I Was Told There'd Be Cake Read online

  I was irrationally petrified that Ursula would be in the office and answer the phone in the middle of the night. The sound of her voice on her outgoing message made me nauseated. I cleared my throat. My aunt has passed away, I said, telling her that I would update her further when I knew about the family’s plans for the coming week but she should count me out for tomorrow at the very least. There was a grain of guilt, but it was nothing compared to the tidal wave of relief that swept it away. I curled back up on the sofa and fell asleep as the sun came up.

  I was awoken by the sound of Jimmy’s phone ringing. I felt hung over and diseased-like. I heard Jimmy answer and put the voice on hold.

  “It’s your father.”

  “What?” I shot up, trying to put the puzzle together as fast as my neurons would allow. My lips were dry from breathing through my mouth all night, and they cracked as I mouthed, “How did he get your number?” Jimmy shrugged and I took the phone from him.

  “Dad?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “What?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, what’s going on?”

  “Apparently I’m dead. That’s what’s going on.”

  “Is that how you got this number?”

  I glanced at the coffee table with the lighters and Vietnamese take-out menus scattered on it. There was a square hand mirror with white residue caught in the edges, which I truly didn’t remember being there the night before. Christ, wasn’t it Monday? I imagined my mother’s voice: Who’s doing drugs on a school night? Put the crack pipe away, kiddo. And stop using your flash cards to cut blow. There was also an empty bowl with burned pot stuck to the inside. If inanimate objects could die, they’d look like that sad little bowl. I picked it up and sniffed it.

  “I got this number by digging up an address book you left in your desk and calling everyone in it. Then I looked up their last names in the phone book and called their family’s homes.”

  When had my father become a Mafia don?

  “Where is your cell phone?”

  “It died.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around today.”

  “Wait, how many people did you call?”

  My father had tracked down half my graduating class until he found someone who knew Jimmy’s last name. It took him until noon to do this, so thorough was the humiliation carnage.

  What happened was this: My scratchy throat worked too well, and the message I left came out garbled. Ursula gathered most of the staff into her office and played the message on speakerphone. Together they concluded that it was my father, yes, definitely my father, who had died. Lenore got wind of this and called my parents’ home in White Plains to offer her condolences on my father’s untimely demise. Which is when, back from the dead, he answered the phone.

  “What’s going on with you?” My father had shifted gears and was genuinely concerned. I was their baby girl and any irregular behavior was a sign that (a) I was in the first stages of cult initiation or (b) I’d been kidnapped and was in a basement somewhere doing Morse code through a vent.

  Exhausted and feverish, I told him everything I had edited out for my sister. I relayed the details of what had happened not only that day, but as much as I could remember from the past year—leading up to my verbal patricide.

  “Jesus.” He sighed, paused, and hung up on me. Rightly so. The aunt in question was on his side of the family.

  My next move was damage control. The friends who’d received a wake-up call from Dad could wait. I dialed Lenore’s number and explained as much of the truth as I could. I told her that in my grief I must have slurred, and that my father was fine but my aunt was, in fact, dead. Could she do me a favor and tell Ursula this?

  “Sure, honey,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Though, it’s funny…your father didn’t seem to know about your aunt.”

  “This is a difficult time for him. Denial, you know?”

  “It ain’t just a river in Egypt,” she sagely offered.

  Ursula never called. A close (potentially parental) member of her assistant’s family had almost definitely passed away and no phone call. I thought perhaps she knew my secret and wanted to spare me the embarrassment. But she was not in the business of sparing. Perhaps she knew and wanted to dangle said embarrassment over my head like a stinky cheese. Not that people generally hold stinky cheese over each other’s heads, but if anyone would, it was her. I told myself that I could no longer work for a woman who wouldn’t make a simple condolence call. But truthfully, I knew I had hit rock bottom after a very long fall, and that it was the length of the fall that did the most damage. She threw the manuscript, but I don’t remember ducking.

  Fake Dead Aunt Day was September 10, 2001, just over a year since my first day as Ursula’s assistant. With Jimmy out of town on “business” and me afraid to face my own family, I spent the night at my friend Justine’s parentally sponsored apartment in the West Village, where there was a fluffy fold-out couch, a working furnace, and a computer on which I typed my resignation letter. I spent more time on that letter than I had on the one to the post office. In the end it was four sentences and a “sincerely.” Justine looked over my shoulder as I typed.

  “What I don’t understand is why you didn’t quit after she threw the manuscript at your head. I would have been out of there so fast…”

  “Sorry, what is it you do again?”

  “I am the proud indentured servant of a brilliant art adviser.”

  “Who…”

  “…Who may or may not have purposely stapled my index finger to a manila folder.”

  “Thank you.” I pressed Print.

  The following morning I got on the subway headed uptown, letter in hand. Though resignation letters are not professionally required in the publishing world, mine was personally necessary. I was so afraid of speaking directly to Ursula, my plan was to hand her the piece of paper and stand there while she read it. I was envisioning this ceremony in my head when the subway train rattled, stopped, and moved again.

  By the time I got off, both World Trade Center towers had been struck by planes. Our office being antiquated, everyone watched what was happening on an old black-and-white TV with rabbit ears, giving my 9/11 experience an instant and eerie historical quality. Eyes glossy, we cupped our hands over our mouths. Ursula took charge.

  “Anyone who feels uncomfortable can go home,” she announced.

  I turned to leave.

  “What’s that?” Ursula stopped me. I still had the letter folded loosely in my hand. Oh, this old thing?

  “Is that something I need to see?”

  Clearly she thought it was some vital document whose chances of being lost or fucked up increased with every moment it stayed in my possession.

  “It’s not important. I was going to give it to you tomorrow. Or I can leave it on your chair. Or—”

  She snapped her fingers, twice, quickly. I stepped forward and presented her with the paper. On the TV behind her, the Pentagon was on fire. Someone said, “I think we’re at war,” but I can’t remember if it came from the long-eared box or one of the spellbound faces glued to it. Ursula gave me the last of her looks; this one said: “I can’t believe that you’d do this to me with all that’s going on in the world. Go find a coffee shop to work in, you waste of a girl.”

  For once I didn’t care. I was as calm as I had been in months. The next day I interviewed for a new job, which I got. My future boss met me at a café, since the building that housed her office was in chaos or temporarily closed due to a bomb threat or something of that nature. Ambulances and fire trucks flew down the avenues. We held our noses, shook hands, and went inside.

  People are always surprised by this. How could I have gone through with a job interview at such a time? We didn’t know how dark things were or how much darker they were going to get. It was Wednesday morning, not “the day after 9/11.” Devastated but ill-equipped to show it, we were all in a kind of limbo and we didn’t
know it yet. Like the flies that used to swarm around Jimmy’s block, unaware that they lived on the lower east side of an island. That was us. It was the beginning of heartbreak, the beginning of paranoia, the beginning of revenge. But we had a few days of slow motion before it all set in. And for a big part of me, it was the end.

  “Okay,” Ursula said, folding my resignation sharply in half, “This is awfully formal. Do you have anything you’d like to add?”

  I looked straight into her eyes. They were a vibrant green unflecked by anything but more vibrant green. This lent them a hypnotic authority. What must it be like to wake up every day with those eyes? Or to be the subject of their approval? Just as I found myself slipping into a view of the world from behind them, I pulled back and focused on the irises up front. They looked increasingly familiar and I realized that, in fact, I had gotten the cookie coloring right after all.

  “Well,” I said, fighting a smile, “I feel uncomfortable and I’m going to go home.”

  BRING-YOUR-MACHETE-TO-WORK DAY

  In 1990, after our Apple IIE quit, our family purchased a Macintosh Classic. This was a good thing because the IIE was a constant source of confusion for me. For one thing, it took large flexible disks that were not even, despite all tactile evidence to the contrary, marketed as “floppy disks.” The more current model—disks half their size and so hard you could eat off them—held the public title of “floppy.” (Also neither of these options were, in fact, disc-shaped.) For another, the monitor would freeze or blink incessantly without telling you what was wrong, like a pet or a baby. I tried to fix it myself once and the Brightness knob shot out and hit me in the eye. As if these crimes weren’t enough to make us love the Macintosh Classic by comparison, our new computer came with three free games. One of them was Oregon Trail. I have no idea what the other two were.

  A game of moderately tough choices and rawhide, Oregon Trail wound its way through the late 1980s in a very un-’80s-like fashion: subtly. Unlike BurgerTime or Tetris, high-speed programs structured around multiple levels, Oregon Trail slowly moved toward a singular goal. It also had a distinct masturbatory quality. Here was something millions of preteens did, only you wouldn’t find out until much later in life. Something one could do over and over again, with no diminishment of rewards. Apparently many children learned how to play it at school, which strikes me as just plain illegal.

  For me, Oregon Trail was a private affair—something I engaged in after dinner when I was supposed to be doing homework. At the time I was going through a somewhat awkward phase, both the “somewhat” and the “awkward” being total understatements. I had a chin that jut out when I smiled, as if it were trying to escape from my face. And who could blame it? My eyes were too big for my head, my hair too big for my whole body, and my whole body too flat to be noticed by anyone but me. Sadly, as it is for many of us, my awkward phase found me years before I qualified for a driver’s license or even the alarm code to the house. Homebound and date-free, I enjoyed an early teenagehood of drawing in journals, chatting with inanimate animals, prank-calling boys, and playing Oregon Trail. Oregon Trail, which provided me with the illusion I was actually going somewhere. Once the game began, I became completely enthralled, pausing only to listen for the pattern of stair squeaks that would indicate a parent was descending.

  Oregon Trail was built on a completely unmodern premise. This also distinguished it from its contemporaries—there were no robots, no time machines, no spacemen possible in a world where people ate unrefrigerated animal guts and washed their socks in a bucket. Originally designed by a couple of college students to teach kids about the odors and tribulations of pioneer life, the game starts in nineteenth-century Independence, Missouri, and heads toward the west coast. The screen itself—displaying a khaki stretch of land and a mountain range in the distance—never alters. It moves from left to right as your tiny wagon heads west, but there are no pop-ups requiring you to select a weapon, no shifts in perspective, no interiors. It’s like watching some brilliant independent film where there are no cuts and no scene changes, only a wagon and a little thing called destiny. It’s also like watching a lost ant crawl across the kitchen counter.

  Though you never see their faces, you can choose your persona—a banker from Boston (likely a metaphor for Reagan), a farmer from Illinois (likely a metaphor for Carter), or a carpenter from Ohio (Jesus?). Each character comes complete with a skill set and a gun ( just the one rifle—this was pre-Uzi). For a future vegetarian, I sure shot a lot of venison.

  Unlike other games of the day, which had me leaping through traffic or called me “gumshoe,” Oregon Trail left lots of room for creativity. It seemed ripe for the misuse. Like a precursor to the Sims, you were allowed to name your wagoneers and manipulate their destinies. It didn’t take me long to employ my powers for evil. I would load up the wagon with people I loathed, like my math teacher. Then I would intentionally lose the game, starving her or fording a river with her when I knew she was weak. The program would attempt an intervention, informing me that I had enough buffalo carcass for one day. One more lifeless caribou would make the wagon too heavy, endangering the lives of those inside. Really now? Then how about three more? How about four? Nothing could stop this huntress of the diminutive plains. It was time to level the playing field between me and the woman who called my differential equations “nonsensical” in front of fifteen other teenagers. Eventually a message would pop up in the middle of the screen, framed in a neat box: MRS. ROSS HAS DIED OF DYSENTERY. This filled me with glee.

  I actually began playing the game in 1990, but it still reminds me of the 1980s. For the sake of this Oregon Trail’s influence, you have to ignore the date discrepancy. There’s always a bit of cultural bleed between decades, and the segue from the ’80s to the ’90s is infamously fluid. Especially if you were still a child in the early ’90s and the formative pop cultural markers of your life were four or five years down the road. It’s the same reason Sunday morning movies can seem unquestionably from the ’80s, but upon closer examination with a digital remote, were made in, like, 1992. Think of slouch socks, of Roxette, of Jennifer Connelly and Elizabeth Shue with full faces. You’re thinking of the ’90s. Much like the Macintosh Classic itself, the ’90s took a while to power up. I find that anything culturally significant that happened before ’93 I associate with the decade before it. In fact, Oregon Trail is one of a handful of signposts that middle school existed at all.

  Which brings us to now. Here in the new millennium, there are five versions of the game available, including an Amazon Trail and Africa Trail, but none has provided as much milk to the pop culture teat as the original. Now the wagoneers have realistic movements and facial features. Their adventures have become complicated. But at what cost? Would I be able to go on unceremonious killing sprees now as I did then? Perhaps now you can click a button and see the inside of the wagon, pioneer children napping through a shaky afternoon, dreaming under the dangling hides of eight rabbits and a moose. I know I will continue to wonder. I am too fond of my memories of Oregon Trail and not in the market to have them replaced. Also, I no longer own a machine that plays video games so my curiosity cannot be satisfied without a significant financial commitment. Apparently the game has changed for the better.

  It wasn’t long before Oregon Trail was criticized for its complete lack of Native Americans, African Americans, or three-dimensional Americans of any kind. The hunting came under a certain degree of scrutiny as well because apparently guns connote “violence.” Then there was the game’s blatant favoring of rich white males. The banker is by far the best choice for your pixelated proxy. He’s in good health and comes with spare funds, which can be used to buy food in times of famine or the munchies.

  Despite this orgy of damning evidence, I still think of Oregon Trail as a great leveler. If, for example, you were a twelve-year-old girl from Westchester with frizzy hair, a bite plate, and no control over your own life, suddenly you could drown whomever you pleased. Say
you have shot four bison, eleven rabbits, and Bambi’s mom. Say your wagon weighs 9,783 pounds and this arduous journey has been most arduous. The banker’s sick. The carpenter’s sick. The butcher, the baker, the algebra-maker. Your fellow pioneers are hanging on by a spool of flax. Your whole life is in flux and all you have is this moment. Are you sure you want to forge the river? Yes. Yes, you are.

  THE GOOD PEOPLE OF THIS DIMENSION

  In 1978, my mother painted an abstract picture of herself holding a red orb in her palm. Twenty-five years later, the painting fell on my head. I’d had it framed because I liked to pretend the orb was me, cradled in acrylic, though my mother insisted she painted it before she knew about me. It was hung above the bed (where I was sleeping in my first apartment on the Upper West Side) when it fell and gashed me awake. The painting was only the first to go. Two shoeboxes from the top of the closet plunged to their deaths and when I heard wineglasses shatter in the kitchen sink, I decided to do some investigating. I had a roommate at the time. I knocked on his door and opened it.

  “You’ve always wanted to live in California,” I said, leaning on the vibrating door frame. He was facedown, buried in the pillow. The pounding, which seemed to emanate from the very core of the earth, shimmied his alarm clock off the nightstand. I caught it in my hand.