Waiting for Cake

The rain was beginning to fall outside the kitchen window. The roll of the thunder was muted, but she caught the occasional flashes of distant lightning. It had been raining on and off all day, but nothing could dampen her spirits. Not on this day. She’d been waiting for this day for more than two years.

The timer dinged and she left the sink, wiping her hands on her apron. Beverly Smith pulled open the oven and peered inside. She pulled in the aroma of the chocolate cake baking inside. With the towel from the counter, she pulled three round pans from the oven and set them out to cool. She couldn’t fight back the smile that overtook her.

Everything would be perfect. George’s bus was scheduled to drop him at noon up in Chillicothe, and his parents would have him home by one. He was coming over for dinner… just the two of them, her parents were gone for the weekend… and he could enjoy a slice of his favorite cake by six-thirty, latest.

***

They had made the plan two years ago, when he was leaving for the Army. Had he forgotten? She thought. It had been a long time. For her it had seemed like a century. Sitting in school for her junior and senior years, while she knew George Hammond was trudging through the jungle half a world away facing danger every single day was torture. She spent every minute of it thinking of him.

Letters from him had been few and far between. She’d written him every week. She poured her heart into each one, telling him how much she loved him and missed him and that he needed to stay safe and come home to her.

She got a picture back from him once. That had been almost a year and a half ago. He was in a group with seven other men. They wore smiles, but she could see the fatigue in their eyes, their haggard faces and sunken cheeks. She saw George’s slumped shoulders, the ones that were so broad and strong before he left.

“Bevie,” her father had warned her, “your boy might be different when he comes home. He’s bound to have done some growing over there. What he’s seen… what he had to do.” She’d seen the faraway look in her father’s eyes. As he talked, he was back in Korea, a nineteen-year-old kid turning into a man.

Later, her mother had sat on the edge of her bed, “Your father had a hard time for a while when he came back. He needed to talk about it, but he wouldn’t. You know your father… I just made sure he knew I loved him. I worried that I had lost him. But, everything will work out.”

They had both been so worried, but Beverly hadn’t. She knew that the love between them was stronger than anything. Being a world away couldn’t destroy it.

But then she began to worry. Afternoon came and went, and the sky darkened, and no stars came out. It was interrupted by the flashes of lightning. Now the thunder wasn’t a rolling in the distance… it was a shaking roar in the valley. A few times she thought things would fall off the shelves the house shook so bad.

Beverly sat down in the living room; the cake sitting covered in the kitchen. She looked across the room and out through the open drapes into the front yard. During some of the flashes, she could see George’s house, sitting dark on the other side of the road, his dad’s car back in the driveway. The clock struck nine.

I’m nothing but a stupid girl, Beverly thought. She didn’t know how she could have expected that he’d still love her. He’d been places and done things. She was just a girl from the valley only a few weeks out of high school. She had never been farther than Cincinnati. Once.

Beverly trudged up the stairs to her room. She changed clothes, turned off the light and slipped into bed. She could still see his house through the sheers over her window each time the lightning flashed. A tear rolled down her cheek, spreading on the pink pillowcase as she sobbed gently, staring across the road.

***

The bus pulled into the station in Cincinnati, the rain chasing it into the depot.

“Sorry, folks,” the driver said, “I just got word that the roads are pretty bad between here and Gallipolis, Ohio. We’re rerouting the Charleston bus south near Lexington and over, instead of up through Dayton and Chillicothe. Riders heading to Dayton, Chillicothe and Gallipolis can wait here for the next bus.”

Shit,” George said. Two days on the train. Another night on a bus. Stuck, this close to home. He stepped off the bus and retrieved his bag from the baggage compartment under the bus. He trudged into the station, looking for a payphone.

***

Beverly woke up, the sky booming with rolling thunder and flashing lightning. She’d never seen a summer storm that packed so much rage. She crawled out of bed and went to the basin. She washed her face and brushed her teeth, getting ready for the day. Storm or no storm, she had chores to do. Eggs needed to be collected and the two milk cows needed milking.

It had been a fitful night of sleep. Nightmares had taken control. For a moment she had thought that George had just been delayed. She’d never seen a storm as furious as the one raging outside. Maybe the roads were impassable somewhere.

But then the doubts crept back in. She wasn’t going to be enough for him. She was just the girl across the road.

***

The rain had started up again. Beverly sat alone at the table in the kitchen. She’d finished her chores for the evening, and the dinner dishes were washed, although she had only picked at her food. She looked at the cake, still uneaten under glass on the stand on the counter. Her heart was in that cake, it was just for George. She thought about just dumping it in the trash.

“No,” she said out loud. It would be like throwing away the man she’d been in love with her entire life. She had told him that she would wait. He’d told her that when he got back, he wanted to marry her.

She heard footsteps on the porch out front.

There was a thump and a gentle knock on the door.

Beverly jumped up from the table in the kitchen and ran down the hall to the front room. She flung open the door and froze. Tears welled up in her eyes.

George dropped down on one knee. He couldn’t have been more wet. Water ran in rivulets down both sides of his face. His clothes were soaked through. Even his duffle, sitting next to him as he knelt on the porch, was soaked.

“Beverly…”

She dropped down on her knees in front of him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, covering him with kisses.

“What happened? You were supposed to be here yesterday morning. I was scared you decided not to come back… come back to me,” Beverly said, still clutching him.

He pulled back from her and stood, lifting her with him. “The buses wouldn’t run. I had to try to find a ride. Ended up walking a good bit of it. Didn’t even see a car between here and Chillicothe.”

“Why didn’t you call? Your parents would have come… I would have come.”

George smiled. “Phone lines are down. I tried. Tried a bunch of times. We can talk all about that later. I need to do something else, first,” he told her. He dropped back down on one knee again. “Beverly, will you marry me?”

Her hands covered her mouth and she started to shake. It had been an emotional rollercoaster for her over the last thirty-odd hours. But those were the words she had been longing to hear. “George… yes.” Her tears were flowing freely as he stood up in her arms. “Get in here. You’re soaked. You’ll catch your death like that.”

He stepped through the doorway, dragging his bag behind him.

“I was going to make you dinner last night. I made a cake. My chocolate cake… your favorite. Let me make something for you,” she said.

“I need to run across the road to my parent’s house and tell them I got here safe. I can grab some dry clothes. I’ll be back in a minute. I’ve been thinking about that cake for two years.”

“Just the cake?”

“Ok, this, too.” He kissed her more passionately than he’d ever kissed her before. She could feel a longing in him that had not been there before. She could feel it in him because it was in her, too. He couldn’t hold her tight enough.

George Hammond shouldered his bag and stepped off the porch, breaking into a run as he went down her driveway and across the old country road that ran between their houses. She stood in the doorway and watched as he continued his run all the way to his own front porch. A moment later, the door opened, and she watched as first his mother and then his father swallow him up in hugs, then he was pulled back through the door.

Beverly gently closed the door and headed back to the kitchen. She fired up the oven to get it preheated for the casserole she’d made for the previous evening and set out everything else he’d need for a good dinner.

After getting the casserole started, she trotted up the stairs and changed into her best dress. She went back down to the kitchen to finish making their dinner, her appetites increasing as she bustled around.

She heard another gentle knock, but before she could get the door, she heard his voice.

“I need to run up and change. My parents know we’re getting’ married. My mom is excited. Dad, too,” she heard him say as he went up the stairs.

As George stripped out of his wet clothes, Beverly slipped into her room behind him with a towel.

“Let me take care of you tonight, George. I have missed you so much.” She looked at him. He was leaner even than he had been when he was playing football in high school and working the farm every day. When he turned toward her, she began to see the scars scattered around his back and side. They stood out in the dim light.

She choked down her worry, and instead wrapped him in a towel and began to pat him dry. Then he kissed her again.

“Better not kiss me like that or dinner might get burned,” she joked.

“You are even more beautiful than I remember, Bev.” He ran his hand along the side of her face.

***

“Are your parents going to worry?” Beverly asked, looking at the clock as it struck one.

“My mom said she was worried about you being alone in this storm,” George smiled back.

The dirty dishes had been washed and dried and put away as they talked after dinner. Half of the chocolate cake was gone, George telling her it was the second-best thing he’d ever tasted.

“Second?” she had replied, her feelings hurt.

“Your lips are far and away the best,” he had said back with a satisfied smile.

Later, after they had gone to bed, George lay sleeping in Beverly’s arms. He woke her, shaking in the midst of a nightmare. He was sweating and crying out before she stroked his face and whispered that she was there and that she loved him.

“I’ll be here for you forever, my love,” she whispered to him.

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Next in the series is "The Visitor."