Aimee Bender: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

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.

One 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.

At around five-thirty, after George and I had thoroughly plundered the refrigerator, Mom came home from her first day at the carpentry studio. Her cheeks were red, as if she’d been jogging. It was wonderful! she said, grasping my hand. She looked for Joseph but he was reading in his room. George had gone home. We’ll just do a quick tour of the neighborhood trees, Mom said in a confiding voice, tugging me out the front of the house. So this is a fir, she said, pointing at a dark evergreen growing in the middle of someone’s yard. Softwood, she said. This one: sycamore, she said, tapping on the bark of the next. She frowned. I don’t think they build furniture from sycamore, she said, but I’m not sure why not.

I peeled a gray jigsaw-shaped piece of bark right off the trunk. I recognized her enthusiasm as phase one of a new interest. Phase two was usually three or four months later, when she hit the wall after her natural first ability rush faded and she had to struggle along with the regularly skilled people. Phase three was a lot of head shaking and talking about why that particular skill-sociology, ceramics, computers, French-wasn’t for her after all. Phase four was the uneasy long waiting period, which I knew by the series of 2 a.m. wake-ups where I stumbled down the hallway into her lap.

Too peely, I said, folding the bark in two.

I leaned on her arm a little as we walked down the shady side of Martel. Waving at some neighbors out on their lawn with a hose. By five-thirty, the heat was light, pleasurable, and the air seemed to glisten and hone around us. She asked if I was feeling better and I said a little, pushing the upcoming dinner out of my head and trying to concentrate on what she was saying next, something about worrying she could not keep up with the others at the studio. Which made no sense. My mother had trouble choosing and sticking but she was initially good at everything, particularly anything involving her hands; the bed she made was so perfect that for years I slept on top of the sheets because I did not want to wreck her amazing exactness by putting a body inside it.

I think you’ll be good, I said.

She tucked a stray hair behind my ear. Thank you, she said. Such a sweet supporter you are. Much nicer than your father.

She did seem lighter, in a newly good mood, as we toured the trees up and down Gardner and Vista and then steered ourselves back inside.

Leftovers at dinner was a whole repeat of the previous night’s upset, just softened by the one day of time and the kindness from George. I kept the nurse’s advice in mind, looking to see if it was going around, but no one else seemed bothered by any of it. Dad asked about the studio, and Mom told us her first assignment would be to cut a board.