Black Cake(3)

The

Recording





Mr. Mitch takes the memory stick with Eleanor Bennett’s recording and inserts it into his desktop computer. Eleanor’s children lean forward in their seats when they hear her voice. Mr. Mitch wills himself to keep a placid face, breathes deep and slow. This is not personal, this is professional. Families need their attorneys to stay unruffled.

B and B, Mr. Mitch is recording this for me. My hand is not so steady anymore and I have a lot to say. I wanted to talk to you both in person but, at this point, I’m not sure I’ll get to see you two together again.

Benny and Byron both shift in their seats.

You are stubborn children, but you are good children.

Mr. Mitch keeps his eyes focused on the notepad on his desk, but he can still feel the air shifting in the room. A stiffening of backs, a squaring of shoulders.

B and B, promise me you’ll try to get along. You can’t afford to lose each other.

Benny stands up. Here we go. Mr. Mitch pauses the recording.

“I don’t need to hear this,” Benny says.

Mr. Mitch nods. Waits a moment. “It’s what your mother wanted,” he says.

“Can’t you make me a copy of the file?” Benny says. “Make me a copy. I’ll take it back to New York.”

“Your mother expressly requested that you listen to this together, all the way through, in my presence. But you know, we don’t have to stay in the office. If you prefer, we could stop now and I could bring the recording to your mother’s house at a later time. Would you like that?”

“No,” Byron says. “I want to hear this now.” Benny scowls at Byron, but he doesn’t look at her.

“Your mother was very specific,” Mr. Mitch says. “We need to listen to this together, so I’m happy to continue this when both of you can make yourselves available.” He opens an agenda on his desk. “I could come by the house late this afternoon or tomorrow morning.”

“I don’t see how it’s going to make a difference to Ma now, anyway,” Benny says. Still standing, she looks down at Mr. Mitch with steady eyes but her voice wobbles on the word Ma.

“I think it will make a difference to you and your brother,” Mr. Mitch says. “There are things your mother wanted you to hear right away, things you need to know.”

Benny lowers her head, stays there for a minute, huffs out a breath. “Better this afternoon,” she says. “I’ll be leaving town right after the funeral.” Benny looks at Byron one more time but he keeps his eyes fixed on the desk. She walks out of the room without saying goodbye, her blondish Afro puff quivering as she stomps across the waiting room, pulls the door open, and steps into the darkened hallway.

Mr. Mitch hears the faint chime of the elevator down the hall and Byron stands up.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you later,” Byron says. “Thank you.”

Mr. Mitch gets up to shake his hand. Byron’s phone buzzes and by the time he reaches the door, his cellphone is already clapped to his ear. There must have been a time, Mr. Mitch thinks, when Byron was just a kid, trawling the beach, more interested in putting a conch shell to his ear than anything like a phone.

“My son listens to the sea for a living, can you imagine?” Eleanor said to Mr. Mitch one day, back in the days when her husband Bert was still alive and they were at some lawyers’ event together.

“It’s actually a job!” Bert quipped. They had a good chuckle together over that one. Eleanor and Bert had a way of doing that, being funny together.

Maybe, when all this was over, Mr. Mitch could ask Byron about his latest project, about how the institute he works for is helping to map the seafloor. The oceans are a challenge, Mr. Mitch thinks. And what about a person’s life? How do you make a map of that? The borders people draw between themselves. The scars left along the ground of one’s heart. What will Byron have to say about that, once he and his sister have heard their mother’s message?





Homecoming





Benny lets herself into her mother’s house through the back door and stands in the kitchen, listening. She hears her mother’s voice, hears her own laughter, smells clove in the air, but sees only a dishcloth folded over a chair, two prescription pill bottles sitting on a counter. There’s no sign of Byron. She walks into the living room. It is silky with light, even at this hour. Her dad’s armchair is still there, the blue fabric nubby in spots where Bert Bennett once sat. The last time Benny saw him, he stood up from that chair, turned his back on her, and walked out of the room.

Hard to believe it was eight years ago.

Benny had been trying to explain herself. She’d sat down next to her father, though not without great embarrassment. After all, who wanted to have a talk with their parents about sex? Though this wasn’t only about the sex, that was the whole point. Benny had taken way too long to get around to this conversation and it had cost her, big-time.

Benny remembers running her hand back and forth over the crushed-velvet sofa that day, murmuring a compliment. Her mother had kept the seat encased in a plastic covering all those years that Benny and Byron were growing up and long after that. It was the first time that Benny had seen the sofa this way. She couldn’t get over the feel of it, how it could be so soft and ridgy at the same time.