I watch Sebastian down hot dog after hot dog. He isn’t the fastest eater, but he seems to be one of the steadier. I watch as several people step back from the table with their hands up in defeat. I feel a hand on my arm and I jump and look back. Cooper.
“Hey,” he says, smiling at me. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” He stands behind me. I try to concentrate on the clock, on the rapidly disappearing hot dogs, on Sebastian, who has motioned for another platter, but all I can focus on is Cooper’s hand still on my arm. The weight of it. The warmth of it. I try to tell my heart to stop beating so fast, but it won’t listen.
The announcer starts counting down from ten. Sebastian crams three hot dogs into his mouth at once.
“Ew,” Sarah says, cringing and looking over at me. She looks at Cooper’s hand on my arm and then back at my face. I can’t read her expression.
The announcer yells for competitors to stop eating. Sarah looks at me for a second longer, then at the table up front. “Whatever’s in his mouth still counts,” Sarah says.
“As long as he can keep it down,” Cooper says. I follow his gaze to where a man is bent over the trash can.
“I could have gone the rest of my life without seeing that,” I say, making both Sarah and Cooper laugh. We wait while the judges count hot dogs with gloved hands.
“Partials don’t count,” Cooper says. One of the tank top girls follows along behind the judge, writing on a clipboard. We have to wait a long time while they count through all of the uneaten hot dogs.
“Watermelons were faster,” Sarah says.
“How many watermelons did Sebastian eat?” I ask, thinking two, tops.
“Eleven,” Sarah says. She laughs at the look on my face. “That contest was awful. It wasn’t timed, so they just had to eat until they were full or they gave up.”
“Or they threw up,” Cooper says, making a face.
“Sebastian won. The next closest person was six.”
“So why did he eat so many?” I ask.
“He said that the level of competition was not going to influence his individual performance,” Cooper says.
Sarah laughs. “What he actually said was that just because everyone else was a bunch of wimpy babies didn’t mean he had to be.”
“Same thing,” Cooper says. He smiles at me, making my heart race even faster. I can almost feel it clanking against the inside of my rib cage. He looks at me for a moment longer, making me wonder what color laminate matches his eyes. Probably something like Gilded Pesto or Sunlit Pines.
The judge walks over to the microphone and holds up his clipboard. He clears his throat, and the microphone screeches, making me wince. “We have the results of the Seventh-Annual Lower East Side Hot Dog Eating Contest.” He pauses dramatically. “But before I announce the winner, I’d like to thank our sponsors.” The crowd around us groans. He rattles off a list of businesses, including, oddly enough, Weight Watchers. Brunelli’s is one of the sponsors too.
“Get on with it!” someone yells from the back, drawing applause from everyone.
The judge clears his throat again. “In third place, Mark Sacovich.” There’s a smattering of applause as Mark walks across the stage. I note that he looks a bit green. Second place goes to a man in overalls and a camouflaged baseball cap.
“And in first place . . .” The judge pauses just long enough to make everyone stop talking. “Our youngest competitor . . .” Cooper starts whistling immediately. “Sebastian Simmons!”
Sebastian runs onto the stage and accepts a trophy with a huge gold hot dog on the top. He also gets a certificate that the judge explains gives him a spot in the Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest in July.
The emcee keeps talking, listing other opportunities to qualify and thanking more people, but I don’t hear any of it because Fig has arrived and she looks terrible. Her eyes are swollen and her cheeks are still wet, and she’s out of breath like she ran all the way here from the deli. She says something to Sarah, who covers her mouth and shakes her head, then immediately puts her arms around Fig. Cooper steps around me and leans toward Sarah, who says something to him. He frowns and looks toward the stage, where Sebastian is still standing, holding up his trophy while photographers take his picture.
Cooper manages to catch his eye. Sebastian looks at him briefly, then at Fig, who is leaning against Sarah, her shoulders shaking with silent tears. Sebastian jumps down from the stage amidst protests from the reporters, pushing through the crowd until he reaches Fig. He puts his hand on her shoulder while Cooper says something to him. Fig looks at him, her cheeks streaked with tears, until he pulls her to him. I stand there just watching, my hands hanging at my sides. Cooper looks at me for a moment, then closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.
“We should go,” he says. It’s clear from whom he’s looking at that he doesn’t mean me. Fig just bobs her head slightly and Sebastian keeps his arm around her, steering her through the crowd.
Sarah looks back at me for a moment, hesitating. “Sorry,” she mouths before following.
Cooper is the last to leave. “I’ll call you later,” he says. Then he turns and pushes through the crowd to follow Sarah, who is getting swallowed up in all the people.
I stand there, not sure what to do. I notice there’s a circle around me that no one seems able or willing to cross. Like my own bubble. My own personal space. Protected, but isolated. And more alone than ever.
Chapter Thirteen
Our neighbor, Peanut Gardner, found the dead loon, but it was my dad who had to fish it out of the lake.
“Stupid thing got himself tangled up in some fishing line,” Dad told me when I saw him carrying the loon out to his truck. He carried it by its feet, its long neck hanging down toward the ground. He placed it on a tarp on the bed of his truck and covered it with another tarp. “Just going to head up to Pumpkin Ridge to dispose of it. Don’t want the smell to draw the bears.” I stood on the porch, my arms wrapped around myself, trying to stop shivering. It wasn’t the cold—the weather was unseasonably warm for May. It was the remaining loon calling from across the lake.
They mate for life. I remember my mother telling Rachel and me that when we were young. That night, after my father went to sleep, I sat on the deck, listening as I had ever since my mother left. Listening to the loon call again and again. Every night, I sat out there, listening. The long, mournful sound would echo across the lake and raise goose bumps on my arms.
But one night I sat until all the color had faded from the sky, until the bats stopped swooping toward the water trying to catch their fill of mosquitoes. I sat there long after my father came out to tuck a blanket around me, pausing for a moment with his hand on my shoulder before stepping back inside and pulling the screen door shut behind him. I sat there until I could see my breath, and the only noises were the sounds of the leaves rustling in the wind and the distant sound of a dog barking. But no call ever came. I’m not sure which was worse: the sorrowful calls or the silence. As long as she was calling, she had hope. The silence was heavy with despair.
I check my phone every few minutes, pulling it out of the pocket of my jeans so many times that I’m surprised I haven’t worn a hole in them. I feel restless, just walking from one end of the apartment to the other. My grandmother left me a note saying she was at some meeting at the MoMA and not to expect her back until after dinner.
I fix myself a bowl of oatmeal and eat it over the sink, half wishing Veronica were here to see this. I can’t even imagine how many rules I’m breaking. Eating standing up. Clanking my spoon against my bowl. Slurping my milk. Chewing with my mouth open. Finally, the phone does ring, but it’s not my cell. It’s my grandmother’s landline. I pick it up on the second ring, thinking maybe it’s Fig or Cooper or someone who can tell me what’s going on, but it’s not any of them. It’s my dad.
“Oh,” Dad says. “Hey there.” From his voice, it’s clear that he didn’t expect me to answer. He clears his throat. “I thought yo
u’d be . . .” And he pauses, probably because he has no idea what I might be doing.
I don’t say anything. The silence stretches for so long that he asks me if I’m still there.
“Yes,” I say. Another silence.
Then, “How are you doing?” He sounds sincere, and it makes my heart ache, but I force myself to remain cold. I’ve been tricked before. First, they hook you, then they start reeling you in. Then, bam, they cut the line.
“Fine,” I say after another long pause.
“I miss you, Mia.”
I close my eyes. Everything in me wants to tell him that I miss him too, but I don’t. Because I’m not sure if the father I miss even exists anymore. I miss the dad I had before. The dad who would drop everything to have snowball fights with us. The dad who would wake me up at midnight to go out onto the deck and watch the northern lights.
I don’t miss the dad who dropped me off at the train station. The one who’s forgotten how to hug or smile or even look at me.
“I like your photos,” I say instead.
“Do you?” His voice is so pleased, it makes me feel mean and small for holding out on him. We don’t say anything for several moments, and I wonder if he’s considering the fork in the conversation ahead of us. Go right for more chitchat or left for a real conversation.
“Is Veronica around?” he finally asks, taking the road on the right.
“No,” I say, staring a hole in the wall above the sofa.
My dad clears his throat, possibly reconsidering his route. “I talked to your mom,” he says.
This gets my attention. “I thought she wasn’t able to talk for a while,” I say.
“Well, they’ve made extra allowances for our special situation,” Dad says. I roll my eyes. Special situation makes it sound a lot nicer than a wife and mother taking off and going all the way across the country to join a convent. Seriously. My mother is now a nun.
“What did she say?” I ask, despite my resolve not to engage my father too much.
“She said she was doing well. Said she talked to you.” I shake my head. More like talked at me. “She said she was worried about you.”
I close my eyes. “She has a funny way of showing it,” I say.
The cold anger in my voice surprises both of us into silence. I wait for the excuse he tried to give me after my mom left. She just needs some time. I believed that right up until the point I dug her attorney’s letter out of the trash. The one in which she stated that she was giving up not only custody to my dad, but all her parental rights. There it was in black and white. My mother officially and legally abandoned me.
I left the letter on the center of my father’s desk. He knew I saw it, but neither of us ever talked about it.
My father clears his throat again. “Veronica says you have a job and some friends.”
My cheeks get hot. I hate that they talked about me, like I’m some sort of weird science experiment they’re keeping record of.
I hear an engine starting up on my father’s end of the phone. “When are you coming back, Dad?” I ask.
“What’s that?” he says. He’s yelling because he can’t hear me, but I can hear him fine. I have to hold the phone away from my ear.
“Nothing,” I say. I’m not going to repeat that question.
“Listen, Mia-bird,” he says, using an old nickname. I wince. “I’ll call you in a few days.” He’s still shouting, and now I am having trouble hearing him over the roar of the engine. “I want to—” A loud noise drowns out whatever he said.
The call starts breaking up. “I have to go,” he says. “I—”
And the call is gone. I’d like to imagine that he was going to say he loved me, but I don’t let myself go very far down that road. Rachel’s death created a black hole that sucked everything into it. Love was one of the things that got lost.
I stare at the phone in my hand until it starts beeping, reminding me to hang up. I lean against the same wall I was trying to stare a hole into and close my eyes. The thing I hate most about all of this is that I have no right to say anything. I have no right to complain. I did this to myself. I did it to all of us.
Because of me, my sister is dead and my mother is gone and my father is lost.
It’s all my fault.
I finally turned my phone off around one in the morning. When I turn it back on as I walk to the deli only three hours later, there are still no missed calls.
Nonna greets me with the longest list yet. I frown when I see rugelach, black and whites, and spice drops again.
“What’s going on, Mia?” Nonna asks. Nothing gets by her.
“Nothing,” I say. “I’m sorry.” I start to tie on my apron.
“You’re upset,” she says. “Talk to me.”
“It’s nothing. I’m just . . .”
Nonna nods encouragingly, but I can’t finish. Sometimes when there’s too much to say, I can’t say anything.
Nonna plucks the list from my hands, rips it in half, and drops the pieces into the trash. “Let’s make something new,” she says.
“What?” I ask.
“You tell me,” she says. I start to shrug, but she’s not going to let me off the hook. “Tell me about something from when you were little.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know,” I say.
“Close your eyes,” she says.
I take a peek around. We’re the only ones in the kitchen. At least there won’t be a bunch of witnesses to this impromptu therapy session. I nod and close my eyes.
“You and your mother are in the kitchen. What are you making?” As she talks, I can actually see my mother standing in tree pose at our kitchen island. She always did yoga balance postures while she was cooking. She’s using an ice cream scoop to place balls of chocolate dough onto a cookie sheet. A stand mixer filled with fluffy white frosting whirls beside her. I feel myself smile.
“Whoopie pies,” I say, opening my eyes. Nonna is grinning at me. “I want to make whoopie pies.”
When the morning rush is over, Nonna finds me helping Grace restock the pastry baskets. She waves a piece of paper in her hand and motions for me to follow her into the kitchen. She’s standing at one of the work tables, surrounded by a sea of ingredients. A huge tin of cocoa powder, a gallon jug of vanilla, and the biggest can of marshmallow fluff I’ve ever seen join the ever-present bins of flour and sugar. I walk over to stand next to Nonna.
“What do you think?” Nonna asks. She moves the sheet of paper in front of me. Downeast Whoopie Pies is written across the top in her loopy handwriting. “Does this look right?”
I scan the list. “I think so,” I say, “but we never used whipped cream.” She grabs her pen and scratches off whipped cream from the ingredient list. “But the rest looks right,” I say.
“Just tell me what to do,” Nonna says. It’s awkward at first, directing Nonna in her own kitchen, but she doesn’t seem to mind even when I adjust the filling recipe when it comes out too soft. We’re pulling the baked cookie-cakes out of the oven in no time and lining them up on the cooling racks to be filled.
Joey comes in for his usual cinnamon roll, but when he sees what we’re doing, he changes his mind. I quickly fill one of the whoopie pies and hand it to him. He takes a huge bite.
“Mia, you’re my new favorite cousin,” he says around a mouthful of marshmallow filling. He heads out to the front, clutching the rest of his whoopie pie.
Within moments, Nonna and I are surrounded by half of the family wanting to try “Mia’s Creation.” We go through a whole panful just feeding them.
“I think they’re a hit,” Nonna says, winking at me.
Warmth floods me. It’s been a long time since I felt like I could do anything other than take up space in the world.
“Okay, everyone,” Nonna says, clapping her hands. “Back to work.” She helps me finish assembling the whoopie pies, then she hands me the new list. The rugelach and black and whites are gone, but there are at least ten more things
added to the list to take their places.
Fig arrives just as I’m hauling flats of strawberries out of the cooler. She looks as bad as she did yesterday. Maybe worse.
“Hey,” she says, coming up to me.
“Hey,” I say back.
I decided last night that if she had wanted to talk to me, she would have. I’m not going to push. Some part of me, a part that I’m ashamed of, is simply angry. I mean, I haven’t known her or her friends that long, but for them to just leave me standing there with an I’ll call you tossed in my direction hurt. And then no one even called. I carefully pour the strawberries into a colander and take them to the sink to wash. Fig follows me across the kitchen.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you,” Fig says, as if reading my mind.
“It’s fine,” I say. I start slicing the tops off strawberries before dropping them into the giant pot Nonna left out for me.
“I told Cooper I’d call you,” she says.
I stop mid slice. I realize that’s what I’m mostly mad at. Not that Fig didn’t call. She was a wreck. But that Cooper didn’t after promising he would. I’m sick of people dropping me like I’m expendable.
“I meant to, and then . . .”
I glance over at her. She has her eyes closed, and I can tell she’s trying to force herself not to cry.
“Listen,” I say, “it’s fine.”
But Fig won’t let it go. “It’s not fine, Mia.” She puts her hand on my arm. I look at it, realizing this is the second time in two days that someone has touched me. Not because they felt bad for me or because they had to. Just because. I look up at Fig’s face and see that she’s actually crying now. I stand there feeling helpless while she grabs one of the towels stacked on the counter and wipes her face with it.
She takes a deep breath. “My father is a drunk.” She rolls her eyes and half smiles. “I mean, my father is an alcoholic. That’s what we’re supposed to say. But it’s the same thing. Just a nicer name.”
I’m confused. “So, you just found this out?” I ask.
Fig shakes her head. “No.”
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