by Jen Nails
His muscly arms dangled by his sides.
“Smells great,” he said.
“Yeah. Wedding cake,” I said, wiping my forehead. “And cookies. And this sesame candy thing.”
Dad handed me a box, and inside was an apron. A really cool orange apron with my name on it. Spelled right, which means he must have had it made at a special place. On the counter, he put a little bag with a card that said “Nina” and a card that said “Gina and Harry.”
“They here?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Nina go to Charlotte?” he asked.
I nodded. He nodded. He wiped his hands on his jeans, and I put on the apron.
“Steffany,” he said. “Got your message. I am proud to be your dad. And Nina’s. I’m not . . . proud of much right now. But that’s one thing.”
I just held my elbows and watched him walk toward the door. He dropped the keys in the dish and put his hand on the knob. He was just gonna go. Just walk out.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
He froze there with his hand on the doorknob. The oven started to beep. As I turned off the heat and pulled oven mitts over my hands, I got more guts. If I could go on TV and cook a meal, I could talk to my own dad. I slid the cake pans out of the oven, put them on the counter, and faced him again.
“And why? Why are you going?” I asked. “Is it because of something that we did? Are you mad at us?”
“No,” said Dad. He let go of the doorknob. “I’m not mad at you. Put that out of your mind and never think it again. It’s complicated, Steffy.”
“I do complicated math at school. I’m in the A group.”
He rubbed the stubble on his cheeks and chin.
“I need to go and work some things out,” he said.
“You could stay and work some things out,” I said.
“I don’t think I can right now,” he said. “Everything . . .”
That word just hung there along with the smell of vanilla cake.
“Everything will be okay,” he said.
“No,” I said. I took off the oven mitts and threw them on the table. “Everyone always says that.” I walked right up to Dad. “I was very mad at you.”
He stood up straight and pulled his head back a little.
“Mom wanted to see you. She was all ready to see you. Why did you do that?”
He turned around in the doorway. “I’m sorry, Steffany,” he said. “I have to go now. I really have to go now.” The words sounded like they had weights tied to them.
“Wait one second,” I said. “Please.”
I ran over to the sink. I didn’t know I needed to do this until it happened: I lifted the old picture of Mom off the wall—the mom who looked like the person she was when she got married—and I ran back to Dad with my arm stretched out. He took the picture.
I blurted out what I’d wanted to say since I’d read his letter: “You could say you love me.”
He put his head down on his chest, and his shoulders hunched forward. It was like he deflated. He whispered, “I don’t know who I am, Steffany. I’m sorry.” He backed up, holding the picture of Mom, and was out the door.
His keys stayed in the dish.
The Biggest Cleesh
“Auntie Gina,” I said, “it’s your Key Moment.” And she was instantly crying, and we hugged. Her dress with the purple sash matched up perfectly with the purple crepe myrtle that Harry wore pinned to his lapel, and the spaghetti-strap dresses me and Nina wore, too. I’d never been to a wedding, let alone been in one. Nina either. Thank goodness our dresses had these secret bra things built in, and the elastic part on the chest wasn’t itchy at all. Denise’s mom had come and done up our hair. It felt like there was a wedding cake on my head.
Mom looked beautiful, all in purple and silver, her hair down. Helen sat with her in the back, near the vestibule in case they had to go to the bathroom. I liked seeing her out of the Place and in the world.
Once the service in the church was over, we took pictures on the lawn while the guests ate pigs in a blanket and drank Cheerwine. Then the reception started right out back, and the meal was laid out on this long table. At one end were the plates and glasses and silverware. Spread along the middle of the table was the feast: ziti and salad, garlic bread, meatballs, rice and vegetables, kimchi, and these garlicky pancake things called pa jun that I have to learn to make. It all looked perfect.
And there, and at the other end of the table, were all the desserts: the layer cake, the cookies, and the sesame candy. It all really turned out. Even the cake layers actually looked good, like they weren’t too lopsided or amateurish. Each layer was a different flavor, from carrot at the top, and then it alternated: vanilla, chocolate, vanilla, chocolate, vanilla.
For the dinner, I got to sit in between Mom and Helen, and Nina sat across from us. Mom’s eyes were all watering the whole time, but she said how much she loved being out. It was warm, and the flowers in Helen’s hair shimmied with the breeze. Me and Nina couldn’t stop giggling at everything.
I am not being all conceited when I say that everyone loved the desserts. I mean, after you eat all that main course stuff, you’re going to want dessert, so there you go. Harry came over to me special, his eyes watering, with a piece of sesame candy in his hand and picked me up in a big hug.
Afterward, when everyone started dancing, I went and ladled up another cup of sweet tea. I thought about Mom and Dad being so young when they did this, how maybe they weren’t even cleeshed yet on their own, so how could they be ready to cleesh together? But Auntie Gina and Harry were. They just were.
When I had my tea, I went and sat with Harry’s great-aunt Lucy, who said, “Hello, Miss Gourmet. I heard it’s congratulations for you.” I thanked her very much. She said she used to own a restaurant in Korea and that my sesame candy was the perfect nuttiness. I didn’t feel silly talking about wanting people to like what I made. Aunt Lucy nodded and took my palm in her hands, and there was something that she pressed into my hand. A dollar.
“Your first customer. Frame it in your restaurant.” I couldn’t stop smiling.
Later on, watching Mom and Nina dancing, I kind of was figuring out the thing about why you needed to be remembered. Being remembered was when someone ate what you made for them. It was an exchange. If you cooked and it just sat there, well, 1) it would get cold, 2) it would be a waste of ingredients, and 3) you needed to share it to have it all mean something. Being remembered was me expressing myself, like Auntie Gina told me to, and it being accepted. And devoured.
Nina walked Mom over to Helen, who gave Mom some water, and then my sister went and danced with Harry’s dad and everyone laughed. And there was a cousin of Harry’s who was sixteen, and she danced with him, too, even some of the slow dances.
I just watched everyone. All Harry’s family, all Korean, shaking around and looking kind of silly on the dance floor with all the Italian Sandolinis who were looking equally silly (except for Nina, the dancer). All of us there for one thing—one big party for Auntie Gina and Harry—and it came to me that bringing two families together was the biggest cleesh you could ever do.
Hands to Heart to Handwriting
Kneading the dough a few days after the wedding got me all funny, and I was imagining Mom’s hands doing it. After all the times making gnocchi this year, it was in my palms and my fingers and knuckles. I knew pasta by heart because I’d watched Auntie Gina make it so many times and then I tried it and tried it and tried it some more. I guessed Mom and Auntie Gina had learned the same way—nobody ever wrote it all down.
I thought of the banana bread recipe and how I felt when I read down that list. How Mom might have felt when she was my age and she wrote it out. What she might have been thinking about. How she wanted everything to go.
The part of Mom’s letter about life veering off had been haunting me. So later, while the dough was setting, I did something. I got out construction paper and markers that I used when I sometimes
made place cards for big family dinners, and I wrote out the whole gnocchi recipe in my best handwriting. I included all the steps, from cutting up onions and garlic for the sauce to tasting testers after the pasta’s boiled for a little while. I wrote each step down in my best handwriting for someone to maybe read later, in case they couldn’t watch me make it.
Birthday Cupcakes
It was the day before Mom’s birthday—the last of Harry’s relatives had gone, and the blankets me and Nina had slept with on the couch were folded and stacked back in the closet. Before I could even notice how desperately I needed to know what was going to happen to me and Nina now that all the excitement was done, now that Dad had left, Auntie Gina sat us all down.
“Girls,” she said. “Okay.” She looked up, and her eyes started to water. “So much to say,” she said, “now that I can actually say it. And I need to get this out before we take Nina back to Charlotte in a couple days.”
Harry took her hand. She cleared her throat.
“I thought, when you went to live with your dad . . . I thought that it would be really hard for you,” she said, putting her hand on her mouth and then taking it off, “because you were going to need me so much. And that made me feel bad. And guilty.” She swallowed. “But what I found out was . . . how grown-up and well-adjusted and strong you girls are, and I found out that instead of you needing me so much, I was needing you. . . .”
And then we were all needing tissues.
“Gina and I are wondering,” said Harry, “what you guys would think about living here with us. For good. For keeps.”
I looked at Nina, and she turned to me.
“We don’t even want you to say anything right now,” Harry said. “We just want you to think about it.”
“I already know my answer,” said Nina. “But you got to say your thing. Now I get to say mine.” She stood up. Crossed her arms. “I don’t hate Dad,” she said. “But if ever again we suddenly have to live with him, that will be so not fair. And I will so not do it.”
She turned around. “Sorry,” she said as she walked through the kitchen and down the hallway. “I’m not trying to be rude.”
Auntie Gina was just nodding and wiping her nose.
“I think I know my answer, too,” I said. “But I have to think about it.”
That night I fell right asleep. When I came down at about eleven the next morning, Auntie Gina was halfway through schweeting gnocchi, and Nina was frosting cupcakes. I got to helping, and while we worked, no one talked about what Auntie Gina and Harry had said last night. A little bit later, when things were all put in containers and dishes were in the dishwasher, Auntie Gina pulled us both into her, and the three of us stood there, holding on to each other.
“Thank you,” said Nina, and right then and there, we knew both our answers to Auntie Gina’s question.
We brought everything to Mom’s that afternoon. Helen had hats for all of us, and the other residents came around to sing when Mom blew out the candles. Harry came, too, and even though she had to be reminded of who he was, she let him hug her and kiss her.
Later, Auntie Gina said she had something important to talk to Mom about, and she sat down real close to her on the couch. Helen came and sat on Mom’s other side.
“Okay,” said Helen, “but we have something important to talk to you about, too.”
Auntie Gina’s eyes got bright when she heard that, but she asked if she could go first. “I just need to get this out into the open,” she said. Helen winked at Auntie Gina. Me and Nina sat on the other couch, holding hands. Harry stood behind us.
Auntie Gina turned to Mom. “I love you,” she said, “and I love the girls. I have thought and thought and thought.” She wiped her eyes. “I wanted to ask you if it would be okay with you if Harry and I put in paperwork to adopt. The girls. They would make us so happy.”
Nina squeezed my hand hard. Auntie Gina and Helen and Mom and Harry talked some more.
It was officially out in the open.
If our mom said it was okay, we would officially move into the cozy house with the soda-making machine and the backyard and the millions of bedrooms and closets. Auntie Gina and Harry had postponed their honeymoon to Italy so we could get settled in. It didn’t feel real yet, though. I didn’t quite know how I felt about the whole thing. It was another Giant New Thing this year, and I was so, so tired of that.
But then there was something else.
“James came,” Mom said while she was blotting her eyes with a tissue. “James came to see me.”
“He came?” I asked. “My dad was here?” I asked Helen. She nodded slowly, a smile creeping onto her face. Auntie Gina had a look on her face like she was half mad, half glad. “Oh my God,” she said. “He finally did it.”
I leaped off the couch. “Mom,” I said. “He came! That’s good!” And I turned back to Auntie Gina and Harry, and there was a catch in my heart. I put my hand on my neck like a real fishhook caught me by the throat. If Dad had come here and if Mom got better someday, maybe we could really be a family, our real family. Mom stood up and turned me around to face her. She looked at Helen as she spoke.
“Your dad wants you to live with Gina.”
“You guys talked about it?” I asked.
“We did,” Mom said. I looked at Helen, who nodded.
“But we’re . . . being given away,” I said.
“Oh no,” said Mom. “No, no, no, no,” she said, and I buried my face in her shoulder.
All the times we had visited, all the Sundays of my whole life, it was us making Mom feel better. It was us telling her all the good things she was doing and how she was getting better. And now it was her helping me to feel better.
“I don’t ever want to hear you say that,” she whispered in my ear. “When Helen says I can move out of here,” she said, “I’m coming to live with you, too.” I glanced at Helen, who gave me the look she gives when we’re supposed to just go with it. Like, who knew if she’d ever be able to move out of there?
“And what about Dad?” I asked.
“Dad sat right there,” she said, pointing to where Nina was sitting, “and just cried.” I kept holding on to her. I had never in my entire life held on to my mom like that, in a way where I needed her as much as she needed me.
Having Some Tea
New lemony smell, new floor creaks, new wind outside ruffling the shrubs against my new bedroom window. I’d been living in this room for two months, but now that I knew it was officially mine, everything felt new again. I went downstairs and quietly made myself a mug of apple-cinnamon tea.
Just like in the other house, Auntie Gina had keys set up by the front door, but instead of being in a random dish, they were dangling from these rainbow hooks attached to the wall. She’d made a set for me and a set for Nina, and she put on key chains with our names. I was officially a member of this house. It partly made me have a pang of missing my dad and partly made me so excited I didn’t know what to do with myself.
I went and snuggled on the couch and stared out the skylight. It was that sweet moment, right before dawn, when the birds and sun are still too shy to come out.
Then Nina came down, joining me on the couch in her sweats and T-shirt.
“I read all your letters,” she said.
“Thanks for writing me one,” I said.
“Thanks for telling me all the stuff you heard in the basement.”
I sipped my tea.
“You are sneaky, Steffany Sandolini. I gotta give you more credit.”
We both kind of giggled.
A sliver of sun peeked between the blinds and swelled. Nina scooted over so close to me I had to steady the mug.
“Steffy,” she said. “Remember when Mom said that her dad was mad at her? When you brought her cream puffs?”
I nodded, the weight of the memory giving me an ache.
“I didn’t think that was a bad thing,” she said. “I think because . . . even if it’s a sad memory or something, it
’s okay. She still remembered something.”
Nina had the envelope that Dad had left her the day before the wedding, the day I gave him the picture of Mom. She opened the triangle part and slid out the card. It had a picture of a shiny trumpet on it.
“‘Dear Nina,’” she read. “‘Keep dancing.’”
We both just sat there, and the air was thick with things we didn’t say.
“Are you gonna go back down there,” she asked, “to the basement?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”
“Yeah,” said Nina.
I didn’t think I wanted to know anymore, like I thought I did at first. Maybe grown-ups were right to try to keep secrets, like Carol telling us it was choir practice and all. Maybe it was better to not know the truth. The only problem was that we saw the stashes in the fridge and we saw the bloody knuckles and we saw the empty chair. So we knew. We knew everything.
But maybe it was like if you heard it officially, like I did at those meetings, then that meant there was no hope of something better. And maybe I wasn’t ready to give up on the idea of something better.
Bread Crumbs
Everyone was up early in this house. Auntie Gina had cappuccinos and sweet cream ready when we got downstairs. At the end of the counter, there was already a big ball of dough cleeshing under a glass bowl. I didn’t know what kind of pasta we were making for later, but I couldn’t wait to find out.
Auntie Gina was cracking eggs into another bowl for an omelet. Nina sat at the bar, yawning. I started chopping up yellow peppers and already-cooked chicken sausages, and Harry made toast. In a minute, Auntie Gina tapped me, and I turned around.
“Wire whisk,” she said as she traded me the whisk for the knife and went to cut my peppers and chicken. Giggling, I went to whisk the eggs. It made me think of my mom, of course, but it didn’t pull me down. After everything that happened this year, there was something buoying those thoughts that wasn’t there before.