The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel (8 page)

15
We still got regular packages of household items from Grandma, slowly mailing her life away in Washington State. They came more frequently now, almost every other week, and in the last one she'd sent me a half-used bar of soap. I didn't want to use it up, so I put it in a drawer.

She'd started good--those two-tone towels, old-fashioned glass paperweights, even a toy bear--but she seemed to grow more bitter over time, and the items deteriorated until we were opening boxes containing a baggie of batteries, the silver backings of a pair of earrings, a half-checked-off laminated grocery list which made my father twitch. The latest box was in the living room, nudged against the red brick fireplace. A couple years back, I'd asked my mother why Grandma didn't ever visit in person. Mom bent her head, thinking, zipping the scissors along the narrow center line of the brown box tape.

Grandma doesn't like to travel, she said.

Then why don't we go see her? I asked, popping open the flaps.

Grandma doesn't like guests, Mom said.

I made some kind of questioning peep, and Mom ran a finger lightly over the raw end of the scissor blade.

Your grandmother, she sighed, was raised with seven siblings. So, when she moved into her own household, she wanted quiet.

What do you mean? I asked.

She put down the scissors and scooted closer. Picked up my hand. Look at your pretty nails, she said.

Were you quiet? I said.

She laid my hand on top of hers.

I tried to be, she said. She used to call me garbage truck when I asked for too many things.

She put her cheek down to rest on our matched hands and closed her eyes. She was wearing a new eye shadow, pale pink on her brow bone, and she looked like a flower resting there. How much I wanted to protect her, her frail eyelids, streaked with glimmer. I put a hand lightly on her hair.

That's mean, I said.

Her lids fluttered. After a few seconds, she sat up and folded the box flaps back fully. She didn't look inside. All yours, baby, she said. I mean Rose, sorry. Take whatever you'd like.

That evening of her errands, I settled down with the new box. In this load, we had a diminished pad of pale-green Post-its, a book on the history of Oregon with a broken binding, and a bag of crackers. I ate a couple. Stale. Kentucky. I filched the Post-its for my room, and put the rest in the garage next to the bulk of Grandma's other mailings, wedging it all onto a shelf next to a jar of jam coated in mold that my mother did not want to refrigerate. The brown box was in good shape, so I lugged it over to the hall outside Joseph's door. New box, I said, rapping on his door. Within minutes, when I walked by again, it had been absorbed into his room.

I still felt upset about the roast beef, so I put in a call to Eliza Greenhouse, my old lunchtime friend with the razor-straight bangs, to ask about the history homework. While it rang, I ripped fringes into the pad of paper by the phone, and when she picked up, someone was screaming in the background. Sorry, she said, laughing. My little sister is having a tickle fight with my dad, she said.

Are you serious? I said.

Stop it! she called past the phone, slapping at someone.

We talked about school for a little while and I tore the fringes into scraps, and after we hung up, my own house felt especially vast. The foundation ticked and settled. All things cleaned and put away. I stood over the trash can and dribbled the torn paper bits out of my fists. That took four minutes. I thought about calling George just to say hi, but I wasn't sure what a person might say after that, so I left the phone and went into the TV room. My father was sitting on the sofa, reading a newspaper article, his feet wiggling away on the ottoman. He wiggled those feet so often it was like we had a pet in the room.

What are you watching? I asked.

Nothing, he said. He pulled a red leather ledger off a bookshelf, in arm's reach, and opened it to rows and columns of numbers.

That one soccer-ball drawing spree had been the most eager I had ever seen my father about fatherhood. I'd glimpsed a little me in his eyes then, inhabiting the pupil, sitting next to him in Brazil at the World Cup finals, drinking a beer. But when I'd drawn the faces on the soccer balls, like a TV blinking off, the little me in his eyes had blacked out.

But, Rose, he'd said, holding up the latest eyelashed soccer drawing, why?

Beer is gross, I said, leaving the room.

Still, regardless of his general lack of ability in the paternal realm, my father was a very decent man. He worked for middle-money law so he did not have to screw the little guy, and he studied the books hard because he wanted to do his part correctly and well. He made a good salary but he did not flaunt it. He'd been raised in Chicago proper by a Lithuanian Jewish mother who had grown up in poverty, telling stories, often, of extending a chicken to its fullest capacity, so as soon as a restaurant served his dish, he would promptly cut it in half and ask for a to-go container. Portions are too big anyway, he'd grumble, patting his waistline. He'd only give away his food if the corners were cleanly cut, as he believed a homeless person would just feel worse eating food with ragged bitemarks at the edges--as if, he said, they are dogs, or bacteria. Dignity, he said, lifting his half-lasagna into its box, is no detail.

When we left the restaurant, he would hand the whole package, including plastic knife and fork, to a woman or man wearing an army blanket outside, at a corner on Wilshire, or La Brea. Here, he'd say. Just please don't bless me. I watched this happen, over and over. He wanted my mother to wear nice dresses and to buy the jewelry she wanted to buy so he could take it off her. He wanted to dress and undress her. The best way I can describe it is just that my father was a fairly focused man, a smart one with a core of simplicity who had ended up with three highly complicated people sharing the household with him: a wife who seemed raw with loneliness, a son whose gaze was so unsettling people had to shove cereal boxes at him to get a break, and a daughter who couldn't even eat a regular school lunch without having to take a fifteen-minute walk to recover. Who were these people? I felt for my dad, sometimes, when we'd be watching the TV dramas together, and I could see how he might long for the simple life in the commercials, and how he, more than any of us, had had a shot at that life.

The one unexpected side of him--beyond his choice of our mother, who really did not seem like a likely match at all--was his incredible distaste for hospitals. Beyond distaste: he loathed them. When driving through a part of town with a hospital, he would take a longer route, using meandering ineffective side streets to avoid even passing by.

The story went that when Joe and I were born Dad couldn't even enter the lobby. Mom had struggled out of the car and checked into Cedars-Sinai, a lovely hospital, a hospital with money, about twenty or thirty blocks from our house. After Dad parked he located the maternity ward, called up, found the number of her room, and asked the harried nurse for the exact location of Mom's window. When the nurse wouldn't tell him, he called back repeatedly, every minute, until she yelled it into the phone: South Side! Eighth Floor! Third Window From Left! Now Stop Fucking Calling! after which he promptly dialed up a local florist to send the nurse a gorgeous bouquet of tulips and roses, one that arrived long before Joseph did.

The same determination and competence that had led him to conjure up a made-to-order footstool meant he was settled right outside the perfect window for hours, staring up, but the limitations this time were far less appealing. During the hours of labor, Mom pushing and pushing, her best friend, Sharlene, cheering her on, Dad waited outside on the sidewalk. There he stayed, for the eight hours needed for Joe, and the six for me, pacing. He chatted with pedestrians. He did jumping jacks. Apparently, for my birth, he brought a crate, and sat on it for long hours reading a mystery until the parking cop told him to move.

Mom told the story, even though Dad would get embarrassed. She told the story fairly often. For Joseph's birth, she said, she was in there all day long; when she was done, she shuffled to the window in her torn hospital gown and held the screaming little baby up. Dad was just a small figure on the sidewalk but he saw her right away, and when he glimpsed the blue-blanketed blob, he jumped up and down. He waved and hooted. My son, my son! he called to all the cars driving by. Mom dripped blood onto the floor. Dad lit up a cigar, passed out extras to pedestrians.

16
After I talked to Eliza, after my mother had left to go on her errands, I parked myself on the other side of the sofa, in the TV room. My father held that red leather ledger in his lap, and he was inputting numbers into new columns. The TV muted across the room. For a while, I just sat and watched him.

Yes? he said, after a few minutes. May I help you?

No, I said.

He had a striking forehead, my father: long with a slight slope at the hairline that lent him an air of officiality. His hair--thick, black, streaked with gray--gripped closely to the top of the forehead, making a clear and assured arch. He looked like the head of a corporation.

Just the previous night, George had been over for dinner and had started asking my father questions about his time in high school. That my father had ever been to high school was funny, and that he was willing to talk about it? Shocking. Somehow, with George there, asking, lightly, the tight box of Dadness was open for looking. I was the lead in my high-school play, Dad said, sipping his water. I dropped my fork on the floor. What? Oh sure, Dad said. Everyone did it, he said. A musical? George asked. Of course, Dad said. Even Mom laughed. Dad filled his mouth with yam. What musical? I asked, and we all waited while he went through the process of chewing, and swallowing, and dabbing with his napkin, ending in the new word
Brigadoon
.

Who was he? That night, the romance in the roast beef had so excluded him, even as he ate it, every last bite of it, and maybe for that reason, he just seemed a little more approachable than usual. I leaned closer, from my end of the couch.

Yes? he said, from his seat. Rose?

Hi, I said.

He put down his pencil.

Don't you have homework?

Yes.

He raised an eyebrow. And why don't you go do that?

Can I bring it in here?

He coughed, a little, into his hand. If you're quiet, he said.

I ran and grabbed my notebook and textbook. While he worked on the details of his schedule and budget, I did California history on my side of the couch, dutifully answering the questions at the back of the chapter before I'd read the chapter. It was so easy to locate the sentence referenced in the question, and I plugged in the appropriate lines like a good little lab rat, looking up occasionally to see the muted actors arguing on-screen, their eyes emphatic. We worked in silence together. With him sitting there, lightly writing those numbers with his slim mechanical pencil, I seemed to get my work done about twice as fast as usual.

Dad? I said, looking up, after writing in the five reasons that the gold rush built up the Californian economy.

Yes?

Where'd Mom go?

On errands.

When will she be back?

Soon, he said. I imagine by ten, at the latest.

Dad? I said.

He raised his eyebrows again. Yes, Rose?

Never mind, I said. Nothing.

He continued his work. I finished up my assignment and went ahead to the next chapter, since our teacher did not believe in homework variety and gave us the identical task for each week. The clock ticked along.

After another while, I looked up again. Across from me, in the red ledger, my father had written many neat new numerical rows. It seemed he was getting more work done too.

Can I ask you a question? I said.

He kept his eyes on the page, deep at the base of the latest column. Then laid down the pencil.

Knock yourself out, he said.

The couch creaked as he resettled himself. It was an open doorway. I could hardly remember the last time I'd sat across from my father without anyone else nearby. I really had no idea what to ask, so I just blurted out the first thing that came into my head.

Did you ever know something? I said.

Excuse me?

I took a breath. Sorry, I said. I mean, did you ever know something you weren't supposed to know? I asked.

He tilted his head. What do you mean?

Like--did you ever walk down a hall and accidentally overhear a secret?

He thought about it, for a minute. No, he said. Why?

What if you did?

I'd keep the secret, he said.

I shifted around in my seat. Okay, I said. Okay. Or, just do you have any special skills?

He chuckled a little. No, he said.

I didn't mean that you don't, I mean--

No, really, he said. He turned to me fully, and his face was friendly. I hit the mean all through law school, he said. I scored exactly in the fiftieth percentile on the LSAT. Five oh. He nodded at himself, pleased.

I closed my textbook.

But you were in
Briga
--I said.

Doon
, he said. I was a perfectly average singer, he said. Even the teacher said so.

You hate hospitals, I said.

So?

I don't know, I said, pulling at the corner of my textbook. Why do you hate them?

That's not a special skill, he said.

No, I said, waiting.

He re-shaped the pillow at his back. Show previews skimmed across the screen, advertising our favorite high-intensity medical program, which was coming up soon.

I just don't like sick people, he said.

Is it because you feel something?

What?

Like you feel their sickness, or something?

He scratched his nose. He looked at me a little funny. No, he said. I just don't like them. How do you know about that anyway?

Was he kidding? The TV switched to commercials, of dancing kids on tree-lined streets.

Mom tells our birth stories all the time, I said. How come you can watch it on TV?

He waved his hand at the screen. Oh, that's different, he said. That's fun.

It's in a hospital, I said.

It's a set, he said.

I think it's set in a real hospital, I said.

Doesn't matter, he said. No smell.

But what if
you
get sick? I said.

I never get sick, he said.

He picked up the remote. Twirled and twisted it, on the sofa. The questions were drumming in me, piling on each other, and I dug deeper into my end of the sofa and tried to remember how George did it, at the dinner table. Softly, as if the answer was not dire. As if the question was a seed placed a few feet in front of a curious bird.

You never get sick? I said, after a pause.

Dad glanced back over. Wiggled his feet.

I just have healthy genes, he said, lifting his shoulders. Always have. All that good Lithuanian chicken.

We stared ahead, together. I picked at the corner of my textbook where the lamination had broken open, revealing the soft layers of brown cardboard.

Would you visit if I have to go to the hospital sometime? I said.

He flapped a hand at me. You're a healthy kid, he said.

But just in case, I said. If it's serious?

Hasn't been, he said.

But if it was?

He looked over at the clock, blinking greenly at the base of the TV. In two minutes our show would come on.

I, he said.

His eyes on the clock.

Might, he said.

His hand rested in the fold of the red ledger. Colors scattered across the screen.

There was nothing much else to say, so we watched the series of car commercials flying by. According to the ads, the first car made you manly, the second made you rich, the last one made you funny.

I pointed out a zippy yellow hatchback driven by a clown. I didn't really like it so much one way or another, but I just needed something to do. Dad peered at the picture. Then he turned to a blank page in his ledger, jotted down the name of the car, and wrote my name, with a precise little arrow pointing to it.

You're not so far from sixteen, he said.

He pressed the mute button, and the room filled with sound. Horns, voice-overs, snatches of songs. It was like we were exchanging codes, on how to be a father and a daughter, like we'd read about it in a manual, translated from another language, and were doing our best with what we could understand. Thanks, Dad, I said. The commercials ended, and the show began with a couple of nurses bustling through an ER. A man had a seizure on the tile. Someone yelled through the intercom. I got pulled into the story, and so at first I didn't hear when he said my name at the break.

For you, Rose? he was saying. For your birth?

When I turned, his face was closer than usual, and I could see the slight strain in the lines above his eyebrows. The quiet urgency in whatever he wanted to tell me.

Yes? I said.

His hand hovered in the air.

For you, he said, I brought binoculars.

Mom came home right as the TV show ended. Ten p.m., on the dot. We heard the car in the driveway, and then the key in the lock, and she breezed into the room with a shine to her cheeks I couldn't look at. I looked at my father instead, to see if he saw any of it, but he was half caught in the images flashing by of another car, a fourth car, one that made you perceptive, a car he probably should buy, and he saluted my mother from his spot on the couch and asked how the errands had gone.

Great, she said. Fine. Rose, you're still up? How was the show?

What errands did you run?

All sorts, she said, brushing a wisp of hair out of her eyes.

Where are the bags? I said.

Oh, she said, waving her hand. In the car, she said.

She winked at me again.

Time for bed, I said, before she could.

Come sit, said my father to my mother, patting a couch cushion.

I left the room.