Janice Buckley

JANICE BUCKLEY

Dead for some time now my mother had a favourite expression I've never forgotten. "I'd love a nice piece of cake." Funny the things you remember.

I was never a cake man. By the time I was eleven I no longer wanted a birthday cake. It might have been that I associated them with being a child, something I no longer wanted to be but more than probably I simply didn't like cakes. Christmas cakes with horrible sweet thick icing were the worst. But my mother loved cakes and ate them in preference to any other food.

Such was my mother's need and desire that she sent me every Saturday morning to the best cake shop she knew. The place was famous. Queue's formed outside the shop snaking around those who simply came to look in the window.

It was a ritual of sorts. I didn't mind it really. My mother's request was most often for Black Forest or Devil's Food but sometimes she wanted a simple Chocolate Cake. And it was in attempting to buy a Chocolate Cake that my life was forever changed because when I think of my mother's words I'd love a nice piece of cake I also think of Janice Buckley.

At fifteen years of age it had suddenly, almost overnight, dawned on me that the world was full of beautiful young girls. A silly thought really. They'd no doubt always been there and always would be, but for the time being I was fascinated, enthralled and eventually in love. Janice Buckley was the object of my desire. A girl who I didn't know by anything other than her name. A name I had only learnt from a friend who just like me had fallen under the spell of the 'other sex' as we chose to call them.

She's Janice Buckley he had said to no one in particular as we hung around in our group on the railway platform while we waited for the train to take us to school. Once I had her name it seemed to be enough. I wasn't going to tell anyone that I liked her, that I found her attractive. A Catholic school girl that was mystery enough. Short, dark hair, freckles. What was it that made me think about her all the time?

For much of that year I contented myself with simply seeing Janice at the railway station. I never spoke to her. In fact I never heard her speak. I preferred the safety of knowing her from a distance, thinking that one day it might change. When the long hot days of summer arrived though I knew I wouldn't see Janice for a couple of months. Our only meetings, so to speak, courtesy of catching the same train to our respective schools.

My mother's passion for cake neither waxed nor waned with the different seasons. In summer as in winter, spring and fall she inclined towards towards Forest, Devil and Chocolate. She had reduced their descriptions to one word. If on some rare occasion she might suggest Angels' Food Cake or Lemon Cake she was careful to enunciate the words and repeat them before she sent me on my way. Once there had been a pineapple upside down cake. There was no other errand I had to perform. I had only to remember the one request. I never resorted to putting pen to paper and carrying a note all the way to the cake shop.

"Chocolate" She had said as I stood waiting. It was quite a walk, half an hour at least. We didn't have a cake shop in our main street down by the railway line, besides which the famous cake shop in the adjoining neighbourhood was so popular that I doubted there was another one around for miles.

"Chocolate" I liked to repeat the request, receive confirmation that I had heard properly.

"I'd love a slice of chocolate cake." A variation on an old theme, but one I knew well. My mother deposited a fresh ten dollar note in my hand as she said the words. A slim tall woman she had aged gracefully. Though I knew it wasn't from a combination of a life spent at home, she never worked, and a diet rich in cakes. While I paid little attention I knew the cake was mainly finished by the middle of the following week. She was not greedy or a glutton, she would only have one or two slices a day. I suppose the cake's longevity might also be attributed to my dislike of them or my father's vigorous shaking of his head whenever he was offered a piece.

"No thanks dear." His usual disinterested response.

With my mother's ten dollars safely tucked into a pocket I headed off through the maze of houses and streets. I took the same route mainly, and gradually as I came closer to the main road where the cake shop sat the thrall of Saturday morning commerce started to take over. It is strange now these many years later that the only shop I can remember is the cake shop. Equally strange too that I can replay in my head every street and every corner I needed to take to reach that shop, whose name I have forgotten. It was so famous.

I stood in line, joining the conga that stretched out the door and occupied most of the space in front of the shop. It was now several weeks since I'd seen Janice. I didn't know at the time that she was gradually fading from my mind. I had probably needed to see her every day. A reinforcement of sorts. I don't know what I had replaced her with. Nothing probably, just an empty space.

The window of the cake shop would have won awards at an exhibition or show. It was full of wondrous creations, every conceivable cake known to humanity was stacked into displays on several shelves. I looked at them with my usual detachment. Once I had bought the chocolate cake I would head for home and the freedom of Saturday afternoon. Free to do nothing mainly.

Janice Buckley. For all the world she was standing just a few feet away from me. I could see her face reflected in the shop window. I looked for a moment, my heart jumping up to my throat. That's what makes you speechless. In the noise of conversations and street traffic I could hear myself breathing.

"Excuse me."

I tried not to hear. Pretending is good.

"Excuse me." A slight touch on my arm.

I turn to face Janice, no voice inside me.

"I just wanted to look at that cake for a moment."

I grunt some inhuman sound and she brushed past. I stared at her back. A white dress, freckles on her shoulders to match those on her face. A fair girl in summer easily burnt.

"Thanks" She says and slips by me again.

"Janice?"

She pauses then and with a somewhat quizzical look stands smiling as the conga inches forward.

"Yes."

"Um." And then the words won't come again.

"Do you want something?"

"No. No." The words starting to pour out now. Nothing rehearsed though. "I know you from the railway station. I catch the same train as you."

"I know. I've seen you."

I wonder if she will ask my name, but instead she sidles closer and in a low voice, that I mistake for the sound of silk rustling, asks if I will buy a cake for her. She points in the window and hands me some money. I feel guilty taking the money. But it is her way of asking that I can't shake loose.

"I'd love a nice piece of cake."

I think of my mother, maybe it is a common expression. When I finally purchase the two cakes, one for my mother, one for Janice, she is outside waiting on the footpath.

"Now that you've come this far, you may as well walk me home."

I'm in disbelief at what she has said to me.

"Do you come over here every Saturday? I've seen you..."

Her words drifting away. She is uncomfortably comfortably close to me. We carry our separate cakes cradled in our hands in front of us. In the crush of shoppers there is nothing to stop our hips occasionally rubbing together, our upper arms continually touching. We reach her house and she puts her cake on top of mine so she can undo the catch on her front gate. She opens and closes it, she on one side, me on the other.

"My mother will be expecting me." She says. Mine too I think.

"Come back and see me won't you?" Her eyes light up her face. A smile and then she is gone up a set of front steps and in through an open door. I wait a moment or two thinking she may reappear. After a while I head home, walking fast, a chocolate cake could melt in the sun of summer.

That night after dinner my mother looks at me across the dining room table.

"What did you do at the cake shop?"

It is not a question I can easily answer. Complications are already looming before I can frame a response. Bought cake I think to say, but I know better. I look puzzled, something is wrong. My mother takes the white box containing the cake from the refrigerator and places it in front of me. She remains silent. Waiting.

I open the box and sitting there is a cheesecake. The cake I ordered for Janice.

"I'm sorry." It's the best I can do. There is no point in trying to explain. Besides which I know she will eat it. I've seen her devour an entire cheesecake in one day.

"What happened?" She doesn't sound urgent or angry, just that I have let her down.

"I mustn't have watched when they put it in the box." I drag out the first lie I can find.

"Oh."

"Or maybe they gave me the wrong box." There you are, a second lie just to help.

"So I wonder who is eating my chocolate cake?"

Janice's mother? I think of Janice.

The next Saturday morning there is no Janice at the cake shop. Disappointment follows me back home. There is no Janice for several weeks. I play with her words until I finally find myself knocking on her front door, come back and see me won't you?

But the door is not answered and as I stand on the front verandah and look through a side window, there is nothing to be seen. The house is empty but it doesn't stop me walking every day over to the cake shop. When school starts up her absence on the railway station confirms her disappearance.

I want to tell my mother I can no longer go to the cake shop on Saturday mornings. But it's a few more years before I don't go. I can't give up on Janice.

Decades later when my mother passed away, although I doubted that he or I would eat it, my father insisted we buy a cake to celebrate her life. The cake shop is no longer there and I find myself in a supermarket walking the aisles until I find a scrawny range of mass produced sponges that are already wrapped and packaged.

I try to imagine my mother. But all I can think of is a young girl called Janice Buckley who if she is still alive is in her early sixties.

I'd love a nice piece of cake.

END.