The Dream Weaver

by Reina Luz Alegre

  José flipped a wooden spoon and caught it expertly. “I learned from the best,” he said, shooting a bittersweet look at Zoey. And for a moment, Zoey wasn’t seeing José the tall, broad eighteen-year-old, but the shorter, skinnier ten-year-old version who’d lifted her up to pour rainbow sprinkles all over the butter cake they’d made with Mami for Dad’s birthday in La Cafetera Cubana’s kitchen. That was the year Zoey was four and insisted on adding glitter to everything. After Zoey had finished decorating the cake, she’d dumped the rest of the sprinkles on poor, unsuspecting José’s head. Yelping, José had dropped her on her butt on the floor, then rained sprinkles on top of her as he shook them out of his hair and T-shirt. Zoey had giggled so hard she’d almost barfed, and Mami had laughed so hard there were tears in her eyes. Mami told Dad the story that night right before they sang happy birthday over the cake. Chuckling, he’d said he was going to wish for better behaved children before he blew out the candles.

  Zoey sighed. She missed Dad as much as Mami right now.

  “I can bake lemon cake balls and ice them to look like bowling balls,” Zoey volunteered, trying not to think about how lemon was Dad’s favorite flavor.

  * * *

  When the sun was beginning to set, José and Zoey left Toni-Ann’s and went to meet Poppy at the arcade so they could all walk home together. As the three of them approached Poppy’s house though, Zoey saw a man sitting on the front steps, a stack of pizza boxes beside him. Her heart leaped when she realized who it was, and she sprinted ahead. The man stood as she neared and Zoey flung herself into his waiting, open arms like she was still a little kid.

  “Hi, Zoey,” Dad said, hugging her tightly. Zoey felt like crying—she’d missed the smell of his aftershave and how safe she felt with his arms wrapped around her.

  “Missed you, Zo,” Dad said into her hair. Hearing those words, Zoey stiffened and stepped out of his hug.

  “I missed you too! But why didn’t you answer my texts? Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?” Zoey blurted. Before Dad could answer, Poppy and José came up to them.

  José glared at Dad without saying hello and stepped around them into the house, letting the door slam behind him.

  “It’s good to see you, Michael,” Poppy said, gently slapping Dad’s back. “Thank you for bringing dinner.” He followed José inside, leaving the door open.

  “Let’s go in,” Dad said, picking up the pizza boxes. “We can talk more then.”

  Zoey closed her mouth—she’d wanted to ask Dad a bunch of questions. And she was disappointed that he hadn’t apologized right away for not texting her back, but maybe she should give him the benefit of the doubt one last time. Maybe he had a good excuse for disappearing on them for so long.

  Once everyone was settled at the dining room table with pizza, Zoey felt it was safe to finally ask her questions. “Dad, how’s the job? Do you have your own place yet? Are you still crashing on your buddy’s couch?”

  “New York is amazing. I went to the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and the Met,” Dad said. His blue eyes twinkled, but Zoey noticed he didn’t answer any of her questions. “And Times Square. Oh man, Zo, you’re going to love Times Square. The whole place is electric. Lights all over. Everybody hustling and bustling…”

  Dad talked and talked, babbling on about tourist attractions. Rowboats in Central Park and musicals on Broadway. The Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center. The more Zoey listened, the more it sounded like Dad had been on vacation without them the past few weeks. Zoey noticed José watched Dad through dull eyes, like he expected nothing more and was over it, and Zoey could feel her temper flaring too. She was beginning to wonder whether he’d even started his new job.

  “You do any work while you were there, eh, Michael?” Poppy asked, coming to the same conclusion as Zoey.

  Dad shot Poppy a dark look.

  “Of course I did,” he said, tossing his pizza crust on his plate. “Selling motorcycles was the best part.” He shook his head. “Actually, no, this is the best part: I’m ready for you guys to move back in with me.”

  Dad beamed, opening his mouth and spreading his hands like they were on a game show and they had just won the prize behind door number three. But Zoey glanced sadly around the dining room. She’d come to love the homey familiarity of Poppy’s house. She loved the borderline creepy pictures of needlepoint clowns her grandmother had made and framed in the foyer and the heavy wooden furniture that hadn’t moved in decades and the vases filled with fake, dusty roses. She even loved the bowl of wax fruit, and the apple that still had her bite marks from when she’d tried to eat it as a little kid.

  “When, uh, when do we have to leave?” she asked.

  “Tomorrow,” Dad said, like it was great news. Zoey sat up so fast her chair scraped the tile with a loud screech. The day after tomorrow was the Summer Big Bowl Championship!

  José folded his arms over his chest. “No way. I have a girlfriend now, and I’m going to college in a few weeks anyway. I’ll stay with Poppy till I have to fly back down to Florida.”

  Poppy nodded, and Dad sighed. “Fine. I guess Zoey and I will take on the Big Apple together,” Dad said, smiling at Zoey.

  Zoey couldn’t smile back.

  “Dad, I, uh, I’m filling in for a player who got hurt on a bowling team. And the championship is in two days at Poppy’s bowling alley. It’s pretty important to me. Can I please stay with Poppy till at least the championship?”

  “Sorry, kiddo. But no. I have to get back to work by tomorrow,” Dad said, not looking all that sorry in Zoey’s opinion. She’d just told him the tournament was important to her, and he hadn’t even paused to think about it before shooting her down! Zoey’s hands balled into fists under the table.

  Oblivious to Zoey’s silent seething, Dad grabbed another slice of mushroom pizza and focused his attention on José. “New girlfriend, huh? Tell me about her.”

  The conversation turned to Toni-Ann, with José saying as little as possible while Dad tried asking the same questions a dozen different ways.

  “She’s a nice girl, Michael,” Poppy finally interjected. “I know her family a long, long time. Son buena gente.”

  Dad nodded, but he wasn’t ready to get off the interrogation treadmill yet.

  “What’s your girlfriend like?” He tried again with José, who rolled his eyes.

  “If you’d stuck around, you would have met her.”

  “You know that I would have if I could,” said Dad slowly. José rolled his eyes again. He obviously didn’t believe Dad. Neither did Zoey. Not anymore.

  “Then stick around now and find out for yourself.”

  “You know that I can’t,” Dad said, a note of warning in his voice. “We have to leave first thing in the morning.”

  “I’ll get some boxes from the basement,” said Poppy.

  “I’ll help carry them,” José said.

  Zoey glared at him, then at Poppy, and finally at Dad. None of them noticed. None of them had bothered asking her what she wanted to do. Everyone just assumed she was leaving with Dad. Fuming inside, Zoey excused herself from the table and ran upstairs.

  Alone in Mami’s old room, Zoey tried texting and calling her friends to deliver the awful news about moving away, but she couldn’t get phone service. For a second she thought Dad forgot to pay their bill and got even angrier at him, but then she realized it was raining outside. She knew from previous visits that sometimes cell service was bad around here during a storm. Lightning flashed, shining a brief light on the tree thrashing against Zoey’s window. The way those branches shook in the wind reminded Zoey of marionettes forced into tortured choreography. Which, come to think of it, wasn’t that far from how Zoey herself felt: a puppet to be yanked around and moved at her father’s will. Never allowed to challenge Dad or express her own feelings for fear of hurting his. Thunder boomed outside, sounding like the rumble of a thousand bowling strikes, but louder and more satisfying. Good, Zoey thought. The sudden, building
storm matched her mood perfectly.

  “Need help packing?” José appeared in her doorway.

  “No. I’m used to packing,” Zoey snapped, shoving socks into every crevice of her already full backpack. “I know what to do.”

  José looked at her sadly, but didn’t say anything. He held up his phone. “No bars. You?”

  “Same.”

  “Okay. Guess we can look up the forecast the old-fashioned way,” José said, turning on the TV beside Zoey’s half-empty dresser and tuning in to the local news with the rabbit ear antennas. A grim weatherman pointed to a mass of red and yellow swirling on the radar behind him, blanketing the Jersey Shore. José whistled.

  “Wow. Looks like it’s going to be raining for a while.”

  Zoey shrugged. Moody weather was fine by her.

  “Wish I could get through to Toni-Ann and just make sure she’s okay though. I know her parents were going to try to keep the restaurant open as long as they could tonight.” José bit his lip. Concern creased his forehead.

  Zoey softened, seeing her brother’s worried expression. “Why don’t you use Poppy’s landline to call Triple Threat Chicken’s landline?”

  José whipped his head up.

  “Landlines. I knew the Dinosaur Age was good for something,” he said, heading downstairs to use the phone mounted on the kitchen wall.

  A few minutes later José popped back into Zoey’s room, looking relieved.

  “Thanks for the idea. They were fine. Toni-Ann got stuck at the restaurant with her parents, and they’re just going to ride out the storm there.”

  “So I noticed you finally called her your girlfriend downstairs at dinner,” Zoey teased.

  “Yeah,” José said, massaging the back of his neck shyly.

  “What college is she going to next year?”

  “University of Pennsylvania. She got into their business school. She’s so smart,” José said, kind of dreamily. “And she’s still going to come home some weekends to help her parents with the restaurant. She’s so sweet, too.”

  Zoey smiled, letting her mind wander. Dad was letting José stay with Poppy until his flight to Florida. Maybe he’d let José stay indefinitely if José wanted.

  “Any chance you’ll stick around too next year? To be closer to Toni-Ann?” Not daring to risk eye contact, Zoey busied herself folding jeans.

  “No, Zoey. You know that already. I’m going to UF. Stop trying to play dumb.”

  “But what about your relationship with Toni-Ann?” Zoey stopped packing and glared at José. “You’ll be so far.”

  “I know. It sucks. We’ll probably have to break up.”

  “What? How can you just break up with someone as nice and intelligent as Toni-Ann?” Zoey was tempted to bop her brother over the head with her laundry bag to knock some sense into him.

  “I’m not happy about it, Zo,” José said, swallowing hard. “But I just met Toni-Ann. I’ve been dreaming of becoming an engineer my whole life. Sometimes dreams require sacrifice. Sometimes loved ones make it hard to build a life you love…,” he said weakly, shooting her a pointed look.

  “Including me?” Zoey asked.

  “Well, you’re not exactly making it easy for me with all these guilt trips,” José answered honestly, sitting down in the swivel chair at her desk.

  “Oh, sorry for being such a burden. At least you’ll be rid of me soon,” Zoey snapped, turning away from him.

  José exhaled and rolled closer to Zoey in his chair.

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. I feel bad because I know you’re going to miss me, but I also know that I have to go to college, and that I’ll always be your big brother—no matter where I am, or what I’m doing, or who I’m dating. If I can even find anyone else worth dating after Toni-Ann,” José said sadly.

  Zoey said nothing, zipped her backpack closed, and began throwing more clothes into her suitcase, thinking that all the men in her family seemed to go about their dreams all wrong: Poppy about to let his business slip into foreclosure. Dad uprooting her yet again for some new job he’d probably quit within the next couple of months. José losing the girl he loved without even trying to make it work first. Zoey might not have known what her own life’s dream was yet, but once she found it she was determined to find a better way to make it come true—one that didn’t cause so much heartache.

  13

  Sunlight sparkled on Zoey’s window the next morning. But she woke up tasting the garlic and rage from last night’s pizza dinner. Her body felt like it had turned to concrete overnight, too, as she trudged downstairs. Finding Dad at the head of the kitchen table, wearing a new, cheerfully yellow shirt covered in emojis and poking at a plate of scrambled eggs, annoyed Zoey to no end.

  “We can’t head back to the city yet,” he said, without looking up from his phone.

  “You mean we’re staying?” Zoey gasped.

  “Hmm?” Dad glanced at Zoey, spotted the hope on her face, and shook his head. “No, kiddo, I just mean we can’t leave till the roads are cleared. Last night’s storm flooded the streets and knocked down a bunch of trees.”

  “Oh.”

  José and Poppy walked into the kitchen together.

  “Thanks for coming with me, mijo,” Poppy said.

  José nodded, popping a bagel in the toaster.

  “Where are you guys going?” Zoey asked, wanting to tag along. She definitely didn’t want to sit in Poppy’s house alone with Dad all morning.

  “To see how the bowling alley handled the rain,” José called from half inside the fridge.

  “I’ll come with you,” Zoey said quickly. “I can help.”

  “We’ll all go, Rafael. We should all help,” Dad told Poppy, looking suddenly worried and standing up.

  “Thank you, Michael. I’d appreciate that,” Poppy said.

  * * *

  When Zoey saw the damage to the bowling alley, she had to work hard to hold back tears. It felt as if there was a bowling ball lodged at the back of her throat. Poppy’s GONZO’S sign had lost four letters. A shutter had come loose, and a giant piece of driftwood had crashed through the bowling alley’s front door in the storm, shattering the glass and letting in three inches of standing water dotted with garbage and seaweed.

  “Can you still host the Summer Big Bowl Championship tomorrow?” Zoey asked Poppy.

  “I don’t think so, mija,” he said, sounding as heartbroken as she felt. “You should call your friends to let them know.”

  “I’ll just text them,” Zoey said, her misery doubled. Now she had to tell Patrick, Tyler, Isa, and Lacey not only that she was moving away and couldn’t be in the championship, but that they couldn’t even hold it at Poppy’s anymore. Zoey tried to send the text, but it wouldn’t go and she realized she still didn’t have any bars. “I think cell service is still down,” she said.

  Poppy picked up the stool behind the cash register and sat gingerly on it, looking lost. His head dropped into his hands. His shoulders shook silently for a few moments. The lump in Zoey’s throat grew bigger. At last Poppy wiped his eyes. He went to help Dad and José move a big branch that had fallen outside.

  The broken door creaked open. Zoey looked up in surprise to find Patrick, Tyler, and Lacey sloshing carefully through the flooded entrance.

  “What are you guys doing here? Where’s Isa?”

  “Isa’s mom wouldn’t let her go out. They lost electricity in the storm, and she was worried about downed power lines in puddles,” Lacey said. “Plus she needed Isa’s help with the twins.”

  “We came to make sure Gonzo’s could still host the championship,” Patrick said morosely, sounding like he anticipated the worst. He kicked a piece of seaweed off his sneaker.

  “Yeah, I was going to text you guys, but I still don’t have service,” Zoey said, waving her phone in the air and noticing that now one little bar was back. She took a deep breath and looked up at her friends. “Poppy said we can’t host the championship anymore. And, uh, my dad c
ame to pick me up last night, so I won’t be able to play anyway. I’m really sorry.”

  “What? No! Where is he? Where’s your father? I’ll talk to him.” Lacey craned her neck, searching for Dad. Zoey was grateful he’d already headed outside to clean up and to assess the damage on the other side of the arcade.

  “I guess we should go see if the other bowling alley can hold the tournament,” Patrick said, rubbing the splint on his finger. “We won’t be able to play without Zoey on our team.” He sighed heavily. “But I guess that’s no reason for all the other teams to miss out.”

  “Oh, she’s playing,” Lacey said firmly, hooking her arm through Zoey’s like she’d physically refuse to allow her to move out of state. “And the other bowling alley can’t host the tournament anyway. They had way too much damage.”

  “How do you know?” Tyler asked. “I thought you didn’t have cell phone service either.”

  “I stopped by on the way here. Sorry, Zo,” she said, glancing at Zoey. “I just assumed Gonzo’s would be in worse shape after the storm because it’s on the beach. But no, a huge tree hit the generator at the other place, and they had an electrical fire. They’re going to be closed for weeks, probably months. The owner was there with an insurance agent when we went to check them out.”

  Tyler walked over to the light switch next to the front door and flipped it. The lights flickered, but came fully on.

  “At least you guys have power.” He looked around. “You know, the damage here isn’t too bad. I bet we could get this place in shape in time for the tournament. What do you think?” He looked at Zoey hopefully. Lacey and Patrick turned pleading eyes on her too.

  “If the other bowling alley is out of commission, and we get a lot of people to come to the championship, then that might be the beginning of a lot more new business for Poppy. He’ll get all the people to come back here who would’ve otherwise gone to the other place,” Lacey said. “Please. We’ll get everything ready for Poppy. He won’t have to worry about anything.” She made a shooing motion at Zoey. “Go. Convince your grandpa.”