Graduation Cake

by Charlie Rogers

My sister Roxane greets me on the front steps of our old duplex like a housecat, a mix of contempt and affection in her guarded stance. She offers me a smile that looks suspiciously like a frown. “Kait will be so glad you showed up,” she says, her voice flat and nasal. I’m struck by how strong her Philadelphia accent is, though I shouldn’t be, given how long it took me to shake mine. It still sometimes slips out when I say a word like Mon-dee or Sun-dee.

“Hey, if there’s even one person here who doesn’t hate me, that’s good enough for me.” I grin, hoping to keep the tension low, but the truth is I’m terrified about what awaits on the other side of the door. The last time I saw our younger brother Josh was at his mother’s memorial service, twenty-five years ago. He dislocated my jaw.

Roxane rolls her eyes, same as as the sardonic teenager I used to share a bathroom with. It’s comforting—maybe we haven’t changed that much after all. “No one hates you,” she says, opening her arms for a hug as I reach the top of the steps, but before I reach her, she adds, “Not anymore.”

“We’ll see.” I glance over at the other door in the duplex, its torn screen and rusted hinges. When we were kids, our neighbor was a friendly guy our parents’ age who lived alone. Mr. Pillsbury, like the dough brand. Based on the disrepair visible on that half of the building, I’m guessing he still lives here. He used to be part of the family, sort of. So did I.

My niece, Kait, interrupts my wondering and preempts Roxane’s long-overdue hug. “Uncle Billy! You came!” The screen door slams behind her as she rushes into my arms. I lift her off her feet, same as I did when she was little, though she’s taller than I am now, and she squeals into my ear, same as she always has. Roxane and I have had our share of problems but I’ll give her credit for encouraging my relationship with her daughter, unlike Josh, whose two sons may or may not even know I exist.

“Nothing was gonna stop me from celebrating my favorite niece’s graduation.” I set her down and smile at Roxane. It’s a cliche but they could pass for sisters: the same dark eyes and tall foreheads. I look more like our father, short and stocky, but I have my mother’s hazel eyes. She died in an accident when I was still nursing, so if I inherited anything else from her, I may never know.

“I’m your only niece.” Kait pouts, but I know she’s actually delighted—I’ve been teasing her with this line for her entire eighteen years.

Mr. Pillsbury appears in the other doorway, his features obscured by the dirty screen. I remember him doing silly magic tricks for Josh and me, always laughing, but his sudden presence—silently watching us—unsettles me even more than the prospect of what waits inside.

“My only favorite niece.” I keep grinning as if nothing’s changed. It’s how I’m going to get through the day.

 ***

My brother doesn’t look up or acknowledge me when I enter the room, busy playing some racing game with his sons. They’re fourteen and twelve, I think. The taller one goes by Bray, and the redhead is named Ryan, but neither of them show the slightest interest in me. My father stands behind them, leaning on the back of the sofa for support—he nods when he sees me and turns his attention back to his grandsons.

“Dad,” I say. I can hear myself straining for jocularity and hope no one else notices. If I pretend to be happy I’m here, maybe it’ll rub off on everyone else.

Dad sighs, a disappointed exhale he used to reserve for the days we’d bring our report cards home or when Mom—not my biological mother but the woman who raised me—would interrupt football to ask him to take out the trash. “Billy. You look healthy.”

Everyone outside this house calls me William, ever since I left—Dad would say he didn’t kick me out but it was pretty clear I wasn’t welcome anymore. My ex-husband would occasionally call me Bill when he was pissed, but for the most part, I only hear that name in here. It lands like a murmured slur.

I’m reminded why I’ve been estranged from these people for almost two decades. Dad, of all people, should know who’s at fault for what happened. If the roles had been reversed, Mom would have worked tirelessly to bridge the divide between me and the rest of the family. Dad has done the opposite, by insisting my story was total fabrication, as if shifting the blame onto me absolves him. Josh has always taken his side. Roxane used to make an effort. Not so much now, but I don’t hold her responsible. I know who really fucked this family up.

I won’t say it, though. There’s no point. I could never prove my claims.

“Good to see you too.” I tap him on the shoulder, playful, like we’re buddies.

One of Josh’s sons—I’m suddenly afraid I’ve got their names reversed—looks up, but not at me, as if I’m not even here. “Is it time for cake?”

“Not until after lunch, bud,” Josh says, his calm voice at odds with the furious way he mashes buttons on the video game controller.

Roxane pipes up behind me. “I ordered sandwiches. It’s too hot to cook. There’s a vegan one for Kait, of course—do you have any restrictions, Billy?”

Josh spins his head around when he hears my name as if I haven’t been standing two feet behind him for a couple minutes.

“Billy. You showed.” It sounds like a threat coming from him, or maybe I’m imagining that. He finally stands and turns to face me—he’s towered over me since I was sixteen and he was eleven, but now he’s twice as wide as the version in my memory, with a full beard specked with gray. He’s also balding more than me or Dad, which gives me an odd rush of satisfaction. “It’s been a while. Do we shake? Hug?”

‍ ‍Neither, I want to say.

“Hug’s good,” I say.

Josh and I shared a room as kids. It isn’t until he’s got his meaty arms around me that I remember how close we used to be, how affectionate he always was.

“You still have all your hair, you fucker.”

“No gray, either,” Roxane adds.

“I didn’t go gray either,” Dad says. “Not until—”

“Should we eat?” Kait interrupts. I don’t think she does it on purpose—she probably isn’t amused by a bunch of middle-agers talking about hair loss during her graduation party—but if so, she’s even sharper than I thought.

Food goes about how I expect. Dad needs to be told multiple times that Roxane didn’t prepare these sandwiches herself, that she just ordered them from the same deli we used to buy candy at when we were kids. Ryan doesn’t want the regular sandwich, or the vegan alternative, so Josh offers to make him something special, rooting around in Roxane’s fridge. I don’t know what happened to Josh’s wife and won’t ask. Bray goes off to a corner to eat by himself. I’ve still never been introduced to him or his brother and he doesn’t seem to care. I guess I don’t either.

I sit at the dining room table—the same wobbly red one that Mom hated—and think to myself how the day is going so much better than I imagined. I certainly didn’t expect a hug from my brother and no one’s told me I shouldn’t have come. And Kait beams every time she sees me, like she thinks she’s fixed her family.

Dad takes the seat across from me, focusing on his ham sandwich like it’s a crossword puzzle, lips dry-smacking as he chews methodically, still ignoring me as much as he can.

‍ ‍This is your fucking fault, Dad told me when we got the news about Mom.

I abandon my food and head outside for some air and a smoke.

 ***

I’m thinking about that day again. I usually don’t, but here it’s unavoidable. So much of the memory is blissfully lost, slowly degraded from photographic clarity to impressionistic sketches.

I remember: the house initially seems quiet, and I think I’m alone. Mom’s on a rare business trip in Fort Lauderdale and Dad’s at work. He’s a professor at Drexel and sometimes he drops by for lunch. It’s too late in the afternoon for that. I find the quiet eerie but freeing—I can do whatever I want. I don’t remember why I’ve come home from school early, or how I got here. I must have walked.

In the kitchen, I heap three huge spoonfuls of ice cream into a breakfast bowl and smother it in chocolate sauce. I’ve never been one for breaking rules and the first bite is wicked and sweet, the most delicious mouthful of ice cream I’ve ever tasted. But I’m still wearing my school uniform and I’m not so lost to my new rebellion that my common sense shuts off—if I get chocolate on any part of it, I’ll get caught. I could strip it all off right here, but if someone did walk in, I’d be mortified on top of guilty. I set the bowl back on the counter and go upstairs to change.

That’s when I hear it, a strange guttural sound coming from my parents’ room.

If I was a savvier kid, I’d have instantly clocked exactly what I was hearing and known to stay away, but… I’ve had a lifetime of buts. This is just the first.

I move down the hallway quickly, without any hesitation or fear, and as I grow closer, the sound becomes clearer: a man grunting. I can’t say it sounds like Dad because I’ve never heard him make noises like this.

When I reach the doorway, I see his feet first, arched and pressed against the footboard. I should have turned away right then but I continue looking, confused for a second as to what exactly I’m seeing. I wish I could live forever in that ignorance, but I can’t. I’m looking at my father’s naked ass thrusting violently. I don’t see the woman he’s on top of, but I can parse enough skin that’s slightly more tanned than Dad’s to know this isn’t how my father masturbates. He’s actually fucking someone.

And Mom is out of town.

‍ ‍You love that big cock, don’t you? Dad says.

I remain transfixed, tempted to peek further into the room to see who Dad is on top of but desperate to run away, and for a few long seconds, I do neither. Then an idea comes to me. This is where it really goes wrong.

I creep back downstairs, find the number of Mom’s hotel on the refrigerator, and call her room.

She sounds out of breath when she answers. “Billy? Is something wrong?”

“It’s Dad,” I say, my voice high and unfamiliar. “He’s in the bedroom. I saw him. With another woman.”

She starts crying and I immediately realize this was a terrible idea. I hear her pull a deep inhale. “I’m coming home. Okay? I’m changing my flight. Don’t tell him, or the other kids, okay?”

I should talk her out of it, but she’s my mother—I don’t tell her what to do. “Okay, Mom. I love—”

She’s already hung up.

Then, I don’t know what else to do.

I go knock on Mr. Pillsbury’s door, but when he doesn’t answer, I sit under the oak tree on his side of the yard and wonder what I’ve done.

Hours later, Roxane finds me dozing under the tree. She asks me about the melted bowl of ice cream which I’d forgotten all about. I don’t want to tell her what I’ve seen so I lie and claim I don’t know anything about the ice cream. She doesn’t believe me.

The next morning, Dad gets the call that Mom crashed her car rushing to the airport. He collapses onto the floor and can barely speak. Did something happen to Mom? Josh asks.

It’s a few more days before I confess about the phone call, what I saw.

 ***

“You’re back.” The voice is unfamiliar, somehow both soft and gravelly. I turn. Mr. Pillsbury stands behind me, at the top of the steps. He’s holding an unlit cigarette, and I’m struck by how much better he’s aged than Dad. He looks closer to my age than his own, but a slight tremor in his right hand gives him away. “Mind if I sit?”

My plan was to have a moment to myself but maybe company would be better. Anything to keep the memories away. “They’re your steps more than mine, Mr. Pillsbury,” I say, resurrecting my unflappable grin.

“True, true,” he says and lowers himself beside me. “Call me Bryan.”

I’m struck by a different memory—when it was just me, before Roxane could talk and definitely before Josh was born, I called him Uncle Bryan. I don’t remember why that stopped. He was still like a family member, at least when we were little, always showing up with the best presents on our birthdays, dressing up as Santa on Christmas Eve, and yet somehow I’d forgotten his first name.

I light his cigarette for him and we sit a moment in silence. Two little girls bike past us on the sidewalk and one of them waves to us—or, more likely, to Mr. Pillsbury. Uncle Bryan.

“It’s good to see you again, William.” He sighs—very different from my father’s sigh, not exasperated but world-weary. “I never got to say what a shame it was what happened to your mother.”

I laugh. “Which one?”

“I knew them both, of course. But I meant Mel.”  He holds his hand in front of his face, parallel to the ground and watches as his fingers seem to move on their own. “Though I was much closer to Eve.”

Eve is my biological mother—when Dad would get mad at my stubbornness, he’d say you’re so much like your mother, as if that was a bad thing. I never learned much about her and always felt like it would be disloyal to my stepmother to show too much interest.

“They didn’t invite you to the party today?” I flick my still-burning cigarette into the street and immediately feel guilty about littering. Bryan doesn’t seem to care.

He stands, his knee joints cracking at my ears. “No, no, it’s not like it was. Hasn’t been in a while. If you can spare a minute…I’ve got something for you.” He clears his throat. “A present, I guess.”

 ***

I can’t remember the last time I’ve been inside Bryan’s house, but it’s easily been decades. The space is a mirror of ours but couldn’t feel more different: every surface is littered with unopened mail and every inch of the walls is covered by oil paintings: a few landscapes—I recognize one as the slope of Clark Park—but mostly portraits of men. They’re all incredibly beautiful and I’m overwhelmed. Bryan must have painted them all.

“Wait right here.” Bryan bounds up the steps, quite spry for someone in his mid-sixties. I wander over to the fireplace that I assume is purely decorative, my eye caught by the image hung above it.

A naked man lounges on a bed. The background is all watercolor splotches, primary colors, but the bed and the man are both vividly detailed. The subject looks so much like me that my heart hammers in my ears. The man in the painting looks right at me, like he really sees me, and offers me a flirty smile. His penis rests lazily on one leg and his right hand sits next to it, the arched fingers drawing my eye toward it.

I spin my head around the room. The same man appears in a half-dozen other pictures. A closeup with an inscrutable expression. Half-submerged in a rippling lake, naked again, peering back over his shoulder with that same bright smile. A similar pose on the bed, but with a sheet pulled to his waist. Everywhere I look, there he is.

He isn’t me. But I know who he is.

Bryan reappears holding another portrait, and if I have any doubt about the subject of these other paintings, this one quiets it. An attractive young couple sit side by side on a pair of colorful cubes, and both of them gaze lovingly at the baby in the woman’s lap. It’s me and my parents.

“Oh.” Bryan sees me looking at the man above the mantel.

My eyes meet the tiny painted gaze of the baby version of me. I want to climb inside the image and warn him. About what will happen, what he’ll do, and what will be done to him. But I can’t.

 ***

I feel like I’ve been gone for hours but Dad’s still working on the same sandwich. I take my seat, my abandoned lunch waiting in front of me. Everyone’s in the other room.

“I was just talking to Bryan next door,” I say, holding my voice as flat as possible. “I saw his paintings.”

He looks up. Is his expression finally showing remorse? Guilt? I can’t tell.

“That was who I saw you with, wasn’t it? You told everyone I made it up and got Mom killed.” I push my food away and press my palms onto the shiny table. “Why?”

Dad sighs, but it’s not like before. It’s more like mine, like he’s been waiting decades to empty his lungs. “You’re older now than I was then, Billy.”

I close my eyes. The response doesn’t come until I open them again.

A shaft of afternoon sun falls across Dad’s pale, pockmarked face. He looks exhausted, cornered. “There’s no excuse, really. I’d lost my second wife. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

I could point out that he’d been cheating on that second wife and I’m guessing had done it to the first as well. I could ask him if he’s capable of apologizing. Or I could ask about the man in the paintings, full of joy and mischief, the map of his life not yet drawn. I could ask if I’m destined to become this version of him, all frayed nerves and crumbling walls.

I say nothing.

Kait joins us at the table, still bubbling with enthusiasm. “Are you ready for cake?”