The Forbidden Cake

The Fountain of Youth. The Holy Grail. The Forbidden Cake.

Adventurer’s have been searching for these legendary items for millennia. Okay, maybe not for the cake. That one’s more recent, but also far more elusive. I’d take a cake over an old cup or a glorified bird bath any day.

My father-in-law, Bob, has exactly three stories he tells me again and again. The first is about how he built his first house by himself. He karate chopped down the trees for the lumber and pounded in all the nails with his forehead. When one of the ceiling joists sagged, Bob gave it a dirty look and it straightened itself out. The second story he tells me is about his vasectomy. I’d say that’s too much information, but after all the details I shared last week in the newsletter about how I almost died (Record-setting poop stones, anyone?), I don’t have much room to complain. Weirdly enough, Bob always seems to bring up his vasectomy story when I ask him to watch my four kids. I’m not sure what he’s trying to tell me.

The final story is about the Forbidden Cake. It’s Italian cream with coconut and follows a recipe Bob learned from his grandmother. Bob is not a baker, armature or otherwise. He simply doesn’t use the oven. If it can’t be charred on a grill or ordered through an app, he wants nothing to do with it. But once a year or so, Bob makes an exception. He digs out his mom’s dusty recipe and gets to work. He spends hours mixing and baking and frosting. Then, when the cake has reached a state of absolute perfection, he sends me a text. It’s not an invitation; it’s a taunt. He tells me about how he’s giving it to someone else.

That’s right: He contacts me out of the blue just to let me know he won’t be sharing it with me. It’s not like we’re next door neighbors. Each time, he could make it and give it away without me ever knowing, but he wants it to hurt. Some years, he bakes it for a group at his church. Other years, he hands it to a random person on the street. Whoever it’s for, he ensures I’m completely aware that it won’t be gracing my plate. Nothing personal.

Looking back, Bob and I might have gotten off on the wrong foot. I met him when I was eighteen and had been dating his youngest daughter, Lola, for a few months. She left home for college with hopes and dreams and came back with me. Talk about a downgrade. Bob had a social and biological obligation to hate me. The first time I visited, I wasn’t allowed to sleep in his house. I had to stay at a friend’s place, although if I’d asked nicely, I’m sure Bob would have let me sleep under a tarp in his backyard. The second time, Bob let me stay in the house, but in Lola’s brother’s room. When 9 p.m. rolled around, Bob said he was going to bed. I told him goodnight. Then he clarified. “We’re ALL going to bed,” he said. Oh. I was a freshman in college and hadn’t gone to bed that early since junior high. Nonetheless, Bob wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be up unsupervised with his daughter, even though we were together nine months a year with no chaperones at college. Bob was powerless there, but in his house, he acted preemptively under the assumption I had the worst of intentions. And he was absolutely right.

Bob has warmed up to me since then. It just took nineteen years and four grandchildren. He had to be sure. Bob and I are pretty close these days. I mean, he tells me about his vasectomy every other week. He also regularly texts me dad jokes that he wants me to use on Twitter. To date, I haven’t posted a single one. You’re welcome. Bob is like a second father to me insofar as I constantly ask him for favors and never do anything for him in return. He renovated my entire kitchen for free. He’s also done a million smaller projects around my house. It’s not an exaggeration to say that, without Bob’s intervention, I would currently be living in a pile of smoldering ruins. He’s all that’s keeping this place together. When Bob fixes stuff, he used to ask me to help, but eventually he realized I just got in the way. The last time he came over to do a repair at my place, he told me to “go write jokes or something.” I gladly obliged. We understand each other completely.

The last bit of lingering animosity between us was that damn cake. It was his constant reminder that, while we were close, we weren’t that close. For nineteen years, he told me about the cake in graphic detail without ever once offering to make it for me. I guess I shouldn’t feel too slighted. He also didn’t make it for the rest of his family. Lola didn’t remember ever eating it, and her older sisters recalled having it maybe once. I was beginning to suspect the cake didn’t exist. I gave up on ever seeing it in my lifetime. Then, Bob had a medical emergency that changed everything.

I won’t go into too much detail about Bob’s situation since I’m not sure how much info he wants to share. Unlike me, he doesn’t have a Substack account to monetize his pain. Huge mistake. His life wasn’t in danger, but he ended up being unable to mow his lawn for a few months. For him, that was a fate worse than death. This is the guy who does home improvement projects for fun. When I visit, he demands that I let him wax and vacuum out my van and then acts like I did him a favor. His lawn is better manicured than Augusta. To be forced to trust that task to another human being was a devastating blow. Naturally, he didn’t reach out to me. My only job in his family is to listen to his three stories over and over again. (Someday, I will write his biography, and it will be titled, The House, the Cake, and the Vasectomy. It will be an international bestseller and also a horror movie.) Instead, he messaged my brother-in-law, Jerry.

I like Jerry. He’s always looking for a good deal. If I need something like an appliance or a computer, I shoot him a text. Ten minutes later, he gets back to me after comparing the quality and price of literally every option on earth and tells me exactly what to buy. He’ll die before he pays full retail price for anything. He once made a used car salesman cry. Naturally, when Bob asked Jerry for the most important of all favors— to mow his (gasp) lawn—there was no way Jerry was going to waste the leverage. Bob told Jerry he could have anything he wanted in return. It was a blank check, an unrestricted, no-holds-barred lawn wish. Jerry considered all the options in the universe, but when it came down to it, there was only one thing he truly wanted: chaos. He told Bob to make the cake. The gears of fate began to turn.

To be clear, Jerry didn’t actually want the cake; he wanted to make me eat it. I’ve been off sugar for a few years now, and Jerry is sick of it. Health is a zero sum game. If one person gets better, everyone else gets worse. There’s a reason I’m not a doctor. I never planned to eat sugar again. The one exception was if Bob made the Forbidden Cake for me, which was obviously never going to be an issue in real life. It was a bit like giving your spouse a hall pass to sleep with any supermodel they want. Well, in this case, it actually happened. Jerry wanted me to forsake everything I stood for, and Bob went along with it. After nearly twenty years of waiting, I was finally going to have my cake, and eat it, too. Honestly, what else are you supposed to do with one?

Bob picked out a weekend for the cake. Then he invited the entire family. This was to be an event for the ages. I watched the calendar. Slowly, the days passed. Then, forty-eight hours before Cake Day, Lola tested positive for covid. I stared at those two pink lines, devastated. There would be no cake. Also, I was worried about Lola’s health. I’m legally obliged to put that sentence there. Cake Day was canceled. Clearly, the entire pandemic was one big conspiracy to keep me away from a legendary dessert. It all makes sense now.

Not today, assorted ingredients. Not today.

Lola survived covid, as I’m sure you assumed. If she had died, I probably would have mentioned that in a newsletter at some point. Several more months passed. I stopped thinking about the cake because, as far as I was concerned, it wasn’t real. Suggesting otherwise would just bring down the wrath of the universe upon me. Last time, it had been a virus. The next, it could be Godzilla. It was safer to let the whole thing go. Jerry didn’t care, though. He had wasted his lawn wish on mayhem, and mayhem he would have. He invited Bob and my family to his house for a random Sunday afternoon together. It was the perfect day for a cake. Bob agreed. He got out the ingredients. I became afraid, wondering what horrible calamity would stop me from eating it. This all occurred a few weeks ago, back before my recent medical situation. I suspect my exploding appendix was the final disaster designed to keep me from eating the cake. Thankfully, the universe got its timing wrong and my appendix blew up half a month too late.

Back in the before times, I was still healthy and nervously anticipating cake. Finally, that Sunday arrived. All morning, Bob texted updates to me and Jerry about his progress. I still thought he was trolling us. At noon, I showed up with my family at Jerry’s house. Bob and my mother-in-law were nowhere in sight. We waited. The minutes ticked by. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Bob showed up empty-handed, but I was a little shocked that he would outright stand us up. The doorbell rang. Every head in the room turned. Bob walked in. He had a cake carrier. He set it on the counter. Pausing dramatically, he unlatched the lid. No one breathed. It was like that part in Indiana Jones where they open the Ark of the Covenant, but with less face melting. Slowly, Bob pulled off the lid. I stared, ready for anything. This is what I saw.