“That’s ludicrous.”
I shrugged.
“No, it is. You went out of your way to help this student.”
“Her mother would rather I didn’t.” I described my unpleasant encounter with her at the Miracle Center. “She didn’t look or sound happy, and I keep hearing ‘dique’ and ‘mala influencia.’”
Remi abandoned her waffle and stood to wrap her arms around me. “What an awful thing for her mother to say!” I buried my face in Remi’s neck and wrapped my arms tightly around her.
The waffle iron beeped, and I left Remi’s arms to take out the next waffle. “More?”
“No, this is more than sufficient.” When I sat next to her again, Remi rubbed my back with one hand and reached for her coffee with the other.
I took a bite of my waffle and glanced at Remi. I felt so relaxed in her presence, I didn’t want to spend a moment without her. “I didn’t ask about your day. You said you had errands, and I need to spend some time at the lab today, but do you think I could still see you tonight?”
“You might get tired of me.”
“Believe me. I am not getting tired of you, not for a long, really long, time. My family is going to be all over me for why I missed mass this morning. If you came with me…” I glanced at Remi.
“They do not know why you missed mass.”
“Oh, they do.”
“How can you be sure about that?”
“They live a block away. Your car is parked next to mine. They know.”
“And you want me to have dinner with them after they all know I spent the night?” Remi set down her cup.
“They’ll have to behave, somewhat, if you’re there. Rosa already told everyone about you, so they want to meet you. If you’re game. It would make my mother happy.”
“Well…if it would make your mother happy.” Remi smiled.
I waggled my eyebrows. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
“When you put it that way, however can I say no?”
Later, seated next to each other at my parents’ table, Remi leaned against me and whispered, “I thought you said they would behave if I was here.”
Rosa’s question had silenced the table. My mother picked up her glass, hiding a wide smile in her sip of water. “Yes, Karla. Why do you look so tired if Remi spent the whole night with you?”
My siblings stifled their laughter, but only to avoid hurting Rosa’s feelings.
“She doesn’t know my nighttime routine like you do, kiddo. You’re a lot better at helping me remember not to let my brain wake up too much before bedtime.”
“You didn’t do your meditation, did you?” Rosa asked, perfecting the tone of a chastising professional.
“Guilty,” I said.
Rosa shook her head and leveled her gaze at Remi. “Once she’s finished with her stretching and meditation, there’s no more talking.”
Luis mumbled, “Oh, I’m sure that wasn’t the problem” and received a jab from Antonia.
“I’ll remember that,” Remi said. “I can see that you still take your project very seriously. You have the makings of a dedicated scientist.”
“I still don’t know about my conclusion, though,” Rosa said. “I told Aunt Karla that you could help her sleep. Now that you know her routine, it should go better. Aunt Karla always looks way better when I stay over.”
“Training people to conduct your experiments just like you would is super tricky. My boss complains about that all the time. You’ll be a tough Principal Investigator like her. We’ll do better to follow your protocol,” I said.
My mother’s gaze zeroed in on me. “Tired or no, I am so happy to see you with a smile on your face. We are so happy to meet the person who can get Karla away from her work. You do not know the number of times she has skipped dinner because she got stuck at her lab.”
My face burned with embarrassment, and it was my turn to lean into Remi and whisper apologies for my family keeping us under the microscope.
Remi’s hand found mine under the table, and she squeezed. Her complexion either hid the effect of their scrutiny better, or she was utterly comfortable with the turn of the conversation. Her eyes made me fairly certain it was the latter. “I admire Karla’s work ethic, but I am very happy to get to spend this time with her family. My family hasn’t gathered around a table like this in a long time. It is an honor to be here with you.”
My parents exchanged a look. They were falling for Remi just as hard as I was. I stowed the older couple’s expression away to explore later. The evening passed quickly with my family’s natural boisterousness widening to include Remi. I did not mind Luis’s teasing about the fart study when it meant that Remi got to imagine how she might have judged such a project.
When we walked hand in hand back to my place, Remi sighed deeply.
“What was that for?”
“You are very lucky. When I met Rosa at the science fair, I thought about how lucky she was to have an aunt like you, how lucky Antonia is to have a sister like you. Now I can see how that comes from your whole family.”
“It’s weird,” I said, replaying my parents’ expression. “Having you there with me tonight is the first time I felt like my parents are proud of me.”
We stopped at the corner under the streetlight and waited for the traffic to clear. Remi looked confused. “How can that be? Certainly they were proud of you when you got your degree?”
The traffic cleared and we crossed the street. “Pride, I think, is a reflection of them. They didn’t feel like that accomplishment had anything to do with them. They acknowledged that it was an accomplishment, but I could see how getting a PhD baffled them.”
“They were impressed.”
“Yes. Impressed. But tonight they were proud of me. I could feel it when you said that you were honored to be there. The way they looked at us after you said that, I could tell how much they like you.”
“And they’re proud of you for catching me?”
“You are a catch.”
“As are you, Dr. Hernandez.”
“Say you’re coming in to continue helping out with my sleep study,” I said, leaning in for a kiss when we reached my condo.
“You know very well that we will not get any sleep if I stay tonight,” Remi answered. “We both have work in the morning.”
“Didn’t you hear my mother saying it’s good for you to pull me away from my work?” I argued, “I have the whole week to be the dedicated professional you admire.” I stepped close enough to feel the heat of her body and pressed my hips ever so slightly into hers. I kissed her so deeply I felt my desire pooling between my legs. I told her as much, and she sank back against her car.
“You make me weak in the knees,” she said.
“I don’t think you should drive in that condition.”
She clicked the fob in her hand, illuminating the interior of the car. A small duffel sat in the backseat, and a fresh outfit hung from the headrest. I opened the door, removing both. “You happen to have a change of clothes?”
“I didn’t want to presume. What if your family had hated me?”
“Silly, silly woman,” I said, carrying her things inside. “I should have warned you that my family falls even faster than I do.”
Chapter Eighteen
Maricela and I stopped with Valerie at the door of her building. “You sure you don’t want to join us for a smoothie?” I asked.
“Sure I’d love to, but this blasted morning sickness has compromised my schedule to the point that I barely felt like I could get away to walk. I need for my boss to see me in the lab. I’ve seriously got to make up for all the time I’m spending in the lav.”
“We don’t have to get anything,” Maricela said after the door to Valerie’s building shut behind her.
“We’re going. You deserve a reward for coming back and keeping up,” I said.
During our walk, Valerie had been the director of topics. She gave a graphic update on the nature of her morning sickness before la
unching into an inquisition of my new sexual activity interspersed with stretches she was sure would be helpful to me now that I was working out a set of muscles that I had “probably forgotten I had.” I’d elbowed her for the slight but honestly, I didn’t care, and watching Maricela trying to pretend she didn’t know what we were talking about was hilarious.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d be joining us after what happened with your mom,” I said once we had our smoothies.
Maricela poked her frozen drink with the straw and apologized again for her mother’s behavior.
“I didn’t understand most of what she said. All I know is that she thinks I’m a bad influence which makes no sense when your grades have improved so much.”
Maricela didn’t look up.
“Did something happen?”
She punched the icy drink with her straw before taking a deep breath and meeting my eyes. “Last week she maybe caught me flirting with the nurse at the clinic?”
“You’re not sure if she caught you or you’re not sure if you were flirting?”
“Oh, I was flirting!” Maricela’s eyes sparkled for a moment as her thoughts shifted away from her mother. “You remember how I told you about my mom feeling so tired, and you told me I should be going to the appointments?”
“Sure.”
“So I listened, and there was this nurse.” She blushed hard. “First, I couldn’t tell if she was, you know, into me. I mean, they have to look interested when you’re talking about their patient, right?”
“If they’re good,” I agreed.
“Well she left, and then the doctor came in, and I listened like you told me to. Then he said I could step out while he did the vision test. When I did, I literally walked into Penny. That’s the nurse’s name.”
I’d figured. “And?”
Maricela continued, “We talked. She thought it was nice I bring my mom to her appointments. I said I don’t mind ’cause everyone is so nice. I asked how she decided to be a nurse, and that made her think I want to be a nurse. I said I didn’t think I would look half as good as she does in those cute scrubs.”
“Nice line.”
For an instant Maricela beamed at me. Then her expression clouded. I remembered Judy walking up the day that I was helping Maricela study and how I’d wondered if she’d seen Maricela poke my sunburn. I knew Maricela did not disguise her feelings well. “And then your mom saw you?”
“She forgot to give me her purse. She gives it to me to hold on my lap because she thinks that if she sets it down anywhere in the clinic, she’s going to get cancer. I told her I was asking Penny if I could go back to get her purse, you know? But Penny looked so confused and then…” Maricela’s eyes brimmed with tears.
“Did your mom say something?”
“No. The way she looked at us, I could see she was angry. She marched back into the room with her purse, and then Penny…she just…she left me in the hallway. When my mom was done she walked out without saying a word to me. I thought she’d wait outside for me and I could apologize to Penny. But then I couldn’t find Penny, and when I came out, I couldn’t find my mom. By the time I did, she was even angrier and said that she had seen you and told you to stay away from me. She told me to stay away from both you and Penny.”
“I don’t understand. You told me that your mom was upset because she thought I was gay.”
Maricela glanced at me guiltily. “That was part of it.”
I bowed my head and shut my eyes. I could not for the life of me figure the young woman out. “Why would you leave the other part out?”
“I didn’t want you to know what she’d seen.”
So it was shame that I had read on Maricela’s face when she had pulled her mother away from the confrontation. I hated to see how Maricela was internalizing her mother’s anger and fear.
“Does she know you’re here today?”
Maricela shook her head guiltily. “She would be so upset. She’s not supposed to get upset, you know, with her blood pressure.”
“Is that why you don’t want to tell her you’re gay?”
“If I tell my mother, she could die.”
“Still, you should tell your mother. You have a right to be yourself. Don’t you want your mom to know the truth about who you are?”
“How can you say that when you know how sick she is? You want me to kill my mother? Because if I tell her, she’ll have a heart attack. You saw how upset she got.”
I opened my mouth to disagree but then remembered talking with Judy about how people with diabetes were already at a higher risk for any number of things including heart attacks. Could Maricela’s coming out pose a health risk? I paused long enough that Maricela sat back, satisfied.
“Now you see why I can’t tell her.”
As much as I wanted to say Maricela could come out to her mother, the words would not leave my mouth.
* * *
My feet up on the wall and hands splayed at my side, I breathed deeply and went through my meditation.
Be well. I had that down, feeling good about the walk with Valerie and Maricela earlier.
Be content. My work was progressing nicely, and I was excited about where things with Remi were going. Monday, I’d sent a text thanking her for a good night’s sleep, because we had at least doubled the number of hours we’d slept. We had texted earlier, each of us acknowledging the copious amount work that we had to do. Remi wasn’t needy and didn’t make me feel guilty for prioritizing my job. What more could I ask for? To talk to her, my subconscious suggested. I told it to shut up and concentrate.
Be calm. This is where my mind was supposed to stop returning to the worry spots of my day. I was supposed to stop thinking about Maricela and her mom, how her mother had yelled at me, and how she was likely to react if Maricela came out to her. I wanted to call Remi, return to my weekend and skip meditation. Be calm. I tried again. You’d feel calmer if you talked to Remi, my subconscious chirped. Shut it! I snapped at my busy brain.
Be at peace. Leave the list of things to do on the pad of paper. Don’t bring them to bed. Busy brain asked whether I thought Remi was feeling peaceful, or whether she would feel more peaceful if we talked for a few minutes.
Damn. I really wanted to call Remi. I glanced at the clock. Going on nine thirty. Late for me, but not quite socially awkward. I sat up and padded to the kitchen.
You still up? I texted.
Nope came the quick reply.
On your way to bed?
After I finish this episode of Ghost Hunters.
I stared the message, disbelieving. Shaking my head, I hit dial. “You watch Ghost Hunters?”
“It is a great show!” Remi said.
“Ghost Hunters.”
“What is wrong with Ghost Hunters?”
“Besides the fact that there is no such thing as ghosts?” I asked.
“Before you pooh-pooh it, you have to watch at least one whole episode. I’m surprised you are not already a fan.”
“Of Ghost Hunters. Ghosts.” I didn’t try to hide my doubt.
“Their methods are absolutely evidence-based. Very scientific.”
“Scientific.” I leaned against my bar, enjoying the sound of her voice, so serious. “You know I’m a scientist, right?”
“Yes, I also know you have trouble sleeping. Why are you not in bed?”
“I can’t stop spinning on a conversation I had with the young woman whose mom has it in her head that I’m going to turn her daughter gay.”
“Maricela,” Remi said.
“Yes. She walked with me and Valerie today and told me about a crush she has on one of the nurses in the clinic where her mother is being treated. Her mom got angry with her, but she’s still pretending she’s straight. I told her she should stop lying and share who she really is with her mom. She said she can’t because her mother would drop dead from a heart attack.”
“That is a possibility, is it not?” Remi asked. “If she is being treated at The Miracle Center?”<
br />
“Yes. She has diabetes, so her heart is compromised. She should be avoiding stress, and here I am encouraging her to talk to her mom. I know it is not likely, but what if it did give her a heart attack?”
Remi was quiet for a moment before she said, “Yes, that would be terrible. Has she considered how she would feel if her mother died before she has a chance to tell her? It could be devastating for her to realize that her mother never fully knew her.”
“So I’m not a bad mentor for saying she should share more with her mother.”
“Is that what is keeping you up? Because it should not. You are a terrific mentor. Maricela is lucky to have someone like you to support her. Knowing a successful lesbian could save her life.”
Her words choked me up, and I could not think of how to respond.
Remi continued, “Think of the opportunity you have already given her to talk about the subject at all. That is a starting place. When you recognize the problem, education can begin. She might ask her mother why you upset her, you who are so successful and confident.”
“You’re good at this, you know that? I feel so much better.”
“I am a trained professional.”
I dropped my voice a notch. “Sounds like I owe you.”
“Yes. My fee is watching one full episode of Ghost Hunters free of skepticism.”
“Thank you, Remi.”
“Anytime, Karla.”
I held the phone, reluctant to hang up, unsure of how to end the conversation. I wasn’t ready for “I love you,” but a simple “goodnight” didn’t feel like enough. “I wish you were here.”
“Do you?” I heard a smile in her voice. “For sex or for your sleep study?”
“Because I like waking up next to you,” I said honestly.
“I like that, too,” Remi said. “Goodnight, Karla. I hope you sleep well.”
“Thanks. You too.”
Chapter Nineteen
I jogged up the stairs to Remi’s second-story apartment two nights later with a bottle of wine and butterflies in my stomach. It was more than her fancy car that made me feel like I was punching above my weight. She had a sophistication, maybe from her years living abroad, that made me feel out of my element in an exciting way.
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