I looked toward the table. She had placed purple and green balloons here and there, thrown a plastic car-themed tablecloth over the table, and had lined toy cars up in a row in such a way that I assumed that they were about to race.
I wondered if I had the right Brando, or if she had somehow forgotten that her son was twenty- two. Around the same age my brother would have been. Elliott was a year older but in the same grade. Or perhaps I had stumbled in on a woman whose friends were not all aboard the boat, as Violet was prone to say.
Her attention was lost on the decorated area. “I have the cake on.” She squeezed my hand. “I have the balloons and all of the decorations ready to go.” Squeeze. “Craig and Marvin are bringing over the meatballs and spaghetti…” She squeezed harder, and then her eyes narrowed. “I think that’s it…”
“Is today Brando’s birthday?” I knew his birthday was August 11, thanks to my sleuthing skills. But I decided to ask in case my source of information had been wrong. I doubted it though. Eunice, the woman who helped raise my father and then me and my brother (and the spawn who had come after my brother, my sister), had given me the information. If there was one thing Eunice did right, it was birthdays. She wouldn’t have forgotten.
This question brought Maggie Beautiful’s attention back to me. Her eyes sparkled when she laughed. “Sure! Every day can be your birthday, if you want it to be.”
Somewhere in the world a cuckoo clock chimed.
“Then it wouldn’t be special,” I said.
She stared at me blank-faced for a few moments before she shrugged. “That’s another way to look at it. Like I said,saucy.” She winked at me and then tugged me toward the hallway. “You are going to freeze to death in those wet clothes! Let me get you some new ones.”
“Nooo,” I said as she pulled me forward. “I really can’t stay that long. I have to go—”
“Oh, but you just got here! Stay for a little while. The party hasn’t even started yet. Oh!” She let go of my hand suddenly, leaving me in the darkened hallway. “The music has to set the tone. Let me play something that reminds me of you.”
Her sequins glittered as she moved around the front room, changing the current music to Nat King Cole’s “Ballerina.”
“That’s better,” she said as she zoomed past me.
She opened the door to the room at the very end of the hall, which I assumed to be hers. She went to her dresser, opened up a drawer, and started searching.
“Just so you know, I only play Nat for special guests. Some people save good wine for their special guests.Isave the best music for mine. Here we go!” She held up a long-sleeved green t-shirt in one hand and a pair of jeans in the other. The t-shirt had “The Grinch Can’t Touch This” in white letters across the front.
I laughed and read the wording aloud. “That’s good to know. I’m safe then?”
Maggie Beautiful shrugged. “Is that what it says?” She put her pointer finger to her mouth and then bit down.
I stopped laughing and nodded. It occurred to me that perhaps she couldn’t read.
“I forgot where I got it. But it has a Santa hat on the back. That’s why I bought it. See?” She turned the t-shirt around to face me. She examined her side, the side with words, and narrowed her eyes as though she were trying to see wording from a far distance. “Is that ‘Grinch’?” She pointed to the word.
“Yes, see?” I stepped into her room and took the shirt from her. I went over each word, repeating it as I did so.
“Brando usually reads everything for me,” she said in a small voice. “I’ve never learned how to read.”
I sucked in a breath but let it out slowly, so she wouldn’t notice my reaction. Her eyes seemed sad as she stared at the words, her smile turning upside down.
She waved a hand. “Oh well, life is never perfect. We make the best of it anyhow. Come on.” She took my hand again. “Let me show you where you can change.”
We passed the second door and she opened the third. I stepped into a whole new world.
Brando’s room. Filled with his things, his smell, saturating the small place, which was filled with very little furniture. Two mattresses were in the center of the room, stacked one on top of the other against the wall.
A table littered with suckers stood next to the mattresses. In its center an old lamp stood, something to give the room a soft glow when turned on. A chair and a small corner desk. A couple of shelves on the wall. That was it.
My eyes narrowed when I noticed one of the pictures on one of the shelves. Slow steps took me there, my heart not ready to see my brother staring back at me, a lopsided smile on his face. Lisette had been seated on his lap, smiling at him.
Nick, the guy who left with my brother that fateful night, had a picture of his own, on the other side of my brother and his girlfriend. A holy candle, the wick almost burnt to nothing, separated the two photographs.
“Your brother was a good kid,” Maggie Beautiful whispered. Her hand trembled as she reached past me. Her finger gently swiped the glass, as though she were touching him in real time. “One of the best.”
I jumped a bit and choked down the hurt that had stuck in my throat. I strangled the shirt in my hands. “You knew? Who I was?”
She smiled at me, the sadness overwhelming. “I had an idea. There’s nothing outwardly that brings you together, but you seem to carry him with you.” She ran the same finger down my face. “It’s a terrible shame that this city didn’t protect him and those two kids. They should’ve had crossing signals for that track.”
