The Cake House Read online

  He ran up the stairs, taking several steps at a time, and I followed right behind as he marched over to my mother. I was afraid he was going to throw the cigarette, but he handed it to her, lit end facing away.

  “That’s pretty lazy, even for you,” he said. “Here’s your fucking cigarette.”

  “She wasn’t going to smoke it.”

  “Do that again, and I’ll tell my dad.” Alex turned away, heading for the stairs.

  Her mouth in an ugly twist, my mother took the shoe that she was still holding and threw it hard. It smacked against the wall by his head.

  White-faced, he turned. She had the other shoe in her hand, ready to throw it.

  A loud, booming voice made us all jump. Claude stood behind me like a giant.

  “What are you doing?”

  My mother let the shoe fall to the floor with a dull thump. She turned away and with a shaking hand took a drag. “I’m tired,” she said to no one.

  “Dahlia,” said Claude, “that woman will be here any minute.”

  “I know. I’m just going to lie down. For a moment.”

  “No, you’re not,” he said.

  Alex also turned to leave, trying to slip past his father, but Claude blocked him.

  “Both of you, you’ll wait downstairs.”

  My mother didn’t move, waiting until Alex went past first. She followed a moment later.

  Claude sighed, then looked at me. “That’s a nice dress, very pretty. But can I trust you?”

  “To do what?”

  “Behave yourself,” said Claude, more amused than not.

  “I’ll behave if you behave,” I said. Light streamed in through the window, illuminating the lines that crowded around his eyes and creased his forehead. He started to speak, but the sound of a car pulling up to the driveway interrupted and he snapped his mouth shut. There were footsteps and a knock on the door.

  We stared at each other, the moment suspended like before glass breaking or a gun firing. I went down the stairs first.

  MRS. WILSON’S GLASSES ECLIPSED HALF her face. Behind the lenses her eyes were as round as quarters.

  “There she is. Hello, dear,” she said with a broad smile, sticking her hand straight out. Her neat, strong fingers squeezed mine before she marched over to Claude and gave his hand one hard shake.

  My mother lingered behind us both, her hair down and framing her face. She took Mrs. Wilson’s hand but said, “I’m not sure why you’re here. I tried to tell them not to waste your time.”

  “We take our job seriously,” Mrs. Wilson replied. “As it is, you had plenty of notice for my visit.” She turned to where Alex loitered by the stairs. She offered her hand again.

  Claude ruffled Alex’s hair. “This is my son, Alex.”

  When we moved into the living room, Mrs. Wilson became distracted by the artwork Claude had on display. She loved the paintings. She admired the cluttered shelves of collectables.

  “Are these originals?” she asked, and Claude gave each piece’s history.

  “Art can be a good investment,” said Claude, adjusting a Chinese vase he claimed was a lucky find from an estate sale.

  “Oh, I agree,” she said, gazing at a framed, one-of-a-kind piece of modern art from the late 1960s that to me looked like a bunch of pale, squiggly lines.

  Confused, I watched Mrs. Wilson. She was here to speak with me. How could she stand there like this was a normal house and react to Claude like he was any other gracious host, proud of his ugly home and his stupid art collection?

  Alex put a hand on my shoulder, as though he realized my distress. Since Tina’s visit, he had avoided me, or maybe I had avoided him, but now he pressed his hand down and shook his head, telling me to keep my mouth shut.

  Mrs. Wilson finished peering at a framed news clipping headlined “Local Businessman Donates Time and Money to Charity” accompanied by a blurry photograph of Claude with a bunch of men in suits. She adjusted her glasses and took a good look at me. “That’s a very pretty dress,” she said, in that way that adults sometimes speak to children, as if wearing the dress was something to be proud of.

  I realized that this person, who until that moment I had not even dared to hope would be some kind of savior, would be of no help whatsoever. She could not look at me and at my mother, at Claude and Alex, and know of the cancer that ate away at all of us. I blamed the dress my mother made me wear, as if it covered hidden bruises and cuts beneath my skin.

  Mrs. Wilson said, “Why don’t the kids run along and I’ll speak first with the parents?”

  Alex steered me from the room—pushed me, pulled me—through the sliding glass doors.

  Once outside and away from the adults, I started yanking at the collar of my dress. It was a stupid dress. I wanted it in rags. I wanted it torn, pulling hard on the sash around my waist. The dress cut into my neck, choking me. I gritted my teeth.

  Alex stood by the fountain, arms crossed, leaning against the low brick wall. I had come to know the subtle differences in his collection of cool, detached expressions. This one—a furrow between his eyebrows, the slightest flush to his cheeks—meant he was nervous, even though all he did was watch.

  “What do you think?” I asked. “Maybe I should rip the whole thing off?” My fingers itched for a pair of scissors to cut the dress to ribbons. Instead, I grabbed hold of a bunch of fabric and yanked until the buttons flew like bullets, disappearing into the tall grass.

  “It won’t work,” said Alex.

  Through the sliding doors, I could see Claude and Mrs. Wilson in the living room. If I’d had the strength, I would have picked up the big stone vase that passed for decoration in the garden and thrown it through the glass. Instead, I kicked my bike and watched it crash against Alex’s, knocking both onto the cement patio.

  Hearing the crash, the adults looked out to the garden, but Alex moved and blocked my view.

  “This won’t work,” he repeated. “She’ll think you’re a brat; that’s all. Pissed off at her stepfather, like a million other kids out there. Pretending you’re crazy for attention and running away. You think that woman doesn’t know a hundred kids like you? She’s already written you off; otherwise, she wouldn’t have called before showing up, not if she thought you were in any real danger. You think she won’t see through your act? Because that’s what it is. An act.”

  “I could tell her the truth,” I said, but I felt cold. He was right. I knew he was right.

  “And what truth is that?”

  “I could tell her the truth about my father.”

  Alex looked at me for a long moment. “You don’t get it. They won’t blame him.”

  The glass door slid open. My mother called for me, but my name died on her lips when she saw the state of my dress.

  “Is she okay? Is she hurt?” asked Mrs. Wilson.

  Alex stepped in front of me. “She’s fine. She fell off her bike, but she’s fine.”

  I forced myself to look beyond Alex at Mrs. Wilson and my mother, and at Claude standing like a great big towering bear over both of them.

  “She tore her dress; that’s all,” Alex said.

  Mrs. Wilson seemed concerned, fussed over me, lamented the dress. “Well, if you’re feeling all right, why don’t you and I have our chat now?”

  Over her head, I caught Claude’s hard, knowing stare. My mother protested.

  “It’s not right. I should be with her,” she said.

  “Technically, I don’t have to ask. But it’s just a chat. There’s nothing to worry about,” said Mrs. Wilson. “We’ll use your room, I think. Rosaura, can you lead the way?”

  Claude whispered something in my mother’s ear. Her hand fluttered to her lips; she had come to the end of her cigarette and wanted another one. With one last look at her and Claude, I led Mrs. Wilson to my bedroom.

  She waited outside while I changed into shorts and a T-shirt. I sat on my bed and called for her to enter. Mrs. Wilson stopped when she noticed my clothing and belongings line
d up along the walls. I had forgotten that it might seem weird to strangers.

  “No dresser?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “I like it this way. I know exactly what I have.”

  She took a moment to consider this, but I could tell she wasn’t convinced. Light streamed in across the room and she walked toward the open window, careful not to knock over the stacked T-shirts and jeans. For that simple consideration, she didn’t seem as useless as I first thought.

  “Look at that view of the garden. Your stepfather could use a gardener,” she added, amused by her own observation.

  For the first time, I noticed her handbag. It looked handmade, decorated with printed photographs patched onto purple fabric, like the kind you get at a mall or a shopping center. Bring in your precious family photos and print them on T-shirts, bags, mugs, and more, great holiday gifts! The bag was littered with faces: Mrs. Wilson surrounded by children, all shapes and sizes. Mrs. Wilson stood behind, or in front of, or beside a child or a teenager, beaming into the camera, a hand on a shoulder, sometimes two. All smiles. All happy, gleeful faces.

  Noticing my attention, she held her bag up for me to see. “My kids,” she said, flattening the folds of the fabric. “This is Jimmy.” She pointed to a large kid with a round face. He seemed twice as wide as she was tall. “He was my last. And Marcela”—pointing to another—“she was before him.” She flipped the bag over: Mrs. Wilson posing with three pimpled teenagers. Mrs. Wilson holding a toddler in her arms. Mrs. Wilson at a birthday party, hovering over the gap-toothed grin of the birthday boy.

  Could I end up on her bag? If there was no space left, I could go on the bottom. I wondered if she had many of these handmade collages.

  “So,” she said, putting aside her collection of troubled children, looking around for a chair to sit on. I made space for her on the bed. Perched slantwise to face me, she took out her clipboard and flicked through her paperwork. “It’s your birthday at the end of the summer. Are you going to have a party?”

  I said nothing. My parents had always struggled with throwing birthday parties. Too hard to organize, too time-consuming, never enough money. There had been one party with José and Sofie. We had cake and a piñata and pin the tail on the donkey. I remembered my father’s hands on my shoulders as he spun me around until I was dizzy, the world tilting sideways as I swung the bat and tried to hit the papier-mâché lion. José beat the piñata into submission, swinging and swinging the baseball bat until he gouged the great beast’s side and made it rain candy.

  “Do you like living here?”

  Any answer I might give seemed stupid. She thought the garden was great, the house big and roomy. I wondered how much she knew. I had thought she would ask why I had run away.

  “No,” I said.

  She tilted her head to one side. “I understand your mother recently remarried?” She flipped a page, read, flipped another. “And that your father passed away.” She crossed her hands over her clipboard. “That must be very difficult.”

  Passed away. I had not thought of him as “passed away,” only dead.

  “Is that what it says?”

  “It says he committed suicide.” She said it gently, but it felt like taking a baseball bat to a papier-mâché animal. So simple, so easy to wrap up and discard an ugly word like “suicide.” It put the blame on my father; it made the rest of us victims. I dug my fingers into the bedsheets.

  Mrs. Wilson returned to her clipboard. “You can tell me anything, you know,” she said.

  Anything. There were many things I could tell her. I thought of my mother waiting downstairs, no doubt smoking a forbidden cigarette. She never used to smoke so much before. My father had disliked the smell of it on her breath, and she used to brush her teeth over and over again before he came home, spraying the room with air freshener, spritzing perfume on her clothes, her wrists, her neck. Is that what she meant by “anything”?

  Mrs. Wilson kept her gaze down on her clipboard.

  I thought of my father, who I felt certain would have hated this woman, because she invaded our space, because she wore purple and purple reminded him of that bitch lady from work who also wore purple. In private, he would curse her name but then smile to her face, becoming meek and polite and desperate to please. She had the upper hand. She had the power.

  A tree swayed in the garden, visible through the window. The ghost appeared behind Mrs. Wilson as if stepping out from behind a curtain. My thoughts of my father must have conjured the ghost. His eyes landed on me in the same expectant way they had in life when I hadn’t cleaned my room, when I hadn’t eaten my dinner. “Do I have to do everything? Don’t make me come over there.”

  And I knew, this was it. The ghost was here, and he was telling me it was time to make things right. This was why he was here. This was why he haunted me. After I did what he wanted, then maybe he could leave and be free and haunt me no more.

  I snapped my eyes back onto Mrs. Wilson, my heartbeat pounding in my ears.

  Mrs. Wilson looked up, saw my face. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

  “Claude killed him,” I said, lightheaded that I had managed to speak out loud. I was certain that this was what the ghost wanted me to say.

  Mrs. Wilson became still; she seemed to inhale without breathing.

  “Whatever the police said, it’s not true,” I continued. “It was Claude’s fault.”

  My father’s ghost flashed in the edges of my vision, like a piece of glass reflecting light. Over and over, insistent, look at me, look at me. But I couldn’t look at him and look at Mrs. Wilson at the same time.

  “If he didn’t pull the trigger, he might as well have.”

  Mrs. Wilson hadn’t moved. “That’s very serious, Rosaura.”

  “It’s true,” I said, my voice low.

  Her manner changed. She had seemed a joke to me, someone who, like Alex had said, would see me as another dumb kid like all the others. I was a chore to be finished and marked as completed. But now I wasn’t sure: She was listening to me, her gaze calculating, penetrating.

  “Is that why you ran away? Why didn’t you have any clothes on?”

  It was gently asked, but I heard the criticism. My behavior cast doubt. Alex had been right. I couldn’t tell her how the cool air felt sweet on my body, or that I ran from the house because my father’s ghost had appeared in the closet beside me.

  “It was hot and I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to go outside, and then I just … kept going.”

  Don’t look. Don’t look at the ghost. My eyes watered from the effort of not looking. But I had to see him. The ghost had come forward. He stood behind Mrs. Wilson, but instead of the relief and peace I expected to find, the ghost’s face contorted with fury. He reached for Mrs. Wilson, a hand hovering over her mouth.

  Cold dread splashed over me, and I jumped up. “That’s all I want to say.”

  Mrs. Wilson’s forehead creased when she saw my expression, and she glanced behind her. But there was nothing there.

  “Just a little longer, Rosaura, I promise,” she said in a reasoning tone. She must have thought I wanted to go out. She thought I was looking toward the garden and wishing for freedom. She didn’t know about the ghost.

  I moved to the window so Mrs. Wilson had to turn. Somehow, I had gotten it wrong, all wrong. Instead of relief at telling the truth, instead of showing happiness, the ghost was angry. He had tried to silence her. Or maybe his hand over her mouth meant I should try to shut her up—but she wouldn’t stop asking questions.

  “Have you seen your stepfather with unusual amounts of money?” she asked.

  “He always has money,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed on Mrs. Wilson. Flicker, flashing in the sunlight. My father wasn’t finished yet. “Why?”

  “Nothing, just something Deputy Nuñez mentioned.”

  “Deputy Mike?” My heart leapt at the mention of Deputy Mike’s name.

  She smiled. “You made quite the impression. How long has your mothe
r known Mr. Fisk?”

  I couldn’t remember. It seemed like I had been held hostage for years, waiting for rescue. Rapunzel, left in her tower chamber.

  “A few months,” I said. “Dad knew Claude from before.”

  My father had said Claude was running a game—a game he could beat. I opened my mouth to tell Mrs. Wilson this, but the ghost crossed the room, solid for a moment, and I snapped it shut.

  He disappeared.

  “Does Mr. Fisk buy your mother a lot of gifts?”

  “Yes,” I said, and only that. If I didn’t speak, the ghost vanished. If I tried to tell the truth, he reappeared. I didn’t want to answer any more questions, knowing now that I had made a mistake in speaking at all.

  Mrs. Wilson persevered. “Have you seen where your stepfather works?”

  “No.”

  I could see her thinking. She took her time, her eyes fixed and unmoving, ponderous and large. “Tell me truthfully,” she said, putting aside her clipboard. She held her hands out, and I left the window to sit next to her on the bed again. “How has it been?”

  She had square, clean-cut nails. Not a hangnail to be seen, not a spot of nail polish. I had to take shallow breaths to stop myself from crying. But I couldn’t cry. If I cried, that would be telling the truth, and the ghost would come back.

  “It’s not supposed to be like this,” I said at last.

  “Your father and mother, did they get along?”

  Movement caught my eye; the ghost appeared, maybe wanting to sit on my bed too. Intruding, insistent, and I closed my eyes, willing him to go away. I didn’t know the answer to that question anyway. What did he want me to say? They were happy. They loved each other. My mother used to cry when my father wasn’t home. She’d cry in her room, and when I went to her, she’d push me away and tell me to leave her alone.

  Mrs. Wilson understood, even though I hadn’t spoken. She took my hand again. “All right,” she said, “All right. I know it’s hard; I know it isn’t fair. I want you to be strong. No more running away; no more fighting your stepfather. You be good, and I’ll see you again. I’ll come back and we’ll work this out together, okay? I’m here now,” she said.