The Cake House Read online

  I turned back to the machine. The machine’s hunger never ended, its stomach emptied into black garbage bags. It vibrated, growled, shuddered. I ran my hand down its flank where its heat was expelled with static electricity, my hair rising on my head, sparks shooting from my fingertips.

  Claude entered the copy room to share a candy bar and a soda. Our fingers shocked each other, jarring all the way up my arm. He watched me tear the wrapper from the candy bar.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  I bit off a mouthful and tried to smile. “Fantastic.”

  He smiled at my sarcasm, sipped his soda, and stared at the wall, lost in thought. I handed him back the rest of the candy bar. He was the one who looked tired.

  “Bad day?” I asked.

  His eyes shifted to me with a sudden unguarded intensity.

  I jumped when the office door opened with a jingle. Claude pushed the half-eaten candy bar at me and fumbled with his can of soda in his haste to greet whoever had entered, shoving both into my hands. I peeked around the corner; a man older than Claude with gray hair and two deep-set raccoon-ringed eyes stood by the water cooler. It was the man from the football game, with the teenage son who was a friend of Alex’s, the same man whom Claude had talked to the entire night.

  Claude held out his hand. “Harold,” he said in his big, booming businessman voice, and Harold gave an answering grin as they shook hands. “This is unexpected, but it’s good to see you.” Claude led Harold to his office without acknowledging my presence. “Come in, have a seat. How’s your family?” He shut the door, muffling their voices.

  The smell of melted chocolate lingered on my fingers. I tried to hear what they were saying as I picked up another fistful of papers. The top one read, “William Stuart, married with one daughter, who heard about Global Securities via the Santa Clarita Valley Signal.”

  The machine hummed, waiting. I stared down at William Stuart’s application, thinking of the football game, of Harold, of the smell of chocolate, of Alex at the football game, of the ache and sting between my legs.

  Then I saw the signature down at the bottom of the page, in the box reserved for in-office use: Robert Douglas, my father’s name, written in his style of jagged lines. The shock of his name made me look up to see if anyone had noticed, but Claude was still secluded with Harold. The rest of the office pulsed in its pervasive silence. I looked at the next form and saw his name again in the box marked for in-office use. And again. How many more? How many times had I unknowingly fed my father to the shredding machine?

  He hadn’t been a client. He had never had the type of money a client of Claude’s would need to invest. No, all this time, he had been an employee. He had worked for Claude. “Claude’s the ticket,” he had said. “I do this work for him, and we got it made.”

  The machine roared to life, and I fed my father into its mouth.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  After Harold left, Claude said he would drive me home and come back to the office. He needed to stay longer than he’d thought.

  “Can I ask you something?” I asked as he shut and locked the door to the office, distracted.

  “Of course, sweetie,” he said, but he didn’t wait for me and I had to break into a run to catch up. In the car, Claude glanced in my direction while backing the Mercedes out of its parking spot. “Did you have a question?”

  I took a deep breath and thought about how to frame my questions. I wanted to know what my father had done for Claude, the kind of work he’d done. I wanted to know why he’d called it a game.

  Before I could speak, Claude patted my leg. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll have time to work in the darkroom later. There are a few tricks I know we can do without a developing tank.”

  As he spoke, he tapped at the steering wheel. It reminded me of Alex. Claude pushed the Mercedes into traffic, tapping at the steering wheel, gazing into the distance with a faraway expression. He wasn’t thinking about me or the darkroom. Those were just words he said because he thought I wanted to hear them.

  “Great,” I said, and turned to look out the window.

  Claude dropped me off at the house. I found my mother in the kitchen, surrounded by groceries. She was unpacking bags, the counter crowded with vegetables and packaged food. “You’re back,” she said, with a strange, relieved smile. “You can help me with dinner.”

  I sighed and sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. “Can I ask you a question?”

  She didn’t look up from where she was pulling out pots and pans.

  “About Dad?” I continued.

  She stopped and became still, her hand on the handle of a saucepan. When she turned, her face held an expression of resigned fear. Then the phone rang. I jumped, and my mother took in a breath before she left for the hallway. I heard her answer and then say, “Just a moment.” Then she called for Alex.

  I went out into the hallway to see Alex come down from his room and felt my entire body awaken, wondering how long he had been home and if he had thought of me at all. There was a moment with all of us looking at one another before he took the phone. There were no other phone extensions, no place for him to go for a private conversation, but he picked up the phone and carried it to the other side of the house, as far as the cord would let him.

  My mother and I went back into the kitchen, my questions forgotten as I chopped a cucumber into wedges and tried to listen to Alex’s conversation.

  IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS, Alex acted as if nothing had changed between us. To him, we were the same stepbrother and stepsister who used to listen to music and ride our bikes together, as if he hadn’t taken my virginity in the darkness of the garage. At school he was rarely alone, surrounded by his friends or sitting with Joey. The weeks drained toward winter, shrinking the days into stubby, short stumps of limp light. When school closed for the holidays, I spent all my time either in the darkroom or with my camera outside taking pictures, avoiding Alex as much as he avoided me.

  On Christmas Eve, my mother wore a patterned dress all in Christmas colors with her hair up in a twist stuck through with a pencil. She looked like someone else’s mother, not the woman who had raised me the previous fourteen years.

  She came to the darkroom with her hip cocked to one side, wielding a vegetable peeler like a knife. “That’s enough photography for one day,” she said. “I need your help.”

  I knew that tone. With a muffled sigh, I followed her into the kitchen. She was planning to cook a turkey, pie, and macaroni and cheese. I started the mashed potatoes, peeling and digging out bruises and gnarled rooted eyes, loving the feel of the potatoes with their brown strips of rough potato skin, the sweet dirt smell of them. The day had turned warm enough for open windows that let in the clean scent of a recently washed world.

  “You’ve been spending a lot of time with Claude,” my mother said as she mixed the cheese and macaroni together. She was trying for a tone of indifference, of idle curiosity. “What is it that keeps the two of you so occupied?”

  The potato slipped from my hand and I had to chase it around the sink. I found her unease—or was it jealousy?—difficult to comprehend. Perhaps seeing Claude and me together, like a father and daughter, was something she hadn’t realized could happen. That I might choose Claude, that I might choose him even over my father. Maybe she worried that I would learn that my father had worked for Claude.

  “I thought you wanted us to get along.” I stopped skinning the potato, turning it around in my wet hands. “Isn’t that the whole point? Aren’t we supposed to be a family?”

  “I know, I know,” she said. “Of course we are.” She set the macaroni on the counter. “It’s just that …,” she began, then seemed to change her mind. “Have you gone to his office again?”

  For the first time, I noticed the few gray hairs that sprung from the top of her head. They were difficult to see amid the honeyed strands, but at that moment the light from the window bathed the both of us in the clarity of midmorning.


  Alex walked into the kitchen. He paused when he saw how we faced each other, then continued to the refrigerator to grab a can of soda. As he walked past, my skin prickled and the hairs on my arm rose.

  My mother looked from me to Alex, then back to me. She creased her brow and searched my face.

  “Something’s changed,” she said after Alex had left the kitchen.

  “Mom,” I said, annoyed.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing, God. Just—” She took me by the shoulders. I ducked away, raising an arm to fend her off. But I did know what she meant. Even though I looked the same on the outside as I always did, my hips, my breasts, even my skin felt different. I couldn’t tell her what had happened in the garage. “Nothing’s wrong. Leave me alone.”

  She continued her silent inspection of my face. Through the kitchen window I saw the Mercedes pull into the driveway, a tree strapped to its top. Claude honked. I went back to peeling potatoes, afraid she could see the stain of Alex in the heat of my cheeks. Claude honked again, and she moved toward the door.

  Carrying one end of the tree through the door, Claude beamed when he saw her. “Merry Christmas,” he trumpeted, setting the tree down for a moment to spread his arms wide. She rocked back on her heels when he kissed her, but he didn’t notice, picking the tree back up and marching through the living room with Alex holding the other end, trailing pine needles like confetti.

  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.