My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories (9 page)

She peered into the living room. “Your TV’s not on.”

“Uh … yeah.” I looked over my shoulder, at Mike’s dormant big screen. “I mean, no. Wait, why?”

“What do you
do
in here all day?”

“I cat sit.”

Haley rolled her eyes. “Most cat sitters can manage to watch TV at the same time.” She switched her bathroom bag from one arm to the other, adding: “Not sure you’re aware of this, but we’re kind of snowed in right now, which is the perfect excuse to stream Netflix. I watched an entire season of
Downton Abbey
yesterday.”

“Is that the one about those rich British people?”

“I’m pretty sure your TV feed didn’t go the way of my shower pipes,” Haley said, ignoring my question.

I pointed to her bathroom bag. “I see you reconsidered the Christmas dreads.”

She let out a dramatic sigh. “I thought about it last night. And I’m going to take you up on your offer.”

I sensed a
but
coming.

“But here’s my thing.…” Haley glanced around Mike’s apartment. “Interesting,” she said, distracted. “It’s the exact same layout as my place, but at the same time it looks totally different.” She turned back to me. “In order for me to feel comfortable taking a shower down here, we have to both share something about ourselves first. Then I’ll feel like I know you better. And it won’t be so weird.”

“Seriously, Haley. I’ll stay way on this side of the apartment. I promise.”

“That’s not the point.”

I glanced into the kitchen where Olive had gone back to housing her wet food. My empty stomach was beyond the cramping stage now, which made me wonder if I’d started digesting muscle. I stepped aside, motioning for Haley to come in.

She walked over to Mike’s L-shaped couch and sat down.

I sat, too. “So, what kind of stuff are we supposed to say?”

“Anything,” she said. “It could be about your childhood. Or about where you’re from. Or why you’re wearing a beanie indoors. Seriously, anything.”

I pulled off my beanie and opened my mouth to ask a follow-up question, but she cut me off. “On second thought, maybe you should put that back on.”

“Why?” I stood up to look in the mirror mounted on the wall behind the couch. My hair was a rats’ nest of thick, brown waves. It was the longest I’d ever had it. I put the beanie back on, saying: “I guess I kind of need a haircut.”

“You think?”

Sweet, another thing I couldn’t afford.

Back home my auntie Cecilia always cut it for free.

“Okay, I’ll start.” Haley paused for a few seconds, looking around, then said, “Long-distance relationships are all about patience. And my boyfriend, Justin, is probably the most patient man alive.”

“How so?” I took the bait, even though I knew what she was doing. This was Haley’s way of establishing that she was in a relationship, which she believed would lessen the risk of me trying to sneak into the shower with her while she was busy rinsing out her Awapuhi.

“Like I said yesterday,” Haley answered. “I was supposed to book my own ticket home. But I procrastinated. So Justin’s back in Portland right now, hanging out at home, when we were supposed to be heading to a B&B in Seaside. Our parents are friends, and they said as long as we were back by Christmas day.… Anyway, instead of getting mad at me, which is what I would’ve done, all Justin wants to talk about is my frozen pipes. He actually feels bad for me, can you believe it? That’s some serious patience.”

“Wow,” I said, playing along. “He sounds … patient.”

“Okay, now you.”

I sat there for an uncomfortable amount of time, trying to think of something interesting to say. I couldn’t talk about a distant girlfriend the way I wanted to—which would
definitely
make Haley feel more comfortable about the shower situation.

“It doesn’t have to be some big profound thing,” she told me. “It can be simple.”

“Got it,” I said, still brainstorming. Then it came to me. “My little sister, who’s probably my best friend in the world, turns seventeen on Christmas day. This is the first birthday of hers I’ll have ever missed.” Sofe wasn’t technically my best friend, and she didn’t technically turn seventeen until the week
after
Christmas, but the point was to show Haley I was a solid brother, which would hopefully increase her trust in me.

“Ah, that’s sad. Why didn’t you go home?”

No money!
“Because I promised Mike I’d cat sit.”

Haley frowned. “I’m sure he’d have understood. It’s Christmas.
And
your sister’s birthday.”

“I have a lot of homework and stuff, too,” I lied.

“Ah, I figured you were a student,” Haley said. “What school?”

“NYU.”

She nodded. “Isn’t your semester over?”

I pulled my beanie tighter over my forehead and shifted positions on the couch. “Actually, it’s for
next
semester.” I pointed at the novel I’d been reading. “This one lit class I’m taking has a grip of reading. I’m trying to, like, get ahead, you know?” It was true that a class I’d signed up for had a large reading list, but the book on the couch had nothing to do with school. And I was a fast reader.

“What year are you?” Haley asked.

“Freshman. You?”

“I’m a sophomore at Columbia.”

“Nice, a college veteran,” I said.

Haley forced a laugh. “Please. I have no idea what I’m even going to major in.”

I glanced at my book again.

There was another awkward silence at that point, and after a few seconds Haley stood up and said, “See?”

I stood up, too. “See what?”

“Now we know a little about each other. Which means it’s less weird for me to take a shower at your place.”

“Well, technically,” I pointed out, “it’s not
my
place.”

“It’s yours through the holidays, right?”

“I guess so.” I watched Haley disappear into the hall, and a few seconds later I heard the bathroom door in the master bedroom close. I looked around the apartment, trying to imagine it as my place. The designer couch. The expensive-looking leather chair. The massive flat-screen mounted on the wall. The fancy-looking paintings.

What would my old man say if he saw me standing here right now?

He’d think I was cat sitting in a museum.

I read the entire time Haley was in Mike’s bathroom—which was a shockingly long time. When she finally walked back into the living room, her hair was wet and I could tell she was wearing fresh makeup. She looked beautiful.

I sat down my book and got up, saying, “Everything go okay in there?”

“It was quite lovely. Thanks.” She waited for me to open the front door. When I did, she looked me dead in the eye and said, “Thank you, Shy.”

I got a weird, unbalanced feeling hearing her say my name, and I told her, “My shower’s your shower, Haley.” But that sounded kind of sexual so I quickly added: “I mean, you can bathe in my place anytime.” But that was creepy, too. “I mean—”

“I know what you mean,” she said, saving me from myself. “I appreciate it.”

She gave me a nice smile and left Mike’s apartment.

When I closed the door, I found Olive looking up at me, accusatorily.

“What?” I asked.

She meowed.

“Look,” I told her, “you’re gonna have to start speaking English around here.”

She stuck out her front paws, stretched her multicolored back, and crept away.

Angels in the Snow

Haley was back early the next morning with her bathroom bag, a change of clothes, and a fresh towel. “I don’t mean to keep interrupting … whatever it is you do down here,” she said, “but I kind of had an accident in the kitchen.” She held out the front of her gray Columbia sweatshirt. There was a large catsup stain between the
m
and the
b
.

I motioned for her to come inside. “You can just leave your stuff in there if you want.”

She forced a laugh. “Yeah, I don’t think so. That would be taking it
way
too far. Besides, how do I know you’re not the kind of person who snoops through people’s things?”

“I don’t even shower in there. I use the one in the spare bedroom.”

“That’s what they all say.” She looked down at her catsup stain again. “I know technically this is more of a laundry issue, but I
feel
dirty.”

“Like I said, you can shower down here whenever you want.”

She set her stuff on the dining room table and reached down to pet the cat. “You’re a friendly one, aren’t you girl? Oh, yes, you are.”

“Her name’s Olive,” I said.

Haley looked up at me. “We’re on a first-name basis now, I see.”

I shrugged. For some reason I wasn’t feeling like my usual laid-back self. I think the hunger was making me irritable. But at the same time, I was happy to be talking to Haley again. Being hungry is bad news. Being hungry and alone? That’s when people start Googling info about suicide hotlines.

She stood up and put her hands on her hips, like she was waiting for something. That unbalanced feeling I got whenever we made eye contact was no longer confined to my stomach. It had moved up into my chest.

“What?” I said.

“You go first this time,” she said.

“We’re doing that getting-to-know-you thing again?”

“Yep,” Haley said. “Every time I come down here, we have to share one new thing. Those are the rules. And ideally it should be something highly personal. The last thing you shared was kind of boring—no offense to your sister.” She glanced over my shoulder, into Mike and Janice’s kitchen. “What are you doing for meals? It never smells like you’ve cooked anything, and I usually hear the takeout guys when they’re coming up the steps.”

“Oh, Mike left a stocked fridge for me,” I lied. “The cupboards are all full, too. They made this big grocery-store run to the new Whole Foods before they left and said I should eat as much as I can.”

“Nice,” Haley said. “But I’m guessing you don’t actually cook.”

I shook my head. “I mostly make sandwiches. And cereal. Easy stuff like that.” My stomach cramped so aggressively at the thought of these mythical meals I winced in pain.

“You’re welcome to eat with me. It’s just as easy to cook for two as it is for one.”

For reasons I didn’t fully understand, Haley’s offer made me want to cry.

I broke eye contact and kneeled down to pet Olive. I was so hungry now I constantly felt lightheaded. My arms and legs felt like Styrofoam. I’d finished off the hot dog bun and baby carrots and the yogurts the night before. When I awoke in the morning, I had half of the chocolate bar. I still felt hungry, though, and drank glass after glass of tap water thinking it would fill me up. It didn’t work.

“Well?” Haley said. “Do you want to come up and have dinner tonight? I was thinking of making vegetable lasagna, my mom’s special holiday recipe.”

My mouth started watering.

Real food.

“I can’t,” I told her.

“What do you mean you can’t?”

I didn’t know how to answer this truthfully. Maybe it was stupid pride—the one thing I
had
picked up from the rest of the Espinoza men. Or maybe it was a fear of being found out. I constantly felt like an imposter among the other students at NYU. When were they going to figure out I didn’t belong here, that some lady in admissions had made a mistake, had offered a scholarship to the wrong guy? I probably spent as much time trying to hide my ghetto as I did on homework.

“I’m supposed to talk to my family back home,” I said.

“Then come up after.”

“No, like my
whole
family,” I told her. “Since I won’t be there on Christmas. But I totally appreciate the offer.”

She just stared at me for a few long seconds. “You’re weird.”

I guess she had that part right.

“Anyway.” Haley grabbed her stuff off the table. “You go first this time.”

I still felt oddly emotional, which wasn’t like me. In fact, I hadn’t cried for over a year, since my mom’s funeral.

Maybe that’s what I could tell her, I thought. How when I saw my mom lying in the casket, my dumb ass broke down … in front of
everyone.
How I started shouting about the world being a fucked-up piece-of-shit place that I was done with, too. How a few relatives tried to get me to calm down, but all I did was turn my wrath on them. “Who you talking to?” I shouted in my uncle Guillermo’s face. “You don’t know shit about me!” When he reached for my arm I smacked his hand away. I could tell Haley about
that.
How tears were streaming down my face, even though my expression never changed, not even a little. And I kept shouting, “I don’t give a fuck about anything! You hear me?”

I didn’t stop crying until my dad came over and slapped me across the face. Right there, in front of everyone. At the foot of my mom’s casket. Slapped me like I was some punk five-year-old.

And as I walked out of the funeral home that day I made myself a promise.

I would never cry again.

For as long as I lived.

No matter what happened or who got sick and died.

“Hel-lo.” Haley waved her hands in front of my face. “Earth to Shy.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slow. Instead of telling her about my dead mom, I told her about the first time I saw snow.

Two years ago, our family drove to the mountains outside of San Diego and stayed at a campsite, in a family-sized tent my uncle loaned us. My parents promised me and my little sis we’d see snow, but the first three days there was nothing. It was just cold. And windy. We spent the majority of our time inside the tent, playing stupid games like Uno and Loteria and Mexican dominos. But when we woke up on the morning on the fourth day, it happened. Thick beautiful snowflakes were falling from the sky. And it had accumulated on the ground all around us. I told Haley how while my dad and sis took turns going down this little hill near our campsite on a cheap plastic sled, me and my mom lay on our backs and did snow angels just outside our tent. Like a couple of giggling kindergartners. And when we got up to check them out, it looked like our angels were holding hands.

Haley smiled. “You’re getting better at this.”