The Cake House (25 page)

I climbed onto the couch and watched them fit the tree into a corner of the room, its large, spindly branches bouncing as they moved it this way and that way.

“What do you think?” Claude wiped his hands, satisfied. He picked up a bag of white cotton batting and began to spread it around the bottom of the tree. It was fluffy and green, and already the pine scent spread throughout the first floor.

“I think it looks like a tree in a living room,” I said.

He gave me a look that said,
Don’t be a wiseass.

“Come on, Rosie, do your part,” he said, pointing with his chin to the boxes full of ornaments.

Alex grabbed a tangled mess of colored lights; I grabbed the tinsel. We did a complicated dance around each other
until Claude called me over to his side. “Over here,” he said, indicating a bald spot on one side of the tree. “Attagirl, get it all covered.”

The afternoon flowed into evening, bringing chilled air and a jeweled sky, vast and deep, visible through the sliding glass doors. We ate in the living room as Alex and I took turns decorating the tree.

“I like the red ones.” I held a perfect round orb in my hand, seeing my reflection widened, my lips stretched, my nose flattened. I held the red ornament close to Alex so I could see his face distorted, stretched wide and unrecognizable.

Claude hunched over his record collection, picking through carols and old standards with baritone men and soprano women. Like his son, he preferred vinyl to compact discs, and he spun the black records in his large hands before carefully dropping the needle.

My mother popped popcorn. I sat cross-legged with a needle and threaded string. She joined me, threading her own needle. I made her a popcorn crown and necklace to match. She laughed a real laugh. Distracted by the lopsided crown falling over her eyes, she pierced herself with the needle and hissed in pain. A bead of blood formed, squeezed from the tip of her finger. Claude left the stereo and went to her, kneeling by her side.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “Jabbed myself like an idiot—that’s all.”

“Give it here,” he demanded.

She hesitated but offered her hand. Claude inspected her finger, brought it up to his mouth, and sucked on it. She lowered her eyes.

“All better,” said Claude. He took the pile of popcorn from my lap. “Popcorn Queen, come on.”

Together, he and I draped the tree. He held his arms out, ready to catch me if I fell while I stood on a stool and put the angel on the top, her cloth hands demurely pressed together, her head bent to one side as if listening for answers.

“It’s so pretty,” said my mother. She started picking up dishes, bits of escaped popcorn, and tinsel.

“Alex, help your stepmother.”

Claude’s command hung in the air as my mother froze. Except for that time when he’d lit her cigarette for me, I don’t think Alex and my mother ever spoke to each other.

“Yes, sir,” said Alex, bending to collect my plate as the record player scratched onto the next song. Claude took my hand, twirled me around.

“Brenda Lee, she’s the best,” he said, singing along.
“Rocking around the Christmas tree at the Christmas party hop.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. The lights blurred, color blending and arcing across my vision. I was breathless, dizzy; the world tilted, rocking to one side. My mother watched, a smile spreading across her face, slow and sweet.

Alex leaned against the doorway in the kitchen with his arms folded—very stern, very cross—but his habitual chill defrosted as he also watched us dance. He clapped and sang along.

Claude spun me around until I collapsed onto the couch.

“And now your turn, m’lady,” he said to my mother.

“Oh no.” She backed away, shaking her head, coquettish.

“Oh yes,” he insisted, his hands clasping hers like big traps.

“You and Rosaura play. I’ve got work to do,” she protested, yet she let him drag her to the center of the room. “No, no. Really. Robert, I can’t.”

It took only a second to register her mistake. Claude dropped her hands, his smile halting like a windup toy stuttering to a stop.

“Claude, I—” she started.

“It’s all right.” He held up his hand, the effort it took written in the stiffness of his shoulders. “A slip of the tongue,” he said, but his voice was every bit as cold as Alex’s had ever been.

He went to the stereo, started flipping through record albums as if nothing had happened. My mother and I didn’t move. Neither did Alex. A minute passed before Claude stopped pretending and dropped his head.

“How can you even think of him?” he asked.

She looked to her hands, to her feet, and then up to the ceiling, as if the stucco contained words that might save her. “I don’t.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

He moved toward her, and she flinched before she could control it. It stopped him. Sorrow stamped all over his face, he reached for her and took her arm. She breathed deeply, then leaned against him so he could rest his cheek on the top of her head. Together, they started up the stairs.

The music had ended during the previous five minutes without my noticing, and the needle skipped over the label. I stood in the middle of the living room, no longer dizzy, no longer dancing. I couldn’t erase that last image of my mother’s face with my father’s name on her lips.

Alex turned the stereo off. “Hey,” he said, and lifted my chin so I had to look at him. Concern warmed his eyes. “Don’t worry about them.”

Here was my chance. Here he stood in front of me, the two of us alone, without Claude, without my mother, and
the well of emotion in the pit of my stomach threatened to overwhelm everything. I grabbed his hand so tightly it must have hurt.

I grabbed his shirt.

I kissed him.

DARKNESS DRAPED MY ROOM
,
WITH
accents here and there from the moon glowing through the window. Something moved in the shadows, and my stomach clenched in anticipation of the ghost hiding in the folds of night, but I refused to fear him, not while Alex stood beside me.

Alex removed his shirt and jeans to stand, bare chested, in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. The background of darkened shadows made him paler than usual.

Above us, I thought I heard the low rumble of Claude’s voice, the quiet susurration of my mother’s cries. Alex moved again when there was nothing but the wind, and together we lay on my bed.

“Why’d you drive off with Tina?” I asked.

He drew back. “What? When? Which time?”

“That morning. After you and I—” I couldn’t say the words, too shy, too uncertain.

He took a moment to think, and it angered me further that neither Tina nor I was important enough for him to remember. But then he said, “That wasn’t Tina. That was Joey.”

It hadn’t been Tina; it had been Joey. He’d driven off with Joey. Did they get together and talk about Tina? What was Joey to Alex? Was there now a fourth person, to make our triangle a quartet? I didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but either way it increased my competition for his attention.

“She’s a friend,” he said, answering my unspoken question, but I remembered that Aaron said Alex didn’t have any friends. “What if I said you’re the only one? No one else. What would you say?”

I shifted a little, my blood pumping warm and hard in a thumping rhythm. Smooth; he was smooth and slippery like glass. These might have been the same words he spoke to Tina. But I realized it didn’t matter. Regardless of his feelings for Tina, I would still want him and still take him.

“I’d say okay. Show me.” The dark obscured his features.

“I should go back to my room, Rosie. I should leave you.”

He used his father’s name for me. It made me shiver. He shifted closer, a bit of moonlight catching the intensity of his eyes.

“But you won’t,” I said. I didn’t want him to go.

He slid a hand under my top, lifting it up and over. He untied my shoes, removing my socks. My jeans followed. We lay in our underwear.

The house creaked. Claude’s voice dropped through the ceiling from the third floor like an unwelcome visitor. We stopped, Alex tense and rigid, but in the silence that followed he smiled, and for once I didn’t shiver; for once he made me warm and I wanted to feel his smile on every part of my body. I wanted to unzip his skin and reach between ribs to hold his beating heart in my hand—as if that would tell me where he might choose to give his love.

I licked his lips. I was skin hungry, unable to get enough, thrilled when he shivered and panted and came apart in my hands. He slid my underwear down, parting my legs. I stopped listening for the noises of the house at rest. All I could hear was the music of Alex’s breathing.

He filled all of my vision, above me, between my legs.
He paused to put a condom on, then pushed in, and it hurt less than before. He took his time, until he couldn’t hold back anymore and I pressed my lips against his neck.

I WOKE IN TIME TO
see Alex sit up and slip his boxers on. I trailed my hand down his back. He arched away from the chill of my fingers but smiled when I sat up.

“I better leave,” he said.

The bedside clock read a little past six in the morning.

“No one’s awake,” I said.

I slid my arm across his back. He held himself still this time, knowing that it was me who touched him. I explored the vulnerable skin at the back of his neck, taking the time I hadn’t earlier. He shivered, but I didn’t let that stop me, tasting down the line of his collarbone, lost in the poetry of his nakedness until he pushed me down against the mattress and kissed my neck, my breast, his hand pushing at my legs.

The house creaked, its weight shifting when a door opened and closed. Alex froze and we both looked at the door to my room. Nothing happened; all was quiet. “It’s okay. It was probably the wind,” I said, hoping that he would start again, but he pulled away, alert.

“Someone’s awake,” he whispered without looking at me. He rose from the bed and walked to the door, opening it a crack to look into the hallway, his bare shoulders bone white in the moonlight.

I didn’t have a good argument for him to stay. Alex was gathering his discarded clothing but paused when I stood and let the sheet fall away. He watched me cross the short distance.

“See you in the morning,” I said.

He shook his head at my crazy naked boldness, and I felt warm inside that he liked what he saw. But with another smile, a quick kiss, he slipped through the door into the darkness of the hallway.

With his absence, I felt a wave of embarrassment to be naked alone in my room, and I slipped my nightgown over my head. I cupped my breasts through the nightshirt, remembering how he had cupped them, tempted to follow him down the hallway, into his room.

I heard a bump and scrape of furniture, then a curse. I stepped out into the hallway, then down the stairs.

Moonlight flooded the living room, spilling into the dining room. All was quiet, but then Claude emerged from the shadows. I took a step back before he could see me.

He was pacing, his briefcase left open with his papers strewn across the dining table. Behind Claude, the desk was open and exposed, pulled away from the wall. It must have been the source of the noise. He paced from the desk to the briefcase, then all the way over to the sliding glass doors, his head twitching, as if getting rid of a fly. A hand swatted, confusion crossing his face. The Christmas tree stood unlit in the corner, the cloth angel silent and observing from on high. The longer I watched, the more I saw a shadow that dogged Claude’s every move.

My heartbeat slowed, and my breath with it, and I saw
him
: the shape of the ghost’s head, a couple of inches shorter than Claude, his sweatshirt with the pocket weighed down, the wound on the side of his face. I froze, my heart hammering so hard it hurt. Claude continued his pacing, restless: desk, briefcase, then up and down the living room. With each step the ghost mirrored his movements. Each step Claude took, the ghost took one with him. Step. Step. Turn. Breathe. Sigh.

A quiet rasping filled the living room. The harder I listened, the more I understood the words that were not spoken out loud. A hum in the air. A buzz.

The ghost whispered in Claude’s ear, saying,
You’re worthless.

Claude twitched; he swatted the air again, but the ghost switched to his other side.

You fail at everything.

Claude paused by the laptop and picked up a few of his papers.

She’s using you. She doesn’t love you. It’s your fault. All of it.

He moved to the desk and the ghost followed.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice cracking, uncertain which of them I spoke to.

Claude glanced up and so did the ghost. They smiled in sync, but only the ghost lifted his finger to his lips.

“Did I wake you?” Claude asked. “I’m sorry. I’m … working, figuring things out.”

He pushed the desk back into position and rolled the top down, used his key to lock it. “Isn’t it a little early?” he asked. “I hope you’re not trying to sneak a peek at your present.” But his chiding grin didn’t hold as he returned to staring without focus at the documents in his hand.

“Couldn’t sleep,” I said, with my gaze more on the ghost than on Claude.

“Oh. Well—” Claude seemed at a loss. He wasn’t looking at me but went back to collecting his paperwork into a neat pile. The ghost stood beside him, his shadow.

Behind me, I heard the soft sound of bare feet on carpet and turned to find my mother in her kimono robe standing a few steps above. She came down the remaining steps
and entered the living room. The four of us—Claude, my mother, myself, and the ghost—stood in awkward silence.

There was no movement between us, until I saw the ghost lean in close to Claude to whisper in his ear, and somehow, as before, I heard the words as well:
What’s wrong with you? How can you stand to look at her?

Then the ghost detached from Claude, took a step back, then another step, and melted into shadow. With his disappearance, the spell lifted, and I took a big breath.

“You’re awake,” said Claude, speaking to my mother.