We lighten the conversation for a while. I try to see Bruce as my brother again, not a victim. He’s the kid who let me win half of our Ping-Pong games in Mexico. He’s the brother who showed me shooting stars.
He tells me about Oregon and how much he loves it out there. He tells me the people are different—he can’t explain how, but they’re just different. He tells me it rains a lot. I contemplate telling him that I am Umbrella, but I decide against it. He tells me about his job and his kids. That’s what he calls them—“my kids.” He tells me about an eleven-year-old girl who’s addicted to meth and a fifteen-year-old boy who keeps getting arrested for arson. He talks about these things the way Mom talks about retrieving random things from patients’ rectums. He seems happy—with his job, with his life.
“It must be so cool to know what you want to do with your life,” I say.
“You’re only sixteen. You’ll figure it out.”
Bruce asks to see the dessert menu even though I didn’t eat but half of my ravioli. It was delicious, but I’m not hungry. He insists on cake.
“It’s the best chocolate cake, Sarah. Trust me.”
I take a deep breath. I think about Mom with a broken arm. I think about the number of times I’ve heard Mom say “Would you just let me sleep?”
“You will come to terms with this,” he says. “I promise.”
I’m still putting my entire life through a meat grinder. The meat that comes out makes no sense. I just sit there, grinding meat.
“Hi, Sarah? It’s Bruce. I want to know what happened at school.”
“Hi, Bruce. It’s Sarah. I’m kinda preoccupied right now because my entire life is a lie.”
“Sarah? It’s Bruce. I think it would be a good idea to talk about school. And you’re being so quiet about it I’m starting to worry.”
“Hi, Bruce. You don’t have to worry. It wasn’t a big deal. It was just a stupid art show.”
“And?”
I take a deep breath again. “It feels so stupid now.”
“What does?”
“You used to get beat up. My problems are stupid.” I am putting myself through the meat grinder. My own meat doesn’t look the same anymore.
“Don’t compare,” he says. “If it made you leave school, it’s not stupid.”
“It didn’t make me leave school. I left school because nothing ever really happens. Nothing new. There is no such thing as an original idea. That’s why I left school.”
“You said something happened.”
“I’m having an existential crisis,” I say.
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a big deal.”
It is. It’s a big deal. It’s an even bigger deal now that I realize everyone I ever knew has always been lying to me since I was born. Maybe I was built to get screwed over. Maybe I was trained to be omitted over and over and over again. Exclusion: not at all original.
The cake is warm. It’s fresh. I concentrate on the cake because it’s not a lie. I bond with the cake as I eat it. I decide that eating the cake is my first action as a real human being. I have been reborn. Baptized by a chocolate cake. The cake is proof that ingredients matter. Anyone can put flour and cocoa and butter and eggs into a pan, but it takes the right mix to make this cake. It takes the right temperature, the right amount of time, the right whisk. If parents cared as much about raising kids as the chef cared about making this cake, the world would be a completely different meat grinder.
Bruce can’t take a bite of his cake without moaning a little. We let it melt in our mouths. We don’t talk. I stop putting my life through the meat grinder. I feel lighter even though the cake is making me full.
By the time Bruce pays the bill I feel happy. Like—content-on-the-other-side-of-the-meat-grinder happy. Not the fake happy. Not the pretending happy. Not the playing-a-role happy. Exhausted but happy for real.
We walk slowly and quietly back to the B&B. We sit on the stoop and Bruce burps. This makes me laugh because Bruce always had the best burps. If I try to burp, I give myself a stomachache.
“I don’t have the energy to pretend to leave voice-mail messages,” he says. “I ate so much I can’t even lift my arms.”
We’re sitting side by side looking across the street. “I made this headpiece out of wire for sculpture class. I wove it. It’s hard to explain but it was cool. I got an A plus. Miss Smith was impressed, you know? She said she wanted it in the annual art show.”
Bruce nods for me to go on.
“I didn’t tell Mom and Dad about any of it. My plan was to go to the opening on Friday night and then bring Mom and Dad over the weekend to see the show. I think I might have thought I had a chance to win a prize, I guess. Dumb, but I thought I had a chance.”
“It’s not dumb to think you might have won. Sounds like it was awesome.”
“It was,” I say.
“So you didn’t win?” he asks.
“No, I didn’t win.” I can leave it here. I can leave it here in the place where I didn’t win and Bruce will console me and he’ll say that it’s normal to feel this way and I’ll go home. As we sit there, still looking across the street as we talk, forty-year-old Sarah walks west on Pine. She doesn’t look over. She doesn’t have to.
“That’s not all that happened, is it?”