Aimee Bender - The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

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.

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.

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.