by Mel Bossa
I was just boring Justin Holt: the Chicago college kid who didn’t know any better and made the oh-so-ridiculous mistake of falling in love with a soon-to-be rock star.
I should stick to making coffee and homework. It’s safer that way.
Earlier that day I’d aced the interview at the advertising agency. I was almost certain the six-month internship would be mine. I knew I’d impressed the panel of three men and two women who threw questions at me like grenades. I caught each one in my teeth, chewed it up, and spat out the perfect answer. They sat across from me in the boardroom in their suits and ties, skirts and heels, eating up my desire to become the most successful copywriter in advertising. They nodded their heads, showered me with smiles, and when I wanted them to laugh, they did. I convinced them my lifelong dream could never happen without them. They had the expertise and the industry knowledge I desperately needed to take my life and career to the next level. All they had to do was hire me, become my personal mentors, and shoot me straight up the corporate ladder.
I knew I wouldn’t hear from the college internship coordinator until Monday, so I had all weekend to wait for the company’s decision. But if my prediction turned out to be true, my entire life would change direction. I would have to leave Clouds in order to meet the demands of the hectic schedule at the agency. I would be poised for a career. A real job. A grown-up life.
I would have to make a lot of sacrifices.
One of which could be love.
*
Dolores Delgado pulled her apartment door open just an inch. She peered at me through the crack. It took her a moment to recognize me. Once she did, she unlatched the gold chain from the door and pulled it wide open. She was in a pale pink nightgown and silky robe. I wondered if her old slippers had stayed on her feet since the last time I was there.
She glanced around me eagerly. “Diego?” she said, with a hope that made my heart ache. “Is he here? Did you bring him to me?”
I shook my head. “No, señora. Diego isn’t here. He’s still in Europe. It’s just me.”
Defeat filled her face and her shoulders sank. She placed a palm against the front of the door, possibly drawing some sort of strength from the cracked paint and the tarnished 3A.
I held out the pie. “Tomorrow is Thanksgiving,” I said.
She nodded. “Oh, yes. It is.”
“I wanted you to have this,” I said. I felt awkward. Out of place. Foolish.
She has no idea what you’re doing here, you dumbass.
“For me?” she asked, surprised. She took the pie. Her fingers grazed across my knuckles. “But why?”
I had no reasonable answer to her understandable question, so I just stood there in her doorway with a stupid smile stuck on my face.
“Did you make this for me?” she asked.
“Yes,” I lied. “I did. Just for you.”
We stood there for what felt like an eternity, exchanging uncomfortable expressions and glances. Finally, she broke our silence with a question. “M’ijo, would you like to come inside?”
Leave her alone. Turn around. Go back downstairs. Catch a cab. Take your ass home to your apartment and wait to hear from Diego. He’ll be back next week, you idiot.
“I would love to,” I heard myself say.
She reached for the sleeve of my charcoal gray pea coat and pulled me into her apartment. She closed the door behind us. She balanced the pie in one hand and mastered two dead bolts and the gold chain with the other.
“Oh shit,” I said, realizing I’d left the bottle of amaretto in the cab. The driver would be ensured a happy holiday now, at my expense. It was the ultimate tip the night before a holiday.
She gave me an odd look. “What is it?” she asked.
“I forgot something in the cab.”
“Do you need to go?”
I ignored the hope in her voice and pushed on. I peeled off my wool gloves, unknotted my plaid scarf. “No, it wasn’t important.”
We were standing in the middle of her cluttered living room. I breathed in deep, inhaling a combination of dust, oregano, cumin, and damp radiator heat. “Wow. What smells so good?”
She pointed to the couch. “Sit,” she insisted. “I will fix you a plate.”
I obeyed her command and sank into the worn sofa. I turned my attention to the television screen, where a gorgeous Latina woman in a wedding dress was crying her eyes out. I was intrigued at once by her state of heightened emotions, her beauty, her suffering. No wonder Señora Delgado was addicted to these shows. I was hooked in a matter of seconds.
All around me were framed photos of Diego at different stages of his life. I grinned at the sight of him, feeling at ease and comforted. I stared at the pictures, taking in the history of his life before he met me. While he was here taking care of his mother and coping with her crippling depression, I was in Georgia, feeding goats and dealing with two parents who treated me like a guest who’d worn out his welcome long ago.
“I’m leaving,” I’d told them three years ago. I was standing in our living room, with suitcases in hand and a bus ticket to Chicago tucked under my arm.
My mother didn’t take her eyes away from the television. My father glanced up from the sports section. “Well, all right, then,” he said. “You know what’s best, son.”
A commercial break came right before I closed the door. “Would it be all right if I convert your bedroom into a craft room?” my mother said to the back of my head. “I’ve always wanted one of those.”
I didn’t answer her. I kept walking. I never looked back.
Dolores Delgado didn’t look right when she returned with a plate of food for me. Her cheeks were pale and a thick layer of sweat coated her forehead. I scooted over and she sat down next to me on the sofa. She folded up the sky blue and white afghan and tossed it into the seat of the recliner.
“Is everything okay?” I asked. My fork was aimed and ready to dive into the delicious plate of chicken, beans, and rice.
She nodded and reached for the gold crucifix on the thin chain around her neck. “Sí, m’ijo. Está bien.”
I started to eat but I could feel her eyes on me. I knew she was wondering why I’d come to see her. Strangely enough, I was asking myself the same question. What was I doing here in her overstuffed apartment? How dare I interrupt her deep depression, her night of novelas and nostalgia?
I should’ve had the decency to let her suffer in peace.
Yet she was only part of the reason I was there.
Sitting in the living room made me feel close to Diego. I was surprised by the wave of sadness swelling up inside me.
“I’m very sad today. I miss my husband very much,” Dolores confided in me. She turned and looked me in the eye and asked, “Tú también?”
I put down my fork and placed the plate of food on the marred coffee table. “I’m sorry, Señora Delgado,” I began. “I shouldn’t have come here and bothered you. It’s just…I miss Diego a lot. He’s been gone for over a week now. I thought maybe if I came here…”
She reached out and placed her hand over mine. Her skin was soft but cold. “Sometimes when I am very sad and I miss my son,” she said, “I go and sit in his room.”
I nodded. I stood up. “May I?” I asked.
She answered with a nod. She leaned back into the sofa and shifted her gaze to the television screen, drifting back into a fictional world that was safe.
I moved across the apartment until I reached the closed door leading to Diego’s past. I turned the brass knob and it clicked. The door creaked with a high-pitched groan as I pushed it open and stepped inside.
The sight of his bedroom made me smile: the Pablo Neruda books on the desk; the Jimi Hendrix poster on the wall; the Chicago Bulls jersey hanging from one of the wooden bed posts; the laundry basket filled with clean, folded clothes; the cartoon cowboy lamp on the nightstand.
I sat down on the edge of the bed in the same spot I’d shared with Diego just days before, facing the window.
The breathless view of the Chicago skyline glimmered back at me. The sight of it filled me with a rush of awe and love. I felt invincible. I felt like the best was yet to come. I felt like my fears and worries about a future for Diego and I were put to rest.
I knew he loved me.
And I knew I loved him.
I lay down on the bed and pressed my face deep into the pillow. It smelled old and musty. There wasn’t a trace of Diego’s scent left.
He turned his back on this place a long time ago. Just like you did when you walked out and left Georgia behind you forever.
I closed my eyes.
I wanted to tell Diego how much I understood him. I knew what it was like to grow up in a place where nothing you saw or touched ever reflected who you were. To find yourself existing in a house of strangers whom you forced yourself to love because that’s what you’re supposed to feel for your parents. But Diego and I had something in common: Our families had failed us. His mother was consumed with grief. Mine couldn’t wait to redecorate my bedroom.
Just like me, Diego was looking for a sense of home, a place where he truly belonged in this world.
I couldn’t wait to share my discovery with him, to tell him about our connection and the parallels in our childhoods. Secretly I hoped he’d be so inspired by what I’d realized that he’d write a song about it. I would insist he sing lead vocals on it. Halo would never be able to comprehend where it came from, the organic reasoning behind it. Only Diego’s voice could do our song justice.
*
I must have drifted off to sleep.
I sat up, alarmed and confused. I had no idea where I was.
What time is it?
I heard the television in the distance. Spanish words and phrases floated from the living room and crept beneath the bedroom door.
Wait. The door’s closed. I didn’t close it.
I felt embarrassed for a second, realizing Dolores must have found me fast asleep in her son’s bed and closed the door so the TV wouldn’t wake me.
My face was hot. My skin was sticky and damp with sweat.
A rush of dread and panic raced through my veins. I felt an overwhelming sense of doom. Something was wrong. I could tell it. I could feel it.
Get up.
I stood. I moved to the door. I pulled it open. Bluish white shadows from the television screen flickered on the living room wall like silhouettes of monsters roaming through the apartment on the hunt for something to devour.
Dolores was asleep on the sofa, curled up beneath the afghan. I moved closer, contemplating whether I should wake her or just leave.
A clock on the wall revealed it was just after two in the morning. I’d been asleep for over five hours.
I thought about going back to Diego’s bedroom, crawling into bed, and falling back asleep, but the peaceful expression on Señora Delgado’s face made me freeze with fear.
She looked calm. Too calm.
I reached for her. I touched her arm. Ice cold.
“Dolores,” I said. My voice cracked with the truth of the situation. I already knew. “Señora Delgado.”
I shook her harder. No response.
No. Please, God. No.
“Dolores, wake up!” I demanded, gripping her arm.
I let go.
I turned away from her, banging my knee against the sharp edge of the coffee table. I winced in pain. I reached for the cordless telephone on top of the television. I pushed buttons. I tried to dial. There was no tone. It was dead.
Just like her.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said to the wall of Diego’s photographs. His eyes were pleading with me to do something. To try and save his mother.
I rushed to the front door. I yanked the gold chain so hard it broke into tiny pieces and scattered across the wooden floor. I struggled with the stubborn dead bolts, willing and begging them to work with me. Finally, I yanked the apartment door open and the chilly air in the hallway hit me in the face.
I raced to the first door I saw. I pounded on it with my fists, begging for someone to answer. To help.
To reassure me everything was going to be okay.
But in the back of my mind, I already knew.
Nothing would ever be the same.
Chapter Sixteen
Diego’s voice cracked when he spoke. I could see tears spilling down his cheeks from where I sat in the front row of the church. He stood behind the pulpit, bracing himself by clutching the sides of it. He looked weak. Damaged. “My mother died of a broken heart,” he told the dozen people who were scattered in the seats in the ornate Catholic church in the heart of Pilsen. “She never got over the death of my father.”
Diego glanced at the blown-up photo of his parents, perched on a wooden easel not far from where he stood. It was a snapshot of them from their younger years. Dolores was sitting in her husband’s lap, with her arms draped over his shoulders. She was looking directly into the camera and smiling, but Diego’s handsome father was staring at his beautiful wife. The deep love in his eyes made me ache inside. No wonder she never stopped missing him.
They’re together now. In heaven.
Those were the exact words I’d said to Diego when he arrived an hour ago. We met on the snow-covered steps of the church. Both of us were wearing ties, blazers, slacks, and shiny leather shoes. We looked like we’d escaped from an all-boys school.
We began to cry the second we touched. He climbed out of the back of the cab and locked eyes with me immediately. He rushed up the cement steps of the church, slid his arms around me, and pulled me to him. We collapsed into a rumble of tears of sadness and relief.
“I’m so sorry,” I said into the heat of his neck.
“I got here as fast as I could,” he explained. “The plane just landed an hour ago.”
“You’re here now,” I said. “That’s the important thing.”
“My mom…” he choked.
I held him tighter, afraid to ever let go. “She’s with your dad now, Diego. They’re together now. In heaven.”
He nodded. He wiped his eyes. He kissed my cheek. “So are we,” he breathed.
I reached up and removed the chain of dog tags from around my neck. I’d worn them religiously since Diego had entrusted them to me as an unspoken vow of our love. I placed them into his open palm and closed his fingers around them. “You should wear these today,” I said.
Diego nodded in agreement.
Behind him, Mary Jane and Athena emerged from the same cab Diego had arrived in. Athena paid the driver and helped an emotional Mary Jane up the stairs to where Diego and I stood. She leaned in and whispered in my ear, “He’s gonna need you now more than ever.”
I nodded in reply.
I didn’t ask where Halo was. Or Nina.
I slipped my hand into Diego’s. He led the four of us into the church. We bowed our heads in unison as we entered the sacred place.
Now, as he stood in front of everyone with his heart breaking open wide, I wanted to be with him. I needed to hold him, to assure him that somehow everything would be okay. Even if we knew those words might not be true.
I fought the urge to walk up the carpeted steps and stand beside him in the shadow of the overbearing crucifix looming from behind the sanctuary.
I looked up at the pale yellow walls and the arched stained-glass windows. In one of them, Jesus was nailed to a giant cross. I wondered how God could let something like this happen.
Behind me, I could hear Athena shift uncomfortably in her seat. Mary Jane sniffled and blew her nose.
Starsky was sitting next to me clutching my hand. Maybe she knew I was on the verge of falling apart. I drew as much strength as I could from her energy pulsing against my palm.
If she hadn’t taken control of the situation from the second I called her and told her that Diego’s mother was dead, none of us would have made it through the tragedy. Maybe she realized she was the only one really capable of handling it all.
Once I finally convi
nced someone to open their door and to call for help, it took another twenty minutes for an ambulance to arrive. Once the paramedics confirmed Dolores was dead, I went back to the neighbor’s apartment and telephoned Starsky. I could barely get the words out, but once I did, she was by my side within fifteen minutes.
Within hours, she tracked down Nina in Europe and explained what had happened. She promised Starsky that Diego would be on the next plane home. Yet he didn’t show up for three more days.
I wondered what had happened to him in those three days, but I figured he would explain later.
Starsky made all of the funeral arrangements, including selecting a cherrywood casket. She insisted on coming to the church early to tie bouquets of wildflowers to the end of each pew.
That’s just the kind of woman she was.
*
As we walked away from Dolores’s fresh grave in the cemetery, Diego stopped me. We turned toward each other beneath the bare branches of a weathered oak tree. He took my hands into his and said, “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive Nina for what she did.”
I probably looked confused because I was. What did Nina Grey have to do with the death of Diego’s mother? “What do you mean?” I asked.
“She waited for two days to tell me,” he explained. His jaw tightened and a flash of anger darkened his otherwise light hazel eyes. “She waited until the tour was over. She knew if I found out, I would’ve left.”
I was floored. “She didn’t tell you?”
He shook his head. He tightened his grip on my hands. “Not until yesterday, Justin. I can’t believe…you had to go through all of this without me.”
“It’s okay.”
“You were there with her when she…died? In the apartment?”
“Yes,” I answered. “It was the night before Thanksgiving. I went to see her. To give her a pie,” I said. “Pumpkin. And she was alone. So I sat with her for a while. She made me a plate of food. We watched a novela for a few minutes. The one about the woman who’s forced to marry a man she doesn’t love just to save her family’s ranch.”