The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

intensify the flavor of her dinner, so she closed hers too, concentrating. Yes, she said, bringing the fork to her lips. Mmm, it’s true. I can taste the thyme much better this way, she said.

Dad looked over at me and shook his head.

We can see you guys, I said, but no one seemed to hear anything either.

22

By my thirteenth birthday, I had collected over eighty dollars from being the consenting babysittee. I used most of it to buy my favorite packaged foods for snacks, or for a few cans of tennis balls that I liked to throw down the street as hard as I could (returned, on occasion, by a neighborhood dog), but with the last bit, I went to the music/video store and bought a copy of Brigadoon-audio and video, both. I listened to the music on my own and snuck the videotape into the TV when my father wasn’t looking, on another night of my mother’s errands. He looked up when the overture and credits began, in swirling violins, and at the first number, he put his ledger aside and sang out a line or two of broken lyrics. He burst out for the chorus. After a few minutes, I joined in, because I knew the words by then, too, but instead of making it all less exposing, the entrance of my voice had the unfortunate side effect of calling attention to what we were doing. Midway through that chorus, my father picked up the remote and clicked off the TV. I have to work, he said, returning to the red ledger. Shaking his head. Funny, he said.

On a Saturday afternoon in April, fair and light, a thin envelope arrived in our mailbox. Inside was one neatly folded piece of stationery paper from the admission offices of Caltech, stating that, although impressed by his application, unfortunately Caltech had an especially fine crop of candidates this year and would not have room for Joseph Edelstein this fall. They wished him all the best in his science endeavors of the future.

I hand-delivered the envelope into Joseph’s lap, where he was sitting outside reading a book on Kepler and the arrival of new enlightenment with the orbital change of thinking. Elliptical orbits, perihelions, equal areas in equal time.

When I gave it to him, he closed the book and took the letter directly to his room, which then he did not leave for two days. Dad said to leave him be, that we should give him space. The trays of food my mother left outside the side door were eaten by birds and bugs.

Two more letters arrived in the mail. All of Joseph’s envelopes were thin. He did not get into UCLA, or USC. He hadn’t applied anywhere else. The competition had stiffened and his grades had been erratic: some strong A’s in sciences, some C’s in Spanish and English, little to no extracurricular activity, an uneven SAT. He could not write But I’m a GENIUS as his application essay and leave it at that. You need to show your genius, the college counselor had said, crossing her legs. How many young men had she seen going through her office with big ideas and complex skills and no way to get any of it on paper?

They’re wrong! Mom said, pacing the house. She called up George, who called up Caltech. She demanded to see the college counselor. She compiled lists of visionaries who had dropped out of high school and started world- changing companies or invented vaccines. She slipped those lists under Joseph’s door.

Her outrage was so large it carried with it a tinge of presentation, the way a person feigning surprise at a known surprise party will make a grander expression than one truly surprised.

Finally, we had to pick the lock with a hairpin. Inside, we found him lying on his bed, reading a textbook, jotting down notes for an assignment due. Can I still move out? he said, when Mom and I clamored around.

23

My brother’s first formal disappearance-formal meaning someone else was around besides me-happened right before his high-school graduation. The day of. It was a gloomy June afternoon, skies a dirty white, tree leaves drooping. Joseph had been both focused and distracted since the school rejection letters, but he had done his usual thorough overly cozy job with my mother’s splinters on Sunday evenings, and he attended his classes until the last day. Our parents had not gone out to any events, or dinners, so there had been no disappearing on any subsequent babysits, to my disappointment. No more laughing, no discussions. On this day, he was supposed to be getting ready to go, trying on the sizing of his cap and gown, manipulating bobby pins, and in my role as younger sibling/domesticated shepherd, I was supposed to herd him into the car to get to school in time for rehearsal. The lambs, however, were loose. I couldn’t find him anywhere.

Joe’s not in his room, I told my mother, who was outside, retouching her lipstick in the side mirror of the car. It’s that thing I told you about, I said.

She peered up, her lips re-pinked. Maybe he’s in the bathroom? she said.

I looked, I said.

It was nearly noon, time to go, sun burning behind the cloud layers, and right on time, George turned the corner at Vista and walked up. He was wearing his black graduation hat perched on his head, the ironed coat folded over his arm. He did a little jaunty bow.

I can’t believe you kids are graduating! Mom said, holding her forehead. She hurried over to give him a hug.

Together, we oohed over his hat and touched the soft golden tassel with the plastic date hanging from it. The phone rang. Mom ran inside. She left the front door open, and I couldn’t tell words but her voice dropped down, low, to the hushed tone of urgent intimacy I heard sometimes when she picked up in the afternoons. I turned to George.

Congratulations, I said.

Hey, Rose, he said. He re-adjusted a bobby pin. How are you?

He looked newly older suddenly, with college admission in his pockets. Smoother at the edges.

Joe’s missing, I said.

Where to?

Don’t know.

So where is he? Mom asked, returning outside, her eyes a little lighter.

Somewhere other than his room, I said.

Did he just go on his own? George asked, still fiddling with his cap.

Joseph? I said, incredulous.

I guess not, said George, laughing.

My mother zipped up her purse and stepped back inside. We followed her in. Despite the awkwardness, I was glad for all of it, that they were both around while Joseph was not, that George was over, that the same thing was happening, but with witnesses. George walked through the living room, with long strides of assurance. Brownies cooled on the kitchen counter, for the party later. We called out his name like he was a lost dog.

That it was graduation day seemed notable. The very beginnings of the fork. Joseph and George still spent multiple afternoons together, and the roads named Joseph and George still appeared to be facing the same direction, but soon the angle at the base would reveal itself as large. Over the last couple of months, while George had been settling linen napkins in his lap, sipping from crystal goblets of ice water at celebratory luncheons for early-admission honors students, my mother had registered Joseph for classes at Los Angeles City College on his behalf. Sure, he’d said, when she and my father had suggested he try out school anyway. But can I still have my own place? he said, as he leafed through her piles of forms.

It’s graduation day! I called, clapping my hands. Time to go!

Mom walked through the backyard, stepping carefully in her tan graduation heels, making divots in the lawn.

George stood in the front of the house, scanning the street. He traced fingers over the bark of the ficus tree whose roots made arches and bumps and broke up the sidewalk.

Jo-seph! my mother called, striding through the living room.