Cake Like Grandma's Kitchen

“I feel like such a bad Christian now.” she worried as he put the organic, almond stuffed olives as big as ripe apricots in the cart. He smiled at her indulgently and pushed the cart down the wide aisle of Whole Food Market. She continued behind him now, looking at all of the condiments she’d never known about until today, the day of her twenty sixth birthday. “Ten dollars for a jar of olives? That just seems wrong.” He still didn’t speak as she wondered if her Mama ever ate olives on anything but pizza? Take out pizza was a treat when she was a kid. Usually it was a cellophane wrapped pizza from the corner grocery store, frozen solid until baked in their oven. She thought of the tiny cubes of pepperoni she now suspected might not have even been meat.
He put a box of quinoa, organic of course, in the cart alongside the salmon, feta cheese, giant olives, tomatoes still on the vine and a bunch of red roses, his favorite. They were having her birthday dinner in a few hours. They’d never celebrated anything before since they’d only been dating a few months. Still, he got up this morning and said, “Pet, let’s have you a party. Just us.” It wasn’t a question; just a decision made on her behalf, but allegedly in her honor. She hadn’t celebrated her birthday since she was eleven. Her Grandma was in charge of celebrations and when she got lung cancer the parties ended.
Now, fifteen years later, Tony said, “Pick out your cake, whatever you want.” So, she stood over the cakes, reading the labels carefully. Carrot. Chocolate. Red Velvet. Pineapple upside down cake. That was her favorite cake, pineapple upside down. Her grandma made them in a cast iron skillet in her kitchen with red vinyl chairs that stuck to the back of her legs in the summertime. It always smelled of something baking and cigarette smoke.
“This one”, she said as she placed the single layer upside down cake carefully in the cart. He snorted, “That’s not a birthday cake.” And he lifted it out of the cart and returned it to the display. There he grabbed a two layer cake smothered in blue roses on white frosting. “You’ll like this. It’ll look good with these candles.” He lifted up candles, one a “2” and the other a “7”. She looked at him quietly, nodded and wandered on behind him down the aisle.