WE GATHER TOGETHER by Edward L. Woodyard

We Gather Together Chapter Eighty-Two

Ben McCulloch was playfully irritating Alison Donnelly. She was trying to do something nice for him and his family for Thanksgiving by making a gooey butter cake, a holiday dessert that had been a favorite in her family for years. Despite working in a small kitchen space in her dormitory which had questionable equipment and culinary tools, she had found two mixing bowls and large spoons to use, having assembled the ingredients she and Ben had bought the night before on a counter next to the stove. Even though she had involved Ben in the process by asking him to turn on the oven to 350 degrees and to find a clean rectangular metal baking pan from a cabinet, all Ben wanted to do was to involve himself with Alison, by hugging her from behind and kissing the back of her neck.

"Come on, Ben."

"I think I love you, Alison Donnelly."

"Think? When you know for certain, let me know. Then I might let you hug me. In the meantime, why don't you go off somewhere for a while and think about it."

He raised his right fist to his chin, glared at the floor and pretended to pose for Rodin. Alison looked at him and remarked drolly, "How thoughtful of you."

"Should I take my clothes off to make it more authentic?"

"Why can't you behave? Your poor mother."

"I'll be good. I promise. I'll help. I can grease the baking pan."

"Promise?" she wondered, as she handed him a stick of butter and the baking pan. "I want to get this done now because we won't have time later if we're going to see all the parade balloons tonight."

Alison then referred to a recipe on her cell phone that her mother had texted her. She opened the box of yellow cake mix and put two sticks of butter in a small saucepan she found in a drawer under the oven, placing the saucepan on the cooktop to melt the butter.

"I'm hungry," Ben announced.

"We'll go get a salad or something. Later."

Alison continued to mix all the ingredients and pointed to the saucepan for Ben to keep an eye on it.

"What about them?" Ben asked.

"What's the 'them?'" Alison countered.

"The big balloons. Mickey Mouse, Doughboy, Angry Birds, Sponge Bob. Watch them getting inflated." He rubbed himself against her.

Alison quickly remarked, "I think something else is getting inflated."

He smiled at her and went to hold her while she defensively held onto the mixing bowl.

"Ben McCulloch, you said you'd behave," she laughed. "Watch the butter. Make sure it doesn't burn." She shook her head, returning his smile. "Let me finish mixing the batter and then maybe later."

"Maybe always gives you hope."

"Possibly. . . while it's baking. It'll take a half an hour."

"Or longer."

"Or in your case, shorter."

Ben grunted loudly, "You know that's not true."

She continued to smile at him, "I know." She then put a second mixing bowl in front of her. "I don't have much more to do here."

She emptied the tub of whipped cream cheese into the second mixing bowl and then cracked two eggs into it. She added a teaspoon of vanilla extract and stirred.

Ben smiled to himself. "Hope is always a positive force in my mind."

"And a source of strength." Alison was trying to distract him, to get him to be somewhat serious.

But Ben wasn't distracted in the least. "Do I need to go back to the checkout line at the supermarket. . .?"

"No. We're fine," she said, deciding to surrender to the inevitable. "I'm on the pill. Your natural self will be good from here on out. But only if you promise that there's no one else."

"The only other person there ever was my prom date senior year."

"What?" She stopped stirring the cream cheese mixture and glared at him.

"I want to be certain that when. . .," he said, letting Alison finish his thought in her own head. "I want it to mean something."

She smiled, then went back to the task at hand, adding half a box of powdered sugar to the whipped cream cheese and eggs. "Where'd you learn to be like that?"

"My sister. I also watched how my father treated my mother. Call it being respectful."

"Call it being unbelievable. The guys I dated back home. . ."

". . . are not here. I am," he interrupted. This time, he completed her thought for her.

Alison began blending the powdered sugar into the whipped cream cheese when she saw that the butter in the pan on the stove was almost burning. She motioned Ben away from the stove and removed the melted butter from the cooktop.

"Lots of potential clogged arteries I'm looking at," Ben said.

"Lots of potential healthy ingredients. It is all pure and natural. Nothing artificial."

Ben watched Alison pour the melted butter into the bowl with the yellow cake mix and crack an egg into it. She handed the bowl and large spoon to Ben. "Stir."

"Yes, ma'am," Ben said, taking the bowl and doing what was commanded of him, "What a stirring experience."

Alison smiled at his pun and began her own such experience, stirring the cream cheese mixture. As the two of them swirled the contents in their mixing bowls, it almost became a silent competition as to who was faster than whom. "Okay, enough experience, Ben."

Alison scooped yellow cake mix batter with her index finger and offered it to Ben. He licked it off her finger and then proceeded to suck it. Alison tried to pull her finger away, but Ben nibbled on it instead.

"Whoa, cowboy. Don't you have a test to study for?"

"Only have to study you until Monday. I can't wait to do more homework."

"Come on," she pleaded. "Let me finish this."

Alison poured the yellow cake mix batter onto the bottom of the baking dish, then spooned the contents of the cream cheese concoction on top of the cake mix batter in the baking pan. "We're ready to bake it in the oven."

"Oh, good. That means. . ."

Ben couldn't finish his sentence. Alison panicked, "It's not hot. The oven's not working. You set it, Ben, right? You pushed the button to get it going."

"Sure did."

She opened the oven door. "No heat. No nothing."