The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

35

I lived at home throughout what would’ve been my college years. I did not go to college. I worked first as a tutor for middle-school kids and then as an administrative assistant at a commercial company that produced cable TV ads. All those smiling people my father and I watched as we sat together paid my bills.

While Eliza and Eddie and Sherrie cycled through the dorms, and the dorm cafeterias, I took down my high-school movie-star posters and replaced them with landscapes and painting prints. I moved the weatherworn marriage stool into the closet and packed my dolls and high-school books in larger boxes and settled those in the garage. It was probably better for me anyway, to go simpler, to avoid the drama of the dorm cafeterias entirely, but mostly I stayed at home because Joseph was gone.

After my visit to his apartment, he did return, one more time. My mother had been driving over every day, several times a day, and on the sixth afternoon she found him facedown again on the floor of his bedroom, starfished. He’s back! she sang to us all, on the phone, from his place. He’s alive! She sat with him at the hospital, kissing his hands, drenched in reprieve, and my father nodded as if he’d known it all along, and more calls were made and fanfares blown, but I did not feel any relief. Doctors came and tested him extensively and my father called up experts and called in favors, but once Joseph was released he only stayed a few more days. As soon as he had an hour alone in his apartment he disappeared again and did not come back. There wasn’t even time to decide if he could stay at Bedford on his own anymore-he went there for a few hours to pack up books for school and Mom had to get groceries for dinner and that was it. To me, this was not a surprise; the act of seeing him there, changing, had been enough to point towards the inevitable future. Whether or not he returned once or twice or three times more, he was headed in, or into, away, and what I’d seen that day was a certain harbinger. The most sobering moment of my life.

When he did return that one time, pasty, exhausted, more drained and dehydrated than ever, refusing to comment, I went once to the hospital to visit, and that was the last time I saw him.

My mother still drove to his apartment every day, on her way to the studio. To check. He loved this apartment, she said, paying the rent and kissing the envelope fold before dropping it into the mailbox. He will return here, she said, when we drove past. She kept up the lease even though the rows and columns in the red leather ledger advised her otherwise. After six months went by, my father tried to convince her that Joseph knew where we lived-on Willoughby-and that he would come to his primary home first, but she raised her eyebrows when he started talking about it and walked right out of the room. Sometimes in the middle of a conversation about Joseph she would walk out of the room and then out of the house itself and we’d hear her car drive off. I never saw her grab any keys. I think she took to leaving them in the ignition, dangling, like a getaway.

On nights when she was home, in the TV room, huddled close to my father and that red leather ledger, muted television colors making stained-glass shapes on the carpet, he whispered into her hair about investing the rent money for a future day when Joseph would come back and need his savings.

Not yet, she said, sitting straighter. I feel he’s returning soon, and he’s going to want that place. I felt it strong today, as I was driving home, she said.

She ran her fingertips over the ballpoint-indented numbers, as if they could swirl into a code and tell her where to look.

It was the landlord who finally said no; he wanted to re-do the apartment appliances, and when he found out no one seemed to be living in apartment four at Bedford Gardens, he called up my mother, annoyed. She made up a story about how Joseph was attending graduate school back east in anthropology but that he loved the apartment for his times in L.A. and wasn’t it better to have a scarce tenant? The landlord, suspicious about sublets, asked her to move out, and so, on an overcast chilly Monday, I took the morning off work and my mother and I loaded all the items from Joseph’s apartment into the same green Ford truck she’d borrowed from the lumberyard long before. There wasn’t a lot to pack. Inside, the apartment itself looked just like how I’d seen it last-even the same distant smell of starch still hovering in the kitchenette.

I felt uncomfortable being there, so I kept an eye on his stuff, standing at the edges like a bodyguard, and in each room, my mother wept. She stood at the window in his bedroom, holding the edge for support, like a painting for the neighbors who might look up from their worlds. She stood at his bedroom closet for a while, as if trying to find a secret trapdoor he’d built into the wall leading to a nest he’d made in the insulation of the building. As if he was king of some underground citadel and commanded all the moles and rats.

I had this dream last night, she told me, as we closed the door and walked down the stairs to the full truck. Into clean fresh air. She pocketed the spare key. Downstairs, I’d loaded the folding table and chair into the cab, behind the seats, so they could not be snatched out of the truck bed or fall out on a bumpy turn.

I dreamed he was surfing in Australia, she said, settling into the driver’s seat.

She turned on the ignition. Her profile was calm, a little worn, with just the faintest lines at the corners of her mouth pulling down. She faced me. Is it ridiculous? she said.

I pulled Grandma’s old bamboo salad bowl into my lap. My other hand behind the seat, holding everything steady.

I bet he’d like it, I said. I heard you can see millions of stars there.

She pulled away from the curb and drove for a while. It felt good, to leave. As she drove down Sunset, I learned the intricacies of the bamboo bowl, which was cracking on the side and had a bump on the uphill northern slant. Boxes slid in the truck bed, to and fro.

At a red light near Western, Mom turned to me. Her face drained of expression.

Rose, she said. Listen. We never finished this discussion. I want you to know. I’ll break up with him if you want me to, she said.

With Joseph? I said, tapping the bowl, smiling a little.

Her forehead creased, confused. I feel terrible that you found out about it at all, she said. I’ve tried to be so discreet-

You’ve been very discreet, I said.

She bowed her head. More tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and fled past the borders of her sunglasses.

You really don’t think your brother left because of this? she said. I can’t help but think it. You found out, maybe he found out-

I ran my fingernail along the crack in the bamboo bowl. Mom, I said. It wasn’t news. I’ve known since I was twelve, I said.

She stared at me.

Twelve?

Twelve, I said.

She counted aloud, numbers I didn’t understand. But that’s the year it started, she said.

I patted the bowl, in agreement.

Did somebody tell you?

No, I said.

Did you overhear something?

No, I said. Just a good guess, I said.

The light turned green.

You were always like that, as a kid, she said wonderingly, pausing. You would come hug me just exactly when I needed a hug. Like magic.

Mom, I said.

I love your father-

Mom, I said. It’s okay.

Cars honked behind us. She reached over to my cheek, my ear, touching my hair.

Go! yelled a car.

She moved along. A driver zoomed past and gave us the finger.

Look at you, tough guy, I said.

What a daughter I have, she said, driving. Look at you. What an amazing, what a beautiful daughter.

I kept my eyes on the road. Hands in the bowl. It was convenient, how my own survival came across as magnanimous.

It wasn’t magic, I said. You always looked like you needed a hug. Hey, Mom, I said. Remember how you said that Joseph would guide you? As a baby?

She gripped the steering wheel. Yes, she said, her voice cracking.

Does he?

She wiped her cheek. What do you mean? Does who?

Larry, I said.

Larry, she repeated. His name new between us.

I watched out the window, waiting. Convenience stores and restaurants and guitar shops passing by.

Not like your brother, she said, slowly. But he has been very helpful.

Then good, I said.

He’s a nice man.

I don’t want the details, I said. But good.

I know it’s wrong, she said, falling back into panic, shoulders rising. I know I should give him up-

No one wants you to give him up, I said.

At the house, we unloaded the stuff onto the lawn. A few boxes of clothes and science books. The leftover furniture. The salad bowl, and some mismatched silverware and plates.

I lifted a box. Where shall I put it? I said.

His room, Mom said, exhaling. Please.

I stumbled through the front door, arms full. Joseph’s room was now Mom’s part-time; she slept many nights there, since she said it was a way to feel close to him when she was missing him particularly. The counters were crowded with her things: blouse piles, turquoise bathrobe, jewelry on his desk, makeup on the nightstand.

We marched back and forth, stacking boxes against his wall.

Mom liked to look at his posters, and peer in his desk drawers, but the other unspoken advantage to Joseph’s room was that oak side door she herself had installed so many years before. It had its own lock and key, so she could come and go as she pleased, and since she still slept in, I never knew anymore how many nights she spent at home. If my father was troubled by her new level of independence, he did not breathe a word about it. They were kinder with each other than I’d ever seen, talking in lower voices, sitting closer to each other on the sofa, but even so, I often woke up in the morning to find him hunched over, leaving a tray with a cup of tea at the base of Joseph’s door.

My father still seemed shockingly unaware of anything that was going on, but based on what I’d tasted, it had occurred to me that inside my mother was some kind of tiny hospital, and my father drove around that one as vigilantly as he drove around the big ones laid out on the map of the city.

He and I hadn’t talked anymore about where my brother might have gone. No more theories of windows and checking. No more jovial assurances that we were all over-worriers. He took up jogging to give those restless feet a purpose, and sometimes, a couple hours after dinner, I’d stand at the front door and see my father circling the neighborhood in darkness, in his old raggy Cal T-shirt and shorts. When he ran up the walk, drenched in sweat, in the yellow glow of the porch light I could see a redness around his eyes that was deeper, ruddier, than the redness in his cheeks. He kept a towel outside on the flower-box ledge, and he would wipe down his face and pat his hair neat before he stepped foot back into the house.

When all was unloaded, and the truck was empty, Mom pulled me close and kissed my cheek and flooded me with thank yous so many times and with such elongated emphasis that it only seemed to prove the need for Larry all over again.

I went to work. She drove the truck to the lumberyard. For weeks, Joseph’s boxes stayed exactly where we’d placed them against the walls of his room. Mom said she couldn’t bear to look inside, so over a series of evenings, daylight extending longer, I finally unpacked them myself. When I found clothing I washed and folded it and put it back into empty drawers; I shelved the books, and the one pot he’d used to cook up ramen joined all our other pots inside the kitchen cabinet. I put a few of Grandma’s items-the salad bowl, the movable lamp-back in the side room, where they began. I tossed old sundries, like rice and pasta. I left the Morehead folding chairs and table leaning against the side walls of his closet, and I feared for a day when my father or mother had a spontaneous fit of grief or terror and called up Goodwill to give it all away.

Let me know, I said, rinsing my hands of dust. If you ever want to give anything away. Just let me know, I said.

I won’t give anything away, said my mother.

Because of all this-all the goods crossing the household, all the resettling of room assignments, all the discussions in cars, all the nights of jogging-it wasn’t a good time for their only other child to leave home. We needed to be in the same house then, as a kind of checkpoint, or performance of permanence, and if my father didn’t actually call roll at the dinner table, ticking off a box for my mother, and then one for myself, it was only because he thought it would make him look like he couldn’t count.

All here! he said, on a regular basis, as we passed around the dishes.

36

Shortly after Joseph’s final disappearance, George packed up his own things and drove the three thousand miles across valley and slope in his chugging gray VW Bug to Boston. He was starting his graduate program at MIT, and for the first few months, he called at least once a week.

Any news? he always asked at the end, and I always told him no, no news.

We said goodbye, and have a good night, and talk soon.

After summer deepened into fall, after hearing about the mounds of work and lab time he’d been assigned, over the sounds of frantic rummaging at his desk and even, once, an alarm clock ringing, I sank down by the phone base in the kitchen and told him we were fine, that all was fine, in case he was just calling out of obligation.

The rummaging halted.

What do you mean? he said. I call because I want to.

I lined a pile of yellow phone books into a tower.

I mean, you don’t have to take pity on me, I said, getting the phone book corners all matched up. That’s gross, I said. You helped me so much, that day. Thank you.

Rose, he said. His voice was tinged with annoyance, and the activity sounds subsided as he settled into a chair. I don’t pity you, not at all. What are you talking about?

Outside, our neighbors turned on their sprinklers for a late-afternoon lawn watering. They were trying to grow an avocado tree from a sprouted pit.

Please, I said. George. I never expected anything more than the one time, I said.

Ping, ping, against the side windows.

Why not? he said, after a minute.

Why not what?

Why not expect more than the one time?

Water droplets smeared, on the windows. No one else home yet. I could just picture him sitting in his chair, listening. With his concentrated listening face. With the just-reddening October leaves outside. Elemental in our kiss, for me, had been its property of one-time-ness, which I had told myself even as it was happening: kissing George was a little like rolling in caramel after spending years surviving off rice sticks.

I mean, I said, in a small voice. Right?

Well, he said, louder, it was meaningful to me, he said. Okay? It was not nothing.

No, I said. I pulled the pile of phone books into my lap. For me too. I didn’t mean that-

I mean, I’m here, he said. You’re there. You should have your own life. I have my own life. That’s smart. But you’re Rose, he said. Okay?

I leaned my cheek on the top phone book. Five-thirty. Water pinging. Parents home soon. It had never felt so wrong to be having such a conversation in their house, an hour away from making dinner for my mother.

George, I said, as softly as I could.

Through the wires, his breathing quieted. For a few minutes, we just stayed there on the phone line, together. Stillness, on his end. I stared at the shelf of cookbooks across from the phone base and mind-moved the black garlic-cookbook to lie on top of the wider-based green pasta-book.

Hey, I said. So. I ate my own spaghetti, I said. I laughed a little. First time I ate anything I made, I said.

And? he said.

Big neon sign in there, I said. Big orange letters. Saying that I am not ready for George.

No, he said.

Nearly, I said.

That was the first time you ate your own food? he said. In all these years?

First time, I said.

And?

Tastes like a factory, I said, spitting out the word.

From where?

I don’t know, I said.

You mean that made the pasta?

I don’t think so, I said, mind-sliding the horizontal books shoved into the top of the shelf back into their vertical slots.

Huh, he said, and his voice stretched and moved upwards, as if he were standing. Well, you go figure that out, then, he said. I don’t want to call up to have a conversation with a factory. I do that enough with the automated bank guy.

Tall books at the sides, short books in the center. Wide books on the horizontal plane, leaning books straight.

I hate that automated bank guy, he said. Tioo, he said. That’s how he says two. Ti-oo.

You going out?

I guess, he said. There’s a study party.

Downward steps of cookbooks, gradated rows.

Okay, I said. Thank you. Good talking to you. Have a good night.

He grunted. Pity you, he said. Ridiculous.

When we hung up, I just sat in the chair for a while with those phone books in my lap. Heavy-weighted paper. All the shelving urgency dissipated. It had felt of utmost importance during the call, this re-shelving, something I was reminding myself to do just as soon as we were off, but now that the phone call was over the urge evaporated. It was comfortable, to sit. Something about being pinned to the chair by all those pages upon pages of phone numbers.

37

That year my brother disappeared, I knew very clearly what I could not do. I could not bear college, the ache packed in the assembly line of trays. I could not yet make the move out of the house. I could not buy a plane ticket to go see George and walk by his side hand in hand against a backdrop of brilliant yellow bursting sugar maples. Could not.

But there were things I could manage, smaller things, and so, on my own, I decided it was time to meet the various cooks of Los Angeles County and to find some useful meals that way. I would eat out as often as possible. This was about all I could handle, and it was the one important thing I figured I could do while living at home. There was a whole lot to consider, and some things need to be considered slowly.

Besides everything else, it had been no small surprise, the Sunday after Joseph disappeared, when I made that spaghetti dinner for my parents and ate it myself. There had been way too much to sort through right away, but I was left with two particularly disturbing first impressions. One was the sickly-sweet nostalgia, in the taste of a tantrum, the longing for an earlier, sweeter time with an aftertaste like a cancer-causing sugar substitute. And the second was that factory.

To taste a factory was not a big deal; I tasted them all the time. I knew them by name and often even by address. But I thought I knew all the factories in America, and the entrance of a new one in that meal had surprised me, a lot.

The day after I made the dinner, while my mother drove back and forth to Joseph’s apartment, checking with the police to see if she should file a report, while my father sat on the sofa and insisted aloud, during commercials, that all would be fine-fine-fine, I went to the kitchen cabinet and checked all the pasta boxes. Made in Ames, Iowa, or Fara San Martino, Italy. I knew these places so well-I could name them in a second in any restaurant meal-in the rigatoni, or macaroni, or sheets of lasagna. I reread the ingredients on the slab of Parmesan cheese, which were all fresh, and I walked over to the supermarket and asked at the customer service desk where they got their garlic and onions. I spent an hour in the back room of the market, which smelled of leafy greens and cold cardboard, going over shipping receipts with the customer service representative. She told me how she really wanted to sing in the opera.

At home, I made the same meal again. Both my parents ate it gladly, and as my mother drank her wine and explained how the co-op was being very supportive, I pretended to eat with them by clanking my fork and sipping my water and set aside a bowl for myself for later. When both parents were tucked into their various beds, sleeping, I heated the leftovers on the stove. Sat down at the table, alone.

That same unknown factory, again. Loud and clear, in the food. A machine-tinge I could not identify. Alongside a little-girl voice wanting to go back, to go back to a time with less information. Go back, said the little girl. Blank, said the factory. I steeled myself and sat at the table with a spoonful of pure sauce and tried to move as slowly as I could through all the layers of information, to the point where I thought I was practically feeling the farmer reach his hand down to pick the tomatoes, in Italy; I was nearly hearing church bells ringing through villages in San Marzano, but the tastes of the too sweet nostalgia and stone-cold factory kept returning in a metallic whir, and none of it matched any factory I’d known in my reservoir of factory tastes, which seemed only to indicate that it must’ve come from the cook.

It was like seeing that photo and not recognizing my own face. It was like lifting my brother’s pants and seeing the legs of the chair.

I did not like tasting that, no.

So it wasn’t as loud as a neon sign, maybe, telling me I wasn’t ready for George, but close.

While Eliza went through school, just as I’d imagined, with keg parties, and virginity losses, and tearful midnight talks with her roommate, and waning updates as the months and years passed, I spent my days working at the office, filing and making copies for other people, and every lunch I scanned the streets and consulted the stacks of those yellow phone-book pages to try out something new.

I started in our neighborhood, buying a pastrami burrito at Oki Dog and a deluxe gardenburger at Astro Burger and matzoh-ball soup at Greenblatt’s and some greasy egg rolls at the Formosa. In part funny, and rigid, and sleepy, and angry. People. Then I made concentric circles outward, reaching first to Canter’s and Pink’s, then rippling farther, tofu at Yabu and mole at Alegria and sugok at Marouch; the sweet-corn salad at Casbah in Silver Lake and Rae’s charbroiled burgers on Pico and the garlicky hummus at Carousel in Glendale. I ate an enormous range of food, and mood. Many favorites showed up-families who had traveled far and whose dishes were steeped with the trials of passageways. An Iranian café near Ohio and Westwood had such a rich grief in the lamb shank that I could eat it all without doing any of my tricks-side of the mouth, ingredient tracking, fast-chew and swallow. Being there was like having a good cry, the clearing of the air after weight has been held. I asked the waiter if I could thank the chef, and he led me to the back, where a very ordinary-looking woman with gray hair in a practical layered cut tossed translucent onions in a fry pan and shook my hand. Her face was steady, faintly sweaty from the warmth of the kitchen.

Glad you liked it, she said, as she added a pinch of saffron to the pan. Old family recipe, she said.

No trembling in her voice, no tears streaking down her face.

I bowed my head a little. I wasn’t sure what else to say. Thanks again, I said.

One of the dim-sum restaurants on Hill Street in Chinatown knew its rage in a real way, and I ate bao after bao and left that one tanked up and energized. An Ethiopian place on Fairfax near Olympic made me laugh, like the chef had a private joke with the food, one that had something to do with trains, and baldness. I didn’t even get the joke, but the waitress kept refilling my water and asking if I was okay.

I’m fine, I told her, holding my spongy injera bread packed with red lentils. It’s so funny!

She rolled her eyes, and brought me the check early.

My favorite of all was still the place on Vermont, the French café, La Lyonnaise, that had given me the best onion soup on that night with George and my father. The two owners hailed from France, from Lyon, before the city had boomed into a culinary sibling of Paris. Inside, it had only a few tables, and the waiters served everything out of order, and it had a B rating in the window, and they usually sat me right by the swinging kitchen door, but I didn’t care about any of it.

There, I ordered chicken Dijon, or beef Bourguignon, or a simple green salad, or a pâté sandwich, and when it came to the table, I melted into whatever arrived. I lavished in a forkful of spinach gratin on the side, at how delighted the chef had clearly been over the balance of spinach and cheese, like she was conducting a meeting of spinach and cheese, like a matchmaker who knew they would shortly fall in love. Sure, there were small distractions and preoccupations in it all, but I could find the food in there, the food was the center, and the person making the food was so connected with the food that I could really, for once, enjoy it. I ate as slowly as I could. The air around me filled with purpose. This was the flora of George’s road, and a swinging kitchen door meant nothing. I went over at least once a week, sometimes more, and my time in general was marked by silent sad dinners with my parents and then lunchtime or dinnertime visits to the café as a kind of gateway into the world. It was somehow fitting, that the place had come to my attention first on the night that Joseph left, me sitting across from George, soon to re-set the room with him, wearing my father’s suit jacket over my shoulders, shivering, trying to understand what I’d seen. The waiters recognized me on Fridays, when I came in at six. On Sundays, when I went over for lunch, while they served half-glasses of wine for tasting customers lounging at the back counter beneath the gilded chandelier.

I bought very few new clothes, and no new technology, and I paid no rent, and so I spent most of the money I made on meals. I allowed myself the extravagance of leaving a restaurant if I could not bear what I found on my plate, and instead did my father’s trick by asking for a to-go box and putting all the food inside it, with a plastic knife and fork, and handing it outside to someone homeless who did not have the luxury of my problem.

38

One afternoon, after a particularly amazing roast chicken, I paid my bill and circled around the outside of La Lyonnaise, finding my way to the kitchen door of the restaurant, a back entrance that opened up into a section of alley that housed a brown Dumpster and a pigeon family. I had the day off from filing. My mother had recently become co-president of the co-op studio, and was busy moving the massive piles of tools into a new loft building off Beverly, close to downtown. Dad at work. He’d gotten so into his jogging that he’d joined a group called Nightrunners that ran exclusively after dark to avoid excess car exhaust. He trained every night at home.

At the back of the restaurant I didn’t want to knock on the door; I just felt like standing closer to it, but after ten minutes or so, a small older woman with short dyed blackish hair opened up, holding a white plastic bag of garbage. She stepped out and picked her way carefully on the asphalt in her thin pink satiny slippers. Threw the bag in the Dumpster. Her face looked a little etched and weary, but her eyes were fresh. She stopped when she saw me.

Hello, she said. Delivery?

No, I said. Sorry. I’m just a happy customer.

Ah, she said, pointing. The front is that way.

I nodded. Yes, yes, I said. I know.

She stepped her way back through the alley and returned to the door of the kitchen. Pigeons burbled behind me. She too looked like a regular lady, living in the world-didn’t seem particularly with it or excitable or stellar. But that chicken, bathed in thyme and butter-I hadn’t ever tasted a chicken that had such a savory warmth to it, a taste I could only suitably identify as the taste of chicken. Somehow, in her hands, food felt recognized. Spinach became spinach-with a good farm’s care, salt, the heat and her attention, it seemed to relax into its leafy, broad self. Garlic seized upon its lively nature. Tomatoes tasted as substantive as beef.

At the door, she stood for an extra moment, looking to the side, and she seemed to be watching the squat palm tree in the house across the way as it swayed a little.

Are you Madame Dupont? I said, thinking of the small precise type at the bottom of the menu, with her name and Monsieur Dupont’s as owners and co-chefs.

She blinked, yes.

I love your cooking, I said. You make spinach taste like spinach, I said. I stumbled, embarrassed. Sorry, I said. I could go on and on. I don’t know how to say it right.

You’re saying it fine, she said. Thank you. She fiddled with the doorknob. Why are you in the alley?

I glanced around. Pigeons pecked at the trash. Could I work here, in some way? I asked. On weekends?

She craned her head forward, as if to hear me better. Brushed a little dirt off the step with her slipper.

As a waiter? she said. Waiters apply in front.

I shook my head. No, I said. Not that. Through the back door, I said. Through the food.

Sherrie flashed through my head, years-ago Sherrie, who I’d heard had gone on to sing old standards at piano bars in San Francisco.

Well, I suppose you could take out the trash, she said, reaching back into the kitchen and bringing out another full white bag.

Okay, I said, stepping forward.

Okay? said Madame. She handed it over. Patted her cheek. And we do need a Sunday and Wednesday dishwasher, she said. Our dishwasher just got a job in a movie. Playing a dishwasher.

Please, I said. I walked to the Dumpster and tossed the bag in. I’d love that, I said.

You love washing dishes?

I brushed off my hands. I would here, I said. I do.

39

Grandma died. In Washington. She checked into the hospital, prepared. For her final mailing, she’d given a priority-mail package to the head nurse with careful instructions and our address written on it in big black pen.

To the hospital, she brought a suitcase that contained her nightgown, pills, and pale-blue felt slippers. She died at ninety-one. Mom flew up to the funeral, assumed the ashes would stay in Washington, and arrived home around the same time as the package: pale-blue felt slippers, an empty bottle of pills, and a teak box with carvings of elephants on the rim, inside of which were the soft gray heaps.

Mom ran fingers over the half-circles in the elephant feet. She picked this box? she murmured. I made this box, she said. She turned it over and a few bits of ashes crept out the lid and sifted to the carpet. Sure enough, at the base: L.M.E. carved into a corner. It was the closest I ever got to seeing my grandmother give my mother a hug.

Mom kept herself very busy at the studio, and she did not mention Larry to me again. She made benches, stools, and trunks. Boxes, tables, shelves. No one could take out her splinters like Joseph had, so when Mom came home with clear hands, I never knew if Larry was doing it or if she had just started taking greater care as she worked the planes of wood. I’d never liked seeing my brother take the splinters out of her fingers, nestled up next to her on the couch, side by side, dipping into that bowl of water. For so many years I’d watched the two of them together and I often felt the urge to stay in the living room, like they needed some kind of chaperone. But as I chopped and baked and stirred and walked, they would float in my head, these splinters, new. Joseph had never carved any wood, but he was more connected to things than I’d realized, and by taking the splinters out of her hand, it felt to me now like he’d been almost pulling himself out of her. That at the same time of this very intimate act of concentrating so carefully on the details of our mother’s palm and fingertips, he was also removing all traces of any tiny leftover parts, and suddenly a ritual which I’d always found incestuous and gross seemed to me more like a desperate act on Joseph’s part to get out, to leave, to extract every little last remnant and bring it into open air.

I found the pair on the shelf of the medicine cabinet, the twelve-dollar tweezers with the angled sharp tips. I cleaned them in peroxide and brought them to a beauty supply shop on Melrose that did makeovers. Just in case you need a spare? I offered. The woman behind the counter eyed me suspiciously, but when she saw how nice the tweezers were, she shrugged and dropped them into her big box of makeup.

40

As my high-school peers went through their later years of college, I worked my free time at the restaurant and days at the cable TV office. Through the subtle shifts of Los Angeles seasons, a movement back and forth through forty degrees, and then through those subtle shifts again. During my free time, I continued to tour the kitchens of L.A. from Artesia to the Palisades. My old rival Eddie Oakley called up out of nowhere one summer evening and we went out a few times, finally having sex on his junior-year college-apartment medium-blue sheets. Cool, he said, patting my arm, afterwards. Full circle, he said.

I slept in his bed for a half-hour, just to try to imagine what it felt like to live there. With car clattering sounds below. With everyone nearby his own age, hollering down the hallways, feet running over a beer-splashed carpet.

On every Sunday morning and Wednesday night, I showed up at La Lyonnaise right on time and I parked myself in front of the sink and cleaned dish after dish after dish. Apparently I was the most grateful dishwasher any of them had ever met. I loved the job; I kept myself focused on clearing the plates, on rinsing the bowls, absorbed in the smells of the kitchen, of piles of chopped onions and rolling pins flattening pastry dough, next to the bubbling pots and sizzling pans, and it was good for me just to be there, to spend as much time there as I could.

At home, my mother no longer woke up in the middle of the night-possibly because she was not in the house at all-and if the living-room light flipped on at 2 a.m. it was my father, up, sometimes having come in from a late-night run. He did not drink tea, but he poured himself a glass of water and then settled into that same orange-striped chair, the vortex of late-night parental thought. I would often hear pages turning of some thickly bound book, and in the muted haze of half-sleep I wondered what he was reading.

George still called once a month or so, and first he had a new girlfriend, who he said was really nice, and then she was his regular girlfriend, and he said she really wanted to meet me, and then he called her his fiancée, and then, in the mail, I received the opalescent envelope invitation, inked in calligraphy. I sent back the little rectangular return card with an attempt at a happy face next to my name: Attending. Steak.

A skinny man at the office, Peter, asked me out. He worked down the hall, in marketing. What? I said, when he asked. I hadn’t noticed him much before, with his thick brown eyebrows and earnest voice. He repeated himself. He waited at my desk, squirming slightly, scratching his chin. I wasn’t sure what to do, and steely factories flashed through my mouth, uncomprehending, but I bit the side of my cheek and told him sure.

When he asked what I liked for dinner, I countered with a walk.

A walk? he said. Great.

Later that week, after work, we exited the office and walked up Gower together, across Fountain, up Vine to Franklin, crisscrossing past landmarks of Hollywood, churches, stone buildings, miniature landscaped parks. For full sections of the walk we had nothing to say. It wasn’t a shocker; at work, once I paid attention, it seemed he could not always maintain eye contact in the general social arena, and when asked about himself would go on about the wrong part of the question without even knowing. He spent the first ten minutes of our walk nervously explaining his latest shoe-purchasing experience to me, and then we just walked. I didn’t mind the quiet stretches. It was like we were trying out the idea of being side by side. We stared at the sidewalk as we went, but he did not ridicule me for living at home and not going to college, and when he asked about what I was interested in and I couldn’t come up with an easy answer he said it was a far more complicated question than it appeared. Up on Franklin, we had a good conversation about funny grandparents. We stood in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel and smelled the old stone pillars. I said it would be nice to see him again. At the end, near my car, I reached out a hand as a thank you, and he stumbled forward to kiss me. His arms pulled me close, and for a second, half a second, all his hitches fell away and he held me with what could only be called confidence. Then we both stammered through a goodbye and fled into the corners.

The next week, at the Lyonnaise café, washing plate after plate clean of the remnants of beautiful food, I finished a big stack and wiped my hands on a dish towel. Leaned against the kitchen door, peeking in the main room of the restaurant. At the bar, people were doing their usual wine tasting. A man had his nose in a glass, and was expounding at length about what he called the edge of leather he’d tasted in a Bordeaux. I listened in the doorway. Monsieur Dupont, a short man with a white mustache, refilled glasses. Do you taste the blackberry? he asked, and the woman with high white heels hanging off the rung of her stool nodded. Blackberry, she said, yes, yes.

41

I missed all the lead-up events and flew in to George’s wedding weekend late, on the redeye, ready just in time for the midday ceremony. Before the procession, a woman who knew the order of things pushed me out to sit on the correct side, and I moved down the split between rows of well-dressed people to sit with rows of men I did not recognize. These were new friends George had made since high-school time, wearing a high percentage of joke ties with their fancy suits, and I rested my eyes on bundles of purple and blue flowers as the bride, a red-haired botanist with graceful wrists, walked down the aisle in a dress that highlighted her flowiness, her movements as easy and natural as the ebb and flood of ocean foam.

Her whole face abloom with joy. George, fumbling with his hands, picking at his thumb, nearly dropping the ring.

I do, I do. A kiss.

Dust pollen swirling in the air as the two rushed back up the aisle.

At the luncheon, in a lantern-strewn rhododendron garden, I sat next to Grandma Malcolm, who kept adjusting her fringy yellow shawl and clinking her wineglass with mine. The band struck up its opening catchy number. I lifted my glass and ate my tiny crab cake and kept an eye on my watch to be sure to leave in due time to catch my night flight home.

Right before dessert, on their tour of the tables, George split from his bride and hurried over to me. We hadn’t had a chance to talk yet, due to all the flurry.

Look at you! he said, pulling me in for a hug.

It had been at least three years. He looked different, close up: rounder, in a nice way. Like the East Coast agreed with him, gave a little shape and formality to the looseness that was his natural tendency. His wire-rimmed glasses were more oval now, and he wore a belt like it was normal. He’d gained a few good pounds.

I gave him some generic wedding compliments, and he held out a hand. Come on, he said, dragging me up. You owe me a dance, he said, tugging me to the dance floor.

The string of outdoor lanterns had dimmed to a muted orange, and tables surrounding erupted in talk and laughter. I held on to his shoulder, stiff. The band singer sidled up to her microphone stand, cooing, and halfway through the song, George drew back and looked into my face.

What? I said.

Remember that cookie shop? he said.

With the clerk and his sandwich? I said. Of course. Remember when you had all-mistakes wallpaper?

He glowed, at me. I’m so glad you’re here, he said, squeezing my shoulder. You’re the representative, you. He trailed out his arm for a twirl. Still a factory? he said.

I faltered, at the end of his arm. I’d only mentioned it the once.

Getting a little better, I said, winding back in.

He hummed with the trumpet and held me close, and he felt so familiar and not familiar, so mine and not mine.

Hey, he said, remember that time when you came into Joe’s room and asked me about the food, what to do about it? he said.

I forget what you said, I said.

I said you might grow into it, he said.

I smelled his shoulder. New tuxedo, perfectly pressed fabric, the same old hint of fruit-scent detergent.

Are you asking if I’ve grown into it? I said.

I don’t know, he said. Have you?

We both laughed, awkward.

I have this job as a dishwasher, I said, feeling the warmth of his hand against mine. At this great place. You know it-remember that place we went to on the night Joe disappeared? With my dad? The French café? You had fries?

You’re a dishwasher? he said. Why aren’t you tasting stuff for them?

I just like to be there, I said. They give me free meals.

He did a dip. Nothing wrong with washing dishes, he said, bending his knee. It just seems like the wrong job, right? Do they know?

He pulled me up and winked at his bride, who was now dancing with her father across the room.

I watched as she blew a kiss back.

Do they know what? I asked.

He rolled his eyes.

Ugh, you Edelsteins, he said. Come on. It shouldn’t be some kind of secret, what you do. I know Joe was working on something, working hard-he showed me a few pages once, years ago, some of the graphs he was making. It was incredible work. Really. Unbelievable. Now, where does any of that go?

I turned to look at him directly.

Sorry, he said. Sorry. I don’t mean to be cold.

It’s not cold, I said. It’s true.

I mean-

George, I said, holding firmly on to his shoulder. Congratulations to you. Really.

The song was moving into its ending and his eyes split: half melted for me, and he thanked me, but my timing was mostly off and it just sounded like the standard ordinary wedding wish, and most of his thinking was still focused on my brother.

I mean, he’s as smart as any of these guys here, he said, waving his arm around the room. His voice curled up, angry.

He should be here, he said.

The band finished up the last notes of the song. Tables clapped, tiredly. Someone called for the cake, and George kissed my cheek and squeezed my hand and thanked me and gave me as much as he could in that moment until time and progress ripped him away and he returned to his bride, who welcomed him in her arms like he’d been at sea for weeks.

42

I arrived home late that night. With a certain quiet, that George was married now. Several hours of the flight I spent at the window, ignoring the movie flashing overhead, my forehead pressed to the glass watching the sun set and re-set over new bunches of clouds as we tracked its movement west. I’d missed the cake-cutting but I’d picked an evening flight so that I could get home in time to go to my Sunday-morning dishwashing, and although it had been important to go to George’s wedding, on the taxi ride to the airport I felt the crumpled paper that had taken the place of my lungs expand as if released from a fist.

When I got home, it was past eleven. Inside, I found my father, awake, sitting up in the orange-striped chair in the dark in his worn Cal T-shirt and running shorts. He held that glass of water in his hand, unsipped, which only served to reflect the room back to him, cylindrically.

Where’s Mom? I said.

Asleep. He waved towards Joseph’s bedroom.

You okay?

He didn’t really answer, just reached out a hand as a kind of welcome home. I went over to shake it.

How was the wedding?

Fine, I said.

Nice girl?

She seems nice, I said. Pretty, I said. I put down my suitcase and perched on the edge of the red brick fireplace.

In his lap, Dad had opened one of the old photo albums, the heavy pages corresponding to what I’d been hearing from my room. This surprised me; except for the garage sale story, he did not often dip into the past, and that one discovery of Brigadoon had been a rare reminder that he’d ever been younger than college.

What are you looking at?

Oh, he said. Just pictures of the family, he said. I couldn’t sleep.

I moved closer, to see better. I was glad he was up. I was still wound up from the trip and didn’t feel like going to bed yet, and through the dimness of a far outside light we could just barely make out the black-and-white squares of people from my father’s childhood. His mother, the dark-haired woman who used all parts of a chicken to feed her family. Uncle Hirsch, holding a football. Grandpa, out and about in town, with some kind of thing on his face.

Was he sick?

Oh, you know, Dad said. The strap.

What strap?

I’ve told you about the strap, he said.

No, I said. I peered closer. The piece of white cloth looked like it wrapped over the lower half of my grandfather’s face and tucked up and away from his mouth.

I used to tell him it looked like he was wearing underwear on his face, Dad said, shaking his head.

For allergies? I said.

I really never told you this?

What?

That he could smell people?

He could what? I said.

You sure?

I coughed, lightly. Um, yes, I said. Very sure.

He touched the photo with gentle fingertips.

My dad, Dad said, would walk into a store and take a whiff and he could tell a lot about whoever was in the store with that whiff. Who was happy, who was unhappy, who was sick, the works. Swear to God. He used to wear that thing on his nose, outside-my dad! Walking down Michigan Avenue with that thing on his face, to get himself a break.

He hit the photo page, as if he couldn’t believe there was a photo at all.

He was a good man, Dad said, such a good man. Truly generous. But can you imagine, going shopping with the guy? Once, I told him I didn’t want to be seen with him, got locked in my room for two days.

Outside, tree branches rustled in the wind. My throat tightened.

Never said such a thing again, Dad said.

Did he say what he smelled? I asked, very softly.

Pain, he said. He shrugged.

I loved the guy, he said, sitting back. Just loved him, but best when he was not wearing the strap.

I pulled the album closer. Looked at Grandpa, his eyes dark and serious above the cloth. Kind-faced Grandma. Little five-year-old Dad, wearing a bow tie.

He died at fifty-four, said Dad. Smelled death on himself, then he died.

He traced a finger around the square photo outlines.

I can do that, I said.

Do what?

I smoothed down the page, as if to push it all in.

You can smell people? Dad said.

With food, I said.

You can taste people?

Yeah, I said, not looking at him. Kind of.

He stared at me. No kidding, he said. You never told me that. Is it bad?

I laughed a little. It can be bad, I said.

Dad closed his eyes, rubbed his eyebrows. Huh, he said. Pop hated it too sometimes, he said, remembering. Hated it but also met some good people-we went into Sears one time and he took off the strap to sneeze and caught a whiff of this great guy, just a gem. Irv. Sweetest man, family friend for years. You can taste people? You mean you have to bite a person?

I smiled, down at the page. No, I said. I taste it in the food they make. Whoever cooks the food, like that.

He nodded, though his eyes were still shut and crinkled with puzzlement. He seemed to be churning through various permutations and skipping over a whole range of possible questions.

What a family, he said.

I returned to the photos, for something to do. Tiny Dad, wearing that little polka-dotted bow tie, his hands spread out to the sky.

Cute, I said.

He craned over to see himself. Ach, that tie, he said.

Together, we stared at that polka-dotted tie as if it was the most interesting clothing item in the world.

You know, I have no special skills, he said.

I remember, I said.

He sealed his mouth a little. Nothing like you or Pop, he said.

I turned the page.

I just have this hunch, he said. You know, I saw what it did, over years-that strap! Would you walk around town with a strap on your face all day?

He picked at his sleeve. Dad on Grandpa’s shoulders, trying to pluck a plum from the branches of a tree. Smiley little Dad, on a swing.

What’s the hunch? I asked.

Just, I imagine, he said, crossing his arms. That I might be able to do something in a hospital. I don’t know what. It’s too much, right? That if I went into a hospital something might come up, some skill. That’s all. Better not to find out, that’s what I say. Keep it simple! Keep things easy!

I didn’t move. Held myself very still.

What do you mean, something would come up? I said, slowing down my words.

Just, I could do something special, he said. In a hospital.

He pushed his lips together. The moon slipped down into the frame of the window and reached an arm of pure light through the glass.

You have no idea what it is? I said.

Not a clue, he said, evenly.

And it’s just a hunch?

Just a pull feeling I get, he said, shifting his seat on the chair. When I see a hospital. A feeling like I should go in. In, in, in.

I dug my hands into the hem of the armrest. My father, out of nowhere, taking shape.

And have you ever? Gone in? I said.

Nah, he said.

Never?

Not interested, he said. I spent time with a sick neighbor once and that was enough for me.

Did he get better?

She was going to get better anyway, Dad said, tapping a hand against his arm.

But did you help her?

I highly doubt it, he said. She was taking a lot of medicine.

I grabbed his hand. Well, let’s go! I said. Let’s test it-it’s late, so it won’t be crowded, and I’ll be with you every second, okay? What do you think? This could be great news! I mean, it might help, right? It might be useful information, for the world.

His body grew heavier, gained inertia, the more I pulled.

No, he said. I’m sorry, Rose. I saw what it did to my father. I’m not going in.

But I’ll stay right with you, I said, pleading. We’ll go in side by side, every second. It’s only a test. I won’t ever leave your side.

I tugged on his arm, harder.

What if it’s amazing? I said.

No, he said. Thank you, but no. His eyes drifted up to mine, stones. He patted my hand and gently extricated his arm from my fingers. His height, still heavying into the seat.

But maybe it could help me, I said.

He frowned. I don’t see how, he said. Food and hospitals are not the same.

He looked back down at the open book, to steady himself. In a long emphatic staredown with his baby self. I had to hold myself back from shoving him out of his chair. I wanted to push him in, somehow. To dump him in there, with a crane. To force. It seemed so unbelievably luxurious to me, that he had the option, that he could drive different routes, sit in his seat, thinking, pondering, never know, never have to find out.

Yours is all in the same place, I said, a little helplessly.

And?

I ruffled the weave of the chair arm.

Lucky, I said.

He tightened his lips, and the word lucky bounced around us, the wrong word, meaning nothing.

Rose, he said, flatly. I couldn’t even go in to see your brother, he said.

And with that, his face locked back into itself.

It was true; when Joseph had been checked into the hospital, Dad had stood outside the electric doors for over an hour, trying to take a step forward. Trying, and trying. I had walked by, on my way to go in. He’d kept a book in his hand to read, so that people passing by would think he had something to do.

You didn’t know that was the last time, I said, in a low voice.

But even if I had, Dad said.

For a while, we sat together with the nighttime, undernoted by the distant sound of cars slowing and accelerating, driving the lanes of Santa Monica Boulevard, Saturday night. Moonlight pierced the window. I thought about that trip to the ER, so many years ago, and the doctors standing above, telling me I could not remove my mouth.

I sank my head down on the armrest. I guess if mine were all in one place, I said, I might do the same thing.

He put a hand on my arm. His palm, cool.

Gotta eat, right? he said.

Right, I said.

And just as he said it, like a bird across the sky, my brother flickered through my mind, and although the thought was half formed, it occurred to me that meals were still meals, food still contained with a set beginning and end, and I could pick and choose what I could eat and what I couldn’t. And that my father’s was a hospital he could drive around entirely, and Grandpa seemed to smell mostly in stores, but what if whatever Joseph had felt every day had no shape like that? Had no way to be avoided or modified? Was constant?

I reached over to touch my father’s hand. His eyes found mine.

I’m sorry, he said, his eyes a little stricken.

He gripped my hand back, hard, and the scared light intensified for a second, blazed, then faded from his eyes. He rubbed his free hand over his face. Whew, he said.

Late, he said, in a new voice. He released our grip and clapped a steady hand down on my shoulder.

Time for bed, I said, sitting up on my knees.

He closed the album but he kept his hand on my shoulder and didn’t release it, and there were more words in that hand, keeping me there, a little more he wanted to say. It was like once he’d revealed one big thing he thought he might as well tell everything he possibly could. I could see the athlete’s urge in it, the sprinter’s impulse to throw all things terrifying into one moment and then go to bed and sleep it gone.

Just one more thing, he said.

You saw something that day, didn’t you, he said.

The ray of moonlight illuminated his face.

When? I asked, even though I knew.

He didn’t answer. I kept my head resting on the arm of the chair.

Yes, I said.

I don’t want to know what you saw, he said, placing the album on a side table. I just want to know one thing. Okay?

Okay, I said, in a small voice.

Is he coming back? he asked.

No.

He nodded vigorously, as if he’d prepared himself. He kept nodding, for a while.

That’s what I thought, he said. It’s been too long.

He pressed down on his forehead, as if to press the thought in there.

Did he say anything? That day in his apartment? Did he ask you for anything? At the hospital?

No, I said.

He wiggled his feet on the carpet. The silver stripes on his running shoes made glinty sparks in the moonlight.

Is he okay? he asked.

I don’t know, I said. I don’t know how to answer that.

He has some kind of skill? Dad said.

I closed my eyes. Yes, I said. Him too.

For a half-hour or so, my father pressed and wiggled. Shook and tilted. Pushed the news around his body like a pinball had fallen in there and was dodging around his bones and tendons. It was too much for me to watch or think about, so I kept my eyes closed and slept a little.

Finally, I woke up when the moon had lowered enough to send a fresh ray onto the chair and side table, lighting up the gilded print on the front of the photo album, which said Photo Album. My father sat alert, still and calm again.

I unwound myself from the floor. Thanked him for the talk. Kissed him good night. I think I’ll just take a walk, he said, standing, and he slipped out the front door and into the trail of white that lit his track down the sidewalk.

43

Sunday morning, I walked over to the café for work.

It was a fair May morning, air cleaner than usual, the rugged San Fernando Mountains detailed in the distance as if cars had never been invented. I was early; the doors of La Lyonnaise were still closed.

I walked around the brick wall storefront, watching birds hop on the telephone lines, and knocked at the back until Monsieur turned the knob and let me in.

By ten, about seven or so hungry people had gathered outside the café, and when the door opened, they all headed inside to take their spots for brunch. Outside, a light wind from the ocean blew the air clean, and this was the air that followed them in, washing through the restaurant. I washed dishes for three hours, my head full of my father and George and hospitals and straps, and as the line of silverware eased I asked the main waiter if I could take a half-hour break for lunch. When he said yes, I left the kitchen for a change and headed over to the wine-tasting counter, where I sat myself on one of the stools between a big man with heavy jowls and a petite dark-haired woman wrapped in a red scarf. Monsieur came over from the back room, wiping his cheeks down with the sheet of his hand.

Mimosa? he said, pulling down a champagne glass.

Sure, said the jowly man.

I’d like to try a food tasting, I said.

Monsieur cocked his head. Late-morning wake-up lines still radiated from his eye corners.

A food tasting? he said.

A glass of Chardonnay, please, said the petite woman in the red scarf. Monsieur lifted another glass off the wall, set it upright.

Could I eat my food here, and tell you what I taste in it? I asked, my voice wavering a little.

Monsieur shrugged. I suppose so, he said. Aren’t you our dishwasher?

I am, I said.

Good work, said Monsieur.

Sounds fun, said the man. Can I too?

Monsieur popped the cork out of a bottle of white wine, and poured a shimmering glass for the woman.

A quiche, please, I said.

Quiche, echoed the man. Delicious.

The woman with the red scarf spent a few focused minutes with her nose buried in the rim of the wineglass. Madame wandered out from the back, where the smell of caramelizing onions drifted out to us at the counter, like a greeting of midday and sweetness and industry, and she and Monsieur spent a few minutes talking closely, his hand resting easily on the nape of her neck. A waiter ducked into the kitchen and returned with two small plates, holding pie slices of golden-crusted yellow quiche. Monsieur filled another glass of wine for a table, and then brought out the New York Times Sunday crossword and a bitten-up pencil. He perched on his stool, behind the counter, and began reading through the clues.

Next to me, the jowly man grabbed his plate. Outside, cars drove up and down Vermont, ducking into parking spots. I looked down at the quiche, with its crisped brown golden edges.

Picked up my fork.

The man next to me ate his mouthful in a rush.

So-we say what we taste in here? he said.

Sure, I said.

Eggs, he said. I taste eggs.

I laughed. Monsieur kept his eyes on his crossword, which was blank.

Yup, Monsieur said, to the page. True, true. There are definitely eggs in quiche.

And this wine has a hint of roses? said the woman next to me.

I took a bite of my quiche, made with such warmth and balance, and swallowed.

I just want to add that the eggs are from Michigan, I said.

The jowly man pursed his lips. We’re not talking about location, he said. He took another bite. Cream, he said.

I pulled my stool in closer, to the counter. Madame came over from the kitchen and stood in the door frame.

Yes, she said. There is cream in quiche.

Actually, I think it’s half-and-half, I said.

No, she said, but she blushed a little. Ah, she said. It’s you. Monsieur glanced up, from his crossword.

I’m on a break, I said.

She nodded, distracted. Her eyes skated up the side wall.

See, there are two different milks, I said, leaning in, on my stool. One is cream, from Nevada, I think, due to the slightly minty flavor, but then there’s regular milk too, from Fresno.

Well, she said. She stepped into the kitchen and I heard her open up the refrigerator, take out a carton.

Monsieur carefully placed four letters into boxes. Quiche Lorraine, he said, to the paper. Named for the Lorraine region of northeastern France, eaten as early as the sixteenth century. German influence.

Ham, said the lady in the red scarf.

I took a sip of water.

Organic pigs, I added. Northern California, I said.

She’s making this up, said the jowly man.

Am I right? I said.

Monsieur twirled his pencil, chuckling.

How do you know they’re organic? he said.

It’s in the aftertaste, I said. Grainier. I’m thinking east of Modesto, I said.

Fresno, said Monsieur, pffing. Same as the milk, he said. There’s a farmer we really like. Ben.

The butter is French butter, I said. Not pasteurized. The parsley is from San Diego. The parsley farmer is a jerk.

Ah! said Monsieur, hitting the counter. I don’t know why we keep going to him, he said. He is such a jerk.

You can taste that? said the red-scarf woman.

In the way it was picked, I said. He picks it rudely.

Madame stepped back, into the bar area. Nice job with the milk, she said. Did you look in the fridge?

How about nutmeg? said the woman with the red scarf. Madame nodded, and the woman flushed. It’s a tricky one, said Madame, dabbing at the corner of her mouth with her apron strap. People never expect it.

Monsieur looked at me directly, waiting.

Far, I said. Indonesia? Standard fare.

Dough, said the big man.

Local, I said. I think you made it yourself.

I made it, said Monsieur. Myself. Last night.

Delicious, I said.

Why are they eating at the wine counter? asked Madame.

Sea salt, said the woman with the red scarf.

You’re not even eating, said the jowly man.

It’s a food tasting, I said. Instead of a wine tasting.

The crust, mused the man. The crust is-

I took another bite. Let the information rise up, slow. Monsieur had stopped working on the crossword, and I could sense him watching me now. Alert. The sharpened feeling of being paid close attention to.

The cook is a little disillusioned, I said.

Mmm, said Madame, leaning against bottles of wine.

The big man next to me wiped his brow with a napkin. Disillusionment is not an ingredient, he said.

But I had her eyes in mine, and I was keeping them.

But the cook loves to mix, I said. Loves the harmony of putting the right ingredients together. Loves to combine.

That’s true, said Monsieur, nodding.

The woman in the red scarf stopped sniffing her glass to listen.

There was also a little hurry during the mixing, I said. It’s about eight minutes fast? I said.

The man next to me raised his hand. Or chives? he said.

Eight minutes, I said. Were you rushed?

Maybe four, dismissed Madame.

Monsieur looked up at the ceiling, thinking.

While she was making the quiche, she was planning on calling Édith, he said. Our daughter, he said, looking at me. Remember, Marie?

Behind the counter, Madame was rearranging wine bottles. It looked like she was taking one bottle out, and then trading it with another bottle of the same brand.

It tastes about eight minutes too fast, I said.

Édith was in crisis, Monsieur said. She cannot pass Japanese.

Madame put down a bottle. Not eight minutes, she said, to me.

Eight, I said.

She is bad at writing kanji, said Monsieur.

Five minutes, said Madame.

Monsieur shrugged. A very small smile settled on his lower lip.

There is also a tinge of sadness in the cook, I said.

Now he put down his pencil for good, and folded up the crossword.

In us all, he nodded.

I shifted in my seat. Re-rolled my napkin. It was the first time in a long time that I’d gone full out with my impressions. I had wanted to introduce myself, to people I wanted to meet. That was the whole of it.

On my other side, the woman in the red scarf stared at my plate again.

The pastry crust is made of flour, butter, and sugar, she said.

Done! said Madame, stepping forward.

The focus broke, and Madame poured the woman a free half-glass of wine, and the man finished his quiche, and talked to Monsieur with great animation about various kinds of bacon. I stayed in my seat. While Monsieur and the man laughed, Madame stepped a little closer to me.

How did you do that? she said, in a low voice.

I don’t know, I said. I just can do it.

She reached her arms over the counter. Someone called to both of them from the kitchen, and they spun off to tend to other customers, but I knew I wasn’t done. While I waited, the woman with the red scarf tapped me on the shoulder.

She smiled at me.

Hi, she said.

I told her good job, on guessing the dough without even tasting it.

Now, did you know all the food information in advance? she said. She was fumbling in her purse for something. She had an awake face, eyes shining like a small bird’s.

No, I said.

You’re quite knowledgeable, said the woman, pushing aside gum wrappers and pens. She blinked up at me. The red scarf brought out something in her cheeks, some good kind of redness.

Thanks, I said. I pushed my napkin around the table. It’s just this thing, I said.

The woman said aha! and brought out a business card, sliding it over to me across the counter. On it was her name, and a job description for something to do with the schools.

So you can tell things, in the food? she said. Fixing her eyes on me.

I didn’t blink. Yes, I said.

Many things?

Yes, I said. Many.

Why don’t you give me a call, then, she said, and her giddy guessing self dropped away, and her eyes settled firmly on mine, and she seemed nice, nicer, suddenly. I might be able to use you, she said.

I picked up her card, held it at all four corners.

I work with teenagers, she said.

She turned, and left the room. She didn’t look back, but the card was a little rectangular piece of her. I put it in my pocket.

The bar had cleared by then. The jowly man had left, joining the rest of the daily traffic. Monsieur and Madame were busying themselves at the counter, sorting through orders, putting away glasses. Madame still kept her eyes on the tables, checking, but the feeling of it had changed. The distance of before was now the discomfort and shyness of going on a first date with someone you think you might like.

Monsieur walked to the front of the bar, from the other side. He held out his hand. We shook.

What’s your name again?

Rose, I said. Rose Edelstein.

Well, Rose Edelstein, he said, it looks like we should all go grab some coffee.

44

So you want to become a cook? Madame said as we walked to their car, together.

I’m not sure yet, I said.

Am I giving you cooking lessons?

Maybe, I said. I just want to be around while you cook. Is that okay? That’s the main thing, I said.

A food critic?

I just want to learn more about it, I said. I didn’t go to college.

I don’t care about that, she said. How old are you again?

Twenty-two, I said.

Can you chop onions?

I think so, I said.

Well, then, she said, pulling a red net bag of onions from the trunk of her car. Then that’s where we’ll begin.

45

When people asked my mother where Joseph had gone, she said he was on a journey. It was a word she liked, full of quest and literature and nobility of spirit. Sometimes she said he was in the Andes, learning about ancient cultures. Other times a deep-sea diver, off a coast in Australia, or else a surfer; depending on her mood, he either rode the waves or searched beneath them. She moved his grandparent fund into a high-interest low-activity account at the bank, where the money built upon itself.

She still spent most of her time at the studio, and for a while, her projects became very small and intricate: Wooden marbles, or wooden pillboxes, with embroidered flowers. Refined wooden tripods, on which to place small wooden frames. She befriended a little girl down the street solely for the purpose of making an entire furnished dollhouse, but the girl was a tomboy, and when my mother found her perfect tiny bedroom set smashed by a basketball, she stopped.

Twice a week, I cooked for her. We took out the recipe books together, and she sat and asked about the restaurant and told me about the carpentry innovations while I went through the Joy of Cooking systematically. I insisted that she sit, that I didn’t need help, that she’d cooked enough for a while. Once again, my salvation looked to any outsider like good and generous daughterliness. For months, we ate only appetizers, and then I moved to soups, and salads, and entrées. I skipped the recipes that sounded too difficult, and my mother picked her favorites and made requests.

She took comfort from what I made. I made it for her. I only ate a little, depending on how much I wanted to bear on any given day. The balances inside were changing, bit by bit, on a daily basis. When her birthday rolled around, I baked her a coconut cake with cream-cheese frosting, and we sat across from each other at the table with big textured slices. Eight, whispered my cake. You still just want to go back to eight, when you didn’t know much about anything.

I set a cup of chamomile tea at her place. She thanked me, still beautiful, with fine lines sunning out now from the creases of her eyelids. We didn’t talk about Larry anymore and her constant panic over Joseph had faded a little with time, but I could still see the tightening cross her forehead when she remembered that he was not calling, that it was the call time and the phone was not ringing. Where did he go? tugging at the edges of her eyes, in the tremble of her fork, and all I could give her was that cake: half blank, half filling, full of all my own crap, and there, with bands of sunshine reaching across the table, we ate the slices together.

Your best yet, my mother sighed, licking her fork.

We ate two slices each, that afternoon. Drank more tea. To elongate the time, more than anything.

Neither of us mentioned that we had reached the dessert section of the cookbook, after which was only the index.

After the cake, we cleaned up, as usual. Rinsed the bowls. Stuck the spatula in with the silverware. She said maybe she’d make me a lemon chocolate cake next time, but I put a hand on her shoulder gently and said I didn’t really like lemon chocolate cake so much anymore.

But you used to! she said.

I used to, I said. A long time ago.

She ran the sponge along the inside of the sink, to clear it of leftover debris. She did not face me, but I could feel the vibration of tears, a kind of pain hive, rustling inside her. As she resettled the knives and forks in their dishwasher cup. As she squeezed the sponge dry. After a few minutes, she looked up, to watch out the kitchen window.

Sometimes, she said, mostly to herself, I feel I do not know my children.

I stood next to her, as if just listening in. Close. She said it out the window. To the flower boxes, in front of us, full of pansies and daffodils, bowing in at dusk. Where she had directed all her pleas and questions to her missing son, over the last few years. It was a fleeting statement, one I didn’t think she’d hold on to; after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love into us. That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit. She wiped her hands on a dish towel, already moving back into the regular world, where such a thought was ridiculous, nonsensical, but I had heard it, standing there, and it was first thing she’d said in a very long time that I could take in whole.

I leaned over, and kissed her cheek.

From us both, I said.

46

On a lunch break at work, I drove over and met the woman who wore the red scarf in an old stone building off Franklin, wedged just to the east of the freeway traffic. She worked with at-risk kids, and she wrote down everything I said on a yellow pad of paper. I wanted to laugh at the officiality of it all, at how earnestly she jotted down cookies and get vanilla and feelings in food. We decided that the following week the kids would make batches of cookies that I would taste. I warned her that it would not be something I could do often. Whenever you can, she said, writing that down too. Not too often.

At work, Peter invited me on another walk. We crossed the city in zigzags.

That evening, I drove to the café. Madame and Monsieur were busy figuring out the latest menu plans for the restaurant, and Madame made me a quick dinner sandwich on a baguette, with pâté and cornichon pickles. The piquant little cornichons, usually a little too acidic for me, were today like tiny exclamation points after the pâté-Pâté! Pâté!

The duck? she said, squinching up her nose.

Great, I said.

Salad?

I ate a forkful of lettuce. Mmm, I said.

Is it organic?

Yes, I said.

Good. She clapped her hands. I wasn’t sure if he was telling me the truth, she said. His prices are good.

As I was finishing up, Monsieur came over from the back room with a padlock.

We want you to have a closet, he said. To store your stuff.

You will have supplies, Madame added. And you need to keep an apron here, and a change of clothes in case we go out. Downtown. Markets.

Okay, I said.

He handed the lock to me, fumbling. Along with a little pamphlet with directions.

I forget how it works, he said.

I turned the front dial.

Just pick three numbers you can remember easily, he said. Okay? Good?

I turned it in my hands. A standard padlock, with a black face and notched lines in between the numbers.

Can I put other things in the closet? I asked him, fingering the circle on the front.

Ah, he said, raising his shoulders. No matter. Whatever’s important, he said. We want you to feel at home.

I went to look in the back. The restaurant itself consisted of three rooms: the main restaurant area, with booths and tables and the wine counter, the kitchen, and a back storage section for the pantry and supplies. In that back section, they’d cleared the small closet for me. It was the size of a standard hall version, with a wooden dowel on top and a small shelf above. The doorknob supported a band of metal where I would hang the padlock. I walked to my car, setting the dial to three numbers. Nine, twelve, seventeen.

At home, at dinner, I explained to my parents that I would be working part-time at the café, learning about cooking in some form or another. That I would have a space to myself. I asked after all the items I wanted. Both of them nodded at me, yes. It’s not moving out yet, I told them. But it’s a step.

They helped me pack the car, together. My mother said she wanted to be the first to try the first official meal I cooked outside of the house. We’re so proud of you, Mom said, and they stood side by side as I drove away, their smiles sewn up with an edge of fishing line.

As I drove off, I honked the horn, once, and my father raised a hand.

It was easy to unload the car, at the café.

Inside the closet, I put my purse, a white chef’s jacket, and a box full of extra kitchen tools and books that I’d bought on my own. Grandma’s teak box of ashes. My mother’s oak jewelry box. Her apron, with twinned cherries, that she gave me as a prize after I made her a pot roast. A velvet and wicker stool that I did not want to see re-upholstered. A rolled-up poster of a waterfall. A plastic graduation tassel.

In the corner, a folding chair.

47

He returned for two weeks, that same spring I’d found him. Badly dehydrated. Skinnier than ever. With bluish skin, collapsed sheaths under the eyes. Silent, when the doctors probed and pushed.

When Mom discovered him facedown on the floor of his bedroom, it was she who called the ambulance to take him to Cedars-Sinai. The place we’d both been born. For the first few days, he was in intensive care, and when his vital signs stabilized, they moved him to the seventh floor, where he would recover. My father’s feet froze at the electric glass entry doors, so he called up all the specialists he knew, former clients, friends of friends, tennis partners, and sent everyone over to find out just what was wrong with his son. On the day I went over, I saw Dad’s car parked on one of the side streets just outside the general front area of the hospital. It was empty, and at the entryway he was standing a few yards from the electric doors, absorbed in reading a book. That day, I had my own specific reason for being there. I did not stop and say hello.

The weekend had seemed too busy for a good visit, so I had taken the day off school and walked over, on a weekday, on my own. Just thinking, the whole walk, as I passed the building that had housed the old cookie shop, and Eliza’s house, and even the ER where I’d gone years ago when I’d wanted to remove my mouth. Inside the electric lobby doors, I asked the nurse with the giant round glasses Joseph’s room number: 714, he said. It was late morning, and the hospital had a low-key feeling, as if it was not a hospital but instead just a place where people do health business. Not a lot of urgency. Slow beeps and clickings. I rode the elevator to the seventh floor with a woman wearing a bright-magenta suit. Her nails, equally magenta, were too long and curved to press the elevator buttons, so she asked me to press hers for her.

Sure, I said.

Six and seven lit up under my fingertips.

On the seventh floor, at the nurse’s desk, I explained that I was there to see my brother. The nurse, a black woman with a perfectly shaped nose and red-tinted hair, said he was getting tested at the moment by a specialist but that I was welcome to wait. She pointed me in the general direction, and I found a seat in the hall outside his door where I waited quietly, watching the nurses busy on their computers, the bulletin board announcing policy changes in red printer ink alongside colorful drawings of families drawn by bored patients. I slept a little, in my seat. Doctors entered and exited Joseph’s room. I walked to a nearby window, and sure enough, my father’s car was in the choice spot, almost directly below Joseph’s room.

My mother came in, kissed me hello, did not scold me for missing school, and went to stand in Joseph’s room, listening. Then she bustled out, blew a kiss goodbye. She visited several times a day.

Another hour passed. Morning turned to afternoon. At one, I brought up lunch from the cafeteria, a negligible hamburger grilled by a pothead who wanted to be famous. I ate it in my hallway spot.

When I’d finished, the nurse with the sculptural nose came over.

You know you can always go in when the doctors are there, she offered. Since you’re family.

I shook my head. Soda buzzed in my mouth. Buzz, buzz.

No, thank you, I said. I want my own time with him.

She went back to her desk, to check the schedule. Returned. She had a pretty set of earrings on, lines of twisted gold that moved when she moved, like wind chimes hanging from her ears. She told me that when this current doctor left, no one else was on the schedule for at least a half an hour.

Thank you, I said. I told her I liked her earrings. She handed me a magazine. You’re very patient, she said.

I read the fashion magazine cover to cover, and learned about the best way to frame my face, with bangs. How to score high at the workplace by being assertive. The air was warm in the ward-it was a hot May afternoon, dry and grainy with a Santa Ana whisper from the east, and inside, only one rickety fan spun in the corner, recirculating a halfhearted stream of air-conditioning from the vents. I closed my eyes, and practiced hearing all the pinpoints in the room behind me: the nurses, the other patients, tucked into their rooms, the experts, measuring my brother’s information. The cool air, circulating; the fan.

Finally, the latest doctor raised her voice in the tones of goodbye, and her nurse helper left, and when all the various professionals went off to attend to their next patients and the entryway had cleared, I stood and entered Joseph’s hospital room. His bed faced west, and through the window at his back, sunlight poured in and glazed the floor. Joseph was facing the other way, but as I pulled a chair near the edge of the bed, he turned his head to see who was next and when he saw it was me, his eyes softened. Nothing I ever expected, in my life. For a while, we sat in silence, together. A plane skirted through the sky outside. Lawn blowers blew leaves around, into the gutters. Cars hummed, at 3rd and San Vicente. At some point I started to fill the space and tell him about all the police write-ups, and about everyone’s reactions, and about the group theory of him and the duffel bag and the bushes, and as I was talking, he reached over and took my hand.

His arm was plugged up with tubes. It was the first time I could ever remember him holding my hand, and he held on to it with real focus, with fingers gripping. Those piano fingers, warm, and strong. I edged my seat closer, right to the very end of the bed. He held on tight, and as we spoke, his voice dropped low, to a whisper. It was the kind of conversation you could only hold in whispers.

You’re the only one who knows, he said.

In a voice so quiet I had to put my ear right up close to his mouth, so quiet I could hardly hold on to the words, he whispered to me that the chair was his favorite, was the easiest to sustain. That at other times, he had been the bed, the dresser, the table, the nightstand. It took time, it had taken almost constant practice. It was good while he was away, but terribly hard when he returned. I’ve tried many options, he said. I’ve tried different choices. But the chair, he said, is the best.

I closed my eyes as he spoke, to hear better. The words, almost ungraspable. Sun on our hands. The sheets, pulled so tight on the hospital bed, sent up a faint smell of brisk laundry detergent bleach.

Does it hurt? I whispered.

No, he said.

His fingers were thin and brittle under mine.

Do you know, while you’re away?

No, he said. I don’t know anything, while I’m away.

Do you feel the passage of time?

He shook his head. No.

The blanket on his bed grew warm, heated by the slanted ray crossing through the window. Late afternoon Los Angeles hazy sunny sun. I opened my eyes. His skin was still heavy, like it had been before, like more hours had pressed into his face than made sense, like he was a living version of the relativity split between the clock on earth and the one in space. There wasn’t much time; soon, a whole new stream of experts sent by our father would be coming in, standing in the doorway with clipboards, and metallic clicking pens, and stethoscopes.

So, I said. Joseph. I have a favor to ask.

Machines whirred beside us. Outside the door, a nurse walked by, soft-footed, on rubber soles.

Joseph squeezed my hand lightly, in response.

You could not usually ask him things, my brother. I had never asked him for anything real. He had sent over George at school that one time, but for so many years I’d begged him to play with me and he’d only do it if my mother offered him a new science book as a bribe. The only time he’d hugged me on impulse was the day, years ago, when I’d come home from the ER after having the fit about my mouth. We did not hang out, or have meals together by choice, or talk on the phone. At times I was sure he forgot my name. But I pressed his hand back, and with my eyes low, pinned to the corner of the pillow, tracing the hemline around the edge, I told him about the line I’d drawn, on the chair. I asked him to only pick that chair, in the future. Not another chair. Not another item. That one. So then, no matter what happened, I would know.

It’s just a ballpoint pen line, I said. But it’s easy to see. I leaned closer. His heart, on a green circuit, rose and fell on the screen nearby.

Please, I said.

His eyes were still soft, looking to mine.

Do you hear me, Joe? I asked.

Yes.

Does it make sense?

It does.

Will you do it?

He pressed his hand, against mine. Yes, he said.

On the walk home, I passed by my father’s car. He was in the driver’s seat by then, asleep, his head leaning on his chest, heavy. I picked a camellia flower from a nearby bush, and left it on his windshield.

Headed home, alone.

There had been a report in a magazine. About a small island off the coast of central California where only a handful of people lived. At the rim of the island was an abundance of trees with a kind of stretchy, tasty bark, but the birds had taken over those trees and very few were surviving. One in particular fell over-an old elegant palm type, a beauty. It grew closest to the edge of the island, and despite its voracious roots, its enormous trunk, it was no match for the steady impact of beaks and thinner dirt and unprotected weather and the gopher holes that eroded its root system below. It fell all the way over and into the ocean. This was a report about the island. About animals, and tree types, and festivals. I’d read it at the dentist’s while waiting for a cleaning.

Many trees in the second ring, up a little higher, had also been overtaken by animals, but some made it through-there, there was enough of a balance of sun and shade, and the roots could dig deeper, and the birds were less crowded, and one of the trees in that area survived, reaching out sideways with tangled branches. It was an interesting tree, one that the islanders commented upon. They found it a symbol of survival, in how it leaned so drastically to the side. They held the summer festival under its stretching boughs, and many weddings happened beneath its main branch, the tear-filled vows strewn with messages of reaching.

Twenty yards in? The other trees grew straight up. Plenty of room for elaborate roots. Birds alighted and flew off. Gopher holes made no dents. The trees were strong, functional. They provided shade and oxygen.

Was it so different, the way I still loved to eat the food from factories and vending machines? How once, in junior high, I’d been caught actually kneeling in front of a vending machine, on my actual knees, in prayer position, with bowed head, breathing a thank you into the little metallic grate that received the baggies after they fell down the chute? The security cop, touring the school, had laughed at me. I thought I liked Oreos, he chuckled. I love them, I told him solemnly, gripping the bag. I am in love with them, I said. I was around twelve then. I did not know how I would get through the day without that machine at school; I prayed those thank yous to it, and whoever stocked it, and whoever had bought it, every night.

Was it so different than the choice of a card-table chair, except my choice meant I could stay in the world and his didn’t?