The Cake House (8 page)

Then Alex shifted to one side and revealed a third person in the room: a boy, shorter than Alex, with a buzz cut and an oversize jean jacket, out of place in the heat of the day.

The boy moved and tried to grab her, but she stuck out her leg to block him. “Tina, what the fuck do you think you’re doing? Get down from there,” said the new boy.

“I want to know if Alex would catch me. Will you?” she asked, speaking to Alex. “If I let go?”

“Stop playing,” said Alex.

“Come on, get down,” said the other boy.

“Why should I? I want to jump. I bet I could jump from here.” She twisted on the windowsill and bent her leg to swing it over, wobbling as she lost her balance, squealing. “Whoa,” she said, then did it again. “Come on, be my hero.”

Alex grabbed her around the waist and pulled her into the room, while the boy stood with his arms held close to his body, as if he was afraid to touch anything.

“Jesus Christ, what are you trying to prove?” asked Alex.

She was breathless and bright-eyed. “See, I knew you’d save me.”

“Are you high?” Alex disengaged her arms from around his neck, clearly not amused.

She swallowed, still breathing hard, and tried to touch his chest again. “No. Not really. I know you don’t like that.”

“A little help here?” Alex said, speaking over her head.

“What do you want me to do?” the boy asked, but he went to her other side. “Here,” he said, reaching deep into his front jeans pocket and taking out a wrapped plastic bag. He withdrew a rolled-up joint and lit it with a lighter, taking a quick puff before holding it out for the girl, who closed her eyes and inhaled.

“That’s your solution?” asked Alex, stepping back from the girl. “By the window,” he said, waving his hand in the air to dispel the smoke.

“Man, what do you want from me?” asked the boy, but he guided the girl to the window, making sure to block her so she wouldn’t get it into her head to climb out a second time. Compared to Alex, he was gentle and patient with her.

“Like that’s going to help. Why’d you bring her?”

“It’ll take the edge off. And she didn’t give me a choice. Sorry.”

“Both of you have got to get out of here,” Alex said, and sighed. “If my dad sees you, he’ll flip.”

“You’re the one that asked for my help.” The boy offered Alex the joint, but Alex shook his head.

“My parents don’t know that I’m here, if that’s what you’re worried about,” the girl added.

Alex didn’t answer.

“I’d never tell them. They call him every day, you know. They leave messages.” Her eyes had dulled but then brightened as she reached for him. “I wanted to see you.” Her voice
was rough from the smoke. She lifted her head, then saw me standing in the doorway to his room. “Who are you?”

The two boys turned around. With sudden force, I slammed Alex’s door hard against the inside wall, cringing at the unexpected loud
crack
it made.

“Do you need something?” Alex didn’t swear or yell, but he spoke with a chill in his voice.

I lifted my chin, angry that these strangers were here with him in his room but not knowing what to say. Then the phone rang.

The ringing echoed through the entire house. Alex and I stiffened, and he shook his head slightly to let me know not to answer. Alex and I were not supposed to answer the phone when Claude wasn’t home. For some reason, Claude distrusted answering machines. “Wait,” said Alex as the phone kept ringing and ringing. “It isn’t Dad.”

How did he know? Did Claude call by code? Two rings, then nothing, then three more rings equals safe to answer. The phone rang and rang with no one to answer it.

It couldn’t be the girl Tina since she was there. Was it some other girl? I remembered that desperate, awkward phone call he had made. Was that person calling him back? He was wondering the same thing—I could see it, the way he creased his eyebrows briefly, squashing down the instinct to answer the phone.

“Should someone get that?” Tina asked.

Ringing, ringing, someone answer the ringing.

As if he could read my mind, Alex sprinted at the same time I did, elbowing me down the stairs to be the first to pick it up. My hand closed around the telephone receiver. Gasping, out of breath, I said, “Hello.”

“May I speak to Claude Fisk?” asked a woman’s voice.

Of course it was for Claude. “He’s not here,” I said, disappointed. I wrapped my hand around the cord like Alex had.

“Is this Rosaura?” The woman pronounced my name differently. Most people said “Rose-zara.” But this woman said “Ro-sow-ra.” I went still and looked at Alex. Glad for the excuse, I leaned in close to him so he could hear as well. “Fetch your mother, my dear. Tell her it is Mrs. Wilson from Child Services.”

The dreaded call, the one that had my mother wringing her hands and Claude coaching me on what to say. Hearing Mrs. Wilson’s voice over the phone brought a curious calm, a release of an unseen fear that had been knotting my belly.

Without looking at Alex, I set the receiver down on the table and ran back up the stairs, past Tina and the boy, who had come out into the second-floor hallway to watch.

“Mom,” I said. “There’s a Mrs. Wilson—” I stopped, surprised to see that the room was put back together, the closet neat enough to put Alex’s room to shame, and that my mother was lying down, curled on her side. “There’s a Mrs. Wilson from Child Services on the phone,” I finished.

My mother shook her head. “I’m not here. Tell her I’m asleep.”

“That’ll only make it worse.”

“Do it,” she hissed, but I tugged her arm until she rose and together we went downstairs. “I can’t talk to her. Tell her I’m not here. Tell her I left the house.”

We got to the phone, my mother as white as the furniture in the front room. Like a child refusing food, she shook her head with quick, sharp jerks. I heard the tinny voice of
Mrs. Wilson saying over and over again, “Hello? Mrs. Fisk? Hello? Can you hear me?”

My mother begged with her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Wilson,” I said into the receiver. “She can’t come to the phone right now.”

Mrs. Wilson was quiet on the other end for so long I thought she had disappeared or had hung up, but then she spoke. “Tell her, and your stepfather, that I’ll be by for a visit tomorrow morning, Thursday, at nine
A
.
M
.”

From the look on my mother’s face I could tell she heard. I said goodbye and hung up.

I thought she would call Claude, go running to him for comfort. Instead, once the dread of the phone call had passed, she blossomed with anger. “I suppose you’d be happy to be taken away.”

“From here? You’re joking, right?”

“This isn’t funny.”

“Then you should have talked to her. She knew you were right here.”

“Being angry with me won’t change anything, won’t—” She closed her eyes. “It won’t fix this.”

She and I stood by the phone until my mother let out a breath and stepped away.

“If she calls again, I’m not home,” she said, pausing when she met Alex coming down the stairs with Tina and the unnamed boy in tow. She stopped and looked at the two strangers and then at him. “They shouldn’t be here,” she said, light and amused, and then continued on her way up to the third floor.

Alex walked his guests to the front door. Tina’s pretty eyebrows were creased in confusion.

At least the phone call had one good result: It got rid of her.

My mother came into my room early in the morning carrying a shopping bag. She shook me awake and dragged the blankets from my body. “Get up,” she said.

My first thought was that we were running away again, but my mother rattled the shopping bag and took out a long green dress.

“Put this on,” she said. “Come on.”

“It’s too early.”

“That woman could come at any moment.” My mother sounded scared, and as I became more awake I noticed the wild light in her eyes, the pale cast of her skin. “It’s a pretty dress,” she said, as if that were reason enough to wear such a ridiculous thing before eight in the morning. “Come here. Put it on. I bought it for you.”

I held the dress out to look at it. Embroidered flowers lined the hem. Sleeveless and gathered in the front, made from a flowing fabric like silk. It was something out of a teen catalog, modeled by girls with perfect hair caught in
mid-laugh and surrounded by friends having the kind of fun I never could have.

The dress still had its tags; it had cost one hundred and ninety-five dollars. I’d never worn anything so expensive before.

“When did you buy this?”

“Oh,” she said, jerking the tag off. “The other day, at the country club. There was a sale. Turn around.” She reached to pull off the T-shirt I’d slept in, then tugged the dress over my head. Her hands were blood warm on my arms. I stood in front of her while she tied the sash around the back. “It goes well with your eyes,” she said, smiling. “Do you like it?”

She said she’d bought it, but she’d bought it with Claude’s money. I thought of those old novels where people had to dress for dinner and went to parties every night. I almost laughed thinking of Claude requiring Alex to dress in a suit. But it fit now—we would all be dressed like dolls standing lopsided on the icing of the Cake House. “This is what you want me to wear?”

“It’s almost eight now. We don’t know when she’s coming. We have to be ready,” she said, turning to make my bed and forcing me to move. “What else do you have to wear?”

Nothing else like this, and she knew it. She started snapping the shopping bag until she could fold it, her movements sharp and choppy.

She looked around my room, as though realizing for the first time what I had done with all my things.

“Are you going to leave your room like this?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

She took a deep breath through her nose, then reached into a pocket for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Taking
a fresh cigarette from the pack, she let it dangle from her bottom lip. Her lighter sparked but produced no flame. She swore. “Do your mother a favor and go light it for me,” she said. “You can use the stove.”

Many of the kids from my old apartment building smoked, but I never had. My mother smoked too much. It had frightened me, to breathe smoke like a dragon.

“Why can’t you do it?” I said.

“Oh, don’t fight me, Rosaura. Not today. It’s not difficult.”

I hesitated, suspicious that once I left the room she’d take that opportunity to shove my clothing and books and everything else I had so carefully ordered into the closet. I prepared myself for a fight, but then she deflated and the frantic energy she had come in with bled out of her. She sat down on my bed, reaching to pick up one of my shoes that I’d left in the middle of the floor.

“I like the room the way it is,” I said.

She nodded. “Just go. I won’t touch anything. I’ll just tidy.”

I knew she was mad at me for answering Mrs. Wilson’s call, but I didn’t want her to be worried; I didn’t want her to be afraid or to cry. I went down to the first floor, noticing how the armholes of the green dress pulled with uncomfortable tightness and how the bodice itched and scratched.

Standing in front of the stove, I held the cigarette, watching the flame on the burner dance. The cigarette was still damp from my mother’s mouth.

Before I could lower my head to the fire, Alex walked in. He noticed my dress, then the cigarette between my lips.

“Where did you get that?” Alex snatched the cigarette from my mouth. “Your mother?”

“Give it back.” I reached for it, but he put his arm against my chest, his eyes so frosty they were better than air-conditioning. “Yes, it’s hers,” I said. “Give it back.”

“She asked you to light it for her?”

“Yeah, so what? I can do it.” I reached for the cigarette again, but he blocked me a second time.

Taking the cigarette between his lips, he bent over the flame, put the tip in the fire, and inhaled. His cheeks sank in for a moment; then smoke trailed from his nose and mouth. I was tempted to steal a pack of my mother’s cigarettes and ask Alex to light each one for me.

He ran up the stairs, taking several steps at a time, and I followed right behind as he marched over to my mother. I was afraid he was going to throw the cigarette, but he handed it to her, lit end facing away.

“That’s pretty lazy, even for you,” he said. “Here’s your fucking cigarette.”

“She wasn’t going to smoke it.”

“Do that again, and I’ll tell my dad.” Alex turned away, heading for the stairs.

Her mouth in an ugly twist, my mother took the shoe that she was still holding and threw it hard. It smacked against the wall by his head.

White-faced, he turned. She had the other shoe in her hand, ready to throw it.

A loud, booming voice made us all jump. Claude stood behind me like a giant.

“What are you doing?”

My mother let the shoe fall to the floor with a dull thump. She turned away and with a shaking hand took a drag. “I’m tired,” she said to no one.

“Dahlia,” said Claude, “that woman will be here any minute.”

“I know. I’m just going to lie down. For a moment.”

“No, you’re not,” he said.

Alex also turned to leave, trying to slip past his father, but Claude blocked him.

“Both of you, you’ll wait downstairs.”

My mother didn’t move, waiting until Alex went past first. She followed a moment later.

Claude sighed, then looked at me. “That’s a nice dress, very pretty. But can I trust you?”

“To do what?”

“Behave yourself,” said Claude, more amused than not.

“I’ll behave if you behave,” I said. Light streamed in through the window, illuminating the lines that crowded around his eyes and creased his forehead. He started to speak, but the sound of a car pulling up to the driveway interrupted and he snapped his mouth shut. There were footsteps and a knock on the door.

We stared at each other, the moment suspended like before glass breaking or a gun firing. I went down the stairs first.

MRS
.
WILSON
’
S GLASSES ECLIPSED HALF
her face. Behind the lenses her eyes were as round as quarters.