The Cake House (35 page)

I pushed the door open and crossed the room, taking a moment to search for Deputy Mike, but I couldn’t find him, until I stood in front of the window. I wondered if this was one of those magic one-way windows they had in television cop shows.

A hand squeezed my shoulder, and I glanced up to see Deputy Mike.

“I was just coming to get you,” he said.

“Are you listening to them?” I didn’t think they should. It seemed sneaky and unfair.

Deputy Mike studied my face, searching for something, before coming to a decision. “This way,” he said, and led me to a door to the left of the observation window.

The room was unlit, but a light came in from a big window that looked into the room where my mother and Claude sat. There were other men and women watching, and someone said something to Deputy Mike, but I turned my attention to the window and the sad, awkward picture it showed.

Claude’s hair hung lank around his face, and he seemed thinner. Or maybe it was just the way he sat with his arms pressed close to his body and his shoulders curved inward. He wore what looked like hospital scrubs, with a short-sleeved tunic, the letters
S.C.S.S.
stenciled on with black dye, his bare arms pale, almost yellow tinged in the fluorescent light.

How long had they been sitting like that, silent and still, filling the little room with great big bubbles of unspoken conversations?

“Isn’t it illegal for you guys to listen to them?” There should be lawyers present, but that wasn’t why I asked. This scene, this strange, painful meeting between a husband and wife, should have been private. It was like watching the aftermath of a love scene, the bitter morning after.

“They both know they’re being watched,” said Deputy Mike, and I tore my eyes off of Claude to look up at
him. “Mr. Fisk denied representation for the meeting; he wanted it like this. He knows that anything he tells her will be relayed to us.”

I went back to observing Claude. He barely moved. He used to fill an entire room with the force of his attention. Now none of his bursting, blustering energy remained.

Finally, my mother spoke, her voice distorted through the microphone. It didn’t sound like her.

“Do you need anything?” she asked.

Claude didn’t answer. She put a hand down on the table between them. With the tip of her finger she started tracing a pattern on its surface. A circle. Then petals. Then a stem, a leaf.

“They said you wanted to speak with me?” she insisted. “I brought Rosaura with me today, but they didn’t think it was a good idea for you to see her.”

Another slight flicker behind Claude’s eyes, but he didn’t say anything.

“She wants to see you,” said my mother.

There was a slight narrowing of Claude’s eyes, and I wondered if he believed her.

She took a small, defeated breath. “Are you ever going to speak?”

“What are you planning to do?” he asked, and everyone in the observation room shifted. I gripped the cold metal frame around the window.

My mother seemed stunned for a moment. “I don’t—” she started. Then, “Now you’re concerned?”

“Of course I’m concerned. I care about you. And Rosie. I plan on taking care of you.”

“The same way you’ve taken care of us all along? No, I don’t think so.”

“I won’t be in here forever. We’re still married. I’m still your husband. You look beautiful in that dress. I bought it for you, didn’t I?”

My mother grew very pale. “We don’t need you. I have a job now. We’ll be fine.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” he said, his voice flat.

She pinched her lips together. “I think I’d better leave.”

“Hey,” he said, and smiled. “I’m sorry. Don’t mind me. It’s just this place. It gets to you. When I get out, we’ll be good. They might even give me house arrest so I won’t be gone long. Take care of things for me, please? Take care of the house. Don’t forget the garden. And those fishes. No one ever remembers the fishes. They’ll starve if someone doesn’t feed them. You keep feeding them for me, okay? You keep them.”

Her brow wrinkled. She must have been thinking the same thing we all were thinking, that he was delusional.

“Tell me,” Claude said before she could respond, and for the first time he moved, his chair scraping against the floor. “Did you put Alex up to it?” he asked, and once again his voice was a deadly calm. “You can tell me. I won’t be angry.”

The door to the interrogation room opened, and a couple of officers entered. Claude had gone stone silent again, let the officers force him to standing, turn him so they could put handcuffs on.

“I’m sorry,” he said to my mother as they pulled him through the door.

I ran out of the observation room as two officers led Claude away. At the same time, Alex and his mother entered from the door leading to the reception area. There was no way for any of the policemen to block Claude’s view. He
saw us both but focused his attention on Alex, straining against the officers’ hold. Deputy Mike barked orders and Claude was led through another set of doors. They had to drag him because he wouldn’t move. He kept his eyes fixed on Alex until the last moment.

Everyone spoke at once. Deputy Mike continued to yell, angry that no one had thought to check before allowing Catherine Craig and Alex to enter. My mother asked if we could leave.

“I was promised this wouldn’t happen,” said Catherine, furious.

I used the commotion to creep to the edge of the room. When Alex saw me, he smiled with one corner of his mouth. I could barely breathe, afraid to get too close. He held out his hand and I took it, felt the warmth of his skin as if he touched every inch of my body.

“Hey,” he said, but I couldn’t hear him over the noise.

I inched a little closer. There was so much to say and ask: Where was he living? Could I call him? Was he happy now? But all I said was, “You okay?”

“What do you think?” he asked, in his typical way of answering with a question. But he smiled again, and I guessed that was all the answer I was going to get. His mother said his name and I dropped his hand as if it burned. In the next moment she led him away, and they both disappeared into a different room.

When my mother and I reached the house, she parked the car in the driveway. Someone had spray painted “LIAR” underneath the white-frosting windows in big, black letters with paint dripping from the letter
R
as if it bled from a wound. I wished for my own can of spray paint so that I could add “CHEAT” and “THIEF” to make the scene complete. Also “I WANT TO FLY AWAY” and “WHERE ARE YOU?”

Let’s go, I thought, let’s drive away. Let’s fly.

Maybe she heard me. With her hand on the ignition, she shifted in her seat, no longer pale. And smiled.

We started packing. I got to keep my clothing and Alex’s bike and the beanbag chairs. My mother went through the remaining furniture that hadn’t been carted away, deciding which pieces she wanted to keep, which ones would be left behind. The first floor grew crowded with boxes.

A few days after Claude’s cryptic comments at the sheriff’s station, a team came out to examine the fishes in the
fountain. I learned they had a name: koi. And, because of their age and coloration, they could sometimes be valued at thousands of dollars. Claude’s fishes, three in total, had not been well taken care of. At least not recently, although they had managed to survive. I hadn’t even realized the fishes were real, let alone that they needed caring. Collectively, the fishes were valued at a few thousand dollars, not enough to make any great difference. Along with everything else, experts had taken the fishes away to be re-homed.

I stayed by the fountain after the men left. The surface of the water dimpled with skittering bugs and water plants growing over the side. No longer concerned with slimy things or bug-eyed fishes, I dipped my arms into the cool water. Ripples spread in widening circles, and I closed my eyes, imagining what it would feel like to be underwater in the slick slime, hiding in the muck, to have my lungs filled and unable to breathe. Peaceful. Beautiful, with the world above always out of reach, always a dream, moving in the ripples.

When I opened my eyes, the reflection of my father’s ghost swayed next to mine, with the blue sky dancing behind us and the roof of the house dipping in and out of view. I had wondered if the ghost would appear again, uncertain if I wanted to see him or not.

“You’re here,” I said.

“Yes,” he answered. Instead of starting with a story as he’d done before, he waited for me to speak, knowing that I had questions to ask him. I swallowed, staring down at his rippling reflection.

“Why’d you do it?” I asked. “Why’d you kill yourself?”

It was the one question I had wanted to ask that I had never been brave enough to ask before. My mother had told
me what happened leading up to his death, but only my father could answer the question of why. Why had he done it?

He turned his head so his reflection in the fountain showed his open, unhealed wound. It was all I could see.

“She ran away. She took you and left. I don’t remember getting my gun, don’t remember driving. Not until I got to this house and I saw her hiding behind him. I pointed my gun at his big ugly face. He was telling me to calm down and she was crying. She expected me to kill her. It was in her eyes. I said to Claude, ‘I’m going to take everything from you.’ ”

I squeezed my eyes shut, remembering the gunshot echoing through the house. What should I say to my father’s ghost? That his careful, diligently plotted revenge on Claude had been successful? That soon my mother and I would leave this house forever and never return? That I loved him?

This was the ghost’s revenge, to bring about Claude’s demise, bring pain and confusion to my mother. This was his plan all along, a carefully woven double cross. My father had gambled on Claude and had lost everything, and now Claude would lose everything. Not only Claude, but so many others as well. Myself, my mother, Tina and her family. The ghost hadn’t cared about collateral damage.

“Are you satisfied yet?” I asked. “Are you done?”

He bent close to speak. “I know where he keeps his money, his hiding places. I’ve always known. The desk, under the carpet on the third floor, and the fountain.”

All the air whooshed out of my lungs, and I turned toward him, toward my father, but he was climbing into the fountain. Slowly, he sank below the water.

My mother pushed the sliding doors open, and I heard
her approach. “Rosaura, I hope you’re not leaving all the packing for me to do. Are you all right? What’s wrong?”

“Wait,” I said, and kicked off my shoes and socks and tried to roll up my jeans, climbing into the fountain. The water came up to my knees and it was cold. The bottom of the fountain squished between my toes. I crouched down to hold on to the brick wall as I shuffled around.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “Get out of there. That can’t be clean.”

I bent down to feel with my hands as well as my feet. The bottom of the fountain was bumpy, and I kept almost falling. “There’s something in here.”

“How can you see anything?” My mother leaned over the edge of the fountain with an expression of skeptical disgust, hesitating to touch the water. But then she took the plunge and immersed her arms up to her armpits. “I think I have something.”

I shuffled over to her, swishing around in the dark water until I found her hands, following down to where her fingers gripped what felt like a slippery, slimy leaf. We pulled up and discovered a black garbage bag, difficult to lift, but as we did, I glanced down and saw through the murky water a floor of dollar bills.

In fact, they were one-hundred-dollar bills, vacuum-sealed in plastic, lining the fountain floor.

My mother and I stared at our hidden treasure, unable to move. My jeans were cold and clammy against my skin. The cloying, rotten smell of the unclean water hung in the air.

For some reason, I remembered one of the many
Goofus and Gallant
cartoons from the
Highlights
magazines. Goofus and Gallant each found a dollar bill lying on the ground. Gallant returned the dollar to his father in the
hopes of finding whom it belonged to, but Goofus took it and bought a candy bar.

The thought came to me as I stared at the money of the many thousands of candy bars it could buy. More than I could eat. More than I wanted to eat.

My mother rubbed at the plastic, trying to clear away the muck. Claude had meant for us to find it. Maybe she thought of our future, of the new apartment we were moving to, and our lack of beds for the bedrooms and pots and pans for the kitchen.

“What should we do?” I asked.

She sighed. “What do you think?”

I smiled. I couldn’t help Claude. I hadn’t helped Alex or Tina. There was nothing I could do for my father. But I could do this one thing. And maybe that was my purpose, found at the bottom of the fountain.

Inside, I waited on hold while someone at the sheriff’s station located Deputy Mike. Gazing out to the garden, I searched for the ghost, but he wasn’t there. I wasn’t sure he had ever been there.

Many have helped or guided me on this journey. My deepest, sincerest gratitude to my editor at Vintage/Anchor Books, Andrea Robinson, and my thesis advisor, Christopher Meeks, for their patience and for an incredibly enriching experience. Special thank-you to Andrea, for taking a chance on
The Cake House.
I want to thank my agent, Diana Fox, for sitting down with me one day and letting me talk about this book, and for her enthusiasm. Thank you to the many teachers in my life, too many to list here, but in particular Janet Fitch and Gina Nahai, for their constant generosity. A big hug and thank-you to my best friend, Sarah, for reading, and for so much more. Thank you to Terri Oberkamper, for her sharp grammar skills. Thank you to everyone at Vintage and Anchor Books. To my family and friends, a mere thank-you is not enough; you have my love forever. And lastly, I’d like to travel back in time and buy William Shakespeare a drink and say thank you for your writing.