Holding the soft jersey tee in the panadería office only hardened one fact inside of me: My grief had changed, morphing from a line between two throbbing end points—Abuela and Andrés—to a new shape. A triangle.
And this trifecta loomed so large, I couldn’t shake it. I couldn’t find myself underneath the black emptiness. My heart fragmented and my breathing came like the prelude to a storm. I had to move. I had to run.
Recipe for Being Abandoned by Your Best Friend
From the Kitchen of Lila Reyes
Ingredients: One packed gym bag kept in Papi’s office. One pair of Nike running shoes. One neon blue tank. One pair of Adidas compression leggings.
Preparation: Change into your gear and flee out the rear service door. Go to your sweet birth city, your Miami. It’s large enough to take you in. Reclaim places and streets that knew you, that knew your love and joy before the last three months took so very much. Reclaim it all.
*Leave out rehashing Stefanie with your family. It’s your loss and you’re going to handle it.
Cooking Temp: 475 degrees—precisely how hot Miami feels when you’re running during the afternoon.
That afternoon, two weeks ago, I went to the rear parking lot and locked everything but my key fob and phone into my turquoise Mini Cooper. Bending and stretching, I prepared to do the thing I did second-best of all. I ran farther than ever before, the kind of distance people earn medals and ribbons for. My only prize was the worn-out reward of stubborn defiance. For hours, I pushed past every hazard sign my body threw out, crossing neighborhood boundaries, until dinnertime came and went. One thought cut through the sweat and heat and pain until my limbs finally shut down: If I traveled far enough, I might be able to run right out of my own skin.
Today I wonder if Stef was right, if I actually could have changed her mind. After all, my powers of persuasion hadn’t worked on my family.
I sink onto the gray velvet bench and try to be as still as possible. I pretend if I don’t move, the place I come from won’t either. West Dade will lock into space and time until I’m home again.
3
After twenty-four hours in my room, I have no idea about the outside temperature, or the number of steps between the inn and Winchester city center. I do know every mysterious smudge on the ceiling, and that it’s six steps from my doorway to the bathroom. Fifteen steps to the loft kitchen and back.
The Wallaces don’t comment on my hibernation, and I find meal trays on the kitchen counter—bless them. One had a note:
Rest. I’m updating your family. Mami’s only called six times.
—Cate
Cate’s also said nothing about the suitcases still propped by my door. About my powered-down phone perched on top of my powered-down laptop.
And then there’s Pilar. I picture my sister’s pert smile and her calm, rational eyes and wonder how many times she’s texted. Or did she power down from me, too, knowing I couldn’t stay away for long? I glance at my phone, the voice of the most precious person in my life, only twenty seconds away. But no. Not yet. I’m not quite ready for an actual conversation with her. At least one not seasoned with the best swear words I know, in two languages.
A white UM t-shirt may have provoked my run, but my flight to England might as well have been booked by one Pilar Veronica Reyes. Since landing, I’ve thought about the midnight scene in my West Dade bedroom a dozen times—the one unfolding after I took off running alone for hours from La Paloma. The aftermath was a hurricane. As irked as I am with my sister, I’m more furious with myself for being so sloppy.
My body had paid dearly for my recklessness, too. I remember the way everything ached. How the fibers of my gray and white comforter scraped against screaming muscles and sunburned skin.
“Más,” Pilar had said that night, holding out the hundredth spoonful of caldo de pollo. I had made this batch of Abuela’s magical chicken soup. That plus a generous coating of “Vivaporú”—Vicks VapoRub—could cure any ailment. “I said more, Lila,” she told my shaking head and tucked-in lips.
“Enough,” I said. My skull housed a bass drum.
Pili huffed and slammed the bowl down on my nightstand. This accounting major moved like an army nurse, stoic and strong, back to our little first-aid caddy.
Her hands rubbed more of the cool, tingling VapoRub onto my calves. I winced when she went in for another round of blister salve.
“Serves you right.” More salve on my heels and toes, patches of skin rubbed clean off. “If you never wear those red stiletto sandals again, it’s your own fault, hermana.”
Yes, my fault. It’s what I got for running for over five hours and more than twenty miles, all but crawling at the end. Once I’d started, I couldn’t stop. And I just hadn’t cared.
Pilar skittered around my bedroom, fluffing pillows and refilling my water glass, poking her head out to see where Mami and Papi were. She muttered hushed Spanish.
Ridiculous girl. Clueless, rash, and selfish. What if I hadn’t found you? What then? God, Lila.
This was what I heard.
This was what I saw.
Mami and Papi huddled in my doorway with their courtroom verdict. Papi’s head bent low, revealing his salt-and-pepper hair and sand-dollar bald spot.
Mami clutched a wad of tissues. “We just got off the phone with Catalina and Spencer.”
Her words came fast and harsh: England. Summer at the Owl and Crow. Cool down. Take some time.
At the end, Mami was crying and my chest was a hollow cavity.
“England? Are you kidding me?”
Papi stepped forward. “This is for your health. This spring was already unbearable for you, and now Stefanie has left.”
They just had to leave me alone. Let me fix it.
Mami brushed black waves from her face. “You think we don’t see you? Weeping in corners for weeks? Hunched over and almost running into the walls? Papi finding you crying in the panadería walk-in? Alone and freezing. That is not right, Lila.”
But it had felt more than right. I remembered the delicious relief of head-to-toe numbness, cooling the flaming loss of Abuela’s forehead kisses. And for Andrés, too. The way he used to hold me so tightly, so completely. Warmed from ankles to ears, his embrace was the one place I’d felt both as big as planets and as light as feathers. In the walk-in freezer, I’d only wanted a few moments of quiet relief. But Papi had barged in, worrying and overreacting.
“You can’t send me away.” Not from La Paloma. Not from my Miami. My family.
“But the neighborhood, también. They’re talking about you more than ever. You can’t heal when…”
When what? When my private business was whispered around town? Oh, it wasn’t hard to see why. It had been going on for three years. All I had to do was snag Andrés, son of prominent Congressman Millan of posh Coral Gables. Andrés was featured in local magazines and society columns. He’d flashed his movie star face on TV with his family during campaigns. Customers and neighbors and fellow shop owners shipped us; they thought our story was adorable. Four years ago, I’d catered his parents’ fund-raiser, where he’d tried his first Lila-made guava pastry. For two years, he came into La Paloma every week for more, until he finally asked me out. I was fifteen and head-over-pastelito for the congressman’s son.
A West Dade Cuban fairy tale. But Andrés canceled our castle.
My parents faced Pilar, practically turning their backs to me. “Elena from Dadeland Bridal came into La Paloma last week,” Mami said. She gulped back a sob. “She told me there was a game between the employees and some of the regular customers. They had a bet on when Lila would be picking out her vestido de boda.”
A wedding dress? Seriously? My blood passed through fire. “Mami! Do you hear yourself?” Just cut me open, spread the past three months all over my bedroom like another coat of pale blue.
“But it’s true,” Mami said. “And I’m so sorry.”
“Now the gossip has changed,” Papi told Pili. “Why di
d Andrés break up with her? How could Stefanie leave her best friend without any notice? Horrible. People talk at the bodegas, the grocery, the newsstands.”
Pilar sat on my bed. “I know. I hear it too.”
Was I even present here? Wasn’t this my life? Their little trio of oversharing went around and over the top, even right through the apparently invisible me. “Enough, okay?”
Finally, Mami looked at me. “It’s not enough because you never say anything to us about your feelings. We can’t help if we don’t know what’s going on.”
I straightened, my limbs lumbering and achy. “I don’t need to talk about my losses. I need to un-lose them.”
“What if that is impossible?” Mami asked.
Impossible. I’d heard this word before and pounded it like a hard coconut shell. Then I used the rich, white flesh to make a cake.
“You lost your abuelita,” Papi said softly. “The biggest part of your heart.”
“Papi.” The word was thick and dark, but I wouldn’t cry; they couldn’t have my tears. The pain was real and it was mine. Mine to suffer and mine to fix. Discussing my hurts didn’t make them theirs to “help” and direct. And now they wanted to “help” even more by sending me away?
“England will be good for you. The chisme will die down and you’ll come back refreshed—” Mami’s cell phone rang. “That’s Catalina.” She stepped out with Papi.
I held out wide, helpless arms to Pilar. I needed her to step in and shut down this ridiculous idea. She would. We were a team: las Reyes.
Now that I’d graduated, I was finally ready to step into my role as full-time head baker and future owner of Panadería La Paloma, right alongside Pilar. There would be no college degree for me––I’d already learned everything I needed from Abuela. The business was ours to take over in a year. Our legacy, our future. Abuela had started it, and we were supposed to carry it forward starting this summer. I couldn’t do that from across an entire ocean.
“I can’t wait to see what you do,” I said over a caustic laugh.
Pilar rose, urging another sip of water down my throat. This time I obeyed. “Do?”
“How you’ll get me out of this England scheme. We don’t have time for this. We need to plan the new business model and menu and staffing changes—”
“Lila.” She pivoted, her brown eyes hooded. “They’re right. You need this. I love you, but I have to let you go. Just for a little while, no?”
It was as if every footstep I’d left across Miami this afternoon turned back to stomp upon my chest. I shuddered. I could only shake my head. No. No. NO.
“I can’t.”
Pilar grabbed Abuela’s white apron with the blue scripted L on the front. She placed it into my arms. Hours ago, they had dripped with sweat and salt. “What would she say to this?” Pilar gestured to the disaster of my overworked body.
“Your sister is right, nena.” This from Mami, who had returned. “Abuelita left you her skill and drive. More than just her recipes. Honor that, Lila. You, in the walk-in, crying. You, a wreck, twenty miles away, scaring us, not caring for yourself—is that how she would want you to go on?” Tears leaked down Mami’s face. “How can you let her look down and see you like this?”
What I wanted to scream: How can I? I can because the one recipe Abuela never taught me was the one to make inside myself when she died and left us too soon. The one to make when a boy shattered my heart, and my dearest friend stomped on my trust.
What I actually said: “…”
Silent and shaking, I clutched the apron and held on to memory.
“Óyeme, mi amor,” Abuela had said months ago, after one of my fights with Andrés. “You love that boy like you love the kitchen.” She was stirring a bowl of mango glaze. “But you add yourself like too much sugar sometimes. Too much temperature.”
I had scoffed at that then. Brushed her off.
“Mi estrellita, if you shine too bright in his sky, you’re going to burn him out. Burn yourself out, también.”
That day, I’d burned my entire body out. I had turned up my own heat and lost control.
“Lila, you will go to England,” Mami had finally said. “We cannot give you the place Abuela built if you’re not well.”
And there it was.
But my run—the exhaustion, inside and out—had muzzled my fighting words. As Papi logged in to the British Airways website, I only stared at that L on the apron placket.
4
Two weeks after Papi booked my flight, Abuela’s white apron sits folded on a nightstand in England. It’s been more than a full day since I’ve landed, but I have barely left my bed.
I glance at the clock—eight p.m., and a cacophony of synths and pounding drumbeat roars from across the hall. It has to be from Gordon’s room. I can’t see Cate or Spencer blasting eighties rock between entertaining guests and managing the property. Just as I identify the group as Van Halen, the music stops. Not ten seconds later, a bass intro from another tune vibrates through the fine wood paneling, volume set to overload. Then… it stops after a few bars. ¿Cómo?
My eyes find rest and respite on my little altar of mementos—the framed photos and white t-shirt. The swoop of the embroidered blue L.
Los recuerdos have a unique kind of power, one of love and history and legacy. Here this memento calls me out sharply, decibels louder than the music, in the language that raised me. Abuela would never stand for me being this idle, barely leaving my bed for more than a day. For her, I will at least get up and unpack.
Just as I peel back my comforter, I’m greeted by a blaring wave of electronic techno-pop. All right, is it the universe’s turn, in the form of Gordon Wallace, to say my hibernation time is officially done? Either way, no. Racket this loud is not going to work for me the whole summer. Before I reach the door, the music stops abruptly, just like before. I wait for some terrible reprise, but nothing comes. “Hmm,” I tell myself and face my suitcases.
Ten minutes later, after dividing up shoes and clothes between the dresser and closet, I’m into my second bag. My flat iron and cosmetics case rest on top. But underneath my bathrobe I find a square notecard and my sister’s familiar scrawl.
Hermana, don’t be mad, but I know you.
Love you, but miss you more, already. —P
Don’t be mad? One never-fail way for Pili to make me mad is to tell me not to get mad, so I’m extra wary when I pull out a thick parcel. The first item out of the brown paper wrapping is a black merino wool sweater.
I did not pack a single sweater.
And then it gets out of control:
Another identical sweater in gray. Short, black waterproof trench coat. Two running jackets. Pair of dark skinny jeans. Two long sleeve tops, one in blue and white stripes and the other in solid navy. Finally, an oversized scarf in a gray and black abstract cheetah print.
Now I’m suspicious of everything in this suitcase. I rummage through for more evidence of tampering and find the black ankle boots Pilar bought when we visited New York last fall. I want to hug her. I want to throw one of these boots at her round, Cuban ass. Neither is an option, so I break my sister-silence and reach for my phone.
The lock screen lights up, showing four voicemails and sixteen text notifications from Mami. Nothing from Pilar.
“You knew, Pili!” I say when my sister’s oval-shaped face fills my FaceTime screen. She’s in Papi’s black leather chair in the back office of the panadería.
“Well, hello to you, too,” Pilar says. “No contact for two days and this is what I get?”
“I texted you and Mami when I landed.” I wave the black sweater in front of the phone. “You knew.”
“What, that you’d spite pack?”
I blow a single puff of air.
“And,” she goes on, “that when I’d go through your suitcase all I’d find would be las camisas pequeñas and sundresses? Of course I knew. And I was right. An English summer is not a normal summer. Mami told you how to prepare, Cat
e told you, and I told you, pero—”
“I’ll wear what I want.”
She sighs; I can almost feel the hot breath circling it. “Winchester is not Miami.”
I fling daggers into FaceTime.
“Lila, don’t you think I know? Me without you is never okay, but it was the only way.”
“I. Was. Handling. It,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Handling it? You, disappearing and Papi seeing your car in the lot and thinking… well what would you think seeing that? And when I finally found you… what I found? Dios, Lila, that is not handling it.”
Pilar rarely cries. She considers and dissects. She organizes and compartmentalizes. It’s one of the reasons we work so well together. I dream and create with eyes that are too big for everyone’s stomachs. Then I make the food that fills them to brims while she finds every way to sell it. But now she’s sniffling and dripping like a leaky faucet, and I am so dense to think I was ever the only one broken. The only one who has lost her abuela.
“Stop, Pili. I know I scared you. I just want to be home.” Home where I can put it all back together.
She blows a foghorn into a tissue. “Home hasn’t been good for you lately. You’ve proven that, okay?”
“The panadería—”
“—is something we’ve been over, what, twenty times? Angelina will do just fine.”
I don’t trust the new baker who’s only been training for a couple of months. “Temporarily.”
“Claro. It’s always going to be you and me. But I need my sister back. Take some time and let Cate take care of you.” She blows her nose again then leans in. “So what’s it like there?”
“You mean outside? I wouldn’t know.”
“I should’ve guessed by that trash heap you’re wearing as hair. But two days!”
“I’ll… tomorrow, okay?”
Music blasts again, drowning out her answer. This time it’s a screaming guitar riff. “Gordon,” I tell Pilar’s puzzled expression.
A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow Page 2
