Better With You Here (9781609417819)

by Zepeda, Gwendolyn

“Alex, how are you, buddy?” Dad says.

  “Good,” I tell him. “How are you?”

  He says he’s good. He asks me how school’s been going, and I say okay. He asks how things are going at home, and I say good. He asks me where I am, and I say I’m in my room. Then he tells me, “Listen, buddy. You remember that conversation we had a while back? About how much I miss you and you maybe coming to live with me?”

  I remember it.

  “Well, I wanted to tell you that I’m thinking about getting you a computer. Your own computer, for your bedroom, so you can play games on it. And so you can do your homework, too, of course,” he says.

  I say, “Will it have a printer, with toner?”

  He says, “Yeah. Of course. But, Alex, the thing is, I want to buy you the computer, but it costs a lot of money, and if you’re not going to be here to use it…If you’re only going to be using it twice a month, then it’s kind of a waste of money. You see what I’m saying?”

  “Yes.” I do see what he’s saying. I don’t do my homework at Missy’s house, so it’d be dumb to have a computer there.

  Dad says, “Okay, good. Because I really want to buy it for you, but not if you’re not going to use it.”

  I say, “What if you buy it and we put it in my room here? Then I could use it every day.”

  He laughs. “Well, yeah, I guess you could. But…” After a while he says, “The thing is, Alex, I really want you to think about what we were saying. About you coming to live with me. Have you thought about it at all?”

  I did think about it a little bit, after he told me last time, but then I stopped. I know that even if I wanted to live with Dad at Missy’s house, Mom would be mad if he told her that. Also, Dad never said if Lucia would come with me or not. I think Mom would get super mad if Lucia left her, too. Also, I don’t know if I’d want to or not. Sometimes I think it’d be good, since Dad doesn’t work as much anymore. He always says that living with Missy made him realize that family is the most important thing, and now he never works late anymore. He’s always taking Missy and Shepherd to the park and football games and stuff, and he’s been saying that he’s going to take us all to Disney World this summer. So maybe if I lived with him, he’d do all that stuff with me.

  But then I think I’d be sad, because I’d miss Mom and Lucia, and I know Mom would miss me a lot. She’d probably cry. I know she’s sad when we go with Dad for the weekend and she has to stay here by herself.

  But that was before she started being friends with Jared’s mom and Angelica’s mom and Miss Buena. Now she does stuff with them when I’m gone, so maybe she wouldn’t mind if I left.

  I don’t want to ask her, though. And I know if Dad asks her, they’ll fight.

  “Alex? What do you think, buddy?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. I’m too scared to say anything else.

  I hear him breathing in the phone, like he’s tired or in a hurry. “All right, buddy. It’s okay. We can talk about it later, all right?”

  I say all right and ask him if he wants to talk to Lucia. He says yes, so I go out to the living room and give her the phone.

  “My turn!” she yells, and then she runs to our room.

  The music’s real low now, and Mom’s in the kitchen emptying the dishwasher. She stands up and tells me, “I think your painting’s almost dry. Hey, baby, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  I tell her that I’m fine. I ask her if I can watch TV now, and she says yes.

  Natasha

  It’s Saturday morning, and I have no plans. Unbelievable. I’m caught up on laundry and don’t have any pressing errands to run. I could study my class notes from Wednesday’s certification course, but I could also do that later. It’s a beautiful clear day. I should go out and…

  Call Hector?

  No. Don’t do that. Call Haley. I couldn’t reach her last night and ended up talking to Geronima for an hour instead. But maybe Haley’s free today and we can go walking at the mall. Burn some calories.

  “Hello?” Her voice sounds scratchy, as if she’s still asleep. It’s already ten, but maybe she likes to sleep late when Jared’s gone.

  “Haley. Are you awake?”

  “What? Yeah.” She sounds bad. She must be coming down with something. “What time is it?”

  “It’s ten. Hey, I can call you back later if you’re still asleep. I just wanted to see if you feel like hanging out. Go shopping or something.”

  She coughs. “I don’t know. I’m pretty…” There’s a long pause. She’s sick, or she really is half asleep. “I’m kind of hungover, I think.”

  “Oh, really? Did you go out last night?” I’m a little surprised, even though I have no reason to be. She’s an adult, isn’t she?

  She coughs again. “Yeah, I went to a party. A rockabilly party.” I have no idea what that means. She says, “We partied…a lot. All night.”

  “Oh.” I guess she wouldn’t be in the mood for any mall walking, in that case. “All right. Well, are you going to be okay? Do you need me to bring you some coffee or aspirin or anything?”

  “No, I’m good. I have green tea,” she says.

  We say good-bye and hang up. It’s silly for me to be surprised. Haley’s newly separated from her much-older husband. Of course she wants to do a little partying on her weekends off.

  And it’d be really silly for me to wonder why she didn’t invite me to the party. She probably wasn’t at liberty to bring extra guests. Or—let’s go ahead and be honest—she probably didn’t think I was the rockabilly-party type. Not that Haley’s that type either, actually. But maybe she’s trying to change her image. Have some adventures, as she says.

  I must look to her like an old, fat mom.

  I’m being ridiculous, though. Because if she’d invited me, I probably would’ve said no. I am an old mom now, and I’m not even ashamed of it.

  The phone rings. It’s Sara, probably calling about Thanksgiving at Geronima’s.

  She says, “Hey, Natasha. How’s it going? You busy?”

  “No. What’s up? Did Geronima tell you she wanted to get together for Thanksgiving?”

  “Yeah, she did. But…um, I was calling to ask you…” She sounds nervous. Why? She says, “You know that store called IKEA?” Not at all what I was expecting. I say yes, and she says, “Um, do you know where it is?”

  I say, “Yes. It’s out in Frisco.” She’s probably trying to apply for a job there. Poor thing.

  “Frisco. How far away is that?”

  “About an hour. Why?” The curiosity is getting to me now. I’m trying to imagine Sara in the yellow-and-blue uniform, lifting the big boxes of unassembled furniture and pronouncing all those Swedish words. I can’t picture it at all.

  “No reason,” she says. “I was just thinking about going over there and checking it out. Seeing if they have a cheap dresser for the girls.”

  “You’ve never been?” I say. “They have all kinds of cheap dressers.”

  “Yeah. No,” she says. “No, I’ve never been.”

  I say, “You want me to go with you? I need some stuff, too.” It’s true—I need something to make more storage room in our closets. One of those magical things that only IKEA sells.

  “Nah,” she says. “I wasn’t trying to…I don’t want you to have to…”

  “No, let’s go,” I tell her. “We can take my Blazer. You’re going to need a big vehicle to put your dresser in.”

  She relents, giving me something to do today.

  “Jesus, there’s a lot of shit here,” Sara says as she rounds the corner from living rooms to offices, pushing her cart full of Baby Junior through the crowd. All around us people fawn over the desks in their rainbow shades of plywood. Monique’s hanging on to the front of the cart like a stuntman in a car chase, and Angelica’s walking next to me, proudly carrying my still-empty IKEA shopping bag. Traffic stops next to a curved desk topped by a cardboard computer.

  “What does ‘Galant’ mean?” Angelica asks. Her voice
is so quiet. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever actually heard her speak.

  Sara shrugs in total bewilderment, so I explain. “All the things for sale here have Swedish names, because this store was started in Sweden. ‘Galant’ probably just means desk.”

  She absorbs this information in silence, and I remember the first time I brought Alex and Lucia here. They asked the same kind of question, of course, but didn’t stop there. Alex thought it was ridiculous that they didn’t translate the names into English, and we ended up having a really long conversation about different cultures and marketing.

  It’s strange to be here with someone else’s kids. But kind of nice, too. It gives me a chance to see how my kids measure up behavior-wise. And it gives me a chance to feel…appreciated. Angelica and Monique obviously enjoy any bit of attention I give them. And I enjoy being able to help Sara. She reminds me of my cousins, except she’s more interesting. Funnier. Less ghetto, for want of a better expression, when you really get to know her. For instance, I can’t imagine any of my cousins shopping at IKEA. They’re strictly Walmart types. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

  Yes there is. Walmart’s disgusting. I’m proud of Sara for having better taste than that.

  We must have burned at least three hundred calories walking through the IKEA maze and lugging Sara’s dresser parts into the Blazer. So the gelato we’re eating now? Practically doesn’t exist.

  “How’d you say you found this place again?” Sara asks me as she licks the dulce de leche off her tiny spoon.

  “This is the neighborhood we lived in when I was married.” And this makes two things that I miss about those days: the washing machine and this gelato place. I used to bring the kids here when Mike worked late, and back then it didn’t seem like a big event. But now I realize that I used to take all that leisure time and extra money for granted.

  Sara looks around the shopping center as if expecting to see my old house between the grocery store and the nail salon. “Nice.”

  Her kids decimated their sorbets a long time ago and are now hopping in and out of the drained fountain in the middle of the patio. I’m glad the sun’s out, making it warm enough for us to sit here in our sweaters.

  “I bet you’re wondering how I have enough money to buy new furniture,” Sara says out of nowhere.

  I wasn’t wondering, actually. But I smile politely, in case she feels like telling me.

  “I got another job,” she says.

  “Oh, yeah? Congratulations. Doing what?”

  She sits back in the iron chair and gazes across the lot at the cars passing down the boulevard. “It’s kind of weird. I’m working at a lingerie place. You know, one of those places where they sell that kind of stuff. The sexy stuff.”

  “Oh, really?” I don’t know what she expects me to say to that. But it seems like she’s waiting for something. Approval? Understanding? “Does it pay better than your cousin’s bar?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she says. “Way better.”

  “Well, there you go. Nothing weird about it, then,” I say. “It’s a job like any other, right?”

  She gives a weak chuckle and nods. Doesn’t say anything else.

  I feel bad for Sara. It’s obvious that she wants to make a better life for her children. But she has so much to struggle through. It’s pretty clear that all she’s ever known is poverty and family dysfunction. I can tell that it makes her self-​conscious to be around people like Haley and even people like me, probably. But she wants to change. I saw her watching me at IKEA, mimicking everything I did, the way I examined the merchandise and spoke to the cashier. Then there was that tense moment when that woman gave Sara a “dirty look,” and I could tell that Sara was holding back her impulse to curse the woman out. The way she’d curse out a pervert in the laundry room or anyone else she found threatening.

  When that happened, she reminded me less of my cousins and more of…I don’t know. Myself, maybe? Back when I was first dating Mike and was trying so hard to be the right kind of woman. The right kind of wife, eventually. I remember the first time Mike took me to a nice restaurant—a really nice restaurant, not the kind of chain place my parents would have considered nice. I remember sitting there sweating it out while the waiter dropped the napkin in my lap and asked if I liked the wine. Feeling unsure of myself in the same way that Sara must have felt his morning among all that Swedish gibberish. The fear of the unknown, battling with the desire to become someone better. I remember it well.

  “I’m just glad to have a job,” Sara says. “You know, life was kind of sucking for me for a while there. I wasn’t getting paid enough at my cousin’s, and my freaking car was falling apart.”

  I don’t want to be nosy, but then again yes I do. “So your ex still doesn’t pay child support?”

  “Who, Jorge?” she says. “He never had to pay until this past month, because the attorney general finally caught up to his ass. He’s been all pissed off about that, and he wants me to bring him the child-support check and sign it over to him.”

  “What? Why would you do that?”

  She shrugs. “It’s his money.”

  “No,” I say. “It’s your money. He has to pay you. It’s the law.” I see Angelica glance up at us from the fountain, and I remind myself to keep my voice down.

  Sara shakes her head. “I don’t pay attention to that. When I decided to keep my babies, I told Jorge I didn’t want anything from him. Because if it was up to him, I wouldn’t have kept them. But he’s been real good with them both, visiting them and helping out and all. Better than Angelica’s sorry excuse for a father.”

  I’ve never heard a woman say anything like that before. “So you just…don’t get child support at all?”

  She shakes her head again. “I mean, he helps out, you know, when he can. He buys them stuff sometimes. But that’s it. I never tried to take him to court, and I’m not down with the attorney general garnishing his wages on his new job. I never asked them to do that.”

  I think back to the conversation we had at the park, when Sara talked about raising her kids without their father’s input. I say, “But those are his kids, too,” even though I already have the feeling there’s no use arguing with her.

  “Yeah,” she says. “But I didn’t have to have them. I was the one who wanted to, not him.”

  I want to ask more: Did he ask her to have abortions and she refused? Why did she get pregnant the second and third time if she was already supporting Angelica on her own? She sounds so sure of herself that I’m dying to hear the logic behind the rest of it.

  But then I look down at her children, playing quietly in the fountain, and I don’t have the heart to ask. They’re here already, so there’s no use asking why. “You must think I’m crazy, then, getting into it with my ex-husband over the kids and the money,” I finally say.

  “No,” she tells me. “That’s different. You two were married, and he fucked that up. If I were you, I’d be taking him to court all day long.”

  It’s funny the way she imagines me with more rights than she herself has, simply by virtue of a marriage certificate. Funny but sad.

  “You know whose situation doesn’t make sense to me, though?” she says. “Freaking Haley’s. You know her husband has tons of money—you can tell. And he’s letting her do this separation or whatever, where she gets to chill out as long as she wants while making up her mind about the divorce. And then he takes their kid whenever she needs him to. So what’s the problem, right? Why even leave him? It’s like he’s giving her all this money, paying for her apartment and shit, and she doesn’t even have to act like his wife. Must be nice.”

  I want to laugh at the way she’s summed up Haley’s choices, because sometimes I’ve wondered the same things myself. But instead I play devil’s advocate and say, “Maybe they have problems Haley hasn’t told us about.”

  “Like what?” Sara says.

  “I don’t know. Maybe the sex isn’t good.”

  She scof
fs. “Well, then she should make it better. I would.”

  I laugh, because I totally believe that Sara would. But for some reason I feel the need to defend Haley. Probably because I like her and want to believe she isn’t just some flake. I say, “Maybe he hits her.”

  Sara jumps on that. “No, because why would she let her kid stay with him on weekends, then?”

  “Well, maybe…” I don’t know. Maybe she is a flake. Or a spoiled child, which is what I think Sara’s trying to get at here. “She probably just doesn’t want to live with the guy anymore. Does she have to stay with him if she doesn’t want to, just because he has money?”

  Sara sits there quietly for a little while, like she’s seriously considering the question. “I guess not,” she says finally. “But I sure as hell would.”

  I can’t argue with her. Maybe, in her position, I’d feel the same way.

  Baby Junior slips off the fountain’s edge and falls into the shrubbery surrounding it. He cries out, and Sara and I jump from our seats, but he’s not seriously hurt. Angelica hurries to help him up and brush the dirt from his hair.

  Sara sighs. “We’d better take off, I guess. I have to do a bunch of laundry and stuff.”

  “All right.”

  As we load her kids back into my Blazer, it occurs to me that I haven’t heard her yell at them once today. Sara buckles Baby Junior into the car seat. Monique is next to him, and her eyes are closing. Next to her, Angelica’s bent over something in her lap. When I get into the driver’s seat, I turn and see that she kept the inventory list full of Swedish words and is using a tiny IKEA pencil to make checkmarks on it.

  I wonder if she’s idly doodling or pretend-shopping for her future apartment. She looks up and catches me watching her in the rearview mirror. I meet her eyes and smile.

  Sara

  So this whole time Haley was bugging me. She’d call me up on a Thursday night and ask if I wanted to go out. And I’d say, “You mean to the park, with the kids?” and she’d say, “Well, I was thinking you could leave the kids with Geronima and we could go to a club.” Or she’d tell me about some show she heard about from the people working at the grocery store. Some weird punk-rock band or whatever. She’d say Jared was at his dad’s and she wanted to have some fun. And I was thinking, He sure does go to his dad’s a lot.