The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

29

My mother kept good photo albums of the family, up to date. With stickers and captions and exclamation points. In one, she showed me a group picture of us in northern California, visiting distant cousins on a seashore near Sausalito. I peered closely at the people, noting my mother in her pale-green linen dress, my father looking especially tall and tan. Who’s that? I said, pointing to a brown-haired girl with a ponytail in a red T-shirt that reminded me of one of my T-shirts.

That’s you, she said.

What? I said. No, I said.

She laughed at me. It’s you, she said. I think you had a new haircut.

Maybe it was the angle? Or the light, or the fact that I was surrounded by people I never saw again, or the newness of the landscape, but for a few seconds before she told me, I did see myself as a stranger-an average light-brown-haired girl who looked pleasant enough, wearing a familiar red T-shirt I knew from my own closet. Once I knew it was me, the face clicked back into the formation I recognized from all the mirrors of my life. Of course, I said, laughing, as if I had known all along.

30

The way it happened with Joseph was such that I was able to tell most of the story exactly as it had happened to me, and everybody focused on facts. I had seen him, yes. At his computer. He had spoken to me, he had called me Rosie. He’d seemed preoccupied, irritable, and then deeply, sweetly kind. He had no weapons nearby, he did not seem to be on drugs, and he’d told me, many times, that he was working. He had not greeted me at the door. I had broken in. My mother had been worried. She had sent me. She had called from Canada. Nova Scotia. He had been dressed. He had looked thin, but not emaciated. Not so different than his usual self. His refrigerator was empty of food except for butter, grape jelly, and a bread so old it crumbled into dust on contact. The bedroom window had been open, and the running theory of both my parents was that he had somehow jumped out of the window from the second floor, and maybe he had even packed himself a duffel bag, for some reason stashing it in the bushes, and that now he was on a journey. He needs time to search for himself, my mother said, through her tears, when she arrived the next day, in her Canadian wool sweater, bizarre for the warm April Los Angeles afternoon. Did he seem suicidal? the policemen asked, in their navy blue, with their pads of paper, when we filed a report the following Monday. I looked at my mother and said no. And I meant no. Alone, I said, a few times, instead.

That night, after I drew the line on the chair, I could not stop shaking. I left his bedroom and sat in the stairwell, in the outdoor corridor of Bedford Gardens, shaking. I crawled into his bed. No one entered or left the building. Time passed in blank sheets.

Shadows of banana leaf plants gathered around the mermaid fountain. Car lights, turning corners, cast shafts of light through the building. His damp, old pillow.

I was still holding the phone close to my cheek, like a blanket. It held no dial tone, as my mother had predicted. The strongest pull was just to fall asleep there, in the bed, for a long time, as if it had been put there on the balcony for that exact purpose-to catch me upon leaving, the mattress my endpoint-but I had calls to make, people to inform. The closest pay phone I’d seen was on the busy street, Vermont, just a couple of blocks away.

After a while, I unfolded myself from the bed, left the phone receiver on the comforter, and descended the stairs. The air was cool, and it was dark out, the deeper, thicker dark of nightfall. My brain felt emptied, as if a wind had blown it clear. The way water from a hose pushes dirt off the sidewalk. Not in a good or a bad way, just cleared.

Friday night bloomed in full form on the city streets, and Los Feliz was busying up for a weekend evening, restaurant umbrellas opened, table candles lit by electric wands. People sat outside in pairs, hands holding flaxen-colored glasses of wine. Forks and knives clinking on clean white plates. Outside the Jons grocery store, I could see a pay phone in a small glass booth, wedged into a far corner of the parking lot. I walked over, steadily. Alert. Pried open the folding door. Inside, the booth contained a half-bench and an old worn phone book lodged inside a black plastic cover. I took the seat. A tired-looking mother and son exited the store, balancing brown bags. Across the street, at the nearby triangular taco stand with the orange neon sign, two teenage girls picked at their hair, waiting in line, their wrists dressed with rows of gold bracelets. Cars drove up and down Vermont. They were all landscapes to look at, no different than a painting.

I faced the phone. Dug in my pocket for change. The silver square buttons on the pay phone itself were my sole lifeline to people. In them, a reminder that someone, once, had dug in a mine to find iron, had spent sweat, and hours, to bring up to land the supplies demanded by the phone-making company that then made an alloy and melted it into squares embossed with tiny numbers that coded a sequence that attached to electrical wiring that would pulse through poles and rubber-coated lines to ring in the household of the only person in the world I could bear to talk to.

Okay.

I faced the little squares. ABC. DEF. GHI.

George was probably out now, at some Friday Caltech event. In his car. Flooded with girls. Rising quickly, into places I could no longer reach. I knew his number by heart, and I fed the change into the slot, punching in the correct sequence. Then I sat very still, on the bench, while the wires linked and connected. The phone rang several times.

Hello?

I gripped the receiver. For a second, when he answered, I just pressed the plastic hard against my ear. I was so overcome with thankfulness that (a) he existed, and (b) he was nearby, and (c) he actually picked up.

Hi, I said. It’s Rose. Edelstein, I added.

Rose, he said. I know your voice. Come on. I’m really glad you called. Listen-

George, I said. It’s not about today.

I handled it awkwardly, he said. I just; I mean-

George, I said, louder.

He must’ve heard the jangle in my voice, because he stopped.

What? he said. What is it? Is Joe okay?

I stared through the window of the next-door liquor store, past the low shelves of candy bars to the clerk standing behind the counter. He had wavy black hair, and was resting on the expensive glowing bottles at his back, reading a Forbes.

Can you come out? I said. I’m at the Jons.

Where?

On Vermont, I said.

Is he okay?

I didn’t answer. My throat had filled.

I don’t know, I said, after a minute. I’ll call my dad too. I’m at the Jons, I said again, watching as the clerk rubbed his eye and turned a page of his magazine, folding and tucking it behind the others.

Did he disappear again? George asked.

Yes, I said, low.

The grocery store door slid open and a couple in their twenties exited, in biker gear, his arm looped around her waist. She was stirring her straw around the bottom of a slushie.

George made a hmm sound, into the phone. Then he said not to worry, we’d been through this before, it would be all right, and that he’d be over right away.

Half an hour, okay? he said.

What’s wrong? I heard a woman’s voice ask him, from the background corners of his room.

I’ll be here, I said, dimly. In the phone booth, I said. Like Superman.

Then I called my mother and left a message on the workshop machine telling her to come home, and I called my father and spoke with his secretary. Is he there? I asked. It’s about my brother. Tell him to call his daughter, I said.

He’s almost done for the day, she said. Are you home?

No, I said. I’m at the grocery store. I peered at the pay phone’s number, written in faint pen by someone’s hand on a thin strip of rectangular paper, attached under glass to the chrome body of the phone. It was a dinosaur, this phone. Everything about it, including the fragile shaky pen markings of a human hand, seemed destined for extinction.

Just tell him to come to Bedford Gardens, I said. He’ll understand.

Then I hung up, and swiveled my body to face the parking lot, waiting.

To see someone you love, in a bad setting, is one of the great barometers of gratitude. Pasadena is twenty minutes east of Los Feliz, more with traffic, more on Fridays, and the parking lot of the Jons filled and emptied about five more times before George arrived, each car spilling out stranger after stranger with a need for groceries. A willowy woman with long gray hair. A compact man in a three-piece blue suit. A shaggy guy with tons of piercings. All wrong. With every unfamiliarly shaped person that drove up, my jitteriness increased. I wanted, desperately, to match up my memory with the parking lot’s contents, and every new combination of nose, eyes, and mouth that stepped out was an affront to that hunger. If I’d even seen a neighbor, or my old flute teacher, or the lady who sold us bread at the bakery, I would’ve run out of the booth and hugged them. It’s me, Rose, Rose, I would say. Rose.

I sat very still, in my glass booth. Hands folded in my lap. A mildew smell drifted over from the yellowing pages of the phone book. When, finally, George drove up in an old gray VW Bug, his hair matted, glasses on, stubble on his cheeks, wearing old jeans and sandals and a T-shirt, at first I just watched him park, putting on the parking brake, opening the door, and I let the relief wash over me, because I knew how he was supposed to look and there he was, real, looking exactly like that.

Hey, I said, standing, waving from the phone booth. He walked over with a stride of seriousness. We hugged. This, the gift of the steelworkers and the wire operators who had installed the poles that crossed the city. He smelled of fresh-cut apples, and sureness, and my head rested into the nook of his neck. After a minute, he pulled back, hands grasping my shoulders, and asked me what happened. I didn’t know how to answer, so I just said that my dad was on the way and Joseph had vanished-that I’d seen him and he seemed off and I’d gone for the phone to make a call and ten seconds later, when I’d returned, he was gone. George nodded, listening. We left his car parked in the lot and exited the store area to walk over to the apartment building. When the light at Vermont turned green, we stepped into the street and George grabbed my hand and the ghosts of our younger selves crossed with us.

31

By the time we arrived at the front entrance of Bedford Gardens, my father was angling his car into a narrow parallel spot on the street. His office wasn’t far, and it was past the worst traffic time now, so he’d just taken Sunset west as soon as his secretary passed along the message. Once the car was set evenly between bumpers, he unfolded himself out of it, in his usual lawyer suit, navy blue with faint gray stripes, and that black-and-gray hair, as imposing as ever. He wiped his forehead down as if to pat his thinking into place, nodded a hello to George and then came up and hugged me tightly, closer than usual, his hands broad paddles on my back.

It’ll be okay, he said, when he saw my face.

Gone, I said, stupidly.

He peered up the stairs, into Bedford Gardens. From street level, all the lights in the building seemed to be out.

He’s not there, I said.

How about this, said Dad, patting for his wallet. Let’s grab some food first. And you can tell us what you know. We’ve been through this before. Beth said you sounded awful on the phone, he said. He looked at me closely, eyebrows low. You don’t look great, he said. Did he hurt himself? he asked.

No, I said. No blood.

Drugs?

No drugs, I said.

But my voice was so quiet and faltering that I walked shoulder to shoulder between the two of them, up the blocks, as if they were bodyguards protecting me from the elements of street and store. I was still wearing the same T-shirt and jeans I had worn to school, and I had no sweater, so, halfway up the walk, my father took off his suit jacket and handed it over without a word.

We passed diners, and book buyers, and smokers, and moviegoers.

At the doorway of a French café near Franklin, we turned as a trio and entered. It was a small place with an uninviting stone façade, but inside, the room was warmly lit, with deep-red walls and a dangling gilded dimmed chandelier and menus so tall I could hide my head behind them. At the back counter, several people wound around stools sipping from half-glasses of wine for the weekend wine-tasting, as advertised on the large chalkboard over the bar. The three of us settled into a booth.

Sit, Dad said. He got up and spoke to a waiter, who brought us each a glass of water. Dad pushed his over to me. Drink, he said. George waited, hands folded, across the booth. It was as if the two of them had decided telepathically not to ask me anything until we were settled. Dad returned to the waiter and whispered more. He strode back and forth between the two sides of the room with ease. I admired that stride; it was like he folded space in two with it. I rarely saw him so focused on a task like this: this father of the checklists and the special skill, the one who had made the stool, so many years ago.

He’s good, George said, watching, nodding. He was pulling at the skin on his thumb. I dug in my pocket, found a ponytail holder, handed it over.

George reddened. Thanks, he said. In seconds, he had it wound around his thumb and was pulling on the elastic.

Did you call Mom? Dad said, returning to his spot.

I sipped the cool water. The waiter returned with an egg-brown mug of hot water and a basket of tea options.

Drink that too, said Dad. You’re shivering.

I left her a message, I said, pulling out a peppermint tea bag. It’s late there, so she probably won’t get it till morning.

It’s good you were there, Dad said, accepting his own coffee mug, wrapping his hands around it.

She told me to go, I said.

Your mom did? George asked.

She called this afternoon and asked me to check on Joseph, I said. She was worried.

Dad exhaled loudly. Closed his eyes. She’s right about half the time, he said, shaking his head. It’s confusing.

And there, in our corner, while the waiter stepped over with his pad of paper, he laughed a little.

After we ordered, I told them both the story in detail, except for what I’d seen with the chair legs. I did not explain any of that, as it did not feel to me in any way explainable. My father listened intently, still warming his hands on the thick porcelain of his coffee mug.

So it’s the usual, he said. He stared into his drink, thinking. Right?

I guess, I said.

Then why are you so shaken up? Dad asked.

Good question, said George, twanging his thumb.

I rolled the tea bag envelope into a tube. Steam rose in flourishes from my mug.

I don’t know, I said, unconvincingly.

George raised his eyebrows. Traced the table’s wood grain with his fingers. He seemed to be feeling the missing words, the gap, and he looked at me keenly, as if to make a bookmark for later.

A steak frites arrived for George. A jambon sandwich for my father. I was waiting on an onion soup.

Start, I said.

My father tilted his head, like it didn’t all fit together. His baguette sandwich was wrapped in white butcher paper and halved on the bias. He pushed it aside.

Let’s just go over it again, he said, shaking a raw-sugar packet into his coffee. You called George when?

After, I said.

And the window was open? Dad asked.

When I left the room, the window was open, I said.

And when you returned?

It was still open.

And did you call George then?

Shortly after, I went to the store and called George, I said. Joseph’s phone doesn’t work, I said.

I think it was around seven-fifteen, George said, eating a French fry. Fry? he said.

Dad took one, distractedly.

I’m just trying to understand, Dad said. He emptied three more sugar packets into his coffee. Stirring. He only ate that much sugar when he was really trying to focus; once, during the research phase of a difficult case, he’d gone through fourteen bars of chocolate in one weekend.

So what did you do right then? he asked. He leaned forward, intent. In addition to the medical dramas, he also enjoyed a lot of cop shows.

Right when?

Right when you walked back into the room. He was gone then?

Yes.

Did you go to the window? Dad asked.

From the booth, I looked through the café window to the street, to the faint shine of a silver bumper, parked at a meter. People walking by in blurs.

No, I said.

No?

No.

Why not?

I don’t know, I said. I was upset.

Did you look around the room?

No, I said.

Really?

He wasn’t in the rest of the room, I said, looking back at him.

How could you tell?

I just could.

I would’ve looked around the room, said Dad, swallowing his coffee.

Sweet enough? I said.

He lowered his eyebrows. Excuse me?

I heard nothing, I said. He wasn’t in the room.

I took a quick look outside the building, George offered, cutting into his steak. Nothing.

So what did you do then? Dad asked.

I crumpled a little, into my corner of the booth. He wasn’t there, I said.

I just think it’s strange, that you didn’t look out the window, Dad said, sitting back and crossing his arms. That’s the first thing anyone would do, he said.

Sir, said George.

I looked later, I said.

And?

Zip, I said, wrapping his suit jacket more tightly around me.

Dad peeled the white sandwich paper off into a curl.

No one seemed bothered by the fact that the window was fairly small, and would be very uncomfortable to climb out of. No one seemed to ask questions or take into account the fact that the ivy bushes, below the window, were intact, and did not seem to have taken on the weight of a body. The window was the only possibility, so, according to my father, Joseph had somehow wriggled out the window and floated down, falling gracefully. He had avoided the bushes, or had puffed them back up before he ran off fleet-footed into the night. It was a good image for my brother. A man all in black, a kind of night thief, the type who would jump freight trains and end up on an island somewhere, king.

Dad gave a definitive pat to the curved red sections of the booth vinyl. Then he bit into his sandwich. Okay, he said, chewing. I’ll stop. I’m sorry.

I started to shake again. A tremor moved through me, visibly, like an earthquake.

George pushed the mug of tea closer. Hey, he said. Drink more.

He’ll be back, Dad said. He touched my hand. He always comes back, he said.

My soup arrived. Crusted with cheese, golden at the edges. The waiter placed it carefully in front of me, and I broke through the top layer with my spoon and filled it with warm oniony broth, catching bits of soaked bread. The smell took over the table, a warmingness. And because circumstances rarely match, and one afternoon can be a patchwork of both joy and horror, the taste of the soup washed through me. Warm, kind, focused, whole. It was easily, without question, the best soup I had ever had, made by a chef who found true refuge in cooking. I sank into it.

Good, I murmured.

George kept refilling my mug with hot water from the teapot and passing it over.

We ate in silence. After, at the register, my father insisted on paying for George’s steak. As we left, the cooks waved thanks from the kitchen, through the flash of a swinging white door.

32

Prospect Avenue was busy by now, night-dark, the half-moon directly above, silvering a sweep of clouds. After George answered a few perfunctory university questions for my father, the three of us walked quietly back to Bedford Gardens, past the coffee shop now milling with people arming up with caffeine to face the evening ahead. Past the rows of houses built in the twenties, with rickety porches and wooden support pillars next to Spanish-tile courtyards and red-tiled roofs. Past the old church on Prospect and Rodney, where sometimes I spied groups huddling on the outside steps with coffee cups. A family of palms: squat, medium and spindly tall. The other trees above us, figs and plums, gleamed in the moonlight, reaching tangled branches up.

At the building, my father gave me a hug. I asked him if he wanted to run up and check out the apartment, but he said no, to my surprise. It’s not a hospital, I said, but he just squared his eyes onto George. You’ll double-check? he said, and George nodded. We walked him to his car. I told him I’d be home soon. I just have to get my stuff, I said. He shook George’s hand firmly. Good, he said, out of nowhere. George and I stood together, watching him go. All around us cars rumbled by, slow, always hunting for parking spots, and as soon as my father’s brake lights glowed red, another car clicked on its blinker to claim the space.

George, who had been unusually quiet during the meal, waited for my lead, and after a few minutes we turned from the street and walked into the courtyard area of Bedford Gardens. I couldn’t face the stairs yet, so we stopped at the first level, right by the mermaid fountain with its stop-and-start flow of water. The stone mermaid rested on a rock, holding a tilted bucket, and that’s what the water came from: a steady stream out of her bucket, back into the sea. The fountain itself, although broken, was framed by a nice stone wall, where we sat down. The stones in the wall were damp, but I didn’t mind. The sensation of water creeping into my jeans was uncomfortable but far easier than the whole experience of sitting in that restaurant and trying to describe most of what had happened.

Hey, Rose, George said after a few minutes, pulling a portion off a nearby banana leaf.

Yeah?

He turned to me. The courtyard was dark, except for exterior lamps from a few of the apartments, casting a faint hum of light onto the cement. Heels clicked by, down the sidewalk. With care, George systematically ripped out the green parts of the banana leaf sections, leaving the veins and skeletal structure intact. He worked on it, concentrating. Even with his usual surprised eyebrows, even slightly mussed and tired, he looked almost unbearably handsome to me.

He let out a breath. Nothing, he said. Sorry.

What?

I could see his mind shift over to another subject. When’d you dye your hair? he asked.

I touched an end. It’s just an experiment, I said. Last month.

Suits you, he said. How’s school?

The usual, I said. You?

It’s good, he said. Nodding, to the leaf. I may be going to Boston in the summer, he said.

Boston, I said, vaguely.

MIT, he said.

We faced out, to the entrance. People strode by in hurries. I could feel George’s body there, so close to mine, so warm and living, and in a distant way I remembered Eliza’s party and realized I’d never told her if I was going to go or not. Something came up, I thought, practicing. George dragged a hand through the fern fronds framing the fountain, the ferns that thrived from the on-and-off drip of the mermaid’s bucket.

Thanks for coming today, I said. Really. I can’t really thank you enough.

Oh, he said. Please. I’m so glad you called me. And I was glad to hear from you earlier, really-

I reached over to his part of the wall. The stone blocks. Not quite touching, just closer. I wanted to grab on to him desperately, but not in a very good way. More like I wanted to get rid of us both for a couple hours.

We miss you, out there in Pasadena, I said.

He nodded.

We, I said. Me.

– .

So.

So.

Boston, I said.

Can you tell me, he said gently, what you saw?

I lowered my head. No, I said.

Try, he said.

I made faint slashes in the air. I don’t know how, I said.

But there’s stuff you didn’t say, he said.

I kept my eyes on the cement. A cracked fissure began at the base of the fountain wall and then crossed the courtyard like a fixed bolt of lightning.

George peered up, at the apartment. Shadows crossed our feet, bouncing shapes from the movement of the ferns he’d touched. Leafy light frondy patterns, shot through with the upstairs lamplight that sifted through the courtyard.

Should we just check, inside? he said.

I pictured my mother, getting the message in the morning, heading to the airport, a small one in Nova Scotia, blistering with worry, transferring as many times as was necessary.

Why does she have a bucket? I said.

Who?

The mermaid, I said. Does she really need a bucket?

He stood. Come on, he said. Let’s go in.

33

At the top of the stairs, we stopped at Joseph’s door.

What’s this? George asked, pushing on the edge of the bed.

His, I said. It’s been out there for weeks. He said he wanted to sleep on the floor.

Huh, George said.

The phone receiver was on the bed. And this?

I put it there, I said. You can see, it’s broken.

I hadn’t locked Joe’s door, so an easy push opened it up, and we stepped inside, into the darkness. Shadows of the furniture in the same places, all things still and inert. The depth of that emptiness. If we’d walked in and found Joseph facedown on the carpet just then, as my mother had discovered him just a couple months earlier, it would’ve been cause for celebration. But the vacant sound of the place, like it was just waiting to produce an echo, hollowing out, cultivating its hollows, only made me want to turn around and leave.

George brought the phone inside and did the obvious, which I had not even considered, which was to check the base, by the kitchen.

Unplugged, he said. He stuck the cord back into the jack and returned. Took my hand again.

Which way’s his room? he said.

He seemed a little nervous, suddenly.

Haven’t you been here before? I asked.

He shrank a little, into his shoulders. Early on? he said. But it’s been a while, he said.

We walked down the hall, together. Other than the afternoon times with Eddie, I was rarely anywhere alone with a guy, let alone this guy. Something I had wanted for so many years, for my younger self, my current self-this time with George, in an empty apartment, holding my hand! Felt distant now, like something I’d seen in a photograph, or read about in someone else’s diary. Instead, it was like we were stepping one foot at a time over the wooden boards of a suspension bridge. He squeezed my hand, and I held on to his tightly.

Joseph’s bedroom door was still open at the end of the hall, so it was just a few steps more to enter, and once inside, to my father’s invisible pleasure, George let go of my hand and stepped right up to the open window and looked around and down.

I stayed in the doorway. Looking at the table. The open laptop. The chair.

George closed and opened the window, and then did a full exploration of the room: the closet, with its plaid shirts and boots, the pencils on the nightstand, the page of the New York Times glowing on the laptop, once woken up.

Why’d he give up the bed? he asked, standing in the open rectangular space next to the nightstand.

I don’t know, I said. Something about his back.

I wonder if he was sleeping in here at all, he said, pulling on the ponytail holder on his thumb. There’s no sign of anyone sleeping on this carpet.

I stepped closer, to George. The room had, in its heavy bareness now, the same full eerie thick feeling I knew so well from years and times earlier.

So, George said. His face was steady, focused, watching mine, trying to ease things for me. Why don’t you try to show me, he said.

I shifted, in my spot. Let out a breath. My voice felt too full to use at any length, so I just pointed to the card-table chair, at the desk.

There, I said.

George, watching me carefully, sweet beautiful George, went over to the chair and sat in it. Then he looked up at me, expectantly. What else would a person do? If someone points to a chair and says, There, the general response, like George’s, would be to assume that there is something else coming and, in the meantime, sit down. It is something we, people, say: You’re going to need to sit down for this one.

So then he sat right on the evidence.

No, sorry, I said, smiling a little. Stand up, I said.

He nodded. Stood. Okay. Yes?

I reached for his arm and pulled him right next to me so that we both faced the desk. I linked my arm with his, close.

There, I said. There.

Is a chair, George said. And a table.

That’s what happened, I said.

I don’t understand, said George.

I kept pointing. I held on to his sleeve. There, I said.

The chair is somehow connected to Joseph?

Yes.

Can you say more?

No, I said.

Why not?

I put a hand on my forehead. The words lived lower. Below words.

I don’t know how to say it, I said. He’s gone in, I said.

He’s sitting?

No, I said.

He’s in a wheelchair?

No, I said.

He’s turned into a chair? George said, lavishly.

Ah! I said, and my eyes grew hot and full, and he heard the tears, and glanced over, fast, taking my hands.

Rose? he said, confused.

Just don’t move, I said. For a second. Please.

Outside, car locks beeped on, and I closed my eyes and held one of his hands between my own, so warm, his fingers just bigger than mine, that dry warmth I remembered from years before, from our walk to the cookie shop. How his hand had been a lifeline then, too. For many minutes we just stood and breathed next to each other, closer than usual. I could smell that familiar fruit scent of his soap, and his T-shirt, fresh, just recently washed in the laundry.

I don’t understand, he whispered.

I laughed a little, under the closed lids.

Me neither, I said. Not at all. Please, I said.

My whole self, calling out: Just now. Just once. Forget all of it. Just now. Don’t step back. Please.

Rose-he said.

And he didn’t move, closer or farther, and I didn’t either, but it was as if a light wind lifted through the window and pushed us just the few extra inches needed. Then the elbows, the shoulders touching, and his arms circled around me, and we held each other close, and I moved my face up to his, my forehead to his cheek, and I was the scared teenager then, and we kissed, a kiss horrible in its pity, or worry, but beautiful because it was George and I’d wanted to kiss him ever since I could remember. Just soft, just lips on lips, just kissing, light. His mouth tasting of sunshine and focus and rumbling adulthood.

It was like we were re-setting the room, together. A room that held nothing inside it now holding two who had known each other through years. It was coaxing and invitation and there was a terrible sweetness to all of it, in the awakeness of my face, and his fingers, and the brushing and gripping of hands on shoulders and faces and backs and in how all the roads had already forked. The surge built and lifted, and I moved into him closer and he pressed into me, and it was turning a corner, heading down new and urgent byways, driving, gravity pulling us lower, but then both of us began to stop it, slowed everything down. Moved our faces apart. Kissing slowly, slower. Pauses. Embellishments. Punctuation. I held on to his arms, tightly. Remember this, I thought. He stayed close, and held my face, and shoulders, and touched the back of my neck, and for what felt like over an hour, we just stood with each other, with hands and lips and skin and quiet.

Thank you, I said. I kept my eyes closed. No one saw that happen, I said. Not even me.

Me, he said.

34

When my mother arrived on Sunday, twelve hours of travel from Nova Scotia to Newark to L.A., we hugged at the door and she kept framing my face in her hands, placing it, as if to make sure it was me. She tried to soften the worry lines pressed into my forehead, but instead, as if drawn by an undetectable marker, they just extended from my forehead onto hers. It bothered her, that I was upset. Usually, like my father, I took Joseph’s disappearances in stride and just waited out the time till he returned. Still, she did look rested from her trip, her cheeks red and glistering from the brisk stirrings of winds out east.

We stood facing each other in the front hallway.

Thank you, she said, for checking. She pressed on my shoulders. Her eyes changed. Listen-she said.

I shook my head. No need, I said. There are bigger things to worry about. I’m not going to say anything.

She kissed my cheek fervently, gratefully, left her tears there. Then picked up her purse and said she was going to drive out quickly to Bedford Gardens to confirm it all.

I listened as her car drove off and then walked around the house. I had trouble standing still. I thought of calling someone-Eliza, even Sherrie-but the only person I really wanted to talk to was George and I already felt like I’d asked too much. I didn’t feel like calling Eddie. So while Mom was at Joseph’s, and Dad settled down to watch the opening chapter of a Civil War miniseries, I found my way to the kitchen. Windows swiveled open, tabletops clear. A head of garlic was resting alone on the counter, so I dug in my thumb and pulled it into sections. Pressed the heel of my hand on the side of a broad knife to smash down each clove. Peeled papery white layers off the firm yellow centers. Minced.

My mother hadn’t seen the bed out on the balcony, and when she came back, she was too agitated to cook, so I said I would do it. I’d already started. As Dad spoke to her in low tones in the next room, I salted a pot of water for spaghetti. I opened a can of good tomatoes, and added it to the chopped garlic and onion sizzling in olive oil. It was the first time I could remember making a whole meal, start to finish. As best I could, I kept focused on the task at hand, and as I chopped parsley into small wet green bits, I just tried to let the ingredients meet each other, as I had tasted in the onion soup.

Dinner’s ready, I said, after an hour. My father stepped in, prompt, stretching, and my mother wandered in with weary eyes and set the table. Her shoulders heavy. I placed a bowl of grated Parmesan cheese in the center of the table and served everyone a bowl of spaghetti with marinara sauce. Dad rubbed my hair like I was a little kid; Mom opened a bottle of wine. They picked up their forks and folded into their bowls and ate quietly. I watched them eat for a few minutes, and then my mother asked if I was going to join them, so I felt the narrowness of the corridor and picked up my fork and twirled the pasta around it. The first full meal I’d made on my own. My hand shaking a little as I bit in.

The sauce was good, and simple, and thick.

Sadness, rage, tanks, holes, hope, guilt, tantrums. Nostalgia, like rotting flowers. A factory, cold.

I pressed the napkin to my eyes.

It’ll be okay, said Dad, patting my hand.

Once, during the meal, my mother looked up. Her eyes were wet. You made this?

Yes.

It’s good, Rose, she said. It’s filling. Where did you learn to cook?

Nowhere, I said. I don’t know. Watching you?

Have you been practicing?

Not really, I said.

They each had two helpings. I ate four bites of mine.

My father cleared his own dish, rinsed it and left the room.

My mother stayed at the table. Waves of worry about Joseph broke over her as she ran fingertips beneath her eyes.

We sat together, for a while, at our place mats. I tried to stay calm, after those bites. I hardly understood most of it.

When she stood up, moving more slowly than usual, we did the dishes together, washing the red streaks down the drain, spooning leftovers into bowls. I checked the pasta box ingredients to see what factory I’d tasted but nothing seemed to match.

Mom finished rinsing and drying the silverware. The lavender-scented dish soap, a pure clear purple. Outside the kitchen window, lamplight glimpsed off a dog collar as a neighbor toured the sidewalks, pulling the leash.

She squeezed out the sponge to dry and placed it on the aluminum bridge between sink sides. It seemed she’d forgotten I was there.

Where are you? she whispered out the window, into the night.