The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

by Aimee Bender

and I held on to those words like they were a thread of gold I could follow into blackness.

But you don’t even know me, said Grandma. How can you love me? It should be earned. You’re too clingy. She’s too clingy, Lane, Grandma said.

Mom’s smiles were so full of feeling that people leaned back a little when she greeted them.

but also relieved, that he soaked up most of her super-attention, which on occasion made me feel like I was drowning in light.

The same light he took and folded into rock walls to hide in the beveled sharp edges of topaz crystal and schorl.

I’d held on to Joseph’s many times before, for many years, but holding his was like holding a plant, and the disappointment of fingers that didn’t grasp back was so acute that at some point I’d opted to take his forearm instead.

Dad asked if he could accompany her, and she shrugged, in the way that most men at the time used as a doorway or lever. A shrug was as good as a yes, sometimes, particularly for a delicate beauty such as this.

announce that I was a kid, he wouldn’t rise up as a parent, and for an hour, we could both have a little respite from our roles.

I hated it; the whole thing was like reading her diary against my will. Many kids, it seemed, would find out that their parents were flawed, messed-up people later in life, and I didn’t appreciate getting to know it all so strong and early.

Light is good company, when alone; I took my comfort where I found it, and the warmest yellow bulb in the living-room lamp had become a kind of radiant babysitter all its own.

That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit.