Izzy As Is

by Tracie Banister

  “I’m still the fun one and I always will be. Fifty years from now, I’ll be leading the conga line at the old folks’ home.” Mamá starts to sway to the side and I have to give her a two-handed shove to get her back into an upright position. Once she’s there, Pilar and I both wrap an arm around her waist to steady her.

  “But you won’t have to live in the old folks’ home if you get married and have children who will take care of you,” Mamá tells me as we help her along the path to her bedroom.

  “She thinks she’s going to move in with one of us when she’s decrépita?” I whisper furtively over Mamá’s head.

  Pilar looks just as horrified by the thought as I am.

  “Maybe Ana will want her,” she whispers back. “She and Raymond have that casita behind their house, so there’s plenty of room at their place.”

  “I may be tipsy, but I’m not deaf,” Mamá reminds us. “And I am not living with Ana. Ever.”

  “Well, we have decades to figure all this out, so I think we should table this discussion for the time being,” my sister says right as we reach the foot of our parents’ king-sized bed and plunk Mamá down onto it.

  While Pilar removes the million and one decorative pillows artfully arranged at the top of the bed and places them on an upholstered bench by the window, Mamá gulps down more wine. I note that the bottle’s half-empty now, which means she should be passing out shortly. She sets the bottle down, wedging it between her thighs, and gazes at me searchingly. After a few seconds of this intense scrutiny, I start to worry that I’ve got food stuck to my face or she’s going to tell me I need to get my teeth whitened because all the café Cubanos I drink are staining them.

  “What?” I finally query.

  “I was just wondering why bringing Eduardo here tonight was something you had to be forced into?”

  I sigh with irritation because she’s making me repeat myself. “I told you when you called Eduardo and invited him to dinner without consulting me first that it was too soon. You don’t just spring a family like ours on a guy; you have to build up to it slowly and make sure he’s ready for the onslaught. Otherwise, you run the risk of scaring him off.”

  “And this is the type of man you think Eduardo is—weak, fickle, a fair-weather amor?”

  “No, I think he’s a stand-up guy, but his family situation is a world apart from ours. The Sandovals are polite, pleasant people, very even-keeled, no one rocks the boat in their house, there’s never any arguing, or crying, or attempts to emotionally blackmail each other. In fact, there’s no drama or scandalous behavior of any kind.”

  “They sound repressed,” Pilar comments as she turns back our parents’ custom-made floral-medallion jacquard bedspread.

  “I don’t remember asking for your shrink-y opinion,” I bite back.

  “Just an observation. I’m not saying that two people from dissimilar backgrounds can’t meet in the middle and learn from each other.”

  “The only thing Eduardo learned tonight is that our family is a loud, chaotic, hot mess.”

  “Ay!” Mamá throws her hands in the air. “You’re ashamed of us! You don’t think we’re good enough for this rich boyfriend of yours.”

  “That’s not what I said.” I thought it, but I didn’t say it.

  “Perhaps our family didn’t make the best first impression on Eduardo,” my mother concedes, which is a shock because she rarely admits to screwing up or being in the wrong. “But you can blame your aunts and cousins for that.”

  And I spoke too soon. She’s not taking responsibility for anything; she’s going to play the victim (her favorite role).

  “I did all I could to make tonight perfecto, but I was thwarted at every turn by those difficult women, and Rique of course. I still can’t believe he brought one of his rats to my dinner party!”

  “Ferret,” Pilar and I correct her at the same time.

  “Just as repugnante.” She shudders and lifts the bottle of wine to her lips again. “That boy is not right in the head. And he wasn’t even invited! He just showed up with Drina, looking for a free meal like always.”

  “Of course, Mamá, it’s all their fault,” Pilar says soothingly. “Here,” she pats the two puffy pillows she’s stacked at the top of the bed. “Why don’t you lay your head down and rest? You’ve had a trying evening.”

  Yeah, I’m sure she’s exhausted from her multiple hissy fits.

  “I am emotionally spent, and my head is splitting.” She raises a hand to her forehead.

  “Well, you’ve got some aspirin right here.” Pilar lifts the bottle of white tablets sitting on Mamá’s bedside table.

  “Sí, I’ve been taking one every day for my heart.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your—”

  Pilar cuts me off with a quelling glance, and I don’t complete the sentence because I know she’s right. There’s no point in arguing about this with Mamá now, even if the ECG did prove once and for all that her heart is fine. Her mental health on the other hand . . .

  “Come on.” I haul my mother up onto her feet and guide her over to where Pilar is standing. She relinquishes the wine bottle to me before reclining, with her head propped up on the pillows. As her eyes drift close, I take a step back, preparing to make a tactical retreat from the room, but her hand shoots out and grabs mine.

  “Isidora!” Her thickly lashed eyes are open again. “Please give Eduardo my apologies for leaving the party early and tell him how glad I am he came tonight. We will have to do it again soon, and he can bring his parents next time.”

  That’ll be a cold day in Miami, which is to say never since our temps don’t even dip below sixty in the winter here.

  “Sure, Mamá.” I try to extract my hand from her surprisingly strong grasp.

  “All I ever wanted was for you to be happy, mija. High-spirited women like us, we need a good, strong man to keep us grounded, and that man needs to love us for what’s on the inside, not just the pretty packaging. I’m lucky your father and I met when I was young and I’ve had him by my side through all of life’s ups and downs. I’ve been worried that you’d never know a relationship like ours, but I think Eduardo could be the one to give you that unconditional love and support.”

  Mamá thinks my dynamic with Eduardo is comparable to hers with my father? We couldn’t be more different than the two of them! Okay, yes, Eduardo is a smart, successful businessman like Papá, and he has a steady temperament that balances out my more volatile— Oh, God, we are like a younger, more attractive version of my parents! How did I not see this before? All right, well, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. They’ve been happily (sort of) married for four decades and they haven’t killed each other yet, which means that what they’ve got going works. I’ll just focus on that and try not to get squicked out by the fact that I’m sleeping with a guy who shares a personality with my father.

  “We’ll see.” I pat her hand. “I should probably go check on Eduardo before Papá gets him sick on one of his Cohibas.”

  “You do that, mija.” With an approving smile curling the corners of her lips, she releases my hand and closes her eyes.

  I scurry back up the hallway and through the living room where I wave off offers of the mango cheesecake ice cream the rest of my family is noshing on. (Mamá is going to be apoplectic if they’ve wiped out her stash in the freezer.) I slide open the glass doors leading out to the terrace and am met by a pungent cloud of cigar smoke. My eyes instantly water and I almost choke, but I push through to find my boyfriend and father leaning casually against the railing that encloses the terrace, engaged in conversation, looking like a couple of longtime bros.

  Eduardo’s back is to me, so it’s Papá who notices me first while he’s taking a draw on his huge Cohiba. He exhales a white plume of smoke and says, “Yes, mija?”

  “Thought you should know that Mamá’s smashed and has retired for the evening.”

  “¡Qué lástima! I must check on her. If you’ll excuse me, Eduard
o.” He offers my boyfriend his hand. While they shake, Papá asserts, “I very much enjoyed our conversation and look forward to continuing it another time.”

  “Yo también,” Eduardo echoes the sentiment.

  As soon as my father’s gone and we’re alone on the terrace, with the closed sliding glass doors finally giving us some privacy, Eduardo puts out his stinky cigar in a nearby ashtray.

  “I’m so sorry. I would have come out here to save you sooner, but I had to deal with more Mamá drama.” The words fall out of my mouth in a breathless rush.

  “It’s okay. I really like your father,” he assures me. “We had a nice chat.”

  “That’s disturbingly cryptic. You’re sure he didn’t say or do anything that made you feel uncomfortable or pressured.”

  “Well . . .”

  “I knew it! Argh!” I raise my clenched fists to the sky. “This is the perfect, humiliating capper to this disastrous night. You’ve been cried on; grilled like a murder suspect; groped and propositioned by the family ‘ho; bitten by a crazed, super-sized rat . . . Oh, how’s your hand, by the way?”

  Eduardo lifts the bandaged appendage from the railing where he was resting it. “Fine . . . I think. I lost feeling in it a while ago.”

  “What? Let me see.” I take his injured hand in both of mine and do a quick examination. “Good grief! Mamá wrapped this so tight; she’s cut off your circulation. It’s supposed to be a bandage, not a damn tourniquet! Why didn’t you say something?” I start unfurling the gauze.

  “I wanted her to like me,” he divulges, with an embarrassed smile.

  “You’re handsome and you’re loaded. That automatically puts you at the top of my mother’s list. If she could, I’m pretty sure she’d ask your parents to child swap with her.”

  “That might be interesting. The Alvarez family is very—”

  “Opinionated, obnoxious, melodramatic, combative, deranged.”

  Eduardo chuckles. “You did warn me.” He flexes his hand, which is now free from the bandaging.

  “Yeah, but my family managed to ratchet up their lunacy to a new level tonight. I felt like I was back on the set of Éxtasis y Engaño.”

  “Ah, but if we were in a telenovela,” he snakes his arm around my waist and pulls me close, “wouldn’t we be the star-crossed lovers who fight against all the odds, including their interfering, drama-prone families, so that they can be together?”

  “We would, but then you might not be Eduardo. You might be his evil twin, Ernesto, who came back from the dead and threw his brother down a well, then assumed his identity so that he could take over the family business and sleep with me.”

  His brow furrows. “But surely you would know that Ernesto wasn’t me when he made love to you.”

  “I don’t know. I mean, you are identical twins. Maybe the two of you have the same moves in the bedroom,” I tease him.

  “I am suddenly very glad I don’t have any brothers.”

  I start playing with his tie, slowly sliding one hand down from the knot, then repeating the motion with my other hand. “And I’m very glad you don’t want to break up with me after undergoing this trial by fire with my family.”

  “It was actually kind of entertaining,” he admits, his eyes dropping down to watch me stroke his tie. “Not that I’d want to experience it on a nightly basis or anything—”

  “Enough said. I promise I won’t subject you to them in the future unless absolutely necessary, but you have to learn how to tell my mother ‘no.’”

  “I’ll work on that. Speaking of work . . .,” he trails off, wincing guiltily.

  “Oh, no.” I drop my hands. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

  “Probably not, but I have to go back to the office and hammer out that contract with Gillian. She can’t finish it without me, and we really need to get all the kinks ironed out ahead of this meeting with our potential distributor tomorrow. Before you get mad . . .,” he holds up his hand to stop me when I open my mouth to protest, “. . . remember I didn’t break up with you over circumstances that were beyond your control, soooooo . . .”

  “I guess it behooves me to be a good girlfriend and say, ‘Okay, honey, you do what you gotta do,’ but just know . . .” I brush my lips against his. “. . . that this ruins all my plans to make this cringe-inducing night up to you when we get back to your place. So, good luck staying focused on that boring, old contract when your mind keeps wandering to what you’re missing out on.”

  I give him a flirtatious wink and walk toward the sliding glass doors, swishing my hips from side-to-side in an exaggerated fashion.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Come on, Z. You know you want to.”

  “I most assuredly do not want to eat Junior Mints mixed with popcorn. That sounds gross.”

  We both take a step forward as the line leading up to the concession stand moves. It’s a good thing we got here early because our fave movie theater, a three-floor, art deco-style building that houses eighteen screens including an IMAX, is packed, presumably because a couple of hotly anticipated movies just opened. There’s a wide variety of people here, too—loved up couples (bet they’re going to see the new rom com with Emma Stone), small fry with their parents (Disney worshippers no doubt), and groups of phone-fixated teens who probably got tickets to the same horror flick we did, except they had to use fake IDs because it’s rated R (for revolting and racy, I’m hoping).

  “Okay, then you pick the candy.”

  Zane squints thoughtfully at the glass display case filled with sugary treats up ahead. “Skittles,” he finally decides.

  “Let me rephrase. Pick something chocolate-y.” I’m PMSing big time and am in dire need of the sweet, brown stuff, which is why I suggested this snack food mash-up to begin with.

  “M&Ms.”

  “Classic or peanut? And please keep in mind that the wrong answer could end our friendship.”

  “Peanut . . . duh,” Zane retorts.

  “Good call.”

  We’re up at the counter now, and Z orders the combo that gets us a big bucket of buttered popcorn and two large Diet Cokes, then adds on a couple bags of peanut M&Ms, all of which totals up to more than the cost of our movie tickets. I don’t care, of course, because Zane’s footing the bill for everything.

  I doctor up the popcorn with lots of salt, toss in the candy, then shove a handful of the resulting concoction in my mouth. “Ohmigod, this is amazing! Best dinner ever!”

  “Not bad,” Zane decrees after taking his own bite.

  We keep munching away as we walk down the long, carpeted corridor that will take us to our designated theater.

  “Fright Site gave this movie nine out of ten severed heads.” My words are garbled because my mouth is crammed full of food, but Z doesn’t have any trouble understanding me.

  “It must be super gory then.”

  “I heard several people puked at the early screenings.”

  “That’s awesome,” Zane says, and I nod in agreement. The scarier and more stomach-churning a movie is, the more the two of us love it. We can’t get enough brain-eating zombies, psychopathic serial killers, slime-oozing aliens, or haunted places infested with vengeful ghosts. The rest of our friends are total wusses about all of the above, so it’s always just Zane and me when one of these films comes out.

  We stop to examine the movie poster for Boardwalk Bloodbath that’s displayed outside the theater. As you would imagine, it’s an image of a wooden walkway next to a beach that looks idyllic except it’s littered with dismembered corpses being feasted on by crows (or maybe ravens, whatever, they’re scary, black birds who like to eat eyeballs).

  “I’m digging the color saturation on this,” Zane comments.

  “Uh, yeah.” I have no idea what he’s talking about, which is par for the course when he gets arty on me. “We should go inside and grab some seats. You know I like to be dead center.”

  “That’s appropriate, considering the movie.” With a smirk, Zane pu
lls open the theater door for me since I’ve got my Big Gulp-sized soda in one hand and I’m clutching the popcorn to my chest with the other.

  We find some good seats and make ourselves comfortable. I’m slurping on my Diet Coke when Z says, “I’m surprised you wanted to come see this tonight.”

  “We always see horror movies on opening night, don’t we?” Reaching into the popcorn bucket, my fingers brush against Z’s and he quickly retracts his hand.

  “Yeah, but Friday night is date night, and I figured you’d have plans with Eduardo.”

  I shrug. “He had a business dinner with his father and some other muckety-mucks. He knows that horror movies are our thing and he’s not a fan, so he told me to go with you and have fun.”

  Zane cherry picks several blue M&Ms out of the popcorn. “That’s cool that he doesn’t mind you going out with your guy friends.”

  “Mmmm hmmm,” I murmur noncommitally, suddenly finding the trivia question up on the movie screen totally fascinating. How many films has Freddy Krueger appeared in? Let’s see, there were the five Nightmare on Elm Streets and that Freddy vs. Jason movie—

  “Izzy, look at me,” Zane commands, and I turn to him with what I hope is a very innocent expression on my face. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Well . . .” I drag out my confession by popping a few kernels of popcorn in my mouth. “The reason Eduardo doesn’t mind me hanging out with you is because . . . hethinksyouregay,” I say the last few words as fast as I can.

  Z’s jaw drops, and he appears to be at a loss for words. So, I seize the opportunity to defend myself.

  “You don’t know how Latin men are. They get jealous over every little thing and they don’t really understand the concept of a platonic friendship between a man and a woman. It just makes things easier for me if Eduardo doesn’t perceive you as any kind of a threat. That way I can spend as much time with you as I want and he doesn’t question it. Just like he doesn’t question me texting into the wee hours or getting mani/pedis with Nacho. Eduardo thinks the two of you used to be a couple, by the way.”

  “Is there anything you don’t lie to that man about? First, your job. Now, your friends. And you met him under false pretenses to begin with.” Zane shakes his head disparagingly.