I grin to myself in my empty house. We have plans tonight.

“A pan of bars,” the host had said. Indulgently, I flit through recipes in my head and glow with leisure anticipation. I have all day to wash my hair, comb it just so, bake my pan of bars, be to school for a birthday party and then to our friends for supper. Which dress, which shoes, which recipe—the day spreads gloriously before me.

I lovingly push freshly washed hair into an exaggerated pompadour to dry.

And I know I’m being quite extra, but I decide to bring chocolate cake for my pan of bars. Gluten-free chocolate cake. They didn’t ask that of me either. Spiraling upwards on this warm thermal of magnanimity, I sally forth.

The hours in the day assemble about me, cocking their eyebrows. Right, I need to be at school by three o’clock, leaving at 2:45. Right, this cake needs to be baked before that. Right, I had better start now, and carefully. Being seven months pregnant, I have a hyperactive propensity for dropping things, spilling things, forgetting things, and reacting counterproductively to stressful situations.

First of all, I rewrite the recipe to acquaint myself better. Next, I slowly measure out each ingredient. I opt not to measure the cocoa powder and cornstarch because I despise how injudiciously they fly off the handle. I do, however, make sure I have lots. Then I begin dumping. Halfway into my mixing, I come to the cornstarch. Yes, I have a lot, but I didn’t consider how in the name of gluten-free, it takes the place of flour—two and a half cups, since the recipe doubles for my cookie sheet, as per instructions. Given my history of answered prayers, I optimistically pray, “Let there be enough.” In faith, I begin measuring. You know how cream of tartar and baking powder always seem to have another quarter teaspoon in the bottom? I plan on this happening with my cornstarch. Two cups filled, I start on my half cup. I reach two and a quarter when I tap out the last of the cornstarch.

I pause, trying to decide if a quarter cup short is too dangerous. Begrudgingly, I at last admit I cannot do without. “But I prayed,” I kept thinking. “I prayed and I trusted and—”

I know I can borrow from a neighbor but I need her to see my message right away, and this is item number three or four I have borrowed recently, and I really, really, really do not feel like leaving my half-mixed cake to go for a drive in the car.

Facing reality, I ask my neighbor. She sees my message right away. I leave my cake batter. My cloud of dust triumphantly announces, “This is a stressed lady.”

Pulling back under the carport, I think, “God did answer my prayer. He did provide cornstarch. I just had to humble myself and not be too lazy to go get it.” Subdued but thankful, I heft my baby and me from the driver’s seat and return to my kitchen. I dump the last quarter cup into the measuring bowl, and tip it towards the mixing bowl.

As the angel stopped Abraham’s knife aloft, he stayed my industrious hand. I glance at the recipe. It does not say two and a half. It says two and a quarter.

God smirks.

I smirk.

“See?” He says. “I did answer your prayer. I gave you egg-ZACKTLY two and a quarter cups of cornstarch. All you needed. But thanks for humbling yourself to ask your neighbor and thanks for being willing to drive over there. I love you, silly girl.” And then we laugh together.

Still grinning, I dump the borrowed quarter cup back into the container and proceed to mix my cake.

Next ingredient is three tablespoons of chocolate pudding mix. “Watch me not have that either,” I remark. Sure enough, I don’t. “I don’t even care.” I say. “I’ll use vanilla pudding instead. I add a bit extra cocoa powder just in case I’ve weakened the chocolate in the cake.

The last ingredient is a half cup of boiling water. “At least I have that,” I mutter, relieved. My mixing bowl is very, very full when I dump it in. The batter sizzles like an agitated rattlesnake. “Oh, no,” I’m cooking my cake in the mixing bowl,” I wail.

“Whip it like crazy,” Sally had said. So I whipped, and the sloppy mixture flung its arms in ecstatic dance. I covered the whirling abandonment with a towel.

“Home-free, just gonna dump this in the pan.”

There is batter for days. I fill an extra pan with leftover batter, realizing chagrinfully that downsizing my upsizing would have avoided the Cornstarch Fiasco.

The cake in the oven, I collapse on the couch. Relieved, relaxing, and pregnantly exhausted.

Eight to ten minutes later, I smell chocolate. That’s a bit soon to be smelling a cake. I drop an eyebrow in suspicion.

Ten to eleven minutes later, I smell something black.

My baby and I go check.

The batter is running over all sides of that pan. The pan is so large and my oven so small, it touches both the back wall and the oven door, so there is cake on more than just oven racks and oven bottom. A few limp sobs bubble up from inside me. My hands hang down. “I need this cake,” I whimper.

The smoke issues forth and my hyperactive smoke detector is a well-known acquaintance. The cake is much, much too far from baked to consider talking out early. So, leaving the oven on, I drag the rack towards me, and start scraping cake off the edge of the pan. The cake had curled around the rim making the pan entirely ungrabbable.

“Okay, different tactic,” I decide. I shove the cake back in. “Maybe it’s done running over. Maybe what’s black is done getting blacker. Maybe it can just bake now.” I close the door on the smoke. It takes two seconds for me to see my folly. The smoke pours out in thick brown clouds. The smoke detector is screaming panicked profanities and stealing the last of my sanity. “We can’t have a fire,” I reason. I snap on the vent fan full blast, then thundering about like a buffalo, I open doors and windows, praying the cats don’t come in like they always do.

“I must do what I must do.”

I open the oven and grab the cake by the scruff of its neck, mashing its face with my pot holder. “Sit there,” I say, sliding it onto the counter. I proceed to remove all its edges.

But I cannot clean a three-hundred-fifty degree oven and this cake must bake.

“Your lower oven,” God said from behind me.

Exultantly, I start heating my lower oven. I make sure the cake understands he is to behave in there. I never use that oven and it’s always in pristine condition. No place for an incorrigible cake to play.

And yet another hurdle rears before me. We had driven over my oven racks to flatten the last three inches, because only then could my big beautiful cookie sheets fit inside my oven. We had not flattened the lower oven racks.

“Focus, Kayla.”

I run to get the scratchy blanket that I use for all manner of situations. I sprawl it on the dining room floor, and cast the least-barnacled oven rack onto its benevolent bosom. I use steel wool to carefully scrape its still cooling ribcage.

Once again, the cake bakes and the home-free feeling fills me. I exit the kitchen, too exhausted to face the mass destruction decorated with bits of crusty cake.

The wave of relief is building and I’m preparing to body board all the way back to the beach on its momentum, but three seconds later, the wave breaks when I look at the clock. It is after two-thirty and I need to leave in ten minutes. I sink like a millstone.

The cake needs to finish baking. My hair is uncombed. I said I would bring the pop and ice cream for floats. Something whispers, “Cornstarch,” in my head. With horror, I realize I offered to bring ice cream without actually checking to see if it was there. “God,” I plead.

I tear into the bathroom, yank my stress-blown pompadour down and claw it back, clapping the clips in place. There is no time for a carefully coiffed construction. Clattering the hand mirror and crashing the hair brush, I fly back to the kitchen in a cloud of hair spray and desperation. Yank the cake out, slam my shoes on, heave the windows shut, mash the off-button on the oven, hook the handle of the grocery bag with my food, (yes, I had ice cream), snag keys, sunglasses, and wallet, and flee the scene. I will arrive at school by 3:00. “Thank you, God,” but I am panting.

A text message pops up from my friend, “Are you about here?”

“I’ll be there by 3:00. I am fine.” I say to myself.

I pull in and she comes running out. She carries my things in for me. “You said 3:00.”

“We wanted to eat by 3:00,” she says kindly.

My fluster flares. I am a mess. I drop a pitcher lid. I don’t know how to help. My ice cream is too hard to scoop. They stick it in the microwave while I martyrously begin scooping from her partial container into the cups for the kids. I keep tipping the cups. I bend to my job with Hercules-intent and the ice cream scoop skips the ice cream and jams its gloppy glory into my arm. Laughing like a kettle of boiling pasta, I shut down my senses and continue scooping. Every desperate attempt to redeem myself ends in a cacophony of criticism from the depths of my discombobulated bosom.

I try to explain but it doesn’t work so I shut up.

Out on the picnic tables, I sit with the children instead of my friends. I feel more at ease there. The sun is bright. My world reduces to the size of my squint and I feel comforted.

On the way home, I text my husband, “If you get home before I do, don’t be alarmed by the mess.”

Grimly, I return to face the carnage.

And tremulously, I open a cookbook to make frosting. I don’t even want to begin Another Dangerous Procedure.

Nothing terrible happens, but the cake is very, very ugly. And thin. Cringefully unworthy of the title, Chocolate Cake.

We arrive at our supper invite. I lay my offering on the kitchen counter beside an unassuming pan of bars. “Pride goeth before destruction…”

Yes, I think, “Destruction is a good description.”

When we leave for home, I forget to tell my husband the New Fancy camp chairs are leaning against the vehicle. “Bump, crunch, lurch.”

When we arrive home, I slide the cake in the fridge and the entire fridge shelf collapses.

“I am done,” I wail. “I am done with today.”

I can’t get into bed fast enough, where nothing can fall but tears, nothing can burn but my eyes and nothing remains but silence and softness and sleep.

Kayla B.