“Still trying to one-up me, Carmen?” Nana hugged Abuela with a long sigh.
“Keeps me going, Maria.” She hugged her with a quick pat on her back. “Now, are we going to chat about dishes or are we going to eat?”
“I’ll get the plates,” I said, a smile pulling at my lips. They always had a friendly competition, but there was never any true animosity between them. Nana was short too, although Abuela was the smaller of the two. Both still had their hair and nails done every week, and I aspired to be that beautiful in my eighties.
My grandfathers passed away when I was young, but I had all the grandparent love I could ever want. Uncle Frankie and his wife lived out west, and we’d see them for the occasional holiday, and my father was an only child like me, so I was the queen of the grandchildren, as my dad liked to say while I was growing up.
I had to take both pernil and chicken parmesan with a side of rice and pasta once we sat down to avoid an argument. I’d put on my loosest leggings earlier, knowing I could eat my grief to my heart’s content.
I didn’t say much as everyone chatted about nothing, eyeing my mother to see if she was eating or crying or both. She’d smile extra wide, but that didn’t hide her glassy eyes. At least from me. I noticed and felt every ounce of pain etched in her features, wishing I could make it better and hating myself for not preventing it in the first place.
“How is it two years already?” Mom finally said, flicking a lone string bean back and forth with her fork on her plate. “Do you know what the first thought in my head was this morning?” Her watery gaze swept across the table. “That I didn’t get a card for him. Javier always got the cards first. A couple of times I forgot and he’d swear it didn’t matter, but there was always a card waiting by the coffeemaker for me on every birthday or anniversary.”
I set my fork down, wishing I’d known that so I could have set out my own card for her today. My parents had that epic kind of love even after all the years they were together. They had their private jokes and other little intimacies only they shared.
Now all Mom had were the memories.
“Javier was always like that,” Abuela said. “Even as a little boy and later a rotten teenager, he never forgot the important things. Although before you, he tried to be cool about it.” She muttered some Spanish under her breath as she dabbed her blue-shadowed eye with a napkin. “You made himloco.”
Mom draped her hand around her eyes, her shoulders shaking with a laugh even as I spotted tears snaking down her face.
Helen looped her arm around Mom’s shoulder. “I remember those days. How about we clear this off and have some dessert? Thanks to my baker son, we have a good variety today.”
“That wedding cake was so beautiful,” I blurted. Where the hell had that come from? I’d been careful not to talk or ask about Tyler all afternoon. I missed him, which was ridiculous since I’d hardly seen him in recent years, but the entire night we spent together was that damn unforgettable.
“It was,” Helen agreed. “He’s talented and a hard worker. I didn’t give him the credit he deserved when he first opened his bakery, so I’m trying to make up for it. I was so glad to see both of you having such a good time together at Donnie’s wedding a couple of weeks ago.”
“Together?” Nana’s brows pinched while Abuela’s shot up.
“Didn’t you used to pick on him when you were small?” Abuela tsked and turned to Nana. “She was so mean.”
I exhaled a long breath when Nana responded with a slow nod.
“That poor kid. Livie never gave him any peace.”
“Sí,”Abuela agreed as Mom and Helen snickered beside me.
They didn’t even know how I’d continued the torture in our teenage years. A shiver rolled up my spine as Tyler’s face flashed in my head, jaw clenched, eyes narrowed to slits, when he’d said he’d known I flirted with his friends to get a rise out of him. I’d gotten a different rise out of him later, but there were too many mothers and grandmothers in this room to fantasize about that memory.
“I wasn’t very nice to Tyler, no. I came along as a favor, let’s just leave it at that.” The chair screeched beneath me as I popped up. I gathered the empty plates and carried them to the sink, not lifting my head to the four pairs of eyes I felt zeroed in on me.
I reached up on the high shelf of my mother’s cabinet for the large tray she always used for desserts when slow footsteps came up behind me.
“You still like that boy.” Abuela sighed. “I knew you did.Qué pasa?”
“Nothing is going on, Abuela.” I set the tray down harder than I’d meant to. “We’re friends, maybe. At least not enemies. Like you said, I was mean.”
“I think that’s pie.” She motioned to the smaller box. “Bring it here and sit down.”
I knew better than to argue with her, so I found dessert plates, the large cake knife, and two forks for us.
“Now,” Abuela started as she slid the string off the box. “What happened at the wedding?”
“We put on an act for his family and his ex-fiancée. It was fun, and it didn’t feel like too much of an act by the end of the night.”
Or to begin with.
She cut a piece of the chocolate cream pie and slid it to me on a plate.
