Black Cake(78)

Back in the fall, a friend had told Benny about an expert she’d seen in the UK who was doing shows about indigenous foods. Benny had written down the name in her agenda, but she had never looked it up. She’d had a lot on her mind. Making a living, trying to get a business loan, going to therapy. Then Benny’s mother died and she had gone back to New York weighed down by everything that she had just learned about her family.

Marble Martin.

Benny has decided she doesn’t want to look her up at all. Byron says Marble Martin looks like their mother. Benny doesn’t want to see that. She’ll wait to meet her.

Benny is hunched over her sketch pad in an airport lounge when a woman in an emerald-green jacket stops next to her.

“That’s pretty,” the woman says. She must be as tall as Benny. And beautiful. “A hair comb?” she asks.

“Yes, a peineta,” Benny says, holding up her sketch pad so that the other woman can take a better look.

“Oh, yes, one of those things those Spanish ladies wore to hold up their mantillas,” the woman says, lifting her right arm into the air with a flourish that calls to mind the flamenco. The broad sleeve of her jacket falls back to reveal a wrist the color of copper and a bracelet with a stone like the iris of someone’s eye.

“Exactly,” Benny says, chuckling.

“This one looks really special.”

“It is. It’s my mother’s. Was my mother’s. Tortoiseshell.”

“Or an imitation. You’re not allowed to make things out of tortoiseshell anymore.”

“I know, but this one’s really old.”

“Is it?” the woman says, nodding. Lingering. Benny runs a finger along the side of the design.

“So, my idea is to do a cake decoration topped by something like this. My hairdresser in New York is getting married.”

“What a great idea! You make cakes?”

“I do.”

“And you’re an artist?”

“Well, I did go to art school,” Benny says, “but I also took pastry classes.”

“Do you take commissions?”

“For cakes? Or drawings?”

The other woman laughs. She hands Benny a business card. “I’d like to see the drawing of that comb when it’s finished.” She points at the business card. “Could you send that to me? We’re always on the lookout for a good illustrator. You never know.”

Benny looks at the business card. An art director at a home brand company. High-end. Is this woman really asking to see more of Benny’s artwork? As the woman walks away, Benny puts the card to her nose. Sandalwood with hints of vanilla and cacao. Benny smiles to herself.





Marble





Someone should have told Marble about this long ago. Someone should have prepared her for this moment. They should have let her know about this single-family, bungalow-style home in Orange County, California, not far from the Pacific shore, with the smell of jasmine in its backyard, and a living room filled with photos of a brown-skinned woman who looks just like her.

It seems the emails and phone calls from the lawyer were not enough to prepare her. It seems the transatlantic flight was not enough, nor soaking in the hotel tub this morning. Marble tries to do now what she does when she is standing in front of a television camera, when she pays only minimal attention to all the signals around her, the director and crew moving and gesturing from the side and beyond the camera, and thinks only of one thing, thinks only of the person on the other side of the camera, just that one person, with whom she needs to communicate.

She tries to do that now, she tries to focus on these two strangers who have summoned her here and are watching her every move, she tries to mind her manners, tries to smile warmly but not too broadly, she follows them to the dining nook where they have laid a sunny-looking table with toast, jam, eggs, coffee, and an inferior brand of tea, but rather promising-looking scones. She tells herself to focus only on them, but this house is filled with distractions, with the sofa and drapes and coffeepot that her birth mother must have been using until just weeks ago.

Someone could have warned Marble of this new mix of emotions she’s experiencing. Someone could have told her that having breakfast with her brother and sister would feel like being on a blind date, with everyone dressed to impress and making small talk and casting shy glances in one another’s directions. And with Marble wondering why in the world she’s agreed to do this, why she is allowing her sense of who she is to be stripped away. These people, this place, that coffeepot, all tell her that she is not who she thought she was.

She doesn’t have to be here, does she? She could just stand up right now and walk out of this house. She could dodge those noisy crows loitering at the end of the driveway and that silly cactus in the backyard and fly back to her mum and dad. It’s just that Byron and Benny are so tall and thick-boned, just like Marble, and there is something about their bulk that is difficult for her to resist. Plus, all those photographs of Eleanor Bennett, Marble’s own face, staring back at her.

She’ll feel better, perhaps, after she’s had a bit of a rest. Marble is tired from yesterday’s long flight over and annoyed at having to change rooms this morning. The first room they gave her at the hotel late last night was decorated in lilac everything and Marble just had to get out of there. Where in the world, Marble wonders, does one manage to find a lilac lamp?