[This short story is registered by Kristen Forbes with the Writers Guild of America] .
LAYER CAKE
By: Kristen Forbes
I only agreed because this road trip was prerequisite to his giving me the car. It was a good three years too late, long after the days of being seventeen and eating lunch at the only table in the high school cafeteria left unoccupied by the freshmen and sophomores. It was after my senior year, when Riley picked me up in his red Toyota truck and drove me to and from school every day. It was even after the summer, fall, winter, spring, then next summer I spent working at Logan’s Quick Stop, stocking the shelves with jars of mayonnaise and boxes of Ritz crackers and bottles of cold Budweiser beer.
After all that I didn’t think I’d need it now— the brochures depicted beaming young adults walking, loaded with backpacks and smiling fiercely through the sunlight. Panoramic shots showed students scattered throughout the sprawling lawns, poring over textbooks and eating apples or throwing Frisbees to each other as though they had not a care in the world. The pamphlets said the campus was interlaced with looping hiking paths and that getting from one class to the next would be a breeze.
I didn’t need the car now, so many years later, but I was going to take it because it was the first thing he ever gave me, the first tangible possession I could point to in real life, not my dreams, and say, He gave me that. My father gave me that.
It was almost twenty years old and in fact if I’d received it at sixteen, I may have been too embarrassed to drive it. A Chrysler Lebaron with severely chipped gray paint and a motor sounding more like a dying motorcycle than a car, there was nothing glamorous about it.
“It’ll get you from Point A to Point B,” my father said, “Which is what a car is supposed to do.”
I only packed two suitcases—there was a lot I wanted to leave behind, pieces of me I felt better left in the past. “You’re not going to take that?” my mom had asked, pointing to the ratty pink blanket I’d slept with every night since I was born, now unraveling at the seams and with deep rips across the satin border. I rolled my eyes at her—what self respecting person would take a baby blanket to college?
The night before we left she made scrambled eggs and pancakes—she always made breakfast on special occasions, firmly believing that a little maple syrup in the stomach could help solve any of life’s problems. She’d grown up in Vermont and was big on maple syrup, and when I was little I used to think that if I ever went there I’d see little jars of the stuff growing directly from the trees. We never did make it out there, though—Mom went for her dad’s funeral but there wasn’t enough to buy a plane ticket for the both of us, and her mom was already dead before she had me.
As I loaded up on bacon, which we almost never had, and dipped my pancake in a pool of syrup at the bottom of my plate, all the lines in Mom’s face tensed up and I didn’t know if she was worried about the trip, or about me leaving in general, or what exactly. But before I could say anything about it she’d smoothed herself back out, like magic, like when I was little and I’d come home from school and see her standing over the kitchen sink as I walked up the driveway, facing away from the window toward the black cat clock whose kitty tail swung back and forth to count down the seconds. Her back would be shuddering, her body heaving and looking like it was ready to collapse. By the time I’d made it through the door, by the time I’d heard the latch click upon itself, she’d be walking toward me with a sunny smile, her body all straightened out and still, with only a crumpled Kleenex balled in her hand as evidence that anything had happened.
Magic Mom looked at me, her face smooth and revealing her true age, the brown hair she’d been growing out since that short haircut from spring tucked behind her ears and her brown eyes giving me that Proud Mom twinkle.
“Holy shit, your mom was yu-oung when she had you,” I remember Lucy exclaiming in the eighth grade, when we went through Mom’s wallet to see if she had any cash—she didn’t—and came across her driver’s license.
“I know,” I’d said nonchalantly, but the truth was until then I’d never known her exact birth year, never done the math to figure out just how little she’d lived a life of her own before me.
Proud Magic Mom looked over and told me in a breathy voice also reserved for special occasions that she had something for me. Just like maple syrup could solve anything, she believed that a surprise multiplied in value if it was announced in a whisper. This usually wasn’t the case—she’d told me about the divorce in a whisper and it hadn’t softened the blow any. She’d told me about the time he was going to have to spend away and why we wouldn’t be able to see him and how I should do my best to forget about him in a whisper, too.
This time she pulled out a small box, wrapped in the food section of the newspaper and fastened together with heavy white tape that’s supposed to be used for projects around the house, not wrapping presents. I opened it carefully, peeling the folded corners down and removing the tape slowly. Inside was something I never expected to see.
“Mom, I can’t,” I began, but she cut me off and wrapped both of her hands over mine. She let go and as I removed the cell phone from the box she said, “I’ll feel better knowing you have it.” She smiled warmly. “For emergencies,” she said, “Or, just when you need to call.”
I remembered the summer I’d decided to become a cheerleader. There was a camp, and shoes, and uniforms, and each girl was expected to buy her own. I barely saw Mom for three months, she was working so many double shifts at the salon. I’d sometimes catch her in the morning before school, sitting at the table with a mug of coffee, rubbing her wrists as though they were tired from the hours upon hours of wielding scissors and blow dryers and curling irons. She promised me I’d be able to go to camp, and I did. And when I quit three weeks later, there was a flash across her face that lasted a few seconds, as if everything inside of her had just dropped. The seconds passed and her bright eyes came back and she never said a word to me about it.
“Thank you,” I whispered, utilizing her philosophy that somehow by whispering the words they’d have more meaning.
The next morning she helped me with the suitcases, lifting them over her tiny body and packing them neatly in the trunk, next to my father’s duffel bag and briefcase. She hugged me tightly, pressing herself against me, feeling the bone structure in my back as if it was the last time she’d ever touch me, then kissed me on the forehead.
And for the first time in as long as I could remember, I found myself alone with my father.
He drove with his fingers tightly gripping the steering wheel, every now and then giving me sideways glances as if trying to reconcile this stranger who was a daughter in his mind, as if trying to absorb me or maybe just remember me after all those years of not seeing me.
“You can turn on the radio, if you want,” he said. I did and I turned the knob and bounced from one station to the next, trying to find the perfect song to bridge the awkward silence between us.
“Slow down, Cowgirl,” my father said, and I thought he was teasing me but I couldn’t be sure, seeing as I didn’t know how a man like him would go about teasing. I stopped as soon as he said that, even though it was on a commercial advertising a carpet cleaning service, and looked out the window at the tall trees that blurred together into one mass of green as we drove past.
“I used to drive up North when I was your age,” he said, and I didn’t respond because I didn’t know how, and instead tried to envision him as an almost-twenty-year-old with everything ahead of him and I wondered something I’d often wondered but knew better to ask my mom about, about how they’d met and what it was like for them when they were younger, and I wanted to ask him about it but I didn’t know how to ask a stranger a question like that.
“First one in our family, Kat,” he said, changing the subject. I wondered if I’d get a chance to bring the subject back later or if it was lost forever.
He made a little whistle noise through his teeth. “I sure am proud of you,” he said, and for a second his right hand was patting my left knee but I must have given him a look because he removed it quickly.
When the radio station finished its cycle of advertisements, it began broadcasting a basketball game which was the last thing I wanted to hear, but I was afraid if I changed the station he’d call me Cowgirl again and I wouldn’t know what to say and I’d already made him uncomfortable by giving him a look and it’s this habit I have, of giving people looks without even realizing it.
We drove along with silence between us and a commentator with a deep booming voice guiding us from farm country to the I-5. “He looks, he shoots, he scores, IT’S GOOD! This game has TURNED ITSELF AROUND, ladies and gentleman! Hold on to the EDGE OF YOUR SEATS! We’ve got ourselves a NAIL BITER! The way this game has been going, there’s no telling WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN!”
We drove until the tank neared empty and he asked me if I was hungry. My stomach was audibly growling at that point, as it often is whenever I don’t want it to be, like in the middle of class or the first time Riley Telson leaned across the black interior of his Toyota truck to kiss me.
I told my father I wasn’t very hungry but we stopped anyway and sat across from each other at a booth with tall laminated menus shielding our eyes from one another. I wondered if that was a thing, a parental thing, that allowed him to stop and feed me even though I said I wasn’t hungry, knowing that my words weren’t matching what was going on in my mind. Or maybe he was just hungry himself, and it was a selfish thing.
He ordered a club sandwich and I got the French toast and thought about Mom. I could picture her sweeping clumps of wet hair off the floor, or bringing out the big oval mirror to show what the back of the head looked like, or maybe gazing out the window like I always saw her do at home, like she was searching for something that existed outside those panes of glass.
My father asked me if I drank coffee, which was something my mom had never asked me, and I suddenly found myself wondering what the view had been like for him. I assumed there were bars across the windows that obstructed him from seeing much of anything, but then again the only jail I knew was the one I’d seen on cable at Lucy’s house on their giant full-screen TV in the den.
I drenched my French toast in syrup and had my very first cup of coffee, which I diluted with three containers of creamer after discovering that I really, really didn’t like the taste. “I hope I’m not teaching you any bad habits,” my father said, and he winked and I didn’t know if he was teasing me again or what.
He ate his fries with ketchup and part of me was tempted to grab a few off his plate the way I would if I were eating with Mom or Lucy or Riley. Instead I kept stirring the creamer into my coffee, hoping that eventually it would improve the taste. After he paid the bill I went to the bathroom, and while I was in there I was tempted to use my new cell phone to call Riley and tell him everything, about getting the car and seeing my dad and not knowing what to say and listening to the basketball game and wanting to ask questions and wanting to punch him when he said he was proud of me because he had nothing to do with it.
I took my time washing my hands, going through the entire alphabet in my head like we’d learned in grade school. My mom had taught me to always use a paper towel to open the door in a public restroom, to avoid contaminating my just cleaned hands with new germs. I wondered if my father used a paper towel to open the door. I wondered if he washed his hands at all.
Back on the road, the game was finished and politicians were debating about the environment. One kept saying that the world was so big, and we were so small, that it was insane to think that we as humans could be responsible for stopping global warming. “It is just that kind of thinking,” the other politician said, “That is gonna get us all killed.”
My father offered me a stick of gum, and I put it in my mouth and then debated what to do with the wrapper. Finally I balled it up and left it in my palm, letting it soak up sweat from my hand as I tightened my grip around it.
“I chew a lot of this now,” my father said. “Ever since I quit.”
I nodded, not sure if I should offer him congratulations or what.
“Hardest thing I ever did,” he said, then smacked his gum loudly.
Harder than going to jail? I wanted to ask. Harder than leaving your family? Harder than facing that other family in court, the one whose daughter he killed when he decided to drive over to his little girlfriend’s house after splitting a half dozen pitchers with a few buddies at the town’s only “Club for Gentlemen”? What the hell is a “gentlemen’s club,” anyway? I wanted to scream at him. There didn’t seem to be a lot of “gentlemen” who went there. In fact, the only guys I ever heard of going there were the drunks who beat their wives, the deadbeats who cheated on their girlfriends, and the losers still living with their mothers despite nearing their thirty-fifth birthdays.
I could feel the French toast rising in the back of my throat and the balled-up wrapper in my hand continued to collect sweat. I should have thrown it on the ground or out the window—what was he going to do, yell at me for littering? I should have thrown it at his face.
Without warning a hot tear began sliding down my face and I desperately asked myself to just once, just this once, have the kind of strength my mom had, the kind of strength that allows you to tuck your feelings deep inside and not let other people know that they’ve hurt you, or that they mean anything to you at all.
I quickly wiped the tears away with the back of my hand and stole a glance at my father, who was still staring steadily at the road ahead. He looked so much older than my mom, with thinning gray hair and deep circles under his eyes and lines stretched out over the corners of his mouth and across his forehead. He didn’t have a twinkle in his eyes the way that she did either, and in fact there was something about him that just looked like a sad old man. It had taken him years to get his license back, years to get another job, years to get to this place where even my mom said, “Maybe people do change.” And there was part of me that felt like I should feel sorry for him, or something, but there was a bigger part that couldn’t stop hating him.
I’d cried like that when Riley had called me, halfway through my year at Logan’s Quick Stop, halfway through me saving up enough to even consider going to college, because even with the academic scholarship Mom couldn’t afford it. I’d had a long day and Mr. Stephens had been on my case, saying I wasn’t being careful enough about removing old milks and sour creams and whipped creams that had passed their expiration dates. I wanted to take the can of stale whipped cream and spray it in his face and say, Look at how hard I’m working! Just look at all I’m doing for you! But then a vision of my mom sweeping hair from the floor spread across my mind and I told Mr. Stephens I would do better.
I was crying to Riley, even before he’d told me anything, because I was missing him and wanting so much to get out of that stupid small town and away from every single person who’d been staring at me since I was five years old, staring at me because my father was a murderer. And then he told me that he’d met someone, and she was really sweet and funny, and I’d like her if I met her, and he hoped I would meet her someday, and it came out in a pile of salty tears and I couldn’t hold them back and he said, “I’m sorry for hurting you,” and I couldn’t even lie and say that he hadn’t.
I knew my father could see my tears now, and he was just pretending to stare straight ahead because he didn’t want me to know that he knew. For that small gesture I wanted to love him and I reached deep inside to see if I could pull something out of myself, something that would allow me to love him, but I couldn’t find it.
“You know that Mom used to make me a cake every year for my birthday?” I asked finally, and stupidly, and not even knowing what I was saying.
My father gave me a sideways glance and a smile crept over him, reversing the direction of his wrinkles for a moment. “She did that for you too?” he asked.
“Like, not out of a box,” I said. “Completely homemade, completely from scratch.”
He was still smiling. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “She’s always been something, your mother. Always been something,” as if he needed to repeat it for me to hear. I never knew what that meant, when someone said someone else was “something.” Everyone’s “something.” Everything’s “something.” What a cop-out to refer to someone in such a way.
“When we were first going together,” he said, and it reminded me of how Lucy’s grandpa talked, sharing tales of “going together” and loaning a girl his varsity sweater and holding her hand and buying her a milkshake. “When we were first going together, she’d make vanilla sometimes, and chocolate other times, and finally she asked me which one I liked better and I said they were both so good I couldn’t decide, and from that point on she made it both ways: half vanilla and half chocolate.”
“That’s how she made mine too,” I said quietly.
“Just about the best thing I ever tasted in my life,” he said.
The global warming debate grew more heated and the politicians attacked each other fiercely for awhile as I stared out the window again, the mass of green whizzing past and I pressed my head against the cold window and wished I had my baby blanket with me, wished I could curl up and fall asleep for the rest of the trip.
I did fall asleep for awhile. I woke up when we stopped at another gas station and my father asked if I wanted anything from the convenience store. “Chips? Candy?” he asked, and again, he was offering me things my mother never had. I got a York Peppermint Patty and finally dispensed of the sweaty gum wrapper when I threw it and the candy wrapper in the trash can at the gas station.
The radio was off when we got back in the car—he must have turned it off sometime after I fell asleep. It was quiet for awhile and I thought about drifting back to sleep.
“Your grandma’s going to be real happy you’re putting this car to good use,” he said finally.
I wanted to tell him I wouldn’t put it to good use at all, that giving it to me now was the most impractical idea he’d ever come up with and that anyone who knew anything about college knew I wouldn’t need a car now. I didn’t even know if this were true or not, but I wanted to tell him anyway.
I hadn’t seen my grandma since I was five and all I could remember was that she smelled like smoke and she always tucked a lollipop in my pocket when my mom wasn’t looking. I had no idea why she wanted to give me this car now and I decided to put it in the vault with all the other things I wondered about but wouldn’t ask my father.
“I remember my first car,” my father said, and I wanted to tell him to stop with the trip down Nostalgia Lane, that I wasn’t interested in reliving his glory days.
“A Lincoln Continental,” he said. “A real beast.”
The smile I’d seen when he was talking about my mom’s cakes came back over his face and I wondered if he’d had his first kiss in his car, the way I’d had my first kiss in Riley’s red truck. I wondered if he’d had first other things too, the way I had, and then I felt truly grossed out at the thought.
I was mentally cleansing myself when he interrupted and said, “You know, Kid, I feel like I lost years and years of my life sometimes. Years I could have spent with your mom, years I could have spent with you.”
I refused to look at him and I hoped he thought I wasn’t listening at all.
“I thought about you so much while I was in there,” he said, and a tear rolled down his cheek, a tear that matched the stupid tear that was rolling down my own cheek and I realized he was the one I got my tears from. He pounded his fist against the steering wheel, either frustrated at his own emotion or pissed off at the memory of it all, and I realized he was the one I got my rage from, too.
I bit down on my lip, hard, refusing to let this be like when Riley broke up with me and I couldn’t stop once I started. I forced myself to think about college, and all that lie ahead of me, and what my roommate would be like and which classes I’d take and how different my life would be.
But it wasn’t me who needed to be stopped. Once that tear rolled past his cheek and down his neck, it was followed by another and then another, and then the tears were followed by a throaty choking sound that seemed to grow more hysterical with each passing breath. I had never witnessed a man crying before, not even on cable at Lucy’s house, and now that it was before me I couldn’t take my eyes of it: how raw it was, how horrific. Years upon years came out in those sobs and I just sat, watching him, watching the sad little man with his knuckles tightened against the steering wheel let it all out.
And then, slowly, and not even aware of what I was doing or why I was doing it, I reached my hand over to him, put my hand on top of his the way my mom would. And he took his hand off the steering wheel and interlaced it in mine, tears still falling in an uncontrolled surrender and sobs making their way from somewhere deep behind his throat.
We were sitting, just like that, when I heard the thud. And then, in flashes, I saw what had happened: how we’d drifted off the road for a second, how we’d drifted onto the bike lane. My father stopped the car and my heart leapt through my chest, everything around me fuzzy and disorienting. We both got out, went to the front of the car: the bike had collapsed in; the body was crumpled underneath. I stared at my father and he stared back at me and for the first time I saw myself in him: a masculine, older version of myself. We must have stood like that for quite awhile, until another car arrived and the police were called and the ambulance came too late and I explained to the officers that yes, I’d been the one behind the wheel, and yes, I knew that anything I said could and would be used against me in the court of law.
