by Pamela Morsi
“What do you think?” Elena surreptitiously questioned as Cam engaged Cesar in a discussion about Spurs preseason basketball.
“Cute,” Red whispered.
“I know he’s short,” Elena told her. “But not anyplace where it matters.”
The last was offered with a meaningful wink and the two women laughed together.
As the evening got later the crowd was shoulder to shoulder. It was amazing that Mrs. Ramirez managed to get through the crush carrying a huge tres leches cake.
Her sister began cutting it into little pieces as her son helped Mrs. Ramirez up on a chair and quieted the crowd.
“Bienvenidos a todo!” she said. “Welcome! Welcome all of you. I am so glad that everyone is here with us tonight to say goodbye to the old place.”
She paused for a moment, surveying the room.
“This place has so many memories for me. My husband and I were so very young when we opened up,” she said. “All five of our children learned to crawl on this floor and toddled around these tables. We’ve celebrated birthdays and anniversaries, graduations and baptisms here in this place. It has been my life and I know it has been a part of your life, too. I will miss it.”
There were nods all around the room.
“Things change and sometimes we must change with them. Some people say that’s good. Some people say that’s bad. I don’t know which one it is, or if it is neither. But I know that change is as natural to life as breathing, so we cannot stop.”
Mrs. Ramirez looked around the room, a determined smile on her face.
“Tonight, we’re not fighting this change, we’re taking it...we’re taking it abrazo. Embracing it,” she said. “The new place is very nice, roomy, with a wonderful kitchen. I don’t want any of you to become, strangers just because we will be so far away. I promise to make the cooking worth the drive.”
Laughter floated through the room.
“I’d drive to El Paso and back for your menudo!’ someone hollered from the back.
“Thursday,” Mrs. Ramirez answered him. “Give me a few days to settle in and I’ll have a big pot of menudo ready to serve by Thursday.”
“But tonight we have cake,” Mrs. Ramirez’s sister announced, abruptly ending any further speech. “Here, start passing this back.”
The cake was excellent. The music started up again and the party revved back into high gear. It was perhaps an hour later when Red noticed Daniel was asleep in a chair. She looked around until she spotted Cam and then waved him over.
“I guess this means it’s time for us to go,” he said, glancing at the little boy.
“Let me find Olivia,” Red said.
“Last time I saw her she was playing out back.”
Red found her easily. She and another girl about her age were supervising the younger children through a game of bebé leche, a kind of hopscotch.
“Your brother’s fallen asleep. Are you ready to go?”
Olivia quickly said her goodbyes and followed Red out the gate and around the building, instead of making their way back through the crowd.
Cam was standing by the front door, a sleeping Daniel slung over his shoulder. He was talking to another couple who seemed to be leaving, too. As Red got closer, she recognized J.B. and his wife, Carol. J.B. was a regular at the bar a couple of times a week, but Carol neither drank beer nor was a music fan, so Red rarely saw her. She gladly took the opportunity to give the woman a hug.
“Carol, it’s so good to see you. You’re looking great.”
The woman shook her head. “I don’t know how you can say that,” Carol answered. “My backside is getting so broad J.B. is threatening to bring home the Wide Load sign from his truck for me to wear on my jeans.”
“She’s lying,” J.B. accused. “I like a woman with a butt on her.”
“Oh, you pretty much like all women,” Carol corrected. They all laughed.
“Well, I don’t like all women,” Red told her. “But I do like you and I think you look great. So just take the compliment and quit finding fault with yourself.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Carol said, giving her a mock salute.
Then, a more serious expression came over the woman’s face and she glanced around, making note of Olivia several feet away, and Cam, talking with J.B. She leaned closer to Red.
“I just wanted you to know that there’s a woman in town who is spreading stories about you,” she said.
For an instant Red was surprised and then she laughed. “Cam, listen to this,” Red said.
Both he and J.B. turned in their direction.
“Some woman is spreading stories about me,” Red explained, still finding it humorous. “It’s got to be your sweet aunt Phyl again. The mean old battle-ax.”
Carol’s brow was furrowed. “I don’t think this woman was related to Cam,” she said. “She’s someone who says she’s from your hometown. She’s saying really ugly things.”
Carol stopped and glanced up again at Cam uncertainly. “She’s saying you seduced your own brother and that your parents threw you out of the house because of it.”
For an instant Red’s whole body was paralyzed. She was so stunned, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to speak at all. But from the depths of strength that had kept her life moving forward this far, she dredged up a biting wit and a nonchalant attitude.
“Oh, well, I’d say that’s a good story to make up if you can get away with it,” she said to Carol, faking a laugh. “She’s probably some cowboy’s ex-girlfriend still out for a grudge match because I fucked her true love.”
Everyone laughed.
“The losers do have it in for you,” Carol agreed.
“Yeah,” J.B. said. “Remember that bowlegged gal that spray painted the word bitch on the front of your building?”
“Oh yeah, who could ever forget that.”
“I guess that was before my time,” Cam pointed out.
“You’re lucky you missed it,” Red said. “I was mad enough to spit nails.”
“You made her boyfriend paint it over,” J.B. said. “And it had to have been a hundred and ten degrees outside that day.” “Yeah,” Red laughed. “The SOB never spoke to me again. But I heard he went back to her and paddled her scrawny backside for a week. That was good enough for me.”
After a couple more laughs and some friendly goodbyes, Cam and Red made their way down Avenue B to the bar. When they arrived, he got the kids into the van while she made sure the bar was all locked up and the alarm set.
When she finally got to the van, both kids were asleep in the backseat.
“We didn’t leave a minute too soon,” she said.
Cam reached over and grasped her hand.
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” he told her. “The past is truly the past as far as I’m concerned.”
“How did you know?” she asked.
“You never resort to the F word on anything less than a direct threat.”
Red realized he was probably right.
“Don’t worry,” Cam said. “I don’t think Carol or J.B. know you as well as I do.”
She nodded.
He started up the car and backed out of the driveway. In silence they drove up Eight Street and turned north on Broadway. It was a few blocks later before Red finally spoke.
“I didn’t seduce him,” she said. “And he wasn’t my brother.”
It was all she intended to say about it.
18
The night of the Harvest Party was as Halloweenlike as a night could get with surprisingly chilly fall air, a full moon and hundreds of little ghouls and goblins out in the neighborhood with their trick-or-treat bags before it even got dark.
Kelly had put Kendra in the stroller and agreed to walk Daniel and Olivia around the neighborhood before bringing them to the party at school.
Red carefully dressed in a button-down shirt tucked into conservative slacks. She’d tried to twist her mile of hair into some kind of respectable updo. After the third
failure, she finally settled on braids that crisscrossed and looped around her head.
“Pippi Longstocking grows up to be Mrs. Olsen,” she said to herself in the mirror with disgust.
Fearing lateness would be worse than bad hair, she hurried to make her way down to the school.
Inside the gym at Cambridge Elementary, the scene was controlled chaos. There were games going on, art displays and science projects. The dance floor boasted no actual dancers, but there were a fair number of goblins milling about. And a DJ was playing such seasonal favorites as “One-Eyed, One- Horned, Flying Purple People Eater.”
Red looked around and realized that she’d missed one important detail about the party. Even the adults came in costume. She should have come as herself, she thought, and she might have been less conspicuous.
With a few directions from a helpful Klingon, Red managed to locate the first-grade cupcake table. Sarah was nowhere in sight, but there was a woman behind the table. She was tall and willowy, like a dancer, and her straight blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail of casual perfection. Her focus was intent and she was busily rearranging everything on the table. “Hi, I guess this is first-grade cupcake,” Red said.
The woman looked up. Her eyes were dark brown, heavily fringed, and her skin was flawless. She gave Red a long look. “Cullens?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Tasha Shakelford,” she said. “And you’re late.”
Red glanced quickly at her watch. It read 6:01.
“Sorry, I got held up by a crowd of pudgy Pokemoners.” Tasha didn’t seem amused.
“Carson is a no-show, so the onus is on you.”
“Huh?”
“Carson. Sarah Carson,” Tasha clarified. “She’s not coming. She says that Elliot is sick. But then she always manages some kind of excuse for everything. I’ve got to handle membership fees at MiniMules. So you’ll have to distribute the cupcakes yourself.”
That sounded fine to Red. In fact, it was extremely preferable to the alternative of working next to this brusque, unsmiling, former girlfriend of Cam’s.
“Sure,” Red said with confidence. “I’d be happy to do that.”
“Then get over here and let me show you the setup.”
How hard can it be? Red thought to herself, but made her way to the workers’ side of the table hastily. Despite what Sarah might have been hoping for, Red wasn’t interested in any way in fomenting a power struggle with Cam’s ex.
The cupcakes were adorable. They had mostly orange or white icing with jack-o’-lantern faces. There were several different patterns, but they were all delightfully cute. Red envisioned children walking up and making their choice with the very least encouragement from her.
“I’ve drawn up a schematic,” Tasha said, handing her a piece of paper that looked as complicated as a house plan.
“Okay.”
“The basic is that we have white, chocolate and strawberry,” Tasha said. “The white are the ordinary face. The chocolate have the little hair swirl and the top of the face and the strawberry have the square nose.”
Red took quick notice of the subtle differences.
“Each type comes with nuts or without,” Tasha continued. “We have to be very careful of nut allergies. They are very dangerous. If one of these kids has a reaction and EMS has to be called, I don’t want the offending nut coming from this table. Do you understand me?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t assume anything. Ask every child if he or she can have nuts or not.”
“I can do that.”
“Good,” Tasha said. “That’s the most important caveat. This section right here—” she indicated about half of the table “—is for the specialty cupcakes.”
“Specialty?”
Tasha nodded. “We have sugar-free in all flavors. The faces with smiles are sweetened with Sucralose. The frowns have aspartame.”
“Okay.”
“We have dairy-free in white and strawberry,” she continued. “As well as dairy-free/sugar-free in white.”
Red nodded.
“Gluten-free is available in strawberry only,” Tasha explained. “And if they ask, tell the parents that it’s a rice-flour and flax combination.”
“Rice-flour and flax,” Red repeated to herself.
“These are the organic whole wheat.” Tasha pointed to a slightly oversize group of cupcakes near the front of the table. “They are, like the bleached wheat, available in sugar-free and dairy-free.”
“Okay.”
“And we have egg-free vegan in all three types,” Tasha continued. “Assure anybody who asks that the ingredients are as local as possible. And that all the chocolate is fair trade from areas without child labor.”
Red wasn’t even sure she knew what that meant, but she nodded anyway.
“This bin at the front of the table is for the paper cupcake cups,” she said. “Please have the children dispose of them here rather than in the trash. We’ll add these to compost and that will help to keep down our carbon footprint.”
“Cupcakes have a carbon footprint?” Red asked with a smile.
Tasha looked at her as if she’d just arrived from another planet. “Everything has a carbon footprint,” she answered in a hushed and horrified tone. “And our first graders know that.”
Red was grateful when Tasha was forced to leave for her duties at another table. When the hordes of kids arrived in the gym, however, she would have welcomed help from almost anyone.
The younger children showed up with pushy parents who always seemed intent on countering the children’s well-trained regimentation of standing in line and waiting their turn.
Red also had to guard against older children who would swoop through and just grab something, without waiting for questions about their allergies or dietary regimen.
She was slow and she had to refer to the dreaded schematic more times than she would have liked to admit. She was only certain of making one mistake, she handed out a dairy-free to a child who was supposed to get vegan. She recognized the error a minute later and told the little girl’s mother, who was horrified.
While the child stomped her foot, screaming, the mom forced open the girl’s mouth, cleaned out the wad of half-eaten cake and then wiped her tongue with a napkin.
“I’m so very, very sorry,” Red apologized profusely.
The woman answered with a dirty look before accepting the guaranteed-hundred-percent vegan cupcake.
It was a welcome relief when the next couple of kids in front of her were familiar faces, even in full “princess makeup” with their dark hair coated with pink glitter hair spray.
“Hey, girls, what’ll ya have?” she asked Olivia and Nayra.
“Chocolate,” they agreed. “We’ll both have chocolate with nuts.”
As Red handled the request, she added, “Nayra, do you have any allergies?”
“Only mustard,” Nayra answered. “It gives me hives. Yuk of the universe, for sure.”
“I don’t think there’s any mustard in this,” Red said, handing the girl her choice. Then, glancing at Olivia, a thought occurred to Red. “What about you?” she asked. “Do you have allergies?”
Olivia looked at her grandmother with the kind of undisguised disgust that only a preteen girl can truly pull off. “Isn’t it a little late to ask?”
She grabbed her cupcake out of Red’s hand and stomped off, her little nose decidedly in the air.
Daniel came by later. Kelly, with her baby in the stroller, was ostensibly watching him, but the little guy was too wound up for the sitter to manage more than just eyeballing.
“I want strawberry!” he told her.
“Daniel, are you allergic to anything?” Red asked.
The boy’s brow furrowed and he looked confused.
“Does any kind of food make you sick?” she clarified.
He was thoughtful for a moment. “I don’t think so,” he replied. “But asparagus probably could if I had to eat it a lot.”
Red smiled at him. “Message received,” she answered. “We’ll avoid asparagus as much as possible.”
The noise level was beginning to wind down, when she looked up to find Cam in front of her table. She was surprised to see him.
“I thought you were playing a party out at Floores Country Store?”
He nodded. “We played a set at five-thirty and we’re not going on again until midnight. I thought I’d come and see what you were up to, give Kelly and the baby a chance to go home early.”
“I’m sure she’ll appreciate that,” Red told him. “I sure do. Would you like a cupcake? Not much of a reward, but they look pretty good.”
He grinned at her. “You look pretty good, too. Except for the hairstyle. Is that like a modified Princess Leia? I’ll just take my reward from you, next time we’ve got a half hour.”
Red didn’t get a chance to respond. Tasha Shakelford suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The young woman’s face was completely changed by the gorgeous smile that spread across her face.
“Tash!” Cam exclaimed and casually enveloped her into a hug that was so natural it seemed like they must have done it a million times. She was the perfect height and their bodies fit together like a matched set.
When they stepped apart, she continued to hold both his hands.
“It’s good to see you,” he said.
“When I saw you here,” she gushed, “I just had to come over and say hello.”
“Well, I’m glad you did,” Cam replied. “Have you met Red?”
She barely glanced in her direction. “Uh...yes, of course. We’re on the Cupcake Committee together.”
“How’s Shake?”
“Oh, he’s fine. The same.”
“And your son?” Cam said. “You do have a boy, right?”
“I have two boys now,” she said with a slight something in her voice that Red couldn’t quite interpret. It seemed part pride and part gloating. “You’re not keeping up, Cam,” she chastened. “Nearly all of us, your old friends, we’re still right here in town and we never see you.”
He shrugged. “I work mostly nights,” he said. “The rest of the world works mostly days.”
