Best to Laugh: A Novel

  Trying to think of something to say amid all this discombobulation, I asked, “How often do you see her?”

  “Oh, not that often. Just when I need a good kick in the pants. She’s about the only one who’s not afraid to give me one.”

  17

  10/28/78

  Dear Cal,

  If there were a newspaper for comedians, here’s what today’s headlines would read: “Guts, Prepare to Get Busted: Candy Finishes Writing Her Killer Five-Minute Act!”

  TO CELEBRATE THIS MOMENTOUS ACCOMPLISHMENT, I decided to bake a cake. It had been ages since I had solicited my neighbors for sugar, and I had long ago stocked up on ingredients but hadn’t had the time or inclination to make use of them. Now I did.

  My kitchen skills were inspired by my grandmother, not because she herself was a good cook (elbow macaroni and orange processed cheese had steady and recurring roles in her culinary repertoire) but because she had such high regard for my mother’s talent.

  “Jo was always so happy in the kitchen, singing and laughing, with you perched on the counter helping her. Oh kid, her Korean barbecue, and this pickled cabbage—kimchee, it was called, and it was spicy but so tasty, and this cold spinach dish, I can’t remember the name but . . . well, eating at her table was an event.”

  When my dad realized he didn’t have a place in his pal Kermit’s family business, he had moved his little family to Minneapolis and into the upper level of my grandmother’s duplex. It was on her kitchen counter I perched after my mom died, but cooking was not something Grandma found joy in, muttering under her breath as she squinted at the recipe book directions.

  Gradually, I took over more and more of the cooking, and when I was nine years old I made my first dinner for the two of us.

  After her first bite of meatloaf, which I’d glazed with a decorative squiggle of ketchup, Grandma groaned with pleasure and putting down her fork, said, “Are you sure I’m not at the Ritz?”

  I became House Chef, always leaving an aluminum-tented plate for my dad when he got home from work. I loved the title, loved the cooking, but after my dad died and I spiraled into that black sad wildness, the only thing I did in the kitchen was scavenge through the cupboards and refrigerator, usually when I was high.

  I was twenty when I finally put an apron back on, and it was an occasion that caused my grandmother to weep. Well, her eyes got a little teary.

  “Umm,” she said, watching me stir the beef stew simmering on the stovetop. “Real food again.”

  “And there’re popovers in the oven.”

  “Oh, happy days,” said my grandmother, pressing her palms together and looking upward.

  Like my mother, I was happy to be in the kitchen and I accompanied my cooking and baking with lots of singing—mostly to songs I learned as a sixth grader. Music was an important part of Mr. Meyers’s curriculum, and every afternoon from one-thirty to two-ten, he seated himself at the piano and hosted a sing-a-long. His repertoire was heavy on sea shanties, which he encouraged us to sing like pirates, throwing in “Arrgh” and “Aye, matey” at our discretion.

  It was these tunes—“Blow, Boys, Blow,” “Highland Laddie,” “The Drunken Sailor”—that I sang now, the sweetness of those grade-school memories an extra, secret ingredient.

  AFTER FROSTING THE THREE-LAYER CHOCOLATE CAKE, I stepped back to admire it. It perched majestically on the plate, like Queen Elizabeth I, worthy of devotion, and I almost whispered an apology before sending the knife through it.

  Melvin Slyke, across the hall, was its first beneficiary.

  “My cake!” he said, taking the paper plate from my hands. “You finally made my cake!”

  “Well, it’s just a piece,” I said apologetically. “I hope you like it—it’s chocolate with caramel frosting.”

  Melvin’s eyes widened behind the smudged lenses of his glasses.

  “May I eat it now?”

  “Be my guest. Enjoy.”

  Back in my apartment, I carefully arranged slices onto paper plates and after tenting them with cellophane loaded them into a picnic basket I’d found in Charlotte’s linen closet. Ready to make my deliveries, I skipped down the tiled staircase.

  I was glad that Maeve didn’t answer her doorbell; I felt obliged to at least offer her a piece, even as I didn’t want to hear her rant against the evils of sugar/fat/cocoa.

  Francis looked almost tearful, telling me he hadn’t had a piece of homemade cake since Eisenhower was in office.

  I crossed the lawn, parallel to Hollywood Boulevard, to the last apartment building on the east side.

  “Mon Dieu,” said Bastien Laurent, as he opened his door to reveal a living room cluttered with photography equipment. “I thought you were Chatelaine.”

  It didn’t take much guessing to figure out Chatelaine was another of the French photographer’s aggrieved model/girlfriends.

  “Nope, just Candy. Voulez-vous a piece of cake?”

  “Candeee,” he said in his not-unattractive accent. “Zees is so mignon. . . so cute of you.”

  I shrugged. “I’m a good baker. I thought you might like it.”

  Bastien accepted the plate and kissed my hand. “Eef I like ze taste of ze cake, I might ’ave to sample ze baker.”

  “Bon appétit!”

  Jaz, the building manager, didn’t answer, but turning to leave I heard the slow creak of a door opening.

  “There are no apartments available,” said the woman standing in the shadows, with an accent that made me feel I’d stumbled onto the doorstep of a cottage in Galway.

  “Oh, I’m not looking to rent, I already live here. I—”

  “Do you have some problem then? Just put your complaint in writing and we’ll have Werner take a look.”

  Werner was Peyton Hall’s Swiss handyman.

  “No, no, everything’s fine. It’s just that . . . well, I made a cake and I thought Jaz—and you—it’s big enough for two, might like a piece.”

  “Oh, did you now?”

  Surprised by the accusatory tone of her voice, I said, “Yes. I can’t eat a whole cake by myself so I’m sharing it with my neighbors.”

  The door opened a little wider, and I saw half a lovely face.

  “I’m Aislin. Mrs. Jasper Delwyn—Jaz’s wife. I’m not trying to be rude, but, well . . . thank you.”

  I handed her the paper plate with the triangle of cake swathed under cellophane.

  “My name’s Candy. I’m subletting my cousin, Charlotte—Charlotte Fields’s—apartment. I can’t believe we haven’t met yet, that I haven’t seen you at least at the pool.”

  She had shifted her position, and I now saw the other half of her face, from which bloomed a yellowing bruise.

  “Oh my gosh, are you all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right!” said the woman, closing the door several inches. “And thank you for the cake. I’m sure Jaz’ll enjoy it.”

  “Like I said, it’s a big enough piece—” but the door was shut before I finished.

  Ed wasn’t home—on another date, I supposed—and I left his piece on his doorstep.

  It was nearly seven and the air was like a cool, relieved sigh after the choked heat of the day. Cutting across the path, I headed west and waved to Robert X. Roberts, jaunty in a seersucker suit as he walked toward the parking garage.

  I stood on Madame Pepper’s questioning welcome mat, not exactly afraid to be there but afraid of disturbing her. I took several deep inhales of the fragrant jasmine-tinged air.

  “By not knocking,” said Madame Pepper, opening the door, “you are testing my psychic abilities?”

  I must have gasped, because she laughed.

  “All my senses are sharp, including my hearing. You are not the most stealthy coming up stairs.” She looked at the basket I held. “And what have you in there, Little Red Riding Hood?”

  “I brought you some cake.”

  “I must have felt it—the teakettle is already on. Come in, come in.”

  Her apar
tment was redolent with a spicy cologne.

  “A client,” she said, waving her hand. “Television producer. He wonders why he cannot re-create past success. Step one, I tell him, is go easy on the aftershave!”

  She indicated I should sit on the sofa while she answered the kettle’s whistle.

  Setting the heavy tea service on the coffee table and herself next to me, she said, “I am splitting this.” She bisected the wide frosted wedge of cake with a knife. “If you do not want to eat your half, I’ll save it for later.”

  “It’s all yours. I’ve got more at home.”

  As she chewed several bites, she stared at an autographed photo of Jean Harlow on the wall.

  “That cake.” She paused to take a sip of tea. “That cake is of exceptional quality.”

  I exhaled, realizing that I had been holding my breath.

  “Thank you. I’m glad you like it.”

  The half piece was quickly eaten and then, with a shrug, she began eating what she had “saved” for later.

  “Have you ever had the famous Sachertorte in Vienna?”

  I shook my head.

  “I have, every time I visit my brother Gavril. And this I like better.”

  A heat lamp of pleasure switched on and I basked under it.

  When she was done, she dragged her middle finger across a smear of frosting on the plate and sucked on it.

  “Forgive my manners. So delicious. Perhaps this is where your destiny lies.”

  “In cake baking?” I hoped this wasn’t a prediction; I liked to bake but didn’t want it to be my destiny.

  She flicked aside a long gray tress of her hair. “Well, then perhaps in making something else people will enjoy.”

  “I hope so . . .”

  “Yes? What is it that you hope?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  Madame Pepper’s sigh was tired.

  “Candy, I don’t need to be fortune-teller to sense it is you who needs to tell me something.”

  I flinched with surprise. “I do? About what? Doing stand-up?”

  She pushed up a jangle of bracelets on her wrist, folded her hands on her lap, and furrowing her luxurious eyebrows, looked at me. The look turned into a stare and a sudden surge of emotion made my heart pound, and I felt a sting of tears in my eyes and then clots of dirt began to fall, some stones, a rock, another, then a boulder, and I was powerless to stop the landslide that I had tried so hard to hold back.

  18

  IT WAS EARLY SPRING of my senior year of high school, my dad had been gone for over a year and I was living the fractured life of a party girl/pot smoker/academic standout. It was as the latter incarnation that I was visiting a small private college in St. Paul that had offered me a big fat scholarship. I had been paired off with an earnest young woman whose name tag read, “Hi! I’m Ellen!” and whose baggy corduroy pants had been worn free of wale at the knees and seat. As we walked through the tree-filled campus, she recited the history of its architecture and its alumnae, in a way that made neither subject interesting.

  Directing me to sit on a wrought-iron bench under the still-bare branches of a cottonwood tree, she asked, “So do you have any more questions?”

  Looking at her Earth shoes, I wanted to ask, Yeah—is whatever comfort you get really worth wearing footwear that looks like turds? but only shook my head.

  “Well, I do!”

  This was said with an enthusiasm that had not animated her earlier conversation.

  “Gee, Ellen, what’s that?”

  “Well,” she said, pushing a clump of her thick blonde hair behind her ear. “I bet you didn’t know I’m minoring in Asian Studies.”

  “You’re right, I didn’t.” Cranking my voice up to match the brightness in hers, I asked, “Did you know I’m Asian?”

  She looked startled, as if I’d pinched her.

  “I . . . yes, I assumed so, judging from your . . . well, your facial features. What is your ancestry, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “What if I did mind you asking?”

  Ellen’s fair skin mottled, and even as I enjoyed her discomfort, I recognized that I was being a wee bit of a jerk.

  “I’m half-Korean. On my mother’s side. She and my father met while he was in the service in Korea.”

  “I knew it! I knew it because that’s the focus of my paper! Korean war brides!”

  “Well, isn’t that ducky.”

  She asked me where my parents had met.

  “In Seoul,” I mumbled, not wanting to share the few details I had.

  “Not in a camp town?”

  “Camp town?”

  “Camp town,” she repeated, like I was hard of hearing. “There were a bunch of them—in Bupyong and Pusan, Songtan—all over—and they’d rise up to serve the needs of the soldiers, with clubs, brothels, and whatnot.”

  Her words had the effect of extreme high altitude, and I felt lightheaded. Breathing didn’t seem a natural reflex as much as an effort.

  “Brothels and whatnot,” I said finally. “Are you . . . are you asking me if my mother was a prostitute?”

  “Well, you see, conditions for women were hardly easy at that time and—”

  I inhaled a gallon of air. “I seriously cannot believe you just asked me that!”

  “It was a cruel reality that the options for these women—”

  “Shut up!” I screamed, leaping off the bench, but before I plunged over the small hill that sloped to the parking lot, I told the academic imbecile to leave me and my mother out of her stupid paper.

  “Which you’ll probably get an F on anyway!” I said, really knowing how to hurt a grad student.

  “PEOPLE CAN BE SUCH IDIOTS,” said Madame Pepper, holding one side of her face as if she had a toothache.

  “It was weird—I was so scared, so angry! Like suddenly I didn’t know a thing about my own mother!”

  WHEN I HAD GOTTEN HOME, I sat at the kitchen table, my head cradled in my arms, sobbing the afternoon away as my grandmother’s hand, steady as a pendulum, stroked my back. When I could finally speak, I asked her what she knew, if she’d ever heard of these terrible things, these camp towns.

  Color drained from my grandmother’s face, and she blinked several times before taking off her glasses. Faint purple tear-shaped indentations lay on each side of her nose from the weight of the frames, and she massaged them with her thumb and middle finger.

  “Yes, I’ve heard of camp towns.” She folded and unfolded the stems of her glasses twice before she put them back on. “And the first time I’m ashamed to say was from my own daughter.”

  I drew in air so fast it sounded like a hiccup.

  “You can’t remember this, but shortly after Lorraine moved back from Wyoming, she and your dad had a big blowout. She asked him point-blank if he’d met JoJo in a brothel, because, according to a friend of hers who had a friend who served in Korea, that’s how most GIs over there met their wives.

  “Candy, I was shocked at what your aunt said but scared for her too, because it looked like your dad was going to throttle her. Instead, in the coldest voice I’d ever heard, he said, ‘I have no words for what you are, Lorraine.’

  “For the longest time, Arne refused to speak to his own sister. Not like he was ever Mr. HaHa MerryMaker, but Lorraine was aware of his punishment, and so was I, and so was your mom. JoJo felt terrible for this rift between brother and sister—double, I think, because she didn’t have any family of her own.”

  I RAISED MY HEAD to look at Madame Pepper. “Both my mom’s parents were killed in the war.”

  The old woman’s face sagged with sadness.

  “She never talked about them, except once. On my fifth birthday. My last birthday with her.” I drew in a deep ragged sigh. “She had a little party for me and made this beautiful ballerina cake, and after everyone went home I taught her how to use the jump rope Janie Larson had given me. Every time she stumbled or stepped on the rope, she’d say, just like a kid, ‘Wait, wait,’
and we were laughing so hard. Which is why I was so surprised when a minute later she was crying, just as hard.

  “I practically knocked her over with my hug. I wanted to comfort her but wanted more to be comforted by her, because her crying scared me so much. She held me for a long time.

  “‘I just sad,’” I said, imitating her accent. “‘Thinking of my mother. Her birthday, three days from now. She not to be even forty!’”

  “Oh, Candy,” said Madame Pepper. “The same terrible burdens, for your mother and for you.”

  I wiped my eyes with the yellowed cloth napkin she handed me.

  “Yeah, early orphanhood. What a great legacy to pass on to your kids.”

  “Excuse me, Candy, but during these years were you talking to someone?”

  It took me a moment to understand what she was saying.

  “You mean like a psychiatrist?”

  “Yes. Psychiatrist. Psychologist. Some sort of professional.”

  “No.”

  “Your grandmother, she didn’t make you?”

  “No. It probably never occurred to her. It didn’t occur to me. Really, my family’s idea of therapy is ‘bucking up.’”

  Madame Pepper’s frown was deep. “Your friends, then, they helped you through this?”

  Shaking my head, I felt a tear piddle down my cheek.

  “After my dad died, I sort of closed myself off to my old friends . . . I was only interested in people who could help me get high. Karen Schaeffer was a pretty good friend and my dope dealer, but then she found God—ugh, her church was in this former dry cleaners that reeked of cleaning solvents—and between her trying to convert me and me trying to convince her to restart her dealing career, well, our friendship sort of fell apart.

  “But not socializing gave me more time in the library where I’d pore over anything I could find about the Korean War. I never did find much on the subject of camp towns.” I swallowed, the memory of speed reading chapters of various battles—Osan, the Pusan Perimeter, Inchon—as sour tasting as bile. “I’d look through the phone book and randomly call people with last names like Kim or Lee or Park and ask them, ‘Are you Korean?’ Most people hung up, although some asked, ‘What is this?’ or ‘Who the hell is calling?’ but no one ever answered ‘Yes.’ If they had, what would I have asked them? Hey, Mr. Kim, what can you tell me about camp towns? Hey, Miss Lee, do you know any prostitutes? Do you think my mom was one?”