The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

by Aimee Bender

  He paused at the kitchen door, but we were all too busy to run to greet him.

  Look at the team go! he said.

  Hi, Dad, I said, waving a knife back. He always seemed a little like a guest to me. Welcome home, I said.

  Glad to be home, he said.

  Mom glanced up from her fry pan and nodded.

  He looked like he might want to come in and kiss her but wasn’t sure if it would work, so instead he lined up his briefcase against the closet wall, vanished down the hall to change, and joined us just as we sat down with the food surrounding steaming in bowls and platters. Joseph began serving himself, and as slowly as I could, I put everything on my plate in even spoonfuls. Half a chicken breast. Seven green beans. Two helpings of rice.

  It was dark outside by now. Streetlamps buzzed on with their vague blue fluorescence.

  The dinner taste was a little better than the cake’s but just barely. I sank down into my chair. I pulled at my mouth.

  What is it? Mom asked. I don’t know, I said, holding on to her sleeve. The chicken tastes weird, I said.

  Mom chewed, thoughtfully. The breadcrumbs? she said. Is there too much rosemary?

  Oh, it’s fine, said Joseph, who ate with his eyes on the dish so no one could get eye contact and actually talk to him.

  As we ate, my brother told a little about the after-school astronomy program and how a cosmologist from UCLA would be visiting soon to explain universe acceleration. Right this minute, said Joseph, it’s just getting faster and faster. He indicated with his fork, and a fleck of rice flew across the table. Dad told a story about his secretary’s dog. Mom pulled her chicken into threads.

  When we were done, she brought the iced, finished, half-sliced cake out on a yellow china plate, and made a little flourish with her hands.

  And for dessert! she said.

  Joseph clapped, and Dad mmmed, and because I didn’t know what to do, I forced my way through another slice, wiping at the tears with my napkin. Sorry, I mumbled. Sorry. Maybe I’m sick? I watched each of their plates carefully, but Dad’s piece was gone in a flash, and even Joseph, who never liked much about food in the first place and talked often about how he wished there was a Breakfast Pill, a Lunch Pill, and a Dinner Pill, said Mom should enter it in a contest or something. You’re the only person I know who can build doors and cakes and organize the computer files, he said, glancing up for two seconds.

  Rose thought I missed a part, Mom said.

  I didn’t say that, I said, clutching my plate, cake gummy and bad in my mouth.

  No way, said Joe. It’s complete.

  Thank you, she said, blushing.

  We all have different tastes, honey, she said, rubbing my hair.

  It’s not what I meant, I said. Mom—

  Anyway, it’s the last cake for a while. I’ll be starting a part-time job tomorrow, Mom said. With a carpentry shop, in Silver Lake.

  First I’ve heard of that, Dad said, wiping his mouth. What are you fixing, more doors?

  I said carpenter, Mom said. Not handyman. I will be making tables and chairs.

  May I be excused? I asked.

  Of course, Mom said. I’ll check on you in a minute.

  I took a bath by myself and went to bed. I felt her come by later, as I was dozing off. Her standing, by my bed. The depth of shadow of a person felt behind closed eyelids. Sweet dreams, sweet Rose, she whispered, and I held on to those words like they were a thread of gold I could follow into blackness. Clinging to them tightly, I fell asleep.

  3 My family lived in one of the many centers of Los Angeles, fifteen minutes from a variety of crisscrossing freeways, sandwiched between Santa Monica Boulevard and Melrose. Our neighborhood, bordered by Russian delis to the north and famous thrift shops to the south, was mostly residential, combining families, Eastern European immigrants, and screenwriters who lived in big apartment complexes across the way and who were usually having a hard time selling a script. They stood out on balconies as I walked home from school, smoking afternoon cigarettes, and I knew someone had gotten work when the moving vans showed up. That, or they’d worn through their savings.

  Our particular block on Willoughby was quiet at night but in the morning leaf blowers whirred and neighbors revved their engines and the thoroughfares busied. I woke to the sounds of kitchen breakfast bustle. My father got up the earliest, and by seven-fifteen he was already washing his coffee cup in the kitchen sink, splashing water around and humming. He hummed tunes I’d never heard of, exuding an early-morning pep that had drained into a pure desire for television by the time I saw him at 7 p.m.

  When he drove off, heading downtown to the office, he always gave one quick blast on the horn. Honk! He never said he was going to do it, or asked anything about it, but I waited, buried deep in my bed, and when his horn sounded, I got up.

  Good morning. My stomach felt fine.

  After breakfast, a mild and unthreatening cereal grain bar, I poured my mother a glass of water and tiptoed into her bedroom, placing it carefully on the nightstand.

  Here you go, I whispered.

  Thank you, she said, her eyes half closed, her hair spread in a thick fan over the pillow. The room smelled warm, of deep sleep and cocoons. She pulled me close and pressed a kiss into my cheek.

  Your lunch is in the fridge, she murmured, turning over to the other side.

  I tiptoed out of the room. Joseph and I grabbed our stuff and walked single file down Willoughby to Fairfax. The sky a strong deep blue. I kicked stones as I walked, deciding the food stuff of the day before was a one-of-a-kind bad deal, and I had a good day planned ahead, one involving the study of fireflies and maybe some pastel-crayon drawing. Eddie Oakley was regaining most of his usual proportion in the indignant section of my mind. The morning was already warming up—the news had signaled an unusually hot spring week ahead, into the nineties.

  At the bus stop, we stood a few feet apart. I kept my distance because I was mostly an irritation to Joseph, a kind of sister rash, but as we were waiting, he took a few steps back until he was standing right next to me. I sucked in my breath.

  Look, he said, pointing up.

  Across the sky, in the far distance, the thinnest sliver of white moon hovered above a row of trees.

  See next to it? he said.

  I squinted. What?

  That tiny dot, to the right? he said.

  I could catch it if I really looked: a pinprick of light, still faintly visible in the morning sky.

  Jupiter, he said.

  The big guy? I asked, and for a second, his forehead cleared.

  None other, he said.

  What’s it doing?

  Just visiting, he said. For today.

  I stared at the dot until the bus arrived, praying at it like it was God, and before Joseph stepped ahead, I touched his sleeve to thank him. I made sure it was the part that didn’t touch his actual arm, so he would not whip around, annoyed.

  Inside the bus, he sat several rows ahead of me and I settled behind a girl singing a pop ballad into her collar. Kids around snapped bubble gum and yelled out jokes, but Joseph held himself still, like everything was pelting him. My big brother. What I could see of his profile was classic: straight nose, high cheekbone, black lashes, light-brown waves of hair. Mom once called him handsome, which had startled me, because he could not be handsome, and yet when I looked at his face I could see how each feature was nicely shaped.

  I sat quietly, watching out the moth-encrusted window, tracking the Jupiter dot as we drove south. Little cars below us, zipping past on Fairfax. At a red light, I gave a nod to an older woman driving in curlers. Waved at a guy in motorcycle gear who did rocker hands back. I glanced at the back of Joseph’s head, wanting to show him. He read his textbook. In my mind, I told him. He laughed, and looked.

  We arrived without incident, I achieved four waves, and Joseph got off and turned down the alleyway that led to the junior high. I walked across the blacktop playground into third grade.

&n
bsp; Math problems, reading, carpet time, oil-pastel sky drawing art project. Recess. Four square. Two points. Milk carton. History, spelling. Lunch bell.

  I spent lunchtime at the porcelain base of the drinking fountain, which was half stopped up with pink gum, taking sip after sip of the warm metallic water that pushed through old pipes from plumbing built in the twenties, pouring rust and fluoride into my mouth, trying to erase my peanut-butter sandwich.

  4 My mother slept in because she did not sleep well. Since she was a child, she told me once, when I brought in her morning glass of water. I would wait to feel myself fall asleep, she told me as I perched on the edge of her bed; and I would wait and wait, she said, wanting to catch it happening, like the tooth fairy. You can’t catch sleep, I said, turning the glass on its cork coaster. She smiled at me, through half-lidded eyes. Smart girl, she said.

  I would hear her, sometimes, as I was resettling myself in the middle of the night; at 2 a.m. it was not unusual to hear the flip of the kitchen light switch and the hum of the teakettle warming. A hint of light down the corridor casting a faint glow on my bedroom wall. The sounds were comforting—a reminder of my mother’s presence, a feeling of activity and function, even though I knew come morning it would mean a tired-looking mother, her eyes unfocused, searching for rest.

  Every now and then, I would crawl out of bed in the middle of the night to find her in the big armchair with the striped orange pattern, a shawl-blanket draped over her knees. I, at five, or six, would crawl into her lap, like a cat. She would pet my hair, like I was a cat. She would pet, and sip. We never spoke, and I fell asleep quickly in her arms, in the hopes that my weight, my sleepiness, would somehow seep into her. I always woke up in my own bed, so I never knew if she went back to her room or if she stayed there all night, staring at the folds of the curtains over the window.

  We’d lived in this house all my life. My parents had met in Berkeley as college students, but they got married right after graduation, moved to L.A. for Dad’s law school, and my mother gave birth to Joseph shortly after they’d bought and settled into the place on Willoughby. She’d had trouble picking a major in college, unsure what she liked, but she chose the house right away because it was boxy and friendly, with red roof tiles and a mass of bougainvillea pouring over the door awning, and the diagonal diamond-shaped window patterns in the front looked like they could only frame a family that was happy.

  Dad studied hard, did well on his tests, shook hands with his teachers. He made sheets of checklists on pads of yellow legal paper, lists reminding him to Talk to the Librarian, Give Green Sweater to Homeless Guy on Jefferson, Buy Apples. Find a Wife hadn’t been on any visible list, but he’d proposed earlier than most of his peers and something did seem to get checked off inside him once they were married. He bought gifts in line with the anniversary materials and framed their best wedding photograph for the hallway, and even though Have a Son and Have a Daughter looked better on paper than in the crying and diapering day after day, my father was pleased by the elder son/younger daughter arrangement. The world had matched what he’d dreamed up, and he settled himself inside what they’d made. He was cheerful enough when he came home from work but he didn’t really know what to do with little kids so he never taught us how to ride a bike, or wear a mitt, and our changes in height remained unmarked on the door frames, so we grew tall on our own without proof. He left at the same time each morning and came home at the same time each evening, and my earliest memories of my mother were of her waiting at the door as soon as it was anywhere near time, me on her hip, Joseph at her hand, watching car after car drive by. He was never late, but she watched early anyway. During the afternoons, when she was tired of kid activities, she would sometimes roll around a white plastic Wiffle Ball and tell us stories of our first few years. In particular, she told the stories of our births. For some reason, Dad refused to go into hospitals, so Mom had given birth to each of us by herself while Dad waited outside on the sidewalk, sitting on a crate, half reading a detective story.

  Lucky me, she said, as she pushed the plastic wobbly ball over. I got to meet you both first.

  When Dad got home, he’d bound up the walk and throw open the door, kissing her, kissing us, lining up his shoes, sifting through the mail. If anyone had been crying for any reason, he’d pull out a tissue and pat down our cheeks and say salt was for meat, not faces. Then he’d run out of greetings and glance around at the walls until he headed off to their room to change. What my father did most comfortably and best was log those long hours while my mother bathed and fed and clothed and burped, viewing the world at large as the vastest of colleges, a repeat of the trouble she’d had earlier deciding on a major. Possibilities seemed to close in on her. I love everything, she told me when I was still little enough to sit high on her hip. I don’t know what I like! she said brightly, kissing me on the nose. You’re so cute! she said. So cute! You! You!

  I hardly knew any of my other relatives. Either they lived far away or they were dead. Three of my four grandparents had passed on to other unknowns by the time I was four, but my mother’s mother was apparently as healthy as an Olympian even though she’d never exercised a day in her life. She lived north, in Washington State.

  She hated travel, so she didn’t visit, but one Saturday afternoon during my eighth year, a big brown box package arrived at our doorstep with GRANDMA in capital letters as the return address. A package! I said, dragging my parents to the door. Is it somebody’s birthday? No, Mom said stiffly, pushing it inside with her foot.

  Inside, beneath layers of foam, I found a dish towel with my name on it. For Rose, she had written, in spidery handwriting on a scrap of paper taped to the towel itself. It was frayed, the pattern faded. I grabbed it out of the box and held it to my cheek. What is this? Dad asked, pushing foam strips onto the floor and lifting out a chipped daisy-patterned teacup with his paper taped to it: To Paul. Her broken teacup? he said. Joseph’s gift was a series of clean blue pillowcases, and my mother’s name was attached to a plastic bag full of cracked tins of rouge. She’s old now, Mom had said, circling a bit of rouge onto the back of her hand. Grandma lived alone, and probably at that point had lost part of her mind, but no one dared move her. She can still get to the post office, right? said Mom, shuttling the bag of rouges to the back of a kitchen drawer. Dad pulled handfuls of coins from his pockets. Whew! he said. Not a lot of love lost between you two! He dumped all his change into the teacup so that no one would ever drink out of it.

  I loved my dish towel. This one was two-toned, and had, on one side, stitchings of fat purple roses on a lavender background, and on the other side, fat lavender roses on a purple background. Which side to use? An optical-illusion namesake with which I could dry our dishes. It was soft and worn and smelled like no-nonsense laundry detergent.

  Because she did not visit in person, Grandma called once a month, on Sunday afternoons, and my mother would gather us around, put the phone in the center of the kitchen table and press speaker. She was gruff, Grandma, but funny. She liked to tell about her geology rock parties, where she had invited people over to the house to dig up and label rocks from the yard and when they walked in the door she specifically requested that no one speak.

  Sometimes I even put tape on their mouths, she said. If they let me. It was bliss. You understand, Joseph, correct?

  Yes, said Joe.

  We did drink a lot, said Grandma, a little wistfully. That you, Rose? You there?

  Hi, Grandma, I said.

  You’re too quiet, said Grandma. Speak up.

  I rolled a vinyl place mat into a tube.

  I love you, I said, through the tube.

  There was a pause. Across the room, from her listening position wedged in the far corner, Mom flinched.

  Love? said Grandma, through the tiny black holes.

  Yes, I said.

  But you don’t even know me, said Grandma. How can you love me? It should be earned. You’re too clingy. She’s too clingy, Lane, Grand
ma said.

  Ma, said Mom, picking at the ends of her ponytail.

  I’m not clingy, I said.

  She is extremely clingy, said Joseph. What rocks did you find?

  How are things there, Ma? Mom asked. All’s good?

  No, Grandma said, all is not good. They’re taking away my driver’s license. Basalt, Joseph, she said. We found a whole lot of basalt. I’ll send you some.

  Boxes of it, the following week. Dark and glassy. We repopulated the garden. When a teacher had us draw our grandparents for an assignment on ancestry, I monopolized the black crayon, and my picture had been of a thick black box with grating, lines extending outward to indicate voice.

  5 After lunch, my teacher sent me to the nurse.

  We studied nature in the afternoons on Wednesdays. In third grade, the nature section was all about bugs and I had been very excited about the upcoming lesson on fireflies, but my mood had changed drastically during the lunch hour, and as soon as we were back in the classroom, I put my head on my desk. I didn’t intend to do it; it was like someone had attached a magnet to my forehead, and then tucked another inside my notebook. That was where my head had to go.

  My teacher stopped halfway through her lesson.

  Close your eyes, class, she called out, and imagine you’re a firefly, flying and blinking in the darkness of the night.

  Then she walked to my desk and knelt by my side and asked if I was okay. I told her I thought I was sick, and my friend Eliza, imagining next to me, popped open one eye and explained how I’d spent the entire lunch hour at the drinking fountain.

  She was very, very thirsty, Eliza whispered.

  Is it the heat? asked our teacher.

  I don’t think so, I said.

  I stood at her desk as she signed a pass with my name on it. While my classmates extended arms to make wings, I walked down empty halls, past old trophies and paintings of houses, up to the open door of the infirmary, where I stood, gripping the hall pass, waiting. I had never visited the nurse before. I was rarely sick. I never faked.