The Cake House Page 25

  I must have made a noise, because he turned and saw me watching.

  “There’s no more room,” he said, and I realized he meant the bulletin board was now so crowded with prayers he had no space for the homemade card he held in his hands. I wondered if the card was from him or from Tom but didn’t ask.

  “We can make room.”

  Together we moved around the cards, the notes written on torn lined notebook paper, and the photographs of Tina and the others from the accident. In these photographs Tina was smiling or laughing, and I wished I had brought the few photos I had taken of her. Except that she was sad in those pictures. Maybe it was better that this wall held the happier moments of her life. We stole a couple of pushpins and stuck his card on the board.

  The school bell rang, but neither he nor I moved. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  He drove fast, with all the windows down. I slid along the bench seat of the station wagon going around tight corners, bumping up against him. He put his arm around me. I felt the bones of his rib cage. He parked on a tree-lined street outside of Verdant Hill Mobile Estates.

  “Is this where you live?”

  “Yeah,” he said with an uncertain look. “Is that okay?”

  I had expected that he would drive me back to the mountain again, or some other place where we could hang out. But I didn’t want him to think I was disappointed, so I took his hand. “Yeah. It’s okay.”

  Pretty houses up on blocks, all in a row, so I could see their potted plants, the scant grass in tiny plots around each mobile home, children’s toys littering the yards. Aaron walked toward one of the houses. He didn’t knock but walked right in. A woman sat at the kitchen table. She had Aaron’s long red hair, gone a bit gray, and his wide smile.

  “He’s been asking for you,” she said, without acknowledging my existence.

  Down a short hallway, Aaron entered a room no bigger than my darkroom. There was a pile of clothing pushed off into a corner by the door, schoolbooks tossed in a heap. Only one window, slid open, with a view of the mobile home next door. No place to sit, except on top of a stack of magazines.

  Tom’s eyes lit up when we walked in. His lips were cracked, almost bloody. He shivered, sweaty, lying on top of the sheets in his boxers, his left arm in a cast. Tom looked from Aaron to me and back again, then up at the ceiling.

  “Good to see you guys,” he said, and when I hesitated to approach, added, “Worse than it looks.”

  He licked his lips, hiding his free arm under the covers, but not before I saw the dimpled track marks in the crook of his elbow.

  Someone knocked on the front door. I sat straight up when I heard the familiar voice of Deputy Mike.

  “I’m here to take him,” I heard him say.

  Tom grew pale, but he didn’t say anything. Aaron went out into the front room as I sat next to Tom on the bed and held his hand.

  “I can’t fucking believe this,” we heard Aaron say. “You’re his brother.”

  “It’s because I’m his brother that I’m doing this.”

  “What kind of fucked-up logic is that?”

  “Listen, I don’t like it either. Do you think this is easy? I know this is my fault, but it’s the only way I know to make it better.”

  Silence. Then, “How can you make it better, man? You only make things worse.”

  Deputy Mike took in a long breath. “If he cooperates, tells us everything he knows, he can maybe avoid a conviction, and he won’t have a felony charge against him. And he has to testify with Alex Fisk as well. Meanwhile, he’ll have to be institutionalized, for his own good.”

  “An institution?” cried Aaron.

  “He’ll get the help he needs there,” Deputy Mike said, but they were yelling, trying to be heard over the other.

  “Now you think he needs help. Man, you suck.”

  I didn’t like hearing Aaron so angry. It was contrary to his essential Aaron-ness. Tom started moving, like he wanted to get up from the bed. I found a few markers and began drawing on Tom’s cast and he lay back down. First a green stem, then a red-and-blue flower, then some grass. Then a second flower, this time purple and yellow.

  “What does he mean, testify with Alex Fisk?” I asked.

  Tom squeezed my hand, marker and all. “Alex needed help, and he came to me, the fucker. Should have told him to fuck off. I guess I know too much or something.”

  I took this in. The first thought I had was of Claude. “You’re going to testify against Claude? When? What’s going to happen?”

  But Tom didn’t answer my questions. He was listening to Aaron and Deputy Mike, trying to get out of the bed again. I didn’t try to stop him this time, but all he could do was sit up straighter.

  “He needs professional help!” Deputy Mike was yelling in the other room. “You know he does.”

  “I don’t know that,” said Aaron, but his tone changed, carrying a questioning sadness that made me squeeze Tom’s hand again.

  “Why don’t we let him decide?”

  I thought Aaron would continue to argue, but a moment later they appeared in the doorway, and the four of us crammed into the claustrophobic space around Tom’s bed. Deputy Mike looked at me first, then down at his brother.

  “You don’t have to go,” said Aaron, speaking to Tom. “You can say no if you want.”

  Tom didn’t answer. Deputy Mike took a step forward. He took his hat off and set it aside. I used to think Deputy Mike’s eyes were gentle, like soft, loamy earth holding the strength of a mountain. And maybe they still were, glinting in the meager light. With both of his hands, he cupped Tom’s face.

  “Oye, hermanito. Mírame, todo va a estar bien. Estoy aquí.”

  Tom’s eyes were red, and his cheeks quivered before he turned to hide his face, gripping his brother’s jacket. “Where … where do you want to take me?”

  “I’ll visit. Every week,” said Deputy Mike. They were both crying.

  Aaron stepped out of the room, and I followed. There was a park across from his house, and we sat on the swings. When I was younger, sometimes my father took me to playgrounds to swing on the swings. He would push and I’d go sailing up, loving the drop in my belly as I lifted off of the seat before swinging back down again. Aaron and I twisted the chains of the swings around and around, making them tighter.

  Everything was changing. I didn’t know what was going to happen next. It was the same feeling, deep down in the bottom of my stomach, as I had as a child swinging high up into the air. I looked over at Aaron’s small house and saw Deputy Mike helping Tom walk. I wanted to run over to them and demand that Deputy Mike tell me what was going to happen, but he had other problems. I wasn’t as important to him as Tom.

  “As soon as he’s up for it, Tom and I are leaving,” said Aaron.

  I didn’t know if I should believe him, but Aaron seemed calm, pushing at the swing so that he swayed back and forth. I didn’t want to tell him he couldn’t dream.

  “Where will you go?”

  “Fuck if I know,” said Aaron. “Anyplace that isn’t here.” Then, after some thought, he said, “Someplace exotic, like Portland. Isn’t that were ne’er-do-wells dwell? What state is Portland in?”

  I huffed a small laugh, despite the pain and uncertainty in my belly. “Can I visit you?”

  “Hell, you’d better.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Aaron drove me home. The house was empty, and I sat in the living room waiting for my mother to return. The waiting felt like the tightening of the chains on the swing, tighter and tighter until you couldn’t tighten any further. I remembered Tom at lunchtime days ago when I asked him what he and Alex talked about. “We talk about his dad and my brother,” he had said. They would testify together. I didn’t know what that would mean for me—or my mother.

  My mother came home a few minutes later dressed in a new suit, and together we made dinner, every moment expecting Claude to come home, but he didn’t, and so we ate wi
thout him.

  “Where do you think he is?” I asked.

  She looked toward the front door. “He didn’t say he was going to be late. I don’t know.”

  Around us, the house was silent, but I could hear the faint noise of traffic coming in from the outside, as well as the noise of birds and crickets and the wind that came in from the garden with the descent into nighttime. I shivered and refrained from looking behind me. It felt as if there was someone watching. Like any moment an earthquake would happen and the walls would shake.

  “What if he doesn’t come back? What if he’s gone?”

  My mother didn’t answer.

  In the morning, when I came downstairs, I saw a bottle of whiskey and a glass on the coffee table. A few of Claude’s files were left on the couch, and the rolltop desk was pushed away from the wall. Sometime during the night, he had come home, but he was nowhere to be seen as I made a lunch to take to school.

  All day as I went from class to class that feeling churned in the bottom of my stomach, as if I might sail too high off the swing and fall. I was filing into my math class behind my fellow students when Claude marched down the hallway, red-faced with boiling intensity. On instinct, I backed away, clutching my books to my chest.

  Claude grabbed my arm. “Let’s go. Come on,” he said, without explanation.

  “Wait, no,” I said, trying to twist free.

  “There’s no time. We have to go now.”

  I dug my heels in as best as I could against the slick, tiled floor until the teacher appeared in the doorway.

  “What is going on here? Rosaura, explain. Sir, please.”

  Claude ignored her, but he did let go of my arm. “Look, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to scare you. But it’s important, all right? We have to go.”

  “Just who do you think you are?” the teacher asked.

  “I’m her stepfather and she’s coming with me.”

  “You can’t take her out of school without a written request submitted to the—”

  Claude then turned the full force of his attention toward the teacher, and she paled chalk white. “I said she’s coming with me,” said Claude.

  The hallway filled with students. Doors opened from other classrooms. I saw Joey with her hands on her hips as if ready to fly into action and come to my rescue. She was looking at Claude, but her eyes found mine with a brilliant fierceness in her frown.

  A second teacher appeared, but Claude ignored him. “Rosie,” he said, holding up his hands as if to placate a wild animal, his too-long hair framed around his inflamed face. “You’ve liked living with me, right? I mean, I’ve never done anything bad to you or to your mom. I’ve given you everything you wanted. Isn’t that right?”

  I thought of those hours spent together in the darkroom, and before that when we went shopping for the equipment, the joy of that day, the happiness I felt. If nothing else, he had given me that. Without acknowledging the adults or the other students, I shook my head, feeling like a liar.

  At first Claude seemed confused at my refusal; then a shift occurred, his blue eyes hardening to ice. He leaned in. “Who have you talked to? What have you done?”

  “No one,” I said, pushing his hands away. “I haven’t spoken to anyone.”

  My teacher ordered the other students to return to their classrooms, then turned to Claude and said, “Please come with me, sir. Or I’ll have to get campus security.”

  “Her mother’s not well,” he said, speaking to the male teacher. “I’m sorry for the confusion, but it’s a family matter. You understand. My apologies for disrupting your class.”

  Claude stepped back, and I looked from him to the teacher, then back at him. “What’s wrong with Mom?” I asked.

  “Rosie, we have to go. We’ll talk on the way,” he said, and tried to reach for my arm again, but I scooted away.

  “Is she okay? Did something happen?” I thought of the pills she took. I thought of her car, worried that maybe she’d crashed or had fallen down the stairs like Mrs. Wilson.

  “Nothing’s going on. She’s … asking for you. We need to go home. Now.”

  I saw his reddened eyes and pale, splotchy skin. He looked tired, his hair uncombed and erratic, and I knew I had no choice but to go with him down the hallway. The teachers made a feeble protest, but at the same time I could sense their relief that the scene was over. Joey waved as I passed her.

  Claude was silent all the way to the Mercedes. I could smell the stink of his fear, his armpits stained dark. He pushed the Mercedes faster, ramming up and down hills before screeching to a halt in the driveway.

  I grabbed my bag and followed him into the house. As soon as I was inside, I called for my mother, running over to the stairs. Claude headed straight for the closet and pulled out a duffel bag and set it down on the dining table. He went to the rolltop desk and unlocked it, removing a false front from the desk and taking out stacks of bound money.

  Without looking away from what he was doing, he said, “Rosie, pack some of your clothes. Just whatever you can take.”

  “Why? Where’s Mom? Mom, where are you? Are you here?” I switched from foot to foot, afraid to move in any direction. He didn’t seem worried about my mother. The money kept on coming until he had several stacks of it. It drew my eyes like magnets. I must have made a noise, because he looked at me as he crouched and took out a couple of lock boxes.

  He grimaced. “Move, now. Come on. We have to leave.”

  But I didn’t move. I couldn’t have moved even if I’d wanted to. My mind raced through a mental catalog of my different possessions—my clothing, the things in the darkroom. And what about those boxes in the garage? And what about my bike? Would I have to leave it behind? Like my mother and I had done before, would we have to run away again? My chest hurt; my legs shook; I didn’t want to run away again.

  “What’s going on? Why are you yelling?” My mother appeared, stepping down the last few stairs.

  Faint with relief, I clutched at her hands.

  “Rosaura, it’s all right,” said my mother. She touched my hair and cupped my face. I nodded and then stood by her side. Her gaze fell to the money on the table. “You better explain yourself,” she said to Claude.

  Claude paused in his frantic emptying of the desk. “We have to go,” he said, almost pleading. “You and Rosie pack whatever you can. We’re leaving now.”

  “I don’t think so. Not until you tell us what’s happened.”

  “There’s no time for that. I’ll explain everything, I swear. Once we’re in the car, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. But we have to leave. Now.”

  My mother didn’t move. She stood with one arm around the top of my chest, almost as if she held me in a chokehold. I leaned against her softness.

  Claude sighed, his shoulders rounding over in frustration or defeat—I couldn’t tell which. Pained, he said, “There’s a possibility the police will be here any minute with a search warrant.”

  Her eyes dropped to the money on the dining table. “What would they find?”

  He rubbed his face. “Jesus Christ,” he said, and went back to the money, trying to make it fit inside the duffel. “Okay, I’m sorry,” he said. “But we don’t have time for this. Just get your things, and I’ll explain everything later. Dahlia, I’m not kidding. Get your fucking things. You and Rosie get in the car.”

  “No,” my mother said. She covered her face with one hand. I felt her stomach push against my back, and then the staccato of her racing heart. “So finally. We’ve come to this. I’m glad,” she said. “How do you keep it up?”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “You forget who I was married to. I’ve seen every kind of scam, every scheme imaginable. When Robert wanted to work for you, I knew then. I knew it all.”

  “But you came to me. You left him and came to me. Why would you do that if you knew, if you weren’t okay with it?”

  “Oh, that’s convenient. Look at yourself. Look what you�
�ve done here. You suggested I leave him. You’re the one who insisted we marry. Fewer questions that way, right? Think of my daughter? What would I live on? Where would I go?”

  “You still could have said no. If you’ve known all this time about the company, what Robert and I did, what I do now, you could have said no if this wasn’t what you wanted.”

  She gazed out to the garden as if looking out to the past, to that early part of the summer. The golden light painted over her skin. “You’re right, of course. I needed to be free of him. I needed to get away and I didn’t know how to do it. And I wanted to believe in you when you said you could help. Just once, I needed to believe in someone.”

  He took a step toward her. “You can still believe in me. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I need you to believe in me.” His voice cracked. “There’s still time.”

  She shook her head, sorrowful, as if finally, right at that moment, she’d come to understand the man she had married. “They’re probably watching the house,” she said, her voice shaky but calm. “You can’t run, Claude. And if you do, I’m not going with you.”

  His face twisted in anger, in fear and shock. Something pushed and pulled between them, zinging over my head.

  “Was it you? Did you talk? Did you tell about Robert and me?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” she said, honeyed hair swept back, her voice as rough as if she’d smoked a thousand cigarettes.

  “Someone talked. Someone gave me up.”

  “It wasn’t me,” she said with false calmness.

  He crossed the room, and I felt my mother tense beside me. We backed up against the wall. She had been calm a moment ago, but she was afraid now.

  “I’m not sure I believe you,” he said, looking at her hard.

  “She already said it wasn’t her.” I spoke up, pushing between them. “It was Alex,” I said. “And Tom Nuñez.”

  Alex wasn’t here anymore, and Tom was safe with his brother, but I still felt sad and shamed to tell Claude the truth, as if by doing so I had betrayed them all.

  “You’re lying.” Claude was pale, brow creased. “You’re mad at Alex. You want to blame him.”