The Secret Side of Empty

by Maria E. Andreu

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I stay out of the apartment as much as I can. Life goes better when I engage with the Parentals as little as possible. I like my other world, the world of Nate and his family and their beautiful house with the giant, empty wine jugs that are inexplicably filled with little decorative scrolls bound with leather string. And a TV whose sound fills an entire cavernous family room like you’re in a movie theater. And how nice everyone can be to each other when they are happy where they are.

  Just like that, Nate and I start meeting every afternoon. I’m not sure exactly how it happens. Suddenly he knows my tutoring schedule. Knows to pick me up at Cody’s house on Tuesdays and Thursdays. At Luke’s house on Wednesdays. Knows to swing by and get me on his way home from tennis practice on Saturdays. Chelsea complains a little that we don’t hang out as much as we used to, but understands, too. She says Nate and I are “cocooning,” something she read about in some magazine. We have found the little empty pockets of time in each other’s schedule and flowed them into one so we can build an us.

  I know I don’t deserve him, but it is delicious to know he hasn’t figured that out yet.

  “Where to today, madame?” he asks as I get into his car.

  “I was thinking a state dinner, perhaps.”

  “Or a skip across the pond, eh?” he says in a terrible English accent.

  “Why do all your accents sound Indian?”

  “Just lucky, I guess,” he says. Puts the car in park. Leans over and gives me a kiss. A stop-the-world, nothing-else-matters-I’m-giving-my-girl-a-kiss kiss.

  He gets out and puts my bike on the rack on the back of his car.

  “You wanna come over my house for a little bit?” he asks.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “I want you to read my Hamlet paper, too. Would you?”

  “Yeah.” He’s more of a math guy and I’ve started to enable him in his literature papers. Which I love doing.

  I’m at the laptop, reading his C+-at-best Hamlet paper, when he puts a yellow Post-it note over it.

  It says:

  Hi.

  “Hi,” I say absently, putting it off to the left side of the paper.

  He puts another one on. Hi. Bigger smiley face.

  “Do you want me to read this for you or don’t you?”

  It’s just that you’re so pretty, it’s distracting.

  I laugh. And put the third Post-it on top of the other two, starting a small pile.

  How is the paper so far?

  “Well, I think that we’re going to need to come up with a better word than ‘hootch’ for Hamlet’s mother.”

  I put that in for you.

  “Very funny.”

  You are a 32B.

  “Are we on that again?”

  YOU ARE A 32B!

  “Yes. You have a great future in Victoria’s Secret.”

  Don’t be ashamed to say you are a 32B.

  “We are never going to get through this paper if you keep doing this.” And I put the Post-it on top of the pile. I love the idea of having a collection of his handwriting. I wonder if I can take them with me or if he will think that’s creepy. As it is, they feel like a stack of demented little love notes.

  As if reading my mind, he writes:

  Why are you putting them all in a neat little pile?

  “What else should I do with them?”

  Throw them away.

  Hmmm, okay, love note collection fantasy over. I make a move to pick them up so I can throw them away. He slaps another Post-it on the paper. It says:

  NO! Wate! Then he scratches that out and writes instead, Wait! You can keep them.

  “You said to throw them out.”

  I didn’t think you’d want them.

  “I do. They’re your handwriting. Your, may I mention, really terrible handwriting. And you’ve never written me a card, so this is kind of like that.”

  Only better. Interactive.

  I laugh. “Yeah.”

  So maybe I could say on these what I would say in a card.

  “Okay.”

  I half-expect to get another 32B comment, but he writes:

  I love spending time with you.

  “Me too.”

  I love you, I think.

  “You think?”

  I love you.

  This I don’t want to say out loud since he hasn’t technically said it. I put the last note on the pile, take the pen and Post-its, and write back:

  I love you too.

  We are about to seal it with a kiss when his mom walks in.

  Her hair is perfect. She looks like she is a straight-up Ralph Lauren ad.

  “M, how nice to see you.” She says this like she didn’t just see me yesterday and every day for weeks.

  “Hello, Mrs. R.”

  “I’ve told you Maggie how many times now?”

  “Maggie.”

  “Would you like some cookies?”

  “Mom, seriously? We’re not five,” says Nate, a little annoyed.

  “I know, I know. I’m headed out to the League,” she says, like that’s the right answer to Nate’s comment. She picks up a humongous purse from the island without missing a stride. Nate obviously knows what that means, but I vaguely wonder if she’s secretly in the Justice League. With her trainer-toned arms, I would not doubt it at all.

  “Natey, sweetie, Carmen left some stew in the fridge. M, of course you’re welcome to have dinner as well. And if you change your mind about the cookies, she made these amazing ones from scratch. If I don’t watch out that woman will make me gain a hundred pounds.” She pats her abs of steel.

  “Oh, and Natey, the decorator may be sending someone over to do some measurements. Just let them in to do their thing.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  She stops to give Nate a kiss on the top of his head, the first time this whirlwind of a woman seems perfectly still.

  “What about Becky?” says Nate.

  “She’s having dinner at Jackson’s. Carmen is in her room downstairs if you need her. Or you can text me.”

  As his mother heads for the front door, Nate flashes me a wicked-looking little I-think-we’re-alone-now conspiracy look. He stands quietly, ear cocked like a bloodhound, waiting as the sound of his mother’s Range Rover fades out of earshot.

  Then he grabs me, throws me over his shoulder, and carries me over to the super-plush couch in his family room. He’s kind of skinny, so I am amazed he’s that strong. It’s dark in the family room. There is only the light from one of the three massive Christmas trees that have magically gone up in his house in the week since Thanksgiving. Without sisters, maids, mother, mother’s friends, neighbors, and decorators running around, we are alone. We have never had the house to ourselves this way before.

  He puts on It’s a Wonderful Life.

  “This movie is, like, a hundred years old,” I say.

  “I know, it’s awesome. It’s my favorite.”

  “I didn’t remember it was in color.”

  “No, it’s just some colorized version.”

  But I see he just wanted the movie for background noise. As soon as the credits start, he’s on me. He kisses me slowly at first, just lips on lips, so soft, then a little wet, then his breath getting quicker and his hands, stronger than I remember them, on my back. Just the small of my back. I arch my back to get him to go further, but he doesn’t. Jimmy Stewart is on the screen talking to some whiny old guy.

  I know I won’t go further than this. But I want him to try so I can turn him down. So I can toy with the idea, feel the energy of its temptation coursing through me. So I can move his hand off. But he doesn’t try anything. Just that kissing, that intoxicating kissing, my hands in his hair, the tips of his fingers tucked into the tops of my jeans, his lips on my neck.

  He stops abruptly, seeming nervous. I look around, wondering if we’re busted. He inhales in slowly, lets it out slowly. There is no sound but Jimmy Stewart making noise on some snowy bridge.
/>   “M, I just wanted to . . . I wanted to say something.”

  “What?”

  “I thought it was . . . well, I wanted to . . .” He stops. I guess he knows he’s babbling.

  “What?”

  “Yes, I’m okay. I just . . . this is really nice,” he says.

  “And?”

  “I love you.”

  “It’s harder to say than to write, right?”

  “I believe that the correct response is, ‘I love you, too.’”

  “I do. I do love you, too.”

  I have, in the weeks leading up to this moment, conducted extensive Google research on how to get boys to do what you want. How to get them to love you. I can’t imagine that this beautiful, rich, sweet, good boy would love me, but I’ve prepared just in case. I have read up on who is supposed to say “I love you” first. Who is supposed to start The Talk. If you don’t want to be the needy chick, I have learned, you’re supposed to let guys take the lead in all that. Waiting has been excruciating.

  So I have choked it back 1,001 times. I have doodled his name on my notebook. I have stared off into space replaying every word he’s ever said to me for hours on end. I’ve tried to act cool when my heart was pounding out of my chest because he has forgotten to call to say good night. It’s been two months. I have bitten my tongue, and I can tell right now that it’s worked.

  “It is nice,” I say. Calm enough. Yes?

  “I just want, I mean . . . I want it to be just you and me. I don’t want to be with anyone else. I haven’t been, since we met.”

  “Me neither,” I say. “I mean, me too.”

  “I’ve always wanted a girlfriend. I’m not one of those guys. I . . .”

  He stops and stares at the Christmas tree for a long time. I snuggle up in the crook of his arm where I fit so perfectly.

  “My parents met in high school,” he says.

  I don’t know what to say to that. I’m not sure how it’s relevant. I wish we had left it at “I love you.” “I love you” just deals with this moment and doesn’t try to stretch it into the future. I have no future, so I don’t want him making any comparisons to his parents in his head. I know we’ll never be like his parents, that this whole “illegal” problem makes my future and his future very different. And that boys like him don’t mingle their futures with futures like mine. But I don’t have the heart to tell him.

  He’s sitting right next to me, but a part of me hurts like he’s already gone.

  I tell him it’s time to drive me home. He does, smiling and chattering the whole time. Like he feels like we’ve crossed a bridge. I think we have too, but I suspect we’ve each crossed a different one. He’s gotten himself a girlfriend. I’ve gotten myself a down payment on a heartbreak. I’m a little mad he really doesn’t have a clue.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I go down to the strip, pumping my legs hard, feeling the cold air on my face. I look at the lit-up giant candy canes and wreaths hanging from the streetlights.

  I’m making the loop to go back home when I see a man who looks like my father sitting in the coffee shop, reading a book. It can’t be my father, because he’s working. But the resemblance is so strong I go around the block to do another pass. As I ride by more slowly and closer, I make out my father’s jacket hanging over the sidearm of the puffy chair. The ratty one I snatch singles out of.

  My heart starts pounding. What is he doing? I park my bike out of his line of sight and watch him from an angle. I crouch that way for ten minutes, heart pounding, my breath condensing in the cold air.

  Finally, I can’t take it anymore. I march across the street and push the door to the coffee shop so hard that it slams against the wall.

  My father looks up, shocked, and closes his book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Reading,” he says.

  “I can see you’re reading. I mean, why aren’t you working?”

  “I . . . I couldn’t go.”

  “What does that mean, you couldn’t go? Did you get fired or something?”

  “No, I didn’t get fired. I just couldn’t make myself . . . I couldn’t go.”

  “I don’t understand what that means.” I can’t believe he’s speaking so softly.

  He glances sideways at the floor. “No, you wouldn’t understand.”

  “How can you just not go to work?”

  “I go. I just couldn’t go today. I just wanted to . . .”

  “You wanted to what?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it to you.”

  “Explain what? Explain that you’re lazy? And selfish? Jose needs clothes besides those hideous hand-me-downs that people give us. I need money for school. We need food besides lentils.”

  “Your mother seems to be figuring all that out.”

  “Is that what this is? Because she’s working? Or have you been doing this for a long time? Is this why we’re always getting kicked out of our apartments?” I point to his book like it’s dirty. I notice it’s from the library. He probably couldn’t afford to buy it if he wanted to.

  Normally if I talked to him like this we’d be three smacks in by now. But I’m towering over him and he looks tired.

  “Are you going to tell your mother?” he asks.

  “Am I going to tell her what? That you’re a coward? That you’re sitting here in a coffee shop reading instead of hustling and building a future for us?”

  “That’s all done now. You’ve got to figure out your own future.”

  It knocks the wind out of me—not that I’m on my own, but that he knows it, too.

  I fish around for the most hurtful thing I can think of. I don’t come up with much. “I wish you’d had the imagination to at least be at a bar. But you’re sitting here . . . what? Reading? That’s your big try for freedom?” I turn to walk away and say over my shoulder. “You’re pathetic.” The barista stares at me. The cold air feels good when it hits me outside.

  I pedal all the way home, as fast as I can.

  I run up the stairs two at a time. I walk into the kitchen fast, out of breath.

  “Monse!” says Jose at the top of his lungs and runs face-first into me.

  “Hey, little man.”

  “Do you want something to eat?” says my mom.

  “Ma, where’s Dad?”

  “Working,” she says.

  I want to shake her, but somehow I can’t make myself even tell her.

  “Monserrat, I wanted to ask you about something.”

  “What?” I say.

  “How are things with that boy?” she says. Boom. That knocks some of the anger out of me.

  “What boy?” I try to sound calm and curious, running down the inventory in my mind of how I might have been busted.

  “The boy you’re seeing,” she says.

  “I don’t know what you—”

  “Is he nice?”

  I consider how much denial to get into. Sometimes that makes it worse. “How do you know?”

  “I’ve seen you. After school. Once I rode by on the bus in front of the diner. And you’re never home.”

  “He’s just a friend.”

  “He’s not just a friend.”

  I sit quietly for a while. “Yes, he’s nice.”

  “Are you boyfriend and girlfriend?”

  “It’s different here than in Argentina.”

  “But are you?”

  “I guess.”

  “I’m glad you have someone that makes you happy. You deserve that.”

  Her cloying at me makes me go want to scrub my skin.

  “You know, getting married might be one way out of this for you,” she says.

  “What do you mean?” I say.

  “Marrying an American.”

  “That’s really disgusting. Getting married for the papers? Seriously, Ma?”

  “I mean, only if you really loved him, not if you . . .”

  But I don’t hear the end of that senten
ce. I don’t want to hear it. It ruins everything to even think of love as a something I’d use to get out of this mess.

  “LADIES, I HAVE SOMETHING TO TELL YOU.”

  We all freeze. Please, not another eight-page paper. Ms. North’s the kind of sadist who would give us one over the break, just because life is unfair like that and she wants us ready for it.

  “I’ve accepted a position at another school. I won’t be coming back after the break.”

  I start to vibrate like I’ve just been hit with the cartoon frying pan. I must have heard her wrong.

  To my total horror, I start slobbering immediately. The more I try to stop, the harder the tears come.

  Quinn Ford turns around and stares at me.

  Ms. North keeps talking, but I have no idea what she’s saying. I hear something about “successor is a great teacher,” and college, and email addresses. I can’t hear her. My sobs have gotten so loud more people turn around.

  Already I’ve started to feel the utter pointlessness of continuing to try in school when there is no hope of any more school in my future. I finally understand the question: when am I going to need this in real life? Passing school is not real life when you are going to go on to a life where what you think and what you know don’t matter. It might be for Mack and Chelsea and everyone else here, but not for me. What will all these books and theories and equations matter when I am scrubbing toilets or when I am deported to Argentina and learning a whole new way of doing things from scratch in a country I’ve never been?

  My universe has only a few lights in it, and a big one just went out. I feel stupid for feeling this way about a teacher. I’d just stop seeing her at the end of the year anyway. But her leaving feels tragic in a way I can’t even explain to myself.

  I get up and run out of the class. Ms. North calls after me but I am in a full-on run. I keep going down the stairs, out the front door, and to my bike. It is the last half day before Christmas break, the day of our party, of our secret Santa. I’ve forgotten my gloves, and my hands freeze on the handlebars. But I just can’t go back.

  Maybe my father is right after all. Maybe I should just stop going to school now.

  None of my friends are around and I can’t think of anywhere to go. So I go home.

  I sit in the kitchen. It’s hot but not like the way it is in my room. I should be safe for hours. Around the holidays, my father’s restaurant gets busier so he is rarely around. My mother, home early from her job and making some concoction on the stove, is luckily not in the mood to chat. I should have peace for a while.