The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

by Aimee Bender

  27 Within a minute, after hanging up, the phone rang again.

  I picked up. Sorry, I said.

  Hello? the voice said. Rose?

  The wish, that George had called back, apologetic, called the number he knew so well to invite me out to spend the weekend in the dorm. Maybe he could show me the town, or be my date to Eliza’s party. Instead, it was my mother’s voice that rushed into my ear, running ahead fast, sharper than usual. The connection wasn’t good—it sounded like she was talking from a pay phone outdoors, and great swoops of wind rushed in every few seconds. She didn’t ask why I was home, but through the gaps she said something about how it was so good to hear my voice and how she was calling from the little town outside the workshop in Nova Scotia. The place had scarce technological amenities—just woodworking tools and gulls—so it was hard to catch her full sentences, but over the rushes of wind, it sounded something like she’d called Joseph seven times and he wasn’t answering his phone and now the answering machine was disconnected so she needed me to write him a check.

  A check?

  On him, she said. Please? The line crackled. Bedford Gardens, she said. She spelled it for me. With a B, she yelled into the phone.

  I know where he lives, I said. Can’t I just call? Can’t Dad call?

  Joe won’t pick up, she said. His phone’s out. Please.

  For a second, the wind lapsed, and quieted. I’m worried, she said, with perfect clarity.

  I’m sure he’s fine, I said.

  Your father doesn’t take this kind of thing seriously, but I have a bad feeling, she said. We had an agreement, Rose, she said.

  I pulled a pile of mail into my lap. I felt the sullenness building.

  So is Larry there too? I asked.

  Who?

  Larry, your lover?

  Excuse me? I can’t hear you from the wind.

  Lar-ry? Your lo-ver?

  Silence, on the other end. Just the wind, talking back. Gulls, squawking.

  Yes, he’s here, she said, finally. Half the studio is here.

  You guys having fun? I said, making an airplane out of a men’s store sale card.

  I didn’t know you knew, she said faintly.

  Oh, for years, I said.

  How—

  It’s really hard to explain, I said. I flew the plane across the kitchen floor, where it crashed against a cabinet. So Joseph—

  Does your father know?

  Dad? I said. My highly observant dad? Are you kidding?

  Or Joseph? she said, her voice starting to waver. Is that why he’s gone?

  I coughed into the receiver. No, I said. He doesn’t know either. Nobody knows but me. Aren’t you wondering why I’m home? I skipped school.

  Her words came through in ribbons and waves. That’s not why I’m away, she said. Nearly the whole co-op is here. It’s a work trip, she said. We’re working. I’m so sorry, Rose.

  I picked at the address label on one of the bills. Electric bill. Probably big.

  So when did you last talk to him? I said.

  Larry?

  Joseph.

  Right before I left, she said. Please, honey. He always answers when I call. We’ll talk about this all when I get back, I promise. Please. Did you say you skipped school?

  The address label wouldn’t come off so I put the ripped electric bill back in its stack by the phone. On top of all the other bills, all the papers that ran the house invisibly.

  No, I said. I was kidding. It’s a holiday.

  Today? she said.

  It’s Barbelucci Day, I said.

  Listen, she said. If something is wrong, I’ll be there as fast as I can. I’ve called the hospitals just in case but he’s not in them.

  You called hospitals already?

  Remember last time? If he’s not home, will you check Kaiser, just in case? The one on Vermont and Sunset? You see, Rose, there’s no one else. It has to be you. It’s only you.

  Someone called her name, from a far distance. I could hear the trees, whipped up. Another land. I’m sorry, I have to go, she said. Thank you, love. Thank you so much. We’ll talk when I get back.

  After she hung up, I went into the living room and sat in the striped armchair for a while. Out the window, the breezeless stillness of a desert spring.

  28 The building where Joseph lived was stucco and ugly, with boxy cypress hedges in stiff rows and that cursive name written on the front, that name so vague I could never remember it.

  When I drove up, the whole complex looked emptier than it had before. Only one broken-down brown Chevy in the downstairs garage. It was late afternoon when I pulled in, the sky streaky with clouds, and on the streets, cars were arriving home, parking, work people unpacking trunks and heading into their units.

  I dragged my feet up the stairs and down the balcony corridor. At the top of the stairway, in front of Joseph’s apartment, someone had pushed a twin bed against the railing. With a pillow and a comforter, all set to go for sleep. By the door, I groped around in the black metal cupola that framed the solitary outdoor bulb until I found the magenta spare key—a cursive J on the key label in my mother’s handwriting. With it, the door opened a notch, and then the chain blocked me.

  Joseph? I called, into the wedge of darkness.

  Nothing.

  I was in a newly sour mood, after the phone calls with my mother and George. Embarrassed, about calling George. Upset, that I’d told my mother what I knew. Now that I’d told her, we’d have to have a talk. Plus, it just made me irritable to have to check on my older brother. Joseph’s front door wouldn’t push open, and so I snuck a grumbling hand through the open wedge and tried to unlatch the chain. I couldn’t actually reach the latch, but the screws felt loose on the door-frame side, so instead of unlatching the chain I changed arms, curled my fingers, did a twist or two, and was able to dismantle the entire apparatus itself. After a minute, the whole thing fell apart and the door gaped open.

  The living room was dark. Empty.

  I hadn’t been inside his actual apartment much. When I saw Joseph, it was because he came to us, because my mother drove out, picked him up, and brought him home. On occasion, he and George came over for dinner together, but the contrast of George’s lively updates on Caltech set against Joseph’s reluctant mutters was too much for even my mother, and she did not extend the invitation often.

  Inside, it smelled faintly of noodles. Nothing much in the way of furniture except that card table with some science books piled on it, and a chair with a ripped seat and our grandmother’s last name written on the back in cursive. Morehead, liltingly. All the curtains were closed except in the kitchen, where a small window sent a few late-afternoon rays onto the tiled floor, a yellow pattern of sun stripes over crisscrossing tile stripes. I left the front door open.

  I’m in, I said.

  No answer.

  I stepped into the hallway. No pictures. The bathroom unlit. The bedroom at the end.

  I’m coming in, I said, down the hallway. Joseph? Hellooooo. It’s me, Mom’s good old checker, I said.

  Quiet. Empty. I clicked on the overhead hall light, but it only cast a burnt yellow tinge over the dimness.

  No sounds coming from his room. Pure silence. I’d been through it all before. Outside, a few cars ambled up the street. Only the faint hum and rattle of distant plumbing, somewhere deep inside the building.

  Joseph did not invite people over, or have parties, so as far as I knew, other than Mom, I was the first person other than himself to set foot in his apartment in weeks. This was significant because at the end of the hall was the door to his bedroom, and on it he’d hung the old sign from his childhood, Keep Out, written years and years ago in thick black pen, now faded to gray. I’d long ago memorized the blocky shape of the O, the slightly too large T. It was such a familiar sight that it took a minute, here, to question. Why was it here? He must’ve lifted it off his old door during some visit home, and put it up again even though he lived alone. But so who was the
sign for now? That badly drawn skull and crossbones.

  I said his name at the door, and when no one answered, I pushed it open.

  Inside his room, the light was off. I flicked it on. Joseph was sitting in the middle of the room, at a card-table desk, in a chair, at his laptop computer. Dressed. Awake. He looked sickly, and thin, but he always looked a little sickly and thin to me.

  Hey, I said, startled. What’s going on? You’re here? Are you okay?

  I’m fine, he said, quietly.

  The bedroom in his apartment was small: wall-to-wall beige carpet, mirrored sliding closets, and no bed anymore, just one plain dresser, a couple of folding chairs, the desk, and a nightstand. One window, closed. In a corner, the carpet matted down in a long rectangle.

  That’s your bed out there?

  The floor is better for my back, he said.

  You’re sleeping on the floor? What are you talking about?

  He stared at me, his eyes flick-framed by those dark romantic lashes, the gaze too wide and unblinking.

  What are you doing? I said.

  Work, he said.

  It was confusing, how he’d been so easy to find. In his jeans and T-shirt and shoes. No big deal. Plus, everything looked regular. On top of the dresser drawer leaned an old plaque from a string-galaxy drawing competition he’d won in junior high school, and another one of Mom’s oak jewelry boxes that she’d made in her more advanced years of woodworking. A few sprinkled pennies and nickels, a loose dollar bill, worn to cloth.

  He looked at me expectantly, but there was another card-table chair open in the middle of the room, also with Morehead written liltingly on the back, and something about the ease of everything was bugging me, something about actually finding him sitting there seemed worse than my usual time spent with nothingness, so I walked over to the free chair and sat down.

  Why couldn’t you just let me in? I broke your chain lock.

  I was busy, he said. Am.

  I scanned the room. In his closet, two worn plaid shirts hung above several pairs of hiking boots. A few rubber bands and pencils and a pen rolled on his nightstand, a brown-stained spruce model that stood boxily beside the absence of a bed. I got up again and clicked off the glare of the overhead light. Outside the window the sun had gone down, and the long end of day spread itself in swaths over the apartment buildings, where cars continued driving into their slots.

  Doing what?

  Work, he said again.

  No, I said.

  I’m busy, Rose, he said, clipped. Can you go?

  I slid open the window, and watched a red Honda Civic back into a spot. A woman got out, shaking her hair. She didn’t pay attention when she opened her car door, and another car nearly lopped off her leg.

  I’ll explain later, he said. It’s a complicated experiment.

  I bet, I said. Why aren’t you answering the phone? I drove all the way over. How come you’re so easy to find?

  —.

  Are you eating?

  —.

  Drinking any water?

  I need to concentrate, he said, his voice dwindling away.

  I kept my post at the window, watching the cars.

  Outside, the white air deepened into blue. The dimming famous romantic southern-California dusk. I had done my job, so I expected myself to leave. I could call Mom to confirm his aliveness, bring him a ham sandwich and a glass of water, and drive back, continuing the debate in my head about whether or not to go to Eliza’s party.

  Except it was so familiar, the feeling in the room. The air held a tinge of the same heaviness I’d seen on Joseph’s face many times during those babysitting moments, when he’d reappeared, exhausted-looking, tufty-haired, and, standing there at the window, I felt a little like a detective must feel when about to turn a corner on a case. As if, if I stood still enough, very very still, as still as I possibly could, then I might see something I had not seen before.

  It shifted my bad mood a little, to note this. The irritation was becoming just a staticky front underneath of which was forming an arrow of anticipation, beginning to point. I kept my post at the window until the apartment buildings across the street were obscured by darkness. The modest joy of seeing windows click on, the simple pleasure of rectangles of yellow light exposing the dark twists of tree boughs.

  A few more cars crept up the street, headlights on. I returned to the chair in the middle of the room, and sat down.

  At his desk, Joseph visibly stiffened.

  I’ll e-mail Mom, he said, how’s that? Right now.

  I shook my head.

  Sorry, I said. I guess I just feel like staying for a little while more.

  How long is a little while? he said, almost shrill.

  I don’t know.

  He didn’t turn. We sat in a row, him in front of me, facing the wall, like passengers on a stationary train. His laptop was on screen saver, swirling fish in a bubbling tank, so I couldn’t see if he was really working on anything or not. On the rest of the desk/table, nothing. A couple pencils. Faint markings, in pencil, sketched out on the wall under the window. Just scribbles here and there about whatever, half an equation, or some numbers in a row.

  His fingers dug into the table’s rim.

  Sorry, I said again.

  What was also strange to me was how he didn’t get back to work. Hadn’t while I’d stood at the window. Still didn’t now. In earlier days, when I just wanted to be in the same room as him, he would try his best to ignore me and then would bring the pad of paper or book in a huff into the next room, maybe swearing at me, or locking the door. But here he stayed put. On an impulse, I reached over and slapped down on a key, to wake the computer up, and he started—what!—and the screen cleared and it was just a news page, just the front page of the New York Times, talking about the economy and foreign policy. No open files, as far as I could tell.

  That’s your work? I said. You’re reading the news?

  And?

  Darkness soaked into the room.

  There was nothing upsetting, that I could see. It wasn’t like there was anything about sex in the air—no hastily covered blanket, or lurking shame or edge of pleasure. And it wasn’t emotional—it wasn’t like I’d just stumbled in on Joseph rocking himself in a corner in tears or stabbing himself or like I’d found his diary in a drawer and read it aloud over the high-school intercom. No bomb ingredients or drug baggies, no samurai sword or gun or syringe. Whatever was happening was different than all of that, was more private, more closed off: all that came through was that he just wanted to be as alone as possible, aloner than alone, alonest, and my presence in the room was as invasive as if I’d strapped electrodes to his skull and was reading the pulses of his mind.

  I’d just like to stay for a little while longer, I said, as quietly as I could.

  You’re such a fucking pain! he said. You’ve always been the worst pain in my fucking ass! and he slammed the laptop lid down, but he did not get out of that chair.

  In any other instance, in those countless other examples, he would’ve stalked out, would’ve gone to the corner farthest from me, maybe off in the kitchen, or on the balcony, but he did not, which was notable, so I started to pay attention to the chair. Just to look closer at it. It was the same chair as mine, the third in that series of four card-table Morehead chairs, sent by Grandma, his personal choice of furnishings for the apartment.

  He was sitting in the chair, the way a normal person sits in a chair, but when I looked very closely, it seemed like the chair leg vanished right into his shoe. That the chair legs went inside both legs of his pants, and when I looked even closer, I could see that he had actually cut holes of the correct size in his pants to place the chair legs through the pant legs, and then, ostensibly, the leg of the chair, a light rat-colored aluminum metal with a rubber bulb at the foot, went down to share space with his own foot, inside his shoe.

  What’s the chair doing in your pant leg? I asked. I said it lightly, just trying to be friendly abo
ut it.

  He said nothing. No more outbursts. He re-opened and clicked up his laptop and read the news. Just observing. Just looking at what was there. I peered closer to see where the chair foot entered his shoe, but the shoe was covered by the hem of his pants, and something, somehow basic, was off. A slightly sick feeling picked up in my throat then, a dizzy feeling, a feeling like I was not going to like this, that whatever I was about to come across wasn’t good. That I should leave, return to the evening, go knock on the door of the red-car woman across the way, ask for food, any kind, to hug her, to go find a man nearby, to call Eddie out of the blue and ask him to take off my clothes, please. Now. Go. The chair leg went wrong, somehow. How? Was he inserting furniture into his body?