Aimee Bender - The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Why does she have a bucket? I said.

Who?

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

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

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

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

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

Huh, George said.

The phone receiver was on the bed. And this?

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

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

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

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

Which way’s his room? he said.

He seemed a little nervous, suddenly.

Haven’t you been here before? I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There, I said.

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

So then he sat right on the evidence.

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

He nodded. Stood. Okay. Yes?

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

There, I said. There.

Is a chair, George said. And a table.

That’s what happened, I said.

I don’t understand, said George.

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

The chair is somehow connected to Joseph?

Yes.

Can you say more?

No, I said.

Why not?

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

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

He’s sitting?

No, I said.

He’s in a wheelchair?

No, I said.

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

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

Rose? he said, confused.

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

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

I don’t understand, he whispered.

I laughed a little, under the closed lids.

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

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

Rose-he said.

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

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

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

Me, he said.

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