The Cake House (26 page)

“I thought I’d start breakfast,” she said.

“That’s good. But I have some work to do.” Claude returned to his briefcase. “I should really go into the office. Just for a few hours.”

“On Christmas?” I moved farther into the room. Claude startled when I spoke, having forgotten that I was there. I turned from my mother to Claude and back again.

“Just for a few hours,” he repeated, and a smile returned to his face when he looked at me.

“You can’t go.”

“Rosie,” said Claude in a reasoning tone, but I could hear the change in his voice and knew he wouldn’t be leaving.

“Maybe later, after we’ve opened presents.”

He sighed but nodded. “All right. Why don’t you turn the Christmas tree lights on?”

I moved to the tree and plugged in the lights, watching them blink on and off, on and off. Beneath the tree, presents waited to be opened, my name among them. I crouched low to inspect the new ones that had appeared overnight.

Claude moved over to the couch, bringing his paperwork and briefcase with him. “See anything for you?” he asked.

There was a box with my name on it, wrapped in silver
paper and topped by a round, springy bow. I picked it up. It was heavy. Claude smiled as I carefully turned the box around.

“Rosaura, help me with breakfast,” said my mother, standing by the door to the kitchen.

“Go help her,” said Claude, but without looking at her.

I set the box down, hesitating for a moment, worried that the ghost would reappear with my absence, but Claude nodded toward the kitchen and I left him alone in the gray of morning.

She and I cooked breakfast. “Maybe I should get a job,” she said while carefully inserting bread into the toaster.

I stirred scrambled eggs around in a pan and lowered the fire.

“Something part-time, maybe at a store,” she continued. “I can’t sit here and do nothing all day forever.”

Careful not to drop any of the egg, I scraped the pan clean before turning to her. She was looking at me with uncertainty, a quiet plea on her face.

“Sounds like a good idea.” I said.

She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth before nodding, turning to the refrigerator, and hiding in the light of its open door.

Alex stood in the kitchen doorway. “Can I help?” he asked.

He and my mother eyed each other, but I took his arm and positioned him by the counter, giving him a knife. “Careful,” I said, handing him half an onion to chop. “Don’t cry.”

Claude appeared at the door, watching as the three of us negotiated the kitchen space.

After breakfast we sat around the tree and I gave everyone gifts. Claude got a bunch of small photos of my mother
arranged like a bouquet of Dahlias. He took his time, carefully examining each one. My mother got a photograph of me that Aaron had taken. I wanted to give her something else, something more, but she waved her hand. “I don’t want anything,” she said. “This is perfect.”

Alex received a picture of him and me together, sitting side by side on the low brick wall that circled the fountain. The automatic timer on the camera had been too quick or I had been too slow, because the edges of my body blurred like a ghost. It had been hot that day and though my hair was in a ponytail, most of it had come loose, bits of it netted about my face.

“Will you cherish it forever?” I asked, trying to sound coy.

“If you want me to,” he said, cocky, with half a smile. He put his hand near mine, fingertips touching. I looked at Claude, but he had eyes only for his Dahlias.

“Open your present, Rosaura,” said my mother.

Alex got up and brought the silver box to me. I slipped a finger under the taped flaps of the wrapping paper, slowly working it loose. The picture on the box showed a shiny new camera, the word “Nikon” printed across the top.

“To replace the broken one. I thought it was time,” said Claude.

TINA APPEARED ON THE LAST
day of winter break. She was a bit of sea foam, bobbing back and forth at the bottom of the hill, popping in and out of view as if she were waiting for me to go inside or leave before venturing any closer. She remained at a distance until I left the yard and went to meet
her. When she saw me, she took a moment to regroup before facing me.

“Is Alex home?” she asked. Her hair was dirty and her lips chapped and bloodred.

“I haven’t seen him today,” I lied. Alex had come out of the bathroom at the same time that I had left my bedroom. He’d stepped aside to let me enter and we had brushed against each other. But I didn’t tell her this.

“Can’t you go check?”

I should have told her to leave, but I wanted to understand her. I wanted to take her picture again with my new camera. When I first knew Tina, she was my rival, but now I wasn’t so certain what her role was, and it hurt to see her so confused and lost.

“Come around to the back,” I said.

She appeared suspicious, but I didn’t wait for her to say no and led her down the worn path along the side of the house. The tall grass had turned white like an old man’s hair.

“The garden is my favorite part of this house,” I said, my bare feet dusty and dirty, hurting a little from sharp rocks and burrs that lay hidden in the grass. “When I first came here I liked to hide in those bushes.”

“And you don’t anymore?”

“Not since …” There was something about Tina as she was in this moment that reminded me of myself those first days after my father died. “Sometimes I see my father’s ghost. He died in this house. I saw him down in those bushes not long after.”

I spoke of his ghost out loud for the first time, but surprisingly nothing happened as a result: The garden remained
exactly as before; the sky and the sun floated above us. I let out a shaky breath.

She didn’t look at me like I was crazy. Instead, Tina sighed, as if she knew all about ghosts, had one of her own, or even several. We sat on the brick wall of the fountain.

“Are there fishes?” Tina bent over the rim. “Hey, there they are. I see them.”

“You can see them?” I saw nothing but the dark, mossy water.

“Right there.” She pointed, dipping her hand into the water. She bent closer, and for a moment I worried that she meant to climb all the way in and sink below the surface. But it was a foolish fear. The water couldn’t be more than a foot deep.

We sat on the edge of the fountain, splashing water. Five minutes. Ten minutes, and for all that time we sat together and didn’t mention Alex.

“I got a new camera for Christmas,” I told her.

She said she wanted to see it. “You’re lucky. My parents didn’t get me anything. They were promising a trip to Europe, but that’s not going to happen now.”

I wanted to ask why they wouldn’t be going to Europe when Alex appeared on the other side of the sliding glass doors.

“You should go,” I said, with a rise of conflicting emotions. She needed to be gone, away from Alex. He was no good for her, but she wasn’t any good for him either.

She followed my gaze, but I blocked her view, pleading with my eyes, with my entire body,
go, get away, get away now.
I pushed her toward the side of the house and the narrow path that led to freedom.

“Is that him?” she asked when the sliding glass doors opened.

“Get out of here.” I kept pushing until she pushed back and gave me a hurt expression. Too late, I thought, when Alex called for us to stop.

“What are you doing?” he asked Tina, while ignoring me. I wondered how he could stand to have the both of us there in front of him. Were we interchangeable to him? Or perhaps he did not think of us as the same.

I witnessed her struggle as she managed her emotions. “Is your dad home? I thought I could speak with him.”

Her question threw me—why would she want to speak with Claude?

“He’s not here. And it wouldn’t help. Come on, I better take you home,” he said.

Reluctantly, she followed. Any second and they would both be gone, back around the house. Maybe he’d take her for a drive; maybe they would park and he’d have sex with her in the backseat. I was jealous, but I was also afraid for her and angry that she couldn’t see how Alex would only hurt her more. It had been a mistake to bring her to the garden.

That night, Alex appeared in my room. Bare chested, he slid in against my overheated skin.

“Is this how it’s going to be?” I asked. “Will you be hers during the day and mine at night?”

“We only talked.”

“Oh right, of course.”

I didn’t know why I bothered to ask; he didn’t answer.

“What happened to her? She’s different now, than how she was,” I said, even though I risked that he would get up
and leave if I kept pushing. But he slid his hand beneath my nightgown, across my stomach, up to my breast, a nipple between his fingers. I started to think that maybe I hated him.

“If you hurt her, you’ll never forgive yourself,” I said.

All I could hear was his breathing.

At school, I began to watch Tina more often, watched her spiral and unravel slowly, an inch at a time. From across the courtyard, I watched her approach Tom. He was sitting against a wall reading a brand-new
Popular Mechanics
magazine, partially hidden from view by a tree and a trash can.

I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but he listened. After she finished, he closed his magazine, and then he shook his head, no. Tina, with a jerky nod of acceptance, turned to leave.

“Wait,” said Tom. He placed a closed fist over her open palm, then leaned in and whispered into her ear. When she tried to walk away, he held on until she nodded in agreement to whatever it was he had made her promise. Then he let her go. She ran back to her friends.

Tom sat back down in his corner and picked up his magazine.

I crossed the courtyard to sit with him. A mix of bushes
and bedraggled flowers were growing where the cement ended. I picked a buttercup and rolled it between two fingers.

“What was that about?” I asked, offering Tom half of my bologna sandwich.

He took it and chomped off a big bite, speaking with his mouth full. “They’re all going out tonight. She asked if I wanted to go.”

Without Aaron next to him, something about Tom appeared unfinished, with his skin yellowed and pale like tissue paper, the cuts and scabs on his knuckles, stains below his eyes.

“Did you say yes?” I asked, wondering who “they” were exactly, and if Alex was one of them.

“Nah,” said Tom. “They’re going to some club. She doesn’t want me to go.”

“Then why’d she ask?”

Tom rummaged around in my sack lunch and took out a bag of chips. I noticed that his left arm bent at a crooked angle. I examined it, bending the arm back and forth, trying to figure out what was wrong with it.

“That’s from when it broke. I was just a kid,” he said in answer to my unspoken question, and I remembered the story Tina had told, about how Alex broke Tom’s arm when they were children. They had all known one another since preschool. I was the one who didn’t fit. I was the interloper, the stranger.

I rolled up his sleeve to reveal the crease of his elbow. “Why do you do this?” I asked, softly caressing the ragged set of track marks.

He smiled. “I’m glad you can ask that question.”

My cheeks grew warm. I let his arm go, wanting to ask him what it was like when he was high, but it was like asking
how someone liked to have sex. I changed topics. “I’ve seen you with Alex. Are you friends?”

Tom slapped his sleeve down to cover his skin. “We’re not. Friends.”

“Then what do you guys talk about? And don’t tell me you don’t.”

He upended the bag of chips over his mouth to eat the crumbs. When he saw that I expected an answer, he said, “We talk about his dad and my brother.”

I wrinkled my forehead. Because of his general air of neglect, his exhaustion and unkemptness, I had always thought of Tom as being alone, without family, besides Aaron. Or if he had family, they were as good as nonexistent. I held all sorts of assumptions, that Tom came from a broken home and that was why he turned to drugs. That maybe he was homeless. But of course he had to have a home. He was scruffy and occasionally unbathed, but he wasn’t dirty. He wasn’t starving. Maybe a single brother wasn’t enough.

“Do you have parents?”

He blinked, his eyes dark and bleak. “My dad’s dead,” he said. Nothing about his mother.

“My dad’s dead too,” I said.

From where we sat we had a view of the field where the cheerleaders rehearsed, dressed in the green, white, and gold of Canyon High’s colors. The girls chanted, over and over again:
And one, and two, and turn around and double step, and kick, and hold, and hold. All right, girls, let’s do it again.
They practiced flips and handstands with broad smiles, so perfectly normal.

“Here,” he said, and gave me a buttercup flower, slightly crushed.

“Thanks.” I added it to the one I already had. He held a second flower, looking at Tina and perhaps thinking of getting up and giving it to her, but Aaron appeared from around the corner and plopped down next to us.

“Is that for me?” asked Aaron, taking the buttercup and putting it behind his ear. “Thanks, buddy.”

Tom cuffed Aaron, and they mock-wrestled until a scream ricocheted throughout the courtyard. Tina had fallen, and blood was pouring from her nose. She stared at her hand and screamed again. Several girls ran to her, and Joey took Tina’s head between her hands. They picked her up from the ground, helped her walk across the courtyard in the direction of the nurse’s office.

From his aloof perch on a picnic table, Alex watched as they passed; then he returned to his lunch.

Tom stared at Alex. He rolled up his magazine and twisted it around and around with his hands.

“Fucking asshole,” he said. “He did that to her. That’s his shit.”

Aaron laughed. He knocked Tom on the shoulder. “Tell us how you really feel. And you’re one to talk.”

A look passed between the two boys, sharp and filled with uneasy color. “Fuck you,” said Tom, and I tensed. Aaron and Tom never fought. They were friends; they cared about each other. “I thought you hated him,” Tom said in his quiet way.