Page 12 of The Ties that Bind
“Then I’d love to come cake shopping with you and help you make that perfect choice,” my mom promised. “See you then.”
So now, here we were one day later, parking my mom’s car in a lot near a well-known French Quarter bakery that specialized in wedding cakes and had been thoroughly vetted by Zoe’s dad.
“Hello and welcome! Do you need help finding anything?” the cheerful woman behind the counter asked as we walked inside, breathing in the scent of fresh bread.
“Actually, can we talk to a…cake designer? Artist? A pastry chef? I want to order a wedding cake,” I explained. “What do you call someone who made cakes?”
“Either of those is fine, but we tend to call them cake designers here. And I think Arturo would love to hear what you have in mind. Come back here, please.” She waited for us to circumvent the counter and brought us to a sort of office. “He’ll be with you in a second. Please, take a seat!”
Not two minutes later, a short, thin man walked in, pulling stained pink gloves off as he did and threw them in the trash can. “Hello,” he said, beaming as he shook each of our hands. “I’m Arturo. I heard you want a wedding cake. What did you have in mind?”
“Well…” After walking past the beautifully designed cakes in the shop, saying I wanted things like flowers and arbors sounded so minimalistic and uninteresting. “I, I’m not exactly sure. But I know I want the cake to represent things we do and things we love. We were together, then parted, then got back together, so I’d like the cake to show reconnection somewhere, too.” I shook my head, realizing I was spewing a bunch of intangible ideas to a man who needed to combine physical things into a cake. “Sorry. I’m not sure how to describe it.”
“No, no, don’t worry,” he insisted. “Let’s try this. What do you do, and what does he do?”
“I’m a nurse, and he’s a florist. I know I’d like some kind of flower pattern on the cake, and maybe an arbor over the top,” I said, finally adding those things.
Arturo didn’t seem put out by the unoriginality. “Hm. Let me think a moment.” Arturo took out a sketchbook and began drawing.
My phone vibrated, and I glanced at it to see a picture message from Marty. In the picture, he sat in the shaded gazebo in Aiden’s backyard, holding a glass of tea in his hand. The caption was “Time for a break.” A massive, ancient oak tree stood behind the gazebo.
“Oh!” I exclaimed. “Marty and I met in Lafayette, and there’s this big old oak tree in a park there. We both carved our initials in it when we dated four years ago, then we found those initials again a couple months ago. What if we have a tree on top of the cake, with a bride and groom underneath it?”
“Fantastic!” Arturo matched my excitement and scribbled furiously. “Perhaps a golden, white, or green wire for the tree. And we can look at some flower patterns to see what you’d like.”
My eyes sparkled, and my mom laughed when I actually bounced up and down in my seat. “And maybe daffodils around the base? Flowers for Marty, specifically daffodils that symbolize healing and hope because I’m a nurse?”
“Absolutely!”
“Oh, that’s so perfect! Thank you, Arturo!”
“But of course, it’s my job.” Still, he shook my hand, looking very pleased with himself. “Now, what date do you need this cake? And how many guests? And I’ll need you to fill out an order form.”
“Well, actually…” I swallowed. This was the moment where everything could go wrong. “The wedding is in five days. It was a bit sudden. There will be about thirty people there,” I added hastily as his face fell. The guest list, at least, we had sorted out.
Worry changed to relief, and Arturo nodded. “We can make that work. If you wanted a cake for a hundred-and-fifty people, it wouldn’t be possible, but a two-level cake to feed thirty is doable. Go ahead and fill out the form, Miss. Your cake will be ready in time for your wedding.”
I had to request a new form part-way through filling it out because utter relief shook my hands and turned all the letters and numbers in Aiden’s address into jagged markings. Thank goodness we had decided to keep the guest list small and personal!
About twenty minutes later, my mom and I walked out of the bakery, absolutely thrilled. Well, I was thrilled, and my mom was thrilled for me. “Gosh, Honey, I’m so jealous! Your wedding is coming along so nicely, and it’s going to be wonderful… beautiful. When your dad and I got married, well…let’s just say there were a few hitches.”
“You’ll have to tell me sometime, Momma, but not today! Don’t jinx it. Everything is going so well.”Just one more thing to think about. Come on, Daddy. Please, please, please…I didn’t know if I was begging my father or praying, or both.
“I can’t jinx what is meant to be! Nothing I can do would put a single hitch in this wedding.” My mother’s conviction strengthened my own.
“You’re right. That means finding a good caterer should be a breeze!” I said optimistically, reminding myself that I had sworn I would wait a little longer before panicking over my dad’s silence.
We visited a few likely places but always ended up turning them down for one reason or another. Sometimes, we didn’t love the food. Other places couldn’t accommodate the wedding date. Finally, late in the afternoon after our feet hurt from walking around the French Quarter all day, we walked into one last restaurant.
Both Marty and I wanted real New Orleans cuisine at our wedding. We had figured the French Quarter was just the place to find it, and we hadn’t been wrong.
“This menu looks scrumptious,” I said slowly, hardly able to believe we may have found the perfect restaurant. “This is food you cook all the time - like Grandma’s recipes.”
“I agree. I think we found the place. Let’s see if they’ll let us try a couple of the dishes on the menu…to see how it tastes for the wedding guests, of course. Not because your Momma is hungry after walking around all day or anything.” A bowl of gumbo caught her eyes as we went to ask about samples, and I chuckled, feeling a hollowness in my own tummy.
Every dish we tried tasted incredible and authentic, as though I had forked it out of a tupperware or casserole dish at a family reunion. Whoever owned this restaurant understood this city, its roots and its classic dishes.
In fact, we loved the food so much that not only did we hire the place to cater, we also decided to stay and eat dinner there as well. Every time my mom and I went out to eat together, we ordered two separate things and shared them. We did the same today. Why try one food when you could order two entrees and have some of each?
