“We will!” they tell me.
“Are either of you doing anything fun over the break?”
“Just hanging out with my mom,” Max tells me. “But my dad is getting out of jail on New Year’s Eve! Then I can hang out with him, too!”
Dorothy and I look at him for a moment. I make a mental note to inform both Georgia and Lina.
“How about you, Dorothy?” I say quickly.
She looks back at me, looking a little sad and a little afraid. “We’re going to my grandma’s in Pennsylvania,” she says, and that’s all she gives me.
“I hope both of you have a wonderful holiday,” I tell them, and each of them comes over to give me a hug. “Thank you again for the card. And make sure you thank the rest of your class and Ms. Baker for me.”
I lean back in my chair after they leave and stare at the card for a while. Particularly at the message. Especially where it says “we love you”.
Georgia agrees to come to the Flores Noche Buena. I borrow my friend Brian’s car, in exchange for moving it for Alternate Side Parking days, while he is away on vacation. I lock up my apartment, whistling the tune of All I Want for Christmas is You, holding bags of presents in my arms. I’m picking Georgia up at her place first, and we’ll drive east from there.I run into a PS 2 family with a second grader and a fifth grader on the way out.
“Merry Christmas Eve, Principal Flores!” they tell me.
I laugh. “Merry Christmas Eve, guys.”
I make the drive over to Georgia’s and park in front of a hydrant. I shoot her a text, “here”. She answers “k”, and I wait.
Nine minutes later, she’s still not downstairs. At the ten-minute mark exactly, I decide to use my key to her apartment and make sure she’s okay. I put the car’s hazard lights on and run up the stairs to her place.
Now, I’ve seen her apartment messy before, but this… this is something else. This is sheer pandemonium. There is shiteverywhere.
There is evidence of cooking splattered all over the kitchen—eggshells, opened bags of sugar, opened cans of sweetened condensed milk. Piles of sugar and drippings on the counter.
The living room has bits of tissue paper and crumpled up wrapping paper and bags and ribbons. Scotch tape and scissors lay in dangerous places on the floor, just waiting for an unsuspecting bare foot to step on it.
Georgia stands somewhere in the middle, looking beautiful and wild and a lot a bit frantic, in a velvet wrap-around dress that accentuates her curves. Her eyes are wet and swollen and rimmed red.
“Georgia…” I approach her slowly, as if I would a wild animal. “Baby, are you okay?”
Her mouth trembles slightly, and then she bursts into tears.
“Hey…” I pick up my pace and wrap her slender body in my arms. “Shhh…” I whisper into her ear, smoothing her hair down. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“I just…” she sobs into my chest. “I just wanted to make it like it used to be,” she tells me nonsensically. “I wanted to cook something, so I looked up the recipe for a Filipino dessert, but the flan collapsed, and then I tried again, and then that one collapsed, and then I got frustrated and threw everything away.”
“There’s going to be plenty of food, Georgia?—”
“And then I wanted to get the best White Elephant present ever, and then I wanted to wrap it really nicely, but I couldn’t get the edges of the wrapping paper straight, and it looked like one of my students wrapped it, so then I tried a bag, but then I didn’t have enough tissue paper…”
“Georgia, I’m sure it’s fine?—”
“It’snot fine,” she yells, shoving me away. She glares at me with tears streaming down her face. My heart breaks. “This means a lot to you, and your family is amazing, and I just wanted my first Christmas without my family and with your family to be perfect, but I’m fucking losing it here, Oliver. This isnotthe time to patronize me.”
I step forward and wrap her in my arms again, relieved when she lets me. “I’m sorry, Georgia, I didn’t mean to be patronizing,” I tell her, letting her sob quietly for a moment. “Okay. I’m here for you. I know this is tough for you.”
“Itistough for me.”
“I know, baby, I know.” I resume smoothing her hair down until she calms down and her breath evens out. “What can I do to help you?”
She’s silent for a long time.
“Just… just give me the space to be me, today,” she sniffs. “I’m going to be weird. I’m worried your family will think I’m insane. But… I just need you to let me work through this on my own. But don’t… don’t apologize for me. Just let me be. ”
