The Cake House (6 page)

“Nothing,” I said, turning away so she would leave, while at the same time not wanting her to go. I wanted her to sit with me until I fell asleep, but I didn’t want to have to say it.

“Do you hate me?” she asked, the same way she might ask if I had done my homework or if I could help her cook dinner. “I hope you don’t hate me. It’s not right, to hate your mother.”

My throat closed. Sometimes I hated her more than I hated anything else. For bringing me here. For leaving my father. For letting Claude put that ring on her finger.

“Although maybe you should hate me,” she said. Her eyes glittered like diamonds. “Sometimes I hated my mother. Never marry, she said. It’s a mistake. Don’t have children. They’ll only hurt you. I should have listened.”

My father, with his hesitant laughs, his nervous energy, the way he used to twirl her around, never stopping until she pried herself free: He was her mistake. But perhaps I was the bigger mistake.

Behind her, a shadow broke away from the rest. The shadow spread. It came up behind her with arms outstretched. Ready to swallow us in his embrace.

I gripped her hand, too afraid to move, to do anything but hold on.

“What is it?” she asked. She started to turn around to look, but I jerked her hand in mine and shook my head, unable to speak.

“Dahlia,” called Claude. His silhouette loomed in the doorway.

“Here,” she said to him, but she was still watching me with concern and confusion.

“Come to bed.” Claude opened the door wider, causing all the shadows to scatter and revealing nothing unusual except for the ring of my possessions lining each wall.

She nodded and started to stand. “Pick up your things from the floor, Rosaura,” she said, then turned to leave.

“Wait,” I said, frantic to keep her with me, grasping at her hands. If she chose Claude, I might lose her forever.

My fingernails scraped her skin as she pulled away. She cried out and cradled her wrist. I could see the scrape my nails had caused along her skin.

“You’re bleeding,” Claude said.

“It’s fine,” she said, letting him take her away.

I said that I was sorry, but she was already in the hallway. Claude shut my door, leaving me in the imperfect darkness with silence pushing in from all sides. There wasn’t even a ghost to keep me company.

THE NEXT MORNING I RAN
downstairs to be first in the kitchen, but Claude was there scrambling eggs in a frying pan and wearing a frilly apron over his clothing. He beamed at me. “I was about to call you,” he said. “Breakfast is served.”

Conflicting desires battled within me: I wanted to ignore him, reinforce how much I hated him, but I was also hungry. He didn’t notice, busy serving eggs and toast onto a plate and pouring a glass of orange juice. He sat at the table and studied me with his bright, expectant blue eyes until I gave in and sat down opposite him.

I picked up the fork and stabbed a piece of egg. “What?”

“Your mother and I have something to do today, but just for a couple of hours,” he said, as if wanting to reassure me.

I managed an indifferent shrug, but it hurt to think that my mother would leave me in this house where my father’s ghost lived to go with Claude, even for two hours. He watched as I ate. I knew he was thinking of the previous night and how I had freaked out. I was trying to figure
out a way to say there was nothing wrong when my mother walked in. I looked behind her, but there was no Alex. I wished I had been smart enough to stay in my bedroom too.

Claude stood up when she entered. “Well,” he said, holding out his seat for her, and then placing another plate with eggs and toast on the table. She hesitated a moment before taking the offered seat.

“Thank you,” she said. “This looks great. You shouldn’t have.”

He leaned over and gave her a kiss on her cheek. “The luncheon starts at noon, if you could be ready by eleven-thirty. Wear the new dress, and those earrings.” He spoke with an easy mixture of request and command before leaving the kitchen.

My mother and I remained silent. She looked at the eggs with a revulsion that I shared, and then she scraped the rest into the trash. I could see the red scratch along her left arm where my fingernail had marked her.

“Where are you going?” I couldn’t hide my resentment that she was leaving. But maybe she had left often during that time I was in the closet and I hadn’t even known. “Can’t I go too?”

She shook her head, as if to clear it, then focused her attention on me. “Will you help me get ready?”

I used to love to watch her dress, watch her put her makeup on. She knew this. Maybe this was her way of apologizing. As we passed the second floor, I strained to hear anything from Alex’s room, but there was nothing.

Her new dress hung on the open closet door, tasteful in a pastel blue. As she took a shower and dried her hair, I organized her makeup: lipsticks lined up, brushes arranged tallest to smallest.

She sat at the new vanity Claude had bought and put on makeup like it was war paint: a little too much blush, lips painted a too-dark red. It was her normal way of putting on makeup, but it seemed more out of place in this strange bedroom than before. She smacked her lips together, smoothing out the color. Then came the dress, sliding over her shoulders, swinging down around her hips.

All she had to do was put her shoes on to complete the outfit, but as she lifted her gaze to the mirror she froze. I looked, too, and saw confusion and disgust cross her face. Without warning, she swept her makeup off the vanity, scattering it across the carpet.

Then she took a deep breath and grabbed a tissue with a quick jerk of her wrist. She rubbed at her lips.

“Wet a towel for me?” I went into their bathroom to get a washcloth. When I returned, she’d picked up all of the makeup. I handed her the washcloth and she scrubbed her face clean, starting over again, this time with neutral colors, a soft, clean foundation and light rosy beige on her lips.

“What do you think?” she asked.

She looked like a character from a television show where families lived in the suburbs and mothers wore sweaters draped over their shoulders. Together, we looked at her image again, her hair brushed to shining gold, diamond drops in her ears; she was perfect, and different from before. Something had changed in the hour it had taken for her to dress, some indefinable metamorphosis that took her even further away from the mother I knew.

I went with her downstairs and was surprised to see Alex sitting at the dining table, dressed in ironed khaki trousers and a light yellow polo shirt that matched his hair.

It hit me that Alex was meant to go with Claude and
my mother to this luncheon, all of them together, and that I wasn’t going with them. They were going to leave me alone, without even Alex as company. It felt like a betrayal, a deliberate insult meant to say I was not wanted, not cared for, not needed.

Claude whistled as he entered the living room with a smile. “All ready?” he asked. “Good. I’ll be just a minute.”

“You’re all going? Without me?” I said, outraged with disbelief I couldn’t control.

“That’s right,” he said, not reacting to my anger.

I hadn’t expected him to admit it. “You don’t want me with you. Keep the crazy kid at home, right?”

Claude pursed his lips. Beside him, my mother and Alex stood mute, apparently unwilling to come to my defense. Maybe they didn’t want me to go either. “After last night, I think you should stay here and rest.”

“But what about Child Services?” I asked, trying to hold on to my panic, feeling sick to my stomach. “What if I call the police and tell them you left me alone?”

Anger snapped in Claude’s eyes, and he took a step in my direction. “You’re going to stay home, and you’re going to rest, and you’re not going to cause any trouble,” he said in a measured tone.

I didn’t understand. If he was so worried, why didn’t he keep Alex home with me, at least? Or better yet, take me with them? Whatever this “luncheon” was, it was important to Claude, important enough that despite the imminent visit from Child Services, he would risk leaving his crazy stepdaughter at home alone rather than bring her with him. And he needed the appearance of a family, together. Looking at my mother, the way she was dressed, she fit in with Claude and Alex more than with me, and I could see in her face
that she couldn’t or wouldn’t encourage Claude to bring me with them.

THEY LEFT AND I REMAINED
standing in the living room, uncertain what to do next. I faced the front room, darkened and full of shadows because the curtains were drawn. Alone in the house for the first time, it was like I could feel the different layers settling with the weight of all that was unsaid. Before the ghost could return, to say those unsaid things, I made my escape to the garden, where at least I could pretend to be free.

Faded petals littered the flower beds, fallen from flowers that lacked the strength to hold their heads up. I dug my fingers and hands into the dirt, the top layer warmed by the sun, and busied myself collecting the corpses of poppies and daisies and dahlia flowers. The Mercedes returned and I heard the car doors slam shut, but I didn’t get up from my work in the garden. The flowers had all died and they needed to be buried.

The side garden gate creaked open and shut. I didn’t turn around, but I could hear someone crossing through the tall grass. A moment later, a pair of neat leather shoes stepped close, and Alex knelt down beside me. The sun made my eyes water, but I was happy to think that he’d come straight back to the garden to see me. I pushed my hands farther into the dirt.

“They’ve all died,” I said with a sigh.

“It’s the heat.” He watched me dig a fresh grave and lay a dandelion to rest next to a sister daisy. “The heat killed them.”

I took a fistful of dirt in my hand, raised it perpendicular
before me, and then let it go. The dirt fanned out as the wind picked up. “I think they died of sadness.”

“That’s dumb,” Alex said, and, careless of his still-immaculate khakis, he dug a hole next to all the others, an unmarked mass grave, and laid a dead flower to rest. “But it’s obviously important to you.”

He wiped his dirt-covered hands on his khakis. Did he also think I was crazy? He wouldn’t quite meet my eyes when I leaned closer.

“Did you have a good time at this stupid luncheon?” I asked.

“No,” he said, and even though his face hardly changed, I thought he might be amused by my resentment.

“Why couldn’t I go?”

“Hey, you have a bike now,” he said. “Let’s try it out.”

He led me to where our bikes stood. Instead of taking his, he took mine instead.

“What are you doing? That one’s mine.”

“I like yours better,” he said. “It’s newer.”

I followed him through the side gate to the front driveway and street. He helped me sit on the handlebars, but I still fell halfway into the basket, screeching in fright, but he was careful as we sailed together. Downhill, with the wind blowing my hair all over the place. On sidewalks and off, until we hit a curb and I almost fell but he grabbed me around the waist. His hand was warm against the skin of my stomach.

“Now it’s my turn,” he said. Despite how much taller and heavier he was, he hopped onto the handlebars, but I wasn’t strong enough to hold him up and we toppled over in a heap onto the lawn of a neighboring house.

He dusted himself off and pushed the bike away. There was a long, streaky grass stain across his chest and shoulder, ruining his polo shirt. I touched the stain. He looked at it and made a face that was a cross between “oops” and “who cares?” that made me smile. For some reason, his willingness to ruin his clothing felt like a gift. I kept my hand on his shoulder. “Why couldn’t I go with you today?” I asked a second time.

Alex inspected his knees, which were also stained. After our yelling earlier while we rode my bike, his silence was unnerving. The skin at his neck glistened with sweat, flushed pink from the heat and brightness of the day.

“Ask me anything else,” he said.

There were so many secrets, and I didn’t know where to look for answers. My mother didn’t speak at all. The ghost told me not to trust Claude. And Claude said to be careful with Alex, that he hadn’t been the same since … something, long ago.

“Did your mother ever live here with you?” I asked.

Alex turned his face away. A car honked, and a lemon-yellow Volkswagen Bug drove up with a couple of girls in the front seats. I couldn’t see the driver, but the girl in the passenger side stuck her head out the window. Pretty face, with dark hair pulled back in a half ponytail framing freckles and a small, upturned nose. She waved and called his name.

I pushed at the tangled mess of my hair, wild and rough around my face. The girl got out of the car and smiled when Alex walked over to her. They looked like a matched pair, even with the stains on Alex’s pants and polo shirt. She should have been the one to go with Alex to a country club lunch.

“Just thought you might like to go see a movie,” I heard her say with a touch of uncertainty.

Alex hesitated, but then the other girl, whom I still couldn’t see, yelled from inside the car, “Come on, Alex, we’re bored. Get your butt in here.”

Did he prefer the sweet request or the demand? I wondered.

“Do you know how to get back?” he asked me, and I realized he was planning to go with them. “Straight up the street. You got it?”

“Yeah,” I said, and there was a moment when I thought he might change his mind, say to the girls in the VW Bug that he was already busy and he didn’t want to go to the movies with them. He wavered, but then the girl in the driver’s seat honked, and Alex looked back at the car.

“Tell my dad I’ll be back later,” Alex said, and with a wave in my direction, he got into the car and drove away.

CLAUDE CAME HOME IN HIS
suit with his jacket draped over his arm, his briefcase in one hand, and questioned me with a glare and an annoyed tug of his tie. “Did he say where he was going? Or when he’d be back?”

“The movies, I think,” I said, and shrugged, wondering if it was a betrayal of Alex to tell Claude this.