People Who Knew Me (10 page)

The problem was Domingo. Domingo was in charge of running the day-to-day business. Maybe because most of the up-front money was his, he took to spending it without consulting Drew. Not that Drew would have helped. Drew wasn't a businessman; he was a chef. “An artist,” he liked to say.

Domingo insisted on top-of-the-line equipment, better advertising, new décor. They bought heavy rustic tables from a designer furniture store when they could have scoured the classifieds or yard sales for better deals. Domingo hired three servers when they really only needed two—and he paid them ten bucks an hour when they should have made eight, at most. His rationale was that he wanted to attract top-notch employees. That was the thing with Domingo—his ideas were good in theory, but only in theory. For the first two months, he didn't even use a bookkeeping system. It wasn't until February that he realized they were way too far in the red.

There were other issues, too. It cost a thousand dollars to fix a plumbing problem that caused the drains in the kitchen to back up. During the dinner rush, customers said they couldn't find anywhere to park on the street. A few complained about the cost of the tacos—three or four bucks a pop. Street-cart tacos were a dollar each, after all. These were gourmet. They knew that. They appreciated the special ingredients, the sophistication. But a four-dollar taco was a four-dollar taco.

Drew was convinced it would get better. Sure, they had kinks to work out, but that was just part of opening a restaurant. He maintained his enthusiasm, his almost manic energy, for months. It wasn't until July that he came to me, in bed, just before midnight, smelling of sweat and food, and said, “I think we're in trouble.” He fell onto the mattress, flat on his stomach, his head turned to one side, not facing me. I put my hand on his back—hot and sticky. All I said was, “I know, babe.”

After the “Closed” sign went up in the front window, I let Drew wallow in self-pity. There's a certain equilibrium in all relationships and I knew I had to counteract his sadness for us to maintain some kind of normalcy. I perked up for his benefit. I assured him we'd be fine, even though I had doubts. It was usually his role to be optimistic—to a nearly delusional degree, at times—but he abandoned that post and I felt compelled to occupy it. The restaurant was separate from us; it could fail, but we wouldn't. Yes, we lost our investment, but we would be okay. I told him about the five thousand dollars, hoping that would raise his spirits, but the fact that I'd had the secret account depressed him more.

The thing is, I'd always known Drew was a dreamer; I just never knew what would happen when the dreams fell apart.

He'd never been much of a drinker. We had wine with dinner most nights, and there was always a six-pack of beer in the fridge, but he was never the type who needed a drink. In fact, he was downright cautious about becoming that type. His mom had told him that his father had had a drinking problem, and whether that was true or a lie constructed by a woman bitter about her husband leaving, Drew lived in fear of the power of genetics. But about a week after the restaurant closed up, I came home from work to find him on the couch with a bottle of Jack Daniel's next to him—a cliché scene if I ever saw one. I had to restrain myself from rolling my eyes. I'd asked Marni, over drinks after work, “When can I tell him to start looking for another job?” and she said, “Why should you have to
tell
him? He should know.” She was right. But I understood Drew. I knew what the taco shop meant to him.

“We need to get you out of this,” I said, sitting with him on the couch, reaching my hand into his bag of chips, as if to say,
I will join you in this misery because I love you
. Bruce jumped up on the couch with us, climbing over our laps, tail wagging.

“Bruce agrees with me,” I said.

Drew just sighed his defeated sigh.

“I have an idea,” I said. “Let's do our California trip.”

We'd never actually planned it. We kept putting it off, saying, “Let's buy tickets after the restaurant opens,” then, “Let's buy tickets after the restaurant gets a bit more stable,” then nothing.

Drew took a sip of his whiskey.

“What?” he said, his tone already discounting whatever visions I had in my head.

“Our honeymoon. We should do it. Finally.” I put my hand on his leg. I was trying, so hard.

“I don't think it's the best time to be going on a trip. We just lost all our money and I have no job.”

“Right—you have no job. So you have free time. And I haven't taken a vacation since I started at Mathers and James. We've got to do it while we can.”

I'd always resented the cheerleaders in high school. Now I had become one.

“It can be part honeymoon, part twenty-seventh birthday celebration.”

“What's so special about turning twenty-seven?” he said.

“We're going to find out really soon.”

I played with the little hairs on the back of his neck. He fidgeted.

“I don't know,” he said, leaning his head back until it banged against the wall.

“Drew, it's all going to be okay,” I said. “We'll look back on this and see it as a brief hard time when we were young. We have time to make back the money we lost. We have all kinds of opportunities.”

As soon as I said that, I worried he'd ask me to specify those opportunities. Thankfully, he didn't.

“If you want to go to California, if that will make you happy, then we'll go. But I can't guarantee it'll make me happy.”

I kissed him on the lips, expecting no reciprocation of affection and getting none.

“You don't have to guarantee anything.”

*   *   *

I booked the tickets the next day, leaving five days later, on October 16. I would have preferred to go in summertime, but everyone at work said there were no seasons in California anyway, that fall was as good a time as any, maybe even better because there would be fewer tourists. The Saturday before, I found an antique ivory suitcase—one of those hard-sided ones—at a secondhand store in Williamsburg. It had rusted buckles and read, in black lettering, “Going to California” next to a peeling-off palm tree decal. I bought it, even though it wasn't the most practical luggage choice. Not much would fit in it, but that was okay. We were only going for five days. I just needed one swimsuit, a few pairs of shorts, T-shirts, a couple nice dresses for hoped-for fancy dinners.

“Can you help me with this thing?” I said to Drew. I'd managed to stuff everything into the suitcase, but was having trouble closing it and fastening the buckles. We were flying out of JFK the next morning.

“Sure can,” he said. His attitude had improved since I'd booked the trip. He'd distracted himself with looking up activities for us to do while we were there. He wanted to see a taping of
The Price Is Right
. He wanted to go to Universal Studios. He wanted to get a map of where the celebrities live. It would have been fair to remind him that we only had five days, but I didn't want to dampen his spirits, so I said nothing, let him think we could do it all.

He sat on the suitcase, his weight closing it enough for me to snap the buckles shut. We high-fived.

“Did you get Bruce's food ready?”

The plan was to drop off Bruce at Marni's place, bring her dinner as a thank-you for taking care of him while we were gone.

“All set. I've got his leash and some toys in a bag.”

It was this, these preparations, that were getting Drew out of his funk. He was a person in need of a new daydream and this trip was it.

“All right, get him in the car and I'll meet you downstairs,” I said.

He called to Bruce and teased him cruelly by saying, “Wanna go for a walk?” Whenever Bruce got really excited, he pranced all over the wood floors, his nails click-clacking with unbridled zeal. Drew closed the door behind them and I did a check of everything on my mental packing list. I went into the kitchen to grab a Ziploc bag for my toothbrush and that's when the phone rang.

“Hello,” an old woman said, her voice shaky with age. “My name is Gladys.”

Drew's grandmothers had passed away before I met him; my mom insisted I never meet my grandmother (for reasons never divulged to me). I had no idea who this Gladys woman was. I walked the phone into the kitchen with me, stretching the cord as far as it would go, and grabbed a plastic baggie out of a drawer. All I had to do was put my toothbrush in it, throw it in my carry-on, and I'd be done packing, ready to go.

“I think you have the wrong number,” I said.

“Wait,” she said. “Is Andrew there?”

“He's not here at the moment. Can I ask who this is?”

“I'm Janet's neighbor.”

Janet. Drew's mother. I didn't want to ask the next question because I feared where it would lead: “Is everything okay?”

“I'm afraid she's taken a fall,” the woman said. “I saw it. She was going out to get her mail and she fell right there on the cement.”

I sat on the couch, feeling my excitement fizzle.

“Is she all right?”

“I couldn't say, dear,” she said. “Hit her head pretty bad—got a goose egg on it. And it seems she broke her wrist. She's asking for Andrew. I found the number on the bulletin board in her kitchen.”

At that moment, I heard Drew in the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time, still possessing the enthusiasm I'd lost so suddenly. He opened the door and, not realizing I was on the phone, said, “Bruce's in the car. Ready to go!” Then he saw the look on my face and he knew.

“Gladys,” I said into the phone. “We'll be right there.”

We didn't speak until we turned onto the 280 West.

“What time does our flight leave in the morning?” Drew asked.

“Eight o'clock,” I said. “We should be at the airport no later than seven.”

It felt good to talk like this, as if we were still going. It also felt pointless.

*   *   *

Drew's mom still lived in the same house where Drew grew up—a three-bed, one-bath in a bad enough neighborhood that the front door and all the windows had wrought-iron bars on them. When we got close enough, we saw his mom sitting on the front lawn—or what used to be the lawn. The grass had gone brown and strawlike. The last time we saw it—in spring—it was still green. Summer had taken a toll.

She was holding her arm close to her, cradling it against her chest, her face contorted into a look of perplexing pain. The goose egg Gladys mentioned was, in fact, there, right smack in the middle of her forehead. An old woman—Gladys, most likely—was sitting beside her, looking up and down the street for help to arrive. My heart palpitated when I realized it was us, Drew and me, who were the help.

Drew parked in front and we got out hurriedly. He went right to his mom.

“What happened?” He squatted down and made a motion to take her arm in his hands for inspection. She held her arm closer to her, like a feral animal protecting its offspring.

I didn't know my role in all this, so I thanked Gladys for calling us. She reached at me with her wrinkly hand, asking me for help up. She was as frail as any old person, but her weight was heavy. I almost fell backward pulling her to her feet. She took a moment to balance herself, then began a slow walk back to her house, shaking her head and muttering, “Someone's got to look out for people in this neighborhood.”

When I turned back to Drew and his mom, he was still trying to coax her into showing him her arm. I crouched down next to them.

“It's the stupid cracks in the cement that made me fall,” she said bitterly. Her voice was faint. I could only hear her if I was within a one-foot radius. “They haven't repaired the sidewalks in
decades
.”

I glanced out toward the mailbox, along the path she would take from her front door to retrieve her mail, trying to find the alleged cracks. I didn't see any capable of tripping up someone.

“Ma, I've got to take a look,” Drew said, with the authority and sternness of a professional. I fancied him a doctor in that moment, wanting the diagnosis to be a bad bruise, requiring ice and nothing more.

Reluctantly, she released the tense hold on her arm and let Drew look at it. The moment he touched it, she clenched her teeth fiercely and a tear started a diagonal journey from her eye to the crease of her nose. It wasn't just a bruise. Drew looked at me, regret and apology in his eyes.

“Ma, it's broken. It's definitely broken,” he said. “We've got to get you to the hospital.”

She said something neither of us heard. We both leaned closer.

“I don't have health insurance,” she said. She bit her lip—either a response to the pain or an attempt to hold back tears. She seemed ashamed, embarrassed. She couldn't look at us directly.

“Don't worry about that now,” I said, though I was worried about it. I could see the bills in the mail, having to pay them.

“Come on,” Drew said, taking her good arm, her right arm, trying to pull her up. In the excruciating time it took him to help her stand, I realized how incapacitated she was. Drew's biceps were flexing, straining to lift her. She had no strength left. Neither did Gladys, really, but Gladys must have been close to ninety. Drew's mom was fifty-three. Her body had gone flaccid. When she was upright, I saw her for all she was—emaciated, sick.

“Emmy, can you get my purse?” she said in a whisper. I imagined her vocal cords had gone limp just like her muscles. Whatever was plaguing her was siphoning all her strength, one day at a time.

“Of course,” I said, relieved to have a task.

I slid past them, went to the front door, undid the latch. What I found inside was astonishing. I gasped, audibly. We hadn't visited in a while and that was even more apparent when I was inside, in a living room that contradicted its name. It smelled like death: gone-bad food, mold, layers of damp dust, mouse droppings. And, if I wasn't mistaken, there was the faint, slightly sweet smell of urine. How often was she not making it to the bathroom in time?