The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake Page 3

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

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

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

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

  I held my elbows, thinking.

  Do you feel hot?

  No, I said.

  Is your nose stuffy?

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

  Food tastes bad, I said then.

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

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

  No, I said. Hollow, I said.

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

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

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

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

  No, I said.

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

  But I’m eating, I said.

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

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

  There, honey, she said.

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

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

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

  Just like food, she said.

  I like food, I said, louder.

  Three meals a day?

  Yes.

  And do you ever make yourself throw up?

  No.

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

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

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

  That’s it?

  That’s it, she said, smiling.

  No medicine?

  Nah, she said. You seem fine.

  But what is it? I asked.

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

  To food?

  Or, she said, maybe an active imagination?

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

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

  My family? I said. Yes, why?

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

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

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

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

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

  Hey, Rose! he said. How’s it going?

  Hi, I said. Hot, I said.

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

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

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

  George laughed. Yes? he said. Miss Edelstein?

  Have you ever been to the school nurse?

  No, he said.

  Don’t bother, I said.

  Okay, he said. He looked a little bored.

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

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

  Now my brother glanced around. Irritated.

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

  What if, I said, food tastes funny?

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

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

  On Mondays, I said. Most food.

  Or Eliza? said Joe.

  Ballet, I said.

  What do you mean? George asked.

  What should I do?

  I don’
t get it, said George.

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

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

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

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

  You play flute? he said.

  Just a little, I said.

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

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

  He fixed his eyes on me. Brown and sharp.

  What’s so wrong with you? he said.

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

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

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

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

  Don’t crumple, Joe, said George.

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

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

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

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

  I’m free, I said.

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

  Joseph opened his mouth to protest.

  Second item, George said, get to work!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  How do you feel? he asked.

  Tired.

  Does it taste tired?

  Some of it, I said.

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

  I spit the bread into a napkin.

  Joseph took his plate to the sink.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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