The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

by Aimee Bender

  She raised her shoulders. I change around, she said. Like the Big Island in Hawaii.

  You get to be Hawaii?

  The Big Island. It has seven different climates. You can be Hawaii too, if you want.

  Are you a rain forest?

  I don’t think so, she said.

  A desert?

  Sometimes, she said.

  A volcano?

  On occasion, she said, laughing.

  I went to walk by myself at the railing. The ocean looked specific and granular in the high heat. When we reached the very end of the pier, I stood by a short old Japanese fisherman who told me he had been there reeling up the mackerel since six-thirty in the morning. What time did you get up? he asked me. Seven, I said. I was already here, he said, looking at his watch. A full bucket of fish nestled at his feet, in a cooler. It was three-thirty. I’m still here, he said.

  Now I’m here too, I said.

  The two of us, here, he said.

  Did you see the sunrise?

  Over the mountain, he said.

  Pretty?

  He nodded. Orange, he said. Pink.

  I want to be the ocean instead of the rain forest, I said on the drive home.

  Sure, said Mom, whose mind was long gone into somewhere else.

  Joseph would reach out to me occasionally, the same way the desert blooms a flower every now and then. You get so used to the subtleties of beige and brown, and then a sunshine-yellow poppy bursts from the arm of a prickly pear. How I loved those flower moments, like when he pointed out the moon and Jupiter, but they were rare, and never to be expected.

  So, because of all this, it was no small surprise one fall afternoon when I spied Joseph, walking from the bus stop, arriving home from seventh grade with another person at his side. A person his own age. I was drawing lightning bolts with colored chalk on the sidewalk because the school nature lesson that day had been about weather: thundershowers, tornadoes, hurricanes. All so exotic to the blue skies of Los Angeles. I was busily getting the edges right on the first bolt when I looked up and saw them walking around the corner, and at first I thought I was blurring my vision. I colored the bolt bright orange. Looked up again: still two. My second thought was that it was a trick. Maybe Joseph had been assigned this other kid. Maybe the guy was a jerk, playing a joke on my brother.

  What are you doing here? I asked, as soon as they reached the front lawn. I think I was seven. Joseph, like usual, didn’t answer. Desert wind. Snakes and scorpions.

  Hi, said George. I’m George. He bent down and shook my hand. He had a good handshake for a seventh-grader.

  Lightning! he said, looking down.

  But why are you here? I asked again, following them inside.

  Joseph headed to his bedroom. George turned back, and said they were there to do homework.

  Is he teaching you? I asked George.

  No, said George.

  But why are you here with my brother? I asked.

  Science homework, said George. Science stuff.

  I noted his eyebrows. His pants, which were the normal pants a boy his age wore.

  You like science too? I asked.

  Sure do, said George, disappearing into Joseph’s room.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon going back and forth from the chalk drawings to Joseph’s door. I couldn’t exactly hear what they were doing but it sounded like they were talking about schoolwork. I drew a whole line of lightning bolts very fast, and then took the blue chalk and made slashes of rain everywhere, in the dry and cloudless air.

  It was during George’s fourth or fifth visit that the blow hit me. I was sitting outside Joseph’s door once again, trying to listen; I still assumed that Joseph must be tutoring George, because I could not understand why the guy kept showing up, two or even three times a week. I pretended I was happily building a train track out of Legos that, due to zoning laws, absolutely had to go over the carpet right in front of Joseph’s door.

  What’s the reason for that? a voice asked. My brother’s voice.

  It’s wind resistance, said George.

  I waited for Joseph to explain something to George.

  Why’d you solve it that way? Joseph asked.

  It’s quicker like this, said George, scratching on a pad.

  Wait, do that again, said Joseph.

  Which part?

  That.

  The toy train bumped along a track of red and blue. I sat and listened for a half-hour, and not once did Joseph explain something to his guest.

  Had I been at school with him, I would not have been so surprised. The fast pace that had stunned everyone when he was my age couldn’t be maintained, and by the time he was in seventh grade, he was in advanced math, yes, but there were at least three in the class ahead of him. For once, he had to glance at his homework to keep up. He had shifted from genius to very smart, and although very smart is very good, to a prodigious kid it’s a plummet.

  Train, bumping back to the station.

  For me, it had ramifications beyond his brain. I had assumed, since birth, that Joseph was so weird because he was so smart. But here was George, even smarter, and he knew my name. When he came over, he made a point of saying hi. When he left, he waved.

  I got caught, that day. I was lying on my back on the hall carpet, spinning the train wheels, when George opened up the door to make a phone call.

  Hey, Rose, he said.

  Sorry, I said. I’m making a train.

  Where’s it headed? he asked.

  I mean a train track, I said. What?

  The train?

  Oh, I said. Ventura?

  Go away, Joseph growled, from the depths of his bedroom.

  I moved my train closer to the kitchen and listened to George’s call. He was checking on his sister, who was retarded. He said, into the phone: I need a new drawing of an elephant, okay? My old elephant needs a buddy.

  Mom was also in the kitchen, rinsing a colander of broccoli under the faucet.

  I looked at her when he was off and back.

  Nice boy, she said.

  Not a desert, I said.

  What do you mean? She put the broccoli aside, to drip into the sink.

  You said Joseph was the desert?

  She ran her hands under the tap. Nah, not the desert, she said, as if that conversation had never happened. Joseph, she said, is like a geode—plain on the outside, gorgeous on the inside.

  I watched her dry her hands. My mother’s lithe, able fingers. I felt such a clash inside, even then, when she praised Joseph. Jealous, that he got to be a geode—a geode!—but also relieved, that he soaked up most of her super-attention, which on occasion made me feel like I was drowning in light. The same light he took and folded into rock walls to hide in the beveled sharp edges of topaz crystal and schorl.

  He has facets and prisms, she said. He is an intricate geological surprise.

  I stayed at the counter. I still held the Lego train in my hands.

  And what’s Dad? I said.

  Oh, your father, she said, leaning her hip against the counter. Your father is a big strong stubborn gray boulder. She laughed.

  And me? I asked, grasping, for the last time.

  You? Baby, you’re—

  I stood still. Waiting.

  You’re—

  She smiled at me, as she folded the blue-and-white-checked dish towel. You’re seaglass, she said. The pretty green kind. Everybody loves you, and wants to take you home.

  It took a while to pick up all the pieces of my train track and put them away in my own bedroom. It was a compliment, I kept thinking to myself, as I stacked the parts; it’s supposed to make you feel good, I thought.

  10 Saturday dawned, sunny and hot. Officially nine. I was ready to go the minute I woke up. George wasn’t due until noon, but I bounded around the house, opening the front door and peeking down the sidewalk as early as ten in the morning, making a pathway of fallen leaves, and when George turned the corner onto our block I ran back inside to op
en the door for him as if I was surprised. Hi! He said hello and sang me a quick happy birthday and then went right into Joseph’s room. After ten minutes of convincing, Joseph exited wearing a baseball cap that read The Best Part About Baseball Is the Cap, and George asked me how I felt about walking all together over to a bakery on Beverly which specialized in homemade cookies that cost a whopping three dollars apiece. Good, I said, bobbing my head. I feel good about that.

  The heat wave was lighter, breezier, on this warm white-skied Saturday afternoon, my father out playing tennis, Mom at the studio learning tools, as the three of us headed off together, crossing Melrose, walking south past the jacaranda-bordered fourplex apartment buildings that lined up in friendly rows down Spaulding.

  When I crossed the street, according to my mother, I still had to hold someone’s hand. At ten, I would be able to cross streets unhanded. I’d held on to Joseph’s many times before, for many years, but holding his was like holding a plant, and the disappointment of fingers that didn’t grasp back was so acute that at some point I’d opted to take his forearm instead. For the first few street crossings, that’s what I did, but on the corner at Oakwood, on an impulse, I grabbed George’s hand. Right away: fingers, holding back. The sun. More clustery vines of bougainvillea draping over windows in bulges of dark pink. His warm palm. An orange tabby lounging on the sidewalk. People in torn black T-shirts sitting and smoking on steps. The city, opening up.

  We hit the sidewalk, and dropped hands. How I wished, right then, that the whole world was a street.

  As the two of them walked ahead, Joseph using a ficus leaf to swoop the air and demonstrate something about torque, I watched their backs and their gesturing arms. In my pleasure at being included I completely forgot about the reason for the trip, but the minute we reached the corner and turned onto Beverly, the silky wafting scent of butter and sugar brought it all back, and a smell that usually made people drool tripped dread right up in my stomach.

  Yum, said George.

  Joseph rolled his eyes. He seemed to be smell-proof, somehow. He took a seat outside the bakery, on a low rock wall surrounding some limp azaleas, and pulled out his usual stack of graph paper.

  I’ll be out here, he said. Doing actual work.

  He started sorting through the graph paper pages. George held the door open for me, and we filed inside, together.

  If I rarely spent time with just Joseph, I had certainly never been alone with George. I had no idea what to do. It was like being asked to dance, or really asked anything. The store was empty, and I stood in the middle of the room, twisting, reading as much as I could sound out of the enthusiastic signs that covered the walls, assuring us that every cookie was baked on the pre–mi–ses, which George and I had agreed earlier was a key factor in today’s test.

  It’s better to be away from your home, he said, coming up to me. We may be able to tell different things, if you don’t know the people.

  Okay, I said.

  Take subject out of environment and re-test, he said, making quote fingers with his hands.

  At the bins, I picked out a chocolate chip and an oatmeal. George got the same and looked at me close, under those arched eyebrows. Good, he said. You ready?

  I guess, I said.

  I sat myself down at a red-and-beige table.

  Take your time, said George.

  I bit into the chocolate chip. Slowed myself down.

  By then, almost a week in, I could sort through the assault of layers a little more quickly. The chocolate chips were from a factory, so they had that same slight metallic, absent taste to them, and the butter had been pulled from cows in pens, so the richness was not as full. The eggs were tinged with a hint of far away and plastic. All of those parts hummed in the distance, and then the baker, who’d mixed the batter and formed the dough, was angry. A tight anger, in the cookie itself.

  Angry? I said to George, who was up browsing the rows—white-chocolate chunk, no-sugar shortbread—chewing his own.

  It’s an angry cookie? he said.

  I nodded, tentative. He took another bite of his, and I could see him paying close attention, trying to taste what I did. His eyes focused in the near distance.

  Man, he said, after a minute, shaking his head. Nothing.

  He went to ring the bell on the counter. After a minute, a clerk wandered in from the back, a young man with short black-dyed hair and a proud arched nose, wearing a dusty red uniform.

  Yeah, he said. What.

  Did you bake these? asked George.

  The young man, probably in his early twenties, looked down at the half still in George’s hand.

  What type?

  Chocolate chip, George said.

  He sniffed. He looked at the clock. Yeah, he said.

  George put his elbows on the counter and crossed his feet, in his khaki pants of a million pockets. I was in love with him, pretty much, by that point. I did not care that my brother had been shooting me evil-eye laser looks of hate all week. Soon, I knew, they’d get distracted by something else—by the broken sprinkler, or by the weather pattern changes, or by traffic system routes along La Brea, but for the moment I was Project Number One, and the young man in the red cookie uniform responded to George, as most people did, because George wanted something from him, wanted his unique specificity right then, with that beam of friendly focus that was so hard to resist.

  We’re doing a school project, said George, leaning closer. Can I ask you a few questions?

  I guess, said the guy.

  What was your mood when you made this?

  No mood, said the guy. I just make the cookies. In the bowl, stir, bake, done.

  Do you like making them?

  Nah, said the guy. I fucking hate this job.

  George shifted his position at the counter. He turned around for a second to look at me directly. Sugary dust slid down my throat.

  Why? George asked.

  Would you want to sell cookies first thing after college? said the guy.

  Probably not, said George.

  I don’t even like cookies, said the guy.

  I bit into the oatmeal. Same levels—now the oats, well dried, but not so well watered, then the raisins, half tasteless, made from parched grapes, picked by thirsty workers, then the baker, rushed. The whole cookie was so rushed, like I had to eat it fast or it would, somehow, eat me.

  Oatmeal in a hurry, I said to George, a little louder.

  Chocolate chip, angry, he said, turning around. What’s that, about oatmeal?

  Rushed, I said.

  He turned back. You make the oatmeal?

  Nah, said the guy. That’s Janet.

  Who’s Janet?

  She works here in the mornings, the guy said. She talks a lot about traffic. He glanced over at me. She’s always running late, he said.

  I could feel my face reddening. George smiled. Thank you, he said, to the guy.

  George returned to me, and pulled my hair into two ponytails with his hands.

  Some-one is sm-art, he sang.

  I wanted to grab on to him, tie myself to his sleeve.

  But I don’t want it, I said, to no one.

  So what’s the project? the guy asked, casually neatening the stacks of coupons on the front counter.

  I was sitting in a red chair, which had been pinned to the floor with several plastic nails. The tips of my feet just touching the floor. The table, a thick shellac over a pattern of beige dots that seemed to be trying to suggest spontaneity. I couldn’t eat any more of either cookie, so I left them crumbling on the table.

  I guess you could call it a test of location, said George, reaching over to finish my leftovers. Like, where do we locate the feeling inside the cookie, he said, chewing.

  The guy scrunched up his forehead, and a lock of black hair fell over his eyes.

  Or, am I bonkers, I said, from my chair.

  And? said the guy.

  Truth was, it was hard to see George eat those cookie halves without hesitat
ion. Without tasting even a speck of the hurry in Janet’s oatmeal, which was so rushed it was like eating the calendar of an executive, or without catching a glimpse of the punching bag tucked beside every chocolate chip. I was so jealous, already, of everyone else’s mouth. But I loved George in part because he believed me; because if I stood in a cold, plain white room and yelled FIRE, he would walk over and ask me why. It was the same thing that would make him into a very good scientist.

  No, I said. Maybe not.

  Wait, hang on. The guy ducked into the back, and came out with a sandwich in his hand, wrapped tightly in plastic.

  Does it work with sandwiches? he asked.

  I didn’t move. He handed it over. George was watching with a kind of neutral curiosity, and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, so I just unwrapped it and took a bite. It was a homemade ham-and-cheese-and-mustard sandwich, on white bread, with a thin piece of lettuce in the middle. Not bad, in the food part. Good ham, flat mustard from a functional factory. Ordinary bread. Tired lettuce-pickers. But in the sandwich as a whole, I tasted a kind of yelling, almost. Like the sandwich itself was yelling at me, yelling love me, love me, really loud. The guy at the counter watched me closely.

  Oh, I said.

  My girlfriend made it, he said.

  Your girlfriend makes your sandwiches? asked George.

  She likes doing it, said the guy.

  I didn’t know what to say. I put the sandwich down.

  What? said the guy.

  The sandwich wants you to love it, I said.

  The guy started laughing. My voice, though, was dull. George reached over and took a bite. Is that ham? he said.

  The sandwich? asked the guy.

  Was yelling at me, I said, closing my eyes. It was yelling at me to love it.

  George took another bite, and then re-wound the plastic tightly around the bread. Does that sound like her?

  Nah, said the guy, laughing a little still.

  I mean, do you love her? George asked.

  The guy shrugged. Depends on what you mean by love, he said.

  I laid my head on the table. The yelling was loud, and it was too much information to sort through, and it was way too much for nine years old. George handed the rest of the sandwich back over the counter.

  That’s it, he said. No more tests for Rose. He reached over and took my hand and squeezed it. We weren’t even in traffic.