The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

13

My parents met at a garage sale, held by my dad’s college roommate. All three were in their senior year of college at Berkeley, and Dad’s roommate, Carl, was an unusually fastidious type for someone in his early twenties. He oiled door hinges, for fun. Dad, a natural slob, said he would sometimes open up the freezer just to look at the frozen food stacked in such nice piles, corn bags nested on top of pizza slabs.

He was good for me, Dad said.

Carl also organized a biannual garage sale, to purge the household of crap. Mom liked garage sales, because she had very little money and was, she said, a fan of the found object. Most interesting to her was furniture, even then, and she had at that point acquired several velvet-topped footstools that she used in her apartment as guest seats. Her roommate at the time, tawny-maned Sharlene, was passionate about cooking, and they often had big dinner parties of cuisines from around the world, Moroccan feasts and Italian banquets, the table decorated with purple-glassed votive candles and old cracking out-of-date maps, because neither could afford to travel. Her roommate took weeks planning the menu, and Mom’s job was to supply the seating. She’d been spending her Saturdays scouting around San Francisco and Oakland and Berkeley for more footstools, at the Ashby Flea Market and at every open garage, and on that particular morning, sunshine freshening up the gardens, she had stopped to browse through the tidy piles at this little house in the foothills when the tall handsome man in the lounge chair asked if she needed any help.

You don’t happen to have any velvet footstools? She scanned the lawn, eyes grazing over shoes and kitchenware.

Footstools, he said, as if thinking about it. All velvet?

Just the top, she said.

He shook his head. I’m sorry, he said.

Or all velvet?

He shook his head again. Not even close, he said.

She tipped her chin, and smiled at him. In those days, she let her hair loose, down to her waist, and whenever I met old friends of hers, they would describe my mother as having resembled a mermaid with legs. With a sheerness to her skin that people wanted to shield.

Dad liked a task.

What kind of velvet footstool? he asked, rising from his chair.

Doesn’t matter, she said. About so high? She held her hand at knee level. With a velvet top? Any color?

Across the lawn, Carl was attaching price labels to a few more books. Nope, he called out. But how about a whisk, for fifty cents?

Mom dipped her head. There were posters pinned to telephone poles around the neighborhood for other sales. Thanks anyway, she said.

Or a toaster oven? Carl said, making sparky sale motions with his hands.

Mom laughed. Nice try, she said. But I’m a woman on a mission.

Dad asked if he could accompany her, and she shrugged, in the way that most men at the time used as a doorway or lever. A shrug was as good as a yes, sometimes, particularly for a delicate beauty such as this. He ran inside and grabbed the local paper, which had listings of sales in the back placed by the truly motivated garage-sale givers, and together, they did a walking tour of the neighborhoods, past Shattuck and over to Elm, and Oak, where the house lawns waxed and waned in shades of green and yellow and beige. At each stop, Mom strolled around the piles, and Dad would make an excuse and duck inside, asking the house owner if he could please use their phone. It’s important, he said, urgently. I would be very grateful, he said. He was charming, and tall, and offered to haul any heavy items outside, and the owners all said yes, and at house after house, he called up Carl with instructions. Please, he whispered. I need you to send someone to the fabric store to pick up some velvet. He cupped his hand over the receiver mouthpiece. In a fierce hiss, he promised Carl that he, Dad, would start cleaning the living room of his textbooks and shoes, yes, if only he, Carl, would rip off the wool top of the one footstool they had. It’s my stool, Dad said, pacing, trying to stand far enough away from the front door and the garage sale itself so that she, opening and closing the drawers of an old oak nightstand, would not hear.

I will, all year, clear the rooms of my stuff, Dad told Carl.

Carl’s girlfriend, who liked pranks, dashed to the closest fabric store, bought and trod on the cheapest mauve velvet, and cut it into a square. Dad kept Mom busy with the tour of the sales for as long as he could, and then they went to lunch at a little café on Durant, where they talked about college and the abyss post-college and he bit his tongue and did not ask for anything else. After splitting a double-chocolate brownie with whipped cream, she sighed. Her eyes shining. I should get back, she said. Of course, he said. Let’s go. He picked up her bag, which held a few new books and records in it. Maybe we can double-check my place on the way, he offered, as lightly as he could. Who knows, he said, sometimes people trade items instead of money.

Since it’s right by your car anyway, he said.

He let her walk ahead, down the sidewalk, and Carl and his girlfriend were tired, lounging in chairs, counting the money and deciding if they should lower prices for the remaining scattering of goods, when Mom saw it. She ran ahead, and clapped her hands with delight at the squat low wooden footstool covered with a kind of worn pink velvet that curled under the base of the seat and was stapled neatly to the inside. She saw it over on the side, by the stack of mildewed books and mismatched silverware.

Can you believe this? she said. Paul? Look!

She held it up in her arms, running her fingers over the plush.

Dad rushed over. You’re kidding! he said to Carl. Someone traded this?

For the toaster oven, Carl said, pointedly. So now we need a new toaster oven.

Dad nodded. I’d like to buy us a new toaster oven, he said.

Sounds like a plan, said Carl, closing his eyes. I thought you might be interested, he said, to Mom.

The color was high on her cheeks. I am very interested, she said.

She sat on the stool and crossed her legs and said she liked the feel of it, liked it very much. It’s pink as a rose, she said, and Carl’s girlfriend beamed. The label read seven dollars, and Mom dug in her purse and paid for it, which Dad let her do, and she lugged it to her car, which he helped her with, and they made a date for the following night. It was as natural a plan as if they’d been seeing each other for months. Date Her, on his most current checklist with a nicely filled-in box. At their wedding, Carl, the best man, told the full story, holding up his flute of champagne, a story Dad had not told Mom ever. The guests roared. Light hit the gold of the champagne in a spear. Mom, in the photos, was wearing a dress that seemed sheerer than it actually was, so in every photo she looked like a ghost, a ghost that at any moment you might catch nude. It was a work of art, the dress, because it danced right in between the very tangible and the very intangible, and her skin and the dress were hard to distinguish. In the toast photo of her standing with Dad, who was all tangibility, black suit and firm shoulders, her eyes burn.

I’d started asking her questions about the wedding one afternoon when I was eleven, trying to understand how two such different people had gotten married at all, and she pulled the photo album off the shelf and opened it on our knees, between us. For a while she kept it on that page with the photo of Carl holding up his champagne, his mouth half open as he spoke his toast. She traced the fringes on his wingtip shoes and told me the story, and as she did, I felt the two parallel strands in her telling: awe, that a man had done so much for her in a couple hours, and how competent a man he was, to make that happen, and even how he had become neater, as a result of his promise to Carl, something she thanked Carl for whenever she saw him, explaining how every day Dad would place his briefcase in the hall closet and take off his shoes and hang his jacket-all of that, plus a kind of slippery unease, that it had not been fate after all. I thought, she told me, that the signs were pointing to him. But it turned out he’d made the signs! she said, poking at the photo with the tip of her finger.

Were you upset? I asked.

It was our wedding day! she said.

She turned the page. We looked at people dancing: people I knew, all younger.

But had you trusted the signs? I asked.

She shook her head, but not as in no. As in shaking her head free of the thought. She turned more pages, dusky-black paper with delicate photo corners holding the pictures in place, and she pointed out relatives I hadn’t met, or Dad’s dad, who’d died before I was born, holding a napkin to his face like a cowboy. The day grew darker outside, and the whitish sheer dress provided us light on the pages. I looked at the people, and grunted in response as if I’d moved on, but I was still caught back in pages before. My mother looked for signs all the time. A person would be curt to her at the supermarket and she would view it as a sign that she should be nicer to strangers. Joseph would give her an unexpected smile and she’d retrace all her actions to see why she deserved it. Once, we arrived home to a snail at the doorstep and she said it was a sign to slow down, and she took a walk around the block at a funereal pace, saying there was something in there for her if she just took her time. She came back just as vivid-faced as ever. Thank you, little snail, she buzzed, lifting it up and placing it in the cool shadows of a jasmine bush. She was always looking for unexpected guidance, and at that garage sale the world had spit up just exactly what she’d asked for, and what could be a better omen than that? So it must’ve been a real blow, on her wedding day, to find out that the larger hand in action was the hand she was then holding.

We turned the last few pages of the album. Grandma, in a daisy-patterned sack dress. Mom’s sister Cindy, wearing jeans. Some of Dad’s red-cheeked uncles.

You’re in here, Mom said.

No, I said.

You are, Mom said. You and Joe. In the air. The beginning of you, she said. She kissed the top of my head.

On the last page, as if to underline her comment, the kiss: Dad and Mom, pressed close together, layers of that ghostly dress blowing around him. We looked at it for a while.

Do you still have that footstool? I asked.

We crept into the garage, flicking on the light. In the coldness of the room, with its old stone floor and whistling window, Mom and I rummaged through piles, setting aside crates and boxes. After a half-hour or so, wedged behind a rake and a series of brooms, I found it: a moth-eaten sun-bleached peach velvet seat, stretched over a shiny brown wicker crisscross-patterned stool. Look! I said, brushing my hand over the top. Mom, knee-deep in a pile of baby toys, eyed it the way you eye a person you haven’t seen in a long time when the last exchange was complicated. I can build you a better one, she said, dubiously. I patted the seat. This one, I said. The velvet was soft. I sidestepped the piles and took it for my room. Furniture.

14

There are heightened years. One was nine. Another twelve. A third, seventeen. My brother used graph paper to make shapes out of sequences; I saw those years as a trio, but not one I wanted to map out on those small graph-paper squares. I didn’t know how I would label that graph, what the x and y axes might be called. Instead, they cluster together in my mind, like a code to a padlock that might hang on a locker. It’s a confounding mechanism, but with all three numbers in place, lined up just right on the notched mark, something in the arch clicks, and releases.

In the movies, an affair is often indicated by spying at motel rooms, or lipstick marks dashed on a white collar. I was twelve when I sat down to a family dinner of roast beef and potatoes, on a cool February evening, and got such a wallop of guilt and romance in my first mouthful that I knew, instantly, that she’d met someone else. Thick waves of it, in the meat and the homemade sour cream and the green slashes of carefully chopped chives. Oh! I said. I drank down a full glass of water. Ah! my father said, letting out an end-of-day sigh. Roast beef, he murmured, patting his belt. My favorite. I got up to find some factory catsup to help me out, while Joseph turned pages of his book and Mom poured herself a glass of wine. Like it? she said. I glanced over at her. It fit, too: she’d been looking better lately, dressing up more, a little happier, wearing patterned headbands with her ponytail, bracelets on both arms. And things, in general, were in a new flux: Joseph had applied to colleges and was hoping to move out of the house and into the dorm room at Caltech he wanted to share with George. Mom talked often about how much she would miss him, but he didn’t really respond, and whenever a box arrived for any kind of package delivery, regular or Grandma’s, Joseph would empty it and then squirrel it away and begin to put things in it. He was half packed already, months in advance. If he could’ve eaten dinner in his room, he would’ve, but our father insisted we sit together at the table.

I read a study, Dad said, flaring his napkin into his lap. Families that eat dinner together are happier families, he said.

I think those families also talk to each other, I said.

Mom, behind us, spooning up a vegetable, laughed.

It was true: our dinners, always at the table, framed by floral-print kitchen curtains and the rising steam off casserole dishes, were almost always silent in those days unless Mom felt like filling us in on the latest news and gossip in carpentry. Dad didn’t talk much about work: I leave work at work! was his mantra. Of course, right after dinner he’d put his dish in the sink and go into their bedroom to make calls, and he’d work, often, until ten or eleven unless I knocked lightly on his door to deliver the name of an upcoming TV drama like a fisherman’s lure for a reluctant tuna. Even as young as ten, if I whispered the name of the show with enough pull, I could get him to put aside his stack of papers and wander in to watch. If I was quiet enough, he wouldn’t send me to bed. We colluded in this way: as long as I didn’t announce that I was a kid, he wouldn’t rise up as a parent, and for an hour, we could both have a little respite from our roles.

He only liked the medical dramas. The law shows made him crabby.

At dinner, as part of his adolescence, Joseph had taken a liking to reading and eating, so he generally brought a book to the table which he would spread in his lap and peer at between bites. Often a textbook, sometimes a thriller. Both parents had given up trying to stop him, because when, previously, they had wrenched a book out of his hands, he had stared into space so disconcertingly it made the rest of us feel like putting a bag over his head. Sometimes, if he didn’t have a book, to occupy Joseph’s eyes I would plant a cereal-box side panel in front of him, and his eyes would slide over and attach to the words, as if they could not do anything but roam and float in the air until words and numbers anchored them back to our world. By the time he was seventeen, he must’ve memorized the vitamin balances in various raisin-and-oat cereals, and if I’d asked him what percentage of niacin one might find in a single serving of Cheerios, I would not have been surprised if he’d been able to spout the numbers as precisely as his own height and weight.

On this night, he was hunched over, reading the Caltech general information pamphlet about campus for probably the twentieth time. He didn’t read the course catalogue but seemed far more interested in the dorms. Mom refilled her glass of wine. She caught me watching her, and winked.

I didn’t talk at the table because I was busy surviving the meal. After the incident in the ER, I no longer wanted to advertise my experience to anyone. You try, you seem totally nuts, you go underground. There’s a kind of show a kid can do, for a parent-a show of pain, to try to announce something, and in my crying, in the desperate, blabbering, awful mouth-clawing, I had hoped to get something across. Had it come across, any of it? Nope.

I had been friendly when I was eight; by twelve, fidgety and preoccupied. I kept up my schoolwork and threw a ball when I could. My mouth-always so active, alert-could now generally identify forty of fifty states in the produce or meat I ate. I had taken to tracking those more distant elements on my plate, and each night, at dinner, a U.S. map would float up in my mind as I chewed and I’d use it to follow the nuances in the parsley sprig, the orange wedge, and the baked potato to Florida, California, and Kansas, respectively. I could sometimes trace eggs to the county. All the while, listening to my mother talk about carpentry, or spanking the bottle of catsup. It was a good game for me, because even though it did command some of my attention, it also distracted me from the much louder and more difficult influence of the mood of the foodmaker, which ran the gamut. I could be half aware of the conversation, cutting up the meat, and the rest of the time I was driving truck routes through the highways of America, truck beds full of yellow onions. When I went to the supermarket with my mother I double-checked all my answers, and by the time I was twelve, I could distinguish an orange slice from California from an orange slice from Florida in under five seconds because California’s was rounder-tasting, due to the desert ground and the clear tangy water of far-flung irrigation. This all kept me very busy. I had little to add to the conversation.

But my mother would talk. Once she sat down, she would take a couple sips of wine to warm up, and the rest of us would lean in as she filled the space. We were grateful, for the distraction of her. We could float in and out of her speeches, her hand light on the curved neck of the wine bottle. She told us everything about the carpentry co-op, which had managed to hold and even extend her interest; her skills had advanced fast in four years, and she talked about cabinetry, and cutting rabbets, and of the various pitfalls and triumphs involved in ripping a board with a table saw. Of the textural differences between cedar and spruce. Of the mortise, the dowel rack, the transom. She told us about all of the other carpenters, and her opinions of each one, and it was in this way, while I was desperately exploring the distant subtleties of the roast beef, trying to figure out if it was from central California or southern Oregon, that I stumbled across the source of her affair.

Bobbie, Mom said, does not do her share of clean-up.

Amber, she muttered, is a fine craftsman but no visionary.

Larry! she said, voice lifting in a curl, put up the new group assignment:

Desks, she murmured, as if she were talking about roses.

I’d been half listening, sawing off a new piece of the roast beef, still warm and savory and swirling with feeling, beef from Oregon, I’d decided, raised by organic farmers, when the curl-up in her voice matched what was in my mouth. Larry, spoke the roast beef. Larry. I chewed and chewed.

Who’s Larry? I asked, taking a sip of water.

Joseph turned a page of his pamphlet. Dad made neat cuts into his potato.

Larry? Mom said, fixing round eyes on me.

Larry, I said. Is he a regular?

He’s co-op president, she said, shifting in her chair, and no one who had any listening skills could’ve mistaken the glimpse of pride in her voice.

Ah, I said. President. I spit a bit of gristle into my napkin.

How’s the beef?

Fine, I said. Oregon?

I think so, she said. Did you see the wrapper?

No, I said.

We all voted for president, she said, pushing a row of bracelets up her arm. She said it the way a young girl with a crush tries to slip details into a conversation, to prolong the topic without too much emphasis or spotlight. No wonder she’d stayed. Joseph drank a long sip of juice. Dad mopped up his plate with the soft interior of a dinner roll. By then, I’d plowed through enough of the meat to get by, so I got up and went to the pantry where I found a half-eaten cylinder of stale Pringles.

May I? I asked, placing a curved wafer on my tongue.

Mom sank back in her chair. Teenagers, she sighed.

After a few minutes, Dad cleared his plate and excused himself. Joseph returned to his room, where he was working on some homework about electromagnetics. Mom ran a sponge over the counters. After I’d bussed the rest of the table, I wrapped up the remaining roast beef in plastic and put it in the refrigerator for some adultery sandwiches the next day.

I just have to run some errands, Mom said, as the dishwasher began its chugging wash cycle. She said it to the air, as a throwaway: Dad and Joseph had long ago left, but I was just done cleaning, standing in the doorway, and the words fell to me. Something small and fragile punctured, inside my throat. Where? I said. Just to get some materials for my desk project, she said, kissing my cheek. Can I come? I asked. Sorry, Rosebud, she said. You have homework. See you in a couple hours! as she sailed out the door.

15

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

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

Grandma doesn’t like to travel, she said.

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

Grandma doesn’t like guests, Mom said.

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

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

What do you mean? I asked.

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

Were you quiet? I said.

She laid my hand on top of hers.

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

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

That’s mean, I said.

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

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

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

Are you serious? I said.

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

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

What are you watching? I asked.

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

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

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

Beer is gross, I said, leaving the room.

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

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

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

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

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

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

16

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

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

No, I said.

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

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

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

Yes? he said, from his seat. Rose?

Hi, I said.

He put down his pencil.

Don’t you have homework?

Yes.

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

Can I bring it in here?

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

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

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

Yes?

Where’d Mom go?

On errands.

When will she be back?

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

Dad? I said.

He raised his eyebrows again. Yes, Rose?

Never mind, I said. Nothing.

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

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

Can I ask you a question? I said.

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

Knock yourself out, he said.

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

Did you ever know something? I said.

Excuse me?

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

He tilted his head. What do you mean?

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

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

What if you did?

I’d keep the secret, he said.

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

He chuckled a little. No, he said.

I didn’t mean that you don’t, I mean-

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

I closed my textbook.

But you were in Briga-I said.

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

You hate hospitals, I said.

So?

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

That’s not a special skill, he said.

No, I said, waiting.

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

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

Is it because you feel something?

What?

Like you feel their sickness, or something?

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

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

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

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

It’s in a hospital, I said.

It’s a set, he said.

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

Doesn’t matter, he said. No smell.

But what if you get sick? I said.

I never get sick, he said.

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

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

Dad glanced back over. Wiggled his feet.

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

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

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

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

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

Hasn’t been, he said.

But if it was?

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

I, he said.

His eyes on the clock.

Might, he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes? I said.

His hand hovered in the air.

For you, he said, I brought binoculars.

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

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

What errands did you run?

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

Where are the bags? I said.

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

She winked at me again.

Time for bed, I said, before she could.

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

I left the room.

17

That night, as I burrowed into the sheets, my mother still tucking in sheets better than anyone, I closed my eyes and went through my usual routine, which involved thanking God, or the mysterious bounty of the world, for the vending machine at school, for the sad lady with the hairnet who still worked at the cafeteria, for the existence of George, and for whoever ate my mother’s cookies at the co-op. It was my usual routine, so it took a second for the change to sink in, and then I shook awake, pressed into my pillow: Larry, rising, Larry, the likely man who saved me from eating her cookies, the man I’d been praying a thank you to for the last almost four years as Mom brought tray after tray of baked goods to the studio. Joseph! I said, knocking on the wall we shared. I said it loud. I knocked again, rapping my hand hard on the wall. To wake him up, from whatever deep state of study he was in. I kept knocking.

After ten minutes, he strode into the room in his pajamas. What, he said.

He was tall, like Dad, but skinny, unlike Dad. He did not care about soccer. His eyes were caverns. And I could see how he was leaving, how he was halfway out the door. Still, as he stood there, arms crossed, hair flat, grim, tense, I remember it as a wash of relief, that he was still there, tangible, able to come in, annoyed, to be in my room. It was an antidote to the feeling that nobody was home.

18

My brother had taken to disappearing. Not in the way of a more usual adolescent boy, who is nowhere to be found and then arrives home drunk, with grass-stained knees and sweat-pressed hair, at two in the morning. No. It would be the middle of the afternoon, airy and calm, and Joseph would be home and then not home. I would hear him packing up those college boxes in his room, shuffling, rustling, and then I’d hear nothing.

He was scheduled to babysit me on Sunday night, just a few days after the roast beef dinner, while our parents attended a law office party downtown. It was my father’s annual post-holiday work party, this year located at the Bonaventure, a pole-shaped silver hotel Joseph had always admired for its outside elevator, one that rode up and down the building like a zipper. He appreciated the vacuum closure inside the booth; I liked the rotating bar at the top. My mother enjoyed parties but my father dismissed them as an unpleasant job necessity, and the two of them would dress up and drive off and hold cocktails and chat while Joseph got twenty bucks for half watching antsy me.

To be babysat by my brother was basically to share the house for the course of an evening. Usually we weren’t even in the same room. At twelve, I was too old for a babysitter by a lot of people’s standards anyway, but it was a good way to avoid acknowledging that a lot of seventeen-year-old boys would push to go out, and my brother did not: either push, or go out. He went once with George to a rock concert and came home in a taxi after an hour, alone. Too much, he said, when Mom asked.

I asked my mother if I could do something else that night, go to a friend’s house or something, but she said she liked paying Joseph to watch me. Please? she said, touching my hair. It makes him feel like a big brother, she said. But he doesn’t watch me, I said, kicking at the wall. She took out her wallet from her purse. How about I pay you too? she said, slipping me a twenty-dollar bill.

That Sunday, I spent the afternoon watching TV. I rolled up my twenty-dollar bill and tucked it inside a jewelry-box drawer. I played twenty-five games of solitaire, and I lost twenty-four of the times, until I got so sick of the deck I took it outside and made the entire suit of diamonds into a streamlined fleet of mini paper-plastic airplanes. I put the final touches on my current-events modern world presentation, and then stared into space for a while, outside on the grass, surrounded by thirteen snub-nosed diamond-planes, crashed. I felt over-stuffed with information. Over the course of several packed days, I’d tasted my mother’s affair and had the conversation with my father about skills. I was not feeling very good about any of it-I felt a little closer to my father, yes, but if I was dying in the hospital, he would probably wave a flag from the parking lot. I felt relieved that my mother had another person to give her cookies to, but that person tore up the family structure and my father had no clue. And who could I tell? I loved my brother, but relying on him was like closing a hand around air. I soaked up my time with George, still, but he was stepping ahead into a future that did not include me.

Sometimes, at school, across the dirt quad that separated the junior high from the high school, I’d see George with an arm slung casually around a girl, talking into her hair as if it was the most normal thing on earth to do. Not only were his eyebrows growing into proportion with his face, but he seemed to be progressing internally at a regular rate as well. Eliza, too-when I went over to her house after school, we flipped through fashion magazines and tested lip glosses. There, we were becoming teenagers; at my house, I pulled a shoebox of dolls and stuffed animals and Grandma’s objects out from under my bed. Beheaded cherubs, old overly bent Barbies, broken jewelry. Eliza went along with it, agreeably, but she made me swear I would never breathe a word to anyone at school. If you tell about this, she said once, her eyes wide, brushing down the long plastic hair of a Barbie, I will bury you, she said. I’d nodded, mildly. It seemed reasonable to me. We were, after all, almost thirteen. With naked dolls in hand, or even the occasional doll-baby, it sometimes felt like we were pedophiles.

My mother had bought a new dress for the work party, and she modeled it for me as my father got ready, the lavender pleated skirt skimming the air. Very pretty, I’d told her, in the mirror. Dad will love it, I said.

You okay with tonight? she said, standing in my doorway.

Sure, I said. I got paid.

Oh, and please don’t tell about that, she said, lowering her voice. Usually the babysittee doesn’t get any money.

I looked up at her. You’re kidding, I said.

No, she said, with total sincerity. It’s a unique setup.

I returned my gaze to the floor of my bedroom, sorting through some of Grandma’s latest: a polished brown rock, a red rhinestone bracelet with a bent clasp.

And the hotel number is on the fridge, Mom said. She swished the folds of her skirt. She seemed both fidgety and calm at the same time. The guilt in the roast beef had been like a vector pointing in one direction just barely overpowered by the vector of longing going the opposite way. I hated it; the whole thing was like reading her diary against my will. Many kids, it seemed, would find out that their parents were flawed, messed-up people later in life, and I didn’t appreciate getting to know it all so strong and early.

That afternoon, the house smelled of roasted pine nuts, because she’d spent the day in the kitchen, making homemade trail mix. I made my own pretzels! she’d announced at 4 p.m., turning off the oven, whipping her hair into a fresh ponytail. I had to taste them-she had presented a few tiny warm pretzels on a plate to me with such a look of triumph and hope-and it turned out to be the food that best represented her: in every pretzel the screaming desire to make the perfect pretzel, so that the pretzel itself seemed tied up in the tightest of knots, the food form, for once, matching the content. Now, that’s a pretzel all right, I’d said, chewing.

In my room, she glanced around the space, filling time, until her eyes came to rest near my bed.

Oh! Now, look at that!

Their velvet-and-wicker marriage stool served as my nightstand, pushed right up next to the bed. I’d had it for a while, but it must’ve slipped my mother’s watch. One book fit nicely on its soft top, and I could wedge homework papers into the interwoven pattern of the base.

I like it, I said.

She walked over, pushed at the cushion. God, it’s so old, she said. We should re-upholster it; I could do it at the studio, in a day. Can we? You could pick your favorite color and material-

I like it how it is, I said.

Hey, Paul, she called. Come look at this!

In the other room, Dad shut some drawers. He strode over to my doorway, with two ties around his head.

Blue? he said. Or red?

Look, she said, pointing.

At what?

Red, I said.

In the doorway, he nodded at me, almost shyly. We’d been a little friendlier with each other since the TV watching. He was decked out in a blue blazer, gold buttons winking. Her lavender dress, his red tie. It was like they had traded in their used-up models for a glamorous in-love pair.

Very nice, I said, as he pulled the blue tie off his collar and draped it on a bookshelf.

Mom pointed at the stool. Look, she said. Our daughter, the family historian.

Dad, preoccupied with straightening the red correctly, skimmed the room, but when his eye caught the stool, his face cleared. He stepped in, closer. Knelt on the floor and ran a hand over the eaten velvet.

Ah, he said. He looked over at me, still sitting and sorting on the floor. Where’d you find this?

In the garage, I said. A while back.

The moths love it, said Mom.

Dad leaned in, to smell the cushion. The peach color, now a pale beige from age. He felt the structure of the wicker base, which was still in good shape.

Mom wants to re-upholster it, I said.

Oh no! he said. He shook his finger at the air. Never! he said. Hey, he said, to me; you asked about special skills? He rose, to stand. This was my special skill, he said. Making this happen.

Mom crossed her arms in the door frame. The holes in it! she said. What special skills?

He went and put an arm around her. It’s our original anniversary, he said, kissing her cheek. Rose, you know the whole story?

I laughed. Mom laughed. She did not put an arm around him. The calm look I’d seen in her just minutes earlier had stiffened, her eye hollows deepening. Neither of them seemed to understand how things had gotten so strained-at the start of their courtship, Dad had thought Mom’s lostness was a sign of her spontaneity and he let her lead the way on weekends, taking the BART around and getting off at unexpected places to buy discarded records at street fairs. Mom had thought Dad’s steadiness meant he could handle and help anything, and she loved to watch him mailing his bills, studying, making his lists. All of which he still did.

At my door, my father kept his arm tight around her, but he suddenly seemed stuck there, like a person who stumbles in public and apologizes to the air.

You take good care of that, he told me, sternly, pointing at the stool.

Somebody has to, I said.

For a second, his shoulders tensed, in his blue blazer. I waved goodbye, to get them out of my room. Go to your party, I said. Have fun.

Mom fled first, in a circle of purple. Bye! she called, to Joseph’s room. Out we go! said Dad, too loud, as they passed, sparklingly, through the front door.

The car drove off. The house settled itself around its new number of inhabitants. Outside, the day was ending, sky a middle blue. I flipped on the light and kept myself busy for an hour, zipping the doll gals around in boats made of slippers, marrying and divorcing the stuffed animals. I had stolen Grandma’s chipped teacup from the kitchen cabinet, and I used it as a friendly companion to the stuffed flamingo, who had an unusual love of tea. The polished brown rock was best friends with the beheaded Barbie. The blue tie a river to swim upon. After a while, even I grew bored, and embarrassed. I felt half five years old and half forty. It was too dark to throw tennis balls around the neighborhood, the only activity I knew that seemed to fit my age. In the kitchen, I dawdled around, eating a piece of factory bread coated with factory margarine, opening and closing some drawers. Thought about calling Eliza but remembered she was out. I found my way to Joseph’s door. I knocked. No answer. I knocked again.

Usually on Sunday nights, Eliza went to the movies with her parents. She got to pick. She said they also all enjoyed sharing a large popcorn, with salt and butter flavoring. The popcorn would reside in Eliza’s lap, and both parents would dip in as they flanked her, as if she were the sole precious book between their sturdy bookends.

No answer at the door. I knocked again.

I made a gagging sound. I let out a half-strangled cough. Emergency! I said. Choking!

Nothing.

The air felt much too quiet in the hallway, bordered by the walls covered in framed family portraits. Cars puttered by outside, heading south to park near Melrose. Nightgown elastic cut into my arms. I was restless, and tired, and the tension of the week had built up in me and I felt my usual pool of politeness draining away. What was the point? My mother had a second life, my father revered the long-ago past, soon George would eat at the dorm instead of our house, and my usual obedience felt up. Done. For once, I ignored the Keep Out sign written in seventeen different languages, and the black-inked skull and crossbones which usually gave me nightmares, and I put a hand right on the doorknob and turned.

It was probably eight o’clock. The sun, down. The house was dark, because our father, along with cutting his restaurant meals in half, also believed strongly in only lighting the room one was inside. Something to do with bills. I, in contrast, enjoyed sitting in a fully lit house when they were away, and I was minutes from running through the rooms and switching everything on. Light is good company, when alone; I took my comfort where I found it, and the warmest yellow bulb in the living-room lamp had become a kind of radiant babysitter all its own. But that night I wanted to locate my assigned guardian, and I hadn’t given up yet, and against my usual instincts, I pushed in. The door creaked open. Crrrrk. Had he rusted up the hinges deliberately? No lock in place, and no light on inside-only a crossbeam through his back door, from our neighbor’s backyard lamp-pole, angling downward to the floor like a shaft of moonlight. It was a cave, in the house, a basement that had risen. I stepped inside. My heart picked up a beat. No movement, no stirring. Piles of books on the floor. A to-go container of romaine lettuce on his desk. He wasn’t in the room, but it felt, faintly, like he was in it. I peeked in the closet. His shirts! His shoes! Bare hangers; umbrellas. Joe? I said, trembling. Are you here? All silence. Empty but not empty. Was someone watching me? The walls? Joe? I whispered.

It was so eerie a feeling that I ran out of the room and ran around the house, flipping on lights, calling his name, opening closet doors, calling, turning on every switch I could find-over the oven, TV on, flashlights on, closet lightbulb pulled, starting to get actually scared, calling-and when I roared back to the now wildly yellow-lit hall outside our rooms, there he was, tall, leaning, looking like someone had socked him in the face. I’m here, he said, thinly. You don’t have to shout. But where WERE you? I asked, still too loud. Sssh, he said. Nowhere. Just busy. But where? I said, jumping a little, in place, and the glare of the hall lights revealed the bags under his eyes and the lines in his cheeks, a face too lived in for someone who had not yet lived all that long.

I was in your room, he said.

I squinted at him. What? I said. He hated my room, all its girl things. Really? Are you okay? Why?

He took a long moment to scratch the side of his nose.

I needed a pink Pegasus pen, he said.

It took me a minute to hear him. A blankness, while we stared at each other. The words disintegrating around us. Pin. Nk. Peg-a. Sus. Pen. Then he made some kind of sneezing snort sound, and we both started to laugh. I held my stomach. He sat on the floor, and laughed and laughed. My stomach cramped. I pulled at the carpet, to stop. I was laughing through mouth and nose at the same time. I can’t breathe! I said once, and then we both dropped into laughing again. His: low and almost silent and throaty. I hugged my body to the wall, to calm down, and when he let out a raggedy sigh, I exploded for another ten minutes.

Stop! I said, wheezing, pressed into the wall.

When we finally stopped, spent, coughing, Joseph lifted him self slowly up off the floor. As if each joint and bone was more weighted than usual. With deliberate steps, he walked through the rooms and turned off every light, one by one. I listened from the hallway as he clicked the switch on each flashlight. As he pulled the metal chain in the hall closet to ink out the bare bulb. Across the house, blocks of light darkened, like a miniature city going to sleep in neighborhoods.

Something inexplicable had exhausted us both, so by 9 p.m. we were in our beds, asleep.

19

I didn’t hear my parents come home. Monday morning broke in with my father’s usual honk, and I stirred in my bed, and listened. Quiet from my parents’ bedroom, where Mom slept in. A bird outside, calling a trill across the neighborhood.

From the kitchen, I could hear the sounds of breakfast, as performed by my brother: a crash of cereal into a bowl, a sloshy pouring of milk.

I pulled myself out of bed, and found Joseph in his usual spot at the kitchen table.

Hey, I said.

He kept chewing.

At the base of the dishwasher, Mom’s high black heels tilted against each other, kicked off her feet. Her jewelry glinted in a little pile inside one of the shoes. Most likely this meant she’d stayed up after they returned, to make tea and sit in the orange-striped chair and stare out the window.

I opened the refrigerator and looked inside. The evening with Joseph replayed itself in my mind. A little chuckle bubbled up.

While serving myself an orange juice, made from Florida oranges, picked by workers plagued with financial worries, fruit piled in trucks that drove overnight across the country, I sat down at the kitchen table across from my brother and started a monologue about the previous night that ended in the retelling of the pink Pegasus pen joke.

While toasting and eating my waffle, the circle split into small indented squares formed in a factory in Illinois, each square equipped to hold the maple syrup collected and boiled by a hardworking family in Vermont who had issues with drug and alcohol addiction, I made the joke again. I made it at the sink, while we were washing our dishes. It was my job, as annoying younger sibling, to beat that joke to death. Each time, I spluttered the sentence out and held my body still, waiting for that tickle in my throat, the uncontrollable overtake.

Joseph didn’t laugh once. His mouth a line, while he watched me slap the table.

It was a one-time thing, he told me, going to grab his backpack.

Our respective schools extended down the same block of Wilshire, so we rode the bus together as usual, several rows apart. Outside, men stood on a billboard ledge pushing up rolls of paper to construct the shape of a woman’s giant chin. Clusters of teenagers stood at a fence around Fairfax High. I’d stopped waving to passengers in cars by then-I’d grown suspicious of people and all the complications of interior lives-so I sat and watched and rode and thought, and as soon as the bus doors opened, we all rolled out the door and split apart like billiard balls.

In third-period Spanish, I settled into my seat behind Eliza. As our teacher started to hand back last week’s quizzes, I moved in close, to whisper in her ear.

I had an amazing weekend with my brother, I said. We laughed so hard I nearly threw up, I said. Vómitos.

She turned to smile at me, distantly. She had an iridescent star sticker attached high on her cheekbone.

How was your weekend? I asked.

While our teacher roamed the aisles, Eliza’s eyes moved past my face and out the open doorway. The late-morning sun was turning the hedges outside the classroom a steely helicopter green. When I went over to her house, her father, on breaks from doing stock-market work at home, would sometimes bake a batch of cupcakes to clear his head. Each little chocolate muffin packet burning through with fullness.

We were thinking of a movie, Eliza said. But everyone was tired, so we stayed home and played Yahtzee instead, she said. She yawned, out the doorway. Excuse me, she said. It was fun, she said.

I drew a star on my desk, in pencil, and then crossed it out with slash marks. Mrs. Ogilby returned my quiz. B plus. I’d missed the past-perfect conjugation of “to go.” Everyone in my quiz was going in the present.

Was that guy George there? Eliza asked me, sliding her quiz into her notebook pocket.

Where?

At your house? she said. With your brother?

I sat in, closer. George? You mean George Malcolm? I said. He’s over all the time, I said.

She sighed. Her cheek glinted in the light.

He’s like my second brother, I said. Except I could marry him.

Eliza ran a finger along the pencil moat on my desk. He seems nice, she said.

He hates Yahtzee, I said.

What?

Just he said that once, I said. He finds it despicable.

Excuse me? Rose? He said what?

Nada, I said, when the teacher glared at us both.

Going, going, going, I said.

My presentation was due in fifth-period current-events class. We were supposed to write on something in modern society that we valued that was not around in the time of our grandparents, and then read a paragraph or two aloud. I went after a girl talking about the advantages of mountain biking, and before a guy who had a whole three-part cardboard presentation on the treatment of malaria.

I cleared my throat. Ahem, I said. My paper is on Doritos, I said.

The teacher nodded. Nutrition is important, she said.

This is not about nutrition, I said.

I held up my page.

What is good about a Dorito, I said, in full voice, is that I’m not supposed to pay attention to it. As soon as I do, it tastes like every other ordinary chip. But if I stop paying attention, it becomes the most delicious thing in the world.

I popped open a supersize bag-my one prop-and passed it around the room. Instructed everyone to take a chip.

Bite in! I said.

The sound of crackling. Eliza giggled in the back. Her parents did not allow her to eat Doritos. I was her drug dealer, in this way.

See? I said. What does it taste like?

A Dorito, said a smartass in the front row.

Cheese, said someone else.

Really? I said.

They concentrated on their chips. That good dust stuff, said someone else.

Exactly, I said. That good dust stuff.

What I taste, I said, reading from my page, is what I remember from my last Dorito, plus the chemicals that are kind of like that taste, and then my zoned-out mind that doesn’t really care what it actually tastes like. Remembering, chemicals, zoning. It is a magical combo. All these parts form together to make a flavor sensation trick that makes me want to eat the whole bag and then maybe another bag.

Do you have another bag? asked a skateboard guy, licking his fingers.

No, I said. In conclusion, I said, a Dorito asks nothing of you, which is its great gift. It only asks that you are not there.

I bowed a little, to the class. Eliza clapped. The same skateboard guy, reeking of pot, asked if I had any Cheetos to compare. Please? he begged. If the teacher allows it, I said, maybe we can take a quick field trip as a class to the snack machine? The class was up and at the door before she could protest. We spent fifteen minutes in a huddle, pushing all our quarters into the slots, tasting every bag available, reading unknown unpronounceable ingredients aloud. Sure, sure, said the skateboard guy, chewing. When I concentrate, it’s all different, he said. He closed his eyes. Eliza hugged me three times, her hands dusted with ranch-flavor powder. We returned to the room buzzing, and after class, the teacher called me over and handed me a printout of the food pyramid, telling me I did a good job but it was important that I eat protein as a growing girl. Thank you, I said, and she dipped her head, and we both nodded in admiration at her helpfulness.

20

Joseph had a test to re-take after school, so I took the bus home by myself, stopping at the small magazine-shop on Melrose at Fairfax to buy my usual bag of chips as a celebratory finale to my paper. The streets were quiet as I strolled. Fewer cars on the road in the middle of the day. A man with a leaf blower steered clumps of grass into the gutter.

I came home to another delivery from Grandma. A long slatted box containing a gray folding chair and a refrigerator-sized box inside of which was an old bookshelf and a broken stool wrapped in newspaper. They’d all arrived together, in a delivery van.

Mom was in the kitchen, starting in on a new recipe from the newspaper.

How old is she now? I said, wandering in.

Eighty-one, Mom said, waving hello with a wooden spoon.

And what is she sitting on?

She shrugged. Beats me, she said.

She flattened the newspaper, peered at the ingredients.

Today’s recipe was ripped from the Metro section, something of a southern-Italian mushroom-tomato sauce, slow-cooked, with good fruity olive oil as the base. My father loved Italian food the best, and my mother made it on days when she was feeling guilty. She’d taped the recipe to the cupboard, for easy viewing. Her eyes were creased with lack of sleep, but she was wearing a new pink lipstick and there was still a clear elevation to her mood.

Want to help? she said, as I washed my hands.

She set me up with a knife and a cutting board and a pile of green peppers. My mind still clear from the chip bags. I liked this aspect of cooking, being a distant hard-to-identify participant, all so long as I didn’t compile or stir anything. Way too scary, to eat a whole meal I’d made myself, but I did enjoy the prep: chopping and dicing, mincing and paring, shredding and slicing, just attacking all these objects that dominated my days even though I knew that nothing would take away the complexity for me, nothing short of not eating them. Still: it gave me such pleasure to grate cheese, like I was killing it.

While I picked seeds out of a green pepper, Mom stirred onions in the pan and told me about the party and all the funny lawyers. She asked about school, and when I told her I didn’t know what class I liked the best, she nodded. I understand, she said, bobbing her head. You have trouble picking, like me. Too many choices!

I don’t know if that’s it, I said, sweeping seeds into the trash. To change the subject, I told her a little about Joe’s disappearance. I didn’t describe anything in detail-just that during the babysit, he had vanished for twenty minutes or so and I hadn’t been able to find him.

Just he was kind of gone, I said. And then, all of a sudden, he was back. It was really funny, I said.

Mom pivoted around. An eagerness crept into her face. Do you think he’s sneaking out the side door? she asked, dropping her voice to a whisper.

I tossed the core of a green pepper into the trash.

Nope, I said.

Or, Rose-maybe he has a girlfriend?

I almost laughed. Um, no, I said.

She laid the wooden spoon carefully on the counter. Checked the recipe on the cupboard.

Peppers?

All set, I said.

She slipped the cutting board out of the counter and scraped the bumpy squares into the pan to join the golden onions and garlic. We watched the pepper parts crackle in the oil.

She put an arm around me, our simplest exchange. I leaned against her side. Rose, she said, stroking my hair. Sweet Rose-oh-Rose, she said.

She picked up the spoon, absently pushing around the parts.

Well, she said. He is secretive, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Runs in the family, I said.

She smiled at me, eyes unsure.

I rinsed and replaced the cutting board and began dicing tomatoes.

I’ll take the stool, I said. From Grandma.

Do you think he has a boyfriend? she asked, hopeful.

No, I said.

I would understand if so, she said, leaning against the stovetop. I could hear her brewing, beginning to form her monologue of understanding. I think that could be very nice, she said, in a small voice.

Sorry, Mom, I said.

How do you know? she said. You don’t know!

She turned back to the pan, to the wooden spoon. Moved around the various bits.

It’s missing a leg, she said, after few minutes, into the pan. What are you going to do with a two-legged stool?

I wedged it outside, near that side door, in the narrow strip of yard that bordered the house. If placed against the outdoor wall, it functioned nicely as a half-ladder. At the next babysit, when I could still hear him poking around inside his bedroom, I tiptoed outside and climbed up the stool rungs to peek inside the little window at the top of his side door. The lights inside were out and all I could catch were shadows over shadows, and darkness, and the usual bulky shapes. It seemed he was sitting at his desk, reading, in the dark. Turning pages.

I watched him for a while, from the stool rungs. My eyes adjusted to the light. He read each page slowly, and when he was ready to turn, he slid a finger up to the top right corner, lifting it as lightly as a wing. He took such care, particularly when alone.

I went to the bathroom. Wandered around. When I returned to the stool/ladder, he wasn’t there.

So preoccupied was I with trying to grab back the laughing lightness with Joseph that I did not think again about where he’d actually gone. When I ran around the house again, knocking on his door, calling his name, circling, opening doors, doing the whole routine over only to finally find him standing outside his room again, with that same unusual weightiness to his eyelids and skin, I skipped right over my former rabid curiosity and returned to the script that had led up to the laughter. I knew my part perfectly. Where was he? He’d been busy? Where? I asked if he’d been in my room, and he said yes, and I said why? and he said, in a weary voice, that he’d needed a pink Pegasus pen. It was around eight-thirty. Over a week since the first disappearance. Parents out, at another dinner. The walls, cool. Joseph, tall, his side pressed against the door frame. I could feel his effort, his playing out of the lines for me. And even I, ever ready to fake the laughing, again, forever, could hear how flat it fell, and we stood, quietly, facing each other, in the planes and stretches of dim hallway. He looked old; he was only five years older, but he seemed then like an old man, a grandpa.

Are you sick? I said.

He shook his head. I’m practicing something difficult, he said. And it tires me out.

What is it?

It’s hard to explain, he said.

Oh. Can I help?

No, he said.

He rested his head against the top hinge. Closed his eyes.

Is it illegal?

No, he said. He smiled a little.

We stood there together for a while. His breathing deep and measured, drinking the air in slow draughts. Those antenna-like eyelashes and fingertips. I wondered what he knew about the family; what he didn’t know. What family he lived in. My mind wandered around.

Hey, I said, after a couple minutes. Could you do something for me?

It was the first of two favors I ever asked my brother, and although this one was far less important, it was still one of the best moments in my whole junior high. The next day, at school, at lunch, while Eliza sat cross-legged and carefully unpacked her brown bag of joy, George turned a corner and came walking over from the high school. His loping, long-legged friendly walk. He’d recently been accepted early admission at Caltech, and it was a soaring lift to see him appear from behind the brick wall that separated the two schools, striding over in his jeans like he had a reason to come over. Which he did. Which was me. He waved as he drew closer. Eliza waved back. A few other middle-schoolers watched from their spots, chewing on the split ends of plastic straws. Any kind of high-school visitation was notable, but this was better than most: by high school, George had grown into himself, and any remnants of isolated nerd-dom had been softened by his easy manner, his good teeth, his comfort with girls, his shopping choices. Lanky, smart, dignifying. He had a rubber band wound around his thumb and was twanging it like a guitar string, something he did sometimes at our house when he was sorting through an idea.

He nodded at Eliza, and then beckoned me over. We’ll just be a sec, he said. Of course! she said, full of cheer, a moon sticker shining on her inner wrist like tattoo practice. George and I stood by a cement pole, and he leaned closer, voice dropping to a whisper. Joe told me to come by and see you, he said. I glowed at him. All okay? he said. All is great, I said. I just wanted to show off to Eliza, I said, and you are the best show-off person I know. He grunted a little, and glanced over at Eliza, who was several feet away, watching us from under her bangs, biting into her turkey sandwich. And oh. I’d tasted that turkey sandwich before. The whole thing was just a sonata of love-the lettuce leaf, the organic tomato grown on a happy farm, even the factory mayonnaise took on such delicacy of feeling it seemed like an exquisite violin solo. It was difficult, and rude, to hate my friend so much.

When do you leave for school? I said.

Usual time, he said. Late August. I’ll come visit, don’t you worry.

Is your mom happy?

Oh sure, he said, twanging his thumb. She’s thrilled.

I could see my brother, far in the distance, perched on a flesh-colored bench, overseeing.

Joe’s watching, I said.

George let out a puff of air. Funny guy, he said. So. All okay over here?

All is fine, I said.

No bullies in the hallways?

No, I said. No bullies at all.

Any boys giving you trouble?

Not so much, I said. We smiled at each other.

You wait for a good one, okay? he said.

Okay.

Food?

Same old crap, I said.

Same, he sighed. Brave girl.

Eliza was now sorting through her three kinds of homemade cookies: chocolate chip, oatmeal, sprinkle shortbread. George’s eyes started to graze over my head, to move on to other topics.

Is that enough time? he said. I should get back.

Sure, I said, bowing. That’s great. Thank you so much. I patted his shoulder. Maybe you could laugh?

He laughed at the suggestion, which fulfilled it.

21

When Joseph was born, my mother’s closest friend, Sharlene, the one with wavy tawny hair who’d cooked the glorious French Tunisian feasts of lamb stew and eggplant-tomato tart in their Berkeley days, showed up at the maternity ward right on time wearing a lime-green T-shirt that said Team Baby. Dad outside. Grandma in Washington.

Sharlene received my waddly mother like a football pass, and for a while, she was the perfect helper-brightening, in command, loving, focused-but Joseph, curled up contentedly in the warmth of the uterine sac, did not feel so motivated or timely. By the fifth hour of heated helping, Sharlene, face red, T-shirt drenched to jade, dragged herself to the pay phone in the lobby and apologized extensively to her boss at a catering company. Mom hollered obscenities so loud you could hear them down the corridors. As soon as Joseph popped his head out, screaming, alive, bluish, squirmy, Sharlene kissed my mother on the forehead, said congratulations, great job, oh happy day, and then hightailed out across town to stuff mushrooms.

The doctor left to attend to another patient. The nurse clipped the umbilical cord and went to bury her face in tulips and roses.

Once she was holding the baby close, my mother slowly sat up and swung her legs around. Her body ached. She stepped off the bed and trundled to the window, where she held up the blanket and watched in silence as small Dad jumped up and down. He lit a cigar. He danced a jig. It was like the silent-movie version of her life. He did this whole routine several times through until he was too tired and squinty and then he blew kisses goodbye and headed off to ready the house. Mom was left, all alone, with her son. It was a private room. And even with the women yelling nearby, and the clicking and beeping of machines, she told me that something seemed to empty out at the ward then, and everything grew very quiet, and still, and there was a window of time and calmness, when Mom and the new baby had several hours together, just staring into each other’s eyes. His eyes, wobbly and new; hers, weary, alone, depthful.

She told me this story for the first time when she was combing out my hair after a weekly shower. I was seven, or eight. I saw in him, she said, and her voice drifted off. I saw, she said. She hung her head. We sat together on the floor of the bathroom, on the fluffy damp lavender rug, and she had shaken my hair dry with a towel and held the comb high over my head, ready to nudge it through the snarls. To copy her, I had grown out my hair as long as possible, down to the butt, and washing it was a major hour-long ordeal of shampoo, conditioner, toweling, combing, and maybe a blow-dry if I was lucky.

She was best with activities, and I cherished this time with her, warmed like baby chicks by the orange-red coils of the wall heater. If this kind of time with Mom meant hearing often about my brother, it was worth it. Plus, I had my own good story; when I was born, she said, I had laughed within minutes, even though the doctors assured her that infants did not laugh. You chuckled! she told me, beginning to pull the plastic teeth through wet hair, scoring lines into my scalp. A big belly chortle! she said.

Really?

Really, she said. She worked the comb down, caught full drops of water in the towel as it collected at the ends, and as she did, her shoulders sank again, a graceful sinking. She glanced through the crack in the bathroom door.

With Joseph, she said.

I waited, dripping.

With Joseph, she said, he saw all the world.

Her hand paused in the middle of my hair.

As a baby? I said.

He was like a wee old prophet in the shape of a baby, she said.

She did not cry when she told this story, but her voice grew smaller, humbled. When Joseph heard it, he would usually leave the room. We fell in love in seconds, Mom continued. Literally, seconds! Boom! She smiled at him, and he would pass through the room, whatever room we were in, and go to his own, gently closing the door. I had a memory of him passing through every room in the house this way, as if all my mother did was retell his birth story, over and over and over again. In truth, she probably only told it a few times, but in my memory replay, I could picture him passing through the kitchen, the TV room, the bathroom, my bedroom, and the front lawn, Mom sitting with me for some reason-hair, homework, wedding album-him walking straight through without a response.

I knew, Mom said, that he would guide me.

Joseph’s door clicked shut.

She wrapped the towel around my head, pressing down on the skull.

Do I? I asked.

Do you what, baby? she asked.

Do I guide you too?

Oh sure, she said, drying my ears. All of you do! You help me all the time, of course!

When my hair was dry and combed enough, she took her time with the three damp strands on either side, her fingers deft and accurate, doing the French style of braids that started high on the scalp. At dinner, running a hand over the bumps in my hair, I tried to catch Joseph’s eyes to see what was so special in there, but he just dodged his around. What? he said, when I kept trying. What is your problem?

I’m trying to be guided by your eyes, I said.

He closed his. Long orbs of pale lids, black rims of lashes.

My eyelids are my own private cave, he murmured. That I can go to anytime I want.

He ate that whole meal with his eyes closed and somehow didn’t spill a thing. Mom thought he was trying to intensify the flavor of her dinner, so she closed hers too, concentrating. Yes, she said, bringing the fork to her lips. Mmm, it’s true. I can taste the thyme much better this way, she said.

Dad looked over at me and shook his head.

We can see you guys, I said, but no one seemed to hear anything either.

22

By my thirteenth birthday, I had collected over eighty dollars from being the consenting babysittee. I used most of it to buy my favorite packaged foods for snacks, or for a few cans of tennis balls that I liked to throw down the street as hard as I could (returned, on occasion, by a neighborhood dog), but with the last bit, I went to the music/video store and bought a copy of Brigadoon-audio and video, both. I listened to the music on my own and snuck the videotape into the TV when my father wasn’t looking, on another night of my mother’s errands. He looked up when the overture and credits began, in swirling violins, and at the first number, he put his ledger aside and sang out a line or two of broken lyrics. He burst out for the chorus. After a few minutes, I joined in, because I knew the words by then, too, but instead of making it all less exposing, the entrance of my voice had the unfortunate side effect of calling attention to what we were doing. Midway through that chorus, my father picked up the remote and clicked off the TV. I have to work, he said, returning to the red ledger. Shaking his head. Funny, he said.

On a Saturday afternoon in April, fair and light, a thin envelope arrived in our mailbox. Inside was one neatly folded piece of stationery paper from the admission offices of Caltech, stating that, although impressed by his application, unfortunately Caltech had an especially fine crop of candidates this year and would not have room for Joseph Edelstein this fall. They wished him all the best in his science endeavors of the future.

I hand-delivered the envelope into Joseph’s lap, where he was sitting outside reading a book on Kepler and the arrival of new enlightenment with the orbital change of thinking. Elliptical orbits, perihelions, equal areas in equal time.

When I gave it to him, he closed the book and took the letter directly to his room, which then he did not leave for two days. Dad said to leave him be, that we should give him space. The trays of food my mother left outside the side door were eaten by birds and bugs.

Two more letters arrived in the mail. All of Joseph’s envelopes were thin. He did not get into UCLA, or USC. He hadn’t applied anywhere else. The competition had stiffened and his grades had been erratic: some strong A’s in sciences, some C’s in Spanish and English, little to no extracurricular activity, an uneven SAT. He could not write But I’m a GENIUS as his application essay and leave it at that. You need to show your genius, the college counselor had said, crossing her legs. How many young men had she seen going through her office with big ideas and complex skills and no way to get any of it on paper?

They’re wrong! Mom said, pacing the house. She called up George, who called up Caltech. She demanded to see the college counselor. She compiled lists of visionaries who had dropped out of high school and started world-changing companies or invented vaccines. She slipped those lists under Joseph’s door.

Her outrage was so large it carried with it a tinge of presentation, the way a person feigning surprise at a known surprise party will make a grander expression than one truly surprised.

Finally, we had to pick the lock with a hairpin. Inside, we found him lying on his bed, reading a textbook, jotting down notes for an assignment due. Can I still move out? he said, when Mom and I clamored around.

23

My brother’s first formal disappearance-formal meaning someone else was around besides me-happened right before his high-school graduation. The day of. It was a gloomy June afternoon, skies a dirty white, tree leaves drooping. Joseph had been both focused and distracted since the school rejection letters, but he had done his usual thorough overly cozy job with my mother’s splinters on Sunday evenings, and he attended his classes until the last day. Our parents had not gone out to any events, or dinners, so there had been no disappearing on any subsequent babysits, to my disappointment. No more laughing, no discussions. On this day, he was supposed to be getting ready to go, trying on the sizing of his cap and gown, manipulating bobby pins, and in my role as younger sibling/domesticated shepherd, I was supposed to herd him into the car to get to school in time for rehearsal. The lambs, however, were loose. I couldn’t find him anywhere.

Joe’s not in his room, I told my mother, who was outside, retouching her lipstick in the side mirror of the car. It’s that thing I told you about, I said.

She peered up, her lips re-pinked. Maybe he’s in the bathroom? she said.

I looked, I said.

It was nearly noon, time to go, sun burning behind the cloud layers, and right on time, George turned the corner at Vista and walked up. He was wearing his black graduation hat perched on his head, the ironed coat folded over his arm. He did a little jaunty bow.

I can’t believe you kids are graduating! Mom said, holding her forehead. She hurried over to give him a hug.

Together, we oohed over his hat and touched the soft golden tassel with the plastic date hanging from it. The phone rang. Mom ran inside. She left the front door open, and I couldn’t tell words but her voice dropped down, low, to the hushed tone of urgent intimacy I heard sometimes when she picked up in the afternoons. I turned to George.

Congratulations, I said.

Hey, Rose, he said. He re-adjusted a bobby pin. How are you?

He looked newly older suddenly, with college admission in his pockets. Smoother at the edges.

Joe’s missing, I said.

Where to?

Don’t know.

So where is he? Mom asked, returning outside, her eyes a little lighter.

Somewhere other than his room, I said.

Did he just go on his own? George asked, still fiddling with his cap.

Joseph? I said, incredulous.

I guess not, said George, laughing.

My mother zipped up her purse and stepped back inside. We followed her in. Despite the awkwardness, I was glad for all of it, that they were both around while Joseph was not, that George was over, that the same thing was happening, but with witnesses. George walked through the living room, with long strides of assurance. Brownies cooled on the kitchen counter, for the party later. We called out his name like he was a lost dog.

That it was graduation day seemed notable. The very beginnings of the fork. Joseph and George still spent multiple afternoons together, and the roads named Joseph and George still appeared to be facing the same direction, but soon the angle at the base would reveal itself as large. Over the last couple of months, while George had been settling linen napkins in his lap, sipping from crystal goblets of ice water at celebratory luncheons for early-admission honors students, my mother had registered Joseph for classes at Los Angeles City College on his behalf. Sure, he’d said, when she and my father had suggested he try out school anyway. But can I still have my own place? he said, as he leafed through her piles of forms.

It’s graduation day! I called, clapping my hands. Time to go!

Mom walked through the backyard, stepping carefully in her tan graduation heels, making divots in the lawn.

George stood in the front of the house, scanning the street. He traced fingers over the bark of the ficus tree whose roots made arches and bumps and broke up the sidewalk.

Jo-seph! my mother called, striding through the living room.

I joined George. Will you still be his friend? I asked.

He looked over. Startled. He reached out and pulled me in close, scrubbing my hair.

What’s with you, he said. Joe and I will always be friends, he said.

A neighborhood kid rode across the street on a bike. I rested on George’s shoulder, for a second. He leaned his head on mine. He smelled of citrus soap.

Will I see you? I said.

Of course, he said. I’ll come by all the time.

His cheek was warm on my forehead, but even as he spoke, it was like the opposite was forming underneath his words, like letters shaped backwards in the reflection of a pool.

My mother stuck her head out the door. Find him? she called.

Not yet, I called back.

She rustled outside, carrying Joseph’s cap and gown, wrapped in plastic. In the kitchen, the phone rang again. Mom had started asking George polite questions about Caltech, so I ran in to pick it up.

Hello?

It was a man’s voice. Hello? May I speak to Lane?

Who’s this?

This is Larry, from the co-op, said the voice.

I picked out a pen from the pen cup, and drew a circle on a pad of paper. I didn’t expect him to give his name so easily.

She can’t talk, I said. We’re about to go to my brother’s graduation, I said.

Ah, right, he said. He had a friendly voice, easygoing, medium-pitched. Just tell her I called, he said. This is Rose, right?

I doodled a demon head on the pad. Who?

Rose? Her daughter?

I gave the demon head bloodshot eyes. I could just imagine my mother telling Larry all the things in her day. Going over every detail of every piece of wood. Telling him the names of each member of her family. I hadn’t been able to stop myself from thanking him every night before I went to sleep, as I watched tray after tray go to the co-op covered in cookies and pies and return the next day, empty.

I scribbled wiggly hair on the demon head. Yes, I said. This is Rose.

He made a little exhale sound, half of a laugh.

Nice to meet you, he said.

Out the kitchen window, George was answering Mom’s questions. Bobbing his head. Soon to fly off into the world of dorms, and girls. It seemed brutally unfair, that he would not be coming over two or three times a week anymore. Mom walked to the car, talking, making some kind of airplane shape with her arms.

You know I know, I said, to Larry.

Know what?

I smiled a little, into the phone. Watched as my mother popped the trunk of the car and looked in there. In the trunk? Joseph? It all seemed funny, for a second, just funny and ridiculous and sad.

I just know, I said. The thing I’m not supposed to know.

He paused again. A muggy silence.

It’s okay, I said. I mean, it’s bad. But it’s okay. Just stop calling the house. And nothing on weekends. All right?

That frozen silence, on the other end. But a heavy, listening silence. George hung up his gown and Joe’s gown carefully on the inside hooks of the back seat of the car.

I think I understand, said Larry.

Mom was saying something else, animatedly, to George, by the side of the car. Her pink, wide mouth.

Thank you, I said, and hung up.

I paused over the pad of paper. Then I wrote it down, on a clean sheet: Larry called.

At a quarter past twelve, Mom honked the car horn. Soon the rehearsal would begin: all the robe-clad grads lining up to mark the ceremony in the high-school auditorium. Our father and George’s family would meet us later, at the school, for the real event.

The horn did nothing but startle the neighborhood kid who was biking, so she left the car to go check the neighbors’ house. Jo-seph! she called, down the street. I stuck the note on the fridge, under a magnet. What to do? I liked seeing her happier. Life was better with her happier.

I walked through the house. Closed open closet doors, shut off lights. Finally, I went to stand in my brother’s room. The whole running and looking, opening and closing, a giant ruse. Like he was anywhere else but somewhere near his room. Even though I could not find him I knew where he was not, and he was definitely not at the neighbors’. The books, the half-packed boxes, the piles of clothes. That familiar tightening tension in the room itself.

He’ll be here soon, I said.

Mom was running down the sidewalk. What should we do? she called to George. It’s time!

I know, I said, too quiet for her to hear. I closed my eyes. Just wait a sec, I said.

She kept running down the sidewalk, towards the end of the block. Jo-seph! I heard her calling. Jo-seph! George stood by the car, talking to the kid biking to and fro. Tossing and catching a loose pine cone.

I left my brother’s room and went to my own, the land of Pegasus pens, and broken stools, and doll stuff. There, I opened the jewelry box my mother had given me for my most recent birthday. She’d made it with leftover bits of lumber, and it was a shiny even oak, with carefully set drawers, handles hewn from twigs. Each piece she made more skilled than the last.

She, who loved him more than anything, was down the street, calling. George, his closest friend in the world, stood outside scanning the sidewalk. It was an unexpected moment for me. My brother and I had never been close, and I didn’t understand what was happening, but it seemed I still knew more about it than anyone else. For whatever reason, I was involved in this way. I sifted through the jewelry-box drawers, past the leftover roll of a twenty-dollar bill. Listened as carefully as I could for clues while settling colorful stones beside each other.

Nothing came from the room itself, but as I untangled a long satin ribbon, I heard two steps, out of his room, one two. When I walked into the hall, there he was, in his door frame, with that same look on his face, like he’d been washed and dried in a machine.

Jo-seph! our mother called, from down the street.

Jo-seph! George echoed.

Joseph looked over at me, calmly. We stared at each other, for a longer minute than was expected.

Ready, he said.

24

In August, they packed up, in brown boxes: George to Pasadena, Joseph to Los Feliz. On the day he headed east in his boxy U-Haul, a painted picture of rugged Alaskan mountains on the truckside, George came into my room and gave me a long hug. I’ll see you soon, he said, holding me by the shoulders, looking at me in the eyes, although I wouldn’t see him, not for months. Eliza was over that day, and to my distaste and her delight, he hugged her too. Take good care of Rose, he told her. I’m fine, I said, bumping inside the door frame, but Eliza nodded, solemn. Her cheeks filling at the bottom with blush. Maybe you could show us the dorms sometime, she said. I almost whacked her on the head with the yellow doll-brush hidden in my back pocket. Yes, I wanted to see the dorms, more than anything! But not with her there too.

My brother convinced my parents to rent him an apartment off Vermont, near Prospect Avenue. About fifteen minutes away. He sat with Dad in front of the TV for a half-hour, the longest I’d ever seen them alone together, and he gave a heartfelt eyes-ahead speech about how hard he planned to study and how helpful it would be to be close to school. He had no interest in driving, and from his new doorstep he would be able to walk to Los Angeles City College, to the 7-Eleven, and to the Jons grocery store. The place was a tenplex with its name written diagonally on the front-Rexford Gardens, or Bedman Vista, or something like that. The units circled a courtyard complete with a wall of ferns and a broken mermaid fountain. Joseph’s apartment was on the second level, with an outside hallway that served as a collective balcony.

To furnish the new apartment, Mom supplied him with seconds from the co-op studio. A dresser with a finicky drawer, a very small table of unclear purpose, a standard pine nightstand, a pair of spindly maple stools.

How about this? Mom said, on moving day, holding up a coat rack made by one of her colleagues; the wood was elegant, a rich striped rosewood from Brazil, but it hadn’t been cut correctly with the buzz saw and something was off in the balance, so it needed to be wedged inside a corner.

Sure, said Joseph. Great.

We were loading boxes into the back of a Ford truck Mom had borrowed from friends at the lumberyard. Joseph dipped back into the house, and returned with two card-table chairs under his armpits. Grandma had sent the rest of the folding set over a series of months, in those long slatted boxes, one at a time.

How about these; can I have these? he asked, holding them up like crutches.

Mom wrinkled her nose. Those? she said. They’re not very well made, she said.

Joseph took two, and then the next two, and then the folding table, and then Grandma’s cracked bamboo salad bowl, and her brass desk lamp with its movable neck. Not as nice as your stuff, of course, he said, walking to the truck and loading it all inside.

The plan was that he would start with a roommate, to share his one-bedroom, but during the interviews of various contenders he sat still as a stone and said nothing. Peppy strangers came to the house and sat with me and my mother, trying to impress, but you could see their mood sink when they tried to engage Joseph and he didn’t answer one of their questions. He didn’t even grunt. He was worse than I’d ever seen him, radiating Get Away because what he seemed to want more than anything was to live alone. He was glad to go to LACC, he said, yes. He only wanted adequate time to work. Why do you want to live alone so much? I asked, but he pretended like he didn’t hear me. Are we so awful? I said, trailing him from room to room. He’d only applied to the schools where George had also applied, and his former ravenous wish for Caltech began to seem to me less about the merits of the school itself and more about the one and only roommate he could’ve tolerated.

Mom, in an effort to be helpful, rented the whole apartment under her own name, and she’d wanted to pick a nice roommate to keep Joseph company, and she even tried to give a few possible people generous breaks on the rent, but when each potential eager-eyed roomie drizzled off, smiles stiffening, Joseph begged her again. He asked if he could use his savings, donated by the generous dead grandparents, to pay the extra rent, and after two more people withdrew their names, Mom talked it over with our father and relented. Fine, she said. But you have to call every single day, she said. She stared him down until he bowed his head, yes. She worried he was devastated from the Caltech rejection, but as soon as she handed over the key, he looped his arm through hers. It’s mine? he said. He danced around the house with their arms linked, singing thank you, Mom! thank you, Mom!-his elbows pointy, his voice ringing. She whooped with him, teary, laughing. Call your father, she said, wiping her cheeks, and he got on the phone, also something I’d never seen before, and called Dad at the office to leave a proper thank-you message with his secretary. When he was off, he did another little bow and promised Mom he’d still come over every Sunday night for the splinters.

He’s coming into his own, she whispered to me, kissing my cheek.

So that the grandparent fund could stay untouched, she paid the rent for the full apartment from her co-op sales, augmented by my father’s salary. No one made any mention of him getting a job.

On moving day, we lugged the co-op furniture and the boxes up the stairs and down the balcony corridor. Once all was unloaded, Mom and I stood around the apartment. Opened and closed his cabinets. Admired the closet space. I flushed the toilet, for entertainment.

Looks very nice! Mom said. She slid open the living-room window to let air in. Peered out his front door. Have you met your neighbors yet?

The rows of doors down the outside hallway were all shut, curtains drawn.

We stood awkwardly in his living room, and Joseph thanked us several times, finally ushering us to the doorway. He kept swinging the door closer to closed.

We get it, I said, stepping out. Bye.

Every day, Mom told him.

Yes.

She gave him another hug, and blew her nose. After he shut the door, she rummaged in her purse and dropped a magenta-colored spare key inside the metal tray of the outside light fixture.

Just as a backup, she said, as we walked down the stairs.

George threw himself into college, and Joseph lived a hermit’s life, and I went through the cycles: Eighth grade. Ninth grade. Tenth, eleventh, twelfth. I clung to Eliza, who, despite her promise to George, had found a new group of friends, girls who seemed, with their broad smiles and quicknesses, to be like bicyclers rolling downhill. Like they lived in a miraculous Escherian land that only offered downhills.

At lunch, the group of them had started to talk about colleges. Eliza had her heart set on Berkeley, majoring in psychology. Several others were interested in political science, or pre-med. I had just applied to a couple of places, almost at random; the idea of more school just seemed confusing to me. Who could bear to pay attention all the time? I kept up my weekly flute lessons so I could play in the school orchestra, but I was content as third chair, and I often wished I’d picked trombone. You can’t blast a flute. My old dodgeball rival Eddie Oakley had grown up to be a jock with nice strong arms, and on occasion, when I was feeling particularly agitated, I ran out to the baseball field at the end of the day and I convinced him to throw broken tennis balls with me over wire fences to roll in the streets. Take that, I said, sending them soaring.

You’re an angry gal, he said, laughing at me.

I’m not angry, I said. I just have a good arm.

A couple times he and I made out outside the boys’ locker room, long after the school day had ended. We pushed our faces into each other. There was something rude and bruising about it, like I was mad at him and he was mad at me and we were having a fight with our lips, but somehow it all still felt pretty good. He tasted like sports. One afternoon, just as it was getting dark, he tucked a hair behind my ear and seemed ready to say something nice; I ducked out of his arms and told him I had to go.

He pulled me in for one last kiss, which lasted for another fifteen minutes. At a pause, I tucked in my shirt.

Bye, I said. I’m going.

You’re the perfect girl, he said, rubbing his chin. You expect nothing.

I scooped up one of the old tennis balls and threw it at him.

And you, I said, are the same asshole you were in third grade.

What? he said, making a mock-innocent face. It’s true, right? It’s good! Tomorrow, same time?

Maybe, I said, walking away.

He chuckled. Maybe, he said. Of course.

During lunchtime, while the downhill girls talked about where they would go to school, and when, and why, I sat on the outskirts of their circle, where grass met concrete, eating my lunch. I watched the science nerds over on a bench, with their books open. Like regurgitated versions of my brother and George.

Hey, how come you only eat junk food? asked one of Eliza’s friends, the strawberry-blonde who was president of the tennis club. She lived entirely on celery and peanut butter. I was right at the edge of their circle, like the tail of a Q, and I swiveled my butt to face her directly.

Eliza looked over, listening, waiting. She had a big crush on the student-body president and wanted to ask the tennis-club girl about the latest sighting in the hall.

Because I can taste the feelings people don’t know they’re feeling, I told her. And it is an absolutely shit experience, I said.

I raised my eyebrows and glared.

Jeez, said the girl, turning back. I was only asking. Is Eddie Oakley your boyfriend?

No, I said.

Someone saw you guys making out by the tennis court.

Wasn’t me, I said.

Rose is really good at dodgeball. And Spanish, Eliza offered. I think Eddie’s okay.

No one plays dodgeball anymore, I said. And I got a B minus in Spanish.

She shrugged. You’re still better than I am, she said.

What did you get?

She looked down at her fingers, nails recently painted an electric spangly pink.

She got an A, said the tennis girl.

I laughed.

Do you think he saw me in the hall? Eliza whispered.

I turned back to the quad. The science kids had left to go talk to a teacher.

For a brief stage that year, I did tell a few people about the food. How am I? I’d say when someone asked. Well, I’m a little caught up with the donut. Generally, it went one of two ways. Either the person would look at me strangely, think I was a kook, and go on to something else, like the tennis girl did. I mentioned it to Eddie as we hurled tennis balls into the street and he said huh, and then stuck his hand up my back. I figured that was the usual, but one afternoon at lunchtime a new girl showed up, freshly arrived from Montana-hazel-eyed Sherrie with all the silver jewelry. She was grateful to have a group to eat lunch with, and she’d met Eliza in English class, and as she bit into her chicken sandwich she told us all about how Los Angeles was so much better than Butte. I mean, it’s huge here! she said, spreading her arms. All the movies are here! she said. Halfway through lunch, Eliza had to go talk intently with the tennis girl about something, so it was just me and Sherrie, left on the grass/cement, bored. To fill space, I held up my last crumby cafeteria chicken nugget and started to list all its various complexities. Ohio, busy factory, bad chickens, stoic breader. I just said it for something to say, but Sherrie scooted closer, her silver-filigree bracelet clunking on the ground. Wait, what? she whispered. What are you saying? she said.

Such a lift I felt that day, when she looked at me like I was the most intriguing person in the world! I explained a little more about it, tentative, and she grabbed my arm and invited me back to her house that very afternoon, where, in her parents’ kitchen, she baked up a pan of brownies on the spot and handed a square over, wide-eyed. After one bite, I dropped it on the counter. Ugh, I said, muffled, grabbing a glass for water. You are massively depressed, I said. She laid her head on the counter and started to cry. It’s true, she said. I could barely get out of bed, she wept. And this!-after the whole lunch discussion of how everything was so great in California, how the move was a chance to re-invent herself, how all was astounding in the new dawning day of glory. Baked goods were still the quickest like that. So when can you come back? she asked, an hour later, her eyes round and shiny with tears. I left that day with a skip in my step: A new friend, I sang to myself. A new, true friend! A gift from the Big Sky Country! I went over to her house many more times, and each time was the same routine: an overly cheery greeting, then chocolate-chip cookies, then rice-crispie treats, down, down, down into the pit, then my response, her tears on the table, her moaning of my rightness. I didn’t mind at first-I loved going over with such a sense of purpose and pacing around her kitchen expounding on my thoughts on her interior. I described every single nook and cranny of feeling I could taste. We were inseparable for months. She called me Glorious Rose, and we sat in her bathroom and played mournful electronic songs that went on for ten minutes, and while I perched on the edge of her bathtub and ate her desserts she helped me dye my hair black, then red, then black-red. But it got to the point where I’d go over to her locker and she’d shove a biscuit in my face and ask me how she was feeling, because she couldn’t tell without me. She’d run after me in the halls with a slapdash sandwich she’d made in five seconds to get me to tell her if she really liked this guy or if she was just kidding herself. I don’t know everything, I said, shoving sandwich bites in my mouth. You like him, I said, nodding. You really like him.

I still didn’t even care until I was over at her house one afternoon and I told her about how Joseph had this disappearing trick that no one had ever figured out and she flattened her bangs over her forehead and asked who’s Joseph? We were in her kitchen, baking as usual. We’d just talked at length about the intricate nuances of her crush on a stoner volleyball player.

Joseph? I said, squinting. My brother?

You have a brother? she said. Is he cute? Hey, will you taste this toast for me? Do you think I’m still depressed?

The walls seemed to sag around us. The toast wavered in the air. Hey, I said, slowly. You know, I’m kind of full. Just for today, I said. Let’s do something else. Sherrie’s face squinched into a purse. How about a movie? I said. But why? she said, licking the edge of the peanut-butter knife. What’s interesting about a movie? I could do that with anyone! Please, she said, Glorious Rosie? Just one teeny tiny bite?

That day, I left her house early and leaned against the window glass of the bus, crying a little into the corners of the six-dollar junky cat-eye sunglasses she’d encouraged me to buy. I didn’t feel like seeing anyone else. At the movie stop, I pulled the cord and welcomed the darkness of the theatre, where I sat alone and ate no popcorn and relished the soft velvet of the armrest that I shared with no one and movies are all sight and sound only and a beautiful landscape and I saw what they showed me and nothing else at all. When Sherrie called later and asked me over for the next day for lasagna, I said I had plans.

And, I thought I’d take a break from the food stuff, I said. For a little while. If you want to see a movie this weekend, or do anything else, let me know.

She called me a fickle drug dealer and slammed down the phone.

In this way, for these reasons, despite her grade coddling and gold standard normality, I was grateful for Eliza. When she overheard the tennis girl’s question about food that lunchtime, she didn’t say a thing, but the next day she brought out a twin to her sandwich. We had too much turkey, she said, putting the spare in its wax paper on a sunlit section of cement. It was probably the first time she understood why I might’ve spent an hour at the drinking fountain that long-ago day in third grade. When it looked like she was just going to leave the turkey on the ground, I picked it up. Unwrapped the plastic. Ate it slowly.

If I didn’t focus on how envious I was that this lightness was where she came from, those sandwiches did help me through the rest of the day.

25

It seemed to happen in springs, the revealing of things. With fresher air, and jasmine blooms, something else new. There was the spring of my food discovery. The spring of my first interactions with my father, and Joseph’s disappearances, and my mother’s affair, which seemed to be ongoing, since I had never tasted the teary residue of a breakup in her meals.

The fifth spring of my brother, in his own apartment, alone.

He had followed through with the daily call requirement. For years, the phone rang at five, usually while my mother was preparing dinner, and they talked about his classes and his day and her classes and her day. He seemed to be enjoying school well enough. He was studying all the time. His grades were good. Since Mom was chopping and stirring as they talked, her meals often took on a tinge of worry and also some kind of ravenous pride. My son, said her dinners, is a beam of pure focus.

He called every day, so if he was still disappearing, he did it on an effective schedule.

Only one time did Joseph fail to call at the appointed hour. When Mom called to see why not, he didn’t pick up. Nor did he answer the following morning. Two days went by and still no response, so Mom drove over, worried, used the spare key, and found his apartment empty. Drove home. Paced. She called on the hour, every hour. No answer. My father, who had never found anything interesting about these disappearances, chalking them up to the private explorations of a twenty-two-year-old young man, tried to calm her down as she roamed the house. The next morning, day three, she drove over again as soon as it was light, and when she arrived at his place, she found Joseph facedown on the floor of his bedroom, limbs spread out like a starfish. His heartbeat slow. Breathing shallow. She called an ambulance and they went to the hospital right away, where they gave him numerous tests and said he was severely dehydrated and weakened but would be all right. Where were you? Mom asked, and the doctors asked, but Joseph just shook his head. Nowhere, he said, and that was the best they could get out of him.

My father did not visit, but sent his usual bunch of tulips and roses to the nurses, to ensure the best of care.

It was in mid-April, after Joseph was comfortably re-set in his apartment, fully irrigated, back to his once-a-day calls, reregistered for a spring advanced quantum-mechanics course at LACC, that my mother lifted up her fork at the dinner table and announced, her arm raised like a statue, that she would be taking a week-long trip with the co-op to Nova Scotia. It’s a very unusual opportunity, she told us, to learn the basics of Japanese carpentry. We will be constructing wooden hinges that take the place of nails, she said. She poked at the mound of potatoes on her plate.

My father was eating very slowly, something he usually did when he was irritable. Streaks of gray flashed through his hair.

How’s the fish? she said.

Fine, he said, pushing on his mouth with a napkin.

Rose, Mom said, turning to me, I’ll only go if you’ll tell me you’ll keep an eye on everyone.

Sure, I said. I’ll check on Joseph. Can I do the grocery shopping? Who’s going?

About half the co-op, she said. We’re trying to refresh our approach. You’ll call every day?

Sure. Can I use your car?

With an adult, she said.

Dad slid his gaze over to me. Along with watching TV together, driving around in the car with my learner’s permit was another good father/daughter activity from the manual. I was a couple years older than most learner’s permit types, but I’d been slower to the car than my peers.

Okay, I said.

Thank you. Mom smiled at me, warmly. It’s really a special chance, she said. I appreciate it so much. One day I’ll make you a cabin, in a forest, she said, with hinges made only of wood.

I took a bite of the mashed potatoes. Northern California, a well-run potato farm. Mom’s giddy excitement about the upcoming trip, paired with her usual spiral of smallness. I ate it on the side of my mouth. No need, I said, swallowing. I prefer nails, I said. And cities, I said.

My father glanced up, for a second, as if someone had called his name. He reached out an arm, as if to ruffle my hair. Since my hair was not anywhere close, his hand hovered in the air.

Rose, he said. Is so grown up! he said.

She left on a Wednesday. Her car was just sitting in the driveway, so I took it to school anyway, trolling around town after classes ended. Eddie saw me in the school parking lot and asked if he could get a ride to his friend’s house. I let him climb in and we rolled around and kissed on a side street for an hour, but I was in a quieter mood that day, having run into Sherrie in the halls with her arm strung through a new girl’s, and I didn’t feel like doing battle. What’s wrong? he said, after trying to shove his face into mine. Where’s the tank? he said.

What tank?

You, he said, grinning at me. That’s what I call you in my head. The tank.

I sat up. Straightened my T-shirt.

I’m no tank, I said. Someone once said I was seaglass.

Ha! he said. Seaglass. Yeah, right.

He played with the radio buttons for a while. Freckles clustered around his ear and jaw.

So what are you doing after graduation? I asked.

He turned back. Me? he said. School, I guess. Baseball. Why? You want to keep in touch?

Nah, I said.

That’s my girl, he said, nodding. He touched my hair, newly reddish from the latest dye. Drew a finger down my nose. Nice nose, he said.

I sank a little, under his hand.

Oh, stop this sad bullshit, he said, moving closer. Come on! Bring out the tank!

He put his face right up close to mine again but I just didn’t have it in me. We kissed for a few minutes and then I pushed him away.

Time’s up, I said.

Fine, fine, fine, he said, patting down his hair. He checked his face in the side mirror. Can you at least give me a ride to Fountain? he asked.

One click opened the car doors. Tank says you can walk, I said.

In the evenings, my father and I ate dinner quietly in front of the TV together: Wednesday night, Thursday. Frozen dinners I’d picked out at the grocery store, greatest hits by my favorite factories. One of the best ones, in Indiana, prided itself on a no touch food assembly, which meant every step was monitored by robotic arms, ones that placed the tortillas into the dish, layered them with cheese, dropped dollops of tomato sauce on top, and shoved it all into the giant oven, thus producing an utterly blank enchilada.

After Thursday’s dinner, my father and I piled into the car and drove awkwardly around the blocks, him instructing me how to brake. I pretended like I hadn’t been in the car in weeks and he kept reaching over and putting his hands on the wheel to angle me out of an awkward position. You’re supposed to tell me, I said, elbowing him off.

Right, right, he said. Sorry. Turn left.

The afternoons were getting longer again, stretching. I stayed too long at a stoplight because the sunlight was so pretty, sifting through all the leaves on the sycamore trees lining Sierra Bonita, turning each a pale jade green. The jacaranda trees preparing for their burst of true lavender blue come May.

Go, said Dad.

Sorry, I said.

Two skateboarders crossed in front of us.

Is something wrong? Dad asked, as I angled up Oakwood.

With the car? I tapped the dashboard, lightly. Seems okay to me.

With you, he said. He kept his gaze forward. Page forty-three in the manual: father has heart-to-heart with his daughter.

No, I said.

He drummed his fingers on the dashboard. Fast, focused. They carried the same active enthusiasm as his wiggling feet in the TV room, on the ottoman. Our bonding had not progressed much beyond watching TV together, except for these weekly lessons in driving, which were 99 percent technical.

Boys? he said.

What about them?

Any problems there?

I tugged on the steering wheel. Not really, I said.

They get better, he said, hopefully. His voice trailed off. Or do you know what you’re interested in? he asked, after a pause.

No, I said. Most people don’t at seventeen.

That’s not true, he said. A lot of people have a little idea, he said.

Well, I said. I do not have a little idea.

I turned onto Stanley, then Rosewood. Deliberately ran a stop sign but he didn’t say anything. His forehead was crushed together with effort.

I ran a second stop sign.

Oops, I said. Stop back there.

Full brake, he said, scratching his eyebrow. No rolling stop or they’ll ticket you.

I turned onto Fairfax. Dad reached out his window to adjust the right-side mirror.

Why don’t you go on up to Sunset, he said, and then make a right.

Okay, I said, accelerating.

Is school all right? Dad said, pointing at the yellow light. Slow, he said.

I hummed at the red light. The car motor, humming.

Fine, I said.

You like it?

Not really, I said.

Why not?

I don’t know, I said.

I turned onto Sunset. Want a burger? Dad asked as we passed All American Burger.

No. You?

No, he said, looking at it longingly. He pointed out the window. Right on La Brea, he said.

I turned, as instructed. Rambled down, through green lights. After a few blocks, I made another turn, onto Willoughby, and drove past the Department of Water and Power building to the curb outside our house where I slid the car right into the driveway.

Nice, said Dad.

He glued his eyes on my hand as I put the car in park, then pulled up on the parking brake.

You’re nearly ready for the test, he said. One more round and I think you’re set.

We sat in the car, facing the low branches of the big ficus tree. He didn’t make a move to go and I didn’t either and for a while we just sat there, staring at the corroded handle on the garage door, with the useless string tied to it for no reason.

Two-toned leaves brushed against the windshield. I had a flash of remembering George outside, in his cap and gown. A vision, of an earlier time.

Your brother, he said.

I waited. He shook his head.

Thanks for the lesson, I offered.

His eyes swept around the car. Outside, the motion-sensor porch light clicked on as a neighbor trotted past with her dog.

You have things to offer, he said, gruffly.

Offer who?

Just to offer, he said. The world.

He didn’t move, and I felt it would be rude to move, so together we continued to stare stiffly out the windshield. A ficus twig tripped down the glass, onto the wipers.

Hey, I heard this story, I said.

He glanced over, eager. A story?

About a kid at school, I said. Want to hear?

Please, he said.

I leaned back, into the firmness of the car seat.

There’s this kid, I said. In my English class? Who was failing, last year. I guess he lives in a kind of run-down neighborhood, over by Dodger Stadium, and he didn’t know he needed glasses, and he saw everything blurry.

I bet he couldn’t read, Dad said. His hands calmed a little with the entrance of narrative, and he reached out the side again to re-adjust the right-side mirror. You can see this?

It’s fine, I said. Should I keep going?

Go, he said. Go on.

Anyway, I said, yes. He couldn’t read. That was the problem. The teachers brought him into testing, and he couldn’t read a word, and he never talked in English class, and he got bad grades for years, and he didn’t even understand how anyone could do this magical mysterious action called reading, and finally one of the teachers said they should test his eyes, and they took him to the eye doctor.

Dad shook his head. That’s the first thing they should check, he said. This crap school system, he said.

I pulled the keys from the ignition.

Well, I said. So they found out he had terrible vision, and he got glasses, and all the teachers stood around him while he tried them on.

Was he a smart kid? asked Dad.

Smart, I said. Definitely. And on went his glasses, perfect prescription, right? And he wore them and suddenly he could read, and not only that, the very act of reading suddenly seemed to him something possible, not like the rest of the world was way ahead of him in this impossible way.

A heartwarming story, Dad said, nodding. I like it. When’s our show on?

Ten minutes, I said. Anyway, it’s not over.

Why not? said Dad, his hand on the door handle. I like where it ended, he said. Let’s end it there.

The kid goes home, right? I said. With his glasses. And his new reading book. And his mom greets him at the door. She’s smiling, because the school called with the good news. But he can see she’s really tired. He hasn’t seen her in years, clearly: years! And she’s totally exhausted, there are these dark circles under her eyes and when she smiles it looks like one of her teeth is a little brown box. They can’t afford the dentist. Right? And his house? It’s a wreck. One side is falling down, and there are cockroaches running across the floor and there’s a big hole in the wall that he thought was a painting.

The motion-sensor light clicked off. Dad’s profile, washed in darkness.

You’re making this up, aren’t you, he said.

No, I said.

What’s the guy’s name?

John, I said.

John what?

John Barbaducci, I said, after a pause.

Dad coughed. Barbaducci, he said. That is the most made-up name I ever heard. Abe Lincoln, just why don’t you call the guy George Washington. So, he said. Fine. Keep going. The kid hates what he sees.

So he steps on his glasses, I said.

Jesus! Dad said, hitting the dashboard. I knew something like that was coming. Now I hate this story, he said. So then he falls behind, correct?

He doesn’t learn to read anymore, I said. But he gets by. He registers as half blind and gets disability.

Oh, now, that is an awful story, said Dad, shaking his head. Awful. He opened his car door.

I stepped out too. Locked the doors.

Nice work with the turn signal, said Dad. Just don’t forget those side mirrors.

I thought it was a good story, I said.

It’s a terrible story, he said, heading to the door. He gets disability and he’s not even disabled! That’s the kind of thing lawyers go nuts about. He thought the hole was a painting?

He fumbled in his pocket at the door.

Here, I said, handing over his ring of keys.

He coughed again, into his hand. I know it’s bullshit, he said, opening the door, stepping in. I know you’re trying to tell me something, but I have no idea what it is. Okay? I don’t think like that. What are you trying to tell me?

Nothing, I said. It was just a guy at my school.

What’s his name again?

John, I said. I grimaced a little, against my will.

John what?

We faced each other, in the hallway. Dad folded his arms.

John Barbelucci, I said.

With a crow, he slapped the homemade pine key-table, fixed at the entryway, made in Mom’s first year of carpentry.

There! he said. He glared at me. You said Ducci, before. I’m sure of it.

Lucci, I said.

Ducci.

Do you have a tape recorder? I said.

I’m sure of it! he said. Close the door, he said.

I shut and locked the door behind us.

So can you read? he said, striding into the TV room. Is that what this is all about?

I kicked off my shoes, and Dad hung his jacket over the back of a chair.

I can read, I said.

It was eight o’clock, on the dot. Both of us zoomed to check the clock. I poured myself a glass of juice, and without a word, we took our spots on either side of the sofa and Dad clicked the TV to our favorite medical program and we rejoiced in the saving of the woman with the heart problem, whose eyes were so large and lovely.

26

Dad went to work on Friday morning without a word about our discussion, his usual honk waking me up at seven-forty. I drove myself to school, but I didn’t feel like seeing anyone at lunch, so I left before noon and drove home. Took a nap on the sofa and thought about the weekend ahead. Eliza had invited me over to watch a horror movie double feature with the downhill girls. Sherrie would be there, and the last time I’d seen her at a social event she burst into tears when she saw me and ran out of the room. You’re upset, I’d yelled after her, meanly. Now, maybe, she’d bring the new friend. Eliza had just kissed her big student-body crush, under the pinstriped awning by the cafeteria. She said it felt like sailing. Sailing? Several of the girls at the party had had sex, something which sounded appealing but only if it could happen with blindfolds in a time warp plus amnesia. I told Eliza I wasn’t sure if I could go; that I might have to go to Pasadena to visit George in the dorm instead, to help him with a school-wide prank involving graduates and umbrellas. Of course, she’d said, her face melting a little. All morning, I was in an unsettled mood, in part from the conversation with my father, mostly from everything, and I wandered into the kitchen and picked up the phone and called George’s number in Pasadena for the hell of it. Maybe I could make it true after all. His machine picked up, and I left a rambly message about how I had a car if he needed anything, that I’d be glad to come to Pasadena if he needed help running any errands or anything, that I was free on Saturday, that I could do his laundry if he was busy, and I had a car if he needed help with anything at all. Halfway through, he picked up, out of breath. Hey! he said. Rose! All okay? I stumbled around the words. Told him I had a car if he needed anything. I have a car, too, he said, gently. How are you? he asked. I mumbled something about being a senior. I thought I heard a woman’s voice, in the background. Everything okay, Rose? he said. I miss you, I told him, in a voice that went up too high, rolling in the upper registers, an awful wheedle. You too, he said. There was a long pause. Anything else? he said, as kindly as he could. No, I said. Sorry to bother you. You’re never a bother! he said, too quickly.

27

Within a minute, after hanging up, the phone rang again.

I picked up. Sorry, I said.

Hello? the voice said. Rose?

The wish, that George had called back, apologetic, called the number he knew so well to invite me out to spend the weekend in the dorm. Maybe he could show me the town, or be my date to Eliza’s party. Instead, it was my mother’s voice that rushed into my ear, running ahead fast, sharper than usual. The connection wasn’t good-it sounded like she was talking from a pay phone outdoors, and great swoops of wind rushed in every few seconds. She didn’t ask why I was home, but through the gaps she said something about how it was so good to hear my voice and how she was calling from the little town outside the workshop in Nova Scotia. The place had scarce technological amenities-just woodworking tools and gulls-so it was hard to catch her full sentences, but over the rushes of wind, it sounded something like she’d called Joseph seven times and he wasn’t answering his phone and now the answering machine was disconnected so she needed me to write him a check.

A check?

On him, she said. Please? The line crackled. Bedford Gardens, she said. She spelled it for me. With a B, she yelled into the phone.

I know where he lives, I said. Can’t I just call? Can’t Dad call?

Joe won’t pick up, she said. His phone’s out. Please.

For a second, the wind lapsed, and quieted. I’m worried, she said, with perfect clarity.

I’m sure he’s fine, I said.

Your father doesn’t take this kind of thing seriously, but I have a bad feeling, she said. We had an agreement, Rose, she said.

I pulled a pile of mail into my lap. I felt the sullenness building.

So is Larry there too? I asked.

Who?

Larry, your lover?

Excuse me? I can’t hear you from the wind.

Lar-ry? Your lo-ver?

Silence, on the other end. Just the wind, talking back. Gulls, squawking.

Yes, he’s here, she said, finally. Half the studio is here.

You guys having fun? I said, making an airplane out of a men’s store sale card.

I didn’t know you knew, she said faintly.

Oh, for years, I said.

How-

It’s really hard to explain, I said. I flew the plane across the kitchen floor, where it crashed against a cabinet. So Joseph-

Does your father know?

Dad? I said. My highly observant dad? Are you kidding?

Or Joseph? she said, her voice starting to waver. Is that why he’s gone?

I coughed into the receiver. No, I said. He doesn’t know either. Nobody knows but me. Aren’t you wondering why I’m home? I skipped school.

Her words came through in ribbons and waves. That’s not why I’m away, she said. Nearly the whole co-op is here. It’s a work trip, she said. We’re working. I’m so sorry, Rose.

I picked at the address label on one of the bills. Electric bill. Probably big.

So when did you last talk to him? I said.

Larry?

Joseph.

Right before I left, she said. Please, honey. He always answers when I call. We’ll talk about this all when I get back, I promise. Please. Did you say you skipped school?

The address label wouldn’t come off so I put the ripped electric bill back in its stack by the phone. On top of all the other bills, all the papers that ran the house invisibly.

No, I said. I was kidding. It’s a holiday.

Today? she said.

It’s Barbelucci Day, I said.

Listen, she said. If something is wrong, I’ll be there as fast as I can. I’ve called the hospitals just in case but he’s not in them.

You called hospitals already?

Remember last time? If he’s not home, will you check Kaiser, just in case? The one on Vermont and Sunset? You see, Rose, there’s no one else. It has to be you. It’s only you.

Someone called her name, from a far distance. I could hear the trees, whipped up. Another land. I’m sorry, I have to go, she said. Thank you, love. Thank you so much. We’ll talk when I get back.

After she hung up, I went into the living room and sat in the striped armchair for a while. Out the window, the breezeless stillness of a desert spring.

28

The building where Joseph lived was stucco and ugly, with boxy cypress hedges in stiff rows and that cursive name written on the front, that name so vague I could never remember it.

When I drove up, the whole complex looked emptier than it had before. Only one broken-down brown Chevy in the downstairs garage. It was late afternoon when I pulled in, the sky streaky with clouds, and on the streets, cars were arriving home, parking, work people unpacking trunks and heading into their units.

I dragged my feet up the stairs and down the balcony corridor. At the top of the stairway, in front of Joseph’s apartment, someone had pushed a twin bed against the railing. With a pillow and a comforter, all set to go for sleep. By the door, I groped around in the black metal cupola that framed the solitary outdoor bulb until I found the magenta spare key-a cursive J on the key label in my mother’s handwriting. With it, the door opened a notch, and then the chain blocked me.

Joseph? I called, into the wedge of darkness.

Nothing.

I was in a newly sour mood, after the phone calls with my mother and George. Embarrassed, about calling George. Upset, that I’d told my mother what I knew. Now that I’d told her, we’d have to have a talk. Plus, it just made me irritable to have to check on my older brother. Joseph’s front door wouldn’t push open, and so I snuck a grumbling hand through the open wedge and tried to unlatch the chain. I couldn’t actually reach the latch, but the screws felt loose on the door-frame side, so instead of unlatching the chain I changed arms, curled my fingers, did a twist or two, and was able to dismantle the entire apparatus itself. After a minute, the whole thing fell apart and the door gaped open.

The living room was dark. Empty.

I hadn’t been inside his actual apartment much. When I saw Joseph, it was because he came to us, because my mother drove out, picked him up, and brought him home. On occasion, he and George came over for dinner together, but the contrast of George’s lively updates on Caltech set against Joseph’s reluctant mutters was too much for even my mother, and she did not extend the invitation often.

Inside, it smelled faintly of noodles. Nothing much in the way of furniture except that card table with some science books piled on it, and a chair with a ripped seat and our grandmother’s last name written on the back in cursive. Morehead, liltingly. All the curtains were closed except in the kitchen, where a small window sent a few late-afternoon rays onto the tiled floor, a yellow pattern of sun stripes over crisscrossing tile stripes. I left the front door open.

I’m in, I said.

No answer.

I stepped into the hallway. No pictures. The bathroom unlit. The bedroom at the end.

I’m coming in, I said, down the hallway. Joseph? Hellooooo. It’s me, Mom’s good old checker, I said.

Quiet. Empty. I clicked on the overhead hall light, but it only cast a burnt yellow tinge over the dimness.

No sounds coming from his room. Pure silence. I’d been through it all before. Outside, a few cars ambled up the street. Only the faint hum and rattle of distant plumbing, somewhere deep inside the building.

Joseph did not invite people over, or have parties, so as far as I knew, other than Mom, I was the first person other than himself to set foot in his apartment in weeks. This was significant because at the end of the hall was the door to his bedroom, and on it he’d hung the old sign from his childhood, Keep Out, written years and years ago in thick black pen, now faded to gray. I’d long ago memorized the blocky shape of the O, the slightly too large T. It was such a familiar sight that it took a minute, here, to question. Why was it here? He must’ve lifted it off his old door during some visit home, and put it up again even though he lived alone. But so who was the sign for now? That badly drawn skull and crossbones.

I said his name at the door, and when no one answered, I pushed it open.

Inside his room, the light was off. I flicked it on. Joseph was sitting in the middle of the room, at a card-table desk, in a chair, at his laptop computer. Dressed. Awake. He looked sickly, and thin, but he always looked a little sickly and thin to me.

Hey, I said, startled. What’s going on? You’re here? Are you okay?

I’m fine, he said, quietly.

The bedroom in his apartment was small: wall-to-wall beige carpet, mirrored sliding closets, and no bed anymore, just one plain dresser, a couple of folding chairs, the desk, and a nightstand. One window, closed. In a corner, the carpet matted down in a long rectangle.

That’s your bed out there?

The floor is better for my back, he said.

You’re sleeping on the floor? What are you talking about?

He stared at me, his eyes flick-framed by those dark romantic lashes, the gaze too wide and unblinking.

What are you doing? I said.

Work, he said.

It was confusing, how he’d been so easy to find. In his jeans and T-shirt and shoes. No big deal. Plus, everything looked regular. On top of the dresser drawer leaned an old plaque from a string-galaxy drawing competition he’d won in junior high school, and another one of Mom’s oak jewelry boxes that she’d made in her more advanced years of woodworking. A few sprinkled pennies and nickels, a loose dollar bill, worn to cloth.

He looked at me expectantly, but there was another card-table chair open in the middle of the room, also with Morehead written liltingly on the back, and something about the ease of everything was bugging me, something about actually finding him sitting there seemed worse than my usual time spent with nothingness, so I walked over to the free chair and sat down.

Why couldn’t you just let me in? I broke your chain lock.

I was busy, he said. Am.

I scanned the room. In his closet, two worn plaid shirts hung above several pairs of hiking boots. A few rubber bands and pencils and a pen rolled on his nightstand, a brown-stained spruce model that stood boxily beside the absence of a bed. I got up again and clicked off the glare of the overhead light. Outside the window the sun had gone down, and the long end of day spread itself in swaths over the apartment buildings, where cars continued driving into their slots.

Doing what?

Work, he said again.

No, I said.

I’m busy, Rose, he said, clipped. Can you go?

I slid open the window, and watched a red Honda Civic back into a spot. A woman got out, shaking her hair. She didn’t pay attention when she opened her car door, and another car nearly lopped off her leg.

I’ll explain later, he said. It’s a complicated experiment.

I bet, I said. Why aren’t you answering the phone? I drove all the way over. How come you’re so easy to find?

– .

Are you eating?

– .

Drinking any water?

I need to concentrate, he said, his voice dwindling away.

I kept my post at the window, watching the cars.

Outside, the white air deepened into blue. The dimming famous romantic southern-California dusk. I had done my job, so I expected myself to leave. I could call Mom to confirm his aliveness, bring him a ham sandwich and a glass of water, and drive back, continuing the debate in my head about whether or not to go to Eliza’s party.

Except it was so familiar, the feeling in the room. The air held a tinge of the same heaviness I’d seen on Joseph’s face many times during those babysitting moments, when he’d reappeared, exhausted-looking, tufty-haired, and, standing there at the window, I felt a little like a detective must feel when about to turn a corner on a case. As if, if I stood still enough, very very still, as still as I possibly could, then I might see something I had not seen before.

It shifted my bad mood a little, to note this. The irritation was becoming just a staticky front underneath of which was forming an arrow of anticipation, beginning to point. I kept my post at the window until the apartment buildings across the street were obscured by darkness. The modest joy of seeing windows click on, the simple pleasure of rectangles of yellow light exposing the dark twists of tree boughs.

A few more cars crept up the street, headlights on. I returned to the chair in the middle of the room, and sat down.

At his desk, Joseph visibly stiffened.

I’ll e-mail Mom, he said, how’s that? Right now.

I shook my head.

Sorry, I said. I guess I just feel like staying for a little while more.

How long is a little while? he said, almost shrill.

I don’t know.

He didn’t turn. We sat in a row, him in front of me, facing the wall, like passengers on a stationary train. His laptop was on screen saver, swirling fish in a bubbling tank, so I couldn’t see if he was really working on anything or not. On the rest of the desk/table, nothing. A couple pencils. Faint markings, in pencil, sketched out on the wall under the window. Just scribbles here and there about whatever, half an equation, or some numbers in a row.

His fingers dug into the table’s rim.

Sorry, I said again.

What was also strange to me was how he didn’t get back to work. Hadn’t while I’d stood at the window. Still didn’t now. In earlier days, when I just wanted to be in the same room as him, he would try his best to ignore me and then would bring the pad of paper or book in a huff into the next room, maybe swearing at me, or locking the door. But here he stayed put. On an impulse, I reached over and slapped down on a key, to wake the computer up, and he started-what!-and the screen cleared and it was just a news page, just the front page of the New York Times, talking about the economy and foreign policy. No open files, as far as I could tell.

That’s your work? I said. You’re reading the news?

And?

Darkness soaked into the room.

There was nothing upsetting, that I could see. It wasn’t like there was anything about sex in the air-no hastily covered blanket, or lurking shame or edge of pleasure. And it wasn’t emotional-it wasn’t like I’d just stumbled in on Joseph rocking himself in a corner in tears or stabbing himself or like I’d found his diary in a drawer and read it aloud over the high-school intercom. No bomb ingredients or drug baggies, no samurai sword or gun or syringe. Whatever was happening was different than all of that, was more private, more closed off: all that came through was that he just wanted to be as alone as possible, aloner than alone, alonest, and my presence in the room was as invasive as if I’d strapped electrodes to his skull and was reading the pulses of his mind.

I’d just like to stay for a little while longer, I said, as quietly as I could.

You’re such a fucking pain! he said. You’ve always been the worst pain in my fucking ass! and he slammed the laptop lid down, but he did not get out of that chair.

In any other instance, in those countless other examples, he would’ve stalked out, would’ve gone to the corner farthest from me, maybe off in the kitchen, or on the balcony, but he did not, which was notable, so I started to pay attention to the chair. Just to look closer at it. It was the same chair as mine, the third in that series of four card-table Morehead chairs, sent by Grandma, his personal choice of furnishings for the apartment.

He was sitting in the chair, the way a normal person sits in a chair, but when I looked very closely, it seemed like the chair leg vanished right into his shoe. That the chair legs went inside both legs of his pants, and when I looked even closer, I could see that he had actually cut holes of the correct size in his pants to place the chair legs through the pant legs, and then, ostensibly, the leg of the chair, a light rat-colored aluminum metal with a rubber bulb at the foot, went down to share space with his own foot, inside his shoe.

What’s the chair doing in your pant leg? I asked. I said it lightly, just trying to be friendly about it.

He said nothing. No more outbursts. He re-opened and clicked up his laptop and read the news. Just observing. Just looking at what was there. I peered closer to see where the chair foot entered his shoe, but the shoe was covered by the hem of his pants, and something, somehow basic, was off. A slightly sick feeling picked up in my throat then, a dizzy feeling, a feeling like I was not going to like this, that whatever I was about to come across wasn’t good. That I should leave, return to the evening, go knock on the door of the red-car woman across the way, ask for food, any kind, to hug her, to go find a man nearby, to call Eddie out of the blue and ask him to take off my clothes, please. Now. Go. The chair leg went wrong, somehow. How? Was he inserting furniture into his body?

Are you in pain? I asked.

I’m okay, he said. He turned around to look at me, with eyes big and gray, and his voice softened, turning almost gentle.

Just go, he said. Rosie.

The room stretched longer, between us. A ringing bell. Maybe once, in our entire childhood, had he called me Rosie. He never even called me Rose. His face, those gray eyes, so big and, for a moment, all kindness. My throat tightened. I did not understand why. I did not understand what was going on.

I went to sit on the floor, at his feet. It was easy, to go kneel at his feet, and he wanted to kick me off, I could tell, but there were chair legs near his legs, so he could not kick me. And he could’ve grabbed me with his hand, pushed me away, but he didn’t, and that gentleness was still in him: Rosie, he’d said, and I reached down, and when I lifted up the pant leg, there was no cut. I don’t even know how to describe it, what I saw. There was no blood at all, and how good it would’ve been, to see blood-to see it pouring out of his leg, and the surgery he would’ve needed, the painkillers, the beige rug soaking through.

All I could grasp was just that he had not inserted the chair leg into his own, but that somehow it was mostly just a chair leg there, dressed in a sock, going into his shoe. No flesh leg visible at all, or only some kind of faint shimmer of leg that I could hardly see clearly. Had he cut off his legs? No. Again: no blood there, none. Instead, there was only that shimmer of human leg around the leg of the chair, a soft fading halo of humanness around the sturdy metal of the chair, a shifting of textures that somehow made sense. It looked like a natural assertion of chair over him, like the chair was dispelling him, or absorbing him, as natural as if that was the way it was with everyone. And then the chair leg, with its rubber foot, went inside his shoe, which no longer seemed to hold a human foot at all.

I sat there. I did not say anything. I held on to his knee, the knobby bone of his fleshy knee.

In the silence, something big and wordless. Those Morehead chairs, scattered throughout his apartment. How I’d show up, one day, and all the other furniture would be out on the balcony with the bed, and only four Morehead chairs would be in his apartment. Plus some pens and shoes.

I love them, he’d told my mom, as each one came in the mail. They’re great, so functional.

How rarely we heard him use the word love. Or, for that matter, great. He was sitting on the floor of the living room, in high school, cross-legged in front of the red brick fireplace, folding and unfolding the latest. I didn’t really care about the chairs, good or bad, but Joseph loved them, seemed to truly value chairs that could fold so easily into a line. The mailman had started to hate us.

God, she loves them too, said Mom. I can’t stand them-no style. Cheapo.

She stood above Joseph with her hands on her hips. There’s a table, too, she said, and, sure enough, it arrived the following week.

Joseph called Grandma, that night of the fourth chair.

Thank you, he told her, sincerely.

I stood in the hall. He listened to something for a while.

You too, he said.

When he hung up, I was over at his side in a second. I could not give him a moment alone. What’d she say?

She’s not making much sense, he said, brushing at the air. She said something about playing cards, he said. Mah-jongg?

Well, they’re card-table chairs, said Mom.

Can I have them, in my room?

Sure? Mom said, tightening her lips. She eyed a chair, the knobby aluminum screw at its joint, the plastic brown-swirled cushion.

He pulled splinters from her hand, weekly. Even in college, even during finals week. On the couch, with tweezers, for hours.

In his room, he was back to the laptop, clicking. Reading the news, as if I wasn’t there. Frozen focus ahead. The moment of tenderness was over, the gateway had closed, and with the same certainty I’d felt just a few minutes before, about how much I’d had to stay and pay attention, something had flipped, like a pancake, easy, and now I had to go get the telephone and call George for help. Something big was happening with my brother, and I could hardly comprehend what I was seeing. I would have to leave the room for a second, but it had to be slow, this was not something that could happen quickly, and we had been to the hospital before and we could always go again and the doctors could take him back and maybe they would know what to do. It was twenty seconds, it was ten, to stride out of the room, to find the phone in its cradle and pick it up. And I didn’t have a choice then, either; I had to have someone else see this, had to, because Joseph would never confirm it for me, no one would, and I would call George first, it could only be George, only George, who’d believed me years ago when I told him the cookie was angry or the string cheese was tired, only George could be trusted to see what was in front of him. I walked out of the bedroom, strode into the living room, hunted around, found the phone, grabbed it, clicked it to on, and brought it back to Joseph’s room.

Ten seconds, eight. The window was still open, the room dark. Only an empty chair, at a table, supporting a laptop, with the front page of the New York Times, news bright and colorful.

Before I went out of my mind with sadness and bewilderment, and George found me at the market down the street, crying; before I called my mother in Canada and said he was gone again, had left, he had been here and seemed okay and then he was gone; before I called my father and wept incoherence to his secretary; before that, all I knew to do was to mark that one. That was my only lucid thought, and a thought I have felt as proud of as anything I’ve ever done in my life. Was just the impulse to take the one pen I could find in the room, the one on his nightstand, a black ballpoint, and to go to the back of that card-table chair, the one at the desk, one of four, the one in front of the laptop, and to draw a thin wobbly line under Morehead. She always signed her name the same. This one, I said, as I drew the line. Him.