Nana had pushed me to complete my degree. I didn’t understand why it was so important to her, but I couldn’t tell her no. For my tiny grandmother, dependent on an oxygen tank to breathe and so diminutive in her wheelchair that she looked like a child, no was never an acceptable answer. The woman had raised me, and she demanded a college education. I remembered the fight we’d had about it very well.
“I’ll just go to college later,” I’d said, exasperated, throwing my hands up in the air at her. It wasn’t a week after my high school graduation, and Nana was pushing me to at least enroll in a nearby community college to get some requirements out of the way if I wasn’t keen on selecting a major yet.
“You’ll go to college now,” she insisted, her voice reedy but firm. She never had to raise it to get what she wanted. She was implacable. “There isn’t a ‘later’ for your education.”
The “later” I meant was troubling even to me. I couldn’t imagine going to college full time while holding down my crappy pizza delivery job and taking care of Nana. That “later” I’d mentioned to her? That was the inevitable “later” of not having to take care of her anymore.
“I’m just scared that I won’t have enough time for everything, Nana,” I told her.
“There is always time for everything if you put enough importance on it,” she responded. “You don’t worry about me. You have to think about your future.”
There was that troubling thing again. The “future” Nana was talking about was the future without her in it.
“Maybe I’ll quit the pizza place,” I suggested hopefully. “That’ll give me more time for my studies.” I didn’t mind the work, and I loved driving. But a job was a job—an obligation that put me in occasionally crappy situations, like naked people opening the door.
“You need your job to help pay for your books,” Nana said. “You won’t be quitting the pizza place.”
There was no arguing with her. She’d always been like that, before the oxygen tank, before the wheelchair. I couldn’t get away with anything under her watch. As I got older, beginning in high school, it was so troubling to me to start becoming the one who watched over her.
Nana’s health was deteriorating quickly. The only mother—and grandmother—I’d ever known, she’d brought me into her home before I had memories of my other home, the one with my mother and father.
Nana had been brief and as vague as she thought was necessary when explaining that situation the moment I was old enough to ask about it.
“Your mother and father had you a little too young,” she said. “They fell in together a little too young, too, and they both have a lot of growing up to do.”
I grew up, too, and I didn’t ask about them again. They never came calling, Nana never mentioned them, and life was just dandy.
Except that I had a college degree and still worked as a pizza delivery person.
“Get a job to suit your skills,” Nana had urged me, as I dabbed Vaseline ointment on her nostrils, which tended to chafe because of the oxygen she had to use. “You’re not living up to your full potential, June.”
“The job market’s really tough right now, Nana,” I said pleasantly, counting out her pills before setting them on a saucer beside a glass of water. “I know that something will come along.”
“Something’s not just going to come along if you don’t go out there and seize it,” she said irritably, her small hands fluttering at me, trying to shoo me away. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about yourself, girl, before you lose your momentum.”
Nana was angry at herself, angry that her waning health forced me into the position of caretaker when she’d been so good at taking care of me growing up. And she was angry that this responsibility limited my potential in the job market.
She was right. I couldn’t fathom getting a full-time office job. It would take me away from her, and she depended on me. We got by on a stipend I got paid for being her full-time caretaker. It also helped that we were involved in a home nurse program at a local hospital, meaning that a healthcare professional visited Nana at the house every day, usually when I was delivering pizzas. The money from the pizza delivery job helped make things more comfortable around our snug house.
Our lives were far from perfect, but we were used to things the way they were. I treasured Nana, and I was grateful for the fact that I was in a position to provide for her, especially after the way she had once provided for me. She could’ve left me to my fate with my hapless parents, or perhaps to the foster system. Instead, she’d given up her retirement and relaxation to raise me as if I’d been her own child.
I couldn’t resent her now for our current circumstances. I was unable of feeling that way about Nana. She was precious to me.
That was also why I wasn’t going to tell her how big of a jerk Devon Ray was in real life.
Nana had enough to worry about, what with her failing health and her concerns that I was wasting my life. I didn’t want to tread on her fantasies about her favorite movie star of the moment.
It was funny. She liked newly popular actors like Devon, and I preferred stars of past eras—the Humphrey Bogarts, Jimmy Stewarts, Fred Astaires. To me, today’s actors were more focused on appearances than real talent. I’d taken Nana to see Devon’s last movie, the one I’d awkwardly mentioned to him before he’d revealed the ugliness inside of himself to me. She had been transfixed the entire time, gushing afterward about how talented Devon was.
“That young man is going places,” she told me as I helped her into the passenger seat of my car in the movie theater parking lot.
“Who, Devon Ray?” I’d scoffed. “He looks and acts just like anyone else right now.”
“No, no. This one’s different.”
“Different how?” I was of the opinion that you could get a dozen Devon Rays sold in a box—each with different names and hair colors, maybe, but practically the same model.
“Different…I don’t know,” Nana mused as I turned on the car. “Like there’s something special about him. Like he’s hungry for it. Like he’s going places.”
Going places. Sure. Like in my cheap, oil-splattered khakis.
Today wasn’t even a good appearance day for me. I didn’t have bad hair days or bad pimple days or bad makeup days. My bad days came in full-on attack. Try as I might, I couldn’t brush out a lump from my ponytail this morning, and I had a big fat pimple appear on my cheek sometime overnight, necessitating a glob of concealer. Being in my 20s had done nothing to stem the occasional blemish. I’d even tried to distract from it by pulling some of my hair out of my ponytail and letting it hang down over my ears, which just made me look vaguely sloppy. My makeup hadn’t looked right, and I somehow got to the end of my clean work clothes and was forced to wear both my polo shirt and khakis from the time the deep fryer in the kitchen at the pizza place spat hot oil on me.
It wasn’t a good day at all for my physical appearance, and yet a movie star had hit on me, tried to kiss me, and heavily implied that he wanted to do so much more.
None of that made sense. It was probably a testament to just how drunk he was when I arrived with his pizza. I hoped it made him gain five pounds.
I pulled up outside of our little house, one of many crammed into the crowded neighborhoods surrounding Dallas, and sat in the car for a while. It had only been a couple of hours since I left the hotel in a huff, and now it seemed like my encounter with Devon Ray had only been a dream. Could it have just been some trick of my imagination? I reached for my phone and opened the photo album, laughing as Devon’s ugly mug popped up. No, that had been real. I had the crappy picture to prove it.
Nana was usually such a good judge of character, too.
She would be thrilled to hear that I’d run into her favorite actor. I didn't have to spoil that with the details.
I turned off the car and got out, snagging the spare pizza I hadn’t delivered to surprise Nana with. She was on a hospital-mandated diet, but I was a firm believer in having
a little fun once in a while. Nana would enjoy the pizza, and being happy was really the most important thing.
I frowned as I navigated my way up the deteriorating sidewalk leading up to the house. Something needed to be done about it, but I was no construction expert. It had been a community effort to build the wheelchair ramp up to the house to allow Nana more mobility. I’d written an essay about her need while I was still in school, and the neighborhood had raised the funds to help us complete it.
For as big as Dallas was, the neighborhoods that it was made up of could be extremely personable. When a need presented itself, the people who lived here rallied around it, making sure it was taken care of. Before the ramp was built, Nana tended to fearfully maneuver the wheelchair down the concrete steps to the front stoop. She left little black marks of rubber on the edges, and I was always afraid she’d be dumped out of her seat while doing it, suffering a terrible injury.
Maybe I could just get some concrete mix at a nearby home supply store and figure out the sidewalk by myself. And the house could really use a new coat of paint. That was something I could definitely do—slap paint on wood.
Beyond the wheelchair ramp, though, the house where I grew up remained virtually unchanged. It was a two-bedroom, one-bath home perched on a tiny patch of grass, all of it surrounded by a chain-link fence. I always wanted a dog for that yard when I was young, but Nana convinced me that it would be cruel to keep an animal in so little space.
I expertly balanced the box of pizza in one hand as I unlocked the front door with the other. The stoop needed to be swept. I’d put it on my list of things to do. That list was always much longer than I thought it could possibly be, much longer than I thought I would ever get done, but I found a way to march through it, even when I was bone tired.
“Nana, I’m home,” I announced loudly, closing the door behind me with my foot.
“In here,” she called back, and I knew she’d wheeled herself into the living room to enjoy the last of the day’s sunshine.
She was a sassy dresser even in her advancing age, and today’s wardrobe choice was no different. Her pink shirt had flashy spangles and sequins, and she’d even pulled on dark leggings I’d gotten her for comfort.
“Nana, you could’ve told me you wanted to dress up today,” I said, frowning at her with disapproval. “I would’ve helped you before I went to work. What would’ve happened if you’d fallen while getting into those leggings?”
“I would’ve gotten up,” she said, preening. “You think I look nice?”
“You always look nice,” I told her. “What’s the occasion today?”
“Milo is coming.”
“Aha.” Milo was a home healthcare professional in his mid-30s. Nana had apparently taken a shine to him.
“Why are you home so early?” Nana asked, looking up from the book spread across her sequined lap.
“Are you upset that I’m going to be here for your hot date with Milo?” I countered, grinning. “I can go run errands, if you’d prefer. What’s Devon Ray going to think of you messing around on him?”
“Oh, stop,” she scoffed. “Devon Ray will never find out. Now, tell me, seriously. Why aren’t you still at work? Did something happen?”
“Something did happen,” I said, arching a brow.
“Tell me.”
“I met Devon Ray.”
Nana shrieked shrilly before covering up her mouth with both of her hands. It sounded like a bird call and made me laugh. She did that anytime she got unbearably excited.
“You’re lying to me, I just know it,” she fussed. “I thought I raised you better than that, June Clark.”
“I’m not lying, Nana!” I exclaimed. “He was my last delivery today, and then I wanted to run home and tell you all about it.” The last part was a lie, but she wouldn’t call me out on this one.
“What in the world is he doing in Dallas?” she asked. “I thought he was supposed to be out in LA, filming one of his new movies.”
I shrugged. “You know more about it than I do.”
“No, you’re the one who should know,” she insisted. “Unless you’re fibbing about seeing him today.”
“How dare you continue to accuse me,” I said, giving her a sad sigh. “You won’t just believe me?”
“I just can’t believe that you would see him, no,” she said.
“Well, I have proof,” I told her. “Look.”
I held out my phone, exposing the photo I’d snapped in his face, and Nana snatched it away.
“Where did you get this?” she asked, her eyes drinking in the photo. She adjusted her glasses as if pushing them farther down her nose would help her make sense of what she was holding.
“I took it,” I said. “Of him. After I delivered his pizza to his hotel room this afternoon.”
“It’s a terrible picture,” Nana remarked, and I had to laugh. “Why didn’t you get a better picture of him?”
“It was spur of the moment,” I said. That was a true statement. “He agreed to let me take a photo of him to show you, and I almost forgot when I was leaving.” Again, it was a false statement, but I couldn’t smear Nana’s love for the man. It would make me feel bad.
“How was he?” Nana asked me, apparently satisfied that I was telling her the truth. “Tell me everything. Every last detail.”
I spun a narrative that invented a positive interaction with a star who was just trying to be normal. Devon Ray was here in Dallas on business (true), trying to bypass drawing attention to himself so he could get more done (semi-true), and he ordered a pizza instead of having an assistant do it so he could get a little taste of being normal (false). He’d been gracious and courteous (at first) and had very magnanimously volunteered to have his photo taken by me as a token for Nana (not really). But in the tumult of exchanging money for pizza (false) and me trying to get out of there (because he was trying to drunkenly hook up with me), I took a quick photo of him as I was leaving (true).
“Is he just as handsome in real life as he is in his movies?” Nana asked. “Barring this photo, of course.”
I snickered. “Yeah, barring the photo, he’s not bad.” But the way he acted made those dazzling brown eyes, the thick, expressive eyebrows, and the cleft in his chin—hell, even his bulging muscles—sour for me. It was a pity. He was a good-looking guy. He just wasn’t a very good person.
“Oh, I wish I could’ve seen him. Gotten his autograph. Something!”
I regretted not securing that autograph for her. It was one of the main reasons I’d gone in the hotel room in the first place, when he invited me in to “collect myself.” No, I might have to lie to Nana to protect her from the truth about her idol, but I couldn’t lie to myself about it. I’d gone into that hotel room because I’d been starstruck. Then again, if he’d paid for his pizza like a normal, decent human being, maybe I would’ve had a chance to get him to sign the receipt. It was Devon Ray’s fault Nana didn’t have an autograph. Not mine.
“Sorry, Nana,” I said. “Want me to go back? I know which hotel he’s staying at.”
“Only if you take me with you,” she said with what clearly was a leer.
“Nana!” I shrieked—a habit I’d picked up from her. “I thought you were going to see Milo tonight!”
“Milo, who?” she said dismissively, waving her hands. “Milo nobody. Not when Devon Ray’s around. I don’t want to stalk the poor boy at his hotel room. Not when he’s trying to keep a low profile. I’m just happy you got to see him. If not me, then you.”
“I can get this picture printed out at the drugstore, if you want,” I offered, trying not to laugh. “Think of it, Nana. I could blow it up to an 8-by-10, and we could set it right there on the table in a nice frame, next to my graduation portrait.”
“Maybe if you’d gotten a better picture of him,” she said. “Is that a box of pizza you’re holding?”
“I know this isn’t the last thing you noticed,” I said, waving it around tantalizingly. “But you’d bet
ter hurry if you want to sneak a slice before Milo gets here. I’ll warm it up.”
It was easy for people on the outside looking in to make assumptions about my living situation with Nana, but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything—not a high-paying job in my field of study, not a boyfriend, not a huge house in a city far away from Dallas. I adored Nana. We had such a great relationship that it never even felt like work. I wanted her to be happy and secure and healthy. That’s what made everything worth it. It’s why I stayed here with her, in a place where she felt comfortable, instead of shoving her off to some home. That wasn’t how you treated people you loved. You took care of people you loved.
Nana had wolfed down nearly three pieces of pizza by the time the doorbell rang. I snagged the last piece from her and shoved it in my mouth, handing her a peppermint and a napkin, and trotted into the front hall to answer the door.
“Come right on in, Milo,” I said, swallowing the last bit of pizza as I swung the door open. “I know Nana has been looking forward to your visit all day.”
“She’s a sweet lady,” he said, smiling, but then he stopped and sniffed. “Do I smell pizza?”
“Pizza?” I resisted the urge to dab at the corners of my mouth. Were they dirty with pizza evidence?
“June, you know your grandmother has to stick to her diet.”
“Milo, of course you smell pizza,” I said, laughing at him. “I work at a pizza place. I’m there all day. The smell gets into my clothes and hair. I think it even seeps into my pores. Don’t blame Nana for my career. Go ahead and get started with her while I go take a shower and burn these clothes.”
I could tell he wasn’t buying it, but the ball was in Nana’s court, now. I was sure she could charm the pants off the man. Besides, everyone needed a little pizza every now and then. Pizza helped the world keep turning.
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