Story of the Month: The Ice Cream Cake

Inside a confectioner’s shop on Christmas Eve.  Carol and Ron, wearing overcoats and hats, standing before a freezer, peering at ice cream cakes.

RON:  What about that one?

CAROL:  That’s for a baby shower.  See the plastic booties?  I don’t want booties on my birthday cake.

R:  But it’s His birthday, too.  Booties might be a nice touch, a gently irreverent reverence.

C:  Tomorrow.  He gets to have tomorrow.

R:  Who ever heard of ice cream cake in December anyway?

C:  This is my first birthday at home in five years, and everyone expects two ice cream cakes from Bischoff’s like we had every Christmas Eve my entire life.

R:  Two cakes?  Christ, we’ll never get out of here.  Why do you need two?

C:  We always—

R:  Okay, okay.  Let’s just get on with it.  The snow’s coming down harder.  We don’t want to get stuck.

C:  We won’t get stuck.

R: (theatrically)

Christmas Eve in Bischoff’s.  The other customers have chosen their cakes and left.  The power goes out.  Melting ice cream oozes from the freezers.  It’s reached their knees, their waists!  The door’s blocked by snowdrifts.  The hot fudge machine gurgles ominously.  Scalding chocolate heaves like lava.  Carol and Ron and old man Bischoff leap onto a tabletop, calling out for mercy.  But who’s to hear?  Everyone’s snug at home eating figgy pudding and knitting booties for baby Jesus.

C:  Shhh!  I can’t think.

R:  There aren’t that many cakes to choose from.

C:  Because we got here too late.

R:  Don’t look at me like that.  If you hadn’t hidden my manger set at the back of the closet—

C:  Hidden it?  That’s where I put stuff we never use.

R:  Who thinks to look for a manger set inside a fondue pot at the bottom of a box labelled snorkeling gear?

C:  Weren’t there masks and flippers in there?

R:  You must have put the flippers away wet.  One of the camels from the manger has mold.

C:  It’ll rub off.

R:  I already tried.  I broke off one of the humps.

C:  So now you have a dromedary.  Big deal.

R:  It is a big deal.  I’ve had that manger since I was nine years old.

C:  You never took it out other Christmases.

R:  We never had a tree.  Where was I supposed to put it, on top of the toilet tank?

C:  You never said you wanted a tree.  Poinsettias are more sophisticated, you said.  Let’s fill the apartment with poinsettias, you said.  I thought you’d pee yourself last year when we found those pink ones.

R:  Besides, every Christmas morning the past five years, we’ve taken off for the   Caribbean — was I supposed to pack up the shepherds and the sheep and the wise men and everybody, and set them up in the sand underneath some  coconut palm?

C: (placating)  Look, we can get a tree next year.  And this year, we’ll have my parents’ tree.

R:  Which is why I needed to find the manger.

C:  Which you did.

R:  My back’s still aching from having to lift that rowing machine out of the way.

C:  Can we not get into your back problems right now?  Can we concentrate on the cakes?

R:  All right, all right.

C:  (beat)  But I do want to hear about your manger scene and why you—

R:  Yes?

C:  Later.

R:  Of course.

C:  I mean, it’s not like you ever explained to me before about…

R:  No.

C:  And we really do need to get these cakes and get going.

R:  Yes.

C:  (beat)  So, have you been hating our Christmases all these years?

R:   No, no.

C:  (mournful)  You have.  I can hear it in your voice.  Oh, Ron.  It’s my birthday, and now you’re telling me that all these years, you’ve been pretending—

R:  No, no.

C:  And I did put those flippers away wet.  The mold on the camel is all my fault.

R:   No.

C:  (starts out teary, slowly shifts to anger)

You were this little boy with a manger scene and it was special to you, and I never knew, and I thought I was special to you…  (beat)  Who was that little boy, Ron?  And how come you never told me about him, about yourself and that you wanted a Christmas tree so you could put out your manger scene — your extra special, god-damned extra secret manger scene?

R:  Well, I…

C:  And what else aren’t you telling me?   What other parts of our lives do you think are shallow and silly and…and…“irreverent?”

R:  Whoa!

C:  It’s Christmas Eve and it’s my birthday and I want to know!

R:  In Bischoff’s?

C:  In Bischoff’s!

R:  Where we’re picking out your birthday cake?  Oh, correction: birthday cakes.  Plural.  That must be bought here and nowhere else.  That mustn’t have booties on them.  That must be Christmas-y, but not too much.  That must exactly match some cobwebby, no doubt inaccurate childhood memory newly festooned with guilt — a memory that you have never bothered to share with me.  Not that I’m offended.  Because I am secure enough in your love not to be offended by that!

C:  Don’t you dare take the high road!  I’m secure in your love, too!

R:  (deflated)  Well, then.

C:  (deflated)  Well.  Then.

R: (pointing to a cake)  What if we took the booties off?

C:  (working to regain composure)  It is a pretty cake.  And for the other…  How about that one?

R:  Kind of plain.

C:  It’s chocolate.  (beat)  Chocolate is really your favorite, isn’t it?

R:  Yes.  Please, Carol, yes.  But don’t you want something that looks more festive?  More seasonal?

C:  We could put one of your camels on it.  (beat)  Couldn’t we?

R:  What would your family think?

C:  What they think anyway — that we’re weirdos, especially about Christmas.

R:  The dromedary.

C:  Huh?

R:  I think I can spare the dromedary.

 

“The Ice Cream Cake” was published in the anthology Real Women Write, Austin, Texas, 2017.