Fiction: Machinations of rememberance

It is your birthday and I didn’t give you a gift this year. 

I didn’t get you a gift.

I didn’t even think of getting you one until it was midnight on your birthday and you came into my thoughts clear and brooding. You always got me a gift- friends, lovers, or not. You sent me chocolate and sweaters and funny typed shirts from small Asian countries. You seemed to think it was necessary long after the obligation had ceased. You asked me what I thought of each tissue papered box, every scrawled note card. It was a little knife in the gut every time to remind me that I wasn’t opening those presents next to you. That you were half way around the world or closer (or was it farther? It always seemed farther) and you weren’t coming back to help me blow out my candles.

There was one birthday when you forgot the cake at the little store down the street. You had ordered it the day before and were supposed to pick it up on your way home. But arms laden with farmers market carrots and the rump of a cow, you didn’t have the extra arms, the hands needed to carry that delicate string-tied package of chocolate and cream home to me. 

You started to cook right away. Glass of wine in hand, pour more, stir this, scratch my back will you? I forgot too. The candles lit, the reduction fully reduced to a blood-red viscous puddle in the cast iron pan, you jumped up, tearing off your apron. You tore out of the house, barefoot, around the corner and three blocks down to the cake shop. You banged on the door, rattled the wrought iron gate until a powdery tall woman appeared and hit the back of her wrist with two fingers. 

We are closed, she mimed. 

You were not having it. 

“It's his birthday,” you screamed through the plate glass. “He needs his birthday cake! It’s not the same without it!”
The woman crossed the shop to find you crying at the door. “OK, OK, how can help?” she lisped in a muddled European accent. She put her arm around you, your spaghetti strapped cocktail dress slipping past freckles and moles. Tears, fabric, every part of you was inadvertently trying to get naked and she wanted you out of her shop so she could go home and watch programs you had never seen in languages you would never know.

I waited for your return, smells of burnt sweet potatoes and roasted flesh filling the empty space around me. You laughed as you stumbled through the door, drunk with red wine and triumph. 

The cake was beautiful. 

My name in marzipan relief on a slick surface of ganache. You taught me these terms long ago. We ate cake first, as we do. You sitting on my lap, feeding me bites between kisses. I love every morsel of you, of your movement, your concern. You make me happy.

You made me happy.

So I won't get you a gift. 

That is my present (non-presence) to you.