The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

1

It happened for the first time on a Tuesday afternoon, a warm spring day in the flatlands near Hollywood, a light breeze moving east from the ocean and stirring the black-eyed pansy petals newly planted in our flower boxes.

My mother was home, baking me a cake. When I tripped up the walkway, she opened the front door before I could knock.

How about a practice round? she said, leaning past the door frame. She pulled me in for a hello hug, pressing me close to my favorite of her aprons, the worn cotton one trimmed in sketches of twinned red cherries.

On the kitchen counter, she’d set out the ingredients: Flour bag, sugar box, two brown eggs nestled in the grooves between tiles. A yellow block of butter blurring at the edges. A shallow glass bowl of lemon peel. I toured the row. This was the week of my ninth birthday, and it had been a long day at school of cursive lessons, which I hated, and playground yelling about point scoring, and the sunlit kitchen and my warm-eyed mother were welcome arms, open. I dipped a finger into the wax baggie of brown-sugar crystals, murmured yes, please, yes.

She said there was about an hour to go, so I pulled out my spelling booklet. Can I help? I asked, spreading out pencils and papers on the vinyl place mats.

Nah, said Mom, whisking the flour and baking soda together.

My birthday is in March, and that year it fell during an especially bright spring week, vivid and clear in the narrow residential streets where we lived just a handful of blocks south of Sunset. The night-blooming jasmine that crawled up our neighbor’s front gate released its heady scent at dusk, and to the north, the hills rolled charmingly over the horizon, houses tucked into the brown. Soon, daylight savings time would arrive, and even at nearly nine, I associated my birthday with the first hint of summer, with the feeling in classrooms of open windows and lighter clothing and in a few months no more homework. My hair got lighter in spring, from light brown to nearly blond, almost like my mother’s ponytail tassel. In the neighborhood gardens, the agapanthus plants started to push out their long green robot stems to open up to soft purples and blues.

Mom was stirring eggs; she was sifting flour. She had one bowl of chocolate icing set aside, another with rainbow sprinkles.

A cake challenge like this wasn’t a usual afternoon activity; my mother didn’t bake all that often, but what she enjoyed most was anything tactile, and this cake was just one in a long line of recent varied hands-on experiments. In the last six months, she’d coaxed a strawberry plant into a vine, stitched doilies from vintage lace, and in a burst of motivation installed an oak side door in my brother’s bedroom with the help of a hired contractor. She’d been working as an office administrator, but she didn’t like copy machines, or work shoes, or computers, and when my father paid off the last of his law school debt, she asked him if she could take some time off and learn to do more with her hands. My hands, she told him, in the hallway, leaning her hips against his; my hands have had no lessons in anything.

Anything? he’d asked, holding tight to those hands. She laughed, low. Anything practical, she said.

They were right in the way, in the middle of the hall, as I was leaping from room to room with a plastic leopard. Excuse me, I said.

He breathed in her hair, the sweet-smelling thickness of it. My father usually agreed with her requests, because stamped in his two-footed stance and jaw was the word Provider, and he loved her the way a bird-watcher’s heart leaps when he hears the call of the roseate spoonbill, a fluffy pink wader, calling its lilting coo-coo from the mangroves. Check, says the bird-watcher. Sure, said my father, tapping a handful of mail against her back.

Rah, said the leopard, heading back to its lair.

At the kitchen table, I flipped through my workbook, basking in the clicking sounds of a warming oven. If I felt a hint of anything unsettling, it was like the sun going swiftly behind a cloud only to shine straight seconds later. I knew vaguely that my parents had had an argument the night before, but parents had arguments all the time, at home and on TV. Plus, I was still busily going over the bad point scoring from lunch, called by Eddie Oakley with the freckles, who never called fairly. I read through my spelling booklet: knack, knick, knot; cartwheel, wheelbarrow, wheelie. At the counter, Mom poured thick yellow batter into a greased cake pan, and smoothed the top with the flat end of a pink plastic spatula. She checked the oven temperature, brushed a sweaty strand of hair off her forehead with the knob of her wrist.

Here we go, she said, slipping the cake pan into the oven.

When I looked up, she was rubbing her eyelids with the pads of her fingertips. She blew me a kiss and said she was going to lie down for a little bit. Okay, I nodded. Two birds bickered outside. In my booklet, I picked the person doing a cartwheel and colored her shoes with red laces, her face a light orange. I made a vow to bounce the ball harder on the playground, and to bounce it right into Eddie Oakley’s corner. I added some apples to the wheelbarrow freehand.

The room filled with the smell of warming butter and sugar and lemon and eggs, and at five, the timer buzzed and I pulled out the cake and placed it on the stovetop. The house was quiet. The bowl of icing was right there on the counter, ready to go, and cakes are best when just out of the oven, and I really couldn’t possibly wait, so I reached to the side of the cake pan, to the least obvious part, and pulled off a small warm spongy chunk of deep gold. Iced it all over with chocolate. Popped the whole thing into my mouth.

2

After my mother quit her job, she spent those first six months or so beautifying the house. Each week, a different project. First, she grew that strawberry plant in the backyard, fastening it on the fence until the berries popped points of red in a wavy row. When she was done with that, she curled up on the sofa in heaps of old lace, placing her best new doily beneath a bowl of fresh-picked strawberries. Then she whipped the cream to put on top of the strawberries picked from the vine and put it all in the ceramic bowl she’d made in college that rested on top of the doily. It was red and white and delicate and elegant but she was always bad at accepting compliments. After the vines slowed for fall, she wanted to do something more rugged, so she called up a friend who knew a contractor and hired him on the promise that she could assist while they installed the side door in my brother’s bedroom, just in case he ever wanted to go outside.

But he hates outside! I said, following them into Joseph’s room for measurements. Why can’t I have a door?

You’re too young for a door, Mom said. My brother held his backpack to his chest, watching, and he gave a short nod when Mom asked if the location was okay. How long will it take? he asked.

We’ll only work on it while you’re in school, she assured us both, pulling out a notebook list of supplies.

It took three weeks of sawing, sanding, destroying and rebuilding, my mother in jeans, her ponytail tucked under the collar of her blouse, the contractor giving long explanations on sizing. Joseph slept under an extra quilted comforter once the wall had broken open, because he preferred his own bed. They worked day after day until the wood was finally fitted, and the window at the top installed, and the doorknob attached, and cheerful little red curtains hung partway down the frame. Mom presented it to Joseph as soon as we came home from school. Ta-da! she said, pulling him by the wrist and bowing. He put his hand on the doorknob and exited through the door and then circled back through the front door of the house and went into the kitchen to eat cereal. Looks good, he called, from the kitchen. Mom and I opened and closed the door fifty times, locking it and pulling the curtains shut; unlocking it and pulling the curtains open. When Dad got home at his usual time, six feet tall and nearly ducking under door frames, he made a few calls in the bedroom, and when Mom dragged him out to see the finished product, he said nice, nicely done, and then folded his arms.

What? Mom said.

Nothing.

It has a key lock, I said, pointing.

Just funny, said Dad, wrinkling his nose. All this work for a door in a room only one of us goes into.

You can use it, Joseph called, from the kitchen.

In case of a fire, I said.

We did so much sanding, Mom said, tracing the new calluses on her palms.

Very smooth, said Dad, touching the curtains.

After dinner, while Dad finished the rest of his work in the bedroom, Mom stretched out on the living-room carpet in front of the red brick fireplace, and even though it was warm out still, almost seventy degrees, she lit a fire using an old pine log she’d found in the garage. Come sit, Rose, she called to me, and we nestled up together and stared as the flickering flames licked the log into ash. I had nightmares that night, since they say you have nightmares more easily when the house is too warm. I dreamed we were plunging down frozen rivers.

My birthday cake was her latest project because it was not from a mix but instead built from scratch-the flour, the baking soda, lemon-flavored because at eight that had been my request; I had developed a strong love for sour. We’d looked through several cookbooks together to find just the right one, and the smell in the kitchen was overpoweringly pleasant. To be clear: the bite I ate was delicious. Warm citrus-baked batter lightness enfolded by cool deep dark swirled sugar.

But the day was darkening outside, and as I finished that first bite, as that first impression faded, I felt a subtle shift inside, an unexpected reaction. As if a sensor, so far buried deep inside me, raised its scope to scan around, alerting my mouth to something new. Because the goodness of the ingredients-the fine chocolate, the freshest lemons-seemed like a cover over something larger and darker, and the taste of what was underneath was beginning to push up from the bite. I could absolutely taste the chocolate, but in drifts and traces, in an unfurling, or an opening, it seemed that my mouth was also filling with the taste of smallness, the sensation of shrinking, of upset, tasting a distance I somehow knew was connected to my mother, tasting a crowded sense of her thinking, a spiral, like I could almost even taste the grit in her jaw that had created the headache that meant she had to take as many aspirins as were necessary, a white dotted line of them in a row on the nightstand like an ellipsis to her comment: I’m just going to lie down… None of it was a bad taste, so much, but there was a kind of lack of wholeness to the flavors that made it taste hollow, like the lemon and chocolate were just surrounding a hollowness. My mother’s able hands had made the cake, and her mind had known how to balance the ingredients, but she was not there, in it. It so scared me that I took a knife from a drawer and cut out a big slice, ruining the circle, because I had to check again right that second, and I put it on a pink-flowered plate and grabbed a napkin from the napkin drawer. My heart was beating fast. Eddie Oakley shrank to a pinpoint. I was hoping I’d imagined it-maybe it was a bad lemon? or old sugar?-although I knew, even as I thought it, that what I’d tasted had nothing to do with ingredients-and I flipped on the light and took the plate in the other room to my favorite chair, the one with the orange-striped pattern, and with each bite, I thought-mmm, so good, the best ever, yum-but in each bite: absence, hunger, spiraling, hollows. This cake that my mother had made just for me, her daughter, whom she loved so much I could see her clench her fists from overflow sometimes when I came home from school, and when she would hug me hello I could feel how inadequate the hug was for how much she wanted to give.

I ate the whole piece, desperate to prove myself wrong.

When Mom got up, after six, she wandered into the kitchen and saw the slice taken out of the cake and found me slumped at the foot of the orange-striped chair. She knelt down and smoothed the hot hair off my forehead.

Rosie, she said. Sweets. You all right?

I blinked open eyes, with eyelids heavier now, like tiny lead weights had been strung, fishing-line style, onto each lash.

I ate a slice of cake, I said.

She smiled at me. I could still see the headache in her, pulsing in her left eyebrow, but the smile was real.

That’s okay, she said, rubbing the underside of her eye bone. How’d it turn out?

Fine, I said, but my voice wavered.

She went and got herself a piece and sat down with me on the floor, crossing her legs. Sheet lines pressed into her cheek from the nap.

Mmm, she said, taking a small bite. Do you think it’s too sweet?

I could feel the mountain swelling in my throat, an ache spreading into the lining of my neck.

What is it, baby? she asked.

I don’t know.

Joe home from school yet?

Not yet.

What’s wrong? Are you crying? Did something happen at school?

Did you and Dad have a fight?

Not really, she said, wiping her mouth with my napkin. Just a discussion. You don’t have to worry about that.

Are you okay? I said.

Me?

You? I said, sitting up more.

She shrugged. Sure, she said. I just needed a nap. Why?

I shook my head clear. I thought-

She raised her eyebrows, encouraging.

It tastes empty, I said.

The cake? She laughed a little, startled. Is it that bad? Did I miss an ingredient?

No, I said. Not like that. Like you were away? You feel okay?

I kept shaking my head. The words, stupid words, which made no sense.

I’m here, she said, brightly. I feel fine. More?

She held out a forkful, all sunshine and cocoa, but I could not possibly eat it. I swallowed and, with effort, the spit slid around the mountain in my throat.

I guess I shouldn’t spoil my dinner? I said.

Only then-and only for a second-did she look at me oddly. Funny kid, she said. She patted her fingers on the napkin and stood. Well, then. Should we get started?

Dinner? I said.

Chicken, she said, checking her watch. It’s late!

I followed her into the kitchen. Joseph showed up about ten minutes later, the thud of his backpack on the floor like an anvil had dropped from the ceiling. He was flushed from the walk home, gray eyes clear, dark hair dampened with sweat, and the red in his cheeks and brightness in his eyes made it seem like he would want to tell us all about his day, with high-flying anecdotes and jokes and ribbings. Instead, he washed his hands at the kitchen sink, silent. He seemed to gather air around him in a cloak.

Mom hugged him like he’d been gone for a year, and he patted her shoulder like she was a puppy, and together the three of us chopped and cleaned while she made breaded chicken breast with green beans and rice. Joseph sprayed diluted bleach on the cutting board in the sink. Oil crackled in the fry pan. I tried to push my mind back to thinking about school, but the anxiety kicked in for me about halfway through the preparation; as I watched my mother roll raw chicken in breadcrumbs, I thought: What if I taste it in the chicken too? The rice?

At six-forty-five, my father’s car drove up and parked. He pushed the door open, jovial, bellowing I’m home! as he usually did. He said it to the hallway. By the end of the day, his hair, black and thick, was matted and rumpled, having taken the hit for all the work worry in his hands.

He paused at the kitchen door, but we were all too busy to run to greet him.

Look at the team go! he said.

Hi, Dad, I said, waving a knife back. He always seemed a little like a guest to me. Welcome home, I said.

Glad to be home, he said.

Mom glanced up from her fry pan and nodded.

He looked like he might want to come in and kiss her but wasn’t sure if it would work, so instead he lined up his briefcase against the closet wall, vanished down the hall to change, and joined us just as we sat down with the food surrounding steaming in bowls and platters. Joseph began serving himself, and as slowly as I could, I put everything on my plate in even spoonfuls. Half a chicken breast. Seven green beans. Two helpings of rice.

It was dark outside by now. Streetlamps buzzed on with their vague blue fluorescence.

The dinner taste was a little better than the cake’s but just barely. I sank down into my chair. I pulled at my mouth.

What is it? Mom asked. I don’t know, I said, holding on to her sleeve. The chicken tastes weird, I said.

Mom chewed, thoughtfully. The breadcrumbs? she said. Is there too much rosemary?

Oh, it’s fine, said Joseph, who ate with his eyes on the dish so no one could get eye contact and actually talk to him.

As we ate, my brother told a little about the after-school astronomy program and how a cosmologist from UCLA would be visiting soon to explain universe acceleration. Right this minute, said Joseph, it’s just getting faster and faster. He indicated with his fork, and a fleck of rice flew across the table. Dad told a story about his secretary’s dog. Mom pulled her chicken into threads.

When we were done, she brought the iced, finished, half-sliced cake out on a yellow china plate, and made a little flourish with her hands.

And for dessert! she said.

Joseph clapped, and Dad mmmed, and because I didn’t know what to do, I forced my way through another slice, wiping at the tears with my napkin. Sorry, I mumbled. Sorry. Maybe I’m sick? I watched each of their plates carefully, but Dad’s piece was gone in a flash, and even Joseph, who never liked much about food in the first place and talked often about how he wished there was a Breakfast Pill, a Lunch Pill, and a Dinner Pill, said Mom should enter it in a contest or something. You’re the only person I know who can build doors and cakes and organize the computer files, he said, glancing up for two seconds.

Rose thought I missed a part, Mom said.

I didn’t say that, I said, clutching my plate, cake gummy and bad in my mouth.

No way, said Joe. It’s complete.

Thank you, she said, blushing.

We all have different tastes, honey, she said, rubbing my hair.

It’s not what I meant, I said. Mom-

Anyway, it’s the last cake for a while. I’ll be starting a part-time job tomorrow, Mom said. With a carpentry shop, in Silver Lake.

First I’ve heard of that, Dad said, wiping his mouth. What are you fixing, more doors?

I said carpenter, Mom said. Not handyman. I will be making tables and chairs.

May I be excused? I asked.

Of course, Mom said. I’ll check on you in a minute.

I took a bath by myself and went to bed. I felt her come by later, as I was dozing off. Her standing, by my bed. The depth of shadow of a person felt behind closed eyelids. Sweet dreams, sweet Rose, she whispered, and I held on to those words like they were a thread of gold I could follow into blackness. Clinging to them tightly, I fell asleep.

3

My family lived in one of the many centers of Los Angeles, fifteen minutes from a variety of crisscrossing freeways, sandwiched between Santa Monica Boulevard and Melrose. Our neighborhood, bordered by Russian delis to the north and famous thrift shops to the south, was mostly residential, combining families, Eastern European immigrants, and screenwriters who lived in big apartment complexes across the way and who were usually having a hard time selling a script. They stood out on balconies as I walked home from school, smoking afternoon cigarettes, and I knew someone had gotten work when the moving vans showed up. That, or they’d worn through their savings.

Our particular block on Willoughby was quiet at night but in the morning leaf blowers whirred and neighbors revved their engines and the thoroughfares busied. I woke to the sounds of kitchen breakfast bustle. My father got up the earliest, and by seven-fifteen he was already washing his coffee cup in the kitchen sink, splashing water around and humming. He hummed tunes I’d never heard of, exuding an early-morning pep that had drained into a pure desire for television by the time I saw him at 7 p.m.

When he drove off, heading downtown to the office, he always gave one quick blast on the horn. Honk! He never said he was going to do it, or asked anything about it, but I waited, buried deep in my bed, and when his horn sounded, I got up.

Good morning. My stomach felt fine.

After breakfast, a mild and unthreatening cereal grain bar, I poured my mother a glass of water and tiptoed into her bedroom, placing it carefully on the nightstand.

Here you go, I whispered.

Thank you, she said, her eyes half closed, her hair spread in a thick fan over the pillow. The room smelled warm, of deep sleep and cocoons. She pulled me close and pressed a kiss into my cheek.

Your lunch is in the fridge, she murmured, turning over to the other side.

I tiptoed out of the room. Joseph and I grabbed our stuff and walked single file down Willoughby to Fairfax. The sky a strong deep blue. I kicked stones as I walked, deciding the food stuff of the day before was a one-of-a-kind bad deal, and I had a good day planned ahead, one involving the study of fireflies and maybe some pastel-crayon drawing. Eddie Oakley was regaining most of his usual proportion in the indignant section of my mind. The morning was already warming up-the news had signaled an unusually hot spring week ahead, into the nineties.

At the bus stop, we stood a few feet apart. I kept my distance because I was mostly an irritation to Joseph, a kind of sister rash, but as we were waiting, he took a few steps back until he was standing right next to me. I sucked in my breath.

Look, he said, pointing up.

Across the sky, in the far distance, the thinnest sliver of white moon hovered above a row of trees.

See next to it? he said.

I squinted. What?

That tiny dot, to the right? he said.

I could catch it if I really looked: a pinprick of light, still faintly visible in the morning sky.

Jupiter, he said.

The big guy? I asked, and for a second, his forehead cleared.

None other, he said.

What’s it doing?

Just visiting, he said. For today.

I stared at the dot until the bus arrived, praying at it like it was God, and before Joseph stepped ahead, I touched his sleeve to thank him. I made sure it was the part that didn’t touch his actual arm, so he would not whip around, annoyed.

Inside the bus, he sat several rows ahead of me and I settled behind a girl singing a pop ballad into her collar. Kids around snapped bubble gum and yelled out jokes, but Joseph held himself still, like everything was pelting him. My big brother. What I could see of his profile was classic: straight nose, high cheekbone, black lashes, light-brown waves of hair. Mom once called him handsome, which had startled me, because he could not be handsome, and yet when I looked at his face I could see how each feature was nicely shaped.

I sat quietly, watching out the moth-encrusted window, tracking the Jupiter dot as we drove south. Little cars below us, zipping past on Fairfax. At a red light, I gave a nod to an older woman driving in curlers. Waved at a guy in motorcycle gear who did rocker hands back. I glanced at the back of Joseph’s head, wanting to show him. He read his textbook. In my mind, I told him. He laughed, and looked.

We arrived without incident, I achieved four waves, and Joseph got off and turned down the alleyway that led to the junior high. I walked across the blacktop playground into third grade.

Math problems, reading, carpet time, oil-pastel sky drawing art project. Recess. Four square. Two points. Milk carton. History, spelling. Lunch bell.

I spent lunchtime at the porcelain base of the drinking fountain, which was half stopped up with pink gum, taking sip after sip of the warm metallic water that pushed through old pipes from plumbing built in the twenties, pouring rust and fluoride into my mouth, trying to erase my peanut-butter sandwich.

4

My mother slept in because she did not sleep well. Since she was a child, she told me once, when I brought in her morning glass of water. I would wait to feel myself fall asleep, she told me as I perched on the edge of her bed; and I would wait and wait, she said, wanting to catch it happening, like the tooth fairy. You can’t catch sleep, I said, turning the glass on its cork coaster. She smiled at me, through half-lidded eyes. Smart girl, she said.

I would hear her, sometimes, as I was resettling myself in the middle of the night; at 2 a.m. it was not unusual to hear the flip of the kitchen light switch and the hum of the teakettle warming. A hint of light down the corridor casting a faint glow on my bedroom wall. The sounds were comforting-a reminder of my mother’s presence, a feeling of activity and function, even though I knew come morning it would mean a tired-looking mother, her eyes unfocused, searching for rest.

Every now and then, I would crawl out of bed in the middle of the night to find her in the big armchair with the striped orange pattern, a shawl-blanket draped over her knees. I, at five, or six, would crawl into her lap, like a cat. She would pet my hair, like I was a cat. She would pet, and sip. We never spoke, and I fell asleep quickly in her arms, in the hopes that my weight, my sleepiness, would somehow seep into her. I always woke up in my own bed, so I never knew if she went back to her room or if she stayed there all night, staring at the folds of the curtains over the window.

We’d lived in this house all my life. My parents had met in Berkeley as college students, but they got married right after graduation, moved to L.A. for Dad’s law school, and my mother gave birth to Joseph shortly after they’d bought and settled into the place on Willoughby. She’d had trouble picking a major in college, unsure what she liked, but she chose the house right away because it was boxy and friendly, with red roof tiles and a mass of bougainvillea pouring over the door awning, and the diagonal diamond-shaped window patterns in the front looked like they could only frame a family that was happy.

Dad studied hard, did well on his tests, shook hands with his teachers. He made sheets of checklists on pads of yellow legal paper, lists reminding him to Talk to the Librarian, Give Green Sweater to Homeless Guy on Jefferson, Buy Apples. Find a Wife hadn’t been on any visible list, but he’d proposed earlier than most of his peers and something did seem to get checked off inside him once they were married. He bought gifts in line with the anniversary materials and framed their best wedding photograph for the hallway, and even though Have a Son and Have a Daughter looked better on paper than in the crying and diapering day after day, my father was pleased by the elder son/younger daughter arrangement. The world had matched what he’d dreamed up, and he settled himself inside what they’d made. He was cheerful enough when he came home from work but he didn’t really know what to do with little kids so he never taught us how to ride a bike, or wear a mitt, and our changes in height remained unmarked on the door frames, so we grew tall on our own without proof. He left at the same time each morning and came home at the same time each evening, and my earliest memories of my mother were of her waiting at the door as soon as it was anywhere near time, me on her hip, Joseph at her hand, watching car after car drive by. He was never late, but she watched early anyway. During the afternoons, when she was tired of kid activities, she would sometimes roll around a white plastic Wiffle Ball and tell us stories of our first few years. In particular, she told the stories of our births. For some reason, Dad refused to go into hospitals, so Mom had given birth to each of us by herself while Dad waited outside on the sidewalk, sitting on a crate, half reading a detective story.

Lucky me, she said, as she pushed the plastic wobbly ball over. I got to meet you both first.

When Dad got home, he’d bound up the walk and throw open the door, kissing her, kissing us, lining up his shoes, sifting through the mail. If anyone had been crying for any reason, he’d pull out a tissue and pat down our cheeks and say salt was for meat, not faces. Then he’d run out of greetings and glance around at the walls until he headed off to their room to change. What my father did most comfortably and best was log those long hours while my mother bathed and fed and clothed and burped, viewing the world at large as the vastest of colleges, a repeat of the trouble she’d had earlier deciding on a major. Possibilities seemed to close in on her. I love everything, she told me when I was still little enough to sit high on her hip. I don’t know what I like! she said brightly, kissing me on the nose. You’re so cute! she said. So cute! You! You!

I hardly knew any of my other relatives. Either they lived far away or they were dead. Three of my four grandparents had passed on to other unknowns by the time I was four, but my mother’s mother was apparently as healthy as an Olympian even though she’d never exercised a day in her life. She lived north, in Washington State.

She hated travel, so she didn’t visit, but one Saturday afternoon during my eighth year, a big brown box package arrived at our doorstep with GRANDMA in capital letters as the return address. A package! I said, dragging my parents to the door. Is it somebody’s birthday? No, Mom said stiffly, pushing it inside with her foot.

Inside, beneath layers of foam, I found a dish towel with my name on it. For Rose, she had written, in spidery handwriting on a scrap of paper taped to the towel itself. It was frayed, the pattern faded. I grabbed it out of the box and held it to my cheek. What is this? Dad asked, pushing foam strips onto the floor and lifting out a chipped daisy-patterned teacup with his paper taped to it: To Paul. Her broken teacup? he said. Joseph’s gift was a series of clean blue pillowcases, and my mother’s name was attached to a plastic bag full of cracked tins of rouge. She’s old now, Mom had said, circling a bit of rouge onto the back of her hand. Grandma lived alone, and probably at that point had lost part of her mind, but no one dared move her. She can still get to the post office, right? said Mom, shuttling the bag of rouges to the back of a kitchen drawer. Dad pulled handfuls of coins from his pockets. Whew! he said. Not a lot of love lost between you two! He dumped all his change into the teacup so that no one would ever drink out of it.

I loved my dish towel. This one was two-toned, and had, on one side, stitchings of fat purple roses on a lavender background, and on the other side, fat lavender roses on a purple background. Which side to use? An optical-illusion namesake with which I could dry our dishes. It was soft and worn and smelled like no-nonsense laundry detergent.

Because she did not visit in person, Grandma called once a month, on Sunday afternoons, and my mother would gather us around, put the phone in the center of the kitchen table and press speaker. She was gruff, Grandma, but funny. She liked to tell about her geology rock parties, where she had invited people over to the house to dig up and label rocks from the yard and when they walked in the door she specifically requested that no one speak.

Sometimes I even put tape on their mouths, she said. If they let me. It was bliss. You understand, Joseph, correct?

Yes, said Joe.

We did drink a lot, said Grandma, a little wistfully. That you, Rose? You there?

Hi, Grandma, I said.

You’re too quiet, said Grandma. Speak up.

I rolled a vinyl place mat into a tube.

I love you, I said, through the tube.

There was a pause. Across the room, from her listening position wedged in the far corner, Mom flinched.

Love? said Grandma, through the tiny black holes.

Yes, I said.

But you don’t even know me, said Grandma. How can you love me? It should be earned. You’re too clingy. She’s too clingy, Lane, Grandma said.

Ma, said Mom, picking at the ends of her ponytail.

I’m not clingy, I said.

She is extremely clingy, said Joseph. What rocks did you find?

How are things there, Ma? Mom asked. All’s good?

No, Grandma said, all is not good. They’re taking away my driver’s license. Basalt, Joseph, she said. We found a whole lot of basalt. I’ll send you some.

Boxes of it, the following week. Dark and glassy. We repopulated the garden. When a teacher had us draw our grandparents for an assignment on ancestry, I monopolized the black crayon, and my picture had been of a thick black box with grating, lines extending outward to indicate voice.

5

After lunch, my teacher sent me to the nurse.

We studied nature in the afternoons on Wednesdays. In third grade, the nature section was all about bugs and I had been very excited about the upcoming lesson on fireflies, but my mood had changed drastically during the lunch hour, and as soon as we were back in the classroom, I put my head on my desk. I didn’t intend to do it; it was like someone had attached a magnet to my forehead, and then tucked another inside my notebook. That was where my head had to go.

My teacher stopped halfway through her lesson.

Close your eyes, class, she called out, and imagine you’re a firefly, flying and blinking in the darkness of the night.

Then she walked to my desk and knelt by my side and asked if I was okay. I told her I thought I was sick, and my friend Eliza, imagining next to me, popped open one eye and explained how I’d spent the entire lunch hour at the drinking fountain.

She was very, very thirsty, Eliza whispered.

Is it the heat? asked our teacher.

I don’t think so, I said.

I stood at her desk as she signed a pass with my name on it. While my classmates extended arms to make wings, I walked down empty halls, past old trophies and paintings of houses, up to the open door of the infirmary, where I stood, gripping the hall pass, waiting. I had never visited the nurse before. I was rarely sick. I never faked.

Inside, sitting at a scuffed pine desk, a woman in a yellow gingham blouse was sorting through stacks of orange and pink files. When I held up my pass, she beckoned me inside.

Hang on a sec, she said, scribbling something on a piece of paper.

I had seen this nurse before at school assemblies, usually standing with whoever had a broken bone. She was the chaperone of the broken bones. She didn’t wear white, but she had soft-looking arms, one wrist encircled by a watchband of overlapping burgundy silk. After adding comments to two files, she looked over at me, sitting in the one free chair. Another sick kid, in a long line of sick kids.

So what’s the problem, hon? she said, picking up a thermometer and shaking it out.

I held my elbows, thinking.

Do you feel hot?

No, I said.

Is your nose stuffy?

I sniffed. The room smelled faintly of cherry medicine. I looked back at her soft elbows, her dark-red ribbon watchband. I used those arms as the first point of trust.

Food tastes bad, I said then.

This was not entirely true-I’d eaten a pretty good apple in my lunch. The recess milk carton was fine. But almost everything else-the cake, the chicken dinner, the homemade brownie, the craving in the peanut-butter sandwich-had left me with varying degrees of the same scary feeling.

What kind of bad? the nurse said, glancing over my body. Do you think you’re overweight?

No, I said. Hollow, I said.

She attached a fresh piece of paper to a clipboard. You think you’re hollow?

Not me, I said, scrambling. The food. Like there’s a hole in the food.

Food has a hole in it, she wrote slowly, on the paper. I watched as she added a question mark at the end. Arc, line, space, dot.

The air in the room thinned. She took my temperature. I closed my eyes and imagined I was a firefly, flying and blinking in the darkness of the night. Normal, she said, after a minute, reading the side. So-you’re sure you don’t think you’re fat?

No, I said.

They’re getting younger and younger, she said, as if reminding me.

But I’m eating, I said.

She wrote that on her clipboard too. Says she’s eating. Good, she said. Here.

She handed over a little paper cup of water. The water was supposedly from a mountain spring, but it had resided in plastic for many weeks and so it was like drinking liquid Lucite with a whisper of a mountain somewhere inside it.

There, honey, she said.

I nodded. I still wanted, very much, to be agreeable.

Now, wasn’t that good? she said, wiping down the thermometer with an alcohol-dipped tissue.

Water is important, I said, gripping the cup. We have to drink it or we die.

Just like food, she said.

I like food, I said, louder.

Three meals a day?

Yes.

And do you ever make yourself throw up?

No.

Or are you taking any pills to make yourself go to the bathroom? she asked, eyebrows raised.

I shook my head. The vent whirred, and the air conditioner kicked up a notch. I could feel the tears beginning to collect in my throat again, but I pushed them apart, away from each other. Tears are only a threat in groups.

Well, she sighed. Then just give it a couple of days, she said. She put her clipboard to the side.

That’s it?

That’s it, she said, smiling.

No medicine?

Nah, she said. You seem fine.

But what is it? I asked.

She fixed her watch on her wrist, lifted her shoulders. I don’t know, she said. Maybe an allergy?

To food?

Or, she said, maybe an active imagination?

I picked up the hall pass. The rest of the day stretched long before me.

Just get some rest and I’ll send for you again in a couple days, said the nurse, tossing out my paper cup. Drink fluids, she said. Take it easy. Your family okay?

My family? I said. Yes, why?

Just checking, she said, settling back down in her chair. She pulled a canary-yellow knit cardigan over her shoulders. Sometimes these things go around, she said.

6

I spent the rest of the school day on the flat hard green carpet of the classroom library reading picture books about animals getting into fixes. A splinteringly dry afternoon. Eddie and Eliza came over with curious eyes to see if I wanted to play four square or dodgeball after school, but I told them I wasn’t feeling well. You don’t want to get this, I said, coughing a little in their faces. I dragged my feet to the bus. At the stop, Joseph looked wrung out from the day too and took his usual spot right up against the window, but this time he sat with a friend, a guy with high arched eyebrows and rangy arms and legs. They hunched over a textbook and talked and pointed the whole ride home.

It was Wednesday, and George always came over on Wednesdays after school. He was Joseph’s best and only friend. George Malcolm: half white, half black, with messy tousled hair, rumpled and tugged between kind of curly and extremely curly. Once, a year or so before, he’d been at our house and he’d pulled out a lock of his hair and used it to teach me about eddies and helixes. It’s a circular current into a central station, he’d explained, giving me one to hold. I pulled on the spring. Nature is full of the same shapes, he said, taking me to the bathroom sink and spinning on the tap and pointing out the way the water swirled down the drain. Taking me to the bookshelf and flipping open a book on weather and showing me a cyclone. Then a spiral galaxy. Pulling me back to the bathroom sink, to my glass jar of collected seashells, and pointing out the same curl in a miniature conch. See? he said, holding the seashell up to his hair. Yes! I clapped. His eyes were warm with teaching pleasure. It’s galactic hair, he said, smiling.

At school, George was legendary already. He was so natural at physics that one afternoon the eighth-grade science teacher had asked him to do a preview of the basics of relativity, really fast, for the class. George had stood up and done such a fine job, using a paperweight and a yardstick and the standard-issue school clock, that the teacher had pulled a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet. I’d like to be the first person to pay you for your clarity of mind, the teacher had said. George used the cash to order pizza for the class. Double pepperoni, he told me later, when I’d asked.

That afternoon, we all got off the bus at Fairfax and Melrose and I followed the two of them home, wilted, trailed by the greasy salty smell of pastrami burritos at Oki Dog, and when George turned around to show something about the direction of an airplane, he saw me tripping along behind and waved.

Hey, Rose! he said. How’s it going?

Hi, I said. Hot, I said.

Joseph kept walking in his faded blue T-shirt, his back to me.

You’ve been walking behind us all this time? George asked.

I nodded. He kept walking backwards, as if he was waiting for something, so I raised my hand.

George laughed. Yes? he said. Miss Edelstein?

Have you ever been to the school nurse?

No, he said.

Don’t bother, I said.

Okay, he said. He looked a little bored.

He started turning back, so I waved my hand again.

Wait, I said. Sorry. I have a real question, I said. A science question.

Now my brother glanced around. Irritated.

Hey, he said. We’re busy. We don’t want to talk about fireflies.

What if, I said, food tastes funny?

Have you tried those cafeteria burritos? asked George, still walking backwards, tapping his pencil on his head like it was a drum. I had one of those today, he said. Now that was hilarious.

Don’t you have flute? Joseph asked, throwing his words back.

On Mondays, I said. Most food.

Or Eliza? said Joe.

Ballet, I said.

What do you mean? George asked.

What should I do?

I don’t get it, said George.

I think there’s something wrong with me, I said, voice cracking.

George squinted, confused. Both he and Joe were weird-looking in junior high; their features kept growing at different speeds and falling out of proportion and at that point George’s eyebrows were so high and peaked on his forehead that he always looked either skeptical or surprised.

We reached the door to the house and Joseph dug around in his backpack to find his keychain. He was in charge of Wednesday afternoons and he had a new keychain he’d bought with his allowance-a solid silver circle with a clever latch that sank into the stream of the circle invisibly. He found it, let us in, and then attached the circle to his belt loop, like a plumber.

He turned down the hall to head straight to his room, but George lingered in the entryway.

You play flute? he said.

Just a little, I said.

Hey, George, Joseph said, heaving his textbook from his backpack and flipping it open. Race you on twelve. A speedboat full of villains is leaving a twenty-foot-high pier at a steady fifteen mph. A car full of cops is about to drive off the pier to catch the villains. How fast should the car be going to land on the boat, if the car leaves the pier when the boat is thirty-five feet away?

But George crossed his arms, the way he did sometimes when he was in and out of Joseph’s room, pacing. They’d copy extra physics questions from the library and settle in for the afternoon-Joseph at his desk, George pacing. They’d prop open the side door for fresh air and flick twigs and hammer through the extra credit that the teacher put up for them, that even the teacher didn’t really know.

He fixed his eyes on me. Brown and sharp.

What’s so wrong with you? he said.

I flushed. I went through what I’d told the nurse. George stayed in the hallway to listen but Joseph ducked inside his room, tossing the textbook on his bed and sitting down at his desk, where he lifted a piece of graph paper and a compass from his folder. As I talked, he placed the steel point of the compass on the graph paper, strapped in the pencil and started to draw, with his careful hands, a beautiful arc. Every action so assured, like he knew exactly what mystery of the universe he was about to puncture.

So is it like Swiss cheese? George asked when I was done.

No, I said. It’s one big hole. The nurse said I had an active imagination.

Joseph crumpled up his perfect arc and pulled out a fresh piece of graph paper.

Don’t crumple, Joe, said George.

I fucked it up, said Joseph, tossing it into the trash.

I have that plan for my bedroom, remember? George said. All mistakes wallpaper, he said, turning back to me. Anyway, he said, let’s test you. We have to have a snack anyway.

Now? said Joseph, stretching the compass again and placing the point at the intersecting corner of two blue graph squares.

Just for a few minutes, said George. You free? he said, looking at me.

I’m free, I said.

He clapped his hands. First item on the agenda: discover what is going on with Rose, he said.

Joseph opened his mouth to protest.

Second item, George said, get to work!

I bowed, a little. What a lift, whenever he said my name. It was like getting my number called out in a raffle.

Joseph nearly crumpled his page again, then stopped his fist and handed it over. George held it up to the light, admiring the curves as if it were a painting. North wall, he said, nodding. Perfect.

That afternoon involved four sandwiches, soda, chips, buttered toast, chocolate milk. I ate my way through the refrigerator. Mom was still away at her new job, at the woodworking studio near Micheltorena, off Sunset into the hills, and my brother and George poured sugar and jam over toast and talked about their favorite TV series with the robots while I bit and chewed and reported to George. He’d found a yellow legal pad by the phone which he held on his lap, with a list of foods in the left column and then all my responses on the right. Half hollow, I said, about my mom’s leftover tuna casserole. Awful! I said, swallowing a mouthful of my father’s butterscotch pudding from a mix, left in a bowl. Dad’s, so distracted and ziggy I could hardly locate a taste at all. The sensor did not seem to be restricted to my mother’s food, and there was so much to sort through, a torrent of information, but with George there, sitting in the fading warmth of the filtered afternoon springtime sun spilling through the kitchen windows, making me buttered toast which I ate happily, light and good with his concentration and gentle focus, I could begin to think about the layers. The bread distributor, the bread factory, the wheat, the farmer. The butter, which had a dreary tang to it. When I checked the package, I read that it came from a big farm in Wisconsin. The cream held a thinness, a kind of metallic bumper aftertaste. The milk-weary. All of those parts distant, crowded, like the far-off sound of an airplane, or a car parking, all hovering in the background, foregrounded by the state of the maker of the food.

So every food has a feeling, George said when I tried to explain to him about the acidic resentment in the grape jelly.

I guess, I said. A lot of feelings, I said.

He drew a few boxes on the yellow legal pad. Is it your feeling? he said.

I shook my head. I don’t know, I said.

How do you feel? he asked.

Tired.

Does it taste tired?

Some of it, I said.

Joseph, who was sitting with his textbook at the table, had made himself a piece of toast with butter and jam and sprinkles of sugar. When he wasn’t looking I reached over to his plate and tore off a section. I must’ve made a face right away, because George glanced over, quick. What? he asked, writing Joseph’s Toast in the left column in big letters. Oh, I said, dizzy, mouth full. Tell us, said George, pencil ready. I couldn’t look at Joseph. I couldn’t even eat it very well. The bread felt thickly chewy, like it was hard to chew. A blankness and graininess, something folding in on itself. A sea anemone? I mumbled. Joseph looked up from folding his iced-tea label into a neat square. His eyes traced the door frame. I’m fine! he said, laughing. I feel fine.

I spit the bread into a napkin.

Joseph took his plate to the sink.

We done yet? he said. I promised Patterson we’d crack the racing code.

All right, said George, standing. He stretched up, and his T-shirt lifted slightly to show a band of skin. Then he smiled at me. Good job, kid, he said.

After they both left the kitchen, I put the milk and the jam back in the fridge and took out a knife and scraped my tongue lightly with its notched edge to get the taste of Joseph’s toast away. When that didn’t work, I grabbed a package of swirled sugar cookies from the pantry; the cookies, made by no one, had only the distant regulated hum of flour and butter and chocolate and factories. I ate six. The heat softened outside, and I washed the dishes, cool water running over my hands, returning a shine to the knives and the forks.

When I was done, I took a board game out of the hall closet and set it up right outside Joseph’s room so I could be as close as possible without actually violating the Keep Out sign. Holding on to the muted sound of George’s voice through the wood of the door.

How you doing out there? he called out every now and then.

Okay, I said, moving a yellow pawn forward four spaces.

She’s nuts, called Joseph, typing. Or it’s her bad mood, he said. You’ve heard of it. It’s called moods.

My stomach clenched. Maybe, I said, quietly, into the piles of fake money I’d been winning in the board game I was playing against myself.

We’ll test her in a better way on the weekend, said George. Outside the house. Hey, Joe, read eight out loud again.

The weekend? said Joe. It was impossible to miss the tremor in his voice.

Just for part of Saturday, said George, okay, Rose? A little more information? Saturday at noon?

Sure, I said, paying myself a million dollars from the stockpile.

7

One time, a year or so earlier, I had surprised my father with a flair for drawing accurate soccer balls, each hexagon nestled neatly next to its oppositely colored neighboring pentagon. He, a huge soccer fan, had been pleased. He held each one up and hooted as we sat down to watch the game together. Now, this is what I call art! he said, taping it above the TV. But I soon began the less approved-of habit of adding big eyes with long eyelashes and a smiling red mouth inside the white spaces on the ball. Rose-oh, no? said Dad, scratching his chin. I can’t help it, I told him, handing over the fifth smiler. They looked too plain, I said.

I stopped watching sports with him after that, but it was the one time I could remember showing off any particular special skill at all. Feeling so pleased at getting all six sides even with their five-sided neighbors. Making dashes to indicate stitching. I was not, usually, a standout participant, good or bad. I read at an average age. I did fine in school but no one took either parent of mine aside to whisper about my potential-I seemed to be satisfyingly living up to mine.

My brother was the family whiz. At six years old, he was building models of star clusters out of Legos that he’d pockmarked with a dental instrument he’d purchased from our dentist with his allowance. He used big words too early, saying things like, I must masticate now, as he took a bite of cereal, and adults laughed at him, loving his big gray eyes and so serious look, and then they tried to hug him, which he refused. Me no touch, he said, bending his arms back and forth like a robot.

Joseph is brilliant, adults often said as they shuttled out of the house, shaking their heads at the precise drawing he’d made on sketch paper of planets yet to be discovered, complete with atmosphere thicknesses and moons. Our mother lowered her eyes, pleased. I was often admired for being friendly.

You meet people so easily! Mom said, when I smiled at the man who changed the car oil, who smiled back.

Certainly I had very little competition, since Joseph smiled at no one, and Dad just flashed his teeth, and Mom’s smiles were so full of feeling that people leaned back a little when she greeted them. It was hard to know just how much was being offered.

8

At around five-thirty, after George and I had thoroughly plundered the refrigerator, Mom came home from her first day at the carpentry studio. Her cheeks were red, as if she’d been jogging. It was wonderful! she said, grasping my hand. She looked for Joseph but he was reading in his room. George had gone home. We’ll just do a quick tour of the neighborhood trees, Mom said in a confiding voice, tugging me out the front of the house. So this is a fir, she said, pointing at a dark evergreen growing in the middle of someone’s yard. Softwood, she said. This one: sycamore, she said, tapping on the bark of the next. She frowned. I don’t think they build furniture from sycamore, she said, but I’m not sure why not.

I peeled a gray jigsaw-shaped piece of bark right off the trunk. I recognized her enthusiasm as phase one of a new interest. Phase two was usually three or four months later, when she hit the wall after her natural first ability rush faded and she had to struggle along with the regularly skilled people. Phase three was a lot of head shaking and talking about why that particular skill-sociology, ceramics, computers, French-wasn’t for her after all. Phase four was the uneasy long waiting period, which I knew by the series of 2 a.m. wake-ups where I stumbled down the hallway into her lap.

Too peely, I said, folding the bark in two.

I leaned on her arm a little as we walked down the shady side of Martel. Waving at some neighbors out on their lawn with a hose. By five-thirty, the heat was light, pleasurable, and the air seemed to glisten and hone around us. She asked if I was feeling better and I said a little, pushing the upcoming dinner out of my head and trying to concentrate on what she was saying next, something about worrying she could not keep up with the others at the studio. Which made no sense. My mother had trouble choosing and sticking but she was initially good at everything, particularly anything involving her hands; the bed she made was so perfect that for years I slept on top of the sheets because I did not want to wreck her amazing exactness by putting a body inside it.

I think you’ll be good, I said.

She tucked a stray hair behind my ear. Thank you, she said. Such a sweet supporter you are. Much nicer than your father.

She did seem lighter, in a newly good mood, as we toured the trees up and down Gardner and Vista and then steered ourselves back inside.

Leftovers at dinner was a whole repeat of the previous night’s upset, just softened by the one day of time and the kindness from George. I kept the nurse’s advice in mind, looking to see if it was going around, but no one else seemed bothered by any of it. Dad asked about the studio, and Mom told us her first assignment would be to cut a board.

A board! he said, clinking his glass to hers. How about that.

She frowned at him. Don’t be mean, she said.

Did I say anything? he said, widening his eyes. I can’t build anything. I can only re-build stools that are already built, he said.

He winked at her. She cleared her glass.

You know that story, Rose? he said.

A hundred times, I said.

Joseph picked up the pepper pillar and shook it over his food in a rain of black specks. Like our mother, he too had long beautiful hands, like a pianist’s, fingers able to sharpen and focus like eyes.

Too bland? Mom asked.

Joseph shook his head. Just experimenting, he said.

Today, Dad announced, patting his place mat, I saw a man walking a monkey. True story.

Where? I said.

Pershing Square, he said.

Why?

He shrugged. I have no idea, he said, wiping his mouth. That was my day. Next.

Joseph put down the pepper. Fine, he said.

Half good, half awful, I said.

Half awful! said Dad, waiting.

My head, I said, is off.

Looks on to me, Dad said. Very on.

Oh, Rosie, no! Mom said. She sprinkled some pepper onto her dish too and then leaned over to hug my forehead into her side. You have a beautiful head, she said. A fine beautiful girl in there.

Food is full of feelings, I said, pushing away my plate.

Feelings? Dad said. For a second, he peered at me, close.

I couldn’t eat my sandwich, I said, voice wobbling. I can’t eat the cake.

Oh, like that, Dad said, leaning back. Sure. I was a picky eater too. Spent a whole year once just eating French fries.

Did they taste like people? I said.

People? he said, wrinkling his nose. No. Potato.

You look well, Mom said. She tried a careful bite of her chicken. Better with pepper, she said, nodding. Much better, yes.

Joseph folded his arms. It was just an experiment, he said.

I’m going out with George and Joseph on Saturday, I said.

Only because it’s your birthday, said Joseph.

Her birthday, Mom echoed. Nine years old. Can you believe it?

She stood and went to the recipe page and wrote on it in big capital letters: ADD PEPPER!

There! she said.

I stacked my plate on Dad’s. He stacked our plates on Joseph’s.

Don’t you see? I said to Dad.

See what?

I pointed at Mom.

Lane, he said. Yes. I see a beautiful woman.

I kept my eyes fixed on him.

What? he said again.

Her, I said.

Me? Mom said.

What is it, Lane? Dad asked. Is something going on?

Nothing, Mom said, shaking her head, capping her pen. She laughed. I don’t know what she’s talking about. Rose?

She said she wants support, I said.

Oh no, no, said Mom, blushing. I was just teasing, earlier. I feel very supported, by all of you.

Can I go? asked Joseph.

She’s making a board, Dad said, bringing the stacks of plates to the sink. What else is there to say about that? She’ll make a perfect board. Any dessert?

I didn’t move. Mom kept smoothing her hair behind her ears. Smooth, smooth. Joseph stood, at his spot.

Can I go? he said again.

What do you want to do on Saturday, Rose? Mom asked. We could dress up and walk around in the park together. There are a couple more pieces of lemon cake, Paul, she said. Over there.

I have an important plan with George, I said.

Joseph squeezed out of his end of the table. After Saturday, nothing, he said to me. Got it?

George? Mom said. Joe’s George?

I’d know if she needed support! said Dad, at the sink.

Joseph left the room. My parents turned to me, with bright, light faces. We stood in front of empty place mats.

Do we say grace? I said.

Grace is what people say before the meal, said Mom. She moved to the piles in the sink. It’s to give thanks for the food we are about to eat, she said.

I closed my eyes.

For the food that is gone, I whispered. Grace.

Due to his role as moneymaker, my father was excused from doing the dishes, and Joseph was so overly meticulous with dish-doing that it was easier when he was off in his room, so it was my mother and me in front of the soapy sink: her washing, me drying. I zipped through the silverware using my new worn rose dish towel from Grandma. Mom seemed in good spirits, squeezing my shoulder, asking me a series of fast questions about school, but the aftertaste of the spiraled craving chicken was still in my mouth and I was having trouble trusting her cheer, a split of information I could hardly hold in my head. I circled the dish towel over wet plates, stacking each one in the cabinet. Dug the dish towel into the mouths of mugs. Strung it through the metal ring on the drawer when I was done.

Afterwards, I heaved my book bag onto my shoulder and headed down the hall towards my room. I kept my walking slow, like my brain was a full glass of water I needed to carefully balance down the corridor.

To my surprise, the door to Joseph’s room was propped half open. This was as rare and good as a written invitation since he’d recently installed a lock on his door, bought from the same hardware store with his allowance. He kept the new key also on that elegant silver circle keychain.

There was still a wisp of daylight outside, but his window shades were pulled, and he had clicked on the desk lamp instead. He was lying on his bed, feet crossed, reading Discover next to a clump of silvery radio innards.

Hi, I said. He looked up, over his magazine. His eyes did not reach out to say hello but instead formed a loose wall between us.

Sorry for hogging George, I said.

He blinked at me.

You don’t have to get me anything for my birthday, I said. Saturday can be my birthday present. You feeling better? I asked.

What do you mean?

Just earlier, with the toast?

He returned to his magazine.

Jesus, he said. You think everyone is in bad shape. I was fine all day, he said, into the pages. I just didn’t want to spend my afternoon watching my little sister eat snacks, okay?

He turned another page, reading.

I waited there, in his doorway, for a while. I poked at the O in the Keep Out sign on his door.

He raised his eyebrows: Anything else?

That’s all, I said.

Good night, he said.

I turned to go and was almost out the door when something blurred in my peripheral vision near where he lay on the bed. As if for half a second the comforter pattern grew brighter or the whites whiter. Then I turned back to look and everything was the same, perfectly still, him reading away.

Are you okay? I said, shaking my head clear.

He glanced up again. Didn’t we just go through this?

Just-

His eyes wide, looking. Half interested.

Did the colors change? I said. Is George coming by?

Now? he said. No. It’s nighttime.

Did you just move, or something?

Me?

Yeah, like did you move from the bed?

He laughed, short and brusque.

I’ve been here, the whole time, he said.

Sorry, I said. Never mind. Good night.

9

Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn’t love me-I felt the wash of her love every day, pouring over me, but it was a different kind, siphoned from a different, and tamer, body of water. I was her darling daughter; Joseph was her it.

He was not the expected choice for favorite. Dad, who claimed no favorites, sometimes looked at Joseph as if he’d dropped from a tree, and very few people reached out naturally to Joe except for George. He’d always been remote-I had a vague memory, from when I was two, of finding Joseph sitting in his room in the dark, so that even my baby toddler brain associated him with caves-but sometime in his third-grade year Mom started taking him out of school. He was bored in class, outrageously so, and the teacher had taken to giving him her purse to sort through and organize while the rest of the class did beginning addition. Mom would pick him up and he’d have made some kind of chain-link out of Tic Tacs, threading each one with a needle he’d dug from the classroom sewing kit. Look, Mom, he said, holding up the mint-green linked cord. Bacteria, he said. The teacher flinched, embarrassed. He is so smart, she whispered, as if he had hurt her with it.

One afternoon, Mom showed up with me on her hip, told the office Joseph had a doctor’s appointment, and took him out, right in the middle of the gym lesson on how to throw a ball. So he never learned to throw a ball. The office did not question the doctor’s appointment, and neither did the other students, because Joseph was skinny and pale and hunched and looked like he needed a lot of medical care. Mom walked us to the car and strapped me into my car seat.

What doctor are we going to? Joseph asked. Am I sick?

Not a bit, she said, driving out of the school parking lot and turning up the radio. Trumpets blared. You are perfect and perfectly healthy, she said. We’re going to the market.

What was he supposed to do, string mints all day? she asked me later, when remembering that year.

I was with them for all of it, but more like an echo than a participant.

That afternoon, the three of us went to the dress store, the farmers’ market, the dry cleaner. We drove the full length of Wilshire Boulevard, from the ocean to the heart of downtown, winding our way back home on 6th through the palaces of Hancock Park. Beneath tall graceful pines, planted in 1932 by the bigwigs of the movie industry. We stopped by the market to pick up ravioli and spinach for dinner. My mother was in between jobs that year, and she did not like to drive alone. Sometimes the two of them talked about how trees grew, or why we needed rain; sometimes they just sat silently while I threw cracker bits around the back seat. Mom loved to listen to Joseph-she nodded with encouragement at every single word he said. Occasionally, we’d pull over to the curb and she’d ask him advice on her life, and even at eight, he’d answer her questions in a slow, low monologue. She would hold tightly on to the band of her seatbelt and fix her eyes onto his, listening.

All this happened for many months, and no one mentioned anything to Dad, and all was fine until one afternoon when Joseph was at school, staying in during recess because he did not like to play dodgeball. The teacher was cleaning the blackboard with a damp cloth. Joseph was crouching on the floor of the classroom, analyzing the color gradation of the carpet fibers, when the teacher asked him, with great concern, if he was feeling any better. Joseph said he was feeling fine.

But the doctors must be giving you a lot of medicine? the teacher said. She was kind of a dumb teacher. I met her later and she cried a little when she met me, like I was going to torture her again with the Edelstein brilliance. When I told her that I wasn’t a genius, she visibly relaxed.

No, said Joseph.

But so what do they do, these doctors? the teacher asked, as she cleared the remaining bits of chalk off the board. Joseph was out of the classroom for most of the day, sometimes three times a week at that point. He didn’t answer. He squatted at the foot of her desk now, investigating the grain of the desk wood.

Joseph?

We go to the market, he said then.

You go to the market with the doctors?

Me and Mom, said Joseph.

Before the doctors? asked the teacher, slowing her hand.

It’s what the doctor ordered, said Joseph, looking up for a brief moment to catch her narrowing eye.

I knew the whole story backwards and forwards, because I heard it told and retold over the phone, to friends, to my father, to anyone, as my mother got investigated. She talked about it for years. A couple of social workers came by and asked her questions in the living room for two hours. The home-schooling contingency in the neighborhood dropped off a stack of handmade pamphlets. When Dad found out what was happening, he brought a notepad to the dinner table to try to understand, asking the same questions over and over while Joseph and I dug through our food. But explain again, he said, lowering his brow. Why were you taking him out? Because he is bored out of his mind, said Mom, waving her fork in the air. Let him discover the world on his own! Dad scribbled jagged lines on the pad. But you didn’t go to a museum, he said. You went to the dry cleaner. Mom gritted her teeth. He liked it, she said. Didn’t you learn something, honey? Joseph sat up straighter. They use liquid solvent but no water, he recited.

Mom had to be talked to by the president of student affairs and the school principal, and she was on mom probation permanently. A few years later, when she wanted to take me out of school for a real doctor’s appointment to deal with a stubborn flu, I had to wait in the main office, staring at the dark fishtank with the rows of tiny blue fish zigging and zagging, while the secretary called Dr. Horner to confirm my appointment.

Cough, Rose, Mom had said when we walked into the main office together. I let out a ripping bronchial spasm.

See? Mom said to the secretary. Can we go?

The secretary gave me a look of concern. I’m sorry, he said, wincing. School policy, he said. He was on hold at Dr. Horner’s for fifteen minutes, and we almost missed the slot. In the doctor’s waiting room, Mom flipped through the magazines like the pages needed to be slapped.

Those months of errands seemed benign: kid and Mom, going to stores together. It was even sweet, in a way. The social workers left the house that day holding slices of Mom’s freshly baked banana bread, calling thank you as they got into their car. As soon as Joseph was back in a regular school routine, Dad forgot all about it. But the one true result of all those absences was that Joseph, who was already unfriendly, made even fewer attachments in the classroom. He’d had a couple friends in earlier years-no one to bring home, but his conversation was peppered with repeated names-Marco, Marco, Marco, Steve, Marco, Steve, Steve. After that third-grade year, it changed to Them and They. They went out to recess. I don’t like them. They all played chess. They have fruit punch in their lunches; can I? Can I stay home? Not like any of this was a problem for Mom-she thought Joseph was perfect, even though he was often in a bad mood, rarely made eye contact, and ignored everyone. She called Joseph the desert, one summer afternoon when we were all walking along the Santa Monica Pier, because, she explained, he was an ecosystem that simply needed less input. Sunshine’ll do it for Joe, she said, beaming upon him. Joseph walked two feet to the side, absorbed in the game booths that lined the south side of the pier.

He is economical with his resources, Mom told me, since Joseph wasn’t listening.

And what am I? I asked, as we walked down the rickety wooden pathway that led to the end of the dock, where the fishermen stood all day with their old-style fishing poles.

You? she said, looking out over the water. Mmm. Rain forest, she said.

Rain forest, what does that mean? I asked.

You are lush, she said.

I need rain?

Lots of rain.

Is that good? I asked.

Not good or bad, she said. Is a rain forest good or bad?

What are you?

She raised her shoulders. I change around, she said. Like the Big Island in Hawaii.

You get to be Hawaii?

The Big Island. It has seven different climates. You can be Hawaii too, if you want.

Are you a rain forest?

I don’t think so, she said.

A desert?

Sometimes, she said.

A volcano?

On occasion, she said, laughing.

I went to walk by myself at the railing. The ocean looked specific and granular in the high heat. When we reached the very end of the pier, I stood by a short old Japanese fisherman who told me he had been there reeling up the mackerel since six-thirty in the morning. What time did you get up? he asked me. Seven, I said. I was already here, he said, looking at his watch. A full bucket of fish nestled at his feet, in a cooler. It was three-thirty. I’m still here, he said.

Now I’m here too, I said.

The two of us, here, he said.

Did you see the sunrise?

Over the mountain, he said.

Pretty?

He nodded. Orange, he said. Pink.

I want to be the ocean instead of the rain forest, I said on the drive home.

Sure, said Mom, whose mind was long gone into somewhere else.

Joseph would reach out to me occasionally, the same way the desert blooms a flower every now and then. You get so used to the subtleties of beige and brown, and then a sunshine-yellow poppy bursts from the arm of a prickly pear. How I loved those flower moments, like when he pointed out the moon and Jupiter, but they were rare, and never to be expected.

So, because of all this, it was no small surprise one fall afternoon when I spied Joseph, walking from the bus stop, arriving home from seventh grade with another person at his side. A person his own age. I was drawing lightning bolts with colored chalk on the sidewalk because the school nature lesson that day had been about weather: thundershowers, tornadoes, hurricanes. All so exotic to the blue skies of Los Angeles. I was busily getting the edges right on the first bolt when I looked up and saw them walking around the corner, and at first I thought I was blurring my vision. I colored the bolt bright orange. Looked up again: still two. My second thought was that it was a trick. Maybe Joseph had been assigned this other kid. Maybe the guy was a jerk, playing a joke on my brother.

What are you doing here? I asked, as soon as they reached the front lawn. I think I was seven. Joseph, like usual, didn’t answer. Desert wind. Snakes and scorpions.

Hi, said George. I’m George. He bent down and shook my hand. He had a good handshake for a seventh-grader.

Lightning! he said, looking down.

But why are you here? I asked again, following them inside.

Joseph headed to his bedroom. George turned back, and said they were there to do homework.

Is he teaching you? I asked George.

No, said George.

But why are you here with my brother? I asked.

Science homework, said George. Science stuff.

I noted his eyebrows. His pants, which were the normal pants a boy his age wore.

You like science too? I asked.

Sure do, said George, disappearing into Joseph’s room.

I spent the rest of the afternoon going back and forth from the chalk drawings to Joseph’s door. I couldn’t exactly hear what they were doing but it sounded like they were talking about schoolwork. I drew a whole line of lightning bolts very fast, and then took the blue chalk and made slashes of rain everywhere, in the dry and cloudless air.

It was during George’s fourth or fifth visit that the blow hit me. I was sitting outside Joseph’s door once again, trying to listen; I still assumed that Joseph must be tutoring George, because I could not understand why the guy kept showing up, two or even three times a week. I pretended I was happily building a train track out of Legos that, due to zoning laws, absolutely had to go over the carpet right in front of Joseph’s door.

What’s the reason for that? a voice asked. My brother’s voice.

It’s wind resistance, said George.

I waited for Joseph to explain something to George.

Why’d you solve it that way? Joseph asked.

It’s quicker like this, said George, scratching on a pad.

Wait, do that again, said Joseph.

Which part?

That.

The toy train bumped along a track of red and blue. I sat and listened for a half-hour, and not once did Joseph explain something to his guest.

Had I been at school with him, I would not have been so surprised. The fast pace that had stunned everyone when he was my age couldn’t be maintained, and by the time he was in seventh grade, he was in advanced math, yes, but there were at least three in the class ahead of him. For once, he had to glance at his homework to keep up. He had shifted from genius to very smart, and although very smart is very good, to a prodigious kid it’s a plummet.

Train, bumping back to the station.

For me, it had ramifications beyond his brain. I had assumed, since birth, that Joseph was so weird because he was so smart. But here was George, even smarter, and he knew my name. When he came over, he made a point of saying hi. When he left, he waved.

I got caught, that day. I was lying on my back on the hall carpet, spinning the train wheels, when George opened up the door to make a phone call.

Hey, Rose, he said.

Sorry, I said. I’m making a train.

Where’s it headed? he asked.

I mean a train track, I said. What?

The train?

Oh, I said. Ventura?

Go away, Joseph growled, from the depths of his bedroom.

I moved my train closer to the kitchen and listened to George’s call. He was checking on his sister, who was retarded. He said, into the phone: I need a new drawing of an elephant, okay? My old elephant needs a buddy.

Mom was also in the kitchen, rinsing a colander of broccoli under the faucet.

I looked at her when he was off and back.

Nice boy, she said.

Not a desert, I said.

What do you mean? She put the broccoli aside, to drip into the sink.

You said Joseph was the desert?

She ran her hands under the tap. Nah, not the desert, she said, as if that conversation had never happened. Joseph, she said, is like a geode-plain on the outside, gorgeous on the inside.

I watched her dry her hands. My mother’s lithe, able fingers. I felt such a clash inside, even then, when she praised Joseph. Jealous, that he got to be a geode-a geode!-but also relieved, that he soaked up most of her super-attention, which on occasion made me feel like I was drowning in light. The same light he took and folded into rock walls to hide in the beveled sharp edges of topaz crystal and schorl.

He has facets and prisms, she said. He is an intricate geological surprise.

I stayed at the counter. I still held the Lego train in my hands.

And what’s Dad? I said.

Oh, your father, she said, leaning her hip against the counter. Your father is a big strong stubborn gray boulder. She laughed.

And me? I asked, grasping, for the last time.

You? Baby, you’re-

I stood still. Waiting.

You’re-

She smiled at me, as she folded the blue-and-white-checked dish towel. You’re seaglass, she said. The pretty green kind. Everybody loves you, and wants to take you home.

It took a while to pick up all the pieces of my train track and put them away in my own bedroom. It was a compliment, I kept thinking to myself, as I stacked the parts; it’s supposed to make you feel good, I thought.

10

Saturday dawned, sunny and hot. Officially nine. I was ready to go the minute I woke up. George wasn’t due until noon, but I bounded around the house, opening the front door and peeking down the sidewalk as early as ten in the morning, making a pathway of fallen leaves, and when George turned the corner onto our block I ran back inside to open the door for him as if I was surprised. Hi! He said hello and sang me a quick happy birthday and then went right into Joseph’s room. After ten minutes of convincing, Joseph exited wearing a baseball cap that read The Best Part About Baseball Is the Cap, and George asked me how I felt about walking all together over to a bakery on Beverly which specialized in homemade cookies that cost a whopping three dollars apiece. Good, I said, bobbing my head. I feel good about that.

The heat wave was lighter, breezier, on this warm white-skied Saturday afternoon, my father out playing tennis, Mom at the studio learning tools, as the three of us headed off together, crossing Melrose, walking south past the jacaranda-bordered fourplex apartment buildings that lined up in friendly rows down Spaulding.

When I crossed the street, according to my mother, I still had to hold someone’s hand. At ten, I would be able to cross streets unhanded. I’d held on to Joseph’s many times before, for many years, but holding his was like holding a plant, and the disappointment of fingers that didn’t grasp back was so acute that at some point I’d opted to take his forearm instead. For the first few street crossings, that’s what I did, but on the corner at Oakwood, on an impulse, I grabbed George’s hand. Right away: fingers, holding back. The sun. More clustery vines of bougainvillea draping over windows in bulges of dark pink. His warm palm. An orange tabby lounging on the sidewalk. People in torn black T-shirts sitting and smoking on steps. The city, opening up.

We hit the sidewalk, and dropped hands. How I wished, right then, that the whole world was a street.

As the two of them walked ahead, Joseph using a ficus leaf to swoop the air and demonstrate something about torque, I watched their backs and their gesturing arms. In my pleasure at being included I completely forgot about the reason for the trip, but the minute we reached the corner and turned onto Beverly, the silky wafting scent of butter and sugar brought it all back, and a smell that usually made people drool tripped dread right up in my stomach.

Yum, said George.

Joseph rolled his eyes. He seemed to be smell-proof, somehow. He took a seat outside the bakery, on a low rock wall surrounding some limp azaleas, and pulled out his usual stack of graph paper.

I’ll be out here, he said. Doing actual work.

He started sorting through the graph paper pages. George held the door open for me, and we filed inside, together.

If I rarely spent time with just Joseph, I had certainly never been alone with George. I had no idea what to do. It was like being asked to dance, or really asked anything. The store was empty, and I stood in the middle of the room, twisting, reading as much as I could sound out of the enthusiastic signs that covered the walls, assuring us that every cookie was baked on the pre-mi-ses, which George and I had agreed earlier was a key factor in today’s test.

It’s better to be away from your home, he said, coming up to me. We may be able to tell different things, if you don’t know the people.

Okay, I said.

Take subject out of environment and re-test, he said, making quote fingers with his hands.

At the bins, I picked out a chocolate chip and an oatmeal. George got the same and looked at me close, under those arched eyebrows. Good, he said. You ready?

I guess, I said.

I sat myself down at a red-and-beige table.

Take your time, said George.

I bit into the chocolate chip. Slowed myself down.

By then, almost a week in, I could sort through the assault of layers a little more quickly. The chocolate chips were from a factory, so they had that same slight metallic, absent taste to them, and the butter had been pulled from cows in pens, so the richness was not as full. The eggs were tinged with a hint of far away and plastic. All of those parts hummed in the distance, and then the baker, who’d mixed the batter and formed the dough, was angry. A tight anger, in the cookie itself.

Angry? I said to George, who was up browsing the rows-white-chocolate chunk, no-sugar shortbread-chewing his own.

It’s an angry cookie? he said.

I nodded, tentative. He took another bite of his, and I could see him paying close attention, trying to taste what I did. His eyes focused in the near distance.

Man, he said, after a minute, shaking his head. Nothing.

He went to ring the bell on the counter. After a minute, a clerk wandered in from the back, a young man with short black-dyed hair and a proud arched nose, wearing a dusty red uniform.

Yeah, he said. What.

Did you bake these? asked George.

The young man, probably in his early twenties, looked down at the half still in George’s hand.

What type?

Chocolate chip, George said.

He sniffed. He looked at the clock. Yeah, he said.

George put his elbows on the counter and crossed his feet, in his khaki pants of a million pockets. I was in love with him, pretty much, by that point. I did not care that my brother had been shooting me evil-eye laser looks of hate all week. Soon, I knew, they’d get distracted by something else-by the broken sprinkler, or by the weather pattern changes, or by traffic system routes along La Brea, but for the moment I was Project Number One, and the young man in the red cookie uniform responded to George, as most people did, because George wanted something from him, wanted his unique specificity right then, with that beam of friendly focus that was so hard to resist.

We’re doing a school project, said George, leaning closer. Can I ask you a few questions?

I guess, said the guy.

What was your mood when you made this?

No mood, said the guy. I just make the cookies. In the bowl, stir, bake, done.

Do you like making them?

Nah, said the guy. I fucking hate this job.

George shifted his position at the counter. He turned around for a second to look at me directly. Sugary dust slid down my throat.

Why? George asked.

Would you want to sell cookies first thing after college? said the guy.

Probably not, said George.

I don’t even like cookies, said the guy.

I bit into the oatmeal. Same levels-now the oats, well dried, but not so well watered, then the raisins, half tasteless, made from parched grapes, picked by thirsty workers, then the baker, rushed. The whole cookie was so rushed, like I had to eat it fast or it would, somehow, eat me.

Oatmeal in a hurry, I said to George, a little louder.

Chocolate chip, angry, he said, turning around. What’s that, about oatmeal?

Rushed, I said.

He turned back. You make the oatmeal?

Nah, said the guy. That’s Janet.

Who’s Janet?

She works here in the mornings, the guy said. She talks a lot about traffic. He glanced over at me. She’s always running late, he said.

I could feel my face reddening. George smiled. Thank you, he said, to the guy.

George returned to me, and pulled my hair into two ponytails with his hands.

Some-one is sm-art, he sang.

I wanted to grab on to him, tie myself to his sleeve.

But I don’t want it, I said, to no one.

So what’s the project? the guy asked, casually neatening the stacks of coupons on the front counter.

I was sitting in a red chair, which had been pinned to the floor with several plastic nails. The tips of my feet just touching the floor. The table, a thick shellac over a pattern of beige dots that seemed to be trying to suggest spontaneity. I couldn’t eat any more of either cookie, so I left them crumbling on the table.

I guess you could call it a test of location, said George, reaching over to finish my leftovers. Like, where do we locate the feeling inside the cookie, he said, chewing.

The guy scrunched up his forehead, and a lock of black hair fell over his eyes.

Or, am I bonkers, I said, from my chair.

And? said the guy.

Truth was, it was hard to see George eat those cookie halves without hesitation. Without tasting even a speck of the hurry in Janet’s oatmeal, which was so rushed it was like eating the calendar of an executive, or without catching a glimpse of the punching bag tucked beside every chocolate chip. I was so jealous, already, of everyone else’s mouth. But I loved George in part because he believed me; because if I stood in a cold, plain white room and yelled FIRE, he would walk over and ask me why. It was the same thing that would make him into a very good scientist.

No, I said. Maybe not.

Wait, hang on. The guy ducked into the back, and came out with a sandwich in his hand, wrapped tightly in plastic.

Does it work with sandwiches? he asked.

I didn’t move. He handed it over. George was watching with a kind of neutral curiosity, and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, so I just unwrapped it and took a bite. It was a homemade ham-and-cheese-and-mustard sandwich, on white bread, with a thin piece of lettuce in the middle. Not bad, in the food part. Good ham, flat mustard from a functional factory. Ordinary bread. Tired lettuce-pickers. But in the sandwich as a whole, I tasted a kind of yelling, almost. Like the sandwich itself was yelling at me, yelling love me, love me, really loud. The guy at the counter watched me closely.

Oh, I said.

My girlfriend made it, he said.

Your girlfriend makes your sandwiches? asked George.

She likes doing it, said the guy.

I didn’t know what to say. I put the sandwich down.

What? said the guy.

The sandwich wants you to love it, I said.

The guy started laughing. My voice, though, was dull. George reached over and took a bite. Is that ham? he said.

The sandwich? asked the guy.

Was yelling at me, I said, closing my eyes. It was yelling at me to love it.

George took another bite, and then re-wound the plastic tightly around the bread. Does that sound like her?

Nah, said the guy, laughing a little still.

I mean, do you love her? George asked.

The guy shrugged. Depends on what you mean by love, he said.

I laid my head on the table. The yelling was loud, and it was too much information to sort through, and it was way too much for nine years old. George handed the rest of the sandwich back over the counter.

That’s it, he said. No more tests for Rose. He reached over and took my hand and squeezed it. We weren’t even in traffic.

Thanks for your help, said George, standing, pulling me up. You’ve been great. Tell Janet to slow down.

Whoosh, said the guy, shaking his head. Sheesh. Thanks? he said, with a voice that sounded like he wanted us to stay.

We threw out our napkins and pushed back through the door, me still holding tightly to George’s hand. I was so relieved to hear the traffic outside, to see the bubbles of closed car windows, people I couldn’t access in their cars going about their day.

Outside, Joseph was still sitting on the rock wall that protected those few scraggly pink azalea plants, making a petaled arrangement of curves on paper.

Well, she’s for real, said George, stepping up close. He raised my hand, like I’d won something. Your little sis. She’s like a magic food psychic or something, he said.

Joseph looked up. He didn’t move his face at all. Instead, he handed over three pages of graph paper with perfect shapes on them. Screw-ups for your wall, he said. Cool, said George, taking a minute to look at each one.

So, George said, turning to me as we started to walk. Seems like it’s mostly the feelings people don’t know about, huh?

Seemed like that to me too but I didn’t like the idea at all.

The guy was so angry! he said, laughing, telling Joseph about the clerk.

Joseph listened as George went through the story, and I took George’s hand every time to cross the street and he held mine back with fingers warm and firm. Sometimes he forgot to drop my hand at the sidewalk and I would hold on as long as he let me, until he needed his arm to make a gesture about the gothic beauty of black rose cacti or the jaunty angle of someone’s chimney. I knew just how that sandwich felt. With my hand in his, I looked at all the apartment buildings with rushes of love, peering in the wide streetside windows that revealed living rooms painted in dark burgundies and matte reds. I’m a food psychic, I told myself, even though the thought of it made me want to crawl under the buildings and never come out.

I savored that walk, and rightly so, because as soon as we got home the cord snapped. Or Joseph cut it. The second we walked in, he ran to his room and brought out a rare hardback illustrated book on fractals he’d checked out of the library, which was catnip to the eighth-grade science mind, and the two of them spent the rest of the daylight and into the evening staring at a leaf.

11

In the lengthening days of spring, Dad upped his tennis and went to work on a case about redistribution rights and my mother continued her carpentry, returning home smelling warmly of sawdust and resin. She brought home a teak board and a box sanded to the smoothness of satin. A pine sling-back dining-room chair, with straight square legs and a complex pattern in the backside stained a golden brown. We circled it, in admiration. She fanned her fingers and complained of the splinters, so she and Joe went on a special trip to a beauty supply shop, where he picked out the finest pair of tweezers on the shelf. They still enjoyed running errands together. That Sunday evening, after dinner, Joseph sat close to Mom on the sofa, and with care, he dipped the tweezers in a shallow bowl of warm water and patiently used his long fingers, his shared dexterity, to clear her hands. Once he removed a splinter, he wiped it on a paper towel, re-dipped the tweezers, and dug around for the next. It took an hour, and quickly became a regular routine, every Sunday evening.

You could be a brain surgeon, Joe, Mom murmured, watching.

Sometimes I wondered if, on Saturdays, she dragged her hands over raw wood to preserve this special time with him.

I struggled by, for the rest of the school year. I filled in my spelling workbook. I took the bus. At recess, I was first in line for the dodgeball group, and several times the teacher had to pull me out for throwing the ball too hard. Eddie called me a cheater. Eliza looked at me from the sidelines with too much sympathy; I threw the ball at her. I broke a kid’s glasses because I threw too close to his face.

I didn’t know who else to talk to, or tell, so, on my own, I ate packaged snack food, learning the subtle differences in tightness and flatness from the various factories across the country, and I ate pre-prepared food from the grocery store that had been made by happy clerks, and uptight clerks, and frustrated clerks, and sometimes I felt scared to open up the refrigerator. Baked goods were the most potent, having been built for the longest time from the smallest of parts, so I did best with a combination of the highly processed-gummy fish, peanut-butter crackers, potato chips-made by no one, plus occasional fast-food burgers, compiled by machines and made, often, by no one, and fruits and vegetables that hadn’t been cooked. At school, I ate my apple and carrots and then used my allowance to buy food out of the snack machines and made it through the day that way.

I asked my father if we could go out to eat more often, to give Mom a break from the cooking. But I love cooking! Mom said, brushing at the air. Is there something so bad about my cooking? No, no, I said; it’s for school? I pulled on my father’s cuff. Please? Dad disliked the outlandish portion sizes in restaurants, but he pushed his lips together, thinking, and mentioned a new Italian place he thought might be good, on Beverly. We went on a Saturday. The chef was a little surly in his minestrone, but also agreeable, easygoing, easy to eat. It’s a tradition? I sang, hopefully, in the car.

Do I need a pound of meat at a sitting? Dad said, driving through yellow lights. Do I really?

Mom rubbed his neck. You’re a growing man, she said.

But I’m not! Dad said, hitting the wheel. I’m not growing at all anymore! Only horizontally!

The school nurse sent for me as a follow-up. I’d dropped four pounds. She recommended ice cream. Ice cream was generally okay. I gained it back.

But so what do I do? I asked George, a couple months after the cookie store visit, when Joseph had left his room to make a bowl of popcorn. George was lying on the floor, on his back, and had somehow acquired one of those red-point laser beams, and was pointing it up to the corners of the ceiling.

Hey, he said. Check this out.

I stepped a foot inside, and watched the red light mark a dot at each ceiling convergence.

Light rays, he said.

Pretty, I said.

But what do I do about it? I asked again, after a minute.

About what?

About my food problem?

He put the red dot right on my forehead. Now you look Indian, he said.

George?

It’s not a problem, he said, moving the dot away. It’s fantastic.

I hate it, I said, tugging at the sides of my mouth.

Or maybe you’ll grow into it, he said, shooting the red dot through the keyhole in the door.

He smiled at me, and it was genuine, but it was also a smile from further away. Our boats on the river had drifted apart. There was a loyalty call he’d had to make, and I could hear the popcorn popping in the kitchen, and the alluring smell of melting butter in a pot. Joseph muttering away, as he prepared it. That popcorn, a puffy salty collapsing death. I would not eat a piece of it.

Maybe, I said.

I think, George said, you should become a superhero. He put the dot on my mouth. Open up, he said.

Laser, down my throat.

There, he said, bouncing the dot around. Supermouth.

Almost six months after the incident with the cake, on a Saturday morning in August, I awoke to the smell of fruit and leaven to discover that Mom was rummaging around in the kitchen, cooking up a summer pie from scratch. Joseph had left early to launch a battery-operated rocket with George in the park, and Dad’s car had honked at its usual exit time even though it was the weekend. Things had been tense around the house. Dad, brusque. Mom, wound up. When Dad was home, she’d tell him stories in a really fast voice and he seemed barely able to listen, eyes floating around the room.

When I shuffled into the kitchen in my pajamas that morning, she greeted me as if I was her long-lost best friend. Rose! she said when I walked up to the door. Good morning! How are you? How’d you sleep? She grabbed me in for a hug and held me tight. Her hair, freshly washed, smelled like a field of new lavender. So! she said, clapping her hands. Honey. What do you think about pie for breakfast?

The fact that she was up at all likely meant that she’d never gone back to sleep after her 2 a.m. wake-up, and that she’d started baking out of boredom at around five. Mixing bowls and spoons and sprinklings of flour covered the counter.

Or cereal? I said.

I’m trying out the newest recipe in the paper, she said. Peach-and-dingo pie. Ready, kiddo? Will you taste it with me?

Dingo? I said. Isn’t that a kangaroo?

Lingo? she said. Lingoberry? Something like that.

She pulled me to the kitchen table, beaming. It was unlike her, to be so imprecise. The morning had warnings written all over it.

My mother had been baking more often in general, but she took plates of desserts to the carpentry studio, where her boss, thank God, had a sweet tooth. He just loved the cheesecake, she’d tell me, shining. He ate all of my oatmeal cookies. Some charmed combination of the woodwork, and the studio people, and the splinter excising time with her son kept her going back to Silver Lake even when she hit her usual limits, and every night, tucked into bed, I would send out a thank-you prayer to the carpentry boss for taking in what I could not. But this morning I was the only one, and it was the weekend, and carpentry rested, and the whole kitchen smelled of hometown America, of Atlanta’s orchards and Oregon’s berry bushes, of England’s pie legacy, packed with the Puritans over the Mayflower.

You try, as a child. There was the same old dread, and there was the same old hope, and due to the hope, I ate the piece of pie she sliced on the small white plate, with a silver fork, beneath the dual lightbulbs in the ceiling fixture. In my daisy pajamas and ripped bunny socks. The taste so bad I could hardly keep it in my mouth.

What do you think? asked Mom, squinting as she tasted, leaning back in her chair, just as she had before.

We began with cake; we end with pie.

I leaned over, too. I could not, for this last time, hide any of it. I leaned right out of my chair and slumped down on the tile floor of the kitchen. I got on the floor because I had to go low. The chair was too tall. The light fixture, glaring.

Rose? she said. Baby? Are you okay?

No, I said, low.

Are you choking? she asked.

No, I said. But I closed my eyes. A gripping in my throat. The graininess of the pie dough, of the peach syrup: packed, every bite, with that same old horrible craving.

Was it her? Was it me?

It was mid-morning, and outside, I could hear the neighborhood kids on their bikes, wheels splashing through puddles from early-morning lawn waterings. It had been an unusually mild August so far, and the light outside was open and clear. In the dewy air after the spray of the sprinklers, I liked to wander down the sidewalk and scoop up any flapping worms with a folded leaf and stick them back in the dirt. I was, in general, an easygoing kid like that, a rescuer of worms. But this morning, while kids biked and swished outside, I grabbed a paper towel and dragged it hard down my tongue.

I started tearing at my mouth. Get it out! I roared.

What is it, baby? Mom asked, struggling out of her chair.

My mouth, I said, suddenly crying. The tears steaming hot, down my face. Everything flooding. I tried to pull at it-my mouth-with my fingers. Take it out! I said. Please. Mommy. Take it off my face.

The floor tile was cool, and I was so glad it was there, the floor, always there, and I put a cheek down, right on the tile, and let the coolness calm me.

Mom knelt by my side, her cheeks flushed with worry. Rose, she said. Baby. I don’t understand. What do you mean?

I threw the paper towel away. Pulled off another. Wiped down my tongue. Pulled off another. I had been avoiding my mother’s baked goods, but I had eaten her cooked dinners now for months and months, which she made for us every evening with labor and love. Trying not to show everything on my face. Eating a potato chip after every bite. I’d been spending my lunchtimes tasting bites from my friends’ lunches, navigating the cafeteria, finally finding a good piece of doughy pizza made in the school kitchen by a sad lady with a hairnet who worked far on the left. She was sad, true, but the sadness was so real and so known in it that I found the tomato sauce and the melted cheese highly edible, even good. I would try to time it just right in the cafeteria every lunchtime to get her food, because sometimes she took her lunch break right at ours; I would shove to be first in line to catch her before she left, rushing ahead, and my teacher had taken me aside to ask what was going on. There’s a lady, at the cafeteria? I said, staring at her bright-blue earring stud. You still have to stay with the class, Rose, she said, pulling me to her gaze. That same sad lady returned from her break ten minutes before the bell rang, so I took to nibbling on an apple or anything packaged until she returned and then running to her window and getting whatever she put her hands on, so that before lunch was over I could eat a feeling that was recognized. I ate fast food whenever I could, which was not unlike holding Joseph’s forearm to cross the street instead of bearing the disappointment of his hand. I was working to find, in every new setting, something filling, and my whole daily world had become consumed by it. And, day in and day out, I had been faking enjoying eating at home, through the weekly gaps and silences between my parents, through my mother’s bright and sleepless eyes, and for whatever reason, for that one time, I could not possibly pretend I liked her pie.

The pie, sitting on the counter, with two big brown slices cut out of it.

What is it? Rose? It’s the pie?

You feel so bad, I said, to the floor tile.

What do you mean? she said, touching my shoulder. Are you talking to the floor? You mean me again, Rose?

You’re so sad in there, I said, and alone, and hungry, and sad-

In where? she said.

In the pie, I said.

In the pie? she said, flinching. What do you mean, baby?

Not baby, I said. No more baby.

Rose? she said, eyebrows caving in. The sheets of tears came down over me again. Blurring. I clawed at my mouth. What are you doing? she said, grabbing my hands. Honey?

I pulled away from her. I tasted it, I said, pitching.

But, Rose, she said, tasted what-

I TASTED YOU, I said. GET OUT MY MOUTH.

She drove me to the emergency room. I cried on the whole drive over, and I cried all through the waiting time, in the plastic chairs. Eventually, the doctor came in, and gave me a shot, and put me in a bed. She’s inconsolable, I heard my mother say, her voice high with concern, as I drifted off.

12

The doctors didn’t know how to diagnose me, but I did have a delusion, they said, about my mouth. I stayed six hours in the wing off the emergency room of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center that day, taking tests, answering questions, peeing into a cup.

We arrived at around ten-thirty in the morning, and after I calmed down, and the shot wore off, and after a few hours of basic medical work-ups, a tall male doctor with half-moon spectacles came into the room where I was recovering. I rested in bed, silently. Embarrassed by the scene I’d made.

My mother sat in a side chair, nervously cleaning out her purse. The room around us was painted in layers of beige-a dark beige trim, an ivory wall, and a tastefully framed watercolor of some straw in a vase.

He sat down on the edge of my bed, and asked me a list of questions. How I felt. If I slept. What I ate.

Your bedtime is eight-thirty? he asked, writing it down.

Yes.

And you wake up at?

Seven.

And do you wake up in the middle of the night?

Sometimes.

He scribbled something on the chart. Why?

Just some days, I said. I wake up at two.

Mom wrinkled her nose, as if something smelled funny.

Just when she’s up, I said, pointing.

The doctor turned to Mom. Ah, he said, sympathetically. Insomnia?

Oh no, Mom said. Just a little restlessness.

Oh sure, the doctor said. Restlessness, I know that. You from here?

Bay Area, Mom smiled.

Bay Area! the doctor said. Such a nice place. I’m from Sacramento.

Oh, really? Did-Mom said.

Excuse me, I said.

They both turned to me.

Am I done? I said.

The doctor opened his mouth to say more but then turned back to his chart. He asked me a few more questions about throwing up, just like the school nurse had, jotting it all down in his boxy doctor-handwriting. Then he left. Mom went out to talk to him. I lay against the pillow and aged many years in that hour on my own. After a while, he and Mom re-entered the room with another doctor and stood at the foot of my hospital bed. Used tissue and sticky candy and worn business cards filled the trash, the dregs of her handbag.

They all stared at me from their heights of adulthood.

Thank you for your help, I said, sitting up straight. I feel better.

They’d served me a hospital bowl of noodle soup, which tasted of resentment, fine and full. I ate it all, making sure they could see. I ate each of the salt crackers, tucked in their ridge-edged plastic wrapping, factory-made in East Hanover, New Jersey.

I’m very sorry, I said. Did I have a fever?

You know you can’t remove your mouth, the tall doctor said.

I know, I said. It’s part of my body.

The other doc scratched her head. But-

I don’t know why I said that, I said. I was feeling sick.

My mother, standing to the side, leaned in. Is she-she whispered to the taller doctor.

Both doctors tilted their heads. She seems to be okay. Give her time, they said. Perhaps it’s an isolated incident.

I finished my soup. Changed back into my clothes while they gave my mother papers to sign. An old man in a wheelchair rolled past our doorway. Out in the hall, the fluorescently lit corridors lent a dull glow to the white linoleum floor, making it hard to tell the time of day, but I caught a glimpse of a far window, floor-to-ceiling, lit yellow with the blaze of a fading afternoon.

As my mother finished the paperwork, the doctor handed me a cherry lollipop, popped out from a factory in Louisiana where, once flavored, the hot sugar cooled on a metal table of small circles and then got stamped onto a white cardboard rod. Not a single hint of a person in it. Thank you, I said. I ate it down to the stick.

In the parking lot, I opened the car door carefully and settled into my seat.

Thank you for taking me, I said.

Of course, Mom said, backing out.

Were the tests okay?

They were okay, she said.

She threaded her fingers through the steering wheel, driving as if she wanted to pull the wheel into her chest.

The traffic was thick on 3rd Street. Some sort of walk-a-thon was happening. The stores, with dresses in windows, with blown-glass vases, packed with browsing people.

I scared you, I said, in a small voice.

She sighed. She reached over, and stroked my hair with her hand. You did scare me, she said.

I’m sorry.

Oh, Rose.

I won’t do it again, I said.

She rolled down her window and stuck her elbow out, her fingers on the side of the car, drumming.

You said-Oh, never mind. Let’s just get you home.

What?

You said I was feeling bad, that I’m so unhappy, that I’m hardly there, she said.

I did? I said, although I remembered the whole conversation like it had been recorded. From the open window, fresh air sifted through the car. It was almost four o’clock by now, and the sunlight was gold and streamy.

I’m fine, she said. I just want you to know, baby girl. I don’t want you to be worrying so much about me.

She said it, and she looked over, and her eyes were big and limpid, a dark-blue color like late-day ocean water. But in the look was still that same yearning. Please worry about me, I saw in there. Her voice not matching her eyes. I knew if I ate anything of hers again, it would likely tell me the same message: Help me, I am not happy, help me-like a message in a bottle sent in each meal to the eater, and I got it. I got the message.

And now my job was to pretend I did not get the message.

Okay, I said.

She turned on the radio. We listened together to a program with quiz questions, about words that had multiple meanings. I couldn’t concentrate very well, and I just watched the houses and stores slip by on Fairfax, fwip, fwip, momentarily in view, then gone.

It can feel so lonely, to see strangers out in the day, shopping, on a day that is not a good one. On this one: the day I returned from the emergency room after having a fit about wanting to remove my mouth. Not an easy day to look at people in their vivid clothes, in their shining hair, pointing and smiling at colorful woven sweaters.

I wanted to erase them all. But I also wanted to be them all, and I could not erase them and want to be them at the same time.

At home, Joseph was nicer to me than usual and we played a silent game of Parcheesi for an hour in the slanted box of remaining sunlight on the carpet. Dad came by and brought me a pillow. Mom went to take a nap. Joseph won. I went to bed early. I woke up the same.