Secret Ingredient

If she had to guess, Esther thought, she hadn’t made a chocolate cake in thirty-five, maybe forty years. The reason was simple enough: Herbert didn’t like chocolate. “Can’t stand the stuff,” he’d declared on their first date, when she ordered mousse for dessert at the Italian restaurant in town. His sweet tooth had plenty of other appetites, of course, for the vanillas and peanut butters and butterscotches of the world, but for chocolate he had little use or love.

So when she sank her fork into the velvety slice resting on her white China plate, Esther savored it all, even the clink of the silver as it connected with porcelain. She raised the fork to her lips and nibbled delicately.

“Oh Herbie,” she murmured to her husband, “You're missing out.”

Herbert was, of course, missing out on many things at the moment. By Esther’s estimation, he had died in his chair three, maybe four days ago. It was hard to say when, exactly. He wasn’t the most talkative person to begin with, and he had gone quietly, without a fuss. Then, well, she had started baking.

She took another bite of cake. Triple chocolate, two layers, with homemade buttercream and chocolate shavings. The trick, she’d read, was adding coffee. All the food blogs said coffee enhanced the flavor. So for the first cake, she added freshly brewed Folgers to the wet ingredients. Next, she tried espresso powder in the batter to give it a little punch.

“It was good but I’ve done better,” she said out loud, and giggled at herself. “That’s what you always tell me, isn’t it, Herbie?”

Not surprisingly, Herbert didn’t answer. He was still where she’d found him, head tipped against the back of the rocker, eyes partially open, jaws agape. Not unlike most of their marriage, really, except for the smell (Esther suspected Herbie had wet himself a little at the end, maybe more than wet). Had it been his heart? All those years of butter and red meat and gravies, she thought, finally paying off. She found the angle of his head no more disconcerting than usual - how DID he ever sleep with his head like that, mouth open to the sky, just waiting to suck in a wayward fly? For years she half expected him to choke to death on his tongue, sleeping as he did in that chair.

She continued to eat her cake at a leisurely pace, sitting across from him in the living room. The evening light outside the picture window deepened to a bruised purple, casting shadows across the couch and the big screen TV, silenced for the first time in so long she couldn’t remember. She rocked slowly in her chair, the same make and model as the one Herbert sat in. Their his-and-hers matching loungers had been Herbert’s idea; Esther thought the overstuffed cushions and built-in cup holders were enormously tacky, just like their monstrosity of a conversion van, and the California king waterbed he insisted on keeping even as their backs ached. Herbert insisted on most things, really.

Had he always been that way? Esther kicked up her foot rest, thoughtfully chewing. She hooked her big toe in the top of one crew sock and peeled it off, flipping it to the floor, and repeated the move with her other foot. “I’ll pick them up in a bit,” she reassured her husband, who normally frowned on such behavior. “I’m really enjoying this cake and want to finish it first.”

For once, Herbert didn’t seem to mind.

Esther polished off the last bite with zeal. For good measure, she ran her fingertips around the inside edge of the plate, catching the last few crumbs and smudges of frosting. She licked her fingers and wiped them lazily on the front of her nightgown. It bore other, older stains that had crusted on the fabric; Esther thought briefly about changing nightgowns before deciding instead on another trip to the kitchen. She stood up and let her gaze fall on Herbert’s dead body.

“That one might be my favorite,” she said. “I think I’ll have another slice. Be right back.”

She shuffled across the thick carpet into the kitchen. Here was her space, where she made the decisions, from the bread maker to the stand mixer to the faded sunflower wallpaper. Herbert didn’t care what she did to it, because that’s where he expected her to spend her time. There was never a conversation about it, really. It was an unspoken contract, the bargain she accepted when after two years of dating he said they might as well make it official, and she felt so grateful that she wouldn’t be alone.

As a child, it had never occurred to her that she was ugly. But as she aged, she couldn’t avoid her mother’s pursed lips and worried eyes. At sixteen, when no one had asked her to the homecoming dance, it was her mother who suggested that maybe a diet wouldn’t hurt. When she graduated from junior college with a typing certificate, her mother encouraged her to get a job in town, not to have a career, but so she could meet a man.

And meet a man, she did. Herbert stopped into the dentist office where she filed paperwork on a hot September afternoon to get a tooth pulled. He was still wearing his overalls and cowboy boots from a hard day of farm work; later he told Esther he had almost come straight into town on his tractor, he’d been in so much pain. Esther remembered how her blouse had stuck to her in patches, how she tried not to smile because she didn’t want him to see the gap between her front teeth. He had looked at her in a peculiar way and asked her out right before going back to sit in the dentist’s chair. That had been the beginning and the end of their courtship; neither of them had to work very hard after that.

Esther said yes to dinner and yes to marriage easily, because Herbert would take care of her, and if they weren’t exactly happy, at least they were comfortable. He usually kissed her goodnight, only occasionally complained about her waistline, and gave her carte blanche to do what she wanted in the kitchen. Not being able to have children had been, of course, her fault, but as he reminded her over the years, he’d grown to think they weren’t worth the trouble anyway. So she kept packing his lunches for the days he spent in the fields, and cooking homemade dinners that were ready and waiting after the work was done. She was careful with her spending even as he bought the surround sound stereo and big screen to fill their evenings with local news and Wheel of Fortune. And she never made chocolate desserts. It was an arrangement she had come to accept, had made some type of peace with.

And then Herbert went and died in his goddamned La-Z-Boy.

Esther gazed around the kitchen. On every surface sat a chocolate dessert: cakes on decorative plates gleamed in the yellow glow of the pendant light, their frosting sweating and running in the heat; cupcakes cooled on the stovetop next to a steaming tray loaded with chocolate chip cookies; even the bread box had been weighed down with a half-eaten pan of brownies. There were tortes, fudges, bread puddings and macaroons bursting from every Tupperware bowl and container she owned. She’d also packed the fridge full of chocolate cream pie, puddings, and a chocolate creme brûlée recipe she’d always wanted to try. She’d worked mostly with ingredients she had on hand - a container of powdered cocoa she’d hidden at the back of the pantry had been mostly full, thank goodness - but she was starting to run out of the essentials.

She thought for a moment about that, then helped herself to a slice of German chocolate cake with a cookie garnish. She paused again, considering the half gallon of ice cream in the freezer, but eschewed the idea in favor of a second cookie. Her plate appropriately filled, Esther returned to the living room, sinking into her lounger with a little sigh.

“Miss me?” she asked Herbert. She picked up the slice of cake with her fingers - she’d forgotten her fork in the kitchen, but no matter - and shoved it into her mouth. Several crumbs and a large chunk of coconut fell and lodged themselves on the front of her nightgown. She didn’t bother to brush herself off. When had she bathed last? When had she slept? How long before she had to call someone? The weight of these questions pushed her back in the lounger, her eyes searching the ceiling. Outside the window, night had arrived.

“Coffee. It’s the secret ingredient, Herbie,” she said. Her voice was muffled behind the cake and the sudden lump in her throat. “I never knew.”