Husky (14 page)

Mrs. Martinez starts making something complicated,
I can tell from the sounds of all these different things getting opened and closed and frying and stirring. Very soon the whole house smells like good things. It covers up the lonely smell a bit but not all the way.

As she cooks, Mrs. Martinez asks me questions from the kitchen. A lot of them I don't know how to answer but, when I try to, she answers them for me. Will I do good in school? “Of course you will,
mi amor
, because you is so intelligent. You do good at everything.” Will I get good grades? “You're going to be the top of the class.” Will I meet a nice girl at school? That one is totally hers. “They will all be after you, 'cause you is so handsome and strong.” With Mrs. Martinez, you could never feel bad about anything in the world because even before you could answer it, she would cut you off with how wonderful you are. I even start to believe her. But then I remember all the stuff she doesn't know. Like the lonely smell mixed up now with lunch, you can only cover it up so much.

Finally the food is done. Mrs. Martinez brings out a big plate for just me. It's rice and chicken and vegetables, and it smells like the best thing I've ever smelled. Even
José gets excited when he sees the steam off the plate.

“Don't get up, I'll bring it,” Mrs. Martinez says as she sweeps into the room and hands me the plate. “We'll sit on the floor and eat, yes?”

The plate she hands me is so full, it's a little hard to hold with one hand, so I put it down and just look at it. It's colorful and hot, and all of it looks fantastic. I didn't think I was this hungry, but being here in front of this, something this good, I don't know how I could be anything else but starving. She comes back with a knife and fork and a bottle for José, and after handing everything out she sits in her chair and watches us, smiling. Smiling bigger and bigger after each bite. It's like she's watching the best show on TV ever, and can't wait to see how it turns out.

“You like,
querido
?” Mrs. Martinez asks.

“It's great,” I mush out, even with my mouth full.

“I just try to put something together for you, it's just something good for a good boy. I make something better for dinner.”

The whole time I eat, Mrs. Martinez doesn't say
anything, she just watches and smiles. Sometimes she even moves her mouth along with me, like she's coaching me how to eat it. When I have a good bite, she smiles bigger, so I try to smile back, but I'm really trying to hint that I would like it better if she'd stop watching me. She doesn't pick up on that and then she looks at Gustavo.

“When he go to army,” Mrs. Martinez says, pointing to the picture of her son, “he writes me letters telling me how much he miss my food. Every day, I miss your rice, Mama. I miss your beans. He never say he miss me once.” Mrs. Martinez laughs at this hard, I guess because she knows it's funny, because it's not true. He missed her a lot.

I eat everything on the plate. I have to. I'm being watched. When I'm done, Mrs. Martinez takes the plate out into the kitchen. “That's how you have to eat to be strong. Your
abuelita
should know better. Cereal! From a box!” She laughs to herself. José sort of laughs too, he must have heard a word he knows.

I've already been here for about three hours, and I've
done nothing but sit, eaten twice, and played with the baby. I haven't moved anything, barely even myself. I've answered—or half answered—a bunch of questions. But I've never been asked if I'm ready to do what it was I was needed to do. I haven't asked yet either, but maybe I should.

“Mrs. Martinez, Nanny told me you needed me to move some boxes or something?” I ask her.

“Yes, I need you to move something for me,” she says, sort of not answering. “It's too heavy for me to lift, and it's all put away in the closet, I just need to figure out what to do with it first. Do you want a soda?”

Another hour goes by, and José takes a nap. Mrs. Martinez says I can turn on the TV and watch anything I like, but I sort of don't want to. I want to do the thing I came to do and leave. I don't know why I'm getting so anxious about it. I mean, everything is nice here and I'm not bored. But there's a feeling of something sort of not being done or not wanting to be done or talked about that makes me feel really uncomfortable about the whole visit. And the lonely smell is always there.

After four hours, Mrs. Martinez starts going through drawers and giving me things. Pencils, pens, notebooks, army men, a Barbie for one of my friends, an ice cube tray that makes ice cubes in puppy shapes. She's giving me so much stuff from drawer after drawer that she starts a bag for me to take home. Every minute the bag gets filled with something else. By hour five, José's mom comes and takes him back down to their apartment. We all hug and bump faces good-bye. In hour six, Mrs. Martinez wants to make more food, but I feel like I'm going to explode, so I just ask, “Mrs. Martinez, I might go home if you don't need me to move anything, is that okay?”

I hear her stop in the kitchen. “No,
mi amor
, I do need you to move something for me. I'm sorry. You right.” She comes to the doorway and says, “It so nice to have you here, I just didn't want you to have to go, but you have to, you got things to do and you want to be with your friends, I know.”

I don't. I don't have to go anywhere, but I feel bad just sitting here. I don't say any of this. And I know I should, but I just wait. Mrs. Martinez takes a big breath and says,
“All right, you right. You right.”

Mrs. Martinez walks through the living room to the back of the apartment and waits outside a closet door. She just waits there. And I wait behind her. It's a few minutes before she can do anything, but then she just opens the door. The closet is filled with boxes, all piled up and ready to be moved. All have the name
Gustavo
written on them. They're filled with all his stuff. And I guess I'm supposed to move them out.

I guess I should move past her and start, but I don't. She's just looking at them, and she doesn't move at all. It's awful to think of everything a person ever owned just in a bunch of boxes, but that's how it is. We wait, the both of us looking at the boxes and not moving. Everything he was is in there. And it is supposed to go.

Mrs. Martinez says, “He was a good boy, my Gustavo, like you, he was good. And strong. And handsome. So handsome.”

I don't know if I'm supposed to agree, or say anything, so I don't. I wait.

“It's so short all this,
mi amor
,” says Mrs. Martinez. She doesn't turn around and look at me, but she knows
I'm there. “You remember that. It's so short, you have to make it all count. And you will. You will, I know it. Like my Gustavo. You will.”

She moves a little forward to grab a box I guess, and I step forward to help her, but she touches the box, and then she starts to close the door. When she turns around, she's smiling again, like I should be eating something. So I smile back, like it all tastes wonderful, but we're both pretending now.

“I'm sorry, you came all this way,
mi amor
. But I can't today. Not today. I need to keep. I need to keep.” She smiles at me with tears coming into her eyes.

“It's okay. I can come back anytime you want,” I say, smiling back.

“You're a good boy,
querido
.” Mrs. Martinez smiles.

After I leave, I listen to “
Soave sia il vento
” again, and it sounds so beautiful. But more beautiful, if that's possible. I know that it's fake and a trick, but maybe that's what it needs to be. Maybe it's better not to know.

Or maybe people will come back.

I can't really walk home right after that. And I know I'll get in trouble for not being where I'm supposed to be, but I need to take a minute, for myself. And then, more than anything, I want to see Mom. So I go to the bakery. It's still open and Jules is behind the counter.

“H-ey,” says Jules.

“Is my mom here?” I ask.

“In back.”

Paolo's baking and tries to high-five me and talk to me, but I just keep walking. This fast-walking thing is really working for me. When I get to the back and to the Blunder Wall, I see Mom sitting at her little desk going over papers and looking so sort of peaceful. I don't know why, but I stop and I look at her like that for a long time.
Just to see her how she is when she doesn't think anybody is around. And she seems so like herself. It makes me happy to know her like this.

I put down the bag of all the stuff Mrs. Martinez gave me and walk to the doorway of the small, bright office to knock on the doorframe. Mom jumps a little but turns around and sees me. “Hey, what are you doing here?” she says, not angry or disappointed or even remembering that I am currently breaking the rule I was just punished for but happy and smiling, like it's a big surprise just for her. And as she smiles I almost tackle her into a hug.

“Buddy, are you okay?” she asks, her voice sort of muffled by my shoulder. When she breaks her mouth free, she asks, “How was Mrs. Martinez's?”

I don't answer for a minute, I just want to stand there for a little bit and not think about anything else. Anything else. Not the lonely smell and the picture with the palms or the boxes and boxes with someone's name who can never read them, or the song that's a lie or the voices in my head telling me to scream on the street, or the lies of people you figured this whole time couldn't ever do that,
ever. I just need a minute with my mom, because she is none of that.

“It was fine. I mostly ate,” I say, pulling away for a bit.

“I bet you ate well,” Mom says with a laugh, and then she sort of jumps. “Here, wait, let me call Nanny before she freaks out and you get in more trouble.” Mom dials on her cell phone, and I can hear Nanny screaming into the phone.

“Yes, he's here. Yeah, he's fine. He said it was fine. I'll send him home in a little bit, and he will go right there.” Mom nods at me to make me agree, so I do. “Right there, yes. Okay. All right. Yes. Okay. Mom, I have to go. Okay.” Mom hangs up the phone and lets out a big breath. “Jeez, that lady can talk. What's wrong, buddy?”

“I just wanted to see you,” I say.

“Oh yeah? Well, that is pretty special, I appreciate that a lot.” Mom smiles. “Well, I'd get you something to eat, but I guess you're probably not hungry.”

“I don't mean to interrupt or anything, I just wanted to stop in and say hello. Honest,” I say back.

“No, I'm so glad you did. I love to see you, anytime.
You want to make something with me or have a soda, maybe . . . inspect the wall?” Mom smiles so big at the last one, I know that is exactly what she wants to do, and her smile gets me excited about it too. So sure, let's look at the Blunder Wall.

Mom gets the most excited about the Blunder Wall most of the time, but tonight for some reason, she's almost giggling about it before we make it over. I guess it might be because I'm here and she gets to share it with me. I'm not here a lot anymore. Or maybe she has a new one that got so gnarly and she wants to show off.

At first she takes me through some classics: the pie that exploded, the challah bread that somehow unraveled, the cupcake that grew straight up and looked like Marge Simpson's hair. And then some new ones: a roll that ended up looking like an angry old man, an apple turnover that burned so bad it looked like an oil spill, and lastly a wedding cake that was perfect one minute—there's a picture of it—and then in the next photo it's crumbled to the ground. Disaster. Terrible. We have to laugh about it now, but that night it meant Mom didn't get to sleep
in her bed. It's funny to me that Mom still takes these pictures. She starts to smile about it almost right off. She gets annoyed and stuff when it happens, but there's also a little bit of her that thinks,
Isn't this just Blunderful
?

The Blunder Wall is filled with every sort of mistake and every mistake, since the beginning of the bakery. There're stories that come with all the pictures. Why she thinks something went wrong and who was with her when it did, and what they said or did. A lot more of these stories have Paolo in them than I expect, and he's a lot funnier to her than he's ever been to me. I can sort of hear her Paolo laugh when she tells me about those pictures, and it makes me uncomfortable. You can see Mom's hands and Paolo's hands are in there too. Mine are even in a few. Jock's in a couple too—in fact, he's the only face you can see in any of them. He knew the right place for everything. Jock would say, “You gotta laugh, girlie, or you'd die for to weep.” Mom always told me he was the reason she started the Blunder Wall, he named it.

We look through more, and it's fun listening to how excited Mom gets about each one, even the ones where
she tells me, “That was such a stupid mistake, all the yeast settled there. Look. Gross.” But she laughs, just as hard at these mistakes as all the others.

“That one almost burned the place to the ground!” Mom laughs about as hard as I have ever heard her. Almost as loud as Nanny.

“This is awesome,” I say, sort of out of nowhere.

“Yeah? You think?” Mom says.

“Sure, it's like everything you've done bad, but you don't have to feel bad about it, because it's up there and it doesn't matter.”

But Mom stops me. “Wait a minute. Just wait. ‘Everything I've done bad'? That's not what this is. This is everything I've done well.”

I don't get it. But I don't say that, I don't need to.

“Now see, this one almost burned the place to the ground, almost, but it didn't because I caught it and saved it. And this cake, I remade that and it was better, in just about four hours. And this one, not everyone can make a doughnut look like Joan Rivers, but I did, or
I
was able to see it. That's something I did right.” Mom smiles big.
“When I look at this wall, I see a lot of laughs and a few tears, sure, but I see that it all works. All of it, maybe not in the normal way. But it works. And when it's good, it works great.”

Mom stands back from the wall, like she is the captain of a big ship and knows she can go anywhere and she likes it. I want to go along with her. But I don't know if I'm invited.

“Bread is a process. Every step, even the ones you screw up or you trip over, matters. And you need each one to be done as well as you can. But if you can't do that, you have to know it, and you have to try again. Those are the things you do well,” Mom says. “You gotta laugh, girlie, or you'd die for to weep.”

Mom looks up at Jock smiling, kisses her hand, and then presses it to his face. I know what she's talking about, or I think I know, and there's a part of me, a really big part of me, that knows she's right. I can see it on her face, how right she is, but there's a second part of me, a bigger part, that thinks,
She so doesn't get it, she's never had to deal with kids my age. There's nothing to laugh about
.

She turns to me with, “Right?”

I answer, “Right.”

Jules has started to close the store down, and Paolo is singing something in Portuguese while he cuts a big pile of dough into little piles for making rolls. As soon as we turn the corner into the oven room, Paolo perks up and looks at both of us, but he keeps singing like it's not a big deal or anything, you know how people sing all the time. In a language only they understand. And then he starts to dance a little, even though it sounds like a sad song, but he has to show off. I don't get it, and I don't really want to. Mom does and she does her laugh, her Paolo laugh, which only encourages him. Why is everything he does so funny?

“How's it going, little man? You come to visit your mom and me?” Paolo says, taking a minute from his, like, samba of one. I did just come for Mom, but sure, Paolo. You too.

“Yeah, he did. Isn't that a nice thing?” Mom answers for me.

“You're a good kid, little man. Your mom loves you a lot, huh?” Paolo smiles. How would he know that? Do they talk about me?

“You want to make something? Or do you just want to hang out?” Mom asks me.

I don't know what to say. We're never going be alone together anymore? Is this how it is now? Whatever we try to make will have to involve Paolo, and I just don't want that today. Maybe not ever. I know I'm being a grouch about it, and he's all right, I guess. But all his “little man” stuff, what is that? I'm a kid, or the smallest bit a teenager, but I'm not some little man. Is it a Brazilian macho thing? Like I'm running around ordering things and making everybody do what I want, because I'm the “man”? Jock didn't do that. Why does he always have to show off, with the slow dancing and the singing and barely any shirt? Just cut the dough and shut up or leave. If I was the man, that would be the first thing I'd tell him to do.

It's awful to think I want him away from Mom, even though I see how she smiles at him, and I know the laugh
she gives him. And I know they went out together. I know it. Who else would Mom go out with? There's only Paolo, and I don't like him or his singing or his dancing or his hairy legs. Honest.

Paolo smiles and offers me another dough cutter, as if I'm supposed to help him, but I turn really quickly to Mom and say, “What about lemon cake?”

“Oh God, I don't even know if I have everything,” Mom says, but she's sort of smiling to let me know that it's a very good idea. The best idea. Mom and I love this cake, from the first time she made it. She had it in a bakery somewhere in Wisconsin or something when she was pregnant with me, traveling with my dad, and she loved it so much, she asked the lady at the small little cake shop, how to make it. She tried to make it on her own, but it wasn't right. And then, she and my dad had left that town, and she could never find out what she was doing wrong. The cakes she made were all good, she told me some were very good, even better than the original, but she could never get it just right. And then she had me. One day, and she has told me this story, like, a million times, but one
day, I was crying or something, and she thought,
I'll make the lemon cake, that'll be the perfect thing for this screaming brat
. And she did. Using the same ingredients and the same way she had tried it so many times before. But that time, that time with me there, it was right. It was perfect. And she couldn't tell why, or what was different. The only thing she figured was that she was making it for someone else. She was baking it to make me happy, even though I couldn't eat it, she was doing it for me. And she sort of figured that was the real difference. She says that was the day she decided to open the bakery. The lemon cake has been our thing ever since. We get it right together.

Paolo can't be any part of it, and I guess that sounds all crazy mean, but I'm not doing it for those reasons, honest. I want lemon cake. I want something between her and me, something no one else can be a part of or even really know about. And I guess that is mean, but I really don't even care.

Mom moves around the kitchen, going into the walk-in and looking for everything that we'll need. We don't have lemons. That part we just don't. “Here,” she says, going
to the register and grabbing a twenty, “go down to the corner and grab, like, fifteen, at least fifteen lemons for me. I'll get everything ready for when you get back.” I half hear her, because as soon as she hands me the money, I run out the door and down to the corner. I grab as many lemons as they have, fifteen is enough, and I take a few more just in case. I want to get back, I want to not miss a minute of making our cake together. I don't even talk to the guy behind the counter, who always asks me a million questions anyway, I have to get back.

I run back. I don't even care if I'm winded or not. I swing open the door really loudly when I get to the bakery, and even though I know they had to hear me, they, like, really had to, I hear them talking. Paolo and my mom.

“You really need to tell him. It's not fair,” says Paolo.

“Who's it not fair to?” Mom asks back a little angry. Good.

“Him. Me,” says Paolo, and you can sort of hear him cutting dough really hard.

“I know, I'm sorry. I just feel like . . . ,” Mom starts to say, and then she stops, I don't see her, but I know
she's biting her lip and thinking about the next thing to say, or wishing she could take back the last thing she said. And then, “You're right. I'm sorry.” Paolo starts to say something, but I'm already in the doorway with the lemons.