The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

by Aimee Bender

  To the hospital, she brought a suitcase that contained her nightgown, pills, and pale-blue felt slippers. She died at ninety-one. Mom flew up to the funeral, assumed the ashes would stay in Washington, and arrived home around the same time as the package: pale-blue felt slippers, an empty bottle of pills, and a teak box with carvings of elephants on the rim, inside of which were the soft gray heaps.

  Mom ran fingers over the half-circles in the elephant feet. She picked this box? she murmured. I made this box, she said. She turned it over and a few bits of ashes crept out the lid and sifted to the carpet. Sure enough, at the base: L.M.E. carved into a corner. It was the closest I ever got to seeing my grandmother give my mother a hug.

  Mom kept herself very busy at the studio, and she did not mention Larry to me again. She made benches, stools, and trunks. Boxes, tables, shelves. No one could take out her splinters like Joseph had, so when Mom came home with clear hands, I never knew if Larry was doing it or if she had just started taking greater care as she worked the planes of wood. I’d never liked seeing my brother take the splinters out of her fingers, nestled up next to her on the couch, side by side, dipping into that bowl of water. For so many years I’d watched the two of them together and I often felt the urge to stay in the living room, like they needed some kind of chaperone. But as I chopped and baked and stirred and walked, they would float in my head, these splinters, new. Joseph had never carved any wood, but he was more connected to things than I’d realized, and by taking the splinters out of her hand, it felt to me now like he’d been almost pulling himself out of her. That at the same time of this very intimate act of concentrating so carefully on the details of our mother’s palm and fingertips, he was also removing all traces of any tiny leftover parts, and suddenly a ritual which I’d always found incestuous and gross seemed to me more like a desperate act on Joseph’s part to get out, to leave, to extract every little last remnant and bring it into open air.

  I found the pair on the shelf of the medicine cabinet, the twelve-dollar tweezers with the angled sharp tips. I cleaned them in peroxide and brought them to a beauty supply shop on Melrose that did makeovers. Just in case you need a spare? I offered. The woman behind the counter eyed me suspiciously, but when she saw how nice the tweezers were, she shrugged and dropped them into her big box of makeup.

  40 As my high-school peers went through their later years of college, I worked my free time at the restaurant and days at the cable TV office. Through the subtle shifts of Los Angeles seasons, a movement back and forth through forty degrees, and then through those subtle shifts again. During my free time, I continued to tour the kitchens of L.A. from Artesia to the Palisades. My old rival Eddie Oakley called up out of nowhere one summer evening and we went out a few times, finally having sex on his junior-year college-apartment medium-blue sheets. Cool, he said, patting my arm, afterwards. Full circle, he said.

  I slept in his bed for a half-hour, just to try to imagine what it felt like to live there. With car clattering sounds below. With everyone nearby his own age, hollering down the hallways, feet running over a beer-splashed carpet.

  On every Sunday morning and Wednesday night, I showed up at La Lyonnaise right on time and I parked myself in front of the sink and cleaned dish after dish after dish. Apparently I was the most grateful dishwasher any of them had ever met. I loved the job; I kept myself focused on clearing the plates, on rinsing the bowls, absorbed in the smells of the kitchen, of piles of chopped onions and rolling pins flattening pastry dough, next to the bubbling pots and sizzling pans, and it was good for me just to be there, to spend as much time there as I could.

  At home, my mother no longer woke up in the middle of the night—possibly because she was not in the house at all—and if the living-room light flipped on at 2 a.m. it was my father, up, sometimes having come in from a late-night run. He did not drink tea, but he poured himself a glass of water and then settled into that same orange-striped chair, the vortex of late-night parental thought. I would often hear pages turning of some thickly bound book, and in the muted haze of half-sleep I wondered what he was reading.

  George still called once a month or so, and first he had a new girlfriend, who he said was really nice, and then she was his regular girlfriend, and he said she really wanted to meet me, and then he called her his fiancée, and then, in the mail, I received the opalescent envelope invitation, inked in calligraphy. I sent back the little rectangular return card with an attempt at a happy face next to my name: Attending. Steak.

  A skinny man at the office, Peter, asked me out. He worked down the hall, in marketing. What? I said, when he asked. I hadn’t noticed him much before, with his thick brown eyebrows and earnest voice. He repeated himself. He waited at my desk, squirming slightly, scratching his chin. I wasn’t sure what to do, and steely factories flashed through my mouth, uncomprehending, but I bit the side of my cheek and told him sure.

  When he asked what I liked for dinner, I countered with a walk.

  A walk? he said. Great.

  Later that week, after work, we exited the office and walked up Gower together, across Fountain, up Vine to Franklin, crisscrossing past landmarks of Hollywood, churches, stone buildings, miniature landscaped parks. For full sections of the walk we had nothing to say. It wasn’t a shocker; at work, once I paid attention, it seemed he could not always maintain eye contact in the general social arena, and when asked about himself would go on about the wrong part of the question without even knowing. He spent the first ten minutes of our walk nervously explaining his latest shoe-purchasing experience to me, and then we just walked. I didn’t mind the quiet stretches. It was like we were trying out the idea of being side by side. We stared at the sidewalk as we went, but he did not ridicule me for living at home and not going to college, and when he asked about what I was interested in and I couldn’t come up with an easy answer he said it was a far more complicated question than it appeared. Up on Franklin, we had a good conversation about funny grandparents. We stood in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel and smelled the old stone pillars. I said it would be nice to see him again. At the end, near my car, I reached out a hand as a thank you, and he stumbled forward to kiss me. His arms pulled me close, and for a second, half a second, all his hitches fell away and he held me with what could only be called confidence. Then we both stammered through a goodbye and fled into the corners.

  The next week, at the Lyonnaise café, washing plate after plate clean of the remnants of beautiful food, I finished a big stack and wiped my hands on a dish towel. Leaned against the kitchen door, peeking in the main room of the restaurant. At the bar, people were doing their usual wine tasting. A man had his nose in a glass, and was expounding at length about what he called the edge of leather he’d tasted in a Bordeaux. I listened in the doorway. Monsieur Dupont, a short man with a white mustache, refilled glasses. Do you taste the blackberry? he asked, and the woman with high white heels hanging off the rung of her stool nodded. Blackberry, she said, yes, yes.

  41 I missed all the lead-up events and flew in to George’s wedding weekend late, on the redeye, ready just in time for the midday ceremony. Before the procession, a woman who knew the order of things pushed me out to sit on the correct side, and I moved down the split between rows of well-dressed people to sit with rows of men I did not recognize. These were new friends George had made since high-school time, wearing a high percentage of joke ties with their fancy suits, and I rested my eyes on bundles of purple and blue flowers as the bride, a red-haired botanist with graceful wrists, walked down the aisle in a dress that highlighted her flowiness, her movements as easy and natural as the ebb and flood of ocean foam.

  Her whole face abloom with joy. George, fumbling with his hands, picking at his thumb, nearly dropping the ring.

  I do, I do. A kiss.

  Dust pollen swirling in the air as the two rushed back up the aisle.

  At the luncheon, in a lantern-strewn rhododendron garden, I sat next to Grandma Malcolm, who kept adjusting her fring
y yellow shawl and clinking her wineglass with mine. The band struck up its opening catchy number. I lifted my glass and ate my tiny crab cake and kept an eye on my watch to be sure to leave in due time to catch my night flight home.

  Right before dessert, on their tour of the tables, George split from his bride and hurried over to me. We hadn’t had a chance to talk yet, due to all the flurry.

  Look at you! he said, pulling me in for a hug.

  It had been at least three years. He looked different, close up: rounder, in a nice way. Like the East Coast agreed with him, gave a little shape and formality to the looseness that was his natural tendency. His wire-rimmed glasses were more oval now, and he wore a belt like it was normal. He’d gained a few good pounds.

  I gave him some generic wedding compliments, and he held out a hand. Come on, he said, dragging me up. You owe me a dance, he said, tugging me to the dance floor.

  The string of outdoor lanterns had dimmed to a muted orange, and tables surrounding erupted in talk and laughter. I held on to his shoulder, stiff. The band singer sidled up to her microphone stand, cooing, and halfway through the song, George drew back and looked into my face.

  What? I said.

  Remember that cookie shop? he said.

  With the clerk and his sandwich? I said. Of course. Remember when you had all-mistakes wallpaper?

  He glowed, at me. I’m so glad you’re here, he said, squeezing my shoulder. You’re the representative, you. He trailed out his arm for a twirl. Still a factory? he said.

  I faltered, at the end of his arm. I’d only mentioned it the once.

  Getting a little better, I said, winding back in.

  He hummed with the trumpet and held me close, and he felt so familiar and not familiar, so mine and not mine.

  Hey, he said, remember that time when you came into Joe’s room and asked me about the food, what to do about it? he said.

  I forget what you said, I said.

  I said you might grow into it, he said.

  I smelled his shoulder. New tuxedo, perfectly pressed fabric, the same old hint of fruit-scent detergent.

  Are you asking if I’ve grown into it? I said.

  I don’t know, he said. Have you?

  We both laughed, awkward.

  I have this job as a dishwasher, I said, feeling the warmth of his hand against mine. At this great place. You know it—remember that place we went to on the night Joe disappeared? With my dad? The French café? You had fries?

  You’re a dishwasher? he said. Why aren’t you tasting stuff for them?

  I just like to be there, I said. They give me free meals.

  He did a dip. Nothing wrong with washing dishes, he said, bending his knee. It just seems like the wrong job, right? Do they know?

  He pulled me up and winked at his bride, who was now dancing with her father across the room.

  I watched as she blew a kiss back.

  Do they know what? I asked.

  He rolled his eyes.

  Ugh, you Edelsteins, he said. Come on. It shouldn’t be some kind of secret, what you do. I know Joe was working on something, working hard—he showed me a few pages once, years ago, some of the graphs he was making. It was incredible work. Really. Unbelievable. Now, where does any of that go?

  I turned to look at him directly.

  Sorry, he said. Sorry. I don’t mean to be cold.

  It’s not cold, I said. It’s true.

  I mean—

  George, I said, holding firmly on to his shoulder. Congratulations to you. Really.

  The song was moving into its ending and his eyes split: half melted for me, and he thanked me, but my timing was mostly off and it just sounded like the standard ordinary wedding wish, and most of his thinking was still focused on my brother.

  I mean, he’s as smart as any of these guys here, he said, waving his arm around the room. His voice curled up, angry.

  He should be here, he said.

  The band finished up the last notes of the song. Tables clapped, tiredly. Someone called for the cake, and George kissed my cheek and squeezed my hand and thanked me and gave me as much as he could in that moment until time and progress ripped him away and he returned to his bride, who welcomed him in her arms like he’d been at sea for weeks.

  42 I arrived home late that night. With a certain quiet, that George was married now. Several hours of the flight I spent at the window, ignoring the movie flashing overhead, my forehead pressed to the glass watching the sun set and re-set over new bunches of clouds as we tracked its movement west. I’d missed the cake-cutting but I’d picked an evening flight so that I could get home in time to go to my Sunday-morning dishwashing, and although it had been important to go to George’s wedding, on the taxi ride to the airport I felt the crumpled paper that had taken the place of my lungs expand as if released from a fist.

  When I got home, it was past eleven. Inside, I found my father, awake, sitting up in the orange-striped chair in the dark in his worn Cal T-shirt and running shorts. He held that glass of water in his hand, unsipped, which only served to reflect the room back to him, cylindrically.

  Where’s Mom? I said.

  Asleep. He waved towards Joseph’s bedroom.

  You okay?

  He didn’t really answer, just reached out a hand as a kind of welcome home. I went over to shake it.

  How was the wedding?

  Fine, I said.

  Nice girl?

  She seems nice, I said. Pretty, I said. I put down my suitcase and perched on the edge of the red brick fireplace.

  In his lap, Dad had opened one of the old photo albums, the heavy pages corresponding to what I’d been hearing from my room. This surprised me; except for the garage sale story, he did not often dip into the past, and that one discovery of Brigadoon had been a rare reminder that he’d ever been younger than college.

  What are you looking at?

  Oh, he said. Just pictures of the family, he said. I couldn’t sleep.

  I moved closer, to see better. I was glad he was up. I was still wound up from the trip and didn’t feel like going to bed yet, and through the dimness of a far outside light we could just barely make out the black-and-white squares of people from my father’s childhood. His mother, the dark-haired woman who used all parts of a chicken to feed her family. Uncle Hirsch, holding a football. Grandpa, out and about in town, with some kind of thing on his face.

  Was he sick?

  Oh, you know, Dad said. The strap.

  What strap?

  I’ve told you about the strap, he said.

  No, I said. I peered closer. The piece of white cloth looked like it wrapped over the lower half of my grandfather’s face and tucked up and away from his mouth.

  I used to tell him it looked like he was wearing underwear on his face, Dad said, shaking his head.

  For allergies? I said.

  I really never told you this?

  What?

  That he could smell people?

  He could what? I said.

  You sure?

  I coughed, lightly. Um, yes, I said. Very sure.

  He touched the photo with gentle fingertips.

  My dad, Dad said, would walk into a store and take a whiff and he could tell a lot about whoever was in the store with that whiff. Who was happy, who was unhappy, who was sick, the works. Swear to God. He used to wear that thing on his nose, outside—my dad! Walking down Michigan Avenue with that thing on his face, to get himself a break.

  He hit the photo page, as if he couldn’t believe there was a photo at all.

  He was a good man, Dad said, such a good man. Truly generous. But can you imagine, going shopping with the guy? Once, I told him I didn’t want to be seen with him, got locked in my room for two days.

  Outside, tree branches rustled in the wind. My throat tightened.

  Never said such a thing again, Dad said.

  Did he say what he smelled? I asked, very softly.

  Pain, he said. He shrugged.

  I
loved the guy, he said, sitting back. Just loved him, but best when he was not wearing the strap.

  I pulled the album closer. Looked at Grandpa, his eyes dark and serious above the cloth. Kind-faced Grandma. Little five-year-old Dad, wearing a bow tie.

  He died at fifty-four, said Dad. Smelled death on himself, then he died.

  He traced a finger around the square photo outlines.

  I can do that, I said.

  Do what?

  I smoothed down the page, as if to push it all in.

  You can smell people? Dad said.

  With food, I said.

  You can taste people?

  Yeah, I said, not looking at him. Kind of.

  He stared at me. No kidding, he said. You never told me that. Is it bad?

  I laughed a little. It can be bad, I said.

  Dad closed his eyes, rubbed his eyebrows. Huh, he said. Pop hated it too sometimes, he said, remembering. Hated it but also met some good people—we went into Sears one time and he took off the strap to sneeze and caught a whiff of this great guy, just a gem. Irv. Sweetest man, family friend for years. You can taste people? You mean you have to bite a person?

  I smiled, down at the page. No, I said. I taste it in the food they make. Whoever cooks the food, like that.

  He nodded, though his eyes were still shut and crinkled with puzzlement. He seemed to be churning through various permutations and skipping over a whole range of possible questions.

  What a family, he said.

  I returned to the photos, for something to do. Tiny Dad, wearing that little polka-dotted bow tie, his hands spread out to the sky.

  Cute, I said.

  He craned over to see himself. Ach, that tie, he said.

  Together, we stared at that polka-dotted tie as if it was the most interesting clothing item in the world.

  You know, I have no special skills, he said.

  I remember, I said.

  He sealed his mouth a little. Nothing like you or Pop, he said.

  I turned the page.