“Aw, you love her. You’re a sweet brother. She wants to cross off Number 34. I’m not sure Dennis regrets the day he was born yet. I’m doing what I can to up the ante. After he finds the skunk I set loose in his house, I’m dumping a few hundred crickets in his bedroom. See if Amber can get comfortable in there after that.”
Brady swallowed hard and grabbed another eggroll, banging his fist around in the bag as if he was angry with the paper. “Dennis is a tool. I never liked him. Didn’t I tell you he was bad for her?”
“You did.” I tried to concentrate on the form I needed to finish, but it was a lost cause. Brady was all riled up, which meant I wasn’t going to get any work done. I put my pencil down and gave him my full attention for the next hour and a half before he’d used up all of his angry words, finished off the eggrolls, and exhausted himself. He went to bed in a huff, leaving me to the empty living room.
The soothing tick-tock of the Salvador Dali soft clock on the wall that Caty had picked out (but Dennis hadn’t wanted her to bring to his house) lulled me as I worked. Before I knew it, I was passed out on the floor of the living room, pencil dropped from my hand and my paperwork almost finished.
* * *
“What’re ye doing on the floor, Mouse? Ye can’t go falling asleep like this. Ye didn’t even make it onto the couch this time.” I heard Eli’s scolding, and then felt his muscular arms lift me up off the carpet. He was strong and capable, and despite my sizable thighs, I felt petite in his arms. It was incredible being loved on by a man when he didn’t need to go above and beyond, but did so anyway. He carried me gently from the living room to my bedroom, barely jostling me when he laid me down atop the mattress.
I tried to sit when he released me, waking up more fully and rubbing my eyes. “I have to finish. I can’t believe I fell asleep.”
Eli kissed my forehead and carefully laid me back down. “Rest, love. Ye can’t keep pushing yourself like this.” He moved to my ankles, and in a gesture so kind, it made emotion swell in my chest, I felt him gingerly untie my shoes and slide them off my feet. Next came my day-worn socks, which I didn’t have the energy to feel embarrassed by. He frowned down at me, deep in thought. “I’ll go get changed and come tuck ye in, yeah? Close your eyes.”
I rolled onto my side and curled up in the fetal position, not liking the feel of my bed without him in it. Though it was a small double mattress, it felt like an ocean of space when I had it all to myself. For the first time, that didn’t feel like a good thing.
Eli left the room and came back a few minutes later, shirtless and in cozy pajama pants – just how I liked him. He slid under the sheets and pulled the comforter up around us, his warm body inviting me to wrap myself around it and snuggle to my heart’s content. I have no idea how I fell asleep ever in my life before this. Eli was the best teddy bear, and I was determined to hold onto him, even in my sleep.
He was pensive, his voice quiet when he spoke. “I worry about ye working so much. Was tha twelve hours, plus how many more when ye got home?”
I shrugged, my eyes closed contentedly. “Thirteen, plus a few more when I got here.”
“What would your mammy say? I don’t think she’d want this life for you. There’s no living in your life.”
“I’ve got to finish those grants, then I can…” I yawned and shifted against him, too tired to have a real conversation.
“I thought ye were going to do just a few, and tell Keith he’d have to do the rest.”
“I don’t leave jobs undone. Didn’t sit right when I tried to talk to him about it. You’re wonderful to worry about me, but I’m alright.”
“I don’t want my girl to be ‘alright’. I want ye to be grand. What if ye lost your smile? What would I do then? How would I find my way home without it?”
In lieu of a response, I leaned up and kissed his lips, my eyes still refusing to open. “I love everything about you,” I murmured, and then promptly fell asleep with my arm and leg coiled around him, and my head on his shoulder, right where it belonged.
23
Mr. Li’s Daughter
The world celebrated with candy the evening before the anniversary of my mother’s birth. We had a lot of trick-or-treaters October 31st, dressed up as princesses, ghouls, ninjas and the like. They didn’t come up to our apartment, of course, but Caty and I parked two lawn chairs on our usual yearly perch outside Mr. Li’s restaurant. We handed out fortune cookies for his restaurant, with menus and mini spring rolls for the adults. Mr. Li had brought us vegetable dumplings, but as good as they smelled, I couldn’t stomach a bite.
My mother was gone – worse than that, she’d withered away, moaning in pain with every movement towards the end. Last year, while the rest of the country was affixing makeup, sparkles and fake mustaches to their faces, readying for a night of fun, I’d spent Halloween holding my mother’s hand in hospice. That turned out to be far creepier than any Halloween celebration to date.
The autumn leaves were halfway off the trees, letting us know that winter was coming, and the beauty of nature would soon be evolving. The chilly breeze made Caty shiver under her sweater, but I felt nothing.
That night, the little trick-or-treaters were a welcome distraction from Caty. My bestie’s sympathetic eyes begged me to talk about my mother’s passing. I didn’t want to talk about that. I didn’t want it to be true. The crisp fall air kissed my face, reminding me that time was happening, whether I was ready for it or not.
“You should try a dumpling, Vi. When was the last time you ate anything?” Caty didn’t hold back on babying me. On a night like tonight, I needed all the mothering I could get. There was a gaping chasm in my chest that nothing could fill, short of my mother’s smile. She’d done such a seamless job of incorporating American holidays with the traditions of her youth. I’d always celebrated Halloween, and then the following night, we cleared our schedules for the Dia de Los Muertos. It was supposed to be the night when the dead walked among us. She always took off November first from work, since that was her favorite holiday, and also her birthday. We would spend November 1st painting our faces to look like skeletons, and making hard sugar skulls. Mine always turned out looking like white bowling balls, but hers could’ve passed a doctor’s inspection.
Brady came home shortly after his shift, with a bouquet of carnations clutched in one hand, and white lilies in the other. He wore a worried look on his face when he took in my closed-off expression. “Hey, ladies. Eating all the fortune cookies without me, I see.” He leaned over and kissed Caty’s cheek, handing her the orange carnations she melted over. I know it had been difficult for her to see Eli bringing me a new bouquet of flowers every week, while her fiancé cheated on her in the sheets she’d purchased. Brady gave Caty a tender smile that he kept on reserve for her more vulnerable days. “For you. I know you miss your mama.”
It was true. Caty’s parents were both socialites that hadn’t been around much. She’d migrated to our apartment most days after school, treating my mother as if she were her own. When her parents had been too busy for student-teacher conferences, my mom had gone for Caty, making homework plans for her, as well as me. Caty had confided in my mom about boys, modeled new outfits for her to get her opinion, and celebrated all the Mexican traditions with us. Caty’s sugar skulls had always been far more impressive than mine, but then, she was an art major, and had a natural flair for sculpting, which she attributed to my mother. When Caty’s parents had dismissed her interest in pursuing art in college, my mother (skint though our budget was), bought Caty a slew of art supplies, making sure our girl was taken care of.
Today was hard on both of us, and the fact that Brady understood that made him king of like, all the things.
Caty loved the simple details, and threw ten parades when anyone brought her the no-frills flowers. She hugged the bouquet to her chest with a smile to light a football field. “Thank you, Brady! They’re gorgeous! You really got us flowers?”
“Of course. Anything
my girls want tonight, it’s yours. Name it.”
Instead of leaning over to kiss my cheek when there was a lull in the trick-or-treaters, Brady pulled me up out of my lawn chair and wrapped his arms around me. I braced myself with a steely breath, holding it in my lungs to endure the hug. I loved Brady; it wasn’t that I wanted him to go away – it was that I wanted to feel nothing, and hugs made me feel too much. I made it an entire three seconds before I shrugged out of the embrace, not wishing to push my limit on a day I knew I’d be prone to tears. I hadn’t cried yet, but I knew it was coming. Putting off the inevitable was easier when your friend wasn’t trying to squeeze the tears out of you like an overfull tube of toothpaste.
Brady pressed the lilies into my hands with an I’m-here-for-you expression. “I got a pot of geraniums for Mama Rodriquez, too. I was thinking tomorrow night we could sleep by her gravesite together, all three of us, like we usually do. It can be the four of us, if Eli’s not working.”
“Not Eli,” I insisted, surprising them both. “I’ll be a mess, and I don’t want him to see me falling apart like that.”
Brady frowned at me. “I’m no expert, but I’m not sure that’s how relationships work. Don’t you think he’d want to know that tomorrow is going to be rough for you?”
I shrugged. “Hopefully I’ll miss him with our opposite schedules.”
Caty tugged lightly on my sleeve. “You took the day off tomorrow, hun. We always take November 1st off. Remember?”
I cursed under my breath. “I forgot about that.” I didn’t know what the right move was, only that I didn’t want my mother to be gone. Talking about it didn’t help much. That only solidified her absence. Part of me felt like each time I mentioned she’d died, it made it more true. I didn’t want it to be real, so I didn’t talk about it all that much.
Brady took in the bags under my eyes with pity I didn’t want to see. “How are you?”
I met his understanding gaze with a vacant expression, wondering how I was supposed to answer something like that. “I’m tired. Can you guys finish the night without me? I think I’m going to turn in.”
I didn’t hear their responses, but moved into the busy restaurant to get to the stairwell in the back of the kitchen. It was all hands on deck for the holiday that brought in more carryout orders than usual. The clatter of the knives and pans kept my crushing depression from being known, for which I was grateful.
I avoided Mr. Li’s eyes, knowing there wasn’t anything he could say that might bring her back. I didn’t want sympathy; I wanted my mom. She was supposed to make sugar skulls with me tomorrow. It was our thing.
“Violet, wait. I’ve got something for you.” Mr. Li met me at the door to the stairwell, and handed me a brown paper carryout bag. “If I don’t see you tomorrow, happy horrible day,” he said with that same note of sympathy in his eyes that Brady and Caty couldn’t seem to shake.
I set my flowers on the counter and peeked inside the bag, gasping at what waited for me inside. Despite my need to hold myself together, I felt the pressure building behind my eyes. “Where did you get this?” I carefully pulled out an intricately carved sugar skull that was about the size of a real human head – just like mom’s creations had been.
He reared back, offended. “‘Get it?’ I made it. Do you think the only thing I can throw together is Chinese food? I know tomorrow will be hard.” He pointed out toward the dining area. “Every November 1st, you three girls and Brady come into my restaurant and show off your skulls. You’re all painted up with that silly makeup that glowed in the dark. You scared half my customers, looking like walking skeletons, but I thought you were funny.”
“You made me a skull for the Dia de Los Muertos?” My eyes watered, and I knew if he said another kind thing to me, I was done for.
Mr. Li leveled his gaze with too much wisdom at me. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and around his mouth left no room for anything but insight and kindness. “Tomorrow I want to see you, Brady and Caty down here, looking like skeletons and showing off your sugar sculptures. I know it will be hard, but your mother was a good woman. She deserves to be honored on her birthday.”
My hands were shaking so badly, I was afraid I might drop the masterpiece that stared up at me with its gaping cavities where the eyes should have been. My mom always fitted hers with a girly touch – a pink bow on the scalp, or earrings where the ears would’ve been. Mr. Li’s was anatomically perfect, with no desire to declare a gender.
Mr. Li took pity on my plight, and put the skull back in the bag, setting it on the counter. His arms engulfed me in a hug I wished no one working in the kitchen had seen. I didn’t last two seconds before I burst into tears, soaking his shirt as I clung to him. I blame Brady, for his earlier hug, and the flowers that always made me emotional. There were too many things that bubbled up in me, but I didn’t want to give a voice to the agony that tore at my guts that night. She should still be here, and there was no amount of working hard or being good that would make it so.
Mr. Li held me far longer than the three seconds I normally allowed. When I finally gathered my sobbing into pockets of hiccups, I tried to work out an apology for exploding all over him, but he wouldn’t hear it. “Upstairs,” he ordered, grabbing the gift he’d made me, and my flowers from Brady.
“But you have customers,” I reminded him, wiping my eyes on my sleeve.
“I have a daughter,” he ruled, making my chest ache with a simultaneous dose of loneliness and comfort. I burst into tears all over again, letting him lead me up the concrete steps and away from the clamber of the busy restaurant.
Mr. Li pushed me toward my bedroom, instructing me to put on pajamas and get ready for bed. He made me ginger tea while I changed, sobbing into my hand and going through too many tissues. The past year of hardening myself against the agony of my mother’s absence finally caught up with me, daring me to pretend for just one more day that I could hold my head above water with the weight I carried around.
When I came out in pajama pants, a tank top and a pink robe overtop, it wasn’t just the tea I smelled, but a whole dinner he’d brought up from downstairs. It wasn’t his made-from-scratch super healthy greens, but sodium-rich Chinese food that made my mouth water. “What’s all this?”
Mr. Li frowned at me. “You’re too skinny. You need to eat something more substantial.”
I burst out into laughter, my emotions all over the place. “You’re the only one who’s ever said that to me, apart from my mom and Caty.”
Mr. Li poured me my tea when the kettle sang, and pushed a fork towards me. “Eat. Fried rice is good for when you have bad days. I only want good days for you, so I never give you that junk. Today is a bad day. Let’s let it be what it is.”
I stared at the father figure who totally got me, and went out of his way to make sure I was taken care of. I nodded, and reached for my fork. “She died in my arms,” I confessed, unburdening myself from a weight that some days felt tied around my neck like a noose. “There weren’t enough pain meds in the world to get her to stop crying toward the end. She couldn’t hold her bladder. She’d lost so much weight, I could see all of her ribs when I bathed her.” I closed my eyes, tears falling into my rice. “I did everything the doctor said, but it wasn’t enough!”
Mr. Li didn’t tell me it would be okay; we both knew it wouldn’t be good for a long time. Instead, he sat next to me on a stool and placed his hand on my shoulder. “She used to call me, you know. Once a week since you moved in, to make sure you were alright.”
My tears paused as I turned to stare at him. “I didn’t know that.”
Mr. Li nodded. “She was worried, because you lived so far from her.”
I gaped, arguing with him as if he was my mother. “I moved five minutes away!”
Mr. Li held his hands up. “That’s what I told her, but she’s a parent. I don’t think we ever stop worrying. You were her world, Violet.”
I turned back to my plate and dabbed at my face w
ith one of the many tissues I’d stuffed into the pocket of my robe. “She always said I was her favorite color.”
Mr. Li chuckled at my mom’s cuteness. “I’m sure you’re everyone’s favorite color, sweetheart. Eat your fried rice.”
I obeyed, needing a parent to push me in a healthy direction when I was lost. I cleaned my plate and sipped my tea, while Mr. Li regaled me with stories where my mom made him laugh, and the habits she had that vexed him. By the time Caty and Brady had handed out a fortune cookie to the last trick-or-treater, I was halfway through the box of tissues, but my tears were mingled with bursts of smiling at precious memories that broke through my dark clouds.
When Mr. Li hugged Caty, she started sobbing in his arms. He had that way about him. She confessed how much she wished my mom had truly been hers, and that her own mother had forgotten her birthday last year. She told Mr. Li about Dennis, with Brady chiming in about our slow-boiling revenge plan.
Mr. Li pulled back, gripping Caty’s bony shoulders. “Does he like Chinese food?”
Caty shrugged. “Who doesn’t?”
“Stop by the kitchen tomorrow, and I’ll cook up something special for him.” He held his finger up to her in warning. “Don’t you take a bite of it, though. I’ll make something edible for you.” He hugged her again. “My poor Caty. He’s a fool, and now he pays for it. Next time you three go making mischief, you tell me, so I can help.”
Brady and I exchanged looks of glee, now that Mr. Li was part of our espionage. “Excellent,” Brady said with a grin, feathering his fingers together like an evil villain. “What do you have in mind?”
“Nothing lethal,” Mr. Li insisted, as if our minds would ever go there.
My eyebrows raised. “Just what are you planning on putting in his food?”
Violet’s Bucket List Page 17