Sisters, Strangers, and Starting Over

by Belinda Acosta

  “What? No lecture?” she asked.

  “You want one?”

  “Not really. You can go. I’m here. Happy?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am.”

  “You know, it takes a village to raise a kid,” Lucy said.

  “I’m not going to get into this with you right now,” Larry said, as he opened the door.

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  “Mom! You want some Diet Coke?” Seamus called from the kitchen.

  “Yes!” she answered.

  “Okay, boys, see you. Be good. Don’t be bad,” Larry warned, as he left the apartment.

  As he walked back to his car, Larry felt confident that everything was under control at his sister’s house. He felt as if he’d done his part to get Lucy back in line. If only he could be as sure about things back home. He wondered when he and Beatriz would be able to continue their discussion from earlier. He’d already given up hope that there would be any lovemaking. He knew he had said what he had to say, but now wished he’d phrased the part about Celeste differently. He wished he hadn’t caused the pained expression on his wife’s face. But most of all, he wished he didn’t feel the way he felt about Celeste coming into their lives.

  Seamus and Wally set the table—three plates, three napkins, three forks—and sat down to eat.

  “It’s ready!” Wally announced from the table. Lucy stood, picked up her purse, and went into her bedroom. Seamus’s stomach lurched.

  “Mom!” he called. “What are you doing?”

  “Go ahead and eat if you want!”

  Seamus got up from the table and went to his mother’s room. Larry hadn’t bothered to go in there, but if he had, he would have seen it was a disaster area: an unmade bed, clothes drooling out of dresser drawers, and the small desk her brother handed down to her, thick with junk mail—all piled over the textbooks Larry helped her buy when she enrolled at San Antonio Community College. As Seamus suspected, Lucy was stuffing another change of clothes into her huge purse.

  “What are you doing?” Seamus asked.

  “I’m just getting a few things. I’m going to stay overnight with my friend,” she said. Seamus clenched his jaw. Lucy left a drawer empty when she grabbed a wad of clean underwear and threw it in her bag, then went to her clothes hamper and pawed through it. When she found the other uniform she was looking for, she sniffed it and threw it over her shoulder and started to leave the room, but Seamus was blocking her way.

  “Excuse me.” He didn’t move. “Seamus!”

  He stood a moment before sluggishly moving out of her way. When she passed through the apartment to the kitchen, she saw Wally sitting at the table, his hands wedged under his knees. He had opened the pizza box and placed one slice on each of the three plates. He was waiting, even though every instinct of his seven-year-old body was straining to dive in.

  “I gave you a piece with lots of pepperonis,” he said proudly to his mother.

  “Oh, honey, I’m not hungry,” Lucy said. She opened an accordion door in the kitchen that hid a stacked washer-and-dryer unit, threw her uniform in the dryer, and set it on fluff.

  “You guys go ahead and eat, if you want,” she said, looking at her watch. She dug into her purse for her makeup bag and sat down at the table to reapply lipstick, then touched up her mascara, looking in a compact mirror. The boys watched her mutely.

  “Sit down, Seamus,” she said, as she used her pinkie finger to clean the edges of her lips. When the boy did not move, she snapped her compact shut and threw it back in her makeup bag. “Stop looking at me like that!” she ordered. “Go ahead and eat, baby,” she said to Wally. “It’s getting cold.” She took a sip of her soda. “Pizza is best when it’s hot, but I love it for breakfast, too. So, don’t eat it all and you can have it for breakfast tomorrow morning,” she said.

  “Cold pizza sucks,” Seamus snarled.

  “We have a microwave.” Lucy said. “I know you know how to use it.”

  “Don’t you like us anymore?” Wally whimpered. Tears were rolling down his cheeks.

  “What? Are you crazy?” Lucy said. “Why would you say such a crazy thing?”

  “Because you’re never here,” Seamus said. She ignored her older son and tried to comfort Wally.

  “Come here, baby.” Wally got up and flopped into his mother’s lap. “Oh! You’re such a big boy!” she groaned. “Such a big boy!” She lifted his chin so she could look into his watery eyes. “Why are you asking me such silly questions? I love you like crazy,” she said. “I’m going to stay with my friend tonight, and you guys are such big boys now, I know you’ll be fine, right? I didn’t know your aunt and uncle were going to change their plans on me.”

  “When are you coming back?” Wally sniffed.

  “I’ll be back, silly! Don’t be so frowny or you’ll end up with a sour face like your brother over there,” she joked. Wally laughed, only because his mother tickled him behind his ear. “Okay?” she asked, and repeated louder when neither of them answered, “Okay?”

  “Okay,” Wally whispered, sliding off his mother’s lap and sitting back in his chair. Lucy got up to pull her uniform from the dryer then balled it up and stuffed it in her purse.

  “It’s going to wrinkle,” Seamus said.

  “It’s polyester. It’s fine.”

  Seamus crossed to the table and fell into his chair with his arms tightly folded across his chest.

  “Okay, so you’ve got pizza and plenty of soda. I’ll be back,” Lucy said.

  “When?” Seamus asked.

  “Before you know it!” she said. And before Wally could get teary-eyed again, she had her keys in her hand and was at the door. “Remember what I told you?” she warned. They kept their eyes on their pizza, refusing to look at her. “Remember?”

  “Yeah,” they finally answered.

  “I’ve got my cell phone and I’ve got my charger this time,” she said, holding it up.

  The boys’ silence sucked the air from the room.

  “Jesus! You act like I’m going off to war or something. I’ll call you night-night later!”

  Maybe she would. Maybe. But Seamus was prepared to lie to his little brother—to tell him that he was asleep when their mother called, and she told Seamus not to wake him up, or better yet, that he couldn’t wake him up. Wally would call him a liar and punch him and Seamus would work hard not to punch him back. Maybe he would or maybe he wouldn’t. But he would try.

  Lucy was out the door before the boys could ask any more questions. The buzz from the dryer’s alarm punched a hole in the silence, and Wally began to whine.

  “What if she doesn’t come back?” Wally asked his big brother.

  “She’ll come back. She still has clothes here,” Seamus said.

  “Why can’t we tell Uncle Larry? I bet he’d let us sleep over there.”

  “Because she said not to,” Seamus said, but the words didn’t sound right to him.

  “I don’t like it when she’s not here!”

  “I know, but we’ll be okay. Besides, with that girl over there, they…”

  “They what?”

  Seamus was flustered. He didn’t know what life was going to be like with Celeste around. All he knew was that the attention over her made him feel like a stray dog that no one wanted to take in.

  “We don’t need them,” Seamus said.

  “I’m going to tell.”

  “No, you’re not,” Seamus warned.

  “I don’t want to be here alone!”

  “You’re not alone. I’m here, aren’t I? You don’t want to be a Wednesday’s Child, do you?” Seamus asked.

  “No!”

  “Well, then, you better not say anything.”

  “Wednesday’s Child” was a segment carried on one of the local news channels where an orphan was showcased in hopes of “finding a family of their very own.” Seamus used to make fun of how the kids looked like puppy dogs, always on their best behavior, well scrubbed, and
in their best clothes, their tails practically wagging. The backstory on their parents was always explained in shorthand with terms like substance abuse, incarcerated, or more plainly, abandoned. When Wally acted up, Seamus warned him: “You better be good or else you’re going to be a Wednesday’s Child.”

  “What about you?” Wally asked.

  “I can take care of myself, but you’re young enough that they’ll take you away and we’ll never see you again,” Seamus said.

  “Shut up!” Wally said. “I’ll go live with Aunt Beatriz and Uncle Larry! I’m too little to be a Wednesday’s Child.” The featured kids were usually Seamus’s age, the older, less cuddly kids, but the ones in most desperate need. “And anyway, she hasn’t done anything bad,” Wally added, convinced that since Lucy hadn’t beat them, robbed a bank, or sold drugs, she hadn’t broken any laws. But Seamus knew better. He didn’t want her to get in trouble—maybe even go to jail. He couldn’t live with that. But her leaving them alone and making them keep it a secret, that chipped and chipped and chipped away at him so much it was starting to cut near the bone.

  It had been fun the first few times Lucy left her boys alone. Seamus had been twelve. It was only for a day, but he was relieved when his mother finally came home at sundown. The next time, it was overnight, and lately she had been gone for whole weekends. Lucy usually asked Beatriz and Larry to keep her boys, saying she had to work or study, and at first, that was true. But when it didn’t work out for one reason or another, instead of changing her plans, Lucy left the boys, stocking them up with pizza and cold cereal, telling them that nobody, and especially their aunt and uncle, needed to know. They were big boys and it was their private business. Seamus was put in charge, and he liked that he could decide if it was okay to have popcorn and soda for dinner or donuts and Halloween candy for breakfast. They liked hanging out with their cousins, but at home, no one was around to make them go to bed at ten, or take a bath, or do chores, wear clean underwear—or any underwear at all! But after a few more times, even if he wouldn’t admit it, Seamus liked not always having to be in charge and welcomed the presence of adults. In time, he thought, maybe his aunt and uncle would get so used to having them around so much that it would make all the sense in the world for them to move in, like they’d always been there to begin with. Like they belonged. But that was before Celeste. Seamus didn’t know what was going to happen with her around. And the fact that his uncle didn’t know either made him decide that the best thing to do—the only thing to do—was to take charge, be the big brother, and try and keep things as normal as possible. It was their secret. He needed to protect his little brother, and even though he was upset with his mother, he needed to protect her, too.

  “Look, would you like it if Mom goes to jail?” Seamus asked.

  “No!” Wally wailed.

  “Then keep your mouth shut!”

  “I can sleep in Uncle Larry’s garage!” Wally said. “I have a sleeping bag!”

  “Shut up! No one is going to sleep in a garage anywhere, and stop asking me questions! If you want to be a Wednesday’s Child, go call Uncle Larry, but if you want to stay here and not have Mom go to jail, then you better listen to me,” Seamus said. The distress on his little brother’s face made him angry and heartbroken at once, and it confused him. There was something inside Seamus that wanted to punch his little brother in the face to stop the roaring emotions inside, but something else that wanted, above everything else, to be held. He fought off his own tears, and his face turned red and rigid.

  “What’s the matter?” Wally finally asked, blinking through his tears and wiping the snot from his nose with the back of his hand.

  “Use your napkin,” Seamus said. The little boy picked up the paper napkin he’d carefully folded in half when he set the table and wiped his nose with it.

  “Blow,” Seamus said. Wally blew his nose, shooting a wad of mucus into the napkin. He took a deep breath to blow again, this time making a honking noise. He giggled and did it again. This time the honking noise was deeper and louder, like flatulence.

  “Now you know why I call you fart-face,” Seamus said with a smirk. Wally blew his nose again, this time making a high squeaking noise that surprised them both. The two boys laughed until their bellies ached.

  “Okay, okay. That’s enough,” Seamus said. His brother acting like a dork eased his anger and confusion for the moment. “If you don’t eat your pizza, I’m going to put it away. We can eat it tomorrow, like she said.” Seamus could feel his anger subsiding as he began to be a big brother to Wally, not in a bossy way but in the caring way he was capable of when no one was looking. “Later, you’re going to take a shower. I’ll wash some clothes after you finish so you’ll have something to wear to school.”

  “Can you wash my Spurs T-shirt?” Wally asked, picking an onion off his pizza and putting it on the table. Why their mother couldn’t remember that they didn’t like onions, Seamus didn’t know. What he did know was that it was up to him to make sure he and his brother got through the night and off to school the next day. Maybe Celeste wouldn’t stay very long. Maybe she was just passing through. He didn’t know the answer to that question any more than he knew when their mother would return or if, and when, he should stop keeping their secret.

  “I know, Mari! I know,” Carlos said. Marisol had called him on his cell phone while he was waiting for his father in the car. And once again, the topic of conversation turned to their plans for school.

  “But you’re going to tell them today, though, right?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Carlos!”

  “I’ll try! Things are weird here with my cousin showing up. Everyone is freaking out over her, even my mom.”

  “Well, you need to tell them about our plans, but more importantly, you need to find out if they will help you with the tuition, since you’re not going to Michigan. If they’re not going to help you, we need to figure out what to do,” Marisol said.

  “I know, I know! I’m going to tell them. I promise. But the time has to be right.”

  Marisol was irritated, and Carlos didn’t blame her. They had been talking about their plans to go to culinary school together for a year, and he’d just mustered up the courage to tell his father what he wanted to do when Celeste fell into their lives.

  “Did you change your mind? Do you not want to go? Is that it?” Marisol asked, fearing the worst.

  “No! That’s not it at all! It’s just that—man, I think I need a flowchart to explain what’s been going on around here,” Carlos sighed. “And you know how my dad is. You know how he’s been about me going to his old stomping grounds. It’s all he’s talked about since I was a kid. He’s not going to like this news. He might even disown me.”

  Marisol knew that this was ridiculous, but she also knew that this was Carlos’s greatest fear.

  “Honestly, I don’t see that happening. I just don’t,” she said. “I know you don’t want to disappoint him, but you can’t go to school up there and try and become something you’re not just to make him happy. It’s your life, or it should be.”

  Carlos had a miserable thought. “Maybe you should go without me,” he said.

  There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. “Is that what you—”

  “No!” Carlos said before Marisol even finished asking the question. The idea of Marisol leaving him made every part of him ache.

  “Well then, you need to step up, baby cakes.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll come over later. I got to go. He’s coming back.” Carlos ended his call and tried to gauge his father’s mood by the speed of his walk and the expression on his face.

  Larry climbed back into the SUV, started the engine, and headed home. Carlos could see his father was distracted but didn’t know when he’d have another private moment with him.

  “So… Marisol…,” Carlos said after they drove a few blocks in silence. “She really brought it yesterday, huh?”

  “Who
?”

  “Marisol, Dad. My girlfriend? The one who made the cake?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure. What about her?”

  “She made the Eiffel Tower cake, just like you wanted it.”

  “Actually, it was better than I expected,” Larry said glibly. “Did someone help her?”

  “No. That was all her!” Carlos said. “She assembled it and did the spun sugar netting at the house.”

  “That’s pretty fancy stuff for a girl who makes pan dulce and those little brown pigs—what are they called?” Larry asked.

  “Marranitos.”

  “Yeah, those. I love those.”

  “She’s the one that makes them at the bakery,” Carlos said, thinking that somehow this information would make his father like Marisol more.

  “Well, good for her,” Larry said. “So, you think she’s going to take over her family’s bakery someday?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” This is my in, Carlos thought. This is it! But Larry had more to say.

  “You know, going away to college is a big change, son. You’re going to meet a whole new group of people, and things will look a lot different when you come back here to visit. It might be a good idea not to, well—you know—not to settle for a girl here. You’re going to meet a whole new class of girls at school. You understand?”

  Carlos understood, but he didn’t like what he thought his father was saying. “Don’t you and ’Amá both come from here?”

  “Well, yeah, but we didn’t meet here. We met at school. It was just a crazy coincidence that we were both from here. Sort of. I mean, I lived on one side of the river and she lived on the other.”

  “But you’re both from here,” Carlos repeated.

  “Yeah. What’s your point?”

  “What’s your point?” Carlos said. He could tell he was getting defensive.

  “Look, son. I know you like this girl, but I think anyone who wants to make cookies for a living is probably not, well, someone that will keep your interest for too long. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Marisa is a lovely girl and all, but—I just think you should keep your options open.”

  “Her name is Marisol, and I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Carlos said.