The Cake House Read online

  A police car coasted on my left side, then drove around to block my panting climb up a hill. One cop, backlit by the dawning sun. Tall, dressed in a tan shirt that blended with his skin and his eyes: all over light and dark brown, like a chocolate chip cookie. I remembered him: Deputy Mike Nuñez. His badge flashed.

  I imagined what I must look like, my skin red from the chill, my hair a wild, mangled mess. A naked girl on a boy’s bike, panting, lost.

  “Has someone hurt you?” he asked.

  “No,” I answered, even though sometimes everything hurt.

  He stepped closer, and I wondered if I should be afraid. The older kids in my apartment complex had all hated cops. They called them puerco and said I could never trust them.

  Deputy Mike went to his trunk and got out a puffy, collared jacket to put around my shoulders. It covered me down to the middle of my thighs. I pulled it closed and zipped it up.

  “All right, get in.” He opened the car door.

  “My bike,” I said, swallowing around my dry throat. I gripped the handlebars.

  “It can come with us.”

  “I’m not sure I remember where I live,” I said. It was the truth; in my mad dash from the house, I hadn’t paid any attention to the street names; I didn’t remember being told the telephone number; I wasn’t even sure I knew Claude’s last name, although I should. It must have been told to me at one point. He was my stepfather now, I realized, and the memory made me want to sink down to the ground and pull Deputy Mike’s jacket over my head.

  “I know where you live. But first, I have to take you in,” he said, putting the bike in the backseat like a prisoner. He waited until I climbed into the passenger side, and then he shut the door behind me.

  This excited me. Being arrested was better than returning to live with Claude.

  Deputy Mike adjusted his rearview mirror and said, “Buckle up.” He didn’t smile, but he paused to stare at me with his brown gaze. Then he put the car in gear and we drove away.

  DEPUTY MIKE HAD A BLACK-AND-WHITE photograph of himself taped to the corner of the glove compartment. In the photo he was much younger, with a small boy sitting on his lap. It was the kind of photograph one got from a booth. The little boy wasn’t smiling.

  He picked up his radio and said something in his strange cop language full of numbers and codes, and told the person on the other end to contact Claude Fisk and ask for Dahlia Douglas. He said Claude’s name like he knew him.

  Without making a sound, I rolled the name “Fisk” around in my mouth. Fisk. Fisk. Fisk.

  “It’s Dahlia Fisk now,” I said, speaking more to the window than to Deputy Mike, but he heard me, glancing from the road, then back again. He finished with the radio and hung the receiver on its peg.

  “Your mother married him?”

  I chose not to answer, listening instead to the chatter of the police radio, the disembodied voice of a woman directing officers here and there. Twice Deputy Mike picked up the radio to answer. They were looking for a missing persons report. There wouldn’t be one, and I told Deputy Mike that. There was no reason for anyone to have missed me.

  The sheriff’s station was a squat building, low to the ground and built with flat bricks the same color as Deputy Mike’s shirt. Even the leaves on the trees outside were beige, dried out, crumpling dusty to the ground.

  The reception area had a bulletin board covered in “Wanted” posters of men and women with hollowed eyes, sneers twisting their mouths. There was one of a woman with wild hair, a scar splitting one half of her face. Her name was Audra Rose. Did she steal? Did she commit murder? I imagined she was one half of me. I could be part Audra Rose, split myself down the middle.

  Claude’s picture should be up there. I should take a pen and draw him in, his flat blue eyes fitting next to all the dead expressions of the other criminals, as guilty as any murderer.

  Deputy Mike led me through a set of doors into a bigger room with desks and chairs. There were fans blowing air along with the air conditioner. After the cloistered heat of the closet, the frigid room made it feel like the arctic. He pointed to a chair next to a desk. “Wait here,” he said, and left me alone.

  The seat was uncomfortable, so I wandered around the room, curious as to what kind of criminals Canyon Country might boast; were they like José’s brothers with their tattoos and colored bandannas wrapped around their upper arms and foreheads? Uniformed men and women came and went. Someone got me a cup of hot coffee. It was bitter but I sipped it for warmth. The clock in the center of the wall clicked each second that passed, like a vicious, even-toned cricket. A calendar pinned to a board had been turned to July. I stared at it for a long time, confused, wondering what day it was, how many days I had been living in the closet.

  Deputy Mike came back. He sat in a chair opposite mine and indicated I should do the same. “Do you want anything from the machines?”

  “Am I under arrest?” The seat was cold against my naked thighs.

  He half smiled, and I wondered if he ever smiled fully. “Not today,” he said. “But there will be some consequences. An investigation. What you did isn’t normal, do you understand?”

  I nodded. I regretted it now, even though the freedom, the wind on my bare skin, had felt so delicious, so wonderful. To exist for even a short time outside the walls of that house that felt like my prison.

  “Your father died,” he said. “It’s okay to be a little messed up.”

  I knew he said that to explain my aberrant behavior, but it made me feel ashamed. I hadn’t thought of my father while I was on the bike. I thought only of the ghost and of being free.

  He shuffled papers on his desk until his phone rang. “All right,” he said into the phone before hanging up. “Your parents are here. They’re waiting outside.”

  I was tied to the chair, not wanting to stay and not wanting to go. Perhaps Deputy Mike sensed my hesitation, because he leaned forward and started to raise his hand to touch my face before dropping it. It felt intimate, sitting across from him wearing nothing but his jacket, my bare feet against the cold floor.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  I wanted to tell him about my mother running away on a hot summer afternoon. That we had driven fast but my father was still able to follow and had arrived at Claude’s house just minutes after us. And now we lived with Claude and his son, Alex. I tried to tell him that I could barely stand to be in the same house as Claude and that was why I hid in the closet. I wanted to tell him about my father’s ghost and the wound that took over one side of his face.

  “Are you scared?” he asked.

  It wasn’t right to say his eyes were brown. They had green flecks in them, and the outside of the irises had a ring of yellow. “He’s not my father,” I said. It was the simplest explanation I could think of.

  He nodded. “Does he hurt you?”

  I wanted to say yes, Claude had hurt me more than any person ever had, but it was like I had lost my voice, like my throat didn’t work, and I couldn’t.

  “It’ll be all right,” he said. “Believe me.”

  I wanted to. I wanted to take his words and hold them like a prayer against my heart.

  He led me from the room into the reception area. My mother was there with Claude next to her, tall and blustery with his too-wide smile like a salesman in a commercial: Buy my car, just nine ninety-nine down. But he wasn’t smiling now. My mother rushed forward, carrying a shopping bag.

  “What happened to her?” Claude’s voice boomed as he rested a big hand on my head, examining me in a perfect likeness of a concerned parent.

  “That’s our question,” said Deputy Mike, all his gentleness gone.

  Claude puffed up like a sail in the wind, but Deputy Mike ignored him and placed paperwork on the counter with a pen on top. “Your daughter was found at six fifteen this morning, unclothed, riding her bicycle down Lone Mountain Drive.”

  Tense silence followed. My mother closed her eyes.

  “She’s not min
e,” said Claude. At Deputy Mike’s continued stare, Claude tilted his head. “But you knew that already. We hadn’t realized she was gone.”

  Deputy Mike didn’t comment. He tapped the paperwork he’d laid out. “The minor’s legal guardian will have to sign. Then she’s free to go. I should warn you, I’ve notified Child Services.”

  My mother wiped her face and walked over, taking the pen. With stained cheeks, she scribbled her name. “Thank you,” she said, but wouldn’t look at Deputy Mike, wouldn’t look at me either.

  “Put some clothes on,” said Claude, back in command mode, handing me the shopping bag my mother carried. “And then wait in the car.”

  I crushed the bag in my hands, moving to the marked bathroom off to the side. My mother had brought my “I’m a Pepper” T-shirt and an old pair of shorts. They’d forgotten to bring shoes.

  Outside, someone had taken the bike from Deputy Mike’s car and left it leaning against the building. Barefoot, I rode circles around Claude’s car.

  WE DROVE HOME IN CLAUDE’S big steel-gray Mercedes, the hushed radio filling in the gaps between my mother’s tear-filled sighs. Claude had jammed the bike into the backseat with me. A wheel spun in my face and a pedal pressed into my lap.

  That first night, Claude’s house had seemed mysterious and dark and strange, but in the full force of daylight I could see that it was just a big, lumbering house on steroids, painted a color fashionable people would call “salmon” or “coral” but I called pink. It looked older than its neighbors, a little superior, like a queen bee, sitting in perfect confectionery stillness. The other houses seemed to inch away, like it was a giant, unwanted cake.

  Claude’s house was the biggest house on the block. It might have been nice a few short years ago, but it had been built without thought or planning and with cheap materials. This was to be my prison, this monstrous pink dessert.

  Alex waited on the steps with his head resting on one palm, looking a little bored. He stood when the rest of us exited the car. I had forgotten how tall he was.

  Claude took the bike from the backseat and handed it to me. It felt heavy and unwieldy in my hands. I still wore Deputy Mike’s jacket over my “I’m a Pepper” T-shirt.

  “You must be tired,” I heard Claude say to my mother.

  She didn’t answer but grabbed my arm, her fingers digging into my flesh. “You don’t leave that closet for weeks and then you run away?”

  Claude made her let go, placing his two hands on both her upper arms. She swerved away from his touch.

  “Maybe I am tired,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose as I tried to interpret the blush on her face. I didn’t think it was entirely anger at me.

  Alex wrested the bike from my clinging grasp, the coldness in his pale eyes making me flinch. He kicked the kickstand back on the bike. I couldn’t tell whom he was mad at, whether he was mad at all.

  Claude turned as he walked my mother toward the front door, a look passing between father and son that I didn’t understand except to see that Alex’s mouth tightened.

  “Come on,” said Alex to me, wheeling the bike behind my mother and Claude. His voice was nothing like how he looked. Not cold or hard but warm, melted honey dripping off a spoon.

  I took a couple of steps but then stopped and stared at the front door, the courage I had gained during my escape draining away. I did not want to walk into that front room where my father had died. The ghost would be in there. Alex waited, his previous annoyance gone and replaced with a quiet attention. He walked the bike back to my side, and I saw in his face that he understood my fear. With a tilt of his head, he indicated the side gate leading to the garden. “This way,” he said.

  I decided the garden should be safe and free of ghosts and followed Alex. The sun beat down on the top of my head. My bare feet slapped against the brick-lined path, past the peonies and the daylilies.

  The back of the house was as pink as the front. Alex parked his bike against the side where I had found it. He picked up a rag and began cleaning the wheels and the frame.

  “Thanks for the food,” I said, but then wondered if I’d dreamt that he had brought a tray of food. Maybe it hadn’t been real.

  He squinted and shrugged, returning his attention to the bike. I played with the zipper on Deputy Mike’s jacket, sweating because the day was warm, but I didn’t want to take it off yet. The jacket reminded me of my bike ride, of that freedom, and of Deputy Mike himself, who had been so kind. Instead, I bunched up the sleeves as high as I could, the excess fabric making it difficult to put my arms down.

  I wandered off to the fountain and placed my hands on the brick barrier, turning them so that my fingers pointed back and I could feel the strain on my wrists. I leaned over, my weight on my arms like a seesaw, getting as close as I could to the water without touching.

  Alex came up beside me and took a handful of water and flicked it at my face. I screeched with a sharp inhale of breath, and there was a furious fight as I splashed him back, squinting my eyes shut and laughing, until he caught my arms and made me stop.

  Under the sun, I was breathless—from the cool water, from his nearness. He let go and we subsided back into awkward silence. Besides that first night when he had held me against his chest, this was the longest we had been in each other’s presence.

  I sat down on the damp, mossy stone, and Alex brought his bike closer to the fountain, picked up the discarded rag, and started cleaning again. I thought it was weird that he was cleaning his bike. It had clearly never been cleaned before. Nervous in the awkward silence, I began to hum.

  Alex looked up. “Do you like music?” he asked, wiping at the handlebars. “Can you sing?”

  “Not really,” I said, but regretted it when he fell silent. It was the first time he’d ever asked me a direct question. I tried again. “There’s a song I know, that my mother used to sing for me.”

  He flashed a smile full of white teeth. “Let’s hear it.”

  The fountain appeared bottomless, full of tangled water plants. “Are there fishes in there?” I searched for the gleam of fish scales. I dipped my fingers in the water, causing ripples. It felt silky.

  “Yes, but after all our noise and splashing they’ll never show themselves. They like to hide,” he said, sitting next to me.

  Smart fishes. I looked at him. “Do you like my mother?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “And I don’t like your father,” I said, wanting to hear his voice again. “What do you think about them getting married?”

  He shook his head. With his long fingers, he picked up a stick from the ground and stripped it clean of bark. He was older than me, maybe sixteen, I wasn’t sure. Thin, narrow face, narrow shoulders, he was unlike his father. I could pick apart his features: those that came from Claude, and those that came from elsewhere, like his eyes with their cool distance. But when he smiled he resembled Claude: a kind of charm with easy confidence. When he smiled, I thought I would do anything he asked.

  Then I sang for him. I sang my mother’s favorite lullaby. A French song, about a little bird caught stealing. She said her mother used to sing it to her. She said it used to make her laugh.

  “Qu’est-ce qu’elle a donc fait,

  La petite hirondelle?”

  My song changed the way he looked at me, more like the way José sometimes had, but with Alex it made me feel dizzy, like I could fall backward, arms spread wide, to splash into the fountain and willfully drown. “Sing it again,” he asked.

  I did, holding on to the edge of the fountain.

  He made me nervous, so I stared at the puffy clouds in the dark-blue sky until I finished. He could be patient and kind, but then his gaze would shutter and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  “Were you worried about me this morning?” I wanted to tease him, wanted to flirt. To do something with my useless hands, I mounted his bike again, riding around the fountain.

  He studied me as I wobbled, and I wished I hadn’t a
sked anything or spoken, feeling foolish and young and ugly. He shrugged, dismissive. “You want me to say yes. I think you like to cause trouble.”

  “Don’t you?” I countered, balancing on my tiptoes until I nearly fell, holding on to his bike as if it was the same thing as holding on to him. “Where’s your mom?”

  As soon as I asked the question, Alex changed. It wasn’t a big change. He didn’t shout or get angry and say it wasn’t any of my business. He did nothing except continue to watch my haphazard progress on his bike.

  “I don’t have one,” he said. “And no, I don’t like to cause trouble.” He tossed the stick he’d stripped bare out over the garden. It twirled in the wind and disappeared into the tall grass. “It doesn’t get you anywhere.”

  He walked away, aloof once again. I started after him, but my foot caught on one of the pedals, scraping my skin. The bike crashed to the ground, falling at my feet with the handlebars twisted. By the time I disentangled myself, Alex was already pushing the sliding glass doors open, pausing only long enough to toss the dirty rag onto a pile of other dirty rags by the doors.

  The scratches on my shin stung. When I looked down to study them, a second pair of feet appeared next to mine.

  The ghost stood in the bright sunshine. I had been wrong to think that he couldn’t appear in daylight, wouldn’t appear in the garden. He was pale, solid, yet removed. He wasn’t like those ghosts shown in movies or TV shows, see-through and made of mist. I had nowhere to hide, nowhere to run. This close, I could see the left side of his face, its pale, freckled skin marred by the black circle of charred flesh. He was wearing the same clothes he died in, his favorite sweatshirt with the front pocket and paint stains, his jeans, and his loafers with the holes in them. It was as if he’d climbed out of the water of the fountain to surprise me.

  “There’s my girl,” he said.

  He stared down at the twisted bicycle, which lay before us like a corpse.

  “I remember when you were born. You were such a strange baby. You didn’t cry when you first came out of your mother. The nurses were freaked out by your silence. So quiet, not a peep, but you opened your eyes immediately and looked at me and at the faces of the doctors and nurses with your bright eyes that always made everyone nervous. You had eyes like two black holes, easy to get sucked into. They said there was no way you could see yet, but they were wrong. You could see everything. So quiet and only a few hours old, you knew everything in the world. It scared me.”