This Cake is for the Party (17 page)

I have a ratchet set, says Bruce.

I'm sure you do, says Trevor.

I'm going to make a coffee run, I say. Who wants coffee?

Oh, Meredith, I'd just love one, says Margaret. Cream and sugar, please.

Thanks for helping us out, Meredith, says Bruce. We sure do appreciate you being here today. He adds: Milk, no sugar for me.

Bruce is tall, and he stands with his chest raised. He's in excellent shape for a man well into his sixties. His frame is classic strength. He has large hands that have seen some physical work, hands you feel you can trust. Bruce is not a heartless man. He has a good face. I don't blame Margaret for wanting to move in with him.

Margaret says, Before I forget, Meredith, I'm almost out of my Artemis Powder.

I might have a jar kicking around for you, I tell her.

How's that going? asks Trevor.

Business is good, I tell him. People don't want to use chemicals anymore. Everyone is afraid of cancer. Then I stop, realizing what I just said.

Sorry.

Don't be.

I didn't mean that—

It's okay.

Margaret has wandered over to the card table that's set up on the other side of the yard. She rearranges piles of mismatched dishware, putting the large plates on the bottom, saucers and bowls on top. I watch her turn some of these pieces upside down over the lawn, dumping out the cherry blossoms that have collected inside. She looks at the mugs, and one by one shakes the petals out of those too. Then she straightens all of the mugs so that their handles are pointing in the same direction.

Sorry if I'm being a bastard today, Trevor says to me.

You aren't really. It's okay.

It's because when I listen to myself talk, the words sound ridiculous.

I know, I tell him. I feel the same way.

I'm just aggravated. Don't listen to me today.

A woman with a vinyl clutch purse is moving through the rack of clothes with her fingers like she's leafing through office files. Then she turns around and leaves the yard, her purse tucked under her arm. Trevor says, When we're talking, it's so obvious that we're alive.

We could be quiet, I say.

No, he says. That's awkward.

He's playing with his T-shirt. Rolling the edge of the fabric between his thumb and forefinger so it makes a tight tube. Then letting it go so it hangs in a curl at his waist. I want to reach out and press the curl down and feel his hip under my hand.

I miss your dad, I say. I spent a lot of time with him this winter.

I know, he says.

Paul Farenbacher's briefcase is on the grass by my feet. I have a collection of old battered suitcases I've picked up from antique shops and estate sales. I love them. They're all in my living room, holding my tax returns and receipts from the past seven years. I have to keep the paperwork for that long in case I'm audited; every year someone starts a rumour that they're digging for fraud associated with natural health trends and small businesses. I promised myself that I would stop buying the suitcases when I realized that I was, quite literally, collecting baggage. But this one is special. I bend down to get it. The cover is black with a pebbly texture. It has a monogram engraved on a brass plate under the handle:
P. A. F.

What's the A for?

Axel, Trevor says. Paul Axel. I have the same middle name.

Do you mind? I'd like to have it, if that's okay.

No, you should have it. You keep suitcases, don't you? He says
keep
. Like they're cockatiels, or exotic orchids.

I could give you the five. To make up for the record guy.

Don't be stupid. It's yours.

I let the briefcase rest on my palms and he touches the sides, flicks open the latch. There's a dusty, grapefruity smell, like sour paper and ink. All of my suitcases have this smell. I'm disappointed when I realize that Paul Farenbacher's case is no different. The lining has an amorphous blue stain in the corner. There are two hinged metal arms holding up the top.

Thank you, I say.

You're welcome.

Do you want anything?

He looks at me, confused. This is the first time I've really seen Trevor's eyes since he's been home. His irises have asymmetrical spots of gold embedded in the blue. The roundness of his eyes, the roundness of his face. He is so much like his father. This is Paul Farenbacher at my age, I think. Involuntarily, I think of kissing Trevor, his smooth teeth sliding against my tongue. I look away.

I mean from the bakery. Coffee, something to eat.

Oh. No, thanks.

I'll get us cookies or something. You haven't had breakfast.

Trevor lowers the lid of the briefcase and it snaps in place. I'll save this for you, he says. You take this home.

One black October day when I was twelve, the same day I woke up to a scritching sound inside my ear (a sound that suspiciously felt like an insect, though I knew that it was highly unlikely a bug could have crawled into my ear canal; I told myself that it was a drop of water trapped in there), I found out I had been dumped by Shane DeSouza. Brad Garret came up to me at recess and said: Shane's with Tammy now, so don't call him your boyfriend anymore. Tammy was a winch-faced gymnast with a spiral perm and a penchant for a certain purple, sticky lip gloss that came in a plastic pot and had an iridescent sheen; an American brand with a French name that I knew for a fact had been tested cruelly on laboratory rabbits; a lip gloss that had been passed around to all of the girls at recess the day before, everyone but me, and when I returned to class after the lunch break on that day, my lips were conspicuously dry and un-glossed. Which is exactly why, I reasoned, huddled in the back of the playground digging at the base of the chain-link fence with a stick, Shane DeSouza didn't want to be seen with me anymore. As I cried and snuffled, my sinuses filled with fluid, giving me an ache in my temples and the ugly need to suck back tears and snot. This made the scratching in my ear intensify, almost as though there really was something in there, a tiny creature who could sense my distress.

That afternoon I was late, having dragged my sneakers through the ditches along the side of the road on the long way home, keeping my head down low, looking at stones and half-rotten leaves and disintegrating litter for poetic implications that would enhance my feeling of wretchedness. When I opened the door, I could tell that Paul Farenbacher was there. The house smelled like his aftershave: caraway seeds, menthol and sawdust.

Meredith, said my mother. There you are. Come say hello to Mr. Farenbacher. He's just brought us a gift for Thanksgiving weekend. She held a square, heavy-looking bottle in her hands.

Paul Farenbacher bent over the banister to get a look at me. Hallo, he said.

After he left, my mother showed the bottle to me—it was almond-infused Polish vodka. She uncorked it, took a whiff, and made a face. It smells like cyanide, she said, and she poured the contents down the drain. She rinsed the hand-blown glass bottle, mottled with intentional imperfections, shimmering and opalescent—not unlike Tammy's lip gloss, I noted to myself—and set it on the shelf next to the glass paperweight with a swallowtail butterfly trapped inside it.

Our house was built without any kind of mud room. After an outing, before joining the rest of the household, you were required to remove your shoes at the door, hang your coat on the hook, and slipper your way up the stairs so you wouldn't leave a trace of the outdoors in the carpet fibres. There was a banister that framed the stairs at the entranceway to better facilitate the viewing of family and friends as they completed this procedure. After years of bearing the weight of these observers, the railing on the banister had loosened, and Paul Farenbacher leaned right along with it. When I looked up, he was tilting towards me at an alarming angle.

What's wrong with you? he asked me. You look puffy. He exchanged a glance with my mother. Tell me this is not trouble with a man!

Paul Farenbacher's lightly accented English sounded knowledgeable and wise to me, and his prematurely white hair and beard, trimmed with precision, so white that it dazzled against his toast-coloured skin, made him look like a wizard or a scientist, equally capable of saving me from the mysteries of the paranormal and the evils of humanity. The truth was that I felt safer with Paul Farenbacher than I did with my own father. My father—whose car insurance had increased exponentially from the number of fenderbenders he caused every year; who, when helping me with my math homework, poured a liberal amount of Canadian Club into one of our sunflower-printed gas station collectible tumblers, calling it his “magic formula revealer”; who had to wear a shower cap and rubber gloves to work and came home from the Island Farms Dairy Production Plant every night smelling like sour milk—secretly embarrassed me.

I think something is eating my ear, I told Paul Farenbacher.

That night, while my mother started dinner (
Please stay
for a bite, Paul. I'm making extra. Call Margaret and Trevor
) and my father watched television (
Can I get you a drink,
Paul, let me pour you a cocktail
), I lay down on the loveseat and let Paul Farenbacher peer into my ear canal with a flashlight and gently press his callused index finger against the tragus of my right ear until a small black spider crawled out, along his finger, and into the palm of his hand.

Gotcha, Paul Farenbacher said.

I bring back a cardboard tray from the bakery, with a paper cup tucked in each of the slots and cookies for all of us to share. I deliver a cup to Bruce. I give Trevor a cup too, even though he said he didn't want one. He tells me his mom is in the backyard.

Margaret is smoking on the back steps behind the house. Paul's old ashtray is beside her. Red lettering on white ceramic:
York University Class of '
69
. A roll of ash lies on top of a slice of masking tape with the price marked on it.

I raise my eyebrows. That'll be twenty-five cents, ma'am.

Oh, geez, she says, exhaling a fast puff. Don't tell Trevor, okay? Thank you, honey. I bend to offer her the tray and she takes her coffee cup out of it. It makes a squeaking sound as she pulls.

Meredith. She motions with her hand to a space on the step beside her. She pats the wood and says to me: Can I talk to you for a minute?

Of course.

I know this is hard for Trevor.

It's hard for everyone, I say. We all loved him.

Margaret nods. She holds the cigarette to her lips like a dart and inhales, eyes squinting. Then she drops her hand and looks at the cigarette in her fingers. She exhales.

These are Paul's, she says. I don't even smoke.

I ask, Can I have a drag?

She passes it to me with a sneaky look, and I put it to my lips just to have a taste.

I never thought I'd see this, she says. You're the healthiest person I know.

Don't tell my clients, I say, and let the smoke out when I smile. I sit down beside her and slip the cigarette back into the notch in the ashtray.

Margaret slices the Scotch tape with one polished fingernail and loosens the flap of the cookie box until it pops open. Since we're making confessions, she says. She plucks out an almond crescent and considers it. She continues, I'm assuming you knew that Paul and I had an understanding.

I look at her.

She puts the cookie in her mouth all at once. I watch her chewing and swallowing and I can imagine her jawbone, her teeth, the skull that is under her skin. I wonder at this: without skin and muscles, we would all be indistinguishable. Each one of us has a skull that looks exactly the same as all the others.

It was so hard for us at the end, she says.

I'm unclear whom she means by
us
, but I don't say anything.

I just wanted to thank you. She licks the powdery crumbs off like she's kissing each finger. He loved having you come over so often. He told me.

I take this in. Then I say: You and Bruce.

She nods. I know this must seem rushed to everyone, she says. But they don't know the whole thing. I just thank God that it was fast for Paul.

She crushes the end of the cigarette into the masking tape until the smoke stops and it becomes nothing more than a stub of paper in a tiny heap of black and white ash.

Boris, the big ginger tom from down the street, has jumped inside the box of paperbacks. His ears—two orange triangles with wispy white bristles—poke up over the brim. This improves sales. He's a popular cat. A small crowd gathers around him. I sell a copy of
Neuromancer
, a battered copy of
A Prayer for Owen Meany
, and a handful of detective novels that I don't recognize.

I ask Trevor if he's going to go back to Costa Rica.

I'm going to take some time off, he says. I might go to Europe. My grandmother is in Berlin.

What about the kitesurfing? I say.

He smiles. The wind will be here when I get back.

Well. If you need a place to stay in the meantime.

He looks at me and I see his chest move through his cotton T-shirt when he takes a breath and again I have to stop myself from touching him. I wonder if he knows the truth about his mother and Bruce. If it would matter to him if he knew.

We should have dinner or something, he says to me.

The woman in the blue trench coat comes back. She's brought someone with her: a short, suntanned man with a curly blond ponytail peeking out from under a baseball cap that says
J. Brinkman and Associates Reforestation
and a flat gold chain around his neck with links that move like a snake. They both touch the sides of the La-Z-Boy, drawing lines in the plush with their fingers as they talk about getting it into their truck.

I think we're finally going to sell the big boy, I say to Trevor, and something wavers in my solar plexus as I watch the transaction.

The woman passes Margaret a bundle of twenty-dollar bills, folded in half. Margaret shakes her hand and puts the cash in her back pocket. Bruce helps the man with the chair. They stand on either side of it and they use their legs when they lift it off the ground. It looks heavy. Like pallbearers, they stand for a moment to stabilize before they carry it out to the truck.