The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

by Aimee Bender

  He made a little exhale sound, half of a laugh.

  Nice to meet you, he said.

  Out the kitchen window, George was answering Mom’s questions. Bobbing his head. Soon to fly off into the world of dorms, and girls. It seemed brutally unfair, that he would not be coming over two or three times a week anymore. Mom walked to the car, talking, making some kind of airplane shape with her arms.

  You know I know, I said, to Larry.

  Know what?

  I smiled a little, into the phone. Watched as my mother popped the trunk of the car and looked in there. In the trunk? Joseph? It all seemed funny, for a second, just funny and ridiculous and sad.

  I just know, I said. The thing I’m not supposed to know.

  He paused again. A muggy silence.

  It’s okay, I said. I mean, it’s bad. But it’s okay. Just stop calling the house. And nothing on weekends. All right?

  That frozen silence, on the other end. But a heavy, listening silence. George hung up his gown and Joe’s gown carefully on the inside hooks of the back seat of the car.

  I think I understand, said Larry.

  Mom was saying something else, animatedly, to George, by the side of the car. Her pink, wide mouth.

  Thank you, I said, and hung up.

  I paused over the pad of paper. Then I wrote it down, on a clean sheet: Larry called.

  At a quarter past twelve, Mom honked the car horn. Soon the rehearsal would begin: all the robe-clad grads lining up to mark the ceremony in the high-school auditorium. Our father and George’s family would meet us later, at the school, for the real event.

  The horn did nothing but startle the neighborhood kid who was biking, so she left the car to go check the neighbors’ house. Jo-seph! she called, down the street. I stuck the note on the fridge, under a magnet. What to do? I liked seeing her happier. Life was better with her happier.

  I walked through the house. Closed open closet doors, shut off lights. Finally, I went to stand in my brother’s room. The whole running and looking, opening and closing, a giant ruse. Like he was anywhere else but somewhere near his room. Even though I could not find him I knew where he was not, and he was definitely not at the neighbors’. The books, the half-packed boxes, the piles of clothes. That familiar tightening tension in the room itself.

  He’ll be here soon, I said.

  Mom was running down the sidewalk. What should we do? she called to George. It’s time!

  I know, I said, too quiet for her to hear. I closed my eyes. Just wait a sec, I said.

  She kept running down the sidewalk, towards the end of the block. Jo-seph! I heard her calling. Jo—seph! George stood by the car, talking to the kid biking to and fro. Tossing and catching a loose pine cone.

  I left my brother’s room and went to my own, the land of Pegasus pens, and broken stools, and doll stuff. There, I opened the jewelry box my mother had given me for my most recent birthday. She’d made it with leftover bits of lumber, and it was a shiny even oak, with carefully set drawers, handles hewn from twigs. Each piece she made more skilled than the last.

  She, who loved him more than anything, was down the street, calling. George, his closest friend in the world, stood outside scanning the sidewalk. It was an unexpected moment for me. My brother and I had never been close, and I didn’t understand what was happening, but it seemed I still knew more about it than anyone else. For whatever reason, I was involved in this way. I sifted through the jewelry-box drawers, past the leftover roll of a twenty-dollar bill. Listened as carefully as I could for clues while settling colorful stones beside each other.

  Nothing came from the room itself, but as I untangled a long satin ribbon, I heard two steps, out of his room, one two. When I walked into the hall, there he was, in his door frame, with that same look on his face, like he’d been washed and dried in a machine.

  Jo-seph! our mother called, from down the street.

  Jo-seph! George echoed.

  Joseph looked over at me, calmly. We stared at each other, for a longer minute than was expected.

  Ready, he said.

  24 In August, they packed up, in brown boxes: George to Pasadena, Joseph to Los Feliz. On the day he headed east in his boxy U-Haul, a painted picture of rugged Alaskan mountains on the truckside, George came into my room and gave me a long hug. I’ll see you soon, he said, holding me by the shoulders, looking at me in the eyes, although I wouldn’t see him, not for months. Eliza was over that day, and to my distaste and her delight, he hugged her too. Take good care of Rose, he told her. I’m fine, I said, bumping inside the door frame, but Eliza nodded, solemn. Her cheeks filling at the bottom with blush. Maybe you could show us the dorms sometime, she said. I almost whacked her on the head with the yellow doll-brush hidden in my back pocket. Yes, I wanted to see the dorms, more than anything! But not with her there too.

  My brother convinced my parents to rent him an apartment off Vermont, near Prospect Avenue. About fifteen minutes away. He sat with Dad in front of the TV for a half-hour, the longest I’d ever seen them alone together, and he gave a heartfelt eyes-ahead speech about how hard he planned to study and how helpful it would be to be close to school. He had no interest in driving, and from his new doorstep he would be able to walk to Los Angeles City College, to the 7-Eleven, and to the Jons grocery store. The place was a tenplex with its name written diagonally on the front—Rexford Gardens, or Bedman Vista, or something like that. The units circled a courtyard complete with a wall of ferns and a broken mermaid fountain. Joseph’s apartment was on the second level, with an outside hallway that served as a collective balcony.

  To furnish the new apartment, Mom supplied him with seconds from the co-op studio. A dresser with a finicky drawer, a very small table of unclear purpose, a standard pine nightstand, a pair of spindly maple stools.

  How about this? Mom said, on moving day, holding up a coat rack made by one of her colleagues; the wood was elegant, a rich striped rosewood from Brazil, but it hadn’t been cut correctly with the buzz saw and something was off in the balance, so it needed to be wedged inside a corner.

  Sure, said Joseph. Great.

  We were loading boxes into the back of a Ford truck Mom had borrowed from friends at the lumberyard. Joseph dipped back into the house, and returned with two card-table chairs under his armpits. Grandma had sent the rest of the folding set over a series of months, in those long slatted boxes, one at a time.

  How about these; can I have these? he asked, holding them up like crutches.

  Mom wrinkled her nose. Those? she said. They’re not very well made, she said.

  Joseph took two, and then the next two, and then the folding table, and then Grandma’s cracked bamboo salad bowl, and her brass desk lamp with its movable neck. Not as nice as your stuff, of course, he said, walking to the truck and loading it all inside.

  The plan was that he would start with a roommate, to share his one-bedroom, but during the interviews of various contenders he sat still as a stone and said nothing. Peppy strangers came to the house and sat with me and my mother, trying to impress, but you could see their mood sink when they tried to engage Joseph and he didn’t answer one of their questions. He didn’t even grunt. He was worse than I’d ever seen him, radiating Get Away because what he seemed to want more than anything was to live alone. He was glad to go to LACC, he said, yes. He only wanted adequate time to work. Why do you want to live alone so much? I asked, but he pretended like he didn’t hear me. Are we so awful? I said, trailing him from room to room. He’d only applied to the schools where George had also applied, and his former ravenous wish for Caltech began to seem to me less about the merits of the school itself and more about the one and only roommate he could’ve tolerated.

  Mom, in an effort to be helpful, rented the whole apartment under her own name, and she’d wanted to pick a nice roommate to keep Joseph company, and she even tried to give a few possible people generous breaks on the rent, but when each potential eager-eyed roomie drizzled off, smiles stiffe
ning, Joseph begged her again. He asked if he could use his savings, donated by the generous dead grandparents, to pay the extra rent, and after two more people withdrew their names, Mom talked it over with our father and relented. Fine, she said. But you have to call every single day, she said. She stared him down until he bowed his head, yes. She worried he was devastated from the Caltech rejection, but as soon as she handed over the key, he looped his arm through hers. It’s mine? he said. He danced around the house with their arms linked, singing thank you, Mom! thank you, Mom!—his elbows pointy, his voice ringing. She whooped with him, teary, laughing. Call your father, she said, wiping her cheeks, and he got on the phone, also something I’d never seen before, and called Dad at the office to leave a proper thank-you message with his secretary. When he was off, he did another little bow and promised Mom he’d still come over every Sunday night for the splinters.

  He’s coming into his own, she whispered to me, kissing my cheek.

  So that the grandparent fund could stay untouched, she paid the rent for the full apartment from her co-op sales, augmented by my father’s salary. No one made any mention of him getting a job.

  On moving day, we lugged the co-op furniture and the boxes up the stairs and down the balcony corridor. Once all was unloaded, Mom and I stood around the apartment. Opened and closed his cabinets. Admired the closet space. I flushed the toilet, for entertainment.

  Looks very nice! Mom said. She slid open the living-room window to let air in. Peered out his front door. Have you met your neighbors yet?

  The rows of doors down the outside hallway were all shut, curtains drawn.

  We stood awkwardly in his living room, and Joseph thanked us several times, finally ushering us to the doorway. He kept swinging the door closer to closed.

  We get it, I said, stepping out. Bye.

  Every day, Mom told him.

  Yes.

  She gave him another hug, and blew her nose. After he shut the door, she rummaged in her purse and dropped a magenta-colored spare key inside the metal tray of the outside light fixture.

  Just as a backup, she said, as we walked down the stairs.

  George threw himself into college, and Joseph lived a hermit’s life, and I went through the cycles: Eighth grade. Ninth grade. Tenth, eleventh, twelfth. I clung to Eliza, who, despite her promise to George, had found a new group of friends, girls who seemed, with their broad smiles and quicknesses, to be like bicyclers rolling downhill. Like they lived in a miraculous Escherian land that only offered downhills.

  At lunch, the group of them had started to talk about colleges. Eliza had her heart set on Berkeley, majoring in psychology. Several others were interested in political science, or pre-med. I had just applied to a couple of places, almost at random; the idea of more school just seemed confusing to me. Who could bear to pay attention all the time? I kept up my weekly flute lessons so I could play in the school orchestra, but I was content as third chair, and I often wished I’d picked trombone. You can’t blast a flute. My old dodgeball rival Eddie Oakley had grown up to be a jock with nice strong arms, and on occasion, when I was feeling particularly agitated, I ran out to the baseball field at the end of the day and I convinced him to throw broken tennis balls with me over wire fences to roll in the streets. Take that, I said, sending them soaring.

  You’re an angry gal, he said, laughing at me.

  I’m not angry, I said. I just have a good arm.

  A couple times he and I made out outside the boys’ locker room, long after the school day had ended. We pushed our faces into each other. There was something rude and bruising about it, like I was mad at him and he was mad at me and we were having a fight with our lips, but somehow it all still felt pretty good. He tasted like sports. One afternoon, just as it was getting dark, he tucked a hair behind my ear and seemed ready to say something nice; I ducked out of his arms and told him I had to go.

  He pulled me in for one last kiss, which lasted for another fifteen minutes. At a pause, I tucked in my shirt.

  Bye, I said. I’m going.

  You’re the perfect girl, he said, rubbing his chin. You expect nothing.

  I scooped up one of the old tennis balls and threw it at him.

  And you, I said, are the same asshole you were in third grade.

  What? he said, making a mock-innocent face. It’s true, right? It’s good! Tomorrow, same time?

  Maybe, I said, walking away.

  He chuckled. Maybe, he said. Of course.

  During lunchtime, while the downhill girls talked about where they would go to school, and when, and why, I sat on the outskirts of their circle, where grass met concrete, eating my lunch. I watched the science nerds over on a bench, with their books open. Like regurgitated versions of my brother and George.

  Hey, how come you only eat junk food? asked one of Eliza’s friends, the strawberry-blonde who was president of the tennis club. She lived entirely on celery and peanut butter. I was right at the edge of their circle, like the tail of a Q, and I swiveled my butt to face her directly.

  Eliza looked over, listening, waiting. She had a big crush on the student-body president and wanted to ask the tennis-club girl about the latest sighting in the hall.

  Because I can taste the feelings people don’t know they’re feeling, I told her. And it is an absolutely shit experience, I said.

  I raised my eyebrows and glared.

  Jeez, said the girl, turning back. I was only asking. Is Eddie Oakley your boyfriend?

  No, I said.

  Someone saw you guys making out by the tennis court.

  Wasn’t me, I said.

  Rose is really good at dodgeball. And Spanish, Eliza offered. I think Eddie’s okay.

  No one plays dodgeball anymore, I said. And I got a B minus in Spanish.

  She shrugged. You’re still better than I am, she said.

  What did you get?

  She looked down at her fingers, nails recently painted an electric spangly pink.

  She got an A, said the tennis girl.

  I laughed.

  Do you think he saw me in the hall? Eliza whispered.

  I turned back to the quad. The science kids had left to go talk to a teacher.

  For a brief stage that year, I did tell a few people about the food. How am I? I’d say when someone asked. Well, I’m a little caught up with the donut. Generally, it went one of two ways. Either the person would look at me strangely, think I was a kook, and go on to something else, like the tennis girl did. I mentioned it to Eddie as we hurled tennis balls into the street and he said huh, and then stuck his hand up my back. I figured that was the usual, but one afternoon at lunchtime a new girl showed up, freshly arrived from Montana—hazel-eyed Sherrie with all the silver jewelry. She was grateful to have a group to eat lunch with, and she’d met Eliza in English class, and as she bit into her chicken sandwich she told us all about how Los Angeles was so much better than Butte. I mean, it’s huge here! she said, spreading her arms. All the movies are here! she said. Halfway through lunch, Eliza had to go talk intently with the tennis girl about something, so it was just me and Sherrie, left on the grass/cement, bored. To fill space, I held up my last crumby cafeteria chicken nugget and started to list all its various complexities. Ohio, busy factory, bad chickens, stoic breader. I just said it for something to say, but Sherrie scooted closer, her silver-filigree bracelet clunking on the ground. Wait, what? she whispered. What are you saying? she said.

  Such a lift I felt that day, when she looked at me like I was the most intriguing person in the world! I explained a little more about it, tentative, and she grabbed my arm and invited me back to her house that very afternoon, where, in her parents’ kitchen, she baked up a pan of brownies on the spot and handed a square over, wide-eyed. After one bite, I dropped it on the counter. Ugh, I said, muffled, grabbing a glass for water. You are massively depressed, I said. She laid her head on the counter and started to cry. It’s true, she said. I could barely get out of bed, she wept. And this!—after
the whole lunch discussion of how everything was so great in California, how the move was a chance to re-invent herself, how all was astounding in the new dawning day of glory. Baked goods were still the quickest like that. So when can you come back? she asked, an hour later, her eyes round and shiny with tears. I left that day with a skip in my step: A new friend, I sang to myself. A new, true friend! A gift from the Big Sky Country! I went over to her house many more times, and each time was the same routine: an overly cheery greeting, then chocolate-chip cookies, then rice-crispie treats, down, down, down into the pit, then my response, her tears on the table, her moaning of my rightness. I didn’t mind at first—I loved going over with such a sense of purpose and pacing around her kitchen expounding on my thoughts on her interior. I described every single nook and cranny of feeling I could taste. We were inseparable for months. She called me Glorious Rose, and we sat in her bathroom and played mournful electronic songs that went on for ten minutes, and while I perched on the edge of her bathtub and ate her desserts she helped me dye my hair black, then red, then black-red. But it got to the point where I’d go over to her locker and she’d shove a biscuit in my face and ask me how she was feeling, because she couldn’t tell without me. She’d run after me in the halls with a slapdash sandwich she’d made in five seconds to get me to tell her if she really liked this guy or if she was just kidding herself. I don’t know everything, I said, shoving sandwich bites in my mouth. You like him, I said, nodding. You really like him.

  I still didn’t even care until I was over at her house one afternoon and I told her about how Joseph had this disappearing trick that no one had ever figured out and she flattened her bangs over her forehead and asked who’s Joseph? We were in her kitchen, baking as usual. We’d just talked at length about the intricate nuances of her crush on a stoner volleyball player.

  Joseph? I said, squinting. My brother?

  You have a brother? she said. Is he cute? Hey, will you taste this toast for me? Do you think I’m still depressed?