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Slice of Life
He looked at the single remaining slice underneath the glass bell, sitting on the stand on the window sill. The stand lifted the cake up and away from the sill on a slender neck. The glass was crystal clear and always rang with a satisfying tone whenever he lifted it. He'd already lifted it seven times since receiving the lemon meringue tart. He had been thinking about lifting it one final time and polishing off the last of the tart when the phone rang.
His mother had died. That morning, in her kitchen. A sudden stroke brought about by an aggravated heart condition. The paramedics were sure she was dead before she hit the floor.
No more lemon meringue tarts sent through the mail, carefully wrapped in a reinforced box to be placed beneath the glass bubble of the cake stand she'd given him when he moved out. This was the final slice and there would never be another like it.
How long would it keep in the airtight bell? Would the sugar and ingredients she used keep for days, weeks, months? Eventually it would go stale, despite his best attempts to preserve it. Nobody knew how to make lemon meringue like his mother.
Perhaps he could have it analysed in a forensic laboratory where they would work out with chemical precision what the mystery ingredients were, what the proportions were, how she mixed, how she folded, how she had created such perfection. But it wouldn't be the same, they'd have demystified the whole thing and broken it down with cold calculation, removing any love or enthusiasm, any feeling whatsoever.
He stared at the slice, marvelling at the canary yellow lemon filling, the browned peaks and snow white troughs of the meringue and the crumbs of the biscuit base scattered around it. Through the crystal it seemed that it could exist forever, untouched, uneaten and it would always taste as good as he remembered it. But he knew it couldn't; eventually he'd have to eat it, eventually he'd have to say goodbye.
Dec.12.2006