by OSTOW, MICOL
The sight of the casket, too, is disturbing. In part because it’s the only time I’ve ever been up close and personal with a dead body, sure, but in part because there’s a nagging feeling inside me, a sense of loss. And that confuses me entirely. How can you lose something you never had to begin with?
When Rosa hugged me, I felt awkward, of course. How could you not, smothered by a near stranger? But there were other emotions lingering beneath the surface too. Emotions that startled me. Her warmth was . . . comforting. But why did I need comfort for someone I’d never known? Lucy needed comfort way more than I did. She was the one whose abuelita had died. Which may have explained why her distrust and attitude felt warranted somehow.
I glance at the children in the corner. They have abandoned their toys and are now busy constructing some sort of sculpture over in the dirt heap. They’re speaking rapid-fire Spanish that I can’t make out from where I’m standing.
Three years of honors language classes and I’m useless at a distance of more than five feet. I briefly contemplate joining them over on the ground—I was a whiz at sand castles when I was younger—but remember I’m still wearing stockings. And even if I weren’t, it’s way too hot for that this afternoon.
So instead I gaze at them, continuing to appear utterly unconcerned.
Two
Saturday morning. I awake to a room that’s thick with darkness. But I’m bright-eyed, and so it must be morning. My body clock is never wrong. I sit up, adjusting, and then it hits me.
Puerto Rico. I’m in Puerto Rico. We’re staying on Isla Verde, which I know is a top resort beach. Isabelle and Adrienne were optimistic when they heard, helped me choose a super-skimpy bikini for the suitcase, something I can’t believe I own and would certainly never wear. On the bed next to mine Max snores heavily. I’m surprised the noise didn’t wake me sooner. I guess I was more tired than I realized.
I tiptoe out of bed and toward the window, peeking my head tentatively underneath the blackout curtain. I’m rewarded with a burst of sunlight so strong that I physically recoil. The ocean glitters. I glance toward the clock on my nightstand: 8:05. I’m not sure what the day’s itinerary is, but I’m pretty sure nothing major is going to go down for at least another hour or two. And I am in Puerto Rico, after all.
What was it that Max said at the wake? “It’s a party”?
I quietly make my way toward my suitcase, groping inside it in the dark. In a moment I’ve fished out a swim-suit—not the one that Ade and Izzy picked out, but something sportier, sturdier.
I could use something sturdy, I think. Today I’m feeling a bit insubstantial.
“You’re going where?” Adrienne asked, her brows knit together in confusion. “When?”
“Puerto Rico,” I said for the second time, working a nail file across the jagged edge of the thumbnail I’d been chewing all afternoon. “Tomorrow.”
“It’s your grandma that died?” Isabelle asked.
“Yes.” I put the nail file down and looked at them both. Adrienne was flopped backward in the oversized rocking chair my mother rescued from a neighborhood yard sale; Isabelle was sprawled on her stomach, flipping idly through a magazine. Both seemed only mildly concerned about this development. But it was hard to expect them to get particularly upset about someone I had never really even mentioned before.
“I told you my mother’s family was Puerto Rican,” I said, stating the obvious.
“Yeah, but . . .” Adrienne trailed off. “You never talk about them.”
“I never have anything to say.”
Understatement. Huge, honking understatement.
Isabelle drummed her fingers against her magazine. “You’ll be back next week?”
I nodded. “We’re just going for the funeral. It’s Saturday. And I guess we’ll stay the weekend. But Dad promises I’ll be back in time to catch whatever cheesy blockbuster is opening next weekend.” I felt slightly guilty that the trip seemed little more than an inconvenience. But then, it wasn’t my fault that I’d never met my mother’s family.
“Good,” Isabelle said. “Because we need to start packing for our trip.”
The vacation had been Izzy’s idea, a six-week, cross-country spree. “Like Thelma and Louise. Except without the crime and the death,” she said.
“Or Brad Pitt,” Ade pointed out helpfully.
“You never know.” Isabelle wagged her eyebrows suggestively. She’d broken up with Ryan, her boyfriend, ages ago, just after Christmas break. We’d all been shocked since they were Woodland’s alpha couple. But Izzy was nothing if not pragmatic: “Please. Like we’re going to stay together when we’re off at separate colleges? Better to get this over with now so we can enjoy our senior year, right?”
“Right,” Ade had affirmed.
Unlike myself, Adrienne hated to be tethered to one guy. She didn’t sleep around, but she definitely liked male attention. Isabelle didn’t mind—as long as she and her relationships were still the main focus of Adrienne’s attention.
Personally, I preferred to be out of the spotlight. Noah and I had started dating in September, and it was my first real relationship. He was totally hot—I had noticed him the year before, when he transferred in from a prep school in Connecticut—and while I wasn’t surprised that he asked me out, in some ways he was different than I expected my first boyfriend to be.
Noah was louder, with a confident laugh and a pronounced stride. But he was thoughtful when we were alone together. Like it was some huge secret that he wasn’t a total Y-chromosomed jerk. He played soccer with Ryan and some other guys we hung with, which put him in some sort of comfort zone or something, so Izzy and Ade were totally supportive.
I had worried briefly when Isabelle broke up with Ryan that it’d be awkward, me having a boyfriend, but the stressing turned out to be totally pointless. Izzy was cool with being single, and Ade was always being pursued by a million different guys. For the most part, our Saturday nights didn’t change one bit: that is, we still spent them at the mall or the movie theater or camped out in the basement of whoever’s parents’ house for the night or, if we were lucky, the weekend. The boys—including Ryan and Noah—were just there with us. And I enjoyed it—a lot—even if somewhere, somehow, I wondered if there wasn’t a deeper level of connection that Noah and I were missing.
Sometime around March, Izzy had hit on the idea of a road trip. Just the three of us, over the summer. A sort of graduation present to ourselves. We’d go cross-country in her SUV, which wasn’t so environmentally conscious but was still the best shot we had at actually making it to sunny Cal. Adrienne shared her car with her younger sister, who would definitely not be okay with saying good-bye to her wheels all summer long. My own vehicle, a cute two-door, was not only too small for our purposes but too “previously owned” as well. Not Thelma and Louise material.
When I first told my parents about the trip, they balked. Yadda yadda job, yadda yadda preparing for college, yadda yadda soon you’ll be off at Brown and we’ll never see you. Then my father made the grave tactical error of invoking “the dangers of three women alone on the road together.” The look on Mom’s face told me I could start packing any old time.
A week after that conversation she took me to the local mechanic’s and taught me how to change a tire. And upgraded my Triple-A service.
Noah said he’d miss me but agreed that the trip sounded awesome. Being separated for six weeks over the summer made me slightly nervous. We had studiously avoided any discussion of “us, post-high school,” and I wasn’t totally sure where, if anywhere, “we” were going—but the trip was definitely an opportunity not to be missed. Newly inaugurated into the cult of roadside assistance, I bought a slew of maps and budget-conscious guidebooks with cute, quirky titles. We plotted our entire trip—three weeks one way, three weeks back, barring unforeseen catastrophe.
We were set to leave a week from Friday. A week from my grandmother’s funeral. Grandma Rosa, that was.
“I kno
w, I need to pack, but like I said, the funeral is tomorrow. We are coming back on Sunday. That gives me four whole days when I get back. It’s no problem.” What would I need other than a few pair of cutoffs and some tank tops?
Isabelle looked doubtful. I knew it would take her at least a week just to pare down the contents of her closet.
“Like Sophie’s Choice. But with clothes,” as she would put it.
“Isabelle. Come on. Emily’s right.”
Adrienne, our own personal reality check.
“It’s Thursday. And it’s just going to be us three on the road.”
“But you have to be prepared for any contingency,” Iz insisted.
“Right. Disco gear, scuba gear, spelunking gear, drag-race gear,” I teased. “On the list. Every possible contingency. In fact, you two should get started—that way I can just follow your lead.”
“You’re so funny,” she said, deadpan.
“Monday,” I promised. “Monday I will break out my all-purpose wear.”
Surprisingly, I am not the only person out on the beach this early. I pass a scattering of sunbathers stretched across lounge chairs, working on their tans as though it were a paying job: shoulders squared and greased. Max and I usually brown, even without meaning to; one long bike ride and our cheeks are flushed bronze. Until now, that’s as close as we’ve come to our inner Ramírezes.
I don’t blame my mom, necessarily, for cutting us off from her former life. Which is not the same as saying that I understand why she made the choice she did. But I respect it, I guess. I don’t imagine that her family had very much money. I don’t think her sisters went to college. I don’t know if they encouraged her to pursue a career. So maybe she thought a separation was the only way out? The only way to get ahead?
I’m only guessing here. Reaching. These are assumptions. Point being, my mom’s decision was just that—her own.
I don’t resent her choice. But it puts me in a curious position right now, feeling like an interloper among my own family. Affected by a death but not feeling entitled to my emotions.
I step past the early birds and make my way to the water’s edge, dipping my toe in tentatively. It’s warm enough to bathe in. I make my way slowly down the shoreline, taking in the expanse of hotels, bars, and restaurants. It’s clear we are in serious tourist territory here, but two blocks out it’s strip-mall city. My mother says the locals still like Isla Verde, even though it’s not totally their own anymore.
She told us this at the airport, just as we boarded the plane. As if she’d been here recently—as if she knew.
There is a breeze playing off the surface of the ocean that brushes my hair off my face. The air feels light here by the water, not humid and cloying like it is on the beaches in New York. It’s deceptive, I know. The breeze brings the temperature down by five degrees or so. It makes you forget how hot the sun is down here, so close to the equator. It’s a false sense of security, the atmosphere along the shoreline. In weather like this, you could easily forget about sunscreen. But then you’d burn in an instant. Before you even realized what was happening.
Dinner is at our aunt Rosa’s, my mother’s next-oldest sister. It goes Amalia, Eva, Rosa, Gloria. My mother, Gloria, is the youngest. I just learned this the other day, after the wake, after seeing my mother and her sisters all lined up in a row. Watching them together, it is nearly impossible to discern the birth order. My mother’s face is smoothest, but beyond that it’s anyone’s guess. Eva has two sons, Carlos and Juan, both of whom are gargantuan, muscled, and near silent. Rosa’s son, José, waved to me grudgingly at the funeral but only when prompted by his mother, who waved at my mother only slightly less grudgingly. And unlike the myriad of female cousins that I’ve just discovered, these boys are nowhere to be found at dinner.
When we arrive, it’s chaos, a mass of bodies weaving in and out of each other, some carrying plastic cups and paper plates, some balancing wriggling babies on ample hips. The women are at work multitasking—barking into the telephone, wiping grimy young faces, tossing trash into large plastic bags. Lucy is among them, I note without surprise, wiping down countertops efficiently. The men—vastly outnumbered—are for the most part gathered around an ancient television tuned to a Spanish variety show. On-screen, redheads in halter tops chirp brightly and gesticulate with lacquered fingernails.
Max just shakes his head. I’m sure he’s dying for a smoke, but there’s nowhere for him to disappear to. He knows my mother would freak out—and now is really not the time to test her.
“How long do you think we’re staying?” he asks. He has a copy of Ulysses in his jacket pocket, but he wouldn’t dare break it out in plain sight. Ten bucks says he cracks before the end of the night—crouches in a bathroom or under a table to knock off a chapter or two. Funny that he hides his reading as furtively as he does his smoking.
Or maybe that’s sort of sad, considering. Other kids do drugs; my brother hides his classics habit.
“Are you hungry?” my dad asks. “There’s a ton of food.” He shrugs his shoulder in the general direction of the kitchen.
I tiptoe toward the madhouse of meal preparation. A wave of thick, dense air ripe with cooking smells hits me dead on. Every square inch of the room is covered with people, not one of whom I recognize.
Wham.
I recoil as my big toe is smashed into the floor. An involuntary “ow” escapes me.
“Perdón, lo siento—” My assaulter stops short. Her brown eyes flash.
“Lucy,” I realize.
“Emily.” She does not look pleased to see me. “Excuse me.” She steps around me awkwardly, raising her arms so as not to hit me with the platter of fried bananas that she is carrying.
“Emily.”
Another platter—much heavier than it looks—is placed in my arms. Lucy’s mother, Rosa, levels me with a gaze. “Diga a los muchachos que necesitan comer ahora.”
She could be speaking Martian for all I understand. The edges of the platter dig into the flesh of my inner forearms.
“¿Sí? ¿Y qué es el problema?”
This time I know exactly what she’s saying. But I’m choking somehow on my tongue, tripping on the words. I can’t think of what to say or how. What is my problem?
“Emily.”
I look up. This time it’s my mother. I’m expecting her to be at least semi-amused by my ineptitude, but instead her face is blank, her eyes hollow and tired. “Emily, take the plátanos to the living room. Where Lucy went.”
To Rosa she says, “She doesn’t speak Spanish.”
Mute, I backtrack carefully out into the melee, leading hip first over to the chipped Formica table where Lucy has laid her platter. I set mine down beside it. Lucy has her back to me, but she turns when she hears me.
“Thanks,” she says automatically. “My mom asked you to?” It’s an observation, not a question. I nod. Like there’s no other way I’d be pitching in. I guess I’m not as . . . domestic as she is.
Max shuffles over to investigate. “Bananas?” He leans into the steaming towers of grease-slicked fruit and sniffs.
“Plátanos,” Lucy corrects him.
He spears one with a plastic fork, shoves it into his mouth, chews thoughtfully for a moment or two. “Bananas,” he decides after he’s swallowed. “Not very ripe.” He puts down his fork and wanders off.
Lucy stares after him for a beat, then back down to the table. Pointedly she picks up his fork and drops it in the nearest garbage can.
I shrug. “He’s fourteen,” I say, as though he couldn’t possibly know better.
“You’re not,” she counters.
And she’s gone.
It occurs to me that Lucy doesn’t much like me. It’s an uncommon situation for me to be in. Avoiding conflict is sort of my thing. I’d rather gnaw my own arm off at the elbow than challenge Lucy on her words or call Noah out for being late to pick me up on a Saturday night.
Pathetic but true. What can I say? I hate tension. A
nd the tension here is thick as Elmer’s glue.
I survey the scene once more: Max has abandoned me, no doubt curled up clandestinely with James Joyce. My father is settled precariously on the edge of an overstuffed couch, concentrating aggressively on the variety show. The big-haired women have been replaced by a dog on a unicycle accompanied by a mariachi player. My only recourse, I decide, is a bathroom break.
When I emerge from the powder room, I find my mother huddled against the wall with Rosa and Eva. Eva’s eyes are red-rimmed, and she’s sniffling. My mother supports her with one arm around Eva’s waist. Rosa pats Eva’s shoulder. Rosa and my mother seem uncomfortable with each other. Then again, uncomfortable seems to be the norm here.
“Mira, it’s the nuyorican!” Rosa laughs. It’s clearly an attempt to cheer Eva up. She reaches out, and for one horrifying moment I actually think she’s going to pinch my ass, but instead she merely grabs my cheek—the one on my face—between her thumb and forefinger and squeezes. It’s all I can do not to cry out. My abject terror must be obvious because she cackles even more wildly, her whole body shaking with the exertion.“Te enseñaremos el español, mamita,” she says. “We’ll teach you Spanish yet.”
“She took it in school,” my mother says, expressionless.
“I did,” I say lamely. “I got an A.”
We leave before I’m desperate enough to try a fried plantain or a piece of chorizo. We wrest Max from the tiny basement bedroom he has discovered—Joyce has been highlighted many passages over—and cab it back to the hotel. My father wants a good night’s sleep so he can be fresh for travel tomorrow morning. Our flight is at 1 p.m., but he’ll be up by eight, packing.
Later, much later, as I lie in bed waiting for sleep, I realize something that hadn’t registered even as I stood before it. Amid the scents and sounds of Eva’s kitchen: the vision of my mother holding a cigarette. She’s back to smoking.
