By Kimberly W. Heiman

The birthday cake had to be perfect, and Lilly-Belle liked pink. Sandra bent over the iced chocolate cake, piping bag quaking between her fingers, teeth biting her tongue. Three more buttercream roses should be enough. The bag squeezed, frosting extruded from the metal tip, globbing into a rough approximation of a petal. 

“You’re doing it wrong,” Bo commented, frantically waving his hands. He leaned into her light, a long shadow graying the cake’s uneven frosting. 

“I’m not!” Sandra growled, squeezing the piping bag again. Another lopsided petal oozed onto the cake. 

Bo’s phone intruded into the space between Sandra’s nose and her buttercream blobs. A YouTube video of a plump British woman, apron-clad, spoke from the screen. “Lightly squeeze the bag, holding the tip at a forty-five-degree angle,” her sing-song, self-righteous British accent reminded her adoring followers. 

“Light touch, Sandra, not strangulation! Good God!” His phone rocked disturbingly close to the cake as he pounded his finger at the screen. “That’s at least a sixty-degree angle! Bloody hell! Do you want to ruin the cake?” 

Sandra’s vision narrowed and sharpened. “Get out of my way, Bo.” She envisioned taking her frosting knife and plunging its dull blade into his phone’s screen. Its rounded tip would lop off Brenda’s head if she were lucky. 

Bo pushed her aside. “Let me do it. I’ve got much steadier hands.” His palm shot in front of her face, wide and unmoving like it was cast out of plaster. 

“If you wanted to decorate it, you should have unplugged from your goddamned phone two hours ago and helped with the baking!” She elbowed her way back in front of the cake.

It was unfair. She knew he’d been researching treatments, but she was tired of maintaining their household alone. Sure, he understood the science behind the articles, could navigate the maze of the American Cancer Society’s website, but she could use help with the laundry and unloading the fucking dishwasher. Anyway, they always ended up okaying whatever treatment plan the doctors outlined. 

“What will Lilly-Belle think when she sees this mess?” His phone gyrated toward the drooping flower petals. 

“She’ll think that her mother loves her so much she made her a birthday cake from scratch, not ordered one from some French bakery we can’t afford!” Her shrill response erupted from her twisted guts and hurled itself at the man she needed not to be fighting with. Her urge to punch him grew with each of his words. 

“Damn it, Sandra, quiet down, you’ll wake Lilly-Belle.” He angrily whispered, then spun, stared down the hallway toward their daughter’s bedroom, and strained to listen for any noises over the incessant decorating directions prattling out of his phone’s speakers. 

Her therapist’s voice flooded her mind: one-two-three and in, four-five-six and out. Sandra focused on her breathing to calm herself, slowing and elongating each breath. 

She bent over the cake again and squeezed the frosting bag. A petal plopped onto the buttercream frosting with a repulsive wetness. She edged it erect with the piping tip and started another.  

Exuberant instructions burst from Bo’s phone. He’d turned up the volume. 

Sandra clenched her teeth. Pressure in her jaw radiated to her eye sockets. She piped another sad pink petal. 

In the video, Brenda was now discussing how to add leaves to her perfect roses. 

Bo snorted. 

Maybe it was all the built-up frustration, the caged helplessness of her frantic mother instincts, or the friction with her husband only released in bursts of sexual aggression. Something exploded in Sandra. 

The stickiness of the white buttercream gooped between her fingers as she dug her hand beneath the cake. Her wedding ring scraped across the platter. The slightly too stiff layers of overbaked cake crumbled as her groping fingers wiggled under the convection. She lofted the cake off the platter. Chocolate crumbs snowed down on her slippers. The top layer of frosted sponge listed to the right. Gooey mounds of roses slid toward the cake’s edges as it tottered on her outstretched palm. She eyed her three hours of work, teetering over the counter, hating every imperfection. Then, her arm arced through the air. The dessert smashed into Bo’s smirking face. She felt his nose punch into her palm as three layers of dry cake and sugary frosting exploded around his jowls. 

His phone cracked against the floor, and the YouTube baker’s yammering voice stopped. 

Sandra’s hand slid away from Bo’s face. Chocolate cake chunks slopped onto the floor. 

He blinked through a pink rose smashed into his eyelashes. For a moment, the only sound was the slow slide of frosting from his cheeks. Bo sputtered. The sputter turned into a chuckle, which turned into a laugh. 

Sandra chuckled too. Her sticky hand gripped her belly, and she bent over, heaving with chortles.

“Mommy? Daddy?” Lilly-Belle’s wheezy voice edged into their laughter. 

She stood in the hallway, clutching her knitted blanket and stuffed hippo to her skinny chest, her wide eyes wrinkling the pale skin of her bald head. 

Bo stumbled to their daughter, swiping handfuls of frosting off his face. 

“Your mother made you a birthday cake.” He dropped to his knees before her tiny frame and held out his frosting-covered hand. Chuckles heaved his shoulders. Bits of frosting sucked in and out of his nostrils. He licked his cake-covered lips. 

“It’s pretty good.”