Cake or Death (25 page)

The happiest times of my life are when I’m horizontal. On the bed, mainly, and after that, the couch. Couchettes on trains. Lying on the floor with an infant. This differentiates me from those lively people who walk, visit, barge in, wave their arms at parties and make a new friend of the person whose head has just been doused with their drink, and those people who hit European cities running when they arrive jet-lagged at their hotel and the room isn’t ready for five hours, rather than pester the front desk, shout and drape themselves on the couch in the lobby looking like death until the hotel relents. I used to be one, now I’m the other. It’s just another version of happiness. Standing up, lying down, same difference.

Please go away. I do not wish to see you again. Do not call me. The point in a woman’s life when she is able to say these things to men and women she wishes to banish—now that’s called being grown up. I am a grown-up. My youth is gone, I have traded the bloom for gloom, but being able to state the facts without blinking is worth it.

I have had many moments, days, even years, of huge happiness in my life when I have entirely forgotten myself. It causes me great pain to remember this. I would give almost anything to be able to relive those times. The great writer on depression, Andrew Solomon, goes even further. It is past happiness that gives him greatest pain. I don’t go quite that far. The fact that the future’s ahead of me and may contain more of those marvellous times that I will remember with anguish is a comfort.

No dish is finer than a lobster served with vanilla sauce. This is not widely known. Seek it out. Eat it often.

There is nothing wrong with your face that T. LeClerc Poudre Éclat can’t fix. Many mornings have I tested this thesis and re-proved it each time.

One shot of vodka (once a day) will cure what ails you. My friend Henry taught me this.

Children should not spend too much time with their parents. They should be with friends, playing, or off on their own, living inside their own heads. I look at the parents of my friends and think, “That raised you?” Parents are as damaged as anyone else. Their children should be given a fighting chance. So come on over to my house. Children give me great delight.

I become aroused (it isn’t exactly sexual, but it is a body-and-brain pleasure) in foreign bookstores. I breathe hard and look around in vain for a grocery cart to load up the goods. In my own country, I simply feel unsettled in bookstores. Odd people populate them, as they do the postal service. Is this normal? Presumably London gourmands feel the same way in Barcelona’s Boqueria market, but yawn at specialty shops in Holland Park. My point is the heart beats faster at many things, not just a cigarette with a lipstick’s traces.

My dream is to travel somewhere where no one knows me. Where I am completely free. But inevitably, you run into people who live one street over and greet you effusively though you would scarcely bother saying hello at home. I am hoping Japan will do the trick. The language is beyond me, the food is frightening, the architecture and all daily matters are entirely unfamiliar.

If they never published another book, we would always have Shakespeare and of him you will never tire. He’s bread, he’s water, he’s champagne, he’s cake, all in one. Shakespeare would never have expected to be the most talented and famous writer (and book-title provider) of his species. There’s nothing stranger than imagining him on a typical day, washing his face, having his hose mended, scribbling away … and being unaware of his life after death. Imagine that.

And finally, I give you my choice. No, it’s not death. That choice has been made for me, you see. And you too. Sorry, did you not grasp that? We will eventually die.

Choose cake, I said at the beginning. And here is the cake I choose. I have been baking it all my life: Ambrosia Chiffon Cake, taken from Cake Secrets: Unveiling the Joyous Mysteries of the Loveliest of Cakes, a pre-feminist housewives’ pamphlet from a flour company in the 1950s. It hung around the house until I left home in 1977 with a photocopy. I assume the original cake scientists are dead now. They were a bit nutty but they knew their cakes.

Oh, you can have your butter cakes, your sponge cakes and your angel food cakes, but nothing surpasses the true chiffon. The basic frostings are seven-minute, uncooked butter, quick cooked and boiled, but I don’t think you can do better than messing around with cream. That’s
heavy
cream. It’s cream that means business.

Here is my recipe for Ambrosia Chiffon Cake. Have your measured ingredients to hand so as to avoid panic. While the upside-down cooling period may be alarming, all will go smoothly if you follow the instructions. If you are impatient, as I tend to be, and the cake falls out of the tin in a sort of wet sag, do not scoop the sadly uncooked batter with your bare hands and throw it at the kitchen window in a rage, weeping with anger, as I have. I didn’t give the cake a chance to dry and firm up. And I blame the harshness of the laws of gravity. They are implacable. Best to eat the batter raw and try again another day.

Preparations. Let the eggs stand at room temperature an hour or two before using. Have ready an ungreased 8-inch square pan. Start the oven for moderate heat (350°F/180°C). Sift flour once before measuring.

The Mixing Method
. Measure sifted flour into sifter, add baking powder and sugar, and set aside. Measure into mixing bowl the oil, egg yolks, water, orange rind, coconut and vanilla. Sift in dry ingredients. Beat ½ minute at low speed of mixer, or 75 strokes by hand.

Beat egg whites, salt, and cream of tartar with egg beater or at high speed of electric beater until mixture will stand in
very
stiff peaks—about 3 minutes (The egg whites should be beaten stiffer than for meringue or angel food.) Do not under-beat.

Fold egg yolk mixture thoroughly into egg whites with a large spoon, flat wire whip or rubber scraper. Do not stir or beat.

Baking
. Pour batter into pan. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F) for about 30 minutes. A cake tester should come out clean. Cool cake in pan, upside down, for 1 hour, resting corners of pan on two other pans or two full tin cans of equal size. To remove, loosen cake from sides of pan with knife and gently pull out.

Serving
. Split cake horizontally. Spread with Ambrosia Cream and coconut.

Combine ingredients in bowl. Chill thoroughly. Then beat until cream will hold its shape. Pile lightly over middle and top layers of cake. Makes
2
cups (500 mL). Scatter with coconut shreds. The cake should be refrigerated after serving. It tastes even better cold.

The woman who accompanied me through the past two years was the great Anne Lamott, whose memoirs and essay collections kept me going until I discovered her novels, and then I rolled about in clover.

To my women friends, my pit crew, I offer thanks: Jennifer (Jinks) Hoffmann, Jennifer Lanthier, Michelle Quance, Lee-Anne Goodman, Fiona Sampson and Marilyn Churley. Thank you, Liz Clarkson, friend of my youth; Rosanna Serpa, friend of my youthiness and doctor of my hair at the Disegno salon in Toronto; and Pam Davies,
friend from the peculiar years. Kristine Quan grew up next door; I wish I had been a better friend despite the distance of a driveway. I honour her beauty, her courage, and her escape. Thank you, Dr. Henry Morgentaler, for enhancing all our lives, but mainly for taking me out to lunch once a month and always paying. Thanks to Mary Sheppard, Naomi Klein, Michele Landsberg, Avi Lewis, Sylvia Stead, Sara Angel, Angela Cavanagh, Jamie Donaldson, Joyce Guest, Anne Kingston, and Andy Strote.

My friends Buzz and Tennyson always welcome me and I am flattered senseless. Thank you, Stephanie, Ethan, Nicola and James. For allowing me into the family, I thank Samantha and Victoria, my beauties, my treasures, my great hope for old age (but don’t forget to pull the plug, darlings). For putting up with a mad auntie, thank you, blithe Sarah, and a special thanks to Alexandra for her sense of wonder, her gaiety and her fragrant wraparound hugs.

I used to find it odd when people thanked their agents, thinking it was just a money deal. It’s not. Bruce Westwood has been a generous friend and wise adviser. He is a great enjoyer and enhancer of life.

Michael Schellenberg, my editor at Knopf Canada, was cheerful and encouraging when I was at my most Eeyore-ish. His advice and Jamie Kennedy lunches were invaluable. Consider it done, Michael. Louise Dennys was patience incarnate, always encouraging to this itchy yet apologetic writer. Thanks also to wonderful Amy Maclin at the New York Times Syndication Service who improved my columns—all insulting her president—without hurting my feelings, no easy task.

Thanks to Mil Millington and Charlie Brooker for kindly giving permission for me to quote them.

Profound thanks go to Lawrence and Andrew at Firesnacks, who came racing to the house like paramedics after I deleted the book.

I had company on the trail. Blue Rodeo, Bruce Springsteen and Kate Bush stayed with me as I wrote. Linwood Barclay, Stephen Colbert, Eddie Izzard, John Hodgman, Mark Morford, Matthew Norman, Deborah Ross, Alexei Sayle, Sandra Shamas, Jon Stewart, Rebecca Tyrrel, and Red Green kept me laughing. Noam Chomsky and Robert Fisk kept me honest. Doris Lessing, Joan Barfoot, and Helen Simpson kept me intimidated.