“But … it’s your home.”
“I live in my mom’s boyfriend’s duplex. Nothing here is mine. I hate it here. The minute I graduate I’m leaving.”
“Where?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care. I’m hopping on a bus and going until I can’t go any farther. Until I find a place that feels like home.”
He’s quiet for a long time. “How will you know what home feels like?”
It hangs in the air between us, as frozen as our breaths. I don’t have an answer.
* * *
Ben pokes his head out of the kitchen window. “How were the waffles?”
Candy barely glances at him. “Fine. Thanks.”
He looks lost as he stares at her untouched plate. The waffles were crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside, with a Nutella filling and sliced strawberries on top. Unlike Candy’s, mine are gone.
“They were fantastic,” I offer, but he disappears, muttering to himself.
It’s three days until Christmas. The diner has never been busier. Locals come in whenever they can now. We’re also getting a holiday bump in freeway travelers, lured by the seasonal coincidence of our exit’s name. For once in my career, I don’t pity their optimism. The Christmas Café is—dare I say it—worth stopping for.
Ben whips out holiday-themed plate after plate. Every shift, he makes something new for Candy. And when she inevitably throws it up or rejects it in her zombie-like demeanor, he looks even more discouraged.
I grab Candy’s plate and turn toward the kitchen, looking up at my elf out of habit. Only he’s not holding a knife anymore. He’s holding a tiny glass vial with a skull-and-crossbones symbol on it.
I cackle so loudly that Candy jumps. She’s actually trembling.
“Sorry!” I say. She flees, straight to the bathroom.
I find Ben leaning over the counter, furiously crossing off items on a list. “Benedict! Are you the one who messed with my elf?”
He looks up, distracted, and then shakes his head as though clearing it. A smile crinkles his eyes as he pushes his hair away from his forehead. His goofy chef’s hat sits on the counter next to the paper and pen. “Not short for Benedict. But yes. I thought he ought to mix things up a bit.”
I laugh again, delighted. “Nobody even notices him except me.”
“I notice everything.” His eyes linger on my face before he blushes. He clears his throat a few times, toying with the pen. “This Christmas menu isn’t working. I don’t know what to do.”
I nudge him with my shoulder. “You always know what to do.”
A deep line has formed between his eyebrows. “I thought so, but nothing’s working.”
“Everything’s working! People have never been so happy to eat here. It’s like they actually enjoy living in Christmas.”
He looks back down at his paper. “Not you.”
I hover, torn between leaning into him and backing away. I can’t commit to this place or anyone in it. I have to be able to leave.
“And not Candy.” He drops the pen. “I haven’t made a single thing she’s liked.”
“Well, she’s puking all the time. Kinda throws things off.”
“I should be able to help. What would she like?”
“I don’t know. She used to be my friend, but then she stopped. She stopped being anything.” Just like my mom. They stopped being the people I needed them to be. “Don’t worry about it. She won’t let you do anything. No one can help her.”
Ben’s brown eyes are so soft, but somehow pierce right through me. “Someone needs to.”
Santa ho-ho-hos the arrival of a customer. Scowling, I head for the door. Ben crumples up his list and throws it in the trash.
* * *
Later that night I storm into the house, pulling on my house jacket with an annoyed huff.
“Maria? That you?”
“Yeah,” I shout, answering my mom.
“How was work, mija?”
The rest of my shift was terrible. Ben was being all, I don’t know, normal—he made people exactly what they ordered. I tried to complain to him about Paul McCartney simply having a wonderful Christmastime, and he just shrugged. Two people stiffed me on tips. And, to top it all off, Candy’s creepy boyfriend showed up early, while she was puking in the bathroom. She still hasn’t told him the news, so I had to lie and say it was food poisoning. His stare was even colder than this wretched duplex.
My mom’s standing over the stove, stirring a pot of macaroni. It gives me a pang of loneliness for Ben. Which makes me angrier, because why should I miss a person who I only left five minutes ago?
“Maria, we need to talk.” She points at a stack of envelopes on the table.
“Were you in my room?” The envelopes are college applications, mailed to me or forced on me by my school counselor. I tried to throw them away—so many times—because they’re pointless. But it felt too depressing to get rid of them, and too depressing to stare at what I can’t have, so I shoved them under my bed. Right next to the duffel bag I keep my tips in. “Did you take my stuff?”
“I was vacuuming. Why aren’t any of them opened? Where have you applied?”
“Did you take my money?”
“I would never take your money. I want to—”
“You take my money every day! I work my butt off at that stupid restaurant and you don’t even let me get my own checks.”
She sets her spoon down, looking worried. “I didn’t take any money from your room. I want to know which colleges you’ve applied to.”
I bark out a bitter laugh. “None. Why would I apply to college?”
Her eyes go wide. “None? You’re going to start missing deadlines!” She grabs at the envelopes, frantically searching through them. “What about this one? It’s in Barstow. It looks nice. Or Cal State San Bernardino. It’s not too far away.”
“I want to go far away! And since when am I going to college? We can’t afford that.”
She shoves the applications at me. “You can’t afford not to. You don’t want to be like me. We work so hard, and so long. We don’t want that for you. You deserve more.” Her eyes are intense, pleading. “Por favor, mija, necesitas aplicar. Para tu futuro.”
It’s the most Spanish she’s spoken to me in years. She always said we shouldn’t leave Rick out by using a language he doesn’t know. But hearing it now makes me feel like a kid again. So, like an obedient little girl, I grab the first application and start filling it out while she watches, holding her breath.
* * *
“Can you help me with a project?” I ask Ben, two days before Christmas. He’s slammed, doing as much prep work as he can, but he immediately stops.
“What do you need?”
“I want to make something. For my mom. Something special. But I don’t know how.”
“What were you thinking?”
“She used to tell me about rice pudding. Her grandma made it for them every Christmas. And she tried to make it a few years ago, but then she got sad and dumped it all down the sink, said it wasn’t right. She’s never tried again. She works really hard. She deserves some of your magic.”
Ben’s smile is the powdered sugar on top of a cookie. “I think we can do that.”
We work all morning. He shows me how to get the milk simmering at just the right rate. I scorch the first batch, and we have to throw it out. But Ben insists it’ll be more magical if I make it myself. So I try again. This time I keep the temperature steady. I skim the surface like he shows me, so that the milk doesn’t get a skin. We add the rice, and I tend to it with feverish intensity. He takes over the stirring while I mix together eggs, sugar, vanilla, more milk.
“It needs…” I tap my finger against the counter, glancing at him for clues. “Nutmeg?” He smiles wider. I sprinkle some in and pour the mixture into the rice on the stove. His body is next to mine, and we both lean in, breathing the sweet steam as it rises up. I turn my face and breathe him in, too. “Keep stirring?” I whisper.<
br />
He nods. And doesn’t move. So we stand, occupying the same space, watching as ordinary ingredients combine into something I hope will be magic.
* * *
“Mama?” I push the door shut with my foot, carefully holding the still-hot dish. Normally rice pudding is served cold, but when I sprinkled the cinnamon on top, it felt … right. Perfect. “Are you home?”
“We’re up here.”
I hurry upstairs. They’re just off a super-early morning shift. My mom wears her weariness beneath her eyes and in the slope of her shoulders, but she manages a smile for me. “Sit down,” I command. I put the pot on the stove as I get out two dishes. I hear Rick pop a disc into his DVD player. The familiar sounds of Bonanza’s opening theme trigger memories of insomnia-plagued nights.
“Does he still stay up watching that show until four every morning?” I stir the rice pudding one last time.
“Hmm? Oh, no. Why would he?”
“I thought he liked doing that.”
“You know he only did that for you, right?”
I stop stirring. “What?”
“I can’t stay awake for the life of me. Never been able to. But he didn’t want you to be alone, so he’d come out and watch television with you until you fell asleep.”
“He—but—I thought he didn’t need much sleep?”
“He was exhausted. But when he was growing up, he had a few years where he had insomnia, too. He said being awake when everyone else is sleeping was so lonely it made him feel crazy. He didn’t want you to feel that way.”
“That’s weird.” All those nights, all that sleep he gave up. It doesn’t make sense.
“How is it weird?”
“Well, I mean, he doesn’t really like me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He never talks to me. And when he does, he talks about when I leave. Like he’s counting down the days.”
“Sweetheart, Rick doesn’t talk much, period. And he is excited for you to leave. Who do you think tapes your report cards up on the fridge?”
I’m shocked. Rick? Plastering my name all over something that belongs to him?
“It was his idea to drive you to and from school. He didn’t want you wasting your time waiting for city buses. He worried your grades would suffer and you wouldn’t get into college.”
“I can’t afford college! And besides. The food. All the labels. The penny-pinching, refusing to turn up the heat. I’m an intruder in his space. He puts up with me because of you.”
Tears fill my mom’s eyes. “Oh, Maria. Why would you think that? You’ve felt like this all these years?”
My eyes are tearing up, too. I get out one more dish. One for Rick.
She takes my hand. “Do you remember your father at all?”
I shake my head.
“Good.” Her voice is fierce. “It’s one of the proudest points of my life that that man has no imprint on you. It wasn’t easy leaving. I had to sneak and save money for years before I had enough to get somewhere far away and safe. I was terrified you’d remember what it used to be like.”
“I don’t. I remember moving around until we settled here.”
She nods. “Rick can’t show affection the way most people do, but he doesn’t have a cruel bone in his body. And, after my life, he’s exactly what I needed. What we needed. I know Rick is odd. He labels his food so he can make sure that he’s not spending more on groceries than he needs to. We keep the heat off so that we can save more, the same reason we take overtime and holiday shifts. The same reason we put all your paychecks straight into savings. He’s been putting away money since the day we moved in. He—oh, we were gonna surprise you, but—Rick? I think we need to give Maria her present now.”
The television goes silent. Rick comes back in the kitchen, hands shoved deep into his Wranglers. “What about Christmas morning?”
My mom laughs, wiping away her tears. “It already smells like Christmas in here. Maria made rice pudding.” She leans over her bowl, breathes in deeply. I cross my fingers, praying I got it right. “Mí abuela used to make this for us. Then we’d sing and later we’d get an orange. Rice pudding and oranges.” She smiles, happy tears streaming down her face. “I’d actually forgotten what it was supposed to smell like. This is perfect.”
She takes a bite, sighs happily, and leans her head on my shoulder. I don’t know what it’s supposed to taste like, but I like what I made. If asked to describe the flavor I could really only say this: It’s warm. Perfectly warm. And with this in my mouth, I can understand a little of how my mom remembered Christmas feeling.
Rick has already eaten his whole bowl. He clears his throat, then says in an exaggeratedly careful accent, “Muchas gracias. Esta comida es muy buena. Me gusta.”
My mom gasps. I gape. Rick looks terrified as he continues. “Yo estoy aprendiendo español. Para hablar contigo. Por que … te amo.”
My mom fully bursts into tears, which makes poor Rick look even more horrified. “Did I do it wrong?” he asks.
“No!” I beam. Because now I understand he wasn’t trying to take anything away from me. He was just trying to fit better into our lives.
“That was wonderful,” my mom manages. “Muy, muy bien.”
Rick sighs in relief. He’s actually sweating. He must have been so nervous. It’s adorable, which I honestly cannot believe I’m thinking about Rick.
I look at my mom, really look at her for the first time in years. She’s beautiful. Sweet and soft and warm, too. I wonder how we went this long without talking about things that mattered. And why it took a pot of rice pudding for me to be able to see that—even though she’s not aggressively affectionate—she’s here. She’s always been here for me. She’s done the best she can.
“This is for you.” Rick slides over a sheet of paper to me. My mom gets up and stands behind him, squeezing his shoulder. The paper is a list of numbers. No … it’s a bank statement. For a savings account with forty thousand dollars in it.
Under my name.
“How—what—where did this come from?”
“I told you,” my mom says. “Rick started saving the day we moved in. Every bonus, everything we didn’t need to live on.”
“But … I can’t … what about you two? The mine won’t last forever. You won’t have any savings!” Here I was, hoarding every penny I made so that I could run away to my own empty future. And here they were, saving every penny they made so that my future was a better one than their families gave them.
I am the worst person in the world. I’m crying, both out of gratitude and guilt.
“We’ll be fine,” my mom says. “The mine has a few years left.”
“We can find work anywhere.” Rick’s voice is soft and even. I always thought of it as monotonous, but it’s more like the rice pudding. Gentle. “Wherever you end up, we can move and get jobs.”
“But this is your home,” I say.
Rick raises his eyebrows, surprised. “Wherever you two are is my home. Tu … eres mi casa. That probably wasn’t right.” He frowns.
I smash them both into a hug. Rick clears his throat, clearly uncomfortable, but I don’t care.
I was wrong.
I’ve been wrong for years.
Being wrong feels amazing.
* * *
On Christmas Eve, I show up at work to find Ben drizzling white chocolate onto peppermint bark. He’s muttering to himself again. It looks like he hasn’t slept.
“You’re incredible!” I throw my arms around him, hugging him from behind.
He startles. “What did I do?”
“The rice pudding! It was perfect!”
He puts his hands on top of mine, tentatively. “You did that, remember?”
“Only because you let me borrow your magic.” I’ve been hugging him for probably too long now. I don’t want to let go, but I begrudgingly release him and point at the peppermint bark. “What’s that for?”
“I thought maybe Candy might
like it. I don’t know. I can’t—it’s not working. Nothing’s working with her.” He hangs his head, and his laugh has a note of bitterness that stings my heart. “Maybe I was never magic to begin with. Maybe this whole thing is stupid.”
“Ben, I need to tell you—”
The animatronic Santa announces an arrival. I go up on my tiptoes and see the top of Jerry’s head. “Candy!” he shouts.
I push through the kitchen door with a scowl. “Are you here to apologize?”
Jerry looks at me. His gaze is even but his fists are clenched. “For what?”
“For your bratty girlfriend! If she was going to ditch her Christmas Eve shift and make me take it when I requested it off a month ago, the least she could have done is let me know. Ben had to call me in when she didn’t show.”
“She isn’t here?”
I gesture at the empty diner. “If she were here, why would I be? Tell her if she’s a no-show again, I’m calling Dottie.”
He takes a step closer, looming over me. Don’t look scared, Maria. Look angry.
“Any idea where she is?”
I roll my eyes. “She’s not my girlfriend, dude.”
His nostrils flare, and he leans even closer.
“Maria.” Ben is leaning in the doorway, casually holding a thick rolling pin. “I need some help back here.” He nods at Jerry. “Tell Candy to call the next time she’s not coming in, okay?”
Jerry storms out. I collapse against the counter, my heart racing. “Thanks.” I gesture at Ben’s rolling pin.
“Where is Candy? What was that all about?”
“She’s halfway to an Amtrak station, on her way to live with an old high school friend. Rick picked her up at four this morning, while Jerry was still on the night shift.” When I told my mom and Rick about my new tip-funded escape plan, this time featuring Candy, they didn’t even hesitate. Thinking about it gives me a burst of affection for Rick—silent, strange, gentle Rick.
“She’s leaving?”
“Not leaving. Already gone.”
Ben follows me back into the kitchen. I dip my finger into the bowl of white chocolate and lick it. “You were wrong. You are magic. But people don’t need to remember how it felt to be happy and safe in the past. They need to have hope that they can get there again in the future. And sometimes the only thing to make that happen is, say, enough money to get away.”
My True Love Gave To Me: Twelve Holiday Stories Page 27
