The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

When I drove up, the whole complex looked emptier than it had before. Only one broken-down brown Chevy in the downstairs garage. It was late afternoon when I pulled in, the sky streaky with clouds, and on the streets, cars were arriving home, parking, work people unpacking trunks and heading into their units.

I dragged my feet up the stairs and down the balcony corridor. At the top of the stairway, in front of Joseph’s apartment, someone had pushed a twin bed against the railing. With a pillow and a comforter, all set to go for sleep. By the door, I groped around in the black metal cupola that framed the solitary outdoor bulb until I found the magenta spare key-a cursive J on the key label in my mother’s handwriting. With it, the door opened a notch, and then the chain blocked me.

Joseph? I called, into the wedge of darkness.

Nothing.

I was in a newly sour mood, after the phone calls with my mother and George. Embarrassed, about calling George. Upset, that I’d told my mother what I knew. Now that I’d told her, we’d have to have a talk. Plus, it just made me irritable to have to check on my older brother. Joseph’s front door wouldn’t push open, and so I snuck a grumbling hand through the open wedge and tried to unlatch the chain. I couldn’t actually reach the latch, but the screws felt loose on the door-frame side, so instead of unlatching the chain I changed arms, curled my fingers, did a twist or two, and was able to dismantle the entire apparatus itself. After a minute, the whole thing fell apart and the door gaped open.

The living room was dark. Empty.

I hadn’t been inside his actual apartment much. When I saw Joseph, it was because he came to us, because my mother drove out, picked him up, and brought him home. On occasion, he and George came over for dinner together, but the contrast of George’s lively updates on Caltech set against Joseph’s reluctant mutters was too much for even my mother, and she did not extend the invitation often.

Inside, it smelled faintly of noodles. Nothing much in the way of furniture except that card table with some science books piled on it, and a chair with a ripped seat and our grandmother’s last name written on the back in cursive. Morehead, liltingly. All the curtains were closed except in the kitchen, where a small window sent a few late-afternoon rays onto the tiled floor, a yellow pattern of sun stripes over crisscrossing tile stripes. I left the front door open.

I’m in, I said.

No answer.

I stepped into the hallway. No pictures. The bathroom unlit. The bedroom at the end.

I’m coming in, I said, down the hallway. Joseph? Hellooooo. It’s me, Mom’s good old checker, I said.

Quiet. Empty. I clicked on the overhead hall light, but it only cast a burnt yellow tinge over the dimness.

No sounds coming from his room. Pure silence. I’d been through it all before. Outside, a few cars ambled up the street. Only the faint hum and rattle of distant plumbing, somewhere deep inside the building.

Joseph did not invite people over, or have parties, so as far as I knew, other than Mom, I was the first person other than himself to set foot in his apartment in weeks. This was significant because at the end of the hall was the door to his bedroom, and on it he’d hung the old sign from his childhood, Keep Out, written years and years ago in thick black pen, now faded to gray. I’d long ago memorized the blocky shape of the O, the slightly too large T. It was such a familiar sight that it took a minute, here, to question. Why was it here? He must’ve lifted it off his old door during some visit home, and put it up again even though he lived alone. But so who was the sign for now? That badly drawn skull and crossbones.

I said his name at the door, and when no one answered, I pushed it open.

Inside his room, the light was off. I flicked it on. Joseph was sitting in the middle of the room, at a card-table desk, in a chair, at his laptop computer. Dressed. Awake. He looked sickly, and thin, but he always looked a little sickly and thin to me.

Hey, I said, startled. What’s going on? You’re here? Are you okay?

I’m fine, he said, quietly.

The bedroom in his apartment was small: wall-to-wall beige carpet, mirrored sliding closets, and no bed anymore, just one plain dresser, a couple of folding chairs, the desk, and a nightstand. One window, closed. In a corner, the carpet matted down in a long rectangle.

That’s your bed out there?

The floor is better for my back, he said.

You’re sleeping on the floor? What are you talking about?

He stared at me, his eyes flick-framed by those dark romantic lashes, the gaze too wide and unblinking.

What are you doing? I said.

Work, he said.

It was confusing, how he’d been so easy to find. In his jeans and T-shirt and shoes. No big deal. Plus, everything looked regular. On top of the dresser drawer leaned an old plaque from a string-galaxy drawing competition he’d won in junior high school, and another one of Mom’s oak jewelry boxes that she’d made in her more advanced years of woodworking. A few sprinkled pennies and nickels, a loose dollar bill, worn to cloth.

He looked at me expectantly, but there was another card-table chair open in the middle of the room, also with Morehead written liltingly on the back, and something about the ease of everything was bugging me, something about actually finding him sitting there seemed worse than my usual time spent with nothingness, so I walked over to the free chair and sat down.

Why couldn’t you just let me in? I broke your chain lock.

I was busy, he said. Am.

I scanned the room. In his closet, two worn plaid shirts hung above several pairs of hiking boots. A few rubber bands and pencils and a pen rolled on his nightstand, a brown-stained spruce model that stood boxily beside the absence of a bed. I got up again and clicked off the glare of the overhead light. Outside the window the sun had gone down, and the long end of day spread itself in swaths over the apartment buildings, where cars continued driving into their slots.

Doing what?

Work, he said again.

No, I said.

I’m busy, Rose, he said, clipped. Can you go?

I slid open the window, and watched a red Honda Civic back into a spot. A woman got out, shaking her hair. She didn’t pay attention when she opened her car door, and another car nearly lopped off her leg.

I’ll explain later, he said. It’s a complicated experiment.

I bet, I said. Why aren’t you answering the phone? I drove all the way over. How come you’re so easy to find?

– .

Are you eating?

– .

Drinking any water?

I need to concentrate, he said, his voice dwindling away.

I kept my post at the window, watching the cars.

Outside, the white air deepened into blue. The dimming famous romantic southern-California dusk. I had done my job, so I expected myself to leave. I could call Mom to confirm his aliveness, bring him a ham sandwich and a glass of water, and drive back, continuing the debate in my head about whether or not to go to Eliza’s party.

Except it was so familiar, the feeling in the room. The air held a tinge of the same heaviness I’d seen on Joseph’s face many times during those babysitting moments, when he’d reappeared, exhausted-looking, tufty- haired, and, standing there at the window, I felt a little like a detective must feel when about to turn a corner on a case. As if, if I stood still enough, very very still, as still as I possibly could, then I might see something I had not seen before.

It shifted my bad mood a little, to note this. The irritation was becoming just a staticky front underneath of which was forming an arrow of anticipation, beginning to point. I kept my post at the window until the apartment buildings across the street were obscured by darkness. The modest joy of seeing windows click on, the simple pleasure of rectangles of yellow light exposing the dark twists of tree boughs.