This Cake is for the Party (4 page)

“She's your friend, not mine.”

The balls go click-click-click.

“You know that's not the point.”

“What is the point, Lise? Tell me.”

Lise stares at her toes with the flags of white tape sticking to them and says, “The point is, you can be a real asshole sometimes.”

“Oh,” I say. “Oh, that's classic.”

“I said you
can
be an asshole, not that you
are
an asshole.”

As if to punctuate her statement, a siren screams down the hill from our house. We both pause as the scream descends, until it's completely out of range. I think:
Someone
is dying
. Lise is probably thinking:
Oh good, they'll be
safe now
.

“You should make that call,” I tell her.

“What call? Call who? Call the police?”

“Well, that would be a start. That wouldn't be the worst thing.”

“She'd freaking die. She'd hate me forever.”

“I thought you said that wasn't the point.”

Lise pulls the masking tape off her big toe. Her face is pink from the heat, and her forehead is shining with sweat. She has bits of grass stuck in her hair. She combs through her bangs with her fingers. Her shoulder blades move underneath the pink tank top and I notice that she's not wearing a bra, that it's just her skin underneath the top, her little breasts pushing the fabric out like soft rosy fists.

I say, gently, “What are you going to do with him today?”

Finally she looks at me. “I'm going to take him to the park,” she says. “Maybe to the zoo.”

“Yeah. Why not go for a walk?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing! You could walk to the park, that's all.”

“Jesus,” Lise says, and turns back to her toes.

“Now what? What did I say? What just happened?”

“You think I'm an idiot. The way you talk to me.”

“I just said about the park, I didn't say anything.”

“I'm smarter than you think I am. I can tell when you're making fun of me.”

This is how it's been with us all summer. I imagine how good it would feel to throw her bottle of nail polish into the street, kick in the screen door, tear at the grass. But it's
so freaking hot
. I close my eyes and count to seven as I inhale. This helps. I close my eyes and let my head fall back. I always feel gummy and sick to my stomach when we fight.

“You know, Lise? This is my weekend. I don't want to do this on my weekend.”

“It's my weekend too.”

Except that it
isn't
. Every day I have to wake up at six in the morning and get a shirt ironed and drive across town to the bank where I work, and every day Lise
sleeps
until eleven and then makes a cup of coffee and brings it back to bed so she can
look for a job on her laptop
. I stand there with my hands in my pockets and listen to the sticky sound of the masking tape as Lise peels it off each toe. There's a crisp line between the polish and the bare nail.

“I saw him at the Wicket last week,” I say.

“Who?”

“Atlas. Sitting at the bar.”

“Krystal took him to the Wicket?”

“Krystal wasn't there.”

Lise swivels on the towel so she is facing me. “Who was with him?” she asks.

“He was there on his own. At the bar with a plate of cherries and olives and a couple of plastic cocktail sticks. Swords, whatever.”

Lise stares at me.

“Bruce was behind the bar,” I add. “He must have given him the cherries and stuff to play with.”

“What did you do?”

“I told Bruce, be good to this guy, he's a friend of mine.”

Lise pushes her bangs out of her face. Her hair is sweaty and it stays where she pushed it. She looks cute, like a fancy canary. “You left him there?” she asks me.

“Everyone knows who he is. They wouldn't have let anything bad happen.”

The Wicket is our local pub, but it's more like a community centre. It's a second home for guys like Bill Peters and Sid Rochon, who I don't think even finished high school. They
start
and
end
their days on those bar stools. But it's not a seedy place, either. Sure, the regulars are on their third pint by noon, and they have a stunning lack of ambition, but they aren't
criminals
.

“Don't you have to go to the gym?” Lise says. “You should just go.”

The sound of an old motor curdles up the street. Krystal's blue Chevette pulls in front of the house. It's coated in a layer of dust, and the signal lights are chipped away from a variety of fender benders. Blisters of paint cluster on the hood like acne breakouts. The car chugs a little, settles after the ignition is turned off. Then the zipper sound of the parking brake.

Still sitting on her towel, Lise waves to the four-year-old in the car seat in the back. He stares out the window, takes in the cube of yellow bricks that is our house, the white and green striped awning over the front door, the dried-out lawn, all of which he knows as well as he knows his own house now. His eyes fix on me.

“Thank you, thank you,” Krystal says out loud to nobody. It could be that she is talking to us. She steadies herself with one hand on the hood of the car as she works her way around it. The hood is too hot and she yanks her hand away when it touches the metal. She jabs her fingers under the back seat door handle and lets Atlas out.

“Come on, buddy, we're here.” She's wearing a black skirt, black tights and a short-sleeved maroon shirt. Something glutinous wavers around her in the heat. She carries a depth of scent that is familiar, like beef gravy, but with a sharp edge.

“God, it's hot,” she says. She teeters over the lawn wearing chunky heels. “These freaking shoes are not right,” she says. “Winners, like three seasons ago.”

“Why are you wearing tights?” Lise asks, looking up at her from the towel.

“They told me I can't do bare legs in this office. No open toes or whatever.”

“Even in the summer?” I ask.

Both women look over at me. “Even in the summer,” Krystal tells me.

“I have pantyhose,” Lise says. “If you want. Summer hose, nude.”

“Awesome,” Krystal says. “What colour nude?”

They fall into this kind of shorthand whenever they're together. It makes it obvious that they've known each other since high school, if only because they start to act like they're in high school. The back of my neck gets itchy when I hear their banter. Atlas is standing on the grass in front of me.

“Hey Atlas!” I try. “Whatcha got there? Did you bring your truck? Huh?”

“Well, they're not orangey,” says Lise. “They're light, you know, taupey.”

Atlas nods at me, squats on the ground, and sucks on his bottom lip as he manipulates the opening of his yellow vinyl backpack. He pulls a red pickup truck out from the pack and hands it to me, I guess because I asked for it. “Thanks,” I say, and I take it from him.

“Can I try them on?” Krystal asks Lise. “I'm dying in these stinkers.”

It's been about fifteen minutes since Lise applied her first coat of polish. She tests her toenails to see if they're still tacky by gently tapping one of them with the back of a fingernail.

“Sure,” she says. “I'll get them for you.” She pushes herself up off the towel. An imprint of her lower half rests in the folds of the pink terry cloth. She walks barefoot across the dry lawn, flattening sharp points of yellow grass into a line of matted footprints. The screen door shuts behind her with a hiss.

“So,” I say. Atlas is standing beside me and looking up at his red truck. I pass it from my left hand to my right hand and then back again. It's made out of plastic and it feels cheap. I remember playing with
real
trucks when I was a kid. Our stuff used to be made out of
metal
. “What kind of job is it for, this interview?” I ask. I try not to meet Krystal's eyes. She stands several feet away from me anyway.

“I'm registered at a temp agency,” Krystal says. “So it's office work.”

“Oh yeah? Where will you be working?”

“Well, I don't, like, have the whole job yet. I'm going to the interview.”

Krystal directs her comments to my left arm. I have a tattoo of a jumping rabbit on my bicep. I know it's an
extraordinary
piece of art, but does it have to take the place of my
face
in a conversation? Atlas watches the truck in my hands like a hound eyeing a soup bone. It looks like he has one big eye and one small one. Or at least, one is wider than the other. Or maybe it's just slightly higher up on his face. I'm not making this up.

“But the interview,” Krystal says, “it's at this law office, it's downtown.”

“Ooh,” I say, without meaning to say it like that. To cover up, I add, “That should be swanky. The office is open on Saturday and everything, eh?”

Krystal doesn't answer me. She crouches down to Atlas's eye level and calls him over to her. He hesitates, then gives up on his truck and walks over to his mother. Krystal tells him, “Be good for Lise, okay? I'll be back to get you in two hours. Do you want to stay outside with Greg or come in with me?”

“I want to stay outside!” Atlas yells.

Krystal smiles at me. “I'll just go take these tights off,” she says. “You don't mind?”

Atlas has one hand busy in the crotch of his nylon track pants. He waggles his penis like a little tail under the fabric. “These are my favourite pants.” he tells me.

I spin the wheels on the cheap toy truck. I press hard into the plastic with the palm of my hand, getting it to really spin. “Well, they're pretty snazzy,” I say.

“My truck!” Atlas says. “Give it back.”

I hand it over. “Did you eat lunch yet?”

Atlas shakes his head.

“You hungry then?”

Atlas nods. The boy has a large head for a four-year-old. It's disproportionate to the rest of his body—he still has a round belly and short, rubbery appendages that look baby soft and malleable. A colossal growth of shaggy, dusty blond hair does its best to cover the expanse of his forehead. When I consider the length and width of Atlas's cranium, I wonder if it's normal for a kid to have a head that big. Krystal leaves him alone too much, but would that result in a head-size problem?

“Let's go make ourselves a sandwich,” I say to Atlas.

It's almost too hot to eat, but it's cooler inside. I lead the way into the house, holding the screen door open for Atlas with one arm. As he walks under, I flex my bicep to make it look like the rabbit is jumping over him. Atlas squeals, and comes back outside right away so he can do it again. He crouches down beside me and then jumps like he's the rabbit, and disappears into the dark house. There are no windows installed on the south side, which means that, a little after breakfast, we don't get any direct light indoors. I stand in the doorway for a few seconds, letting my eyes adjust.

We're in the kitchen eating peanut butter, mustard and lettuce sandwiches on whole wheat bread when Krystal and Lise emerge from the bedroom smelling like cigarette smoke and a high-pitched perfume.

“You're teaching him disgusting habits,” Lise says, nodding to the squeeze bottle of mustard on the counter.

“
I'm
teaching him bad habits,” I say.

Krystal looks at me. She's holding her black tights bunched in one hand, the feet and toes dangling. I screw the lid back on the jar of all-natural peanut butter and put it back in the fridge. “It's
whole wheat
bread,” I say to the fridge door.

“Oh honey,” Lise says, and for a second I think she's talking to me. Then she says, “Don't play with your food, okay?”

Atlas has taken his sandwich apart on the kitchen table. He's eating the mustard side first. The lettuce from the middle has fallen to the floor beside him, a smear of bright yellow on the tiles.

“Aren't you going to be late for your lawyer interview?” I ask Krystal.

“My watch was fast,” she says. “I have an extra fifteen minutes.”

Lise sees some mustard on Atlas's face. She folds a piece of paper towel, dampens it with tap water, and tries to wipe his cheek. Atlas turns his face back and forth, ducking the towel at each swipe. Something about his twitching head and his frustration makes me feel a flutter of understanding, shadowy wings in my frontal lobe:
I
know just how he feels
.

“Wow,” I say. “That was lucky. Good thing it wasn't fifteen minutes slow.”

Krystal ignores me and says to Lise, “Thank you. I'm going to get going. I'll see you around three?”

Lise hugs her. “Those are my lucky pantyhose! If you know what I mean!”

When Krystal leaves, her hand lingers on the door handle for a second before she lets go of it. A rectangle of bleached sky and desiccated lawn disappears as the screen door hushes itself shut.

Inside our house, it is remarkably cool and dark. In the winter the lack of light is blatantly depressing, especially for Lise, who has a mild case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. But in the summer the cool linoleum and tiny square windows make it the only sensible place to stay during a heat wave.

I sit at the kitchen table and give Lise the eye. “Were you talking about me?”

Lise looks at me. “What do you mean?”

“In the bedroom.”

“Don't even,” she says.

Lise glances over at Atlas, who is huffing around in the living room. He's taking the couch apart, pulling off cushions and pillows and tossing them onto the rug. Lise goes to the fridge and pulls out a plastic litre bottle of diet Coke. With her free hand, she pinches two tall glasses by the rims, careful that she doesn't clink them together too hard, and then she comes over to the table. She pours one for each of us without asking.