Sweet 16

A slice of rum cake before the girls go out looking for trouble.

You stretch naked across Clare’s bed, one arm folded tight behind your hip, the other a cradle for your tilted head. Today is her sixteenth birthday and your present is to pose for her so she can add another drawing to her art college application. It’s been two hours since she arranged you in this position and she has barely snapped at you for moving.

A draft slips over you from the nearby window and pain increasingly buzzes from your shoulders, down your arms, and into your hands. None of your other friends are willing to pose naked for her. You think this should be enough to demolish the prevailing theory that your ongoing virginity is prudishness. They find this very amusing and a reason to tease you to no end. You decided months ago to ignore them. Except it bothers you. Either way it doesn’t matter tonight: staying still longer than a body ever should, inviting pneumonia and crippled limbs, bonds you and Clare closer together.

Clare’s older sister, Sophie, swings open the door. “Oh sweet Jesus,” she laughs.

You grab the first thing atop the pile of clothes. Unfortunately, it’s your jeans, which means you’ll have to drop the quilt you swiftly wrapped around yourself. Being exposed in front of her sister is different than when you are with Clare because that is pragmatic. Clare’s you is not you. The long lines of the body she draws turn elegant. It’s impossible to imagine that the serene face she composes would belong to someone given to outrageous faux pas as you do especially when plastered, like you will be later tonight.

“Close the door!” Clare shouts, grinning. She flips the drawing pad cover over and slides it carefully into the narrow space between the bureau and the wall.

“Mom and nonna want you downstairs. It’s birthday cake time,” Sophie says.

You hope it’s the cake you remember from last year, the one soaked in so much rum you decided you were drunk afterwards.

Italian rum cake

Clare slowly goes about putting her box of pastels in order and returning the delicate bench she was using under the vanity. The room she shares with Sophie is so little that it’s almost impossible to navigate around the big bed, too-long bureau, and unnecessary vanity. Mirrors above the bureau and framing the vanity magnify the jumble of white and gold-trimmed furniture.

You and Clare glance at the clock and then at each other. It’s 6 o’clock and you’re supposed to meet up with your friend Rachel by 6:30.

“We have to go,” Clare smiles, a gesture you’ve seen gets her out of many situations. She is small with long dark brown hair and content to be in the background, observing, not participating. Except she is too beautiful to remain unnoticed. You know people take her to be shy, but she isn’t. She’s more stubborn than anyone would imagine. Spoiled, Sophie calls her. Willful, her mom believes. Relentless, says your other friends, because she is always leading them into doing what they, and especially you, don’t realize they want to do. Like hang out in Center City and wander about museums and watch foreign movies. Like not hesitating to enter expensive boutiques and try on clothes no one else but Clare can afford because of her after-school job at a jewelry store. And, such as tonight, insist on meeting up with Rachel and her boyfriend, who always has the best weed in the neighborhood and a large open field across from his house. On warm nights such as this Indian summer night, she loves how the field shelters them from the world.

“Go where?”

“Out.”

“To Rachel’s house,” you say helpfully.

“Right,” her sister snaps. At 19, she is sophisticated about the world and her sister’s transgressions.

By now you’re fully dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed to slip on Clare’s cherry-red platform shoes you’re borrowing even though she cautioned that you will be taller than all the boys and too imposing to approach. You heard her caution as more humorous than rebuke.

Clare pulls on a white gauzy turtleneck and just-right old blue jeans. Sophie takes off her suede jacket and hangs it in the closet. She is everything Clare is not—tall, blond, pursuing a practical degree that her parents approve of, and excited to be engaged to someone she’s dated for only a year.

“You don’t go down now, you won’t be allowed out,” Sophie says.

Clare ignores her and inspects you. “You’re wearing that again?”

You look at yourself in one of the mirrors. What’s wrong with the blue flowered blouse you stole from your sister? You think it’s romantic. You love it!

She laughs. Her sister does, too.

“You can see right through it,” Sophie says.

Okay, so you didn’t realized that. But there’s nothing underneath to see anyway and, besides, it’ll be dark.

“I’ll do your eyes,” Clare says.

“You got ten minutes to get down there,” Sophie warns and leaves, hopefully to stall the birthday gathering.

Here’s what Clare does to your eyes: brushes dark green eyeshadow across your lids in one long stroke, layers on mascara, rubs transparent pale pink gel blush across your cheekbones. She combs your red hair back from your face. The mirror reflects you as a fraud in a mask, which is sort of comforting. Clare doesn’t have to wear makeup, and you secretly believe the only thing she cares about is how her clothes project exquisite allure. Her perfect hair is a part of that and she lingers over brushing it.

Her mom screams up the stairs. “CLARE!”

“Make sure you tell my nonna how much you like the cake,” she says to you.

“The one with rum?”

“It’s her birthday speciality.”

You nod and smile. “I get an angel food cake from a box,” you say as a way to confirm you will more than thank her nonna.

You both spray on her sister’s Shalimar perfume then file down to the dining room where her mom sits at the table. Sophie gets her height and blond hair from her. Nonna stands in the kitchen waiting to carry the birthday cake to the table. Clare inherited her petiteness and dark hair.

Her mom scares you: she knows everything. Your mom knows everything, too, but you don’t mind defying her because she’ll always love you even when you disappoint her. Clare’s mom seems constantly annoyed, often angry, treating her daughter as a heedless faultline in the family, a problem she doesn’t understand how to solve. Intuition tells her that, as sure as there is a God in heaven, Clare will break her father’s heart. But he is working late, as usual, leaving her with their young contrarian child.

You and Clare pull out chairs and sit across from her mom. Her sharp gaze tell you she knows you’re up to no good.

Her mom says something in Italian to Clare’s grandmom, and just like that her nonna carefully carries the cake out of the kitchen. It is impossibly tall, lit on top with exactly 16 candles. Her nonna carefully parades it around the table to Clare and gingerly slides it down next to her, then gives it a tiny shove to maneuver it in front of the birthday girl.

Sophie claps. “One big blow,” she says to Clare.

Clare extinguishes all but three candles, which takes an extra puff.

“Thank you, nonna,” she says and kisses her.

Her mom reaches across the table to retrieve the cake and portions it into serving pieces. The slices are very thin: everyone in this house is forever on a diet they don’t need. It’s so quiet the china plates sound like timbales when their forks gently scrape across them.

Clare stands as soon as she finishes and picks up your plates.

“Where are you going?” her mom asks. Unlike Sophie, she’s warning her.

“To Rachel’s house.”

“To do what?”

“She made me a dress for my birthday.”

Clare and you coordinated your lies because you know they will be acceptable. Her mom likes Rachel the best because she emanates responsibility. Comfortable talking to adults, she always sits with her mom at the dining room table and asks for advice about handling her seven younger brothers and sisters. She’s revealed that she wants to be a librarian and while she, like every other girl their age, wears tight sweaters and tank tops, Rachel covers them with well-fitted jackets she sews herself. What Clare’s mom doesn’t know about Rachel is that her boyfriend always shares his drugs with her, such as the mushrooms they all tried a couple of weeks ago. Also, she sleeps with her boyfriend and is well practiced in slipping into his attic room for the night.

“Be back at 11,” Clare’s mom says.

“I’ll wait up,” Sophie says and beams a sarcastic smile.

“I promise,” Clare says and goes around to kiss her mom and her nonna.

“Thank you for the cake,” you say to her grandmom but you’re not so sure she understands you. You bend down and hug her, carefully because she’s so old but maybe not gentle enough because you feel her stiffen in your arms. Clare’s mom looks perplex. Sophie laughs. You’re pretty sure you need to leave.

“Come on,” Clare calls from the living room. You retrieve your shoulder bags from the closet and sling the straps across your body. She tugs her hair free and lets it fall over her back.

And out you and she go into the night, up to Rachel’s boyfriend’s house and into the field where a ring of large stones hold a banked fire. You find her sitting cross-legged on the ground with her boyfriend’s head nestled in her soft lap. The fire illuminates the faces of his friends and a few girls you don’t know. A lot of laughing and joshing is going on, a prickly vein of anticipation, too. No one but Rachel acknowledges your arrival, and she with no more than a soft “heyyyyy.” All of them are beyond stoned.

Hours later, closer to one than 11, you and Clare meander back to her house, high and unmolested. The boys have finally figured out that Clare pays attention only if she wants to and they never made a move toward you tonight because she never left your side. You both sneak into her house and to the kitchen where she cuts two huge pieces of her birthday cake. The cake weeps rum. The layer of chocolate is luscious but slightly bitter and the whipped cream icing a sweet afterthought. You and Clare devour slice after slice, supremely happy with yourselves and satiated by the night.