The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

catch the villains. How fast should the car be going to land on the boat, if the car leaves the pier when the boat is thirty-five feet away?
    But George crossed his arms, the way he did sometimes when he was in and out of Joseph's room, pacing. They'd copy extra physics questions from the library and settle in for the afternoon--Joseph at his desk, George pacing. They'd prop open the side door for fresh air and flick twigs and hammer through the extra credit that the teacher put up for them, that even the teacher didn't really know.
    He fixed his eyes on me. Brown and sharp.
    What's so wrong with you? he said.
    I flushed. I went through what I'd told the nurse. George stayed in the hallway to listen but Joseph ducked inside his room, tossing the textbook on his bed and sitting down at his desk, where he lifted a piece of graph paper and a compass from his folder. As I talked, he placed the steel point of the compass on the graph paper, strapped in the pencil and started to draw, with his careful hands, a beautiful arc. Every action so assured, like he knew exactly what mystery of the universe he was about to puncture.
    So is it like Swiss cheese? George asked when I was done.
    No, I said. It's one big hole. The nurse said I had an active imagination.
    Joseph crumpled up his perfect arc and pulled out a fresh piece of graph paper.
    Don't crumple, Joe, said George.
    I fucked it up, said Joseph, tossing it into the trash.
    I have that plan for my bedroom, remember? George said. All mistakes wallpaper, he said, turning back to me. Anyway, he said, let's test you. We have to have a snack anyway.
    Now? said Joseph, stretching the compass again and placing the point at the intersecting corner of two blue graph squares.
    Just for a few minutes, said George. You free? he said, looking at me.
    I'm free, I said.
    He clapped his hands. First item on the agenda: discover what is going on with Rose, he said.
    Joseph opened his mouth to protest.
    Second item, George said, get to work!
    I bowed, a little. What a lift, whenever he said my name. It was like getting my number called out in a raffle.
    Joseph nearly crumpled his page again, then stopped his fist and handed it over. George held it up to the light, admiring the curves as if it were a painting. North wall, he said, nodding. Perfect.

    That afternoon involved four sandwiches, soda, chips, buttered toast, chocolate milk. I ate my way through the refrigerator. Mom was still away at her new job, at the woodworking studio near Micheltorena, off Sunset into the hills, and my brother and George poured sugar and jam over toast and talked about their favorite TV series with the robots while I bit and chewed and reported to George. He'd found a yellow legal pad by the phone which he held on his lap, with a list of foods in the left column and then all my responses on the right. Half hollow, I said, about my mom's leftover tuna casserole. Awful! I said, swallowing a mouthful of my father's butterscotch pudding from a mix, left in a bowl. Dad's, so distracted and ziggy I could hardly locate a taste at all. The sensor did not seem to be restricted to my mother's food, and there was so much to sort through, a torrent of information, but with George there, sitting in the fading warmth of the filtered afternoon springtime sun spilling through the kitchen windows, making me buttered toast which I ate happily, light and good with his concentration and gentle focus, I could begin to think about the layers. The bread distributor, the bread factory, the wheat, the farmer. The butter, which had a dreary tang to it. When I checked the package, I read that it came from a big farm in Wisconsin. The cream held a thinness, a kind of metallic bumper aftertaste. The milk--weary. All of those parts distant, crowded, like the far-off sound of an airplane, or a car parking, all hovering in the background, foregrounded by the state of the maker of the food.
    So every food has a feeling, George said when I tried to