“Gracie,” she says, shaking her head and making atsk, tsknoise. “Soup and bread is only snack.”
“Of course,” I say. Because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that you don’t argue with Melly’s mom when she’s trying to feed you.
I dutifully fold up the beach chair, and we head back to her house.
Once inside, she motions for me to sit down at the table, and she immediately begins buzzing around the kitchen. Before I know it, a plate featuring a mountain of pelmeni is in front of me, smothered by a giant scoop of sour cream and sprinkled with freshly chopped dill.
“For you, Gracie. Dumplings for my best dumpling.” She smiles and pats my hair, like one might pat a good little dog.
“Thank you,” I say, sinking my teeth into the thick pasta shell hiding the mixture of ground meats inside. The whole point of taking a walk was to try and be healthy. This is just proof that thecaloriesfindme.
Mrs. A sits across from me at the table. “You are sad, yes?”
I shrug. “I’m okay.”
“Then why you sit on beach in winter like homeless?” she asks.
“It’s warm today. April’s not winter—it’s spring!”
Mrs. A shakes her head. “Where I come from, every month is winter,” she says.
I can’t help but laugh. My phone dings.
“You have message,” Mrs. A comments.
“It’s okay,” I say, waving it off.
“You check. You know what they say, ‘Opportunity knocks only once.’ You check. Could be good news.”
I pull out my phone. It’s an email from Colin. I don’t open it. For one thing, if he read my work and hated it, I want to be alone when I find out—and preferably near a toilet in case second lunch decides to repeat on me. And if he loved it, I want to be alone so I can bask in his praise. It’s this potential basking that I’m thinking about when Mrs. A calls me out.
“You see? It is happy message. You are smiling.”
“It’s just an email,” I say, popping a dumpling in my mouth.
“No. You make face like this, is not ‘just email.’ Is somebody special?”
I shake my head. “Just an old friend.”
“Is boy, this friend?”
I nod, chewing. “From high school.”
“Ah. In my family, we have saying. ‘Best way to forget is drink Goldschläger.’”
I laugh at the ridiculousness of this family mantra.
“Means like American saying: ‘Best way get over someone is get under the bed.’”
Now there are tears coming out of my eyes from laughing so hard. “I’m sorry, Mrs. A. I think you mean, ‘The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.’” I wipe my cheeks with a napkin.
She points at me with her wise, knowing red fingernail, nodding her head, considering these words. “Ah, yes. This very wise. You do that. This boy, he is handsome?”
I nod. “I think so, yes.”
“He has job?”
“He runs a law firm.”
