Maria woke up to the landline ringing, her cell phone still under her pillow. She could smell coffee brewing in the kitchen when she climbed out of bed and picked up the cordless phone. “He’s not here,” she said. “But my mom is.”
Maria went into the kitchen, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes. As soon as her mother saw her, she took the phone out of Maria’s grip and slammed it onto the counter. “Don’t pick those calls up! I’ve told you before!” Her eyebrows climbed up her forehead, and Maria took a step back.
“How was I supposed to know?” Maria asked, but she knew it was her fault. She had forgotten, again, to look at the caller ID. All unknown numbers were to go directly to voice mail, and Maria already knew the area codes of the collection agencies. She even knew some of the representatives by name. John, Susan, even a Rafael from Delaware. They all seemed pleasant on the phone. Minutes after her mom hung up, the phone rang again. Maria listened to it ring once, and then twice. It rang five times in total and was cut off at the sixth ring, and then they heard the loud speaker of the message machine go off, followed by an alert: their in-box was full. Maria remembered her letter. Her father hadn’t heard back yet and suddenly, notwithstanding flashed in her head, and she felt a tinge of pain, like something was being pinched just behind her eyes. She thought of Andres, and the pain became sharper. She couldn’t remember why she had ever tried making a joke out of food stamps, why she had thought a thing like not having enough money to eat could be funny.
“Get dressed,” Maria’s mother said once the phone had shut up. She looked at Maria’s pajamas—a giant T-shirt, a pair of ripped sweats. “We’re going school shopping.”
“It’s not even September.”
“We can’t wait ’til September. The sales are happening now.”
“Fine.” Rocky never paid attention to the schedule of sales and never wore anything out of season, but Maria showered and dressed like her mother commanded, and when they got to the 99 cents store, Maria lagged behind, sensing that she’d been tricked. There was no rush in buying things from a store that offered a perpetual discount, where everything, no matter the season, was priced at a single dollar. As they searched in silence for folders without dolphins and bunnies on the front fold, Maria found out that she indeed had been fooled, that her mother had dragged her out of the house with a different agenda than the one she’d proposed.
“Maria, is everything okay? You’ve seemed so sad recently.”
Maria’s eyes suddenly filled with tears, and as soon as her mother saw it, she pulled her daughter to her chest. Maria breathed in the clean scent of laundry, vanilla, a ripped edge of cilantro.
“You don’t need no boyfriend, anyway,” her mother said. “Listen when I tell you, save your tears for when I die.”
Maria tried to swallow. She was about to correct her mother—a boyfriend, I don’t need a boyfriend—but suddenly she imagined Andres standing next to her, telling her that she thought she was better than him. She was so overcome that she found herself breathing into her mother’s shirt, unable to say anything at all. Her mother had only known the bare minimum about Andres, and Maria hadn’t wanted her knowing that Andres dumped her, but it was impossible to hide how much she’d been crying, when she was moved to tears by almost anything, including every song on the radio, even the ones they heard in passing at supermarkets and fast-food restaurants, and it was even harder when her sense of abandonment was compounded by Charlie’s disappearance, too. In the store, there were scuff marks from all the places where people had dragged the heels of their shoes, and Maria knew she couldn’t cry here, not in front of all these nosy clerks and kids running down the aisles. Still, it felt good to be held. Maria swallowed a few more times before unsuccessfully attempting to pull herself away.
“Thanks, Ma.” The words were muffled in her mother’s shirt.
“One day you’ll look back on this and you’ll see it wasn’t so important.” With her mouth still pressed against Maria’s ear, Maria’s mother continued. “Did you really think he’d be your last boyfriend?”
“Did you have boyfriends before Dad?”
“Oh baby,” Maria’s mother said into her daughter’s hair. “That’s a conversation for a different day. But I’ll tell you this—he wasn’t the first one to propose.” Finally, without any warning, she let Maria go.
Maria moved ahead of her mother, down another aisle, blinking vigorously. She was intrigued. There were men before her father? This was news to her! Who! She was dying to know. But while her mother had hugged her, she had felt her phone buzz several times in her back pocket. Now, she reached around and flipped it open. Embedded in a velvety blue banner, there was a message alert from a number she didn’t recognize.
Hey, beautiful, the text message said. Free for lunch?
The wall of her abdomen tightened. She was suddenly standing at attention, like a soldier ready for battle.
Behind her, her mother peered into a stack of composition notebooks.
Sure, Maria typed. Her phone buzzed again before she could look away.
An hour? Give or take? Meet me at the park entrance near the Met.
A current of hope buoyed her. She felt herself rising, like a balloon edging toward the tip of its string. She remembered the call from that morning, and she no longer cared about Rocky’s lie or misunderstanding or whatever it was. As she stared down the aisle at a gaggle of children illuminated from the soles of their light-up shoes, Maria breathed deeply. Charlie would remember the promise he made her, and if he didn’t, Maria would remind him. She closed her eyes languorously, and in that humming violet space, what she saw was undeniable—his easy grin, the nod of his head, the upturned lips with which he would kiss her. He had reached out to her; it was clear. She could see the plan would work.
She grabbed a composition notebook and stood with it poised in her hand. “Mom,” she said, pleased to hear that her voice was no longer breaking. “Can I go to Rocky’s apartment today? I want to keep studying for the SAT. She has her own tutor, you know.”
Her mother’s eyes went slant. “Okay. But get home early, please.”
Maria watched as her mother walked away, the basket hoisted up on her hip, the steps that she took almost rhythmic. She once thought her mother was frumpy, inelegant, but as she watched her saunter down the aisle, Maria thought of all the boys who may have wanted to marry her. She wondered how much energy they had spent trying to court her. Her mother said: Did you think he’d be your last boyfriend? Well, the answer was that of course she didn’t. But it was just a little sad to think that certain things never amounted to anything, yet they took up so much of your time. What was the point of living with no regrets when there were clearly things that ought to be regretted? This was actually a comforting thought, one she could put behind her arm and take with her. Nothing about the future could intimidate her when she looked at it this way; nothing about meeting Charlie could scare her when she opened her eyes to the contours of things that might forever and ever be solidified in her history as perfect, complete, horrible wastes of time.
CHAPTER 21
Charlie usually walked around the apartment in starchy blazers and silken ties, and he was always at least a half inch off the ground in a pair of polished black shoes. Today he was wearing a set of camel-brown loafers that were torn at the heel and whose soles were run down to the floor, and whatever he did do before meeting Maria, it didn’t consist of shaving. The two suede laces near the toe were frayed and coming undone, dragging along the cobblestone pathway, catching in the mortar caulking. As he walked toward Maria outside of the park and unfolded one arm from his chest to her shoulder, Maria was startled by his height. For the first time, she noticed that he was shorter than Andres by several inches.
To Maria, Charlie looked bedraggled.
“Annie!” he exclaimed when they were only a foot’s distance from each other, and Maria had to remember that he was talking to her. A shudder ran through her shoulders. She could’v
e been called anything—but Annie was certainly not right.
Charlie reached around her face with the pointed part of his chin. He kissed her on the cheek, and his face was hot and gravelly like the hide of the pumice stone that Maria’s mother kept in the shower. What is that for? she asked one day, toweling her hair over the sink. My calluses, her mother replied. Ew, Maria said, to which her mother sucked her teeth. Mija, just wait ’til you’re older.
Maria drew back. He was darker than usual; he looked like he had been tanning. Although the rest of him looked shabbier than Maria had ever seen him, he wore his tan like a table freshly lacquered, a shade of brown glazed onto his skin like a coat he had bought and had just ripped the tags off, worn for the very first time.
When they were only arm’s length apart, Charlie drew Maria into the crook of his giant arm. As she drew her face away, she smelled something sweet on his breath.
“Ice cream?” He pointed to the ice-cream cart in front of them, its tiny textured wheels parked on the cobblestone pathway.
She looked at the cart, at the images plastered onto each side. It was a collage of gumballs, hard chocolate crusts, Popsicles. Tweety Bird’s eyes bulged at her from the face of a coagulated glob of corn syrup and yellow molasses. She pointed at an image of an ice-cream bar coated in pink, with coffee cake crumbs.
“Strawberry shortcake,” he said to the man who had been peering into the face of his wristwatch until Charlie spoke. “You want something to drink? Water?” He looked at the man. “Give me a water.” He took out his wallet to pay.
“You’re not getting anything?” Maria watched uneasily as the man behind the cart eyed the fifty-dollar bill Charlie handed him, holding it up to the sun and squinting before putting it away. Charlie peeled down the ice-cream bar’s wrapper before handing it to her, revealing its pink, speckled flesh.
“I had a vanilla cone as I waited.”
Something didn’t feel right. Maria felt a deep unsettling and tried not to stare at the frayed ends of his shoelaces dragging along on the ground. When they sat on the lawn, he fiddled with his watch, adjusting the straps as if he had noticed they were suddenly too tight on him. He caught her looking. “Are you hungry?”
She had hardly finished her ice cream. Maria was full, but she was also anxious to be sitting outside in daylight, in the giant expanse of blank canvas that was the great lawn. It would be better to have the conversation over food, anyway. It would be quieter if they were indoors, and Maria imagined the way she would emphasize certain words over others: appreciate over please, grateful over indebted. And then there would be words she would have to remember to omit completely: Favor. Help. Need.
“Yes.” She smiled. “I’m starving.”
They went down the avenue, to a pizza parlor. At the door, she stopped. Three girls were huddled at a table near the window, their ponytails high above their heads. Maria’s limbs became taut like a tuned guitar string, and she stared, unmoving, the smell of burnt cheese nauseating her. She knew those heads, every bleached strand of hair, the highlights wearing off at the roots. She knew what they smelled like after gym class in the locker room—soapy fingers and fresh sweat. Charlie trailed just behind her, but his hand hovered at the small of her back, and she walked in before he could prompt her.
Someone called out an order, and a long mane whipped toward the counter. She stood and walked toward Maria, and when she was just a few paces away, Maria saw that she wore a stranger’s face. Maria felt something loosen its hold around her neck.
Charlie ate two and a half slices. Maria ate one and the half Charlie didn’t. When they finished, there was enough to eat more. In other company, she might have.
“I’ll get a box so you can take the rest.”
“I can’t eat anymore.”
“For your parents. Wouldn’t they like that?”
“Oh,” Maria said.
“Wouldn’t it be a nice surprise?”
Maria was going to tell him that her mother made dinner every night, but he was talking too quickly, and now he was out of his seat, walking up to the counter to ask for a box.
“For your parents,” he said, when he returned.
Maria wished he would sit back down. All she wanted was to tell him about the payments they were missing, about the way that fear in the house had become resignation, inevitable like death, but at the same time she didn’t care about her delivery anymore; she remembered she wasn’t trying to compose a poem or perfect the perspective of a painting, and that if she kept deliberating over the appropriate word or dramatic emphasis, she would altogether lose her chance. When she saw that Charlie was walking toward the door, she hurried to put the remaining slices in the box herself. She fumbled; the grease made her fingers slippery. She needed to ask. Time was slipping away just as easily.
Outside on the sidewalk, he placed an open hand around her neck and gently squeezed the tendons he found there. What had he been thinking when he reached out to her? There was nowhere the two of them could go. He couldn’t really take her to the Hamptons house now—he had work tomorrow, and he didn’t have a single bag packed. His car was in the parking lot in midtown. It’d be a hassle to do all of that tonight. He raised her face to kiss her goodbye on the cheek.
With his face close to hers, he smelled the shampoo in her hair. He imagined how, with her hair wet, it would no longer curl, but lie flat down on her forehead. He realized that she didn’t actually smell like Tatiana at all, that she actually had a smell of her own, and that for him, it was brand-new. There was no use in denying what it had felt like to hold her in place for appraisal in Vegas, how he had enjoyed looking at her like a diamond from all sides. When she pushed him away, it was collaborative, a suggestion among other suggestions that could be scaled, that all seemed to have equal weight. He had gotten so close, even then—this time, he would make it. It wouldn’t be hard. He could take off from work. He could purchase a toothbrush.
“Do you want to come with me to the Hamptons house? We have a pool, you know. This time, we can jump in. You can swim.”
“I can’t,” Maria said, and her face went dour. “I can’t sleep over anywhere anymore.”
“How about we leave tomorrow morning, then?” It was perfect. He could go to the apartment and pack his bag tonight. It was August, the slowest month, and nobody would care if he were sick. And best of all, the girl wouldn’t have to sleep in his bed. That seemed a bit much, even for him.
“I’ll get you back before dark. How does that sound?”
“Okay.”
“Perfect, sweetheart.” His hand left her shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then, lovely. Don’t be late. Don’t make me wait.”
He kissed her quickly on the cheek and hurried down the avenue. He didn’t turn around to confirm if she’d raised her hand after him, if he would’ve seen how her fingers splayed to wave goodbye.
The Bloody Mary, thick like salsa, savory as a potato chip, was Rocky’s favorite brunch drink. She and Laura sat across from one another, underneath an umbrella shade on Madison Avenue.
“You still haven’t slept with him? But it’s been a while now!” Laura put her mimosa down by the stem. They were on their second round and the eggs Benedict had yet to come out. Laura was incredulous. “Wasn’t that what this whole thing was about?”
Rocky studied her friend through her sunglasses. Even if Laura was irritating, what she said was true. Pursuing Ricky had started like many of her sexual pursuits did, as a conquest. In her daily agenda, alongside the week’s homework assignments, Rocky kept track. She’d opened her agenda to the index, where they’d printed a full-spread world map. She had been to Asia, she proudly boasted, because Skylar was only half white. She’d already done Africa, she also declared, though she couldn’t name more than two countries there. All of the Western industrialized world was a given, since a boy like Matthew could count for places like Germany, Ireland, Italy, England, and who knows where else? She didn’t know what would happen once she ha
d conquered them all—if she’d have to restart and reset—but she wasn’t concerned with that question when she decided that Latin America was next.
When she had shared her findings with Maria, Maria laughed. You can have Andres. Right after I’m finished with him. But Rocky knew that day would never come; as much as Maria complained about him, it seemed that she only grew fiercer in her sadness and more fervent in her attachment each time that she saw him.
I could, Rocky said. Or what about a Rosario?
No. Maria frowned. There’s nobody.
If the Rosario household was off-limits, Rocky’s options were near negligible. The usual contenders came from the Catholic brother school, but there was only one student who might fit her criteria. His name was Facundo Hiciano, and though Rocky had never actually spoken to him in person, she knew that from the sound of things, he would do. For a while, she looked out for him when she went to parties, especially the school dances that the boys’ school hosted in their enormous front hall. She only hesitated because she was dating Matthew, and Matthew and Facundo went to the same school. Between morning homeroom and the walk to first period, a whisper could become a well-known rumor.
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