The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

board. Joseph was out of the classroom for most of the day, sometimes three times a week at that point. He didn’t answer. He squatted at the foot of her desk now, investigating the grain of the desk wood.

Joseph?

We go to the market, he said then.

You go to the market with the doctors?

Me and Mom, said Joseph.

Before the doctors? asked the teacher, slowing her hand.

It’s what the doctor ordered, said Joseph, looking up for a brief moment to catch her narrowing eye.

I knew the whole story backwards and forwards, because I heard it told and retold over the phone, to friends, to my father, to anyone, as my mother got investigated. She talked about it for years. A couple of social workers came by and asked her questions in the living room for two hours. The home-schooling contingency in the neighborhood dropped off a stack of handmade pamphlets. When Dad found out what was happening, he brought a notepad to the dinner table to try to understand, asking the same questions over and over while Joseph and I dug through our food. But explain again, he said, lowering his brow. Why were you taking him out? Because he is bored out of his mind, said Mom, waving her fork in the air. Let him discover the world on his own! Dad scribbled jagged lines on the pad. But you didn’t go to a museum, he said. You went to the dry cleaner. Mom gritted her teeth. He liked it, she said. Didn’t you learn something, honey? Joseph sat up straighter. They use liquid solvent but no water, he recited.

Mom had to be talked to by the president of student affairs and the school principal, and she was on mom probation permanently. A few years later, when she wanted to take me out of school for a real doctor’s appointment to deal with a stubborn flu, I had to wait in the main office, staring at the dark fishtank with the rows of tiny blue fish zigging and zagging, while the secretary called Dr. Horner to confirm my appointment.

Cough, Rose, Mom had said when we walked into the main office together. I let out a ripping bronchial spasm.

See? Mom said to the secretary. Can we go?

The secretary gave me a look of concern. I’m sorry, he said, wincing. School policy, he said. He was on hold at Dr. Horner’s for fifteen minutes, and we almost missed the slot. In the doctor’s waiting room, Mom flipped through the magazines like the pages needed to be slapped.

Those months of errands seemed benign: kid and Mom, going to stores together. It was even sweet, in a way. The social workers left the house that day holding slices of Mom’s freshly baked banana bread, calling thank you as they got into their car. As soon as Joseph was back in a regular school routine, Dad forgot all about it. But the one true result of all those absences was that Joseph, who was already unfriendly, made even fewer attachments in the classroom. He’d had a couple friends in earlier years-no one to bring home, but his conversation was peppered with repeated names-Marco, Marco, Marco, Steve, Marco, Steve, Steve. After that third-grade year, it changed to Them and They. They went out to recess. I don’t like them. They all played chess. They have fruit punch in their lunches; can I? Can I stay home? Not like any of this was a problem for Mom-she thought Joseph was perfect, even though he was often in a bad mood, rarely made eye contact, and ignored everyone. She called Joseph the desert, one summer afternoon when we were all walking along the Santa Monica Pier, because, she explained, he was an ecosystem that simply needed less input. Sunshine’ll do it for Joe, she said, beaming upon him. Joseph walked two feet to the side, absorbed in the game booths that lined the south side of the pier.

He is economical with his resources, Mom told me, since Joseph wasn’t listening.

And what am I? I asked, as we walked down the rickety wooden pathway that led to the end of the dock, where the fishermen stood all day with their old-style fishing poles.

You? she said, looking out over the water. Mmm. Rain forest, she said.

Rain forest, what does that mean? I asked.

You are lush, she said.

I need rain?

Lots of rain.

Is that good? I asked.

Not good or bad, she said. Is a rain forest good or bad?

What are you?

She raised her shoulders. I change around, she said. Like the Big Island in Hawaii.

You get to be Hawaii?

The Big Island. It has seven different climates. You can be Hawaii too, if you want.

Are you a rain forest?

I don’t think so, she said.

A desert?

Sometimes, she said.

A volcano?

On occasion, she said, laughing.

I went to walk by myself at the railing. The ocean looked specific and granular in the high heat. When we reached the very end of the pier, I stood by a short old Japanese fisherman who told me he had been there reeling up the mackerel since six-thirty in the morning. What time did you get up? he asked me. Seven, I said. I was already here, he said, looking at his watch. A full bucket of fish nestled at his feet, in a cooler. It was three-thirty. I’m still here, he said.

Now I’m here too, I said.

The two of us, here, he said.

Did you see the sunrise?

Over the mountain, he said.

Pretty?

He nodded. Orange, he said. Pink.

I want to be the ocean instead of the rain forest, I said on the drive home.

Sure, said Mom, whose mind was long gone into somewhere else.

Joseph would reach out to me occasionally, the same way the desert blooms a flower every now and then. You get so used to the subtleties of beige and brown, and then a sunshine-yellow poppy bursts from the arm of a prickly pear. How I loved those flower moments, like when he pointed out the moon and Jupiter, but they were rare, and never to be expected.

So, because of all this, it was no small surprise one fall afternoon when I spied Joseph, walking from the bus stop, arriving home from seventh grade with another person at his side. A person his own age. I was drawing lightning bolts with colored chalk on the sidewalk because the school nature lesson that day had been about weather: thundershowers, tornadoes, hurricanes. All so exotic to the blue skies of Los Angeles. I was busily getting the edges right on the first bolt when I looked up and saw them walking around the corner, and at first I thought I was blurring my vision. I colored the bolt bright orange. Looked up again: still two. My second thought was that it was a trick. Maybe Joseph had been assigned this other kid. Maybe the guy was a jerk, playing a joke on my brother.

What are you doing here? I asked, as soon as they reached the front lawn. I think I was seven. Joseph, like usual, didn’t answer. Desert wind. Snakes and scorpions.

Hi, said George. I’m George. He bent down and shook my hand. He had a good handshake for a seventh- grader.

Lightning! he said, looking down.

But why are you here? I asked again, following them inside.

Joseph headed to his bedroom. George turned back, and said they were there to do homework.

Is he teaching you? I asked George.

No, said George.

But why are you here with my brother? I asked.

Science homework, said George. Science stuff.

I noted his eyebrows. His pants, which were the normal pants a boy his age wore.

You like science too? I asked.