“Sure. And pigs can fly.” I zip my luggage shut.
“Don’t go, Sloane,” she pleads, and I deflate, knowing Clemmie’s house won’t be the reprieve I need and deciding to stay.
“Just—” she says suddenly, moving closer. “You’ll tell me? If you really need me?” Concern, deep and rageful, wells in her eyes, and I resent myself for not being who she wants me to be. Someone who would never have put herself in this position in the first place.
“Sure,” I lie, knowing I’d never force her to look at the mess I’ve made.
21
Andy
Pancakes. That’s our Thanksgiving food of choice. Not turkey or pumpkin pie but pancakes and perfectly crisp bacon that you can smell two floors down from the apartment. Carm doesn’t remember how the tradition started, how after Luis died we could barely afford to keep the lights on much less a turkey, but I remember. How we drove over an hour the night before to pick up food from the not so local food pantry. How the pepper haired woman hugged my mom, her eyes so weathered, so sad after having to turn not just our family but several tired moms with their gaggle of kids away.
Mom had pulled three doubles that week, working single shifts in between, just enough to buy the beater we’d been saving for for months. A wood paneled station wagon, the left side mirror hanging on by a mangle of wires. It was our first car since the van got repossessed and we were so excited that the long rides on the bus were now in the rearview. But that night, Mom looked gray, a woman defeated, beaten down by the world. The ride back to our place was long, silent. Even Carmen, didn't make a single sound. We finallypulled into the duplex we shared with an older woman, Lola, and Mom silently pulled a five year old Carm out of the car, went inside and went straight to bed. I remembered being so worried, about all of us, wondering if things would ever get better, if mom would ever get to feel content. In that moment Luis’ death felt like more than just a loss, it felt like a curse.
The next morning, I woke up to the same smell filling my nostrils now, the sound of bacon sizzling on the stove as Carm helped Mom make different shapes on the skillet with the pancake batter. The crate of old Christmas decorations Mom kept when we moved strewn across the small living room.
“Andy put those up while we make our Thanksgiving feast!”she’d called, booping Carmen’s nose with the pancake batter now running down her finger. It all felt too warm, too good, like a trick after the night before, too many emotions running through my body for me to pull them back in, to stop the quiet sob before it came. Mom’s own expression seemed to melt, seemed to recognize all the tension. The pent up anxiety roiling through her was also affecting me. She flicked the stove off, set Carmen down and tugged me into her, a forceful but soft embrace.
“I know Andy, I know,”she’d saidher voice a quiet melody as she stroked my head waiting for the tears to stop.“Things will get better. They will get easier. They always do.”
She hugged me once more, hard, like her body was begging me to understand, to know she was doing what she could, and I did.
“Wanna make a molehill out of this mountain?”Her smile was still tired but warm, like it had always been, and from that moment on that’s what I’ve been doing. Trying to help her make these giant immovable things more manageable.
“Andy, that looks like shit.” My sister's blunt tone has mymom stifling a laugh, pulls me away from the past and into the now. “Call Sloane to help you,” she croons, and my jaw tenses.
“Carmen! Language!” She smiles, flipping the bacon with metal tongs and Carm smiles primly at her, unaware that even if I called Sloane, she wouldn’t answer. That she’s avoiding me.
“Sorry. Andy, that looks absolutely dreadful.” Carmen resumes her chastisement in a faux posh British accent that has Mom giggling and me rolling my eyes, swallowing back my self-pity. She’s referring to the red and green paper rings I helped her glue together while watching Les Miserables last night. I’m trying to hang them from the ceiling but all I have at my disposal is a roll of silver duct tape and arguably, she’s right…it does look like shit.
“Grab some cash from my purse and run down to the corner to get hooks or something. Marcus said they’d be open until noon.”
I shrug on my coat, disregarding my mom’s purse entirely as I leave.
Boston’s different on this side of town. It’s not all tree lined streets and cobblestone roads, but that doesn’t take away from its charm. Moving here took some getting used to, no doubt, but the three of us have found a home here, a community. I see Nancy—an older woman who lives in the building across from ours and who’s been trying to set me up with her daughter Maria for the past couple of years—holding a tin pan, thick black smoke fuming from it, a series of expletives escaping her. I lift a hand up, hoping I don’t get roped into whatever is going on over there.
“Andrew!” Her thick Bostonian accent coats the vowels.
“Hey Nance.” I smile, moving to continue my walk down the block to Marcus’ shop, hoping she sees just how not in the mood I am to shoot the shit.
“Help me with this, will ya? This god damn stuffing is ruined and I can’t get the damned thing to stop smokin’.”
Rolling my neck and pushing Sloane to the back of my mind, I laugh, because that’s all you really can do when you see Nance, hair in rollers, oven mitts on, and a cigarette dangling from her mouth, cussing in the street.
“Here let me—” I say, now by her side. I grab the pan, which is charred beyond measure and stick it under the hose-less spout, running the water until it’s flooded the pan, the smoke thicker initially until it completely dwindles away.
“Prince Charming!” She elbows me and I fight my grimace, because nothing could be further from the truth. “You know Maria will be home this afternoon, I can?—”
“Thank you, Nancy but I’m…” I trail off realizing I’m not anything but hopelessly fucking enamored with someone I can’t have. Some who can’t even admit they might want me.
“Oh shit, the turkey!” She runs in before I have a chance to finish and that’s probably for the best.
I count the sidewalk cracks as I walk toward the corner store, trying and failing to keep from thinking about that kiss. That glassy eyed look she had when she pulled away, like she was shot, like the kiss itself was some kind of betrayal. I keep telling myself it was just a kiss, keep trying to convince myself it didn’t matter, but the lie chokes me before I can swallow it.
There’s a wrongness in trying to pretend she was nothing, in denying the way she felt against me. The way her sunshine and citrus scent unfurled into something too familiar, like a memory that didn’t belong to me but fit anyway, one that might have replaced the lost summers spent growing up too fast after Luis died. Melted popsicles by the pool, salt clinging to sun warmed skin, soft exhaustion after leaving the beach. I could practically taste the sea on my lips when she pulled away and I wanted more, more of that life that felt so far away butsomehow with her it felt like mine, like if I just held her tight enough it would materialize.
So I tried—let my lips feel every curve of her mouth, fingertips brush the soft skin of her cheeks, palm rest on the base of her neck as I pulled her into me and let myself dive into her. But she left.
