The Cake House (21 page)

That Sunday, I sat on the front steps with my camera. The laundered blue of the sky unfolded and expanded to every corner, pinned to the heavens by the sun. I shivered in my sweater and thin pair of jeans, taking pictures of the front yard full of puddles.

The Mercedes lurched into the driveway. Claude and my mother had gone for a drive. She was smiling when she exited, dressed in a new camel-hair coat with a fur-lined collar that nestled around her neck. They held hands crossing the lawn, but my mother lingered in the front yard as Claude went inside. It was as though the storm had swept the tired and sad Dahlia away. Her eyes bright, her expression clear, she sat next to me and brushed the hair out of my face.

“It’s gotten so long,” she said.

“I like it long.”

“Come up to the room,” she said. “We can still trim it.”

I followed her up the stairs into the bathroom on the third floor. She held my head beneath the faucet. Water dripped cold down my neck and into my eyes and nose before she
sat me on a chair facing the mirror. From such a low angle, all I could see was her reflection. She rubbed my head with a towel before placing it around my shoulders. Taking a comb, she pulled it through my hair. My head dragged back. Before, when I was younger, I had resented that she cut my hair herself instead of taking me with her when she got her hair done, but now I was relieved that we weren’t going to a fancy salon, that it was just the two of us. “What were you and Claude fighting about the other night?” I asked, wincing.

“We weren’t fighting.” She put the comb down and reached for a cigarette, struggling with the lighter. Then she drew in a long drag and set it on the edge of the porcelain sink before picking up the comb again.

“You had your coat on. And you’d packed a suitcase.”

She parted my hair down the middle. “I was confused when I woke up.”

I knew she hated storms. “Were you scared?”

“A little,” she said, now wielding a pair of scissors. As wet clumps of hair fell to my lap, she added, “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: The life you have is the life you choose.”

I made a face at her. I didn’t choose to be haunted by my father’s ghost, or choose to live here in the Cake House with so many secrets. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if I had. After all, I had chosen to go to the party. I had chosen the darkroom. Maybe I had even wanted my mother to leave my father.

After this thought, I looked for the ghost in the mirror’s reflection, but there was nothing. More wet clumps of hair slid down to my waiting hands.

“I didn’t choose any of this,” I said.

“Maybe not,” she conceded. She came around to kneel in front. “Should we give you bangs? What do you think?” Without waiting for my answer, she took the comb and scissors, cutting away at the hair over my eyes. “That’s better.” She took the towel from around my shoulders and dusted the hair off my lap, wiping at my neck. “It’s still long,” she said. “I didn’t cut too much.”

I looked at myself in the mirror, wanting to understand. “What about this life did you choose?”

Her fingers fiddled with my new bangs, brushing them over to one side, then back to the other. “We have to live with our choices, Rosaura. And I’m trying to live with mine. Or at least, taking some control over it. I’ve made a decision.”

I watched her through our reflection in the mirror. She reminded me of crystal, both fragile and strong. I wanted to run far away from her, and I wanted to be just like her. She placed her hands on my shoulders and squeezed. She had made a decision. I didn’t ask what it entailed, but I thought of the manila envelope full of money.

The moment passed. She pressed her lips to the top of my head before letting go, picking up the cigarette. Most of it had burned away, leaving a long, crooked finger of ash that crumbled into the sink.

“I’m going to lie down,” she said, with a brief return of the Dahlia from the week before.

She left the bathroom, trailing smoke behind her. As she went under the shadow of the doorway, it seemed as if the smoke took the shape of a man that reached for her, grasping for her shoulder, missing by mere inches.

MONDAY MORNING
,
I HEARD ALEX
’
S
footsteps and hurried putting on the rest of my clothing to meet him before he headed downstairs and left for school. He hadn’t come home till late the night before, and I hadn’t had the chance to talk to him, to see if he noticed my new haircut. He was standing by the open door of his bedroom.

“Where were you last night?” I asked.

He didn’t answer but paused as he was putting on his jacket. I suspected strongly that he’d been with Tina.

“Whatever you’re doing, you should end it.” I was thinking of what my mother had said, about this being the life we choose.

“What?”

“With Tina. Break up with her.”

His features were devoid of expression. “What makes you think we’re even going out?”

I folded my arms. I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. “She believes you are.”

“Then why should I break up with her? Give me one good reason.”

The demand left me speechless. There were so many reasons why he should break up with Tina, I wasn’t certain I could name them all. Because she deserved better. Because he didn’t love her. If he did, he wouldn’t kiss me. He wouldn’t look at me the way he did.

“Because I want you to,” I said, then turned and left his room.

Claude didn’t comment but quirked his eyebrows when I came downstairs and demanded, “Can we go now? I don’t want to be late and I want to take some pictures before class.”

“Whatever you say.” Claude followed me out to the Mercedes.

Eager to have a stockpile ready to develop in the soon-to-be-completed darkroom, I took pictures of the empty campus, the dew-glistening football field with its sleeping clusters of daisy-chain flowers. With the temperature cold enough for my hands to ache, I sat near the football field and took pictures. I could have gone inside one of the warm buildings, but I preferred to be outside with my camera and catch the start of the new day on film.

The broken focus of my camera made objects in the distance blurry. I trained the lens on two fuzzy figures in the distance moving closer. By the long red hair and skinny skeleton silhouette, I knew one of them must be Aaron. The other, Tom.

Aaron came into focus first, the bruise below his right eye having faded to a mottled yellow with green around the edges. Without the skeleton makeup, freckles crowded across his nose. They both plopped down to the ground next to me.

“If it isn’t our very own intrepid photographer,” said Aaron. Tom lay on the grass.

I had been wondering if I would see them again, if perhaps they would emerge from the sea of faces in the hallways at school or remain onetime apparitions from the party.

“Does it hurt?” I asked, sorry for the bruises and cuts on both of their faces.

Aaron smiled a little. “If I say yes, will you kiss it?” His smile slipped away as the first bell rang for class.

“Let’s get out of here, go for a drive,” said Aaron. He stared down at the grass. “I have my car. We can go wherever. Take the day.”

My first thought was that Alex would know. Not only
that I ditched classes, but that I went with these boys in particular. I looked at Tom where he lay with an arm shading his eyes. The skin on his knuckles had split but was already scabbed over. Most of Alex’s animosity during the fight had been focused on him. And yet they were friends enough for Tom to be invited into Alex’s room. Some dark impulse of mine wanted Alex to yell at me, come after me, to answer my questions when I asked him what he was doing with Tina. Anything but ignore me.

“Forget it,” said Aaron. “Forget I asked.”

“Let’s go,” I said.

Aaron grinned. He slapped Tom on the shoulder. Tom peeked from under his arm and let Aaron pull him up on his feet. The three of us slipped between buildings to an opening in the fence, then scurried over to Aaron’s station wagon, an old Buick with bench-style seats that smelled of aftershave, engine grease, and, weirdly, bananas. I sat between them.

The mountains made a jagged silhouette in the sky. We drove on Soledad Canyon Road past horse ranches and riding stables then onto the highway, the windows cracked open, the wind whistling a strange tune. Bushes dotted the way like spots on a calico cat as the road hugged rock walls and sheer cliffs. Aaron turned onto a smaller path, and we drove high up to a mountaintop covered in billowing wheat-colored grass. Below, over the side of the mountain, I saw houses and ranches, open fields. Aaron parked the car beside a large rock formation.

The wind lashed my hair across my face.

“Stand with him,” said Aaron, trying for my camera as he pushed me next to Tom.

“No—first the two of you, over there,” I said, wanting
the first picture taken to be of them. Tom leaned against the hood of the station wagon and pulled Aaron to sit next to him. Aaron squawked, thrown off balance, but he settled next to Tom and flung an arm around his shoulders. Aaron turned awkward under the camera, grinning like a child at a birthday party, all teeth and cheeks and bright smiles, while Tom could have been a professional model, posing with stormy eyes focused on some distant skyline.

We took turns, each taking charge of the camera until another claimed it. Tom got creative, forcing Aaron and me to bend and contort into ridiculous poses. Aaron, on the other hand, wanted action scenes: Tom jumping off the hood of the station wagon, Tom carrying me on his back. Aaron swung my arms up and down, hyperactive and unstoppable. “Who’s a winner?” he asked, laughing, then flung my arms up and took my picture. “You are!”

Aaron led me to the rock formation, tugging off his shoes until he stood barefoot. My shoes and socks followed. He started climbing, and I placed hand and foot into the same holds Aaron used, until I teetered at the top with him.

I turned back to help Tom, but he remained sitting on the hood of the wagon. “You’re not getting me to climb that rock. I’ll fall over the side. Crazy mofo,” he scolded.

“Party pooper,” Aaron yelled. But the merry light in his eyes vanished when Tom rolled off the hood and crawled into the backseat of the car.

I squeezed Aaron’s hand.

“Raise your arms. Up, up. That’s it,” he said, whooping out loud and hopping up and down in a comical war dance, his voice carried away, echoing into vastness, bouncing from one side of the valley to the other. “Your turn,” he said.

“No way.” I shook my head, dizzy from the altitude.

“Come on, let it out. Let the wind take it. Give it up to the gods of sun and crabgrass.” He grinned, then wrapped one of his long arms around my middle and made me stand in front of him. “Trust me.”

He put his hands on my shoulders. I closed my eyes, tipping forward as if I might dive off the rock, legs swaying, but he held me against his chest. I barely breathed, my toes gripped into the rock as if I had claws like a bird. I lifted my arms, felt his arms line up along mine. And then there it was, a long, single note spilling from my throat and out into the open valley, not very loud but building louder until it was all I could hear.

When my voice failed, Aaron kissed me, lips and teeth and saliva, wet and slippery, smooth like the wind-polished rock face, clinging like the tough grass. We sat on the rock, facing the valley.

“What about Tom?”

Aaron didn’t answer, spreading his legs so that I could sit between them as he wrapped both of us in his jacket. The station wagon was the only immediate reminder of civilization. I couldn’t see Tom through the windshield.

“What’s wrong with him?” I leaned back and pressed my cheek against Aaron’s chest, my butt already numb from sitting on the hard rock.

Aaron’s breath was warm on my scalp. “You want a list? Jeez, where should I start? He likes Pop Rocks for one thing. And by ‘like’ I mean ‘is obsessed with.’ He’s a Pop Rocks fanatic; it’s the weirdest thing. Demands I drive him all over creation to buy the damn things. I find them stuck in the seat of my car, in my
hair.
Everywhere. And he thinks Van Halen was better
with
Sammy Hagar. I don’t even know what to say to that one.”

I laughed and Aaron put his cheek next to mine. From his front pocket he took out a joint and a lighter. The smoke floated away, carried by the wind.

“Are you scared of Alex?” I asked.

“Nah. Your friend Alex is a … chump,” he said, nodding as if that gesture added weight to his word choice.

“I’ve seen Tom with him,” I said. “Are they friends?”

Maybe that was what irritated Aaron, that Alex might be friends with Tom, usurping his position. But Aaron snorted.

“Alex isn’t capable of having friends,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“Only that he doesn’t view people the same as you or I do. He doesn’t have friends. Unless they’re rich.”

“You’re wrong,” I said.

Aaron’s expression cooled. He slid off the rock, then made a motion that I should do the same. He caught me when I jumped down, my feet raw and frozen. We walked back to the station wagon.