Susan Taylor FOLLOWING THE RECIPE The Cake Bible says, "In a large mixing bowl combine all the dry ingredients and mix on low speed for 1 minute to blend." Kathy and I do that, we put the 6 cups of sifted cake flour, 3 cups of sugar, 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons of baking powder and 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt in my mother’' largest mixing bowl, the one that's been sitting, gradually filling with dust and animal hair, on the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet since my family moved to this house when I was nine. Then we stand there, looking doubtfully at the blades of the mixer as they stab down into all the fluffy whiteness. "Are you sure we’re supposed to turn the mixer on with just the dry stuff?"” Kathy asks. "“It's what the book says," I say, and I flip the switch right as she bends her head down to look more closely at the bowl. A small mushroom cloud of cake flour blooms up and hits her in the face. "“Shit." I say. She looks at me, her face whitened like a geisha's. "You look like a geisha," I tell her. "Why'd you do that?" she asks, putting her head down over the sink and wiping the flour off with her hands. "Accident," I reply, and duck into the refrigerator for the good bottle of champagne I've been chilling for us to drink while we bake this cake. I have a couple of bottles of cheap stuff for after we're drunk. "I think we have to re-measure," she says, tapping the bowl. "“Oh, come on, it wasn't that much," I reply, but then I realize she's right, we can take no chances at this point. "Yeah, we should do it totally by the book," I say, and pull the measuring cup out of the sink. I dry it with the dish towel and open another box of cake flour. Glancing out the window I realize it's dark enough to see the meteor shower that's on the sky's schedule this evening. "Hey," I ask, "Want to drink our first glass and watch the stars?" She grabs two Burger King Aladdin glasses out of the cupboard and stands there while I pour champagne into them, carries them to the door, then she turns back and says, "Bring the bottle." The two of us sit on the grass of the back lawn, toasting Dave and his imminent marriage every way we can think of. "To Jenny," I say and for a moment we raise our glasses and wish her well. We toast the house they just bought across the street from his parents. We toast the children we invent for them, a red haired boy who will bash mailboxes and steal things from people's sheds as soon as he's in Jr. High and a snotty little fat blonde girl, the kind who squeezes packages in the supermarket until things ooze out of them. We toast until we run out of toasts and I open the other bottle I brought out. There’s something I’ve always wanted to know, because it’s none of my business. "Kath, do you ever think about how it would've been?" She knows what I’m asking. "I would never have made it through school," she tells me, "I'd be living here, with a malnourished kid, in a singlewide out in the desert, working at K-Mart.&auot; It's true; it would have gone that way. I picture it, Kathy tired from cashiering, the trailer sitting on a 1/4 acre of sand, the baby crying and the fights the two of them would have had, Dave's truck fishtailing up a tall angry plume of dust spreading out over the road as he left. She probably made the right decision. "It wasn't your last chance," I tell her, and I lean over and pour more champagne into her glass and then more into mine. We sit for a while, listening to the bubbles in our glasses rise and burst. "He's off our hands, now," I finally say, and with that Kathy and I clink Burger King glasses one more time and look up at the sky. It's quiet. The night is soft, there is a velvet deepness to it, and the stars shine like punctures letting light into an immense tent. I see a star arc downward, a curve of sudden phosphorus light across a corner of the sky, an instant of light and motion becoming one, and I point to it, but it's gone before she turns her head. Back in the kitchen, we decide to mix the dry stuff by hand. We then add, in the sequence dictated by the book, nine large egg whites, two cups of milk, one tablespoon plus one teaspoon of vanilla, and one and one-half cups of softened butter. "Arrange 2 oven racks as close to the center of the oven as possible, with at least 3 inches between them," says the book, "preheat oven to 350."” I eye the interior of the oven and try scraping some of the black stuff off the oven floor with my fingernails, then turn the dial to 350. Kathy drains her glass, then tosses it into the sink with a sharp clatter that makes me wince, and switches on the Mix Master. Attracted by the noise, my mother wanders into the kitchen. She stands there with her reading glasses sliding down her nose, looking at us. "Is this as far along as you two are?" she asks. "We had some unexpected occurrences," I say. "Well, you better hurry up," she says, "you don't have as much time as you seem to think." She pushes her glasses back up with one finger and waddles out of the kitchen. "We're on our own schedule here, old woman," Kathy says, after she's sure my mom's too far away to hear her. I snort. We're slaves to The Cake Bible schedule or we're going to be at the bakery section of the supermarket as soon as it opens tomorrow morning, pulling little plastic clowns off birthday cakes and assembling a wedding cake imposter. We gently, painstakingly, slide the first of the pans into the oven, set the timer for the required 20 minutes, and take another bottle of champagne out to the yard. "Will we hear the timer from out here?" Kathy asks, holding out her glass. It wobbles a little so I steady it with one hand while I pour, champagne seething up over the top of her cup and dripping off her hand onto the ground, and then I look up at the sky. It is limitless, a deep black pulling me upward, the stars scattered like lost diamonds. An ant crawls up the top of my foot, and I brush it off. "Sure we will," I tell her.