Eat Cake: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

mulled this over, trying to find the hole in his reasoning but not coming up with one. I scooted over to Sam’s side of the bed and put my arms around him. “You just need to relax. Take some time, think about yourself for a change. When you’re ready there’s going to be a great job for you.”
    Sam slipped one arm beneath me and sighed. “You’re very charitable for a woman whose husband is unemployed.”
    “Temporarily unemployed,” I said. “You don’t exactly have a long history of slacking off.”
    Sam kissed me and for a second I had the distinct impression that the mood in the bedroom was about to shift from desperation to romance, but then the phone rang. Sam sat straight up, the sheet still knotted in his fists. The panic was back. “What if it’s them?” he said.
    “Them?”
    “What if it’s the hospital? What if they changed their minds?”
    “Sam, it’s not the hospital.” Whoever it was was calling too early. It wasn’t even six o’clock in the morning. I leaned over to get the phone.
    “Wait,” he said. “Don’t answer it. I don’t know what I’m going to say.”
    “You won’t have to say anything. I don’t want to wake up Mother and Camille.”
    The call was collect and so it was my father, who had never been awake at quarter till six in his life unless he hadn’t been to bed the night before. The operator never said it was Guy calling for Ruth. He always had to make the names up, Mahler calling for Alma, or Rosencrantz calling for Guildenstern. This morning it was Sacco calling for Vanzetti, which made me think he was probably in some sort of trouble. I said I would accept the charges. Sometimes he called twice in a week and then we wouldn’t hear from him again for ten months. It was hard to track him down. His home was a series of hotel rooms and mail pick-ups. At seventy-five he was still playing piano in bars and on cruise ships. A couple of times I had encouraged him to think about the future and he’d had a good laugh and we’d dropped it. My father wasn’t anyone I knew particularly well and so his future wasn’t any of my business. I was hoping this call had nothing to do with money. It wouldn’t be the best morning to call this house for money. The operator connected us and my father said my name. In the background I could hear all sorts of squawking and overhead announcements, but I couldn’t tell what they were announcing, exactly.
    “Dad, it’s so early. Are you in a bus station?” I asked.
    “Not a bus station. Do you want to take another guess?”
    I listened harder. Normally I wouldn’t have enjoyed this game but I wasn’t so eager to get back to the business at hand.
    Sam tugged at the sleeve of my nightgown. “Your father?” he mouthed.
    I nodded. I listened again.
    “Hurry up and guess,” my father said, his voice full of booming good nature. He must have been up all night, in which case he could not possibly be sober.
    “A casino.”
    “She thinks I’m in a casino,” he said to someone, and I heard a woman’s voice laugh and repeat the funny sentence to another woman, who also laughed, from farther away.
    “Okay,” I said. “I give.”
    “Darling girl, your old dad’s coming for a little visit.”
    Now I sat up in bed. I twisted the cord around my wrist and pulled it snug. “Well, that wouldn’t be the best plan because as you may remember my old mom lives here now.”
    “She’s still there? I thought she would have found her own digs by now.”
    “These are her digs.”
    “Can you tell him you’ll call him back?” Sam said. “We’re in the middle of a crisis here.”
    “Dad?”
    Sam reached up and put his hand over the receiver. “But don’t tell him what happened.”
    “I wasn’t going to tell him.”
    Sam let the phone go and fell back on the mattress like a coconut falling out of a tree. He made a soft thud.
    My father cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about your mother, I know that makes things a little