We Were Beautiful

by Heather Hepler

  “Veronica, do you have a mop? I notice I left some footprints behind.”

  She looks at the size 12 muddy footprints in her hall. At first I’m afraid she’s angry, but then she starts laughing, making my father’s cheeks even pinker.

  “Something smells amazing,” Dad says. “Although I have to confess that after more than a month of nothing but rehydrated spaghetti bolognaise, I’m up for just about anything. What are we having?”

  Veronica starts laughing even harder. She lifts the lid to the pot on the stove.

  “Spaghetti,” she says.

  My father looks sheepish. “I’m sure it’s better than what I’ve been making.”

  Veronica flips off the burner and puts the cover back on the pot. “Let’s go out,” she says. “I know this great little place.” She looks over at me and I nod. Family dinner night with my family.

  The word family trips me up for just a moment, because a year ago my family looked very different, but watching my dad and Veronica laugh together while he tries to operate a mop and she tries not to tell him he’s doing it all wrong makes me smile. There aren’t as many of us and we aren’t as emotive at the Brunellis, but maybe with time we can be stronger than we once were.

  “Let’s go,” I say. “I’m starving.” My dad smiles at me and I smile back, because for the first time it feels like it’s okay . . . or at least it’s going to be.

  Even though he has about eight inches on her and outweighs her by probably seventy pounds, Grace is definitely frightening my dad.

  “So, you decided to come back,” she says when I introduce her. My dad nervously bobs his head yes. “Well,” Grace says, frowning, “at least that’s something.”

  Gina directs us to a booth and leaves us with menus. It’s weird being a customer here. Fig waves from behind the counter, and I wave back. The rest of the family seems to be watching us while trying to pretend not to watch us.

  “So, what’s good here?” my father asks.

  “Everything,” Gina says, returning with a basket of rolls and twin dishes of honey butter and homemade jam. My father decides on minestrone soup and chicken and dumplings. I decide to have the same. Veronica hands her menu to Gina.

  “Make it three,” she says. We sit not talking for a while, suddenly awkward now that the drama is over and there aren’t any footprints to mop up.

  “How are you doing?” my father finally asks me.

  “Okay,” I say, not sure how to condense everything into a few sentences.

  Veronica gives me one of her looks. “I would say you’re a little more than okay.” She looks at my father. “Mia is apparently the best baker’s helper Nonna’s ever had.”

  I raise my eyebrows. This is definitely news to me.

  “And she’s taking pictures again, although I’ve never seen any of them.” It’s her turn to raise her eyebrows at me. “And she has some nice friends.” The emphasis on the word friends is not lost on my father, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “Hi!” Fig walks over to our table. “I’m Fig,” she says, holding out her hand to shake my father’s.

  He seems startled by her, which makes me smile. She sits down beside my grandmother and begins talking and talking. She tells my dad about Cannoli Day and Art Attack and all the other stuff we’ve done over the past few weeks. My father just nods, clearly overwhelmed.

  “And this Saturday, we’re going to this reception at the MoMA,” she tells my dad. “Mia has this amazing dress. It’s all purple and green, and it has this drapey thing at the front.”

  My dad keeps nodding, and I can’t help but laugh a little. Fashion is utterly lost on him.

  “You should come,” she says. “Of course, you’ll have to get a suit or a tux, but probably one of my uncles could help you out.”

  Our food arrives, saving my father from responding. I clearly remember him saying that the only time anyone would catch him in a suit would be right before they dropped him into a six-foot-deep hole and threw dirt on him.

  “Fig!” Gina calls from the kitchen.

  “Gotta go,” she says. She stands up. “It was super to meet you. I’m sure I’ll see you again.” She heads back to the kitchen, and as soon as she’s out of earshot, both my father and Veronica start laughing.

  “She certainly is exuberant,” my father says, smiling.

  “She is,” I say. “She’s the best.”

  “I’m glad you have friends here, Mia,” my father says.

  “Me too,” I say, although right now I’m not so sure about one of them. Somehow, I have to talk to Cooper. Somehow, I have to make things right.

  We’re almost finished eating when Gina comes over again, bearing a plate of whoopie pies. My father takes one and bites into it.

  “This is the best whoopie pie I’ve ever had,” he announces loudly. I shake my head. Dads can be so embarrassing. He finishes one and starts on another, making me believe he really does like them. “Of course, if it were peanut butter filling . . .”

  I shake my head. The forever argument at our house—peanut butter versus vanilla icing. Dad and Rachel were always for peanut butter, while my mom and I were firmly in the vanilla camp.

  “Say what?” Joey says, walking over. He pulls his earbuds out of his ears. “There are different kinds?”

  My dad nods and Joey glares at me. Clearly, he thinks I’ve been holding out on him. Joey demands to know all the other varieties of whoopie pies, and Dad and I trade off listing them until Joey’s written down more than a dozen varieties. Joey shakes my father’s hand like he’s just been given the key to the city before heading back into the kitchen. I’m pretty sure I know what will be at the top of my list in the morning. My dad looks over at me, grinning.

  “I missed you, Mia-bird,” he says for the second time today.

  “I missed you too, Dad,” I say.

  Then Joey belches long and low and Grace yells at him, and I spot Fig trying not to crack up. My dad cuts his eyes at me and I duck my head, trying not to laugh.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I tell myself I’ve been too busy to stop by and see Cooper, but that’s not quite true. Though I have been busy. Nonna has us working harder than ever. It’s wedding season, and you’d be surprised how many brides forgo a wedding cake for a huge tower of Brunelli cannolis. And after work, I’ve been spending time with my dad, doing the touristy stuff like taking the ferry to Staten Island and walking (yes, walking!) to the top of the Empire State Building.

  But I’ve also been taking him to other places, like to see Sarah play at The Wall and to watch Sebastian try to beat the record for number of grapes stuffed into his mouth at once. (He managed forty-three, just twenty-eight short of the world record.) Cooper was at both places, but he stood far away from us and left without saying anything to me.

  I also took my father to have dumpling soup at the restaurant where Sebastian works. My dad entertained Sebastian and Fig with stories I’ve heard all my life, like how he found actual buried treasure when he was doing a dive off the coast of Florida and how once he was trapped in an underwater cave for nearly an hour when his arm got wedged inside a crack in the rocks.

  “I wasn’t sure I was going to make it home to see my little girls again,” he says. He looks at me quickly, but I just nod.

  I’m getting used to talking about Rachel, or at least hearing about Rachel. I lean back and snap a photo of the side of my father’s face as he talks. He doesn’t even blink. I’ve been taking lots of photographs over the past week. All close-ups of faces. A homeless man asleep on the steps in front of our building. A woman selling beaded belts from a stand in Washington Square Park. Grace when she’s yelling at Fig and me because we’re goofing off instead of putting together the pans of lasagna like she asked.

  “So, when am I going to meet this mystery guy you’ve been seeing?” my father asks, causing me to nearly drop my camera.

  I shrug. “We’ve just been busy.” Everyone looks at me. “Well, we have,” I say.


  Fig shakes her head. We’ve already had some version of this same conversation at least half a dozen times over the past few days. “Mr. Hopkins?” Fig says, looking at my dad. “How would you like me and Sebastian to take you on a tour of Chinatown?”

  My father gestures “sure,” and looks at me for confirmation, but Fig is already shaking her head. “Oh, Mia’s not invited.” She looks at me pointedly. “She has something she needs to take care of.”

  I roll my eyes. Fig is not exactly subtle.

  My dad goes along with it. “I’ll see you later,” he says, and kisses the top of my head.

  “You lead the way,” my father says to Fig, dropping money on the table to cover our bill. He and Fig and Sebastian start toward the door, leaving me sitting at the table. Fig points at me and gives me what I suppose is her scary face before disappearing out onto the sidewalk.

  The woman who owns the restaurant comes out and smiles at me. She reaches into the pocket of her apron and pulls out a fortune cookie, then places it in front of me. She smiles again as she stacks the bowls and carries them to the kitchen. I pick up the cookie and turn it over in my hand so I can I rip the plastic open. Once I’ve freed the cookie, I break it in two and slide out the fortune.

  At least this one isn’t blank. I read it, then fold it in half and start to put it in my pocket until I think better of it. I pull my locket free and push the clasp, sliding the fortune inside before snapping the locket closed and tucking it away again. I take a deep breath and walk toward the door.

  The day is overcast and almost cool, and I shiver as I leave the warmth of the restaurant. I start walking farther downtown toward There, trying to figure out what I’m going to say, but even when I’m right in front of the door, I still have nothing.

  The first drop of rain hits my arm. Then another and another still, until I have to either go in or start running for my grandmother’s building to keep from getting totally soaked. I decide to go in, figuring I can always make a run for it later.

  A lot has changed in a week. The floor is finished and a new glass case covers the whole front wall. There’s a long wraparound counter with stools positioned in regular intervals along it, and tables and booths fill most of the remaining room. But it’s the mural on the back wall that makes me pause. Other than the lower right-hand side where I was working on the ocean, it’s complete. I walk forward, watching as it turns from one big picture into hundreds, maybe thousands of tiles, each arranged perfectly so that from afar they blend together into the perfect landscape. I reach out and touch one of the tiles that make up a maple tree with its leaves just starting to turn.

  “Hey!” a voice calls from the entrance. “We’re not open yet.” I turn and see Simon standing there. “Sorry, Mia,” he says when he realizes it’s me. “Where’ve you been?”

  I start to tell him I’ve been busy, you know work and family and blah, blah, blah, but one look at Simon’s face tells me he’s not going to accept that for a second.

  “He’s out back,” Simon says. I take a deep breath.

  “Thanks,” I say, and head toward the door that leads through the kitchen and then to the alley beyond.

  I’ve decided I’m going to tell Cooper everything—everything I can remember. I leave my bag with my camera in it on a table near the kitchen and walk outside. It’s still raining, but only drizzling now. Cooper is bent over an air compressor that he has shielded from the rain with a big tarp. He’s slowly pouring something white and viscous and foul smelling into a bucket connected to the compressor by a long plastic tube. He puts down the empty bucket and stands up, using his sleeve to wipe at the water that is dripping from his hair into his eyes. Then he turns toward the building and toward me.

  It’s in that long moment that I see the pain in his eyes that I’d always assumed was there because of his art. But then it’s gone as if he’s dropped a curtain over it all.

  “Hey,” he says finally.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Why are you here?” he asks, and I feel my heart bump painfully in my chest. I realize it’s almost the same question I asked my father when he arrived.

  “I wanted . . .” I take a deep breath, trying to remember what my father said. “I wanted to see you.”

  Cooper looks past me for a moment, like he’s searching for the right words, but then he sighs and looks back at me. “Mia, I don’t mean to be harsh, but I’ve really got a lot to do. Simon’s trying to open next week, and I’ve got to finish the wall and spray it today if it’s going to dry in time.”

  “Of course,” I say. His voice is so matter of fact, and his eyes are flat. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.” I stare at the ground.

  “It’s fine,” Cooper says after a long pause. I look back up at him, but I can barely stand to see him looking at me like that, Not angry, not sad. Just nothing.

  “Cooper,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too,” he says. And I desperately want him to tell me why. Is he sorry that we had an argument? That I didn’t trust him? That we met? But he doesn’t say any of those things. He only looks down at the bucket at his feet. “I’ve really got to get back to work.”

  “I know.” I’m already backing toward the door. “I guess I’ll—” I start to say, I’ll see you around, but I know that’s not very likely.

  “Yeah,” he says, as if he was thinking the same thing. He bends and lifts the bucket, and I walk back into the kitchen and through to the dining room and the front door.

  “Did you find him?” Simon calls from the other side of the room.

  “Yeah,” I say, hoping that Simon will think the wetness on my cheeks is just from the rain.

  “I’ll see you later, Mia,” Simon calls. I hear Cooper’s voice as I walk out. Talking to Simon, but not to me. I step out into the rain, wondering if this is one of the things Veronica said you just can’t fix.

  I decide not to go straight back to Veronica’s. I walk through the rain until my clothes are so wet that I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t get any wetter if I jumped into the river. There’s the ice cream place and the dog park. I pause under an awning, watching as a man in a suit with a newspaper clutched over his head sprints past, running for a waiting cab. The Brooklyn Bridge looms over the streets. I decide to walk on the bridge, and start to feel that ache inside of me that I thought I’d completely used up when Rachel died and then my mom left and my dad took off. But it seems my heart still has room for pain.

  The walkway is mostly empty. Just me and some guy riding a bicycle away from me toward Brooklyn. It’s too wet to see much of anything to either side. Just heavy gray clouds dipping into soupy gray water.

  I stop at what I imagine is the halfway point and look down at the water below, which seems to stretch forever in both directions. Rain peppers the surface of the river, making it dance. The cold has brought with it fog, which is nudging up against the city, kept out by the buildings guarding the shoreline. Within minutes, the fog is so thick I can’t see either side. It’s just me floating on this bridge on a huge gray cloud. Even the sounds of the city, always there, are muffled. The only real noise is a foghorn calling from far away.

  My parents made me see a therapist before I was released from the hospital the first time. “It’s just an assessment,” the doctor told me, but after the seventeenth question she asked, I knew exactly what they were trying to assess. They wanted to make sure that when they released me, I wouldn’t hurt myself. She kept encouraging me to talk about everything, but no one wanted to hear how poor Mia was feeling. All anyone could think about was poor Rachel, who died too young. She was too beautiful and too smart and too popular to die. I imagined if they thought about me at all, it was only ugly, hateful things.

  I sit down and lean against one of the support posts. It’s cold through my shirt. I should go back. Back to my grandmother’s, or maybe all the way back to Maine. But before I can move, the fog takes over, reminding me of the way it started pressing in even as Rachel
was driving us down our dirt road and out onto the highway. I close my eyes and lean my forehead against my knees, feeling rain drop onto my neck and slide under my collar. The memories are coming hard and fast now, and I let them.

  Rachel told me to just relax when we pulled up in front of Greg Stinson’s house. “It’ll be fun,” she said. She led the way up the driveway and onto the porch. The windows were vibrating with music and laughter. “You ready?” she asked, smiling at me. I nodded, but I felt anything but ready.

  The kitchen was crowded with people I’d never met, some standing, some sitting on the counters, and others hunched over the keg sitting on the table. Everyone seemed to know Rachel. They smiled at me too. “Any friend of Rachel’s,” some guy said as he pressed a red plastic cup into my hand. I took a sip to be polite. My first beer. It was bitter, but then it settled into my stomach. Warm and heavy.

  “This is Greg,” Rachel said, drawing someone toward me. He nodded and grinned.

  “Mia,” he said. He had his hand on the back of Rachel’s neck. I smiled at Greg and took another sip.

  “Stinson!” someone yelled from the other side of the room. Greg glanced over and nodded his head in acknowledgment. He gave Rachel a squeeze, leaving faint white marks on the sides of her neck.

  “Good to meet you, Mia,” he said before walking off.

  “You okay?” Rachel asked, gesturing at my cup. I told her yes because her eyes told me she needed me to be okay. Her feet were already turned toward Greg, who stood with some other guys. All laughing. Passing a bottle back and forth between them. Rachel rolled her eyes at him but was beaming.

  “I’ll find you in a bit,” she said. When she reached Greg, he put his hand on the back of her neck again and smiled at me. I turned away from them, trying to make Rachel believe I could handle myself here. Make her believe it wasn’t a mistake to bring me along.