She sat up and shot me a look that screamed, “Duh!”
“What movie do you want to pick up?”
Emma shrugged. “I dunno. How about Romeo and Juliet?”
I stifle a groan and smile instead. “Sure, if you want to watch Romeo and Juliet again, I guess we can rent it.”
Emma lets out a little excited yip. She had this odd fascination with the Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio version of the movie. I don’t know where it came from or why, but one afternoon back in L.A. about a year or so ago, I came home from a yoga class to find her laying on the floor, chin propped up on her hands, totally wrapped up in the movie.
When I asked her what she liked about it she said, “Romeo is cute. Why are they talking like that?”
I laughed and sat down, explaining the Shakespearean dialect and what the meaning of the movie was. At the end, she cried and looked up at me. “Why did they kill themselves, why couldn’t they just stay alive and be happy?”
I had just shrugged. “It’s why the story is so popular, they were star-crossed. It was their fate, I guess. They were going to die. If they had lived the story wouldn’t be as great as it is, I guess.”
We tried watching other Shakespeare movies, but none of them held the same enticement that Romeo and Juliet did. Either that or it was because none of them had Leonardo DiCaprio as the hunky lead actor.
Emma hopped off the couch, her misery over being a hobo fading. I get up as well and head toward the foyer where my purse and car keys are waiting. As I open the door, a pair of strong hands bearing a vase full of sunflowers greeted me.
“Oh, hey,” Steven said from behind the flowers.
“Hi,” I said peering around large yellow flower heads.
“You forgot these. I didn’t want them to just sit on your desk all weekend, so I figured I’d bring them by on my way home.”
“Ooh, those are so pretty,” Emma gushes, rushing toward the door. “Mom, did Steve buy those for you?”
“No,” I said blushing. “They’re from everyone at the station.” I reach out and take the vase from Steve. “For my birthday,” I add for clarification. Setting the flowers on the table by the door, I readjust my purse strap and stand there uncomfortably.
“We’re going to get cake and rent a movie,” Emma tells Steve. She rushes toward the front door excited at the prospect of cake and DiCaprio.
“Sounds like some great fun. What movie are you renting?”
Emma pushes past Steve and leaps down the porch steps. “Romeo and Juliet,” she calls as she runs through a soggy pile of fallen leaves toward the car.
Steve stops, waiting for me. “I thought you girls were going out to dinner.”
“Rough day at school,” I tell him. “Some girl told her she dresses like a hobo.”
“Ouch.” Steve cringes, his eyes following Emma across the lawn. “What was her comeback?”
“She told the girl she smelled like a hobo!”
“Good one,” he chuckled. I smile and watch Emma leaning breathlessly against the car’s passenger side door.
“That’s what I said, but she was kind of upset about it and asked to stay home tonight. I wasn’t really feeling up to driving all the way to Sappho tonight anyway, so I agreed.”
“Oh, well, have fun with your evening.” He started back toward his house.
“Hey Steve?” I call across the yard. He stops and turns toward me. “You have any plans for dinner?”
He shakes his head no and smiles. “I was planning on picking up a sandwich and a six pack and watching a Patriots game, why?”
“I just thought maybe you’d like to have a real meal.” I grin at him and wait for his response.
“Are you asking me to have dinner with you?”
“Yes,” I reply boldly. “Emma makes a wicked good pizza-“
“I do,” she yells from her place by the car. “I make the best pizza in the world!”
“See, the best pizza in the world. So what do you say?”
“What time should I come over?”
I laugh and glance at my watch. “Around six, is that good?”
He nods. “I’ll see you at six.”
Steve makes his way toward his house and I hurry towards the car, unlocking it, and slipping inside. Emma slides into the passenger seat and awkwardly reaches for her seatbelt.
“Hey mom,” she said as I back the car down the driveway.
“Hmm?” I murmured.
“Do you like Steve?”
“Of course I like him, he’s very nice.”
“No, I mean do you like him like you liked Daddy?”
Ooh. Wasn’t expecting that one, I thought, but it raised an interesting question. Did I like Steve the way I liked – loved, Kyle? I wasn’t sure. I was physically attracted to him; he made me dizzy in the head with that stupid little school girls crush I had on him.
Okay, so obviously I liked him. To Emma I said, “I don’t know.”
“Do you think he’s cute?”
I laughed. “Yes. I think he’s cute. Why?”
“Just wondering. He thinks you’re cute, too.”
I glanced at her from out of the corner of my eye. “How do you know that?”
She smiles smugly and says, “When he was working on the garage door there was a man who came to help him, remember?”
“Yes, Joe. He’s a friend of Steve’s. He’s the guy who fixed your bedroom window.”
“Mhmm. Well, I was playing in the back of the garage – they didn’t know I was there – and Steve told Joe that he thought you were beautiful.”
“Oh, well, you shouldn’t eavesdrop on other people’s conversation. You could hear something that you don’t want to hear.”
Emma I see nodded and hummed along to the radio until our drive was over. I thought about the two of us, Steve and me, and what it would be like to be with him in that way. It had been a long time. A really, really long time since I’d felt the stirrings of anything even remotely close to what I felt right now.
And if I felt this way about Steve, then I needed to tell him the truth about Mora, about me, and about why I left.
***
The grocery store is crowded on this wet Friday evening. Emma and I make our way toward the freezers by the bakery, debating the merits of vanilla ice cream cake versus chocolate ice cream. Reaching the freezers, we stand in front of them peering into the thick glass.
“I like that one,” She cries pointing to a large cake that would have taken us the rest of the year to eat.
“How about this one instead,” I say pointing to a smaller one.
Emma wrinkles her nose and shakes her head. “That one,” she said, tapping the freezer door.
“Okay,” I said pulling over the door. It was too big for just the two of us, but smaller than the first one she’d chosen. “What kind of pizza are we going to make tonight?”
“Pepperoni!” she exclaimed.
“For you,” I retorted.
“Eww, mom, you’re not gonna make that gross pizza with the green boogey looking slimy stuff are you?”
“Oh please,” I say, exasperation lacing my voice. “It’s good and tasty.”
Emma rolls her eyes and pushes the cart toward the produce department. I trail behind her, stopping at the fresh herbs, picking up some basil. I breathe in the earthy, slightly minty smell as I carry it toward the cart. Emma is dropping apples into a bag as I reach for the Roma tomatoes.
“Just a few,” I plead. “I’ll get more later on in the week when I go grocery shopping.”
She nods and ties off the bag, setting it into the cart and grabbing a container of caramel dipping sauce placing it next to the basil. I carry the tomatoes back to the cart and motion her to follow me ignoring her choice of sweets. “We need to get some cheese, pepperoni for you, and a jar of pesto because I’m lazy and not making it from scratch tonight.”
With Emma at the helm, we successfully avoid other shoppers, collect our items, and flee the superm
arket like Bonnie and Clyde, sans the criminal charges. After loading the bags into the trunk of the car, I swing by the movie store, pick up Emma’s choice and Armageddon and Ghost Rider for me.
By five, we are back home and in the kitchen with the radio playing as Emma beats the pizza dough into submission while singing along to some song by Justin Bieber,
“Baby,” bang, bang, “baby, baby, nooo,” bang, bang, bang, “like baby, baby, baby, ooh, just thought you’d always be mine,” bang, bang.
“Emma,” I yell over the singing and banging. “A little more singing and less brutalizing the pizza crust.”
“Sorry mom,” she blushes and sets down the meat tenderizer and started poking the pizza dough. “Hey mom?”
“Hmm?”
“Did you and your mom used to do stuff like this?”
“No,” I tell her. “My mom, well she wasn’t the cooking kind of mother, she worked too much.”
“How come?”
I shrug. “I don’t know, she liked to work and cooking was not fun for her, I guess.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you see her much? Did you spend time with her a lot?”
“Not a lot while I was in school but during summer break we would take two weeks and just do the family thing, so I did things with her then.”
“Did you make special brownies then?”
“Yes’ I lied. It was a recipe my grandmother had passed down to her, but the woman could barely boil water properly. I found the recipe one summer in a cookbook in the closet, made the brownies for her, and continued making them as I got older. There was something comforting about the task that made me happy, and really, Emma didn’t need to know that Belinda was the front-runner for the world’s most neglectful mother.
“How come she never comes to see me?”
“She lives in France now. I’m pretty sure it costs a lot of money to come home, so maybe she’s saving it up so she can come see you.”
“Maybe,” Emma murmured.
I finish with the cheese and set it down next to her pan then went for the pepperoni. “Is Paul coming over tonight?”
“No,” I mumble. “He had to do something for his job.”
“Oh okay. Steve should be here soon,” she said glancing at the clock. Just then the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it!” She shouts while racing toward the door.
I hear the front door open and Emma talking to Steve. He laughs at whatever she says and the pair of them comes back toward the kitchen. I glance up as he walks in, my breath catching in my throat. He has on a nice fitting blue long sleeved shirt that clings nicely to his biceps.
I glance away as the blush races across my cheeks. “Glad you could join us.” I say as I fight for control of my emotions.
“Me too,” he replies. “I brought soda,” he says, setting a 12-pack of orange slice on the counter.
“Thanks.”
“It smells good in here, what kind of pizza are we making?” he peers at Emma’s pizza. “Ooh pepperoni, my favorite. And what are you making?”
He glances at the pesto-smeared crust and wrinkles his nose. “What the hell is that?”
“Language, please,” I remind him.
“Oh, sorry.”
“It’s okay. And to answer your question, it’s pesto.”
“It looks like baby sh- I mean baby poop.”
Emma giggles dramatically. “It does!”
“Seriously, what kind of pizza are you making?” He asks curiously.
“It’s tomato basil pizza. This half,” I say pointing to the pesto, “is going to be pesto, then a layer of cheese and a layer of tomato. This half,” I say pointing to the opposite side, “it’s going to have a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, a layer of basil, a layer of cheese, a layer of tomato, another layer of cheese then a sprinkle of parmesan on the top.”
“Sounds great,” he snarks. “I think I’ll have Emma’s pepperoni.”
Steve and Emma share a laugh. “Whatever,” I cry. “Eat your pizza. I will enjoy mine all by myself.”
“Tell me she at least bought herself a decent birthday cake,” he whispers loudly to Emma.
“She did,” Emma replies, then tugs Steve over to the freezer where the cake was stored.
“Score!” he joked. “Ice cream cake.”
“It’s my favorite,” Emma said.
I picked up her pizza and slid it into the oven beside my own. “You two kill me.”
“Hey mom, can we play a board game while the pizza cooks?”
“Like what?”
She turns to Steve and asks, “What kind of games do you like? We have Operation, Twister, Scrabble, Clue, Monopoly, and Uno. I wanna play Twister; do you like to play Twister?”
“Sure,” he conceded.
“Yes!” Emma hisses and hurries off toward the closet under the stairs to retrieve the ancient board game.
“Good luck,” I tell him. “She’s limber as hell.”
“Oh, don’t think you’re getting out of playing too, there miss tomato and pesto pizza.”
“It’s my birthday,” I shoot back.
“All the more reason to play.” He states as he went to find Emma.
“Fine,” I sigh and follow him into the living room. Emma is smoothing the edges of the mat when we entered.
“You guys ready?” she asked. Steve and I both nodded and the game began with a right hand here, a left foot there, here a hand there a foot.
Halfway through the game, Steve and I are so tangled up it was beginning to look like the opportunistic beginning of a cheaply made porno. As Emma flicked the spinner and announced that I had to take my right hand off the red circle, and place it on the green circle all the way across the room. I fall, collapsing to the floor with Steve’s limbs tangled in mine.
“Well, that was fun,” Steve laughs, as I am extracting my limbs from his. “I’m going to spend the rest of the weekend hobbling around like an old man.
“Nah, you’ll be fine. I’ll be right back; I’m going to go check on the pizza.”
***
Later that night, after pizza and cake had been eaten and Steve and Emma had polished off the entire 12 pack of orange slice soda, we sat on the couch while Emma snored softly on the floor.
“So, are you having a good birthday?” Steve asks.
I nod in the flickering light of the TV. On the screen, Romeo and Juliet were peering at each other through a shimmering fish tank. Des’ree sang seductively in the background. “As good as is to be expected.”
“So Paul…”
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