How to Build a Heart

by Maria Padian

  “Lots,” Jack says, his eyes round with concern.

  Many phone calls—between me and Mami, Aunt Carrie and Mami, and Uncle DeWitt and Mami—happened. Mark’s offer to drive me back, and my idea that he stay for a while, required some negotiating. But now a plan has hatched, and the Clayton Crawfords have a real live relative (who knows his way around a Skilsaw) to help with our build and earn equity hours.

  Of course, before any of that occurs, Mami and I have a face-to-face coming.

  As Mark heaves the groceries onto the counter, she points him and Jack toward the car to collect the rest of the bags. That should give her about thirty seconds alone with me.

  A lot can happen in thirty seconds.

  So I make a preemptive strike.

  “Mami, before you say anything, I’m so, so sorry I took off without asking first and scared you. I know I probably deserve to be grounded for a decade, but . . .”

  Before I get any further, she wraps her arms around me and holds me in a tight squeeze. When she lets go, her eyes are damp.

  “I was so worried! Don’t ever, ever do that to me again!”

  “I won’t.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t.”

  Mami looks as if she can’t understand how she gave birth to such an imbécil.

  “That Mark. Is this going to be okay?”

  I know what she’s wondering. Is the wild child we once knew safe to be around now that he’s full grown?

  “He’s tame enough. Jack says he’s staying with Betts?”

  Mami nods. “She has a little apartment over her workshop. He can stay there in exchange for chores.”

  Oh, yes. I really like the idea of Betts ordering Mark around.

  Outside, Jack squeals with laughter. They are playing, probably while ice cream melts in the car. Hyper, meet Distractible.

  Mami settles onto one of the stools. She’s switched to her interrogation face. “So. Did you find what you were looking for at that reunion?”

  I’m not sure how to answer. I thought I was just avoiding the Habitat dinner.

  “I saw Grandma Crawford,” I say.

  Mami’s lips purse. “And how is she?” she asks politely.

  “Still mean as a snake,” I reply.

  Surprise, and suppressed laughter, cross my mother’s face. Like she knows she should correct me, but her heart isn’t in it. “Isabella . . .” she tries.

  “Did you know,” I continue, “she was the one who said the ‘might as well be black’ thing years ago? I found that out.”

  Mami stills. I can’t tell whether this is a surprise. She doesn’t say anything

  “So, how is she?” I continue. “I guess . . . racist?”

  Still nothing. I’m used to seeing a little more fire from my mother. Especially when I’m tossing verbal grenades.

  “She is not a kind woman,” Mami finally says.

  “You think?” I can’t hold back the sarcasm. “I mean, with family like that, who needs enemies?”

  Mami’s eyes narrow. And she doesn’t say, so much as spit, what comes next.

  “No. She is not family.”

  There’s the fire.

  My mother takes a deep breath. Like we’re settling in for something long. Luckily, the sounds of Mark and Jack and Paco tearing it up continue outside. “My mother has a saying, ‘La sangre llama.’ ‘Blood calls.’ I didn’t really understand it until I had children of my own. Right after you were born, and they put you in my arms? It was like I recognized you. A brand-new little person, but I knew you.

  “All of a sudden I understood . . . animals. How mother lions and bears go crazy if you get near their cubs? It’s in our bodies, in our blood. You know your own and you will fight to protect them. You will do anything for them. That’s what a mother does.

  “So your father’s mother . . . confused me. Do you know, she wouldn’t come to our wedding? How do you do that? Turn your back on your own son?”

  “She’s racist!” I insist.

  But Mami shakes her head, hard. “I don’t use that word. It is too simple. Calling people racist makes it easy to lump them together and label them all bad. Prejudice is more complicated than that. So is race. What is race, anyway? Is ‘brown’ a race? Is ‘Latina’ a race? I don’t know.

  “Here is what I do know, your grandmother is very uncomfortable with difference. Color. Religion. Country. State, even. You should hear her go on about Yankees! And I do not mean the baseball team.”

  We both laugh. Things have gotten noticeably quieter outside. The guys are probably going to reappear at any moment.

  “I know she did not like that I’m Puerto Rican. But she skipped our wedding because we got married in a Catholic church. And Charlie was thinking about converting. That really upset her.”

  “Was she awful to you, Mami?” I’m trying to imagine what this was like for her. Those once-every-year reunions.

  Mami pauses, carefully choosing what she says next. “I am not going to lie to you, Isabella. Her unkindness hurt me deeply. But Charlie’s brothers, and the wives, especially Carrie, were very nice. And you were so little, you were fine. But at her birthday, when she didn’t wait for you to change clothes and be in the big picture? That was the last straw for your father. And I realized my mother was only partly right. Yes, ‘La sangre llama.’ But there is another saying. ‘La sangre te hace pariente, pero la lealtad te hace familia.’”

  “‘Blood makes you . . .’ I’m sorry, what?” I try.

  “Blood makes you related, but loyalty makes you family,” Mami translates. “She is blood, Isabella. But being a family is so much more.”

  I sit on the other stool. I’m more than a little ashamed of all my anger at Mami for not taking us to North Carolina these past years.

  “I’m sorry, Mami. For all the times I bugged you about visiting the Crawfords.”

  “I told myself I didn’t want anything from them.” She sits up a little straighter when she says this. “I thought we didn’t need anything from them. And we don’t. From her. But Isabella, it felt good to talk to Carrie and DeWitt on the phone. And I am glad Mark will help us.”

  Jack and Mark choose this precise moment to carry in the rest of the groceries. My brother’s hair is damp with little-boy sweat. Even Paco pants. Mami moves to the counter and begins unloading the bags, giving my arm a quick squeeze as she brushes past. There’s more to say but it will have to wait.

  “I just met your neighbor,” Mark says. “Nose ring? Blue hair?”

  “We saw Roz!” Jack confirms. “Can she come for dinner? She hasn’t been over in ages.”

  Mami smiles politely. “Another time,” she tells Jack.

  Mark sits on the stool Mami just vacated. “So,” he says, grinning wickedly, “you’ve been talking about me.” I look at him, confused. “That Roz girl, just now? She walked up to us and said, ‘Well, if it isn’t the cute cousin.’”

  “Oh god,” I groan.

  “I told her, ‘The one and only. And who might you be?’ She said she’s a friend of yours? We should all go out, Cuz. She’s pretty cute herself.”

  “Isabella is grounded for a decade,” Mami informs him from the kitchen.

  I aim my see-how-it-is? face at Mark and shrug.

  “Izzy skipped the big important dinner,” Jack explains. “And it was so good! They had ice cream sundaes!”

  “That’s awesome,” I tell him. I turn to Mami. “So how did that go?” It’s the first time either of us has even mentioned the Habitat event.

  “Ms. Betts raised all her money. And you would have had a nice time. Everyone was asking for you. There were people who know you. Their daughter goes to your school.”

  My heart skips a beat. Honestly, there’s this clutch in my chest, and for a full second I experience what it mus
t feel like to die.

  “Who?” I ask. But I know.

  “Mike and Donna Shackelton. Their daughter sings in that group with you? And by the way, they told me you also know their son? Isabella, is that the boy with the rock?”

  I’m too miserable at this stage to do more than nod.

  But Mami winks at me. “Do not worry,” she says. “We did not talk about that. They are very nice. A good family.” She’s trying to reassure me. Of course, I feel anything but.

  Because that was not how I planned to tell Sam.

  29

  Sam proposes Perry’s again. I say no. The last things I need are fresh appearances on social media. The paparazzi will have to wait.

  I suggest Pie in the Sky, Betts’s epic pizza place in Alder. It’s far enough from Clayton that we won’t know anyone, plus Mark can drop me off on his way to Betts’s.

  He can also pick me up if things go badly.

  Sam is already there when I arrive, in a prime window seat. He smiles when he sees me cross the room. He wears another electric-blue shirt, like from the steamer nondate. He practically glows in that color.

  “This place is cool,” I say as I sit. “’Dyou have trouble finding it?” I glance around the wood-dark dining room. It’s like an old-fashioned log cabin except with the sort of random junk on the walls you’d find at Applebee’s. Plus it smells wonderful. Melted cheese and roasted onions. My stomach rumbles.

  “I’ve actually been here before,” Sam says. “The pizza’s great.” He seems happy to see me but also a little guarded. Like I’m a gift-wrapped box he found on his doorstep, with trigger wires poking out the sides. Making a suspicious ticking sound.

  “So, in the interest of full disclosure,” he begins, “did I just see you get dropped off by a strange guy in a pickup?”

  I make a mental note to share with Mark that Sam pegged him as strange from more than forty feet away. “That was my cousin Mark. And he is very strange.”

  Sam’s shoulders relax. “I didn’t know you had relatives around here.”

  “I don’t. He’s from North Carolina. That’s where I went last Friday. To a family reunion. He drove me back.”

  Sam takes this all in, his eyes never leaving my face, which I find unnerving. I pick up one of the menus on the table.

  “So. What’s good here?” I ask.

  “My parents met your mother on Friday night.”

  Okay. It’s like that. Mark would approve. He told me to be direct.

  “Come clean, Cuz,” he said. “You can only hide for so long.” This, after he’d pried out of me that coming to Reunion was an excuse to avoid the Shackeltons at the Habitat benefit.

  “What if he dumps me the minute he finds out?” I asked him.

  Mark looked puzzled. “Finds out what?”

  “That I’m poor. That we live in a crap place smaller than his garage. That I’m on scholarship at St. V’s. I could keep going, but do you get the point?”

  “Uh, no one’s dumping you. Not to be weird, but you are hot AF.”

  “Ew. Boundary crossing. First cousins, remember?”

  “You are also smart, funny, talented, and kind. If he dusts you because your mom doesn’t make much money, then you don’t want him.”

  Easier said than done, I didn’t say.

  “Actually, speaking of hot AF,” I said. “Sam is . . . so beautiful.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  “And had a zillion girlfriends.”

  Mark was silent.

  “Really popular girlfriends. Pretty. Experienced.” We let that last one hang there for a minute. “Like, he doesn’t date Catholic school dorks in uniforms, who . . .”

  “Yeah, I get where you’re going with that,” he laughed. “Same thing, Cuz. Use your voice. Say what you want. And what you don’t want.”

  “What if we want different things?”

  “Then you shouldn’t be together,” he said.

  “Ouch.”

  Mark laughed. “Nobody said this was easy,” he said. “And hell, I’m no expert. But I do know that secrets don’t stay secret for very long. It all comes out, in the end. So rip the damn Band-Aid off and just tell him.”

  I don’t know if Mark Crawford qualifies as any sort of Life Coach, but I decide to go with his advice. I place my menu flat on the table.

  “Yes, they did,” I say to Sam. “My mom really liked your parents.”

  “They liked her, too,” he says. That’s all. He waits. He’s set this in motion, and wants to see where I’ll go.

  I take a deep breath, and leap. “You know that house where you dropped me off the other night?”

  He nods.

  “I don’t live there.”

  Sam sits back in his chair. His expression has changed from waiting to wary. Like I’ve taken off the first tiny bit of a disguise, and he’s not sure what lies beneath.

  “I live the next block over. In Meadowbrook Gardens.”

  His eyebrows contract, forming this little line between. “The trailer park?”

  “Actually, it’s a mobile home park. But yes.”

  “Right. Sorry. So . . .” He pauses. “Why did you have me leave you at that house?”

  “Because our place is a dump. And I didn’t want you to see it.”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “There’s more,” I continue. “My mom isn’t a nurse. She’s a nurse’s aide. She doesn’t make much money, and since my dad died, we’ve moved around a lot while she keeps looking for better jobs. We don’t get a lot of help because all of her family lives in Puerto Rico. They’re broke, too.”

  Sam waits some more. When he’s satisfied I’m done, he speaks.

  “Is that it?” he asks.

  “I think so.”

  “Just so I’m clear, was your dad a Marine who died in Iraq? Or did you make that up?”

  “That’s true.”

  “And do you go to St. V’s with my sister?”

  I laugh. A little. “Yes.”

  “And your family is moving to that new development in East Clayton? The one Habitat for Humanity is building?”

  “Yes.”

  Sam stares at me for what feels like forever but is probably only sixty seconds. He looks . . . hurt?

  “You think I’m an asshole,” he finally says.

  My shock is electric. I feel my whole body startle. “What? No! Oh my god. Not at all!”

  “Yes, you do,” he insists. “Why else would you not tell me those things? You must think I’m a materialistic asshole who cares how much money your mother makes.”

  “Sam . . . no.”

  I feel the beginning of a cry coming on. This is not the reaction I expected.

  “I don’t think badly of you. I feel bad about me. You’ve never been poor, so you don’t get it. But I was . . . embarrassed. You live in this gorgeous house with these gorgeous parents and you’re perfect. You’re perfect, Sam. And I’m . . . not.”

  He snorts. Is he laughing at me?

  “Right. The perfect family that had no clue one of them was getting bullied into depression. How’d that happen?” He breaks eye contact and stares out the window. His jawline stiffens.

  Sam Shackelton is not mocking me. He looks like he’s trying not to cry.

  “You know what my mom said about yours?” he finally says. “That she was the bravest woman she’s ever met. The fact is, my mom blames herself. She blames herself every single day for Aubrey. It doesn’t matter how many times we tell her it wasn’t her fault. After she met your mom, she said, ‘Maybe if Aubrey had had a mother like that she wouldn’t have gotten so sad.’” Sam’s voice cracks. “It wasn’t my parents’ fault. It was mine. I was the one who dated that awful girl. And she wrecked my sister. So trust me, Izzy. I’m as far from perfect as they come.”
/>   This was a mistake. This pizza place. Because right now the only thing I want to do is wrap Sam Shackelton in my arms and hold him. But our bright-eyed waitress chooses this moment to see if we’re ready to order.

  “No,” I bark. “Give us ten minutes.”

  The poor woman flees.

  “Remind me not to get on your wrong side,” Sam says.

  “That’ll teach her,” I say.

  We both try to laugh. This is hard.

  “Sam,” I say, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. I think I’ve been keeping secrets so long I’m on auto-lie.”

  “I’m sorry if I came across as someone you couldn’t trust,” he says. “Given my past track record with girls, I can see where you got that idea.”

  “So. What happens now?” I ask him. I hold my breath. Beneath the table I cross my fingers.

  “I could use a do-over,” he says. He reaches across the table and holds out his hand, palm up. “I’m Sam Shackelton. Nice to meet you.”

  I clasp his hand in mine. “Isabella Crawford. It’s very nice to meet you.”

  “I’m not perfect. And if you call me that again, I’ll get mad.”

  “Me neither. Perfect, that is. I also despise pineapple on pizza, so if you order anything called a Hawaiian, we’re done.”

  “I was thinking the Meat Me? With hamburger, pepperoni, and sausage.”

  “Yeah, I’ll need a salad with that.”

  “Also, no more secrets. Not about anything, Izzy. Especially not about the house thing, which, by the way, is very cool.”

  “Deal,” I tell him. “And Sam?”

  “What?”

  “Since we’re not keeping secrets, would you go hunt down the waitress? I’m starving.”

  Sam treats me to one of his killer crooked smiles and goes off in search of our server.

  Meanwhile, I sit back. I cannot remember the last time I felt so light. Maybe it’s because my arms are finally empty of stones.

  Except for one. But that’s not my secret to share.

  30

  I was wrong about a blitz: it’s not like an aerial bombing. It’s like ducks paddling on a lake. On the surface, things look smooth. But beneath the water? Those webbed feet are working like mad.