What I Want

by LN Cronk

  “What’s that?”

  “Christmas pudding,” she said. “It’s a traditional Australian recipe. It’s got butter and brown sugar and currants and almonds and–”

  “Do I have to share?” I interrupted.

  “Nope,” she said. “It’s your Christmas present. You can eat the whole thing all by yourself if you want.”

  I smiled at her.

  “But if you do,” she said, “I hope you get sick as a dog.”

  Beginning on the plane ride, Josette’s stash of food was devoured quickly. Like Josette had instructed, I shared a lot of it with my family, but when Mom asked where the roasted quandong nuts and homemade hot cocoa mix had come from, I told her that a woman from the university had made it for me. (This was not a total lie. Josette was a woman and she was officially from the university now that she was enrolled as a freshman and scheduled to start classes at the end of February.) Somehow I didn’t think Mom was going to handle it too well if she found out that my roommate was a female, so I didn’t elaborate any more than I had to and was thankful when Grace started grumbling about how I had eaten all of the fudge.

  For Christmas, I had bought Mom an Australian black opal pendant. Dad and Dorito got Wallabies rugby jerseys, and I gave my younger nieces didgeridoos, which are traditional Australian wind instruments. It only took a few minutes of listening to those on Christmas morning for me to begin to second-guess that decision, but at least my older nieces didn’t break any windows or anything with their boomerangs and my sisters seemed to like their wool scarves, compliments of some Australian sheep.

  Dorito’s in-laws wanted to have all of their granddaughters to themselves for a few days, which meant that Dorito and his wife Maria and I got to go away by ourselves for two nights, skiing. I told Dorito all about everything there was to do in and around Melbourne, and we started making plans for his upcoming visit.

  I could hardly wait.

  ~ ~ ~

  WHEN I GOT back to Australia, Josette led me out into our tiny backyard to show me the muntrie bush. It was covered with little green berries that she assured me would ripen soon, and she promised me again that she would make me a muntrie pie.

  She wound up being so busy once school started a few weeks later, however, that I wondered whether she would actually have time to make me a pie once the berries ripened. Although she scaled back some on her hours at the electronics store where she was a cashier so she would have more time for her classes, she obtained a work-study position at the main library on campus, and it seemed that she wound up working more than ever.

  She wasn’t home much in the evenings anymore (and when she was, she was usually busy either reading or studying), but she still almost always ate dinner with me while we watched Chances Are, and she still did the dishes for me every night. She had recorded every episode that I’d missed while I was gone over Christmas, but we never seemed to have the chance to watch anything except for the current episodes because she was too busy to watch the older ones.

  She seemed happy though.

  She might have had very little spare time now that she was back in school, and it still might have been a rare thing to hear her laugh, but at least she smiled more than she ever had.

  ~ ~ ~

  ONE MORNING, WHILE I was still asleep, my phone vibrated. I looked at the screen, saw that it was Dad, and answered extra groggily to make sure that he knew that he’d woken me up. When he didn’t apologize though, and instead began by saying, “I have some bad news, Marco,” I suddenly wasn’t groggy anymore.

  He had been having some trouble with his memory.

  He and Mom were in the States.

  He had gone to see a specialist at the Mayo Clinic.

  He had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s.

  He was on some medicine that was hopefully going to help.

  He was fifty-four years old.

  I was speechless for a moment until I finally told him, “I’m going to come home.”

  “For what?”

  “To be with you!” I exclaimed. “To help you!”

  “Help me what?”

  I couldn’t say anything.

  “Marco, everything’s fine right now,” Dad insisted. “There’s no need for you to come home.”

  “I want to come home,” I said quietly.

  “Well, I don’t want you to come home,” he persisted. “You’ve worked way too hard to get where you are.”

  “I want to come home,” I said again, trying very hard not to cry.

  “Marco,” he insisted, “listen to me. You’re coming home for the wedding in just a few months. See how things are then, okay? If you get here and you decide you want to stay home then you can, but please finish out the semester. Please promise me that you won’t let this stop you.”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “Marco?”

  I still couldn’t.

  “Marco?”

  “What?” I managed to ask after a moment.

  “What you’re doing makes me so proud,” he said quietly. “Don’t quit now, just because of this.”

  I lost it.

  “Here,” I heard my mom say. “Let me talk to him.”

  Mom came on and tried to calm me down over all my sobbing, but there wasn’t really anything she could do. Finally I managed to pull myself together long enough so that she’d be able to hang up in good conscience, but as soon as she did I broke down again.

  It was then that I became aware of the fact that Josette was next to me with her hand on my back. She had obviously heard me crying and let herself into my room. I glanced up at her in despair.

  “What happened?” she asked gently, sitting down next to me on my bed. And I told her everything.

  “I’m so sorry, Marco,” she said when I finished, her hand still on my back.

  I sat there with my face buried in my hands and thought about what a great dad he was and how he had taken me home from that orphanage and done everything that he could for me to let me have the best life possible. Not just me, but my brother and sisters too. All of us.

  “How can this be happening?” I cried.

  Josette didn’t answer but gently rubbed my shoulder.

  “He is such a good person,” I said, looking up at her. “He’s the best person I’ve ever known.”

  She nodded at me.

  “When I was little,” I told her, “he always used to pack my lunch to take to school because I wouldn’t eat what they had at the cafeteria.”

  She nodded again.

  “And one day I didn’t eat my sandwich,” I said, “and he asked me why and I told him that there was too much jelly on it . . . it had soaked through the bread and it was all soggy . . . you know?”

  I was fully aware that I was babbling, but it felt really good to be talking about him. She looked at me understandingly.

  “And so then he started putting just a little bit of jelly on it after that so I’d eat them, but one day on a Saturday he made one for me and I told him it didn’t have enough jelly on it and he said, ‘I thought you didn’t want a lot of jelly on it’, and I told him it only soaked through if it sat around in my lunch bag all day but I liked a lot of jelly if I was going to get to eat it right away . . .”

  She probably thought I was insane, but she just kept nodding and looking at me like I was making perfect sense, so I kept going.

  “He totally got it,” I said, “and he always did it right after that. He was the best dad . . .”

  I started crying again.

  Josette sat there like that with me for a long time with her arm around me, just listening. I talked about the day he had stopped by my school when I was little and told them I had a doctor’s appointment just so that he could take me fishing, and I told her about how he had spent hours with me in the backyard, shooting the soccer ball at a full-sized goal he’d set up so that I could practice blocking shots and about how he’d flown me to Boston so I could finally have a moustache. As that story was com
ing out of my mouth I couldn’t believe I was sitting there telling Josette that I’d had a cleft palate and facial hair transplant, but I was too upset to be embarrassed and she didn’t change the look on her face at all or act like she minded, so I kept on going.

  When I eventually started running out of steam, I took a long, jagged breath. Josette rubbed my back and asked me if she could get me anything. I shook my head.

  “Have you had breakfast?”

  “I can’t keep anything down,” I said, shaking my head.

  “You need to eat something,” she insisted. She stood up and headed out of my room. “I know something that will make you feel better.”

  I looked at the clock on my nightstand.

  “You’re late for work,” I called after her, standing up and following her.

  “It’s okay,” she assured me.

  “No it’s not,” I said. “You need to get to the library.”

  “It’s okay,” she said again. “I’ll call Brenda and tell her I can’t make it.”

  “You just started working there,” I argued. “You can’t skip out already.”

  “It’ll be fine,” she promised. “Brenda’s nice.”

  I stopped arguing because I didn’t really want to be alone. I sat down on the couch, staring at the darkened TV.

  “What are you making?” I asked when I heard her opening a cupboard.

  “Vegemite.”

  I turned to look at her, alarmed, and she smiled at me.

  “Just wait and see,” she said gently with another smile.

  In a few minutes she brought a bowl in and put it down in front of me.

  Chicken noodle soup.

  I looked down at it and teared up again.

  Josette sat down beside me and started rubbing her hand across my back once more.

  She stayed quiet.

  I knew she was waiting to see if I wanted to talk anymore but I didn’t. I picked up the remote to turn on the TV. I ate my soup and the two of us sat together on the couch for the entire day.

  We watched every single episode of Chances Are that she had recorded while I’d been gone over Christmas.

  ~ ~ ~

  DORITO CALLED ME the next morning and I talked with him for a long time. The sense of impending doom that I’d felt since the day before lifted a bit, and he wrapped up our conversation by telling me that he loved me and reminded me that he’d see me in a few weeks.

  After that, Dad called me too, and I felt even better after talking to him for a second time. He sounded completely like himself and so normal that I began to convince myself that I still had a long time left with him. When I hung up the phone that time, I felt good enough to get dressed and go to the lab.

  I couldn’t wait to see Dorito.

  I had to battle with Josette about where he was going to sleep when he arrived as she insisted that she was going to go to a hotel, but I knew she couldn’t really afford to do that, and I also knew that she wouldn’t be comfortable letting me pay for it. She talked about asking her boss Brenda if she could stay at her house, but I finally convinced her that I wanted to rent a rollaway bed to put in my bedroom so that Dorito and I could lay awake at night and talk like we had done all the time when we were younger.

  She eyed me suspiciously.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I’m trying to figure out if you’re lying or not,” she said.

  “I’m getting better at it, aren’t I?” I grinned. She shook her head in mock disgust, but I knew I had convinced her to stay.

  Once Dorito arrived and had been advised of the sleeping arrangements, Josette said, “Marco tells me that you’re used to sharing a room with him.”

  Dorito looked at me in confusion.

  “I knew you were lying,” she muttered.

  “Muñeco,” Dorito gasped in mock dismay. “You lied?”

  “We used to share a room whenever we went to Grandma and Grandpa’s,” I argued.

  “This is true,” he conceded, giving Josette a shrug.

  “Muñeco?” Josette said questioningly.

  Dorito started to open his mouth to explain, but I elbowed him in the ribs as hard as I could.

  “Don’t you need to get to class?” I asked her.

  She looked at her watch.

  “I suppose I should get going,” she admitted, but she had a glint in her eye and I knew she wasn’t going to let it drop.

  As soon as Josette was out the door, Dorito turned to me with raised eyebrows. “Wow,” he said. “How’d you manage to pull that off?”

  “Pull what off?”

  “Getting her,” he said, jabbing his thumb toward the door for emphasis, “for a roommate?”

  “She just needed a place to stay,” I said, shrugging. “It’s no big deal.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s not!” I insisted. “I’ve already got a girlfriend, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “And does Bizzy know about her?”

  “Yes.”

  “I bet she doesn’t know what she looks like,” he said.

  “Of course she doesn’t,” I snapped. “She’s blind!”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, “but I bet you didn’t bother to fill her in.”

  “There’s nothing to ‘fill her in’ on. She’s not even all that . . .”

  My voice faded off.

  “Okay, fine,” I finally said. “She’s pretty. Big deal.”

  Dorito bit back a smile and shook his head.

  “Do Mom and Dad know about her?” he asked.

  “Not exactly . . .”

  “Wow. I can’t believe you’ve turned into such a liar,” Dorito said, not bothering to suppress his smile this time.

  “I didn’t lie to anybody,” I protested. “I’ve just kind of avoided the subject.”

  “There’s no way Mom hasn’t grilled you about your roommate,” he argued.

  “Well, no,” I admitted. “I just kept it kind of vague.” I coughed into my hand and then muttered, “And I might have referred to her as ‘Jo’.”

  He laughed out loud.

  “I didn’t know you had it in you,” he said, shaking his head with a grin on his face. “Oh, man, are you ever gonna get it! They’re coming to visit in like a month!”

  “I know,” I sighed. “What should I do?”

  “I don’t know,” Dorito said, shaking a finger at me in reprimand. “This is why you’re never supposed to lie.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, shoving him. “Like you never lie!”

  “I never said that,” he admitted, laughing again, “but I’m a whole lot better at it than you are!”

  I glared at him.

  “What were you thinking, Marco?” he asked, a little more seriously.

  “I don’t know,” I said helplessly. “It’s really not that big of a deal!”

  “Yeah,” he laughed. “Tell that to Mom.”

  “I’m almost twenty-three years old,” I reminded him.

  “They still paying your rent and stuff?” he asked.

  I sighed once more.

  “What should I do?” I asked again. “Should I tell them now so they have a chance to get over it before they get here?”

  “Oh, no,” he replied adamantly, shaking his head. “It’s too late for that. Your best bet is to wait until they get here and just play dumb. Maybe you’ll get lucky and they won’t want to make a big scene in front of her.”

  Dorito had been working Mom and Dad a whole lot longer than I had . . .

  I nodded and decided to take his advice.

  By the time Mom and Dad arrived, however, I was really second-guessing that decision. I picked them up at Tullamarine Airport, giving them both (but especially Dad) extra-long hugs. I was really glad to see them and particularly relieved that Dad seemed to be doing well, but I was still so worried about how they were going to react to finding out about Josette that by the time we’d loaded their luggage into my car, driven to the house, and pulled into the driveway, I was sweating bull
ets.

  I popped the trunk and hurried out of the car, immediately busying myself with the two largest suitcases they’d brought. My throat was so dry I could barely speak, but when I reached the top step of the porch I managed to turn around and say to them very quickly, “I may have forgotten to mention to you that my roommate is a female.” Then I turned back around just as quickly and pushed the front door open without waiting for their reaction.

  Even though I had my back to them, I knew that Mom and Dad were staring at each other in shock, but – just as Dorito had predicted – they were too polite to make a scene in front of Josette. Instead, they stepped into the living room and stood before her with their mouths slightly open, shooting furtive glances at one another but mustering up the manners to reach out and shake her hand.

  To my surprise, I noticed that Josette was staring right back at them with her own mouth slightly open, shooting furtive glances at me. I couldn’t imagine what her problem was, but then I looked at my parents again . . .

  My very white parents.

  “Oh,” I said to Josette, as understanding dawned on me. “I may have forgotten to mention to you that I was adopted.”

  Interestingly enough, Mom took to Josette right off. She believed me when I told her that nothing was going on between the two of us, and she really seemed to like Josette. As a matter of fact, sometimes it felt as if Mom was more interested in talking with Josette than she was with me. The two of them worked on dinner together on the nights that we didn’t go out, they went shopping together several times, and one day Mom even treated Josette to a pedicure. They came home from that excursion laughing and giggling and showing off their toenails, and then Mom made Dad help her find a bunch of baby pictures and videos of me to show Josette.

  There I was with a big, gaping hole in my face, giving the camera the biggest smile I had because I didn’t know any better.