Eat Cake: A Novel Read Free Page B

was wearing a T-shirt and some sweatpants and as far as I could see he hadn’t done any real harm.
    “Your father is in a hugging mood.”
    “He hasn’t hugged me,” my mother said to herself as her steady hand took the vodka right to the rim of the jigger.
    Sam made an easy turn in his puddle of water but my mother took a giant step away.
    “I’m
soaked
.” Camille put a hand on either side of her head. It was as if she had been sent to live in a house of friendly chimpanzees and she was constantly astonished by the indignity of it all. Then she turned around and was gone again.
    “Well, now you’ve done it,” my mother said, handing Sam his drink. “You frightened her off. You know it’s going to take at least a half an hour to get her to come out of her bedroom now. We could starve before she changes clothes.”
    “What are we doing here,” Sam said, “taming the little fox?”
    “I only try to hug her when she has a fever,” I said. I was joking, of course. I was sort of joking.
    Sam looked at the door through which our daughter had disappeared. “I think we should be more affectionate. That’s one of the things we need to work on.”
    “Work on it yourselves,” my mother said. She gave me my drink. She’d thrown in a splash of cranberry juice to make it pretty. I have to say it wasn’t bad.
    Sam hung up his coat on the back porch, where it could drip without consequence, and I put the chicken on the table. Camille came back in record time wearing a blue cotton sweater and a pair of low-slung jeans. She pointed at her father. “Don’t.”
    He raised his hands to show that his intentions were honest.
    “Doesn’t this look good?” my mother said to the plate of chicken, which is what she said every night regardless of the meal.
    “Chickens are shot full of antibiotics,” Camille said. “And it’s not just that. Girls are starting their periods at, like, seven now because the chickens have so many hormones in them.”
    “Everything is a health hazard if you want to look at it that way.” Sam speared a piece of meat and put it on Camille’s plate, where she looked at it as if it were a squirrel hit in a mad dash across the road. “Walking across the street is dangerous. Driving a car, very dangerous. Think about what’s in the water, or in the air for that matter. For all we know we’re sitting on top of the biggest source of radon in Minnesota. Did you ever think about that?”
    “You’re so morbid,” Camille said morbidly.
    Sam shook his head. “Not at all. I’m just sticking up for the chicken. My point is, you never really know what’s good for you or what’s bad for you. Have you done the right thing or the wrong thing? You never know what’s going to get you until it’s too late.”
    I put down my fork. My mother and daughter put down their forks as well. We all stared at Sam. “What in the world happened to you today?”
    Sam sliced, chewed, reflected. “Nothing much.”
    “May I be excused?” Camille said to no one in particular.
    “You haven’t eaten,” my mother said.
    “I ate something,” Camille said, though she must have meant she ate something for lunch because clearly she hadn’t eaten her dinner.
    “Stay put,” Sam said.
    “At least have a piece of cake,” I said.
    “Cake!” Camille cried. “You know I can’t have cake. Why do you keep making cakes? This isn’t a bakery.”
    “This isn’t a bakery,” Sam repeated quietly, as if it was news to him.
    “She can’t have cake if she hasn’t eaten her dinner,” my mother said.
    But I was already on my feet, already heading over to the pan on the kitchen counter. The debate was still raging but I had a knife in my hand. It was carrot cake, after all, which is practically a serving of vegetables.
    “I’m going to be the size of a house,” Camille said.
    “You are currently the size of a coat hanger. A house is a long way away.” Sam reached forward and pulled her plate toward the middle of