Rabbit Cake

by Annie Hartnett

  “Lizzie,” I said, getting my footing on the shingles. Even though I’d been up on the roof before, it had seemed much safer then. “Don’t jump. Lizzie, please don’t jump.”

  Lizzie looked at me and grinned, like she had when I’d caught her in the chicken coop.

  “Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, Lizzie, wake up! I forgive you, I’m not that mad about the zoo. Please don’t kill yourself.”

  Lizzie lunged for me and there was nowhere to go, I couldn’t step to either side, I couldn’t run. I had to meet her head on. She grabbed my hair, so I grabbed hers back. Lizzie snapped her teeth in my face but I wouldn’t let go. Her breath stank of sleep.

  “The zoo was the one thing that was mine,” I said. “You took that.”

  “Mmph,” she grunted. Lizzie pulled my hair harder, and I yanked on hers.

  “You take everything. You hog all the attention, it’s like you think Mom only died on you. She died on me too, and Dad.” Maybe if we hadn’t had to spend so much time on Lizzie’s problems, we might be done grieving for Mom by now. These months were supposed to be about Mom, but they’d been about Lizzie instead.

  Her eyes were glazed, dark. The light reflecting from the moon was bright enough that I could see her face. “You’re selfish,” I spat. “You ruined my grieving chart. You distracted us from Mom’s death with your stupid sleepwalking, and now we’re going to be in mourning forever.” I pulled her hair harder.

  Lizzie let go of my hair and tried to circle her hands around my throat. I pushed her away as hard as I could; we both lost our balance then. I fell onto my back, grasping at shingles. She always wins, I thought as I steadied myself.

  But I looked around and saw Lizzie was no longer on the roof. I crawled along the ridge of the roof to the edge of our house, and Lizzie was lying like a dead bird on the ground. My heart flew into my throat. I had killed my sister. I had been awake to do it, and angry.

  But no, her legs were moving. Could a person move after she was dead? I remembered what they say about headless chickens, so did the heart die before the muscles? I turned and scurried back to the other end of the roof, where I jumped down onto the garage, and then onto the truck, then to the pavement.

  Lizzie was alive, and awake by the time I got to her. She asked me what happened, her eyes bleary.

  “You were on the roof,” I said, wiping the tears off my face.

  “Did I jump?” she gasped.

  I was shaking too much to answer.

  “Is this blood?” She held up her wrist.

  Boomer sat next to her, and licked her hand.

  “It’s not blood, it’s frosting,” I said. We were in the middle of the rabbit cake minefield. I took a deep breath. “You attacked me on the roof, and we fought and you fell.”

  “Right,” she said. “I remember now.”

  “You do?”

  “I know Mom died on you too,” she said. “I’m sorry I ruined your chart.”

  “Wait, you remember?” Sleepwalkers never remember, that’s what Mom always said.

  She breathed loudly out of her nose. “I don’t know, Elvis. Maybe I . . .”

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe I should tell you. I guess I should tell you.”

  “What?”

  She breathed in. “My memory is not all blank like Mom said her sleepwalking was.”

  “Really?”

  “Sometimes it’s like remembering a dream, you just remember parts of the night,” she said. “And I sort of remember the night Mom drowned.”

  “Oh my God, what?”

  “I was sharing a package of hot dogs with Boomer. We were sitting on the floor and all of a sudden he started whining and scratching at the door. But I didn’t let him out. I just kept eating the hot dogs. That’s all I remember, and then you woke me up. I was in the bathtub and you said Mom was gone.”

  “Boomer tried to save her.”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “And that’s why he was so sick after Mom died.”

  “I gave him a lot of hot dogs,” she said, and then she broke into tears.

  We sat there. I didn’t hug her. I started crying too, thinking of Boomer pawing the door to get out.

  “Elvis, I’m sorry.” She wiped at her eyes.

  “You never told anyone? All this time?”

  “I called Miss Ida, and I told her.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She couldn’t tell me if Boomer could have saved her, if that would have made a difference. Sometimes dogs save people from fires, you know? Boomer could have pulled her out of the water.”

  That must have been the reason for Lizzie’s breakdown at St. Cloud’s; that was why she’d sent me the drawings of Boomer. And then I realized something else about what Lizzie had just told me: “Wait, you were eating in your sleep when Mom was alive?”

  “I’d done it a few times. Mom knew. She hadn’t told Dad yet. She said if I ate more during the day it wouldn’t be a problem.”

  “I always thought it was caused by Mom’s death.”

  “I know,” she said. “It did get worse after Mom was gone.”

  “Oh.”

  “I know Dad was supposed to follow Mom that night.” She started up crying again. “But it’s really all my fault.”

  “You didn’t mean to lock Boomer up.” Allan the lawyer called it mens rea, which in Latin means the intending mind. Sleepwalkers cannot have mens rea; you cannot blame them for what they do. They are just as surprised by it as anyone.

  I looked up at the moon, round as a peach, more orange than yellow tonight. I remembered what the book from the library said about those who sleepwalk during the full moon. They are moonstruck, under the influence of the sky. Most of what I had learned in all my research was that we don’t really understand why people sleepwalk. We only know it is something that is out of their control. It is not something that anyone chooses, nothing anyone wants.

  Lizzie did not want to be a sleepwalker. She did not want to hurt anyone, especially not our mother.

  “Mom wanted to die,” I said. I wasn’t sure I believed it had been a brain tumor, but it was the best thing I had.

  “What?”

  “I think Mom killed herself because she had a brain tumor.” I told Lizzie about the notes I’d found in the naked mole rat book. I told her that a brain tumor could cause headaches, seizures, and changes in sexual behavior. I told her about Mom milking Mr. Oakes.

  “Gross,” Lizzie said.

  “I know.”

  “But there’s no proof of that, right? I mean, you never found anything? A doctor’s note?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “She would have told us if she had a brain tumor.”

  “Maybe . . .” I hesitated. I wasn’t sure. No one else believed the brain tumor theory, and now I didn’t believe it either. “But Lizzie, it’s not your fault. She was your mother, and you loved her.”

  “You don’t think? You really don’t think it’s my fault?”

  Our family would never recover if we blamed Lizzie for Mom’s death. I had no idea what that grieving chart would look like, how many months that would take to get over. So I shook my head. “No, it’s not your fault.”

  She exhaled. “I really hope Samantha is okay, or then I’ll really be a murderer.”

  I realized that no one had bothered to tell Lizzie that Samantha was out of the hospital. Dad had just wanted to teach her a lesson, but it was too complicated to explain, so instead I said: “The nurse called. Samantha’s fine. She said there’s no permanent damage.”

  Lizzie was so excited, so relieved, she reached over to grab my face and she kissed me, smack on the mouth.

  “Elvis?” she said, after she released me.

  “Yeah?”

  “My feet are killing me.”

  I woke up Dad so he could drive us to the hospital. On the ride, I was in the middle of the truck’s bench seat, with Ernest on my lap. I had come around on the parrot. It wasn’t h
is fault that he’d lived in the pet store, that he’d seen what he’d seen. Dad stopped in front of the emergency entrance, and helped me load Lizzie into a wheelchair before he went to find parking.

  “I’m still mad at you,” I said, as I wheeled Lizzie around the hospital hallways. There were things that Lizzie had done when she was awake; things she should be blamed for. The moon hadn’t been controlling her then. “I’m mad about the zoo.”

  “I didn’t think you’d lose your job.”

  “That’s just the point, you never think before you do something.”

  “I did think. I did it for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Remember how you told me about the mice at the zoo, about what happens to them?”

  “Yeah,” I said, surprised that Lizzie remembered that. She hadn’t even glanced over at me when I’d cried right in front of her. She hadn’t let me watch Dr. Lillian Stone that night to make me feel better.

  “I wanted to repay you,” Lizzie said. “You’ve done so much for me, trying to help me fix my sleepwalking. I wanted to do one good thing for you. I freed all the mice and all the rats from their cages, so they wouldn’t be gassed.”

  “Whoa.”

  “See? I knew you’d be happy.”

  We were both quiet. I could hear someone’s heart monitor beeping in a nearby room. Lizzie was a better sister than I’d thought she was. She had broken into the zoo for me. She had noticed when I’d been upset. She had listened.

  “I’m sorry I smashed your rabbit cakes,” I said.

  “It’s okay. You were mad. We already have the world record.”

  At home, after both of Lizzie’s legs had been encased in casts, she took two of the pills the doctor had given her, each one a happy yellow color. They made her pretty loopy, but talkative.

  “I’m so sorry, Dad,” Lizzie said.

  “Sorry for what? You didn’t mean to break your own feet.”

  “I’m sorry I nearly killed Samantha. I’m glad she’s okay.”

  “Me too.” Dad gave me a look.

  “Is she still your girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  “That’s too bad,” she said.

  “It’s okay. Not meant to be.”

  “And I’m sorry for breaking into the zoo. They were killing animals.”

  “What?”

  “They kill the mice in the Rodent Tunnel exhibit.”

  “They breed too fast,” I said, and I was starting to cry again.

  “I wanted to save them for Elvis.”

  “You’re a whack job, but I love you for it,” Dad said, leaning down and kissing the top of her head.

  “And I’m also sorry—”

  “Forgiven,” Dad said, holding up his hand.

  After that, Lizzie fell asleep on the couch, drooling a small frothy ocean onto the pillow. Her whole body was finally relaxed.

  “You can believe whatever you want about that night,” Miss Ida had said, when I’d called her a year ago. “It won’t bring your mother back.”

  Lizzie was probably right: Mom would have told us about a brain tumor, milked it for attention. Lizzie and Dad could believe whatever they wanted, as long as Lizzie didn’t blame herself, but I couldn’t let it be just a simple accident. I had a new theory, a good one, one that didn’t involve a brain tumor. It was what I would choose to believe.

  My answer had always been in the coffee grounds: Mom did kill herself. She didn’t have a brain tumor, didn’t have a good reason to do it like cancer or another disease. She didn’t mean to commit suicide, didn’t really want to leave us; she was suicidal only in her sleep, the same way a sleepwalker could be an unintentional murderer.

  Mom must have killed herself by accident, not with intention, because I know that Mom loved being alive. That was what her rabbit cakes were about, celebrating every small good thing in your life. I know most families don’t celebrate every new moon or every solstice and equinox, but maybe they should. You never know when someone you love will shoot themselves in the middle of their own birthday party, or be found dead in another state, caught in a river dam, so everyone might as well have their cake right now.

  43.

  When Megan Sax came to the front door with a cardboard box, I immediately knew that it was Megan, not Vanessa, who had been with Lizzie when she broke into Serengeti Park. It made much more sense that way. Before they’d fought, Megan used to go along with all of Lizzie’s bad ideas.

  “My mom said I can’t keep them any longer.” Megan put the box in Lizzie’s lap. “What happened to your legs?”

  “I broke them. I fell off the roof.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Hey Elvis,” Megan said. “I’m just bringing over what we got from the zoo.”

  “What did you steal?” I wasn’t sure what the zoo had that Lizzie would want.

  Lizzie opened the box and let me look for myself. Inside, there were six rats. A blonde rat stood up on her hind legs, her little pink paws held to her chest, and I swear, she smiled at me. I thought of Mom; she had a gap between her front teeth too.

  “I freed the mice, but I heard that rats make good pets,” Lizzie said.

  “I helped.” Megan puffed her chest. “I took the rats home while Lizzie let herself get arrested. We needed to wait until the coast was clear before I brought them over.”

  “We didn’t open the lion’s cage, I didn’t swim in the penguin fountain, and the zebra got out by accident. I don’t know why they’re making it sound so much worse than it was. Megan did break the Big Gulp machine, but otherwise, we only took the rats and freed the mice.”

  The zoo would never miss the rodents. Rats were just snake food, a brand-new litter every week. We never gave names to the rats; there wasn’t a point in getting attached.

  “Wait, the zoo said you opened the lion’s cage?” I asked, realizing something.

  “Yeah,” Lizzie said. “They want to add some sort of endangerment charge.”

  The zoo wasn’t playing fair. They were using the lack of security cameras to hurt Lizzie. “The zoo wants you to look crazy,” I told her, that was why they were exaggerating the events of the break-in. I knew the way Serengeti Park worked, how much they hated animal activists. The zoo director would never want it to get out that Lizzie had been saving zoo animals from certain death, it would be bad for business. We were supposed to lock Rodent Tunnel while we gassed the rats. The sign we put on the door said Exhibit closed for cage cleaning. It had a cartoon of a smiling mouse on it.

  “How could you let them kill Chucky Cheese?” Lizzie held up a gray rat. If the zoo found out that Megan had been there that night, the whole sleepwalking defense would fall apart. Lizzie would be punished for what she’d done. But it was impossible to be mad at her now; she didn’t want to see defenseless animals killed.

  “So,” I said. “What did you name the rest of them?”

  “This one’s Brigitte Bardot,” Megan said, holding up the blonde rat that looked a little like Mom, with the big gap between the teeth.

  When I asked Lizzie later about how she and Megan had made up, she told me that she’d sent Megan a box of chocolates in the mail, and that was all it took. “She likes sweets.” Lizzie shrugged, but I thought there was probably more to it. I bet Lizzie had apologized too.

  Over the next week, Megan Sax came over almost every day and we built huge obstacle courses with paper-towel tubes for the rats. It was the most fun I’d had in a long time. Lizzie built a rat-sized swing set out of wood and twine.

  “Listen, Elvis, I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” Megan said, while she was swinging one of the rats on the miniature tire swing. “I’m sorry for what I said about your mom. I was mad about her and my dad, but I shouldn’t have said those things. You get it, right?”

  I didn’t know exactly what Megan had said about my mother, but it must have been why Lizzie broke Megan’s jaw into three pieces and why Lizzie said what she did about the red sausage fr
om the butcher’s. I also didn’t know anything about Mom and Mr. Sax, but that was another easy guess, after what I knew about Mr. Oakes and Mr. Debbie. Dad might have been fine with the affairs, but Mr. Sax had a wife and kids of his own.

  “I’m glad you and my sister are friends again,” I said.

  Lizzie should never have hurt Megan, especially not for something that sounded like it was partly our mom’s fault. But I understood why she did: you want to defend those you love, even if the ones you love aren’t very good all the time, and sometimes they are even downright awful.

  44.

  Vanessa came home in time for Christmas, and there was so much we had to catch her up on; she’d been gone for nearly a month. On Christmas day, Vanessa made a feast, since Lizzie had a hard time cooking in her wheelchair. Dad gave everyone coal in their stocking, except for Ernest.

  “Boomer’s been good; he doesn’t deserve coal,” I protested. Dad just laughed.

  “Hide and seek,” Ernest whistled.

  Lizzie gave me a dog-tag necklace, engraved with: Please return to the Babbitt family, followed by our address.

  “In case you get lost while I’m gone.”

  “I love it,” I said. “But you’re not going to jail.”

  “Fingers crossed,” Lizzie said.

  I wished I’d gotten my sister something else besides a box of new playing cards. On the back of each card, I’d written World Record Holder in metallic Sharpie pen. I gave Vanessa a hummingbird feeder, and she gave me a stuffed cat to replace the one left behind at St. Cloud’s.

  It was our first Christmas as a family without Mom, I realized, since we hadn’t celebrated at all last December. I knew Mom would have been happy about this year’s holiday. She would have wanted everyone to have a good time, as long as we kept her picture framed on the mantel, the one where she looked like a young Goldie Hawn.

  After dinner, there was no rabbit cake for dessert, but Vanessa made figgy pudding, which I’d never had before. Lizzie resumed her old familiar position on the couch, and I sat on the floor below her so she could french-braid my hair while we watched Dr. Lillian Stone. Dr. Lillian was in Indonesia after a tsunami with her team of vets. The people were using elephants to clear debris, but the elephants had cut their feet on glass and shards of metal. Dr. Lillian had the vets care for the elephants while she told some of the tsunami victims she was donating money to rebuild their houses.