Violet’s Bucket List

by Embers, Tuesday

  Mr. Li remained vague, but warned Caty again not to eat Dennis’ portion. Then he sent me to bed, and cleaned the dishes for us, watching over his trio of misfits as if we were his own.

  24

  My Fort of Isolation

  Caty slept in my bed that night, the two of us clinging to each other like scared twin kittens in need of our mommy. That meant Eli had to sleep in Brady’s room when he came home at three in the morning. Though I cuddled Caty all night long, I felt lonely without him.

  Caty had requested November 1st off before the school year had even started, knowing neither of us would be functional. The two of us slept in until ten, waking to puffy eyes and a bed littered with damp tissues.

  Caty stretched, knocking one of my boobs, which always felt like it was in the way. “Morning, cupcake,” she said to me through a yawn.

  “Morning… regular cake.” I couldn’t think straight, unused to getting so much sleep. My body was stiff, and though a weekday off presented me with a litany of things that could be crossed off my to-do list, I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed. Caty stood and stretched again, but I merely rolled over, content to wallow and push the world away for as long as it would let me.

  “You got any plans for the day?” she asked, rummaging through my drawers. She yanked out a purple shirt and jeans, laying them on the bed for me.

  “Nope. This bed. That’s my only plan.”

  Caty’s voice was tentative, using carefully chosen words when she spoke. “I was thinking we could make Mama’s enchiladas. Maybe her spicy guacamole, too. I’m in the mood to eat my feelings with a side of tomatillo salsa today.”

  I closed my eyes and pulled the comforter tighter around me. “No, thanks. That would involve getting out of this bed, which I don’t plan on doing.”

  “I wanted to make sugar skulls later and paint our faces, like we always do. I can wait for you to be awake for that part.”

  My heart sank into the mattress, weighting me there and securing me to the spot. “No, thanks. I just want to stay in bed today.”

  Caty was cautious as her fingers reached down to sift through my hair, brushing the strands that had dried to my face from all my tears in the night. “Eli’s here. He’ll probably be around the apartment most of the day. You two are on opposite shifts, so you never get to spend much daytime together. Are you sure you don’t want to get up and see him?”

  I knew my face was splotchy, my eyes swollen from crying. “I don’t even want to see myself. Can you lock the bedroom door on your way out? Maybe he’ll think I’m at work.”

  Caty sat down on the side of the bed, her nimble fingers working a thick French braid into the side of my head to keep more hair from sticking to my face. Then she turned my head and did the other side, so I had two braids to keep my unruly hair from bothering me. The clean hairdo made me look like a I had a plan in life, and not as if life had already beaten me over the head and buried me. Caty kissed my cheek, told me she loved me, and left for the kitchen. We’d spent every Dia de Los Muertos together since we were in junior high, but this time I wanted to be alone. I closed my eyes and shut out the world, irrationally angry that the universe had taken such a good person away prematurely.

  I drifted off, but was roused however many hours later by a light tap on my door. Caty’s voice was gentle. “Violet? I made lunch for us. You want to come out and eat with me?”

  “No, thanks. I’m sleeping.”

  “Mouse, open up. I’m worried about ye.” Eli’s voice made me crawl deeper under the covers, shame washing over me that I was the kind of girl who couldn’t get out of bed today. It was the one drawback of living with the hottest guy in the universe – I had no buffer of a separate place where I could live in my bed and cry all day without him knowing how pathetic I truly was.

  “I’m okay. Just tired. I’ll see you before you go to work tonight.”

  “Ye plan on sleeping all night and all day?”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I muttered a “yep” that was dripping with self-loathing.

  I expected that to be the end of it, but when the Allen wrench jiggled in the knob to unlock it, I stiffened. Eli and Caty let themselves in, invading my pity party and seeing me at my worst (which, incidentally, is how every girl wants her own personal movie star to see her).

  Chagrin kept me firmly under the sheets, hiding under the fabric like a child. In that moment, I truly wished I could still be a kid, hiding when life grew too harrowing to navigate. My mom would handle things when I was overwhelmed, but now she couldn’t, so I wallowed. I’d handled life for nearly an entire year without her, so I was due an entire day in bed.

  I was ashamed of myself, but unable to stop the flood of sadness that, after a year of powering through, finally toppled me. “Go away!”

  “Honey, Caty told me about your mammy. Why didn’t ye say anything? I’m here for ye, or I want to be, anyway.” He sat down on the side of the bed, gently prying at the covers I pinned over my head to isolate myself from the world. “Why’d ye lock me out?”

  “Because I don’t want you to see me like this! I’m not the girl who lies in bed and cries all day, but today, I’m that girl!”

  “I want to see ye exactly as ye are. Do ye think I’ve never shed a tear over something sad? Losing your mammy warrants a day in bed, at least. Did ye really think I wouldn’t understand tha?”

  “I don’t want you to have to understand it. I want it to not be real!”

  He said quietly to Caty, “Ye can go back out and finish what ye were doing. I’ll be in here for a while.” Eli sank down into the bed next to me after the door closed, making himself comfortable with his head on the pillow. He was thoughtful for a couple minutes, letting me adjust to the fact that he wasn’t going anywhere – that day, or for the foreseeable future. “I don’t remember much about my mammy. My Da didn’t like to talk about her, and left the room whenever her name was brought up, so I learned not to speak about her. Over time, I started to forget.” He rubbed his chest uncomfortably. “I don’t remember much about her now. I don’t want tha to happen to ye, Mouse.” Slowly, he peeled back the sheets of my fort, revealing the mess that I was. “Tell me about your mammy.”

  I’d thought my tears were maxed out, but at Eli’s gentle caress of my face, more leaked and slid down my temples as I rolled onto my back to stare up at him. “She was amazing, and then she died, and now it’s all ruined.”

  Eli didn’t shy away from my grief, but pulled me closer, drawing nearer to the damp tissues and puffy eyes. He rolled onto his side and gathered my body to his, welcoming my messy depression for what it was. “It sounds like ye were close.”

  “The closest. I always felt sorry for people who complained about their mothers. I had the best one, and then she was just gone.”

  Eli kissed my forehead, being gentle to me when I was lost. He spent the next two hours holding me, asking thoughtful questions, and slowly getting me to spill my carefully held-together guts to him. Never once did he grow weary of my tears, or act like he was bored hearing stories of my mother. He laughed at her antics, held me through the bits about her cancer, and kissed my closed eyelids when all I could do was cry through the pain.

  I didn’t understand why my mother had been taken from me. I didn’t understand how I was supposed to just up and live a whole life without her now. The only thing I understood that afternoon as I wept in Eli’s arms, was that the man in my bed loved me, no matter how messy my life got.

  Through my tears, I knew my mother was smiling down on me, grateful that I’d found a man who wanted to love her as I did.

  25

  Mr. and Mrs. Skeleton

  Caty shook her fists in the air when I finally emerged from the bedroom at two in the afternoon. The second I meandered out, my senses were assaulted with jalapeño, ground beef, cilantro, and a dozen other scents I associated with my childhood. Caty had been cooking up a storm, making all our favorites, because I’m just that lucky. />
  She wore my apron, which was now stained with a smear of red from tomatoes, and had oily ground beef splatters on the green bib. Most surprising of all was her face, which I should have expected would be painted to the hilt. Her artistry was in full effect, and I could tell she’d spent at least an hour on the details to make her pale skin look like a skeleton.

  “Jays! What did ye do to your face?” Eli exclaimed, taking a step back as soon as his eyes fell on Caty in the kitchen.

  “Hello, it’s my death mask.” The charcoal outline and painted-in details made her look horrific, but when she smiled, it was simply quirky. She started explaining the details of the Dia de Los Muertos, and the traditions we’d stuck to since childhood. “Tonight, we’re sleeping in the graveyard where Mama Rodriquez is buried. We’re going to leave our sugar skulls for her, and loads of candy. I got the black and orange peanut butter chewy Halloween candies she hates. She’d laugh so hard if she saw them. ‘Caty, those aren’t even fit to feed the birds. Do not bring those in my house.’ She’d laugh her socks off if she saw those on her grave.”

  I loved how Caty imitated my mother’s voice – the heavy Spanglish accent prevalent and precious. I managed my first attempt at a smile that day. “I’ll bring her some cookies to make up for the peanut butter candies.”

  “Good plan. Go take a shower, and I’ll heat you up some of the enchiladas I made this morning.”

  I nodded, moving slowly, since my limbs were stiff from disuse and too much crying. Eli lowered me to the recliner instead, and covered me with the red, white and green afghan Caty had knitted years ago. Dennis didn’t like knitted blankets, so she’d left her creations with us, where they would be appreciated. Eli leaned down and kissed both of my puffy eyelids. “I’ll draw ye a bath. Would tha be alright?”

  My mouth fell open as I gazed up at him. “Are you serious?”

  “Of course.” He tilted his head to the side, as if to ask what else I would expect a person to do in this situation. “Caty’s making lunch. The least I can do is draw ye a bath. Ye lost your mammy. Ye don’t lift a finger today.”

  Caty’s grin couldn’t be hidden, even with the best melancholy skeleton makeup job. “Listen to the man. I caught the last sentence of that. Your English is getting better, Eli.”

  He turned and shot her a faux glower. “I’ve been speaking English this entire time! Oh, ye drive me mad.”

  “What?” Caty asked, her nose crinkling.

  I sniggered as Eli stomped off to the bathroom, wondering in my pit of unfortunate events, how I ever got to be so lucky. My phone buzzed with what I assumed was another “hang in there” text from Brady while he was at work. I reached to the coffee table to snatch it up, but realized it was an incoming call from work. “Hello?”

  Keith’s voice was no-nonsense, getting right down to business. “Violet? I need you to come in today. I’ve been calling you all morning.”

  My cloud of being cared for so sweetly began to dissipate as burdens of adulthood sank on my shoulders. “Keith, I’ve had today requested off for like, eight months. You approved it.”

  “Yeah, but it’s the day after Halloween. Two PTs called in sick. It’s either hangovers, or their kids eating too much candy and feeling sick, but whatever. I need you to come in and cover their caseloads.”

  My mother’s smile drifted away in my imagination, making me somber and leaving me feeling pushed around. It wasn’t even a request he’d presented me with, but a demand. A request was fine, but a command to come in on my day off? “I’m sorry, Keith, but I can’t.”

  Keith paused, his voice dropping to an anger he usually reserved for hostile and uncooperative insurance providers. “Do you have children at home who need you there?”

  It was a well-aimed kick to my uterus, reminding me that I wasn’t a mother, on a day I was focused on not having a mother. If I had kids someday, they would never know their amazing grandmother. “I mean, no. But I…”

  “Do you have the Ebola virus?”

  “Of course not. Keith, I…”

  “Then I need you here.”

  Caty marched over to me, hands on her hips when she saw me wavering. “I don’t know. I mean, maybe I could…”

  Caty snatched the phone from me and put it on speaker, her painted face livid and deadly. “Hi, Keith. Violet has the flu, the plague, seven limbs amputated, and whatever else you need to hear to respect that this is her day off.”

  “Who is this? Put Violet back on the phone.”

  “This is her best friend – the person who’s going to be fielding all work calls, so Violet can actually have a day off without being bothered. You run the facility, right?”

  “Caty, no!” I whispered, biting my nails as Eli came out of the bathroom. “I can go in.”

  Keith was indignant. “I do. There’s no need to speak to me like this.”

  “If you run the facility, being short-staffed is your issue. Don’t you dare put it on Violet, who shows up for you seventy hours a week.”

  “It’s not that many,” Keith said sheepishly.

  “It is that many, and you’re too much. She’ll see you tomorrow, which leaves you plenty of time to work up a good apology for guilt-tripping a perfectly nice person because you’re having a bad day.” Then, before another word could be spoken, Caty ended the call with a triumphant, “Screw you!”

  My mouth fell open as Caty pocketed my phone, which was vibrating again with no doubt another angry call from Keith. “He’s in the wrong, Vi. You don’t need that today. I’ll be fielding your calls for the rest of the evening.” She struck a Vogue pose, knowing I would giggle. Everything was funnier when your face was a skeleton. “Am I the sexiest assistant you’ve ever had?”

  “Without a doubt. I can’t believe you just did that. He’s going to be angry tomorrow.”

  “He’s going to learn his lesson today.” Caty answered the phone with a cool receptionist’s voice. “I’m sorry, Violet can’t come to the phone right now. Her ear fell off. Sucker just popped right off because her boss called too many times. Also, her middle finger decided it’s had enough exercise for today. It’s okay, though, because I’ve got two middle fingers for you.” She promptly hung up before Keith could reply, giggling at the new game she’d invented to amuse herself.

  Eli’s face was stony, his brows pushed together and his jaw set. “How many times has he called, Caty?”

  “Huh?”

  Eli rolled his eyes and extended his hand to her. “Let me see the phone.” He scrolled through, his eyes widening. “He’s called ye twelve times today!” The phone buzzed in his palm. “Thirteen!” He answered, and I rested my head in my hands to hide from my roommates. “Is this Keith?”

  Keith’s pinched voice crackled out over the speaker function, which Caty hadn’t turned off. “Yes. Listen, I don’t know what kind of game…”

  “Did ye approve Violet’s day off?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Do ye know who I am?”

  “No. Do you know who I am?”

  “It doesn’t matter who ye are.” Eli leaned down and kissed my forehead, rubbing out the worry lines between my eyebrows as he took Keith off speaker. “Get in tha tub, Mouse. I’ll take care of it.” Then he stalked away, growling low threats into the phone I tried not to hear. He took the phone call out into the stairwell, shielding me from another layer of anxiety I didn’t need to feel when I was already maxed out.

  I wanted to handle it, but if I was being honest with myself, Keith was good at steamrolling me. I was good at standing up for my friends, but not quite as adept at speaking up for myself. Hence, the too many hours, and the fact that I actually did need a friend or two to intervene from time to time.

  Caty jerked her thumb to the door. “Okay, I liked him before because you were nuts for him, but after that? I didn’t catch a word, but did you see the look on his face? Hold onto that one, Vi. Drew you a bath, and then stands up for you when your boss is out of line? Sexy.”

&n
bsp; I think my nerves had hit their max capacity, because I snorted out a laugh at her assessment. “I’m glad you think so.” I stood slowly, my body still a little stiff, and made my way to the bathroom.

  My eyes watered yet again when I took in the scene Eli had set just for me. There were bubbles enough to add an extra foot of height onto the steamy water’s surface. The air was warm and fragrant, filling my lungs with jasmine and peace. I slowly undressed and lowered myself into the tub that had been so thoughtfully assembled for me.

  In the quiet of the bathroom, I felt no shame as my tears spilled down my cheeks, adding to the water, and the bubbles that covered my breasts. This time, they weren’t one-dimensional tears of sadness. Gratitude and relief also washed through me. I relaxed into the warm hug the water gave me, finally optimistic that the heaviness I carried around with me might somehow be lifted from my overburdened shoulders.

  Eli didn’t wash off his face paint when he reluctantly got ready for work that night. Being a bouncer at a club afforded him the liberty to look as menacing as he liked, so the skull Caty and I had drawn on his face fit perfectly with his job description. When Brady came home from work, we did the same to him. Though, we painted his face every year, so he was used to it.

  I paused in front of the door with my guy, smiling up at his painted face with more affection for him than I’d ever had for a man I was kissing. “Are you sure you want to go to work like that? Your boss won’t get mad?”

  Eli snorted at me. “I keep my boss alive. Beyond tha, Antonio doesn’t care if I come to work in a tutu.” He slid on his jacket with a frown that was accentuated by the shading Caty had done to his stellar bone structure. “Are ye sure ye don’t want me to call off tonight? It doesn’t feel right, leaving ye.”

  “I’m sure. You can come to the gravesite after you get off, if you like. Or you can have the apartment to yourself, rather than sleep on the ground in a graveyard.”