredient in the coffee cake. Legend has it that it’s been in our family for generations, passed down grandmother to mother to daughter, and now I’ve gone and ruined it by bringing Not-Cameron to my sister’s stupid wedding.

More people have gathered around our table as news spreads of my mystery man who spilled the secret ingredient. Someone else might take this as a sign that Not-Cameron was their soulmate, link fingers with him, and propose on the spot, but I am simply mortified. Even worse, I see my sister storming over, hair falling out of its carefully pinned curls, her freshly minted husband trailing after her with a bewildered expression on his face.

I stand up, brush the crumbs from my fuchsia bridesmaid dress, and prepare myself for a berating. I’m trying to decide if I should tell them the truth about Not-Cameron, in hopes that such a pitiful confession will make them forget this transgression, when suddenly Grandma Wallace herself steps in front of my sister, and everyone freezes. Well, almost everyone. Not-Cameron is finishing the last crumbs, blissfully unaware of the trouble he’s caused. The rest of us, though, we wait for Grandma Wallace to speak.

“I have a confession to make,” she says. My sister looks like she might faint. “I lost the recipe for that coffee cake 20 years ago. I’ve been using a recipe from a cookbook ever since.”

An eruption of noise breaks the silence. Aunts argue with nephews, cousins whisper to uncles, hapless dates and friends look for an exit. As the crowd disperses into factions—those who claim to have known it was a fake, those who claim they never liked that cake, those who think Grandma Wallace is lying to protect the real secret ingredient—I take my seat next to Not-Cameron. Still oblivious to the shock waves he’s sent through this reception hall, he’s casually sipping champagne, his free hand relaxed on the table.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Grandma Wallace watching, her lips curved in a small smile.

I think back to that Thanksgiving day in the kitchen. The teaspoon in the cocoa jar. Her face scrunched up as she measured. The calculating look she gave me when I appeared. The ease with which she let me try something she knew I wouldn’t like.

She was sharing a secret, just not the one I thought.

And I think: if Grandma Wallace can keep a secret for 20 years just to avoid embarrassing herself, well, two can play at that game.

I take Not-Cameron’s hand and kiss him on the cheek. He doesn’t seem a bit surprised.