Free The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel by Aimee Bender Page B

fingers on the side of the car, drumming.
    You said--Oh, never mind. Let's just get you home.
    What?
    You said I was feeling bad, that I'm so unhappy, that I'm hardly there, she said.
    I did? I said, although I remembered the whole conversation like it had been recorded. From the open window, fresh air sifted through the car. It was almost four o'clock by now, and the sunlight was gold and streamy.
    I'm fine, she said. I just want you to know, baby girl. I don't want you to be worrying so much about me.
    She said it, and she looked over, and her eyes were big and limpid, a dark-blue color like late-day ocean water. But in the look was still that same yearning. Please worry about me, I saw in there. Her voice not matching her eyes. I knew if I ate anything of hers again, it would likely tell me the same message: Help me, I am not happy, help me --like a message in a bottle sent in each meal to the eater, and I got it. I got the message.
    And now my job was to pretend I did not get the message.
    Okay, I said.
    She turned on the radio. We listened together to a program with quiz questions, about words that had multiple meanings. I couldn't concentrate very well, and I just watched the houses and stores slip by on Fairfax, fwip, fwip, momentarily in view, then gone.
    It can feel so lonely, to see strangers out in the day, shopping, on a day that is not a good one. On this one: the day I returned from the emergency room after having a fit about wanting to remove my mouth. Not an easy day to look at people in their vivid clothes, in their shining hair, pointing and smiling at colorful woven sweaters.
    I wanted to erase them all. But I also wanted to be them all, and I could not erase them and want to be them at the same time.
    At home, Joseph was nicer to me than usual and we played a silent game of Parcheesi for an hour in the slanted box of remaining sunlight on the carpet. Dad came by and brought me a pillow. Mom went to take a nap. Joseph won. I went to bed early. I woke up the same.
    Part two
    Joseph
    13 My parents met at a garage sale, held by my dad's college roommate. All three were in their senior year of college at Berkeley, and Dad's roommate, Carl, was an unusually fastidious type for someone in his early twenties. He oiled door hinges, for fun. Dad, a natural slob, said he would sometimes open up the freezer just to look at the frozen food stacked in such nice piles, corn bags nested on top of pizza slabs.
    He was good for me, Dad said.
    Carl also organized a biannual garage sale, to purge the household of crap. Mom liked garage sales, because she had very little money and was, she said, a fan of the found object. Most interesting to her was furniture, even then, and she had at that point acquired several velvet-topped footstools that she used in her apartment as guest seats. Her roommate at the time, tawny-maned Sharlene, was passionate about cooking, and they often had big dinner parties of cuisines from around the world, Moroccan feasts and Italian banquets, the table decorated with purple-glassed votive candles and old cracking out-of-date maps, because neither could afford to travel. Her roommate took weeks planning the menu, and Mom's job was to supply the seating. She'd been spending her Saturdays scouting around San Francisco and Oakland and Berkeley for more footstools, at the Ashby Flea Market and at every open garage, and on that particular morning, sunshine freshening up the gardens, she had stopped to browse through the tidy piles at this little house in the foothills when the tall handsome man in the lounge chair asked if she needed any help.
    You don't happen to have any velvet footstools? She scanned the lawn, eyes grazing over shoes and kitchenware.
    Footstools, he said, as if thinking about it. All velvet?
    Just the top, she said.
    He shook his head. I'm sorry, he said.
    Or all velvet?
    He shook his head again. Not even close, he said.
    She tipped her chin, and smiled at him. In those days, she let her