Spoiler: Al always wanted the muffin.
That was fine by Sam. Al didn’t charge Sam rent. Not a red cent. Ever. His boss went so far as to pay Sam a few dollars over minimum wage, and for that Sam would bake, cook, clean, and shave crop circles in the man’s back if he’d ask.
“What is that, nuts?” Al poked a freshly glazed pastry with a meaty forefinger.
Ever since he was a kid, Sam loved to cook and bake, whipping up increasingly complicated dishes, making substitutions wherever necessary, which was often, since his mom rarely bought groceries and he was alone a lot. At twelve he discovered you could make a somewhat convincing facsimile of Thai food with peanut butter and jarred salsa. At least according to the palette of a preteen Texan of German descent who at the time hadn’t tasted real Thai food.
Al had given Sam free rein of the kitchen more than a year ago, ever since Sam had silently handed his boss a lemon chiffon cake for his wife’s birthday (her favorite) with a Post-it note on the top: “For Mrs. Petridis.” She’d declared it the best she’d ever tasted, and although Al knew better than to make a big deal of it, his better half insisted on passing Sam pamphlets for culinary school. For Sam’s birthday they bought him a small stack of hardcover cookbooks and the gesture moved Sam so profoundly that he couldn’t make eye contact with Al for a week. At the Petridises’ urging, Sam secured his food handler’s permit and now created the weekly menu of sandwiches, soups, and salads, as well as the pastries. He got up at five a.m. to prep, while Finley, his ace, his number two at House, a dark-skinned, lanky Mexican kid with a big hipster beard and a Scottish name, came in at eight to man the register and bus tables.
“That one’s pistachio,” Sam told Al. “And vanilla-hibiscus, espresso, and salted dark chocolate.” Sam had gotten the recipe from a food blogger, who said they were irresistible to women and wrote candidly about her exploits that testified to it.
“Want?” Sam handed over the tray as a matter of course.
“Yeah, I’ll try a donut.” Al’s round face halved the smaller circle with a single bite. “Namazinnn, Sammy!” he said with his mouth full. Al’s shadow hovered ever closer to sample the other flavors. Other than his mom, Al was the only person allowed to call him Sammy.
Al cocked his head. “Say, Sammy, you all right?” Al was also the only one to regularly inquire about his mood.
The thing about Sam was that he had a tell. Well, two. They weren’t an exact science, but they gave you a sense. One was his hair. He had a great head of hair. Dark and longer on top, his ex-girlfriend—who came up as “Liar” on his phone now—had referred to it as irresponsible hair.
If it was relaxed and tucked behind his ears, Sam was chill. If it was slicked back, he was spoiling for a fight. If it was fluffy—a very rare treat—it meant he completely trusted whoever was around at the time. Sam’s hair hadn’t been fluffy in a while.
Today it was tucked back yet also, kinda, done. With the telltale sheen of product. It was inscrutable.
Avid Sam observers, especially if they were monitoring him in his own habitat, could check for his next tell. Sam’s happiness was somehow tied to his desire to bake. When you walked into House and there in the display case was a cold lone scone and an anemic trio of store-bought Danish, you were better to keep a wide berth. You should treat him as you would a man with a scab where his eye had been and the words “NOT TODAY, SATAN” branded in giant letters across his forehead—with caution.
While House bought their bread from Easy Tiger, pastries typically were Sam’s domain. If the case and cake stands were resplendent with crunchy fresh-baked coffee cake, whoopie pies, or caramelized banana bread pudding pots with cream cheese frosting, it meant that Sam was liable to make out with you if you walked in. Plus, you’d enjoy it. Sam was a dynamite maker-outer. Today he’d whipped together a dozen hand pies and the donuts and nothing else—and that could mean anything.
“Yeah, Al. Doing great.” Sam carefully face-planted the largest O into a shallow dish of vanilla-hibiscus glaze and set it carefully on a wire rack. The smile may have been the most unnerving part. Sometimes Sam appeared a touch unhinged on the rare occasions he did it. As if his face were out of practice. Not that he frowned either—that betrayed too much information. Mostly he stared straight through you.
“Okay, then,” said Al, glancing over at Sam as he left. Just to make sure.
Sam dipped another donut in glaze. His hands were bony and veiny and moved quickly. His arms, lean, tanned, and blanketed in tattoos, would have looked at home on a Russian convict. Sam had a lot of tattoos. All over his chest, back, and calves.
He wiped up a bright fuchsia dribble of icing with his left hand and continued dipping the remaining three donuts with his right. He was pleased with the results.
Some guys wouldn’t call baking or the ability to make a Pikachu foam cappuccino topper particularly manly pursuits, but Sam wasn’t just any guy. He didn’t concern himself with how fist-pumping frat dudes with crippling masculinity issues and no necks spent their time.
Fin came in and immediately eyed the racks. There were six trays with four immaculate donuts cooling on each.
“What are these, limited-edition?” he asked. “We’ll sell out these shits in an hour.”
“Nah, they’re off-menu. I’m making these for someone,” Sam said. Fin huffed the sweet donut steam.
“You can’t bake for these girls out the gate, Sam. You’ve got to manage expectations.”
Sam smiled his wonky smile.
Fin studied him warily.
“Dude. Please.” Fin’s shoulders slumped. “Come on, tell me these aren’t . . . Please tell me you’re not dating lyin’-ass Liar again,” said Fin, hands up in a defense pose. “Yo, I get it. She’s hot—no disrespect—but the last time y’all broke up, I didn’t know if I was going to make it.”
Sam ignored any mention of the Great Love of His Life.
“Seriously, Sam, you were in a bad place for so long,” said Fin. “Monster-ass chem trails coming out of your ears, man.”
“They’re not for her,” Sam said.
Fin hung up his backpack, threw on an apron, and glanced at the rack that held bloopers. “Can I kill these?” Sam nodded, and Fin took down a misshapen glazed in a single bite. “Mmmm,” he said, cramming another half into his mouth. “These are way too good for her anyway.”
PENNY.
It was the big day. Penny considered feeling sad. It was supposed to be bittersweet, wasn’t it? Leaving home and going off to college was A Thing. She blinked for moisture—no dice. Along the lines of having a sneeze you can’t find or an itch that lives too deep under the skin, college felt surreal, conceptually out of reach. Even the application process felt like it was happening to someone else. It was unimaginable that there would be any consequences to filling out the forms and writing the essay. She applied to only one place—the University of Texas at Austin—and got in. By law. Everyone in the top ten percent of their Texas high school did.
Penny’s new phone chimed next to her on the bed. It was Mark.
Good luck baby!
Text me when you get there!
Penny rolled onto her back and smiled. She considered what to write back. The screen beneath her thumbs was so shiny. God, her phone was beautiful. Rose gold, in a black rubber case that read, Whatever, Whatever, Whatever, it was easily nicer than anything she’d ever owned. She wiped down a smudge with her T-shirt. It was way too pretty to be desecrated with nudes. Especially with a 2436-by-1125-pixel resolution at 458ppi. Penny sent a generic smile emoji back.
She went downstairs. While Penny’s walls were bare, every other surface in Celeste’s home, much like her car or her desk at work, was covered with keepsakes.
According to Penny, her mom wasn’t very mom-like, much less Asian-mom-like. It wasn’t solely that she dressed like a fashion blogger and was younger than other moms. Celeste didn’t monitor Penny’s homework or insist on piano lessons. Okay, so maybe Penny’s idea
of an Asian mom came from the movies, but she hadn’t grown up with a lot of Asians in her life. Let alone Koreans specifically. Penny had a Korean name and it was bogus. It was “Penny”—not even Penelope—spelled out phonetically in Korean characters so it didn’t actually mean anything.
When she was three they’d visited her grandparents in Seoul, but she’d been too little to remember anything and they’d never gone back. Celeste did, however, dedicate a Korean corner in her home. An altar of sorts. It included a miniature Korean flag and a framed poster of the 1988 Olympics with the cartoon tiger mascot. There was also a small laminated picture of the pop star Rain in a white suit from years before he went into the military for mandatory service. The first time Penny’s friend Angie came over, she asked her if it was a photo of her brother.
Elsewhere in the house there were snow globes galore, Eiffel Towers of varying sizes and framed pictures of World-Famous Art—two renditions of Van Gogh’s Starry Night (one on a tea towel), Monet’s water lilies, and several of Degas’s blurry ballerinas. Penny called the whole lot “fridge magnet art.” Stuff you’d seen enough times that you could imagine the factory workers in China rolling their eyes about having to keep churning it out.
The only memento Penny prized was a framed picture of her parents. She’d carefully wrapped it in a T-shirt and stowed it in her backpack to bring to school. It was the only photo she had of them, possibly the only one in existence, and Penny treasured it. It was the source of 50 percent of the material in her “dad” dossier. Other information included:
1. Penny’s mom and dad had met, of all places, in a bowling alley on dates with other people.
2. Her dad had a cute butt (Celeste’s words) because he played baseball in high school.
3. They were inseparable. Until, of course, they weren’t.
4. He was Korean too!
5. His name was Daniel Lee and as far as Penny knew he lived in Oregon or Oklahoma. It could have been Ohio. In any case, it started with an O.
6. In those three states combined there were 315 Daniel Lees. Some were probably white. Or perhaps black.
In the picture, Penny’s parents are at the beach at Port Aransas. They’re kids. Celeste hasn’t visibly changed over the years (Asian don’t raisin) except her face was rounder then, fuller in the cheeks and lips. They’re sitting on a black and yellow Batman beach towel. Daniel Lee has a straw cowboy hat perched on his head but no shirt. Celeste’s wearing a trucker hat that says PORN STAR, a bright red bikini, legs crisscrossed, and she’s grinning behind huge white sunglasses while holding an ICEE. Celeste swears the ICEE must have been a pregnancy craving since blue raspberry usually makes her gag. To Penny, it’s cosmically unfair that her mom’s tummy can be that flat while she’s pregnant, but then it’s hardly fair that her dark-eyed father would skip town two months before Penny was born either.
“He was the funniest guy I’d ever met,” Celeste said when Penny unwrapped the parcel on her eighth birthday. “He asked the best questions.” Penny had been asking a lot of questions for a genealogy assignment. She wanted to know everything (mostly as it related to her)—whether he asked about Penny, if he had another family with brothers and sisters for her to play with, when she could see him. But Penny could tell Celeste hated talking about him. She became withdrawn and went to her room with a headache. So Penny shoved the questions to the back of her brain and never brought him up again. The photo, she kept in a drawer.
Downstairs, Celeste was sniffling in the kitchen, as she’d been when Penny went to bed. Penny suspected a performative aspect to her mom’s crying. Comparable to YouTubers sobbing during heavily edited confessional vlogs, Celeste bawled lustily during the semifinals of reality singing competitions and any movie involving animals. Penny would rather eat a pound of hair than reveal her true emotions. Not to mention how Penny wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop once she got going.
“Mom?”
Celeste glanced up from the wadded tissues in her hands. Her eyes were puffy as if she actually had been crying all night.
“Hi, baby.” She smiled before crumpling again. “Can I please come with you? I could buy you lunch. Help you decorate?”
“I can buy my own lunch,” Penny said. “Plus, you’d have to trail me in your car and drive all the way back by yourself. I’d have to get back in my car and follow you to make sure you got home safe. A vicious cycle.”
Celeste swallowed. “You know, I didn’t know it would hurt this bad?” She seemed genuinely surprised. Celeste’s narrow shoulders quivered like an agitated Chihuahua. Penny sighed and hugged her. She was going to miss her.
Oh, shit. Am I going to cry?
She squeezed her eyes tighter for any reciprocal condensation.
Nope.
“Well, I’m proud of you,” Celeste said, pulling away and smiling bravely.
Penny peered down at her. Celeste seemed small. Feeble really. And damp. In the afternoon light, in jeans and a faded T-shirt that read SLAY HUNTY, Celeste resembled an incoming freshman as much as Penny did.
It was sad that things had gotten so bad between them. When Penny was in grade school, they’d been thick as thieves. Back when the greatest excitement Penny could imagine was having a Starbucks salted caramel mocha for breakfast, Penny thought she was so lucky to have her mom as her best friend. She could stay up late, wear makeup, borrow her mom’s clothes, and dye her hair any color of the rainbow—life was a riot—a never-ending slumber party. In middle school Penny started to see things differently. She no longer texted her mother a thousand times a day for outfit approval or advice. Celeste and Penny became a study in contrasts. Celeste was proud of her well-mannered, studious daughter, teaching her how to forge her name on letters from school and getting Penny her own credit card for “fashion emergencies.” Celeste encouraged Penny to get her hardship driver’s license at fifteen, not because they needed her to but because Celeste thought it would bolster Penny’s popularity to drive her friends around. The harder Celeste tried, the more Penny pulled away. If anything, Penny resented that Celeste had decided somewhere along the way that her daughter could parent herself.
Penny walked to the driveway with her mom trailing her. She turned for a one-armed hug. Imagining herself as part of an animal control unit lassoing a python in a studio apartment, she held Celeste’s gaze with her own the whole time. Then—with no sudden movements—she deftly popped the car door open with her free hand and slid in.
Seat belt fastened, Penny eased out of the driveway and into freedom. Part of her dreaded going to college alone. In the Instagram Stories version, her dad would haul her boxed-up belongings in a big truck. They’d argue about what to play on the way there and he’d give up the aux cord, since he’d miss her so much. As he left, he’d get choked up, handing her fifty dollars while mumbling something about making good time, and Penny would know deep in her heart how much he loved her.
“I love you, baby!” wailed Celeste, jolting Penny from her thoughts.
Penny rolled down her window. “I love you too, Mommy. I’ll call you later. I promise.”
This time Penny did feel a pang. Her nose got that stinging, chlorine feeling you get right when you’re about to cry. She checked her rearview to see her already small mom getting smaller, waving big.
• • •
An hour and a half later, Penny pulled into the curved driveway at Kincaid.
“Jesus,” she whispered, clutching her steering wheel to gaze up at the building. Kincaid was among the oldest dorms at UT, and it was hideous. Penny wondered if you could feel the ugliness from the inside. Boasting eight floors painted in alternating blue and salmon layers, it resembled a Miami hotel from the 1970s more than a dorm. Eighty units of eyesore that were the tackiest part of the campus skyline. The lurid hues reminded Penny of kicky animal-print scrubs favored by pediatric oncologists. It was the upbeatness that made the whole thing depressing.
Throngs of anxious parents and freshmen huddled around SUVs carting
enormous plastic bins, laundry baskets, and floor lamps. Just as Penny rolled down her window to scope the scene, a freckly brunette stuck her face into her car until they were nose-to-nose. Her eyes were bulbous, glinting with a helpfulness that bordered on menacing.
“Name?” yawped the girl. Penny smelled Fritos on her breath.
“Lee,” she supplied. “Penelope.”
“Hmm . . . Lee?” She drew her finger down her clipboard and then tapped it. “Ah,” she said triumphantly. “There you are, sweetie.”
Ugh. Sweetie. This chick was nineteen tops.
The girl’s eyes flickered over Penny’s red lipstick. Penny had found it with a note to “smile more!” in her backpack pocket. Celeste had a habit of tucking cosmetics or clipped-out articles about the effects of positive thinking among Penny’s things. Sneak-attack gifts that felt like criticism.
“Sweetie?” Penny sang back. “Can you back up a smidge? You’re practically inside of my face with your face?” She said it exactly how she imagined the girl would, with everything going up in a question.
There was no way Little Miss Texas Corn Chip was going to “sweetie” her into submission.
The girl swiftly withdrew her head.
“Oh my God?” she chirped, bleached teeth gleaming. “So many of the parents literally can’t hear me? I’ve been yelling for hours?” The girl inspected Penny’s lipstick again. “Wait. I’m obsessed with how matte that is. What is it?”
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