This Cake is for the Party (12 page)

Let me say it.

I interrupt him: Janey has a lover.

What?

Janey's been sleeping with someone. Milt doesn't know.

His body falls backwards, like he's lost his balance.

The music that's playing right now. The guitarist.

David clears his throat. You're saying Janey's sleeping with Rastin?

I just found out.

Janey told you that?

Help me with this, I tell him. Get the corkscrew.

The pasta is finally ready and I serve it to everyone in generous bowls with fresh curls of Parmesan on top. David put together an extra place setting for himself and he's squished in between Becky and Janey, at the corner of the table. Timotei is sleeping on the couch in the living room. I take this as a sign that the atmosphere is peaceful.

I've been saving this wine for a special occasion, David says. And tonight is the night. He raises his glass. To Janey and Milt, he says.

David makes sure that each person at the table meets his eye as he clinks his glass to each of theirs. This is what David does at dinner parties. He moves his glass from person to person purposefully. He raises his eyebrows and makes his eyes widen, looking for each glance before he moves on. He looks deranged as he does this.

So, Janey says, using her spoon to coax her noodles onto the fork, what are you working on these days, Becky? Any shows coming up?

I'm working with sugar syrup, she says. It's not like anything I've used before—I've had to talk to candy manufacturers to find out how I'm supposed to use it. I'm making a—yes—well, a sculptural work.

She made a body cast out of plaster, says Milt.

Whose body? I ask.

My own body, she says.

I laugh before I can stop myself. But it's unsophisticated to laugh at contemporary art, so I correct myself and say: Oh, goody! A life-sized Becky candy! What flavour will you be?

I'm glad you asked me that, Becky says. She nods her head, letting her fork dangle from her fingers like a pendulum over the bowl of pasta. Choosing a flavour, she tells me, will authenticate the project more than any other aspect of the composition. I had considered using cherry—but then, that's so obvious, isn't it?

Not that anyone would be tasting it, says Milt. Am I right?

That's part of the joy of installation work, Becky tells him with one eyebrow raised to a point. You never know how people will respond. Then she rolls her eyes and puts her fork down. God, it was hellish, she says. I had my students make the body cast, but they worked from the top down instead of up from my feet, so not only was my face encased in plaster for five hours while they covered my legs, but the weight of the plaster as I stood there—it dried on my body, it took hours—well, I think the weight of it did something to my back. I haven't felt the same since that session. And since my shiatsu therapist decided to change her name to Pashmina and sail to Maui, I'm just caught in this chronic pain cycle.

I have a massage therapist, I say. I have her card, remind me, I'll give it to you.

I'm sorry, Bonnie, I mean, I'm sure your massage therapist is lovely for you. But regular massage doesn't work
for me
. I have a certain constitution that responds to the energetic approach of shiatsu.

Pashmina? asks David. Really? Isn't that a scarf?

I don't know, says Becky. Her name used to be Margaret, and all I know is that she's gone now, and I'm in pain.

It's a wool wrap, says Janey. I'm wearing one in lavender, for the wedding.

You could carry lavender, I say. To make it all go together.

It's not the season for it, Becky says. And dried flowers are terrible feng shui. You don't want dried flowers in a wedding. You want fresh everything.

Because a wedding is a fresh start, says David.

I shoot him a look over the table.

Speaking of fresh starts, says Milt, what's up with Mr. Pressman, Beck?

I watch Milt use his knife to slip some noodles onto the edge of his fork—he's cut the noodles with the knife, he's cut them into small pieces—and a warm punch of love for him hits my chest. Janey is lucky to have found Milt. She asks too much from him, but he gives it anyway, and it pleases him to please her.

Becky says, Mr. Bradley Pressman, professional scoundrel, is up to no good. She holds her wineglass up like she is waving a flag. I have tried to avoid him, but he insists on showing up at every single opening I've been to this month. If I didn't know better, I'd say he was stalking me.

Isn't that a good thing? asks Janey. Doesn't he own Pressman Gallery?

He does, says Becky. He and Mrs. Pressman own the gallery.

Aha, says David. The wife.

That's right, says Becky. And his hands had no business being where they were, at the opening of Hirakawa's show last week. For example.

He touched you? asks Janey. How? Where were his hands?

Where was his wife, I want to know.

You don't know what kind of relationship they have, says David.

I look at him. What does that mean? I ask.

Well, they could have an arrangement.

Janey says, Maybe she has a whole collection of lovers, herself. They could have talked about it, about finding a little something on the side. Maybe it spices up their own sex life.

I say, So he's hitting on Becky, his wife knows about it, and she's okay with it.

It's a theory, says David. Just a theory. Affairs happen.

Milt says, Is it an affair if the wife knows about it?

No, I say. It's only an affair if it's a secret. That damn kernel of something is still stuck in my tooth. I can't stick my finger in my mouth again. I drink more wine, swirl it around to distract myself from the discomfort. I watch Janey across from me. One of her hands is under the table, likely on Milt's knee.

Well, it couldn't be a secret, Becky says, because he's not hiding his affections.

Has he asked to see your work? asks David.

Yes, she says. And I haven't shown it to him. I don't want to charm my way into the gallery just because he likes to see me at these openings in heels and silk. I want to earn it the proper way. The real way.

What's real anymore? I say. Nothing's real.

This causes a bit of a silence. Janey is watching me now.

Milt says, Uh. He's looking down onto his plate. I found something, he says. I don't know what this is, but it looks important.

He pokes into his dish and pulls out a black, matted clump that hangs like a tumour from the tines of his fork.

It's the thyme, I tell him. You're the lucky one, you got it on your plate. You get to make a wish.

You want me to wish on this? He makes a face.

I thought that only happened with wishbones, says David.

Oh, shut up, I tell him. You're just jealous. Milt got the thyme, he gets the wish.

Do I have to keep it a secret? Milt asks.

I give up and dig my index finger into my mouth, searching for the seed or whatever it is that has wedged itself into my tooth. Thorry, I mumble, I have this thing thuck in my thooth. Excuth me.

From across the table, I watch Janey's eyes fill with water when she looks at me. Milt doesn't notice that Janey's crying, but David does. He rubs her shoulder with one slow hand. He presses his hand to the base of her neck with care, like he's lining up the bones in his fingers with her vertebrae to see if they match. I can't stop watching them. My finger is still stuck in my mouth and I drool onto my wrist, just like a baby.

Where Are You Coming From,
Sweetheart?

On the night her father died, Christine was in the dark of a Greyhound bus on the way from the Big Smoke to the Big Nickel, in one of the rear seats beside the washroom stall, letting a man named Bruce Corbiere put his smoky, apple-sticky tongue in her mouth. It felt like a living thing, burrowing. This was Christine's first kiss. She was fourteen years old.

Christine's father had allowed her to spend the weekend with her cousin Sonia and her aunt Juicy in Mississauga. The Greyhound bus was headed back north on Highway 69, the same stretch of road that had taken her own mother ten years earlier. Christine had been four years old, pencilling lumpy butterflies on the back of a phone bill envelope, when a police officer knocked at the door to report the accident. Christine's mother was driving the silver Valiant home from her sister's house when a transport truck swerved into oncoming traffic. It crushed the Ford and trapped her mother inside. This happened so long ago, it's more story than memory. She knew the detail about the butterflies on the envelope because her father still used this piece of paper as a bookmark in the black leather bible next to his bed.

Before she left for the weekend, Christine had had to finish all of her household chores—her father used the word
chores
, as if they lived on a farm. She was in the basement on Wednesday after school, cramming her father's brown pants into the washing machine, when she found the note. She had dipped into his pockets looking for money. The pocket lining was dotted with pimples of pilled cotton. She pulled out a crusty handkerchief and a fat beige crumb of—what? It was heavy as a pebble, disgusting. But in the other pocket there was a scrap of paper, folded twice.
42
:
1
–
11
My tears have been my food day and
night. Why are you downcast, O my soul? Put your hope in God.
The handwriting was dark and loopy. She threw it away, into the can of dryer lint with the dead house centipedes. Not even a quarter.

While her father boiled sausages with onions in the kitchen—Christine wouldn't eat this anymore because she was a vegetarian—Christine vacuumed his bedroom. He had been home from work all week because of a bad headache. She used the corner attachment to suck up the flakes of cigarette ash along the baseboards, picked up the empty soup bowls and pop cans that had rolled under the bed. She wiped the dandruff off the top of the headboard with a damp cloth and emptied her father's ashtray where it sat beside his bible.

Because she went into his bedroom every week, she knew: her father's closet was still full of her mother's old clothes. And he moved them around. He touched them. One day she found a peach polyester nightie crumpled in the bed. The whole scene was too revolting to contemplate— her father's hairy arms twisting the nightie into a thick cord, a sash, dangling it over his face, squeezing it, oh, horrible, slipping it between his legs? Christine had stripped the bed, thrown the nightie in with the rest of the load, and hung it up on a wire hanger in the very back of the closet. This Wednesday, thankfully, there was nothing unexpected in there. She changed the sheets on his bed, added the dirty ones to the laundry basket, and brought the basket down to the basement for a second load.

After dinner, Christine had asked her father if she could watch an episode of
Lost and Gone
. Sean Paisley played the doctor's younger brother and he was in the whole second season. He was without question the most adorable boy on television. She had rented the DVD from Video 99 three days ago. It was only a three-day rental.

Lost and gone, her father said, his hands folded in his lap. His blue jogging pants ballooned around his skinny legs and the ankle elastics made the jersey pouf over the top of his slippers. Are you lost and gone too, Christine?

She daubed dish detergent in the bottom of the greasy sausage pot and turned on the hot water. She dropped their two knives and two forks into the suds, one by one. Her father always sat at the kitchen table after dinner to watch her clean up.

No, Christine said. It's just a show, okay?

Her father stared at the running water. The Bible tells us to be filled with joy and praise, he said.

Christine turned off the tap and reached for the sponge. Amen amen amen amen hallelujah praise the lord, she said.

Her father sighed and let out an invisible cloud of suffering. I try to teach you the Right Way, he said. But I have failed. He pushed the palms of his hands into his eyes.

Take an Aspirin or something, Christine said. You are so full of negativity.

I'd like to call a house meeting, her father said, his eyes still covered. Meet me in the living room when you're finished. He stood up and shuffled out of the kitchen. Christine swiped the knives and forks with the soapy sponge and rinsed them under hot water.

It's not like we're poor, Christine told him. You work for the government.

We aren't rich, he said. He was sitting in the brown chair in the living room with the Household Debt ledger book open on his lap. Columns of numbers stumbled over the lines in blue ballpoint. This book tracked Christine's spending habits.

I take issue with this, Christine said.

We'll mark it in the book.

I don't have ten dollars for you, Christine said. I owe you everything already.

Thirty-five for the bus tickets, he said, writing in the book, plus ten dollars standard for the visit. He traced his finger down the Debt column. Three hundred twelve dollars, he said, making a note in blue pen.

If I'm paying for the tickets, how is it fair that I have to pay you ten dollars extra?

Nobody ever said life was fair, he said.

You are such a cliché.

Do you want to take the trip or not?

Christine stared at the top corner of the notebook, at the silver coils ridging down the side. They started to vibrate like an optical puzzle. Look closely: are the lines straight or curved? She closed her eyes and watched the yellow shapes float on the black of her eyelids. Just put it on my tab, she said, eyes closed.

You get one dollar for doing the dishes tonight, her father said.

Awesome.

And four dollars from Sunday.

Christine opened her eyes and tapped the plastic DVD case on her thigh.

So that's three hundred seven, he said, and drew a line in the book.

Last Sunday after church, they had driven out to the lake to collect empty beer bottles from the bush parties. Her father wore the Beer Bag, a top-loader backpack that was so stained and filthy it made their whole garage smell like sour fruit and rotten cheese. Christine had to come with him; it was her job to scout under the pine trees for any shiny brown glass that hid in the blueberry bushes and rested on the moss. She picked up all the broken ones, the bottles that had been tossed onto the rocks, and put these pieces into a brown paper bag to dispose of safely. Things she avoided: the disintegrating wads of toilet paper; the dark brown Colt butts with white plastic tips; the crumpled pale folds of condoms stuck to the lichen. She dropped whole dusty bottles and any cans she could find into her father's Beer Bag as she found them, careful to lower them by the neck so they just clinked on the others without breaking. They returned these for refund on the drive home. They did this every Sunday. The people at the Beer Store knew Christine by name and she wasn't even legal yet.