These Dreams Which Cannot Last

by Matt Flickinger

  “That’s clever.”

  “They were so lit. Especially the bass player, Miguel. They have this one song ‘leaving.’ It’s so good—”

  Zain’s phone dings.

  Aunt Mellie sets her glass on the table, “moment of truth!”

  Zain pulls up the text. Charlotte’s face is all scrunched up, her tongue sticking out between her teeth. She was probably going for punk, like that singer she talked about on their walk the other night, Sid Vicious. The picture is actually perfect, though. Rebellious and still beautiful. Zain laughs, handing over the phone. Aunt Mellie smiles and takes the phone, quickly. Her smile fades a bit when she sees the picture.

  “What?” Zain asks.

  “She is not what I was expecting,” Aunt Charlotte says, looking up at Zain. Her eyes are different, not playful. More like she’s looking at a stranger.

  “She was just being weird. I can ask her to send another—”

  “Zain. She is beautiful.”

  “I told you,” Zain says, taking back his phone.

  “She’s older?”

  “She’s a junior,” Zain says. Aunt Mellie takes another drink, that weird look still in her eyes, even though she’s no longer looking at him. Zain takes another sip of Coke.

  “I don’t know what I was expecting,” Aunt Mellie says, finally. “I just thought she’d be younger, I guess. Eventually…I knew, you’d have girlfriends like this. Once you… just not so soon.” She looks at him again, a bit of sadness mixed in now, “It makes sense, though. Charlotte is exquisite, Zain.”

  What just happened? he thinks. Why is Aunt Mellie acting so weird? As Zain pulls up the picture again, the waiter sets their food in front of them. Zain’s plate is a heaping mound of steaming red shrimp spilling over a pile of rice, a whole avocado spread over the top. It smells incredible.

  Aunt Mellie unwraps her silverware and spreads the napkin across her lap. She looks over at Zain’s plate, “nice choice.”

  “It smells so good.”

  They eat in silence. The shrimp is spicy and soft. So yummy.

  “I’m happy you’re here,” Aunt Mellie says.

  “Me too,” Zain says, wiping his mouth. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you for joining me. You’ve grown up so much since I saw you last. I’m sorry I’ve missed so much.” She looks like she wants to say something else but doesn’t.

  Zain considers telling his Aunt that she hasn’t missed too much, that he’s still the same, but he doesn’t. Because it isn’t true. He is different, he knows. Different in a different way even than last year, when he saw her after the funeral. The waiter comes back and asks them something. “Todo esta´ bien,” Aunt Mellie says and spears another piece of her fish. They don’t talk much throughout the rest of the meal, not about anything important.

  Waiting on the bridge, Aunt Mellie reminds him how to claim citizenship, “Remember, when they ask, just say ‘American citizen.’” Zain looks out over the river, both cities visible from the top of the bridge. He thinks about borders, between countries and times. The ones he can see and the ones he didn’t realize he crossed until he was on the other side. He wonders who decides on the geographical ones. Is it just landscapes and politics and power struggles? More than that, he worries about not seeing the personal borders he wants to remember crossing. When did he go from a kid in Aunt Mellie’s eyes to something else? When did he change in his own eyes? he thinks. He has felt different since he and his mom left River Valley two days ago, but really he has felt different for so much longer. When did that happen? He can trace some of the changes back to last spring, when his mom picked him up from school with the terrible news, but not all of them. As they inch down the bridge toward the Border Patrol booths he looks down one last time onto the dirty water of the Rio Grande. Some borders are bigger than others, he thinks. And maybe some of them are too small to see. And some big borders are just a series of smaller ones, made up of little spaces and moments of time. And maybe you don’t know you’re past some borders because you’re not. Maybe, he thinks, you’re still on the bridge.

  29

  Preparations

  Tuesday and Wednesday mornings are much the same as Monday. Long run, then sneaking down the hallway to listen in on his mom and Aunt Mellie at the table. The only interesting bit this morning, when Aunt Mellie says, “you have to tell him soon. No matter what you decide, you know my vote, but you have to tell him.” Zain’s mother responds with, “I know, I know.” She sounds pissed, then her chair scrapes back from the table and Zain has to run back down the hall. Tell who? Decide what soon? If only I’d come in sooner, he thinks. That night Zain doesn’t set the alarm on his phone before collapsing onto his bed. All afternoon at the museum and walking around downtown has Zain tired. Could use a day off from running, he thinks, and tomorrow is a holiday, after all.

  When he wakes up, the house is warm with the smells of Thanksgiving. His mother and Aunt Mellie are already in the kitchen. Aunt Mellie is chopping vegetables, his mother spreading a layer of pumpkin pie filling into a graham cracker crust.

  “Good morning, sleepy head,” Aunt Mellie says.

  Zain fills a glass of water and sits at the kitchen table, “good morning.”

  “Grab the green beans from the pantry for me, ya?” Aunt Mellie says. “We’re on the clock here. Guests will be here in two hours.”

  “Guests? Grandma and Grampa?”

  Aunt Mellie wipes a forearm across her forehead. “Not this year. They went to Santa Fe. We’re having a few other guests over, Zainy.”

  “Aunt Mellie has invited guests to our dinner,” Zain’s mother says. Aunt Mellie doesn’t show any signs of hearing her sister say our like an accusation. Zain looks over the counters. There is definitely more food than usual, more pots and pans, and serving dishes he’s never seen before. The rest of the morning is spent preparing the feast before the guests arrive, friends from Aunt Mellie’s work. It’s all kind of exciting. His Aunt giving him a cooking task and leaving him to figure it out. Slicing and stuffing peppers with cream cheese, stuffing the two giant turkeys with the stuffing. Watching his mother and Aunt in the warm kitchen moving around as a team. His mother actually smiling while sipping wine. Zain feels good. It feels almost like a home. Different than the one he lost, but it still has that feeling. Different but the same, he thinks.

  It’s finally here. The nightmare right-of-passage Charlotte has been dreading since she was little. Every Thanksgiving is the same, her mother trying to make up with one meal for an entire year of takeout and delivery, the throwing of an occasional frozen lasagna into the oven. In past years, on the rare occasion Charlotte was summoned to the kitchen, it was always either to set the table or stir the already mashed potatoes. Then she was free. But she could feel it coming. Chloe’s return put a stop to all that easy freedom. Charlotte knew when the knock came this morning that she was to be dragged into her mother’s penance.

  Forcing someone to wake at 8 AM on a holiday should be a punishable crime, she thinks. Especially if it is to cook. But here she is, half-awake, stirring a cold can of cream of mushroom soup into a pan stuffed with cold green beans. Charlotte can’t remember the last time her mother knocked on her door on a holiday morning (the Christmas before she told her parents she stopped believing in Santa, probably). But this year, her mother needed “all hands on deck!” The smells, the cold uncooked food, all of it is nauseating. Most people love Thanksgiving dinner, the moist (worst word ever) turkey, the mashed (how appetizing is that word) potatoes, sugary yams even (potatoes should be salted and fried). To Charlotte, the whole thing is gross. Not just the food. Her mother’s willing engagement in the most domestic expectation of holiday meal preparation, the forced conversations with whichever relatives are in town that year between shoveled forks full of glistening meat, her dad (the rest of the year totally uninterested in football) lounging in front of the TV shooting the proverbial shit with his brother or his mother’
s father. Gross.

  Charlotte is not surprised to see her sister almost skipping around the kitchen, as smiley as ever. Despite staying up until two in the morning laughing at all Chloe’s stories about her first half semester of college, the best part of the break so far (even if her sister never asked about Charlotte’s year), Chloe looks like she woke hours ago from a full night’s sleep. She bounces her own witty quips around the room like a talk show hostess on a Thanksgiving special, elbow deep, shoving stuffing into a dead bird’s ass (or throat or whatever the cavity is where the stuffing goes). Even though Charlotte kind of hates that her sister can be so awake after they polished off two bottles of wine last night, it is also kind of respectable. With every genetic similarity they share, the effortless humor, the disdain for this town, the bone structure of their faces (no doubt they are sisters there), somehow the ability to engage in the ridiculous missed Charlotte. It is a gift she did not inherit, all of it used up in her sister before Charlotte was conceived. Smarts and an ability to bullshit like she isn’t is exactly what will lead Chloe to great success. Even her responses to her mother’s obvious jokes don’t seem forced, like Chloe sees the value in the worthless banter. And all of it is natural, always has been. In high school, Chloe was president of the Social Studies Club and Key Club, and had a position on the homecoming court. She was a princess, runner-up to the queen by only a few votes. Too caught up in a lunch meeting with the National Honors Society, Chloe had forgotten to cast a vote for herself in the final run-off. Watching her sister handle so many plates and jobs in the kitchen now, the whole forgotten vote thing kind of seems perfect. It is a very fitting metaphor for Chloe’s time in high school. She was too busy being successful in everything to really succeed at being perfect in one area.

  Charlotte smacks the serving spoon across the top of the casserole, green beans evenly dispersed among the mush (for the most part). She empties a bag of French fried onions on top, spreads them over the slop with her hands, and sets the pan on top of the stove, “done.” She is almost out of the kitchen when her mother calls her back in, “not yet!” Her mother looks over a shoulder, smiling, “it is time for you to learn how to make a pie, young lady.” And with one insistent look from her mother, the transition is sealed. Kid to cook. Rebel to unwilling accomplice. Chloe sets a glass of white wine (slightly more than half-full) next to a pie pan of perfectly pressed, home-made crust, “Happy Thanksgiving, seester.” Charlotte takes a sip and shakes pumpkin goop from the can, spreading it over the crust. She wipes her hands with a paper towel and texts Zain, “my family is trying to domesticate me. Send help!” Her back against the counter, she watches her mother and sister floating across the kitchen like eager servants and finishes the last of her wine. The rest of the morning Charlotte is a sweaty mess. Bent over pans, spreading more pie filling, transporting casseroles into serving dishes. She checks her phone four times, but Zain doesn’t text back.

  30

  Thanksgivings

  Except for the guests who walk in without ringing, the doorbell doesn’t stop for an hour. Gradually, the house fills with all different kinds of people. Guests of so many ages and appearances and colors and sexualities (a group of Mellie’s shorthaired friends stealing her away into a corner of the kitchen for Tequila shots) pour in through the front hallway. Zain’s mother moves from room to room with a platter of the stuffed jalapenos he made. When the turkeys are cooked, a group of college kids stands over the stove, taking turns carving and filling paper plates with the meat. Lines form. Plates fill with fixings and sides. There are too many people to fit around the dining table so some people take their plates to the back patio. Others gather in the living room, balancing their plates on their laps on the couch or on chairs or footstools. Zain’s mother leans the empty jalapeno platter in the sink and hands him a plate. She has already put his favorite part of the turkey on it, the leg. “Cooks should get their choice of the meat,” she says. Zain thanks her and takes a place in the fixings line.

  “Are you having a good Thanksgiving?” she asks.

  “Totally. This is really cool,” he says, looking back at his mother. She half smiles, nodding. It is the nicest she has been since grounding him.

  “You like it here,” she says.

  “I guess. Ya.”

  Zain loads his plate with sides. Behind him the line stalls. He can feel his mother looking around the room, nodding. Somehow he knows she isn’t smiling. Maybe it isn’t just smiles you can feel without looking, he thinks.

  Charlotte finishes setting the table and runs up the stairs before her mother can give her anything else to do. She’s been good, no weed all week, but there is no way she can choke down the rest of Thanksgiving Day (much less dinner) without some herbal assistance. She flips on the shower and opens the cabinet beneath her sink, reaching around the tampon box until she feels the cool glass of the pipe. Setting it on the counter, she opens the box and withdraws the near empty baggy and a lighter. Dried out, but it will do the job. She loads a bowl and stands on the edge of her tub, cracking the window. She packs the bowl down into the pipe and flicks the lighter.

  Her grandparents will arrive any minute. Her grandma’s questions locked and loaded. Charlotte knows what she’ll ask. About the school year, her grades, new boys in her life. No, she will not tell her about Zain. Charlotte has already decided not to talk about the boy who hasn’t texted her all day, hopefully just too busy with his holiday in El Paso. He denied looking forward to the trip, but she could tell he was excited. Talking about Aunt Mellie and his times from “before,” which she quickly figured out meant before his father died, not that she could verify (how could she ask that?). Most of his texts have been about all the fun he’s having. The texting conversations have gotten shorter over the last two nights, though. Jesus, she thinks, she is doing it again. Obsessing is silly. This isn’t Anthony or Carlos. The boy on the other end is a boy, he isn’t fucking groupies or out drinking at some frat party, the likes of which he swore he hated before leaving for UNM two summers ago. This isn’t like before. This is Zain. Sweet, sad little Zain, she reminds herself. She holds the smoke in until her lungs burn and breathes out through the crack in the window.

  Zain has been eating quietly, taking small bites and pretending not to listen to the other people at the patio table. As far as he can tell, they are all college students. They talk about classes and parties and common friends. Just as he takes a bite of green beans, there is a lull in their conversation. When the girl next to him turns, he’s not ready.

  “So, what is your story?” she says. She has the darkest skin Zain has ever seen in real life and a heavy accent. She waits while Zain swallows. The rest of the table starts up again, laughing about some professor.

  “Me?” Zain says.

  The girl smiles a big white tooth grin, “are you a first year? A freshman?” She emphasizes fresh.

  Zain smiles, “yes.”

  “My name is Aisha,” she says.

  “Zain,” he says, holding out his hand.

  “Zain. I have not heard that name,” she says. She takes his hand. Her hand is strong and calloused.

  “My Aunt Mellie,” he says, “this is her house.”

  “Oh, goodness. She is a wonderful lady.”

  “Thank you,” Zain says, “I agree.”

  “This is my first Thanksgiving,” she says, turning in her chair to face him.

  “Oh. Cool,” he says, unsure what else to say. Welcome, maybe, he thinks. Her smile is blinding. Now that she has turned, Zain can see her whole face. It is smooth and mysterious, the darkness of her skin deep and severe. Different than any face he has ever seen this close, but totally lovely. He considers telling her he is a freshman, in high school—

  “I am a freshwoman.” She laughs, showing so many big white teeth.

  “Where are you from?” Zain asks, not sure if this is an okay question.

  “I am Kenyan.”

  “Kenya?” Zain says, �
��Wow.”

  “Your Aunt is my professor for University 1301. She invited many of us over for this holiday meal.”

  Zain nods.

  “We who had nowhere else to go.” With every big smile from this girl, Zain feels more like talking.

  “Nowhere else to go?”

  “Students from other places. Too far from home.”

  Zain looks around the table, then the yard. Most of the faces scattered around are college age, of different races. It is a diverse group, for sure.

  “‘It is a new tradition,’ she told us,” Aisha says. “A home cooking meal for students who cannot go home to cook.”

  Zain replays the conversation between his mother and Aunt Mellie when he was cutting the jalapenos. “UTEP is a commuter school, mostly,” Aunt Mellie said. “But what about the ones who don’t live in town? Where will they go for the break if they can’t go home?”

  “In my culture, there is no better holiday than Mashujaa” Aisha says. “We honor the heroes of our people, the ones who found our freedom. Today I celebrate my own freedom on a day devoted to yours, in our shared land.” When she stops talking she seems pleased. Zain isn’t really sure Aisha understands Thanksgiving, but the way she smiles and talks about freedom being “found,” it is all too interesting to correct. He grabs his plastic cup of orange soda and holds it between them, “to freedom.”

  Aisha looks for a moment at his cup, confused. Then her face softens into a look of familiarity and she lifts her cup, “toast!”

  They click cups, “to finding freedom,” Zain says.

  “Cheer!” Aisha says, another big grin lighting her face.

  The rest of the family has spent most of the meal catching up with the first daughter. Good, she thinks. This means Charlotte has escaped unquestioned, left to her plate to cure her munchies with mashed potatoes and dinner rolls. By the time her grandma starts grilling Charlotte, her high is wearing thin.