The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

by Aimee Bender

But I loved George in part because he believed me; because if I stood in a cold, plain white room and yelled FIRE, he would walk over and ask me why. It was the same thing that would make him into a very good scientist.

I lay against the pillow and aged many years in that hour on my own.

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.

It can feel so lonely, to see strangers out in the day, shopping, on a day that is not a good one.

I thought, she told me, that the signs were pointing to him. But it turned out he’d made the signs!

I read a study, Dad said, flaring his napkin into his lap. Families that eat dinner together are happier families, he said. I think those families also talk to each other, I said.

Dad didn’t talk much about work: I leave work at work! was his mantra. Of course, right after dinner he’d put his dish in the sink and go into their bedroom to make calls, and he’d work, often, until ten or eleven unless I knocked lightly on his door to deliver the name of an upcoming TV drama like a fisherman’s lure for a reluctant tuna.

We colluded in this way: as long as I didn’t 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.

Dignity, he said, lifting his half-lasagna into its box, is no detail.

Yes? he said, from his seat. Rose? Hi, I said. He put down his pencil. Don’t you have homework?

I did California history on my side of the couch, dutifully answering the questions at the back of the chapter before I’d read the chapter. It was so easy to locate the sentence referenced in the question, and I plugged in the appropriate lines like a good little lab rat,

The questions were drumming in me, piling on each other, and I dug deeper into my end of the sofa and tried to remember how George did it, at the dinner table. Softly, as if the answer was not dire. As if the question was a seed placed a few feet in front of a curious bird.

I’d stopped waving to passengers in cars by then—I’d grown suspicious of people and all the complications of interior lives—

after class, the teacher called me over and handed me a printout of the food pyramid, telling me I did a good job but it was important that I eat protein as a growing girl. Thank you, I said, and she dipped her head, and we both nodded in admiration at her helpfulness.

others were interested in political science, or pre-med. I had just applied to a couple of places, almost at random; the idea of more school just seemed confusing to me.

Same girl same. I am completely baffled by the purpose of higher education and would rather not be here.

You’re the perfect girl, he said, rubbing his chin. You expect nothing.

we stepped into the street and George grabbed my hand and the ghosts of our younger selves crossed with us.

Inside the closet, I put my purse, a white chef’s jacket, and a box full of extra kitchen tools and books that I’d bought on my own. Grandma’s teak box of ashes. My mother’s oak jewelry box. Her apron, with twinned cherries, that she gave me as a prize after I made her a pot roast. A velvet and wicker stool that I did not want to see re-upholstered. A rolled-up poster of a waterfall. A plastic graduation tassel. In the corner, a folding chair.

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