We Were Beautiful

by Heather Hepler

  Veronica sits with me until I stop crying. I lie down and pull the blanket up over my shoulder. She stays until she thinks I’m asleep, then she goes back to her room, leaving the doors open between us. I push back under the covers and try to find sleep.

  I’d been home from the hospital for only a few days when the state police emailed my father a copy of their report. Normally they don’t do that, but since my dad works for the state’s search and rescue, and because both of his daughters were involved, they made an exception. My dad wasn’t home when it arrived. I sat in the chair in front of the desk, half of my face still a spiderweb of stitches and bandages, and read. The report said vehicular manslaughter, which is just a nice way of saying death by automobile. They ruled it a nofault accident, but the report stated that the breathalyzer test they gave me came up positive. Not enough to be declared drunk, but enough. The report said they tested Rachel too, but because she was in intensive care and because she wasn’t the one driving, they hadn’t tested her until late morning the next day. The test was inconclusive.

  The police asked me why I was driving when I didn’t even have a license. But I couldn’t tell them anything at all, because I couldn’t remember anything about that night. The psychiatrist said that was normal, but I felt anything but. It’s not normal to have a chunk of your life gone, where on one side it’s your birthday and you’re going to a party and on the other you’re in the hospital bed and your face is half gone and your mother is crying and your father is telling you your sister is dead.

  Fig is grinning when I drag myself to the diner and into the kitchen. She pulls me into the cooler and shuts the door behind us.

  “My mom called Frank last night.” She pauses. “He’s not coming.”

  “How did that happen?” I ask.

  “The Brunellis staged an intervention,” she says. “Of course, I’m not exactly sure how it was different from family dinner night, except there was a little more yelling.”

  I half smile. I can’t imagine being at the center of an intervention with that family. Truth be told, Grace alone could scare me into compliance.

  “Grace told my mom to stop being so stupid. Joey told her if Frank came around, he’d kill him. Nonna just looked at her.”

  I shudder, remembering how mad Nonna was when she was making cinnamon rolls. I change my mind. Nonna is definitely scarier than Grace.

  “Then they all stood around while she called him. They put him on speaker phone.”

  “Whoa,” I say, cringing.

  “It was awesome,” Fig says.

  “I’m sure it was,” I say, thinking Fig is exactly right with her choice of words. Awesome is the perfect word to describe the Brunelli family. They are a force of nature—powerful and sort of frightening and definitely awesome.

  “Now you,” she says.

  “Me what?”

  Fig rolls her eyes. “You. Cooper. Beach. Sunshine. Romance?” She sees me blush. “Did he kiss you?” she asks. I nod. “I knew it,” she said, grinning.

  She looks at me. I’m not smiling.

  “I blew it,” I say. I start to tell her about the weirdness after. About how I just shut down. But Grace yells at us to get out of the refrigerator. Even though the door is probably three inches of steel and air tight, we can hear her as if she’s standing right beside us.

  When we emerge, Nonna’s list is longer than usual. “I’m sorry,” she says as she adds several things to the bottom of an already overwhelming amount of work. “We’re just swamped.” She gives both Fig and me a floury squeeze and hums as she walks back to her office. I smile at Fig. The real Nonna is definitely back.

  Fig and I divvy up the tasks. I take everything in the kitchen and give Fig everything out front. She looks at me for a long moment, but doesn’t say anything. I know she’ll be back to pestering me about where I go every afternoon and when we are going to have that talk once things slow down, but for now I just get the narrowed eyes as she backs through the door to the front.

  I am literally elbow-deep in homemade pimento cheese when my phone rings.

  “I’ll get it,” Grace says, slipping my phone out of my pocket. All I can do is watch as she pokes the screen on my phone and says hello. “Mia can’t come to the phone right now. Can I take a message?”

  I close my eyes and say a prayer. Please don’t be Cooper. Then I reverse it. Please be Cooper.

  Grace looks at me funny while she listens to whoever is talking on the other end. “I’m confused,” Grace finally says. “You’re calling on behalf of her mother? Is her mother okay?”

  She listens, then nods at me. Mom’s okay. Grace focuses on my face and shrugs her shoulders as she keeps listening. “I’ll tell her,” she says after a bit. She listens again. “You too.” I hear the beep of the call disconnecting. Grace keeps staring at the phone, but she doesn’t say anything.

  “What did she want?” I ask, wiping my hands on a clean towel.

  “That was a nun at Our Lady of Immaculate Conception,” she begins. I nod. I guessed that much. “She asked me to tell you that your mother wanted to wish you a happy birthday.”

  I feel my stomach drop. I’d lost track of the date in my busyness. And I wonder if my mother had them call almost a week early because my actual birthday will be forever linked with Rachel’s death.

  “Thanks,” I say, hoping Grace will just let it drop, but this is Grace.

  “What the heck is that all about, Mia?” She stands there waiting for an answer, but I don’t know where to begin or if I even want to begin.

  “My mother is a nun,” I say, like it’s the most natural statement in the whole world, which it so clearly isn’t.

  “How is your mother a nun? Doesn’t the whole married-and-child thing kind of go against the whole nun thing?”

  I take a deep breath. “She applied under special circumstances,” I turn back to the mixing bowl, but Grace doesn’t let up.

  “What does that mean? Special circumstances?”

  I keep mixing the cheese, willing Grace to go away, but she’s not budging. I take a deep breath, keeping my chin ducked. “She had to get her marriage annulled and give up her parental rights,” I say quietly, so maybe only the pimento cheese can hear. I peek at Grace. She seems completely at a loss for words. For a moment.

  “What kind of mother does that?” Grace asks.

  “You don’t understand,” I say, slightly louder.

  “Mia, look at me.”

  A lot of people are saying that to me recently. I look up at her.

  Grace’s expression is fierce. “No mother should ever abandon her child.”

  “You don’t understand,” I repeat. “She had to.”

  “She had to,” she says, parroting me. “Are you actually listening to yourself?”

  “I deserved it,” I say, because I truly deserve every bad thing that gets thrown my way and more.

  “You deserved it!” Grace is so loud that several other Brunellis come in to see what all the commotion is about. One of them is Fig. “Mia, my brother Joey there is a bum.”

  “Hey!” Joey says, but Grace gives him a look and he shrugs. “She’s right.”

  “My son Danny is currently attempting to break the world record for being fired from the most jobs. My daughter, Myra, only calls home when she needs money. I won’t even go into all my other kids. Whatever you did or think you did is not reason enough for your mother to take off.” The whole kitchen is quiet. “Or your father, for that matter. Family is family.” Everyone in the kitchen nods, like this is some great wisdom.

  I look over at Nonna, who is standing in her office doorway. I wonder how much she’s told everyone.

  I untie my apron and lift it over my head. “You don’t understand,” I say for the third time. I pick up my bag from under the counter and walk toward the back door, depositing my apron in the hamper on the way out.

  “Where are you going?” Grace yells at the back of my head.

  “Let her go,” Nonna sa
ys as I start to walk out. “But not alone. Fig, go with her.”

  I open my mouth to protest, but Fig is already at my side, her backpack slung over her shoulder.

  “Let’s go,” Fig says. She heads out the back way and I follow, leaving a kitchen full of Brunellis staring at my back, quieter than I’ve ever heard them.

  We walk down the alley and out onto the sidewalk in silence. I stand there, not sure where to go. That’s the thing with running away. It works better if you actually have a destination in mind.

  Fig doesn’t look at me, but at the sky. “What you need is soup,” she says. She puts her hand on my arm. “Come on.”

  She leads me across several blocks, not saying anything, like she knows I just need quiet for a bit. Even if quiet in the city is anything but. Garbage trucks slam cans against the sidewalk. A car alarm blares in the distance. A man sings Sinatra loudly and off-key. Fig turns down an alley and suddenly we’re in Chinatown. We walk another block, and then Fig ducks into a restaurant with Chinese characters on the sign and a single word in English: Food.

  We stand in the doorway, letting our eyes adjust to the sudden darkness of the restaurant. A fountain burbles in the center of the room, surrounded by fat ceramic cats balancing vases of bamboo on their heads. A woman walks out of the back and straight toward us. She is talking to Fig in what I guess is Chinese and Fig is nodding. The woman indicates that we should pick a table. We choose a booth toward the back and slide in. I face the front door. Fig faces the kitchen. The woman talks to Fig, who keeps nodding.

  “This is Mia,” Fig says, pointing at me. The woman smiles and her face lights up.

  “Hi,” I say. This makes her smile again. She tries to hand us menus, but Fig shakes her head.

  “Two dumpling soups,” Fig says. The woman says something else and disappears into the kitchen.

  “You speak Chinese?” I ask.

  “No,” Fig says, like I just asked her if she’s ever walked on the moon. “But Sebastian does. And no matter how many times he tells her, she still speaks to me like I can understand.”

  I don’t have time to consider her answer before our soup arrives, carried by none other than Sebastian. He puts the bowls down in front of us and bumps Fig to slide over so he can sit down.

  “You work here?” I ask. As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I’m thinking, Well, duh, Mia, but Sebastian just nods. I think about his art and his job at the MoMA. It’s a wonder he and Fig ever find time to spend together.

  “It pays the bills,” he says. Fig just rolls her eyes, making him elbow her again. Her spoon sloshes a little.

  “Careful,” she says. “It’s hot.”

  I take a spoonful of my soup. “It’s good.”

  “Just don’t ask what they put in it,” Sebastian says. “They won’t tell you. They actually have the recipe locked in a safe in the back.”

  “I brought Mia here to talk,” Fig says. The word sounds slightly ominous. Sebastian nods and leans his head back on the seat.

  “I’ll go first,” Sebastian says, surprising me. “Did Fig tell you how we met?”

  “Sort of,” I say.

  “I didn’t give her any details,” Fig says.

  “Well, we were in this group. I guess it was what you’d call a support group, but it wasn’t all Oprah-y. We didn’t journal and walk around affirming each other or any of that crap.” I half smile. “Everyone in there . . .” He pauses. “What I mean is, to get into the group, you had to be a victim of familial violence.” He says it in a stilted way, like he’s reading it. “Basically, someone in each one of our families hurt us.” I look at him for a long moment, thinking about what he just said.

  “I’m sorry,” I respond, because I don’t know what else to say.

  “It sucks, but there it is.” He shrugs. “With me, it was my mom.” He looks past me. “It wasn’t her fault.” Fig puts a hand on his arm. “I mean, it was, but it wasn’t. She was mentally ill. She used to hear voices. Thought they were angels. They told her to do things.” He pauses then holds out his hands toward me. He pulls up the sleeves of his shirt, revealing the ugly scars on his arms. “I’ve got the same ones on my feet,” he says.

  Fig is biting her lip, looking like she’s trying not to cry. Sebastian looks over. He hands her a napkin, but she bats it away.

  “It’s awful,” she says, softly. Sebastian pulls his sleeves back down and sits back.

  “So, there you go,” Sebastian says. He points at my soup. “Eat.”

  I shake my head, then close my eyes, gathering courage. When we were little, Rachel and I used to dare each other to jump off the dock into the freezing cold water of the lake. If you thought about it too much, you just couldn’t. You had to jump, so that by the time your brain figured out what you were doing, you were already in the water.

  I’m going to tell them. It’s now or never.

  “My sister is dead,” I say, “and it’s my fault.”

  I can’t look at either of them, just at the dumplings bobbing around in the steaming broth. Fig slides her hand across the table with her palm up. I lift my hand and put it in hers.

  “So, I can’t join your group because I’m the bad guy. I’m not the victim.”

  Fig squeezes my hand. “You’re not the bad guy.” she says. “Do you want to talk about it?” I start to shake my head, but then I realize that I do, if only just to say it out loud.

  “It was a car accident,” I say. “I was driving.” She squeezes my hand. “It was late. And foggy.” I leave out the bit about the drinking. I can’t even remember it. I close my eyes, willing the memories to come back to me. I feel the tears sliding down my cheeks. “There was a deer—”

  I start to say more, but I can’t. It’s like all the air got sucked out of the room, making it hard to breathe. I don’t say anything else. I simply keep my eyes closed.

  “That picture on your camera,” Fig says. I think about when she accidentally saw the photo I took of Rachel when I first got my camera. The night she died. I look up at Fig. Tears are still rolling down her cheeks. I notice that Sebastian’s eyes are wet too. “That photo . . .”

  “Rachel,” I say. “Her name was Rachel.”

  “Is that how your face got hurt?” Sebastian asks. Fig cuts her eyes at him, but I nod. No one says anything.

  It’s Sebastian who finally breaks the silence. “You gonna eat that?” he asks, nodding toward my soup. I shake my head and slide it across the table. Fig smiles a little and picks up her spoon. Sebastian tries to dip into her bowl, but she deflects his spoon with her own.

  The waitress is back. She starts smiling at us again. “It was good?” she asks.

  I nod, trying to keep my face hidden behind my hair. Fig nods, and Sebastian nods with his mouth full. She takes the empty bowl from Sebastian and Fig slides hers over to take its place, shaking her head at him. The Chinese woman walks away and returns with fortune cookies clutched in her hand. She puts them down in the center of the table and walks away again. Fig nods at me, and I take one. She selects one and pushes the other toward Sebastian. We all open them. Fig and me with our hands, Sebastian with his teeth.

  Fig clears her throat. “New friends are like silver. Old ones like gold.” She tosses the fortune on the table and snorts. “That’s so not true.”

  Sebastian pulls his fortune free. “A beautiful woman will buy you ice cream.”

  “It does not say that,” Fig says, snatching the fortune from him. “He who knows he has enough is rich.”

  “Have you noticed they’re never fortunes anymore, just pithy sayings?” Sebastian asks.

  “Pithy?” Fig asks.

  “You know, clever, wise.”

  “I know what it means,” she says. “I’m just surprised to hear you use that word.”

  “I’m smart,” he says.

  “You are,” Fig says. She leans against him and looks at me. “What does yours say?”

  I look at the slip of paper in my hand and turn it over. �
�Nothing,” I say. “Mine’s blank.”

  Fig holds out her hand and I give her the slip of paper. “Weird,” she says, turning it over. “I’ve had cookies without a fortune in them, but I’ve never seen a blank one.”

  “No pithy saying for you,” Sebastian says, smiling.

  “Yeah,” I reply, trying to smile back.

  “So,” Sebastian says, leaning toward me. “Tell us what Cooper is up to.”

  “It’s supposed to be a secret,” Fig reminds him.

  “But Mia knows,” he says.

  “Mia is in the circle of trust.”

  I frown. I’m not so sure about that anymore.

  “Oh, and we’re not?” he asks.

  Fig rolls her eyes. “We are. But you can still have surprises in the circle of trust.”

  “What kind of name is There?” Sebastian asks. I shrug.

  “It’s the same guy who owns Here,” Fig says.

  “You mean that breakfast place uptown?” Sebastian asks. Fig nods.

  The waitress is back and talking faster than before. Sebastian stands up. “Gotta get back to work.” He starts to walk toward the kitchen but stops halfway. “Did you get something to wear for the opening at the MoMA?” Sebastian asks. Fig shakes her head, making him frown.

  “I will,” she says. She pretends to cross her heart, making Sebastian roll his eyes.

  “It’s in less than a week,” he says, clearly stressed that she still hasn’t made her fashion arrangements. He shakes his head at Fig’s smile and heads toward the kitchen. “Make Mia come,” Sebastian calls over his shoulder.

  “You should come,” Fig says to me.

  “To what?” I ask, still feeling sort of fuzzy after the intense conversation. Obviously, Fig and Sebastian are used to this sort of thing.

  “There’s this event over at the MoMA. Very fancy. Some donors’ party. All the volunteers get to go though and they can bring a guest.” She shrugs. “Or two.”