SALLY RELISH
Chapter 1: A Cake for Mazy Bundle
Mr Bundle was a terrible driver. He was probably the worst driver that Edmonton had ever seen. Riding with him was like getting stuck on the scariest, fastest, most nauseating ride at the carnival-- where you scream from start to finish and cry at the end, stumbling away with your head on backwards and your clothes turned inside-out.
So you can imagine how surprised Mrs Bundle was when her birthday cake was not flipped or mucked on the ride home.
For most of this particular day in May, she had sat on the front porch of the house where she lived with Mr Bundle, soaking her feet in a big basin of mayonnaise, reading a magazine for women in their seventies (and today Mrs Bundle had advanced as far into her seventies as anyone ever could. Next year, she would have to subscribe to the Eighty-Years-And-Up mags, which she was not looking forward to in the least.) She was a pudgy, silver-haired woman, with a sizable dimple at the base of her chin, and cheerful creases at the corners of her eyes. Despite her age, Mrs Bundle was as quick and lively as a cricket. Her husband, on the other hand, was a tall, blowzy-looking man, with clunky feet. He had no hair on top at all, but great tufts of it protruding from his ears-- as if dandelions had gone to seed inside his head and puffed out the sides.
Mr Bundle stopped the car midway into the azalea bushes. He got out with a thick set of grey-rimmed glasses perched crookedly on his nose, and a big, white box clutched in his arms. Tramping across the lawn, he held the box up for Mrs Bundle to see, as if it were a prize he had won. Mrs Bundle threw her magazine on the ground and hurried across the porch, leaving splotchy mayonnaise-footprints behind her.
“What have you got there, Harold?”giggled Mrs Bundle.
“Tut-tut,” grinned Mr Bundle, arriving at the porch and holding the box above his head so that Mrs Bundle couldn't reach. She tried jumping for it, but nearly slipped on the sauce under her feet. Mr Bundle laughed, “I've come to see a loony, old woman, who happens to be turning seventy-nine today,” he declared, “so move aside, Young Lady-- I'm going inside to find her!” He bustled past his wife and into the house.
“Ohhh, you're in for it!” cackled Mrs Bundle, rushing after him, painting a trail of greasy footprints all the way down the hallway.
The month of May meant the snow in Edmonton had almost entirely melted, with only tiny, iceberg-shaped piles of it dotting the neighbourhood, like frozen lawn ornaments. The air smelled of wet wood on these days, with traces of rain in the grass and trees, dripping on the poor sods who walked under those leafy boughs when the wind picked up.
The Bundles' front yard was a big, grassy lot, pestered by clovers and thistles. A few bushes bloomed pink and yellow beside the driveway, and a narrow concrete path led from the sidewalk to the front door.
They lived in a simple brown house, with a fat wooden porch running along the front of it and three square windows facing the street. Mrs Bundle had hung purple curtains in the windows and set flower pots packed with daisies along the edge of the porch. The front door was a beautiful turquoise green. It had a big, silver knocker at the top and a shiny, brass doorknob.
The Bundles' backyard was hidden behind enormous hedges. Not just garden-variety green things, but extraordinarily tall, silvery-green bushes that glistened in the daylight, as if they were made from real metal. Each wall was the length and bulk of two city buses piled up. No matter where you stood, you could barely see the Bundles' little chimney peaking over the trimmed tops. The hedges were as neat as a wall of bricks, with flat sides and even tops, and branches so dense, the yard behind them was blocked-out entirely.
“...They must use one of those trucks with a lift-thingy on it,” Ms Briggs had crooned. “like the telephone repairman uses to fix power lines after a storm.” Her head was bent all the way back, staring way up at the hedge-tops, trying to reason how on earth anyone could get up there to trim. And while some neighbours found the sheer size of the bushes fascinating, many of them sighed and shook their heads. “Poor old Bundles,” they would say, “they're off their rockers, didn't you know? Look-- they've gone and spray-painted their hedges silver!”
Mrs Bundle snuck up behind Mr Bundle in the kitchen and nabbed the box away from him. It was heavy. She scuttled over to the kitchen table and gently set the box beside a vase of purple crocuses.
Mr Bundle removed two little plates from the cupboard while Mrs Bundle pulled the box open and whooped at the beautiful cake inside: lemon cake, layered with raspberry Italian buttercream and fresh raspberries, drizzled with white chocolate ganache, topped with pink lettering that spelled Mazy, you're amazing!
“Harold,” she gushed, “you didn't squish it! You didn't flip it or mush it! What a beautiful cake-- and all in one piece! That's amazing!”
Mr Bundle nodded.
“It would be amazing if you'd wipe that gunk off,” he said, eyeing the mayonnaise smears across the floor. Globs of it were sliding off the tops of her feet.“You're leaving sloppy footprints all over the place!”
Mrs Bundle scoffed at her husband and fetched a towel from a drawer beside the sink. She took a seat at the table and rubbed her feet clean. Mr Bundle cut two enormous slices of cake and plopped one on a plate in front of his wife.
“Happy Birthday, Mazy,” he sang, kissing her on the forehead and lighting a little candle he'd pushed into the top of her cake slice. Mrs Bundle laughed.
“Seventy-nine years old,” she whistled. “Well, nothing better than some cake and a quiet evening, right? ...Ohhh, I had such a relaxing day, Harold! I slept late, had tea and tarts for breakfast, and there were no calls all day long! Not one! I was free to do as I wanted, and I haven't had a day to do as I pleased since... well, since last year, when I turned seventy-eight! ...Today, I feel I've been charged-up, like a big old battery!"
Mr Bundle smiled distractedly, wondering if he had forgotten something.
Mrs Bundle shoveled an enormous forkful of cake into her mouth.
...It tasted like being seven-years-old.
Lemons: Sucking sugar-dipped lemon slices on the porch while making a
game of tossing clothes pins into a bucket at the foot of the stairs.
White Chocolate: A white, bunny-shaped chocolate treat. Mazy bit the ears off in one bite.
Buttercream: Butter on hot bread. Eating spoonfuls of butter when no one was looking.
Raspberries: “Mazy,” smiled her mother, “hand me that pail will you?” The raspberry bushes were taller than Mazy, with enormous leaves like handkerchiefs and raspberries as big as these big buttons on her dress.
She'd wiped her hands on the front of it.
There was juice around her mouth,on her hands, on this dress.
The berries were wonderfully fat and sweet.
She hadn't put any raspberries into her silver bucket.
Mother, on the other hand, had picked buckets full.
“Doob yoob rike it?” asked Mr Bundle, through a mouthful of cake. Mrs Bundle nodded happily. Mr Bundle had icing around his mouth and in his hair. He was shoveling the cake into his face so quickly, his fork was having a tap-dancing attack on the plate. Bits of cake and buttercream were flying at Mrs Bundle's face, landing in her hair and on her nose and on the floor and the table and the cupboards.
“Harold!” she quacked, covering her mouth to keep from spitting cake all over the place. Mr Bundle stopped clacking his fork and squinted at her through the flecks of icing on his glasses, cake bulging in his cheeks. Mrs Bundle wiped her face with her apron. She burst into such a loud fit of laughter, Mr Bundle jumped and nearly fell off his seat-- which had Mrs Bundle laughing even louder. Then he began to chuckle along with her, pulling his square-rimmed glasses off and using his shirt tails to wipe off the lenses.
“Hellloooo!” sang a voice from down the hallway. The Bundles stopped.
“...Can I come in?”
The Bundles looked at each other with wide eyes.
“...Well, I've come inside! The door was open! ...Mazy? ...Harold? Are you here?”
“Oh no...” whispered Mr Bundle.
“Not today,” choked Mrs Bundle.