Never Too Real

by Carmen Rita

  “Ay, no. Wha’ happened? Did ju say som’ting bad?!” For a moment, Dolores Ana Rosa Rivera dialed her tone down a notch—not only out of concern for her daughter, but also out of a need to get a rise out of her. Cat bristled at her puppetry—too many years of it, she was all too aware. But what she needed right now was love and understanding, not a codependent dance. The desire to talk to her mother disappeared as quickly as the original urge to call had appeared.

  “No, no, Ma. It was nothing.”

  “Well, it canno’ be no’ting! Wha’ did ju do?”

  What did I do, Cat thought. It’s gotta be what did I do.

  She moved to playing defense. “It was ratings . . . or something. The ratings.” She blew her nose, loudly.

  “Did ju call jor agent? Doesn’ he haf somet’ing to say? Maybe ju can take a pay cut.” Did this woman ever take a moment?

  Cat couldn’t believe her ears. “Ma! You don’t go back to work and ask for a pay cut after you’ve been fired!” Shit. The dance began.

  “Well, why no’? If it’s about money, den save dem money!”

  “Ma, you have no idea how this all works. You just don’t do that!” Her mother’s insistence on giving her professional advice rankled Cat to no end.

  “Listen, I’m no’ es-stupid! Jor no’ de only one who knows t’ings, ju know!”

  Dolores’s education had stopped at fifteen when she came to the States from D. F., Mexico City, and went straight to work in a factory. She’d never even held a desk job, instead waiting tables for years to help put her daughter, her only child, through school. Cat had turned out to be a great investment. Her daughter was on TV. She was famous.

  “Ma, I gotta go. I need to call my agent.”

  There was no arguing with delusion. In classic hopeful-immigrant fashion, Dolores had poured everything into Cat. But she also had developed a toxic habit of living through her, as if the cord had never been cut, as if Cat pulled her as well along through life. It was exhausting.

  “Well, we need to talk about wha’ ju’re goin’ to do! Dey jus’ canno’ do dat to ju.”

  “Yes, they can, Mom. Oh, here—here’s my agent. Gotta go. I’ll call you later.”

  Cat hung up. Any guilt from lying about another call dissipated immediately. Dolores was probably calling her own sister right now to complain about what a horrible, selfish daughter Cat was for hanging up on her. And a mother who had sacrificed so much—she was the reason her daughter was a star, no?

  Back home, Gabi’s bags jostled and bumped as she searched for her house keys. Her heart was already pumping in anticipation of what was behind this door number one. She couldn’t hear anything but the television through the fireproof apartment door, and the quiet made her more anxious than yelling and crying would. Silence is the worst, Gabi thought. She was the oldest of a gaggle of kids from Spanish Harlem, and as painful as it was to hear her mother and father screaming at each other, everyone there knew that the quiet was much more insidious.

  “Hellooo?” Gabi called out tentatively as she entered a dark foyer, wanting—needing—to see her son’s face. Only the television screen illuminated the apartment, along with a sliver of light from her son’s bedroom. Gabi’s insides dropped in both disappointment and relief at the sight of her husband splayed on the couch watching a show, one arm up, one leg up, taking up as much space as physically possible. She hated this position. It reminded her of an orangutan. But comatose also meant that maybe the drama was over, or, could at least be avoided one more night. She stared at him for a beat as his eyes never left the screen. How did we get here?

  “Guurl, you’re finally here!” Gabi’s publicist friend, Nitika Solani, sang out to her, waving her hands above the mass of heads between them.

  Gabi waved back and squinted as she concentrated on making her way through the gaggle of partiers, their drinks seemingly all too ready to spill on her. Gabi’s hair was a bit less tamed, her eyes a bit less sunken. It was six years earlier, and she had managed to get dragged away from another early night to bed after a long day in residency at a psychiatric ward for teens by her graduate school friend who took a different path of “mental” practice: publicity.

  “Listen, chica, this guy all right, this chef is just beyond. Gorgeous, Jewish!—I mean, hello, amirite?—and his food is to die.”

  Gabi smiled, but rolled her eyes at her friend’s attempt to get her excited for another man. The only way this one differed was that Nitika had been working with him for months as her client and they both were on very good terms. Gabi didn’t hear any diva behavior from him, either, something Nitika loved to dish—or bitch—about with Gabi.

  Nitika pulled Gabi’s arm with one hand and grabbed a drink from a server’s tray with another, handing it to Gabi, all while they made their way to the chef’s station. Gabi and Nitika were equally attractive and equally brown. Though Nitika’s brown came from Mumbai, originally, via California. But Gabi in that moment was feeling subpar as the income difference between public relations and psychology became clearer. Nitika donned the latest clothes and looked slick, her blow-out and color screaming expensive. Gabi tried to tell herself that her sale items and more grungy Brooklyn look was just that, her own look, and fit perfectly into her world. She couldn’t resist, though, taking note of the gut feeling that she wanted what Nitika had: success.

  “Okay, my dear, here he is, hottest chef on the planet right now, Bert Gold!” She introduced him as a publicist would, with flair. Gabi couldn’t see who Nitika was gesturing to. She only saw the back of someone, bending down, scrambling behind the massive wooden cutting table, chef coat on, a denim-like texture, very much worked in. It seemed he was doing some sort of display cooking with his sous-chefs or assistants standing around him, arranging bite-sized tastes that were going around the room with servers. The attendees were munching rapidly whatever came off the table with many mmmms and wows coming from all sides. “Um, Bert. I’ve got someone you have to meet.” Nitika, this time, stating calmly with a bit of impatience.

  “Yup, yup . . .” A muffled response came still from below the table. “Ah, okay, hi. Hi.”

  Well, he was handsome, Gabi would give him that. Sweaty a bit. That Mediterranean tendency toward growing hair nearly everywhere, but she liked that. He had a strong neck and Gabi strangely noticed that he had particularly small ears for his head. Funny.

  “Hi. Gabi.” She reached out her hand. He put out his elbow instead to bump hers. Gabi hesitated a second, then realized that as he was still cooking and serving, there’d be no hand shaking. They bumped elbows and both smiled politely.

  “Bert, Gabi here is my dear friend from graduate school who does the good work, ya know, helps people. She’s a psychologist.”

  Bert’s eyes opened a bit wider, their small three-person scrum maintaining a mini-cone of stillness, if for but a moment. “Uh-oh!”

  Gabi eye-rolled him. “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

  “Well, you don’t want to start shrinking chefs because seriously, you’d be the one needing meds!”

  Ha. Right. Gabi didn’t find that funny. Childish humor. Nitika caught on. Feeling Gabi’s frost, she turned professional. “Ooooh, kay. So, listen, I’ve got New York mag coming to you in five, you ready?” she asked Bert.

  “Yup, yup, I’m good.” He shook his head like a boxer going into a match. Chefs are so physical, Gabi thought none-too-happily as Nitika turned both the ladies away from the increasing madness of Bert’s table performance. “Bye.” We waved.

  “Okay, so?” her friend asked.

  “Eh.” Gabi shrugged.

  “Oh hon, we are never going to get you married! Don’t you want to have kids?!”

  “Yeah, of course! More than anything. It’s just . . .” Gabi lost her mouth in her drink, some peachy-looking possible-margarita with a spicy kick.

  Nitika sighed. “All right. Let’s deposit you with some good folks and I’ll head back to the super-fabulous man of the evening you want to have nothi
ng to do with.”

  Two hours later, most of the crowd had dispersed and Gabi was surprised to find that she’d had a good time. Those peachy-spicy drinks helped, but Nitika had also made good on her introductions and the conversations she had and subsequent possible future-friendships were real. They were mostly females, or boyfriends of someone, but it felt pretty good to go out for once and connect. If Gabi didn’t have her friends, she would simply work herself to the bone and hire a sperm donor. Dating was such a time suck.

  “Can I get you another one of those?” She felt a tap on her shoulder.

  “Oh! Oh hi,” Gabi said to Bert, now sweatier than ever but somehow also nearly tasty looking. Probably the drinks. “No, no thanks. I’m good. Probably should have stopped before this one.”

  Bert smiled and put his hands on his hips, stocky but still slim. “Well, hey, I’m really sorry I couldn’t pay more attention to you ladies back there—it was kinda a madhouse.”

  “Yeah, I saw that.” He was cute, but Gabi’s small-talk abilities felt burnt out for the evening.

  Bert seemed to feel her lack of interest. “I bet you think I’m a total ass for that ‘shrink’ comment, right?”

  Gabi raised her eyebrows in partial agreement. “Well, maybe ‘ass’ is a bit harsh.”

  “Nah, nah, that’s okay, I deserve it a bit. I get a little flustered when I’m nervous.” Gabi nodded at him. “Ya know, I mean, this whole night, and stuff, but really I think you made me nervous!”

  Oh geez, Gabi thought, here we go. She set her drink down. “Oh, I saw you tonight; you were doing pretty good.”

  “With the cooking? Oh yeah, that I just get into the groove, ya know . . .”

  “No, I mean with the ladies—you were doing just fine.” Gabi noticed out of the corner of her eye during the night how many women of all ages fawned over Bert, passed him numbers and cards, took photos, and even the men were kowtowing to him like cultists of cuisine to a guru.

  Bert gulped at Gabi’s straightforward swipe. “Well. Okay then. A ballbuster.” He took off his bandanna, exposing the mop of wet dark brown curls underneath. Running his fingers through his mop, he raised his head to Gabi and went in for one more try. “Go out with me.”

  “Excuse me?” Gabi asked, surprised.

  “Will you go out with me, maybe for coffee in the morning?”

  “Can’t do mornings. Work.” Though Gabi noted his offer of a non-alcoholic meeting. Usually a sign of either someone who actually wants to get to know you, or someone who doesn’t want to spend money on you. Seeing how well Bert was doing, Gabi was going to hedge her bets on option one.

  “Okay, well, I don’t go in until later on Mondays—can you do coffee at, like, five?” His eyes pleaded, and Gabi started feeling a tug coming from her insides. She noted the shape of his scruff, the lilt to his upper lip when he spoke, his strong brows. But mostly she noted his tenacity. She loved that quality in a person.

  “Sure. Sounds good.”

  “Oh! Okay—great!” Bert visibly brightened. “I’m so looking forward to it, Gabi.” He shook her hand this time.

  “Nitika can get you my contact info,” Gabi offered.

  Bert nodded, winked at her, and walked away. She could have sworn she heard him humming.

  After they dated for a while, Gabi asked Bert why he was interested in her in the first place, with all those women after him. He told her, “It was because you weren’t impressed by me.”

  Years later, Gabi was even further from impressed.

  “Hey” was all Gabi got out of him, her husband’s eyes not breaking contact with the screen. She dropped her bags softly so as to not wake their son and mustered a polite and plaintive “Hey . . .” in return. But the moment her bags landed with a rustle and a clink, the little boy ran out of his bedroom, grabbing and squeezing tight his mother’s legs in a save-me hug. He had been waiting up.

  “Oof. Hi, baby,” Gabi said gently.

  “Mamiiiii,” little Maximo wailed into his mother’s side.

  Snapping out of his TV trance, Bert sprang forward from the couch.

  “What did I tell you? Stay in your room! Get in there, right now!” he scolded.

  Tall, and scruffy as a Brooklyn-creative was required to be, Bert Gold bore little evidence of his time as a star chef. When he’d met Gabi, he’d just snagged his slot in the Meatpacking’s hottest nouveau-American restaurant by winning an episode of King Cook, an all-male cooking competition on SpikeTV. But bad management led to the closing of the restaurant, and the next restaurant that followed. Bert could cook but he could not lead people as he needed everyone to like him, and, had too-little fire in his belly. That tenacity that she once saw seemed to give way with each failure. It culminated in him describing himself to Gabi as a worker bee now, not a colonel. I should have listened harder to that one. Winning the cooking competition got him the accolades and fifteen minutes of fame he’d craved, but it thrust him into roles that he had no desire to play, particularly as his wife’s star rose as his fell. For a few years now, Bert had found it all too easy to hang around his “home office” in a T-shirt and shorts, maintaining his supposed online presence, cooking for personal clients once in a while. Gabi earned plenty of money, after all, and she came preloaded from the womb with limitless energy and fortitude. When they’d met, Bert was at his peak. Gabi was doing well, but the fulfillment of her potential had only just begun, while his was in full swing. Now the tables had turned and Bert was outearned as well as overshadowed in the public eye. It was a recipe for resentment.

  Flinching at the thrust of his father’s pointed finger and sharp voice, the auburn-haired five-year-old held on to his mother and wailed louder. A little bit of drama in his feelings, but it all added to a whole lot of truth to Gabi.

  She put out her palm and instinctively turned her body to protect her son from Bert’s aggression. “Okay, that’s enough,” she told both of them. When Gabi was a teenager and had grown close to her mother’s height, she would stand between her mother and her sisters and little brother, forbidding the bullying and the hitting that would come their way. The pain that she’d been first to experience. Gabi was very comfortable with this position: You’ll have to go through me first.

  “Don’t talk to me like that! Don’t order me around!” Bert yelled at Gabi.

  “Just calm down, okay? Max’s had enough for the night and you have had way too much to drink.” Gabi worked to keep her voice as sedate but as unyielding as possible.

  “Oh, fuck you, I have not.” He waved her off and sat back down, eyes on the television, arms and legs again splayed.

  Gabi saw red. He was obviously drunk and maybe even high. This was why she never went out anymore, unless it was related to her work. She didn’t trust him to stay sober with Max.

  “Are you kidding me? You’re two whiskies in and it’s a Tuesday, at home with your son so I can work to support you guys and you can sit on this couch!” As soon as it came out she realized that emasculating him wasn’t going to solve any problems. But she was exhausted, filters not functioning.

  “Oh, fuck that. You know, I’m sick and tired of your high-horse bullshit—”

  Maximo was holding on to his mother’s legs, tight.

  “High horse! I wish I had a fucking horse, but noooo, I’m stuck in this apartment that reeks of liquor and pot and your . . . your . . . self-pity, and you can’t see for one minute what you’re doing to this family! You. Need. Help.” Gabi kept her hands on her son, who was now quiet and shaking.

  Bert set his glass down, grabbed the sides of his head, stood and bleated, “STOP trying to fix me, goddamnit!”

  Maximo flinched his little body, echoing his mother’s reaction. An angry drunk is a scary drunk, and a dangerous person. Gabi shut down, stunned by Bert’s obviously pent-up vitriol. They froze in place as Bert grabbed his keys and wallet and stormed out the door. Thank God.

  Gabi finally breathed in, and out, then whispered a hush-hush as she shuffled her
son back to his room, imagining that she was placing a psychic cloak of protection over her and her boy. Gabi was a sensible, rooted-in-science person, but she always felt that energy was energy—it was real and present. Her mother was into Santería and ghosts, priests’ blessings and sage burnings. And Gabi had had childhood visions and strange dreams, which made her feel at times like a closet bruja. One foot in the world of social science. The other, in a very messy, yet potent place.

  Max had been too often at the receiving end of Bert’s alcohol-fueled rages since the child could talk—and talk back. But this year in particular. This was a very bad year. Gabi bent down and held her strong-willed son, half Puerto Rican (which meant Spanish, African, a smidge of Taino), half Jewish, whispering to him, “It’s okay, mi amor. It’s okay. Mami loves you. Te amo mucho.” Rocking and rubbing his back, envisioning her ardor radiating from her chest, into Max, trying to bring their breaths into sync. She took his cherubic face into her hands. “M’ijo, let Mami wash your face before you go back to bed, okay? It’ll feel so so good.”

  Sniffles. “Okay, Mami.”

  One of the few, but treasured, memories Gabi had of her temperamental, depressed mother was of her taking a warm washcloth and gently wiping the salt trails from Gabi’s teary, young face. She could never remember why she had been crying, and how many times, but she did remember that in this display of affection from her mother she felt loved, even if only for that moment.

  Bracelets jangling, Gabi directed Maximo into the bathroom. The washcloth was warm, just so, and the boy closed his eyes as the cloth approached his face, ready for its healing blessings. Gabi gently swiped Max’s flushed face, with a soft, melodic “Shhh . . . shhh . . .”

  “Mami, why do you have to leave me with him?”

  “Shhh . . . shhh . . .” Swipe, rub. More warm water, squeeze.

  “Querido, sometimes Mami has to work long days.” She took her son’s cheeks into her hands and locked eyes with him. “I don’t like being away from you, but sometimes I have to, amor. I have to work so we can have this home and you can have your nice things, okay?” She wasn’t telling the whole truth because there was a part of Gabi that loved to work hard. She was as ambitious as she could be, always wanting more than what had been expected of her female, brown, ’Rican self. But now Gabi was supporting the family financially. And the way Bert was spiraling downward, she wouldn’t be surprised if he never worked again. And if she was truthful with herself, she wondered if subconsciously she didn’t work so much and focus on Max all in defiance of him and what he’d become; maybe she did it even in disgust.