The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

by Aimee Bender

  The bar had cleared by then. The jowly man had left, joining the rest of the daily traffic. Monsieur and Madame were busying themselves at the counter, sorting through orders, putting away glasses. Madame still kept her eyes on the tables, checking, but the feeling of it had changed. The distance of before was now the discomfort and shyness of going on a first date with someone you think you might like.

  Monsieur walked to the front of the bar, from the other side. He held out his hand. We shook.

  What’s your name again?

  Rose, I said. Rose Edelstein.

  Well, Rose Edelstein, he said, it looks like we should all go grab some coffee.

  44 So you want to become a cook? Madame said as we walked to their car, together.

  I’m not sure yet, I said.

  Am I giving you cooking lessons?

  Maybe, I said. I just want to be around while you cook. Is that okay? That’s the main thing, I said.

  A food critic?

  I just want to learn more about it, I said. I didn’t go to college.

  I don’t care about that, she said. How old are you again?

  Twenty-two, I said.

  Can you chop onions?

  I think so, I said.

  Well, then, she said, pulling a red net bag of onions from the trunk of her car. Then that’s where we’ll begin.

  45 When people asked my mother where Joseph had gone, she said he was on a journey. It was a word she liked, full of quest and literature and nobility of spirit. Sometimes she said he was in the Andes, learning about ancient cultures. Other times a deep-sea diver, off a coast in Australia, or else a surfer; depending on her mood, he either rode the waves or searched beneath them. She moved his grandparent fund into a high-interest low-activity account at the bank, where the money built upon itself.

  She still spent most of her time at the studio, and for a while, her projects became very small and intricate: Wooden marbles, or wooden pillboxes, with embroidered flowers. Refined wooden tripods, on which to place small wooden frames. She befriended a little girl down the street solely for the purpose of making an entire furnished dollhouse, but the girl was a tomboy, and when my mother found her perfect tiny bedroom set smashed by a basketball, she stopped.

  Twice a week, I cooked for her. We took out the recipe books together, and she sat and asked about the restaurant and told me about the carpentry innovations while I went through the Joy of Cooking systematically. I insisted that she sit, that I didn’t need help, that she’d cooked enough for a while. Once again, my salvation looked to any outsider like good and generous daughterliness. For months, we ate only appetizers, and then I moved to soups, and salads, and entrées. I skipped the recipes that sounded too difficult, and my mother picked her favorites and made requests.

  She took comfort from what I made. I made it for her. I only ate a little, depending on how much I wanted to bear on any given day. The balances inside were changing, bit by bit, on a daily basis. When her birthday rolled around, I baked her a coconut cake with cream-cheese frosting, and we sat across from each other at the table with big textured slices. Eight, whispered my cake. You still just want to go back to eight, when you didn’t know much about anything.

  I set a cup of chamomile tea at her place. She thanked me, still beautiful, with fine lines sunning out now from the creases of her eyelids. We didn’t talk about Larry anymore and her constant panic over Joseph had faded a little with time, but I could still see the tightening cross her forehead when she remembered that he was not calling, that it was the call time and the phone was not ringing. Where did he go? tugging at the edges of her eyes, in the tremble of her fork, and all I could give her was that cake: half blank, half filling, full of all my own crap, and there, with bands of sunshine reaching across the table, we ate the slices together.

  Your best yet, my mother sighed, licking her fork.

  We ate two slices each, that afternoon. Drank more tea. To elongate the time, more than anything.

  Neither of us mentioned that we had reached the dessert section of the cookbook, after which was only the index.

  After the cake, we cleaned up, as usual. Rinsed the bowls. Stuck the spatula in with the silverware. She said maybe she’d make me a lemon chocolate cake next time, but I put a hand on her shoulder gently and said I didn’t really like lemon chocolate cake so much anymore.

  But you used to! she said.

  I used to, I said. A long time ago.

  She ran the sponge along the inside of the sink, to clear it of leftover debris. She did not face me, but I could feel the vibration of tears, a kind of pain hive, rustling inside her. As she resettled the knives and forks in their dishwasher cup. As she squeezed the sponge dry. After a few minutes, she looked up, to watch out the kitchen window.

  Sometimes, she said, mostly to herself, I feel I do not know my children.

  I stood next to her, as if just listening in. Close. She said it out the window. To the flower boxes, in front of us, full of pansies and daffodils, bowing in at dusk. Where she had directed all her pleas and questions to her missing son, over the last few years. It was a fleeting statement, one I didn’t think she’d hold on to; after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love into us. That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit. She wiped her hands on a dish towel, already moving back into the regular world, where such a thought was ridiculous, nonsensical, but I had heard it, standing there, and it was first thing she’d said in a very long time that I could take in whole.

  I leaned over, and kissed her cheek.

  From us both, I said.

  46 On a lunch break at work, I drove over and met the woman who wore the red scarf in an old stone building off Franklin, wedged just to the east of the freeway traffic. She worked with at-risk kids, and she wrote down everything I said on a yellow pad of paper. I wanted to laugh at the officiality of it all, at how earnestly she jotted down cookies and get vanilla and feelings in food. We decided that the following week the kids would make batches of cookies that I would taste. I warned her that it would not be something I could do often. Whenever you can, she said, writing that down too. Not too often.

  At work, Peter invited me on another walk. We crossed the city in zigzags.

  That evening, I drove to the café. Madame and Monsieur were busy figuring out the latest menu plans for the restaurant, and Madame made me a quick dinner sandwich on a baguette, with pâté and cornichon pickles. The piquant little cornichons, usually a little too acidic for me, were today like tiny exclamation points after the pâté—Pâté! Pâté!

  The duck? she said, squinching up her nose.

  Great, I said.

  Salad?

  I ate a forkful of lettuce. Mmm, I said.

  Is it organic?

  Yes, I said.

  Good. She clapped her hands. I wasn’t sure if he was telling me the truth, she said. His prices are good.

  As I was finishing up, Monsieur came over from the back room with a padlock.

  We want you to have a closet, he said. To store your stuff.

  You will have supplies, Madame added. And you need to keep an apron here, and a change of clothes in case we go out. Downtown. Markets.

  Okay, I said.

  He handed the lock to me, fumbling. Along with a little pamphlet with directions.

  I forget how it works, he said.

  I turned the front dial.

  Just pick three numbers you can remember easily, he said. Okay? Good?

  I turned it in my hands. A standard padlock, with a black face and notched lines in between the numbers.

  Can I put other things in the closet? I asked him, fingering the circle on the front.

  Ah, he said, raising his shoulders. No matter. Whatever’s important, he said. We want you to feel at home.

  I went to look in the back. The restaurant itself consisted of three rooms: the main restaurant area, with booths and ta
bles and the wine counter, the kitchen, and a back storage section for the pantry and supplies. In that back section, they’d cleared the small closet for me. It was the size of a standard hall version, with a wooden dowel on top and a small shelf above. The doorknob supported a band of metal where I would hang the padlock. I walked to my car, setting the dial to three numbers. Nine, twelve, seventeen.

  At home, at dinner, I explained to my parents that I would be working part-time at the café, learning about cooking in some form or another. That I would have a space to myself. I asked after all the items I wanted. Both of them nodded at me, yes. It’s not moving out yet, I told them. But it’s a step.

  They helped me pack the car, together. My mother said she wanted to be the first to try the first official meal I cooked outside of the house. We’re so proud of you, Mom said, and they stood side by side as I drove away, their smiles sewn up with an edge of fishing line.

  As I drove off, I honked the horn, once, and my father raised a hand.

  It was easy to unload the car, at the café.

  Inside the closet, I put my purse, a white chef’s jacket, and a box full of extra kitchen tools and books that I’d bought on my own. Grandma’s teak box of ashes. My mother’s oak jewelry box. Her apron, with twinned cherries, that she gave me as a prize after I made her a pot roast. A velvet and wicker stool that I did not want to see re-upholstered. A rolled-up poster of a waterfall. A plastic graduation tassel.

  In the corner, a folding chair.

  47 He returned for two weeks, that same spring I’d found him. Badly dehydrated. Skinnier than ever. With bluish skin, collapsed sheaths under the eyes. Silent, when the doctors probed and pushed.

  When Mom discovered him facedown on the floor of his bedroom, it was she who called the ambulance to take him to Cedars-Sinai. The place we’d both been born. For the first few days, he was in intensive care, and when his vital signs stabilized, they moved him to the seventh floor, where he would recover. My father’s feet froze at the electric glass entry doors, so he called up all the specialists he knew, former clients, friends of friends, tennis partners, and sent everyone over to find out just what was wrong with his son. On the day I went over, I saw Dad’s car parked on one of the side streets just outside the general front area of the hospital. It was empty, and at the entryway he was standing a few yards from the electric doors, absorbed in reading a book. That day, I had my own specific reason for being there. I did not stop and say hello.

  The weekend had seemed too busy for a good visit, so I had taken the day off school and walked over, on a weekday, on my own. Just thinking, the whole walk, as I passed the building that had housed the old cookie shop, and Eliza’s house, and even the ER where I’d gone years ago when I’d wanted to remove my mouth. Inside the electric lobby doors, I asked the nurse with the giant round glasses Joseph’s room number: 714, he said. It was late morning, and the hospital had a low-key feeling, as if it was not a hospital but instead just a place where people do health business. Not a lot of urgency. Slow beeps and clickings. I rode the elevator to the seventh floor with a woman wearing a bright-magenta suit. Her nails, equally magenta, were too long and curved to press the elevator buttons, so she asked me to press hers for her.

  Sure, I said.

  Six and seven lit up under my fingertips.

  On the seventh floor, at the nurse’s desk, I explained that I was there to see my brother. The nurse, a black woman with a perfectly shaped nose and red-tinted hair, said he was getting tested at the moment by a specialist but that I was welcome to wait. She pointed me in the general direction, and I found a seat in the hall outside his door where I waited quietly, watching the nurses busy on their computers, the bulletin board announcing policy changes in red printer ink alongside colorful drawings of families drawn by bored patients. I slept a little, in my seat. Doctors entered and exited Joseph’s room. I walked to a nearby window, and sure enough, my father’s car was in the choice spot, almost directly below Joseph’s room.

  My mother came in, kissed me hello, did not scold me for missing school, and went to stand in Joseph’s room, listening. Then she bustled out, blew a kiss goodbye. She visited several times a day.

  Another hour passed. Morning turned to afternoon. At one, I brought up lunch from the cafeteria, a negligible hamburger grilled by a pothead who wanted to be famous. I ate it in my hallway spot.

  When I’d finished, the nurse with the sculptural nose came over.

  You know you can always go in when the doctors are there, she offered. Since you’re family.

  I shook my head. Soda buzzed in my mouth. Buzz, buzz.

  No, thank you, I said. I want my own time with him.

  She went back to her desk, to check the schedule. Returned. She had a pretty set of earrings on, lines of twisted gold that moved when she moved, like wind chimes hanging from her ears. She told me that when this current doctor left, no one else was on the schedule for at least a half an hour.

  Thank you, I said. I told her I liked her earrings. She handed me a magazine. You’re very patient, she said.

  I read the fashion magazine cover to cover, and learned about the best way to frame my face, with bangs. How to score high at the workplace by being assertive. The air was warm in the ward—it was a hot May afternoon, dry and grainy with a Santa Ana whisper from the east, and inside, only one rickety fan spun in the corner, recirculating a halfhearted stream of air-conditioning from the vents. I closed my eyes, and practiced hearing all the pinpoints in the room behind me: the nurses, the other patients, tucked into their rooms, the experts, measuring my brother’s information. The cool air, circulating; the fan.

  Finally, the latest doctor raised her voice in the tones of goodbye, and her nurse helper left, and when all the various professionals went off to attend to their next patients and the entryway had cleared, I stood and entered Joseph’s hospital room. His bed faced west, and through the window at his back, sunlight poured in and glazed the floor. Joseph was facing the other way, but as I pulled a chair near the edge of the bed, he turned his head to see who was next and when he saw it was me, his eyes softened. Nothing I ever expected, in my life. For a while, we sat in silence, together. A plane skirted through the sky outside. Lawn blowers blew leaves around, into the gutters. Cars hummed, at 3rd and San Vicente. At some point I started to fill the space and tell him about all the police write-ups, and about everyone’s reactions, and about the group theory of him and the duffel bag and the bushes, and as I was talking, he reached over and took my hand.

  His arm was plugged up with tubes. It was the first time I could ever remember him holding my hand, and he held on to it with real focus, with fingers gripping. Those piano fingers, warm, and strong. I edged my seat closer, right to the very end of the bed. He held on tight, and as we spoke, his voice dropped low, to a whisper. It was the kind of conversation you could only hold in whispers.

  You’re the only one who knows, he said.

  In a voice so quiet I had to put my ear right up close to his mouth, so quiet I could hardly hold on to the words, he whispered to me that the chair was his favorite, was the easiest to sustain. That at other times, he had been the bed, the dresser, the table, the nightstand. It took time, it had taken almost constant practice. It was good while he was away, but terribly hard when he returned. I’ve tried many options, he said. I’ve tried different choices. But the chair, he said, is the best.

  I closed my eyes as he spoke, to hear better. The words, almost ungraspable. Sun on our hands. The sheets, pulled so tight on the hospital bed, sent up a faint smell of brisk laundry detergent bleach.

  Does it hurt? I whispered.

  No, he said.

  His fingers were thin and brittle under mine.

  Do you know, while you’re away?

  No, he said. I don’t know anything, while I’m away.

  Do you feel the passage of time?

  He shook his head. No.

  The blanket on his bed grew warm, heated by the slanted
ray crossing through the window. Late afternoon Los Angeles hazy sunny sun. I opened my eyes. His skin was still heavy, like it had been before, like more hours had pressed into his face than made sense, like he was a living version of the relativity split between the clock on earth and the one in space. There wasn’t much time; soon, a whole new stream of experts sent by our father would be coming in, standing in the doorway with clipboards, and metallic clicking pens, and stethoscopes.

  So, I said. Joseph. I have a favor to ask.

  Machines whirred beside us. Outside the door, a nurse walked by, soft-footed, on rubber soles.

  Joseph squeezed my hand lightly, in response.

  You could not usually ask him things, my brother. I had never asked him for anything real. He had sent over George at school that one time, but for so many years I’d begged him to play with me and he’d only do it if my mother offered him a new science book as a bribe. The only time he’d hugged me on impulse was the day, years ago, when I’d come home from the ER after having the fit about my mouth. We did not hang out, or have meals together by choice, or talk on the phone. At times I was sure he forgot my name. But I pressed his hand back, and with my eyes low, pinned to the corner of the pillow, tracing the hemline around the edge, I told him about the line I’d drawn, on the chair. I asked him to only pick that chair, in the future. Not another chair. Not another item. That one. So then, no matter what happened, I would know.

  It’s just a ballpoint pen line, I said. But it’s easy to see. I leaned closer. His heart, on a green circuit, rose and fell on the screen nearby.

  Please, I said.

  His eyes were still soft, looking to mine.

  Do you hear me, Joe? I asked.

  Yes.

  Does it make sense?

  It does.

  Will you do it?

  He pressed his hand, against mine. Yes, he said.

  On the walk home, I passed by my father’s car. He was in the driver’s seat by then, asleep, his head leaning on his chest, heavy. I picked a camellia flower from a nearby bush, and left it on his windshield.