Black Cake(18)

Benny informed the customer that it was surely a problem with the printer head, which was not removable, though she was sorry to say that the particular printer in the customer’s possession was no longer under warranty. It was not worth it, Benny said, to seek assistance, since a consultation alone, without repair, would cost the customer more than half of what it would cost to purchase a new product.

“And to think that I’ve hardly used the thing,” the customer said.

“That, ma’am, is the problem,” Benny said. “This particular technology is not advisable for people who are not going to be using their printers every day, or at least on a regular basis.” At this point in the call, Benny was still following the recommended language.

“But no one told me this when I bought it,” the customer said. “Apart from the fact that I’m now forced to buy a new printer after only two years, it seems like a real waste of materials. Aren’t we supposed to be reducing the trash we produce?”

“Yes, ma’am, I am in complete agreement with you,” Benny said.

It was the next statement that got Benny fired, according to her boss, who happened to be walking down the aisle behind her cubicle and overheard her.

“Alas,” said Benny, “we are living in a dumping ground for electronics, from printers to computers to mobile phones that fall apart, or that we are encouraged to replace with newer models that are marketed as being more desirable, and this, ma’am, is one of the main reasons for the environmental degradation that our planet is experiencing today.”

Benny did not forget to ask, “Is there anything else I can do for you today?” but it didn’t really help her case, though she remained convinced that the customer had gone away feeling relatively satisfied, because sometimes all we really want is for somebody to acknowledge that we were right all along.

At least the supervisor fired Benny in person. Back when Benny was still seeing Joanie, poor Joanie only learned she’d been laid off one morning when the electronic key card to her office building failed to open the door to the staff entrance. Benny was deeply offended on Joanie’s behalf. She’d even gone to Joanie’s former workplace to tell the manager what she thought, before being escorted off the property by a security guard. But this episode only added to the resentment that Joanie had been feeling. About the job, about her boss’s lack of respect. About Benny’s failure to tell her parents about her and Joanie. Again.

Maybe, Benny thought, she could supplement her income by selling more of her drawings. She hadn’t tried to sell the others, she’d simply been offered ridiculous sums of money for them by people who had seen her sketching to pass the time in cafés and airports and, once, in a laundromat. She had replicated the laundromat work on heavier paper with a toothier surface, mounted it, and earned enough to pay an entire month’s rent.

Benny had felt like a bit of a fraud at first, but then she got to thinking. She had studied drawing, hadn’t she? And if she could be paid to dress up in an animal costume, which she did on weekends at the mall, then why couldn’t she accept good money for her artwork? She hadn’t really tried before this only because she hadn’t thought it possible.

Benny pulled out her sketchbook and placed it on the café table. Drawing, like baking, usually cleared her head, but she kept thinking about how this diner reminded her of her dad and, by extension, her ma. By the time she was ready to head back to her apartment, she had come to a decision. She would go home this winter, no matter what. It was time. It had been a month since her mother had left that voice message on her cellphone.

Benedetta, please come home.

Maybe her ma was ready to apologize. Maybe Benny was ready to hear her out. Plus, her ma had sounded tired. Her ma had never been one to sound tired. Yes, it was definitely time.

Benny’s phone was ringing. Her brother’s number. Her brother never called. All of a sudden, everyone was getting in touch.

Leaning against the wall of her old bedroom now, letting the cool seep through the back of her sweater, Benny can’t get away from the feeling that maybe, just maybe, she’ll step out into the hallway and find her mother there, or see her father pop his head into the room and narrow his eyes at the color of the walls, the way he used to. That, maybe, all this can be undone.





Byron





Byron’s phone is vibrating along the kitchen counter, its screen flashing, one-two, one-two, like lightning strikes in a wall of clouds. Byron feels like the phone. Agitated. Where the hell is Benny, anyway?

“Sorry, just a second,” he says to Mr. Mitch. He gets up to turn off the phone when he recognizes the number.

Lynette.

It’s been three months since they last talked. She must have heard about his ma.

Byron had wiped Lynette’s number from his list of contacts on the night she’d walked out on him. He’d punched delete with a sense of satisfaction, as though she might feel the defiance in his gesture throbbing across the airwaves, as though it might lead her to regret her hasty exit. It was only later that he realized that when Lynette slammed the door shut, she had already emptied her side of the bedroom closet, had already stuffed her computer and toothbrush into a bag, had already left the earrings he’d given her the previous month on the desk in his studio.

Byron hadn’t noticed any of this at first, he’d only seen Lynette’s arms waving around, her face turning wet, as they argued. She’d been doing that a lot, lately. Crying, yelling, bugging him about plans for the future. Who talked about The Future nowadays? Byron didn’t like that kind of pressure. Did it mean nothing to her, at all, that they were already living together? Didn’t it count that he had offered to mentor her nephew Jackson? Why was it that nothing Byron did ever seemed to be enough?