One Hundred Spaghetti Strings

by Jen Nails

  From upstairs, I heard the sound of the screen door creaking, then the front door, then the keys in the dish. I hurried down to butter the toast, fry up some potatoes, and make coffee.

  Dad and I devoured our meals. Nina sat and picked at hers. It went like this:

  “Steffany,” said Dad.

  “Yeah?”

  “How did you make this so perfectly?”

  I just shrugged.

  “Grandpa Falcon’s favorite dish,” he said. “I haven’t had this in ten years. Reminds me of . . . sitting at that orange table,” he said, “with my dad.” He closed his eyes while he chewed. “Thanks.”

  It was like I was playing that game Red Light, Green Light, and I was walking forward during a green light to Dad so, so fast and I never wanted it to turn red. I wanted him to keep talking about sitting at the orange table. I wanted him to say how eating together might be making him remember a long time ago, when it was me and Nina and him and Mom.

  Nina picked some more and then went over and opened the fridge and took out the peanut butter. Auntie Gina would have made her eat what was for dinner. Dad just watched her spread peanut butter onto a piece of bread and then fold it over. Auntie Gina would have said she spent time making dinner for a reason. Dad just helped himself to more.

  I knew Nina remembered Grandpa Falcon reading Richard Scarry books to us outside on the yellow blanket. Cutting out paper dolls and always making this special dress he called an “orange slice” dress. Playing hide-and-seek in his basement around all those spools of coily wires and boxes and pieces of wood. How we would plug our noses because of the rotten-grape smell coming from the bottles under the stairs. I knew she remembered how we’d always get dropped off over there because Mom and Dad were gone. Those were memories that I knew for sure were real, not the foggy kind that crept up sometimes. I wanted Nina to eat with us and say something about those times, with Grandpa Falcon and Dad and maybe even Mom. I knew she remembered all those things, but she acted like she didn’t.

  Spooky Jell-O

  It had been a month. We were getting our homework done, Nina was getting picked up from dance fine, and me and Nina were taking the bus to the Harris Teeter on Fridays after school for groceries. Dad would leave us money and had said for us to just go ahead without him. We were getting the key thing and the leaving-after-Dad-in-the-morning thing down pat. Life without Auntie Gina was scary at night, though, when it got quiet and when there was time to remember how she was in a new house across town and not two bedrooms away. The possibility of walking into her room in the dark if I needed something was gone. There was a big hole in me at night, and I couldn’t figure out how to fill it up again. Dad was in that room now, and I just couldn’t imagine myself talking to him if I was scared about something. Yet.

  In the mornings, there was starting to be sort of a routine of him getting the paper from the porch and reading it while I made breakfast. I could get used to filling his quiet page turning by whisking eggs or mixing pancake batter. Sometimes he ate what I had made, sometimes not. When he did eat, he was more of an eggs guy than a pancakes guy. Mornings with Dad were different from Auntie Gina’s chatting about her hours at the hospital or checking that I finished my fraction sheet or making Nina go wash off the black eyeliner. Different, but kind of okay.

  I was keeping a list of Dad’s favorite foods:

  Brussels sprouts and egg whites

  anything meaty like hamburgers, pork chops, and chicken

  pasta

  candy (a few times I noticed a Snickers in his chest pocket).

  On the first Friday in October, Mrs. Ashton asked us to take out our journals to work on our autobiographies.

  “Think about this, folks,” she said. “Who are you in school? Who are you at home? Are there different facets of who you are? And remember,” she said, “just be honest. Now write.”

  I opened up my notebook to the tuna melts recipe from the first day of school and just looked around the room for a while. I could feel myself getting anxious about this assignment. At least May was a long way away, and it was only October. On her classroom windows, Mrs. Ashton had stuck those gummy-like decorations that were the shapes of fall leaves and pumpkins and bats. They looked like gummy candy. Or Jell-O.

  Below the tuna melts recipe I wrote the word Jell-O. I wrote down some ideas for Halloween treats you could do with Jell-O, and then time was up.

  Lisa came over after school. We plopped down our backpacks, and I got us some sweet tea.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked.

  “What do you think?” she said.

  “We are so making lunch counter tuna melts,” I said.

  “What’s the difference between lunch counter tuna melts and just tuna melts?” she asked.

  “Lunch counter tuna melts are Greensboro Four tuna melts.” I said. “I made them up.” I explained how I remembered the book from the school library and told her about my tuna melts recipe.

  “Steffy,” she said, “you’re funny. You would remember that book. But you better start writing actual notes on the autobiography. You’re gonna get seriously behind.”

  “Nah,” I said, licking tuna and mayo off the spoon. I just didn’t want to think about it. “Can you hand me the cheese?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “What did you write about today?”

  I told her about Spooky Jell-O.

  “We are so making Spooky Jell-O after this,” she said.

  We split a tuna melt, and then we decided that we’d start a business where we’d make Spooky Jell-O and other unique holiday desserts and donate them to places like where Mom lives. Lisa said it’d be hard to actually make money if we were donating and all. Yeah, maybe we could sell some to schools for school parties and donate the rest.

  First we mixed up a thing of orange Jell-O like it said to do on the box. Then we put it in the fridge for a while to solidify before dumping in a bunch of gummy spiders and worms. We put it back in the fridge to chill and went up to my room.

  Lisa stood in front of my bed and spread her arms out wide.

  “I’m being a supernova this year,” she said. “I’m doing both my arms in tinfoil and then wearing this silvery leotard and these pants my mom’s making that actually light up.”

  “Oh my gosh, that’s perfect,” I said.“You have to use your lunar-talkies somehow, too.”

  “Absolutely,” she said. Last year for her science fair project she had made this whole cockpit of a rocket ship thing and had gotten these walkie-talkies to show how astronauts communicate with Earth while they’re in space.

  “You’re going to the moon someday, Lisa Rudder.”

  “I hope so,” she said, collapsing next to me on the bed. “But you know what? You have to have 20/20 vision.”

  I shrugged. “You’ll get contacts. That’s all.”

  “But I like my glasses,” she said, sliding them to the middle of her nose and making a funny face at me. “What are you being?” she asked.

  “A jar of peanut butter.”

  “How!”

  “Decorate a poster board and curve it around me.”

  “Genius.”

  Later we slurped down almost all the Spooky Jell-O at the kitchen table. So much for selling or donating that batch. There was only a small blop left over when Dad got home, carrying his briefcase thing. I offered it to him, and he said no thanks. Then he went upstairs and closed his door. So I left the rest for Nina. But she said the Spooky Jell-O looked gross. After she’d gone up to her room, the jiggly stuff and I just stared at each other.

  When Auntie Gina got home on nights when I’d made something new, we’d sit together and she’d try it and she’d give me tips. Too salty (my sweet potato fries). Too much cocoa powder, not enough sugar (homemade icing). Just right (not that many things, but she did love the deviled eggs I made once—just the right amount of paprika sprinkled on top). Auntie Gina was only across town, but it felt kind of like she was across the world.

  Dad wasn�
�t ever going to be able to tell me how much sugar to put in chocolate chip cookie dough or exactly how much hamburger meat to put in the meatball mixture. I couldn’t imagine him sitting with me and Nina on the couch with a bowl of popcorn with Nina asking about shaving her legs and me wondering about making caramel corn.

  He wasn’t ever going to be able to do the things that Auntie Gina did. Or talk to us like that. But I wanted so much for him to talk to me at all. About anything. I wanted him to like me enough to tell me.

  Marinating Chicken in an Eggy-Looking Sauce

  It was a big, huge house with a triangle-shaped skylight and tons of pictures. There was stuff in there that I didn’t even know Auntie Gina had or wanted or liked. Colorful vases and swirly art. In the kitchen was an enormous island like on a cooking show. Fruit bowls and a kitty cat clock that’s eyes moved side to side each second. Harry got her a cappuccino maker and this fizzy-water-making thing.

  For some reason, Auntie Gina seemed as new to me as all her new stuff, and I couldn’t look her in the eyes. She looked like a teenager almost, in a cute gray-and-pink shirt and a jean skirt, and she was even older than our mom by almost eleven years. And there was this knot in my stomach about Harry. Why did he have to be so nice? Why did he have to say it was okay for her to plaster pictures of me and Nina all over the place?

  Auntie Gina had been marinating chicken in an eggy-looking sauce, and once we got busy rolling it in the bread crumbs, I started getting more back to normal. While she made waffle batter, Harry showed us the giant backyard that I didn’t know who would play in and the garage with all his old books on leaning shelves. We got to look upstairs at all the million bedrooms and closets. In the bathroom, Auntie Gina’s lotion looked foreign and out of place, like when you put your stuff in the hotel bathroom. Every few summers, when Auntie Gina and Harry could take the same days off from the hospital, they would take us to Myrtle Beach for a couple days, and we’d stay in a hotel right on the shore. It made me wonder what this summer would be like with Dad.

  Harry showed us their Wall of Fame, which was tons of pictures in their hallway of me and Nina mostly, and of Harry’s relatives. Seeing all these pictures of me in Auntie Gina’s new house made me think of how there were little pieces of me all over the place—there were the photo albums that Mom had of us at the Place, there were these pictures and the guest bedrooms here that Gina had decorated all cute for me and Nina, and then there were all my things in my own house, like Wiley and my bike and all the possibilities in my kitchen waiting to happen. How could I ever even begin to put all this together and write my autobiography letter to myself? All these pieces of me were too scattered to keep track of. Who was I at home, Mrs. Ashton wanted to know? Which home?

  Nina was yawning and being kind of rude for most of the tour of the new house, and I jabbed her a small one in the ribs. Then Harry asked us if we wanted a homemade Coke, and we said sure. Homemade Coke turned out to be these packets you can add to the fizzy-water thing, and I chose cream soda and Nina chose root beer, and you wouldn’t believe it that it tasted the exact same as real soda from the store.

  At dinner, Nina talked about how they didn’t have hip-hop at her dance studio and how much she wanted to learn it.

  “At Charlotte Rep they have hip-hop,” she said.

  “Charlotte Rep? The summer program, right?” asked Auntie Gina.

  “Yeah,” said Nina. “I want to audition this year. They have scholarships.”

  “When are auditions?”

  “Sometime in May.” Nina took a sip of her tea. “Could you take me down to Charlotte? To audition?” she asked, without looking at Auntie Gina. “I know it’s far, but . . .”

  “Nina,” said Auntie Gina. “Between me and Harry and your dad, we’ll get you there. Don’t worry about it.”

  My face was getting kind of hot because I knew I was being too quiet and I knew Auntie Gina wouldn’t let me get away with it for much longer. She nodded toward me.

  “So what’s up with you, girlie?” she asked. “What’s been cooking?”

  “Literally,” said Harry.

  Did you notice I’m wearing a bra? Dad’s stuff isn’t unpacked. I can’t fall asleep at night.

  “How do you get the chicken this crispy?” I asked. The meal was a mixture of the saltiest and crunchiest fried chicken and the buttermilkiest and sweetest waffles and syrup.

  “Oil,” Auntie Gina said. “You want your breading like this, you’ve got to fry it in rivers of oil.”

  We talked a little bit more about how Harry liked to squeeze a blop of syrup from the bottle on each bite of chicken and waffle just so he could get the exact amount of maple flavor, and everybody laughed.

  Then Auntie Gina said, “Harry and I wanted to tell you guys something.”

  Me and Nina stopped moving. I had been chewing, but I just let the bite of waffle sit in my mouth.

  “What,” said Nina.

  “Well,” said Auntie Gina, “it’s about Thanksgiving.” And then suddenly Auntie Gina was crying at the table. Harry swallowed his bite, took a drink of water, and took a breath. I did, too.

  “My grandma,” said Harry, “is getting sick.” He rubbed his forehead. “I’m going up to New York for Thanksgiving this year so I can see her.”

  “And I’m going to go, too,” said Auntie Gina. She was wiping and wiping her eyes with her napkin. I crossed my arms over my chest. One annoying thing about Auntie Gina: every time something kind of big was happening, she started crying. So there was no way, ever, to be angry with her. Because you always wanted to give her a hug. But I was mad at her. She had left us, after taking care of us since I was three. Eight years. And now she was telling us that she wasn’t spending Thanksgiving with us?

  She said she had an easy Crock-Pot turkey dinner recipe for me and Nina to do, or she’d make arrangements for us to have dinner at the Place with Mom.

  “And maybe it’ll be good for you two to have Thanksgiving with your daddy this year. How is he? He doing okay?” she asked. Harry passed Auntie Gina another napkin, and she blew her nose. Me and Nina looked at each other. She shrugged one shoulder and made a face.

  “I don’t know,” Nina said. “We see him at breakfast and dinner.”

  I just sat there, because it felt like if I opened my mouth to talk about how Dad didn’t even put his toothbrush by the sink and how Auntie Gina’s stupid pear lotion was all cute and fresh in her new bathroom, I would throw up chicken and waffles.

  “Well,” Auntie Gina said, after looking at us with her radar vision for a minute and maybe knowing we didn’t know what to say, “tell me the lowdown about school so far.” And we talked about stuff this year so far, more dance stuff from Nina, my advanced math class, this polenta recipe I wanted to try. It was like normal, us three all talking at the same time.

  While Harry cleaned up, we set up stuff for the ice cream sundae bar.

  When we got dropped off at home, Auntie Gina had Harry wait at the curb, and she ran in with us. Dad was on the couch watching TV with his shoes on. He must have just gotten home from work. We didn’t mean to be listening so hard to their conversation, but we couldn’t help it. She asked how he was doing, and he said fine. She asked if his business at St. Theresa’s was going okay, and he said yes, ma’am. She asked how work was, and he said fine. I don’t think his hand moved from the armrest the whole time they talked.

  There was a feeling that she wanted him to say something that he wasn’t saying. Or just say more. Good luck, I wanted to tell her. This was a guy of few words. Pretty soon we were walking Auntie Gina out the door, and she kissed us both a hundred times and wiped her eyes and said she loved us.

  Even though it was the same old Auntie Gina, after being in her new house I felt farther from her, melty and almost gone to nothing. And Thanksgiving without her this year would be like serving the turkey without the stuffing.

  The only thing that had made me feel better at Auntie Gina’s was helping her in the kitchen. When we
were rolling chicken breasts in eggs and bread crumbs, and talking about cooking oil versus butter in waffle recipes, that was the best part of my night. And it always was the best part, in all my life: doing cooking stuff. And this Thanksgiving Auntie Gina wouldn’t be there with me to do that. I imagined taking a marker and crossing that Thursday out of the calendar and just going from Wednesday to Friday so I wouldn’t have to wish so hard that Auntie Gina and Harry had stayed.

  Carrots to the Beat

  Saturday it rained all day. Usually when it was stormy, Auntie Gina would open the big window in the dining room. But she was at her new house right then, probably having leftover waffles from the dinner last night. Me and Nina opened that window and stood in front of the screen and breathed in that good wet smell of cut wood and dirt. We watched Simpsons reruns all that afternoon while Dad just stayed in his room. All of a sudden, a trumpet started playing from up there. Nina’s head popped up from the couch.

  “Huh?” said Nina. We looked at each other.

  “This is ‘Take the “A” Train,’” she said. “We did improvised dance to this at my studio. Oh my gosh.” She sat up and started kind of swinging her head back and forth. She turned the TV way down so we could hear better, but pretty soon the trumpet stopped.

  “That was Dad?” I whispered.

  “Unless the pillowcase knows how to play,” Nina said, flopping back down and turning the TV back up. The trumpet started again a few minutes later, and Nina slid off the couch. She lunged and lifted her arms to the ceiling. Then she moved her hips, and she held her hair and swayed. She did a high kick and then lunged again, leaning forward and bobbing her head.