Fifteen #4
“Before my parents passed, my mother ordered a cake for my birthday. Eighteen was huge, and the party she had planned was going to be a spectacle. The news that the plane had gone down came the same day they delivered the cake, and I guess our housekeeper just shoved it in the refrigerator without thinking.”
He never talked about his parents, so I was silent, making sure I didn’t disturb him.
“I found it in there the day after the funeral, this huge Superman cake. What possessed her to order it I will never know, but it was there, taking up an entire shelf with ‘Happy birthday to our superhero’ on it, or something to that effect.” He was silent for a few minutes, just watching the road.
“And I knew she would have gotten the biggest kick out of watching me blow out candles and do the Superman pose and everything else, so I took it out and cut a slice.”
I couldn’t imagine how much Dane missed his parents.
There had just been the three of them and his grandmother.
She had passed two years before his folks, and they had died aboard a private plane on their way home from one of his father’s many business trips.
His mother didn’t usually go with him, but the meeting had been in San Francisco, and she loved the city by the bay.
“The cake was really good, I remember, but there was so much of it. If I’d had my party…
But it was a full sheet and I was just one person.
I swear it lasted forever. Every night for dessert—I had it.
My friends came by, my dad’s business associates, people I didn’t know.
I offered everybody cake, and they probably thought how weird it was that I had this cheesy little kid’s cake, but nobody said anything about it. ”
I stared at his profile and waited.
“I remember there was still half of it left, and I tried to give some to Jude to take home. He said he hated leftovers, and I realized that that was all it was—something left over. I had made a big deal out of something I’m sure my mother would have tossed out the next morning, if not the night of the party.
She always wanted me to live in the moment, to be present…
the cake lying in the fridge day after day would have annoyed the hell out of her. ”
I nodded as he turned to smile at me.
“I pitched it the next day.”
“And so, what? Now you don’t believe in leftovers on some spiritual level?”
“I just don’t like them at all.”
“So that’s why I couldn’t take any from Mrs. Ward?”
“Yes.”
“Spoken like someone who never had to make one meal stretch into two or three. When you grow up poor, leftovers are part of survival.”
“I hate them. I never want to see something twice. You can have too much of a good thing.”
I shook my head. “You’re disturbed.”
“Obviously.”
“Are you going to send Sabine some flowers and a card to apologize?”
He rolled his eyes like I was stupid. “Sure. Find me a card for ‘I’m sorry I forgot you.’”
I chuckled. “Seriously…maybe you should take a break, huh, player?”
“Shut up.”
I sat there, smiling out the window.
“You’re saying you have no weird thing from your childhood that makes no logical sense?”
“No, I won’t say that.”
“Tell me.”
I shrugged. “Garbage bags.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Garbage bags. You know, the plastic kind? Hefty or Glad or whatever.”
“Yes, I know what a garbage bag is. Just make me understand.”
“Okay. See, when I was little, it was a luxury item. We used the plastic bags they packed our groceries in to put trash in because real garbage bags were at the bottom of the list. My grandmother lived on her Social Security, and the state helped her with food stamps for me. That was all there was, so… But the little bags broke all the time, and sometimes all we had were the brown paper ones. It was a mess.”
“And what?”
“So now I keep, like, four different sizes of garbage bags at all times. I completely freak if I run out of them. I feel like I’m back there in the trailer park.”
“But you loved your grandmother.”
“I did, but I didn’t love being called poor white trash for where I lived. I didn’t love our scary neighbors or never having enough so we could pay the electric bill and eat at the same time. Sometimes at the end of the month all we had was rice and beans.”
“Which is probably why you don’t eat either.”
“Probably.”
“Huh. Garbage bags.”
“Yep. Any size you need, I’ve got you covered. I even have lawn bags.”
“You don’t have a lawn.”
“So not the point.”
He laughed softly and then let out a deep breath. “We’re both deeply flawed.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
“Well, if no leftovers and a variety of garbage bags is the extent of our neuroses, then I’m fine with it.”
“Okay,” Dane agreed with me.
“Okay.”
“Are you tired?”
“No, why?”
“I don’t feel like going home.”
“You wanna hang out with me?”
He shrugged, and I smiled because he did.
“Did it hurt when Sabine slapped you?”
“Could we stop revisiting this topic?”
I almost cackled. “Open mouth, insert foot.”
“Shut. Up.”
“Your friends are gonna give you so much shit.”
He groaned loudly, and I asked him what he wanted to do.
“I don’t care.”
We drove to the Varsity theater downtown where they were showing The Sound of Music, and they had recliners, couches, and overstuffed chairs instead of rows of seats. I got us both steaming mugs of oolong and got a weird look when I passed his to him before I sat down.
“What? You don’t want me to sit by you?”
He just continued to look at me like I had sprouted wings or something equally strange.
“You want me to pull a chair over here in case some hot woman wants to sit down?”
He sipped his tea. “No.”
“Then what’s with the look?”
“No look, it’s just interesting.”
“What is?”
He turned his deep dark eyes on me. “You, Jory.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He smiled over the top of his cup. “Well, the fact that you’re here hanging with me at twenty-two years old instead of out getting laid…that’s interesting.”
I snorted. “I’ll be twenty-three in January.”
“Which has what to do with anything I just said?”
“I dunno.”
“Just talking to hear yourself, huh?”
“No, I just… Isn’t Thanksgiving a holiday you’re supposed to spend with your family?”
“Yes, it is.”
I looked him in the eye. “Well then.”
He stared at me and I stared back, and between my words and the way I met his gaze with my own, he understood what I was trying to say.
“Okay,” he said as the movie started.
And somewhere near the middle of the film he gave my leg a gentle pat as he slouched in his seat. It was not to be missed that the man treated me more like his brother than his assistant. I wondered briefly if he realized it himself.