Parking the car, Sam grabbed the two bags of loot from the trunk before crossing to the passenger side and opening the door for her mother.
Eva grasped Sam’s proffered arm. Rising and glancing at the house, she turned to her daughter. “How do we…get in?”
“Oh, I just asked Pauly what he ever did if he got locked out. He told me they keep a key hidden under the third light on the right.” Sam indicated the knee-high lanterns bordering the path to the front porch.
“Resourceful.” Eva patted her hand. Sam escorted her mother halfway down the path, stopped to snatch up the key from its hiding place, and continued to the porch. “This feels…wrong,” her mother whispered as Sam unlocked the front door.
“Oh, c’mon, Mom, do you really think Pauly and Maria said that when they were stuffing my underwear drawer with zucchinis?”
Eva’s smile indicated that her reservations weren’t that serious. Sam pushed open the door and held it for her mother. Glancing outside to make sure no curious neighbors were staring, she closed the door and threw the deadbolt.
“Okay, Mom, you have your orders. You start in the bathroom, and I’ll head to the kitchen. If you run into any problems, just call.” She slipped one of the grocery bags over Eva’s arm. “You got that? It’s not going to fall?”
Eva smiled. “It’s fine.”
She passed a sheet of yellow, lined paper to her mother, who made soft tsk-tsk noises but nonetheless clutched the list in her trembling hand and made her way into the bathroom by Pauly’s room. Nodding in satisfaction at both her ingenious conspiracy and her mother’s independence, Sam turned and marched toward the kitchen.
Twice she had to pause in her own endeavors to help her mother with tasks requiring more dexterity than Eva possessed, and once she helped her mother to a chair so she could rest. But for all her posturing about the ethics of their conspiracy, Eva was grinning from ear to ear, and it was clear that she was having the time of her life.
Promptly at eight a.m. the next morning, Eva and Sam knocked on the door of the Sanchez residence. When no one answered, they smiled at each other, and Sam knocked harder. A couple of minutes passed before Maria threw open the door wearing a white terrycloth bathrobe and not much else. Her dark hair curled in eight different directions, and her eyes were puffy with sleep. She looked adorable, and Sam’s hand flew to her mouth in a vain attempt to cover up a huge grin. Maria glared.
“Just wake up?” Sam asked, reaching out to move an errant curl back to its regular place. It stubbornly bounced right back.
Maria rubbed her eyes. “Please come in. I guess my alarm didn’t go off. Remind me again why we’re doing breakfast at such an ungodly early hour? Restaurant folk operate on a later schedule, you know.”
Heading into the living room, Sam said too loudly, making Maria cringe, “Sorry, but Eva and I have a big day planned, and we needed to get an early start. Thanks for having us over.”
“No problem,” Maria mumbled, following them and fussing with her hair. As the Lathams settled into the couch in the living room, Pauly entered, his too-long pajama pants dragging on the hardwood floor. Sleep had wreaked havoc on his hair, too.
“Hey, Maria, did you unplug my alarm clock? It didn’t go off.”
“Is it still lit up?”
“Uh huh.”
“Then it’s plugged in. Mine didn’t go off either. Maybe we forgot to set them.”
“No, I know I set it before we left for the theater,” Pauly insisted.
Sam cut in. “Why don’t you two go take quick showers, and Eva and I will watch something on your TV while we wait.”
“You sure that’s okay?” Maria asked, unable to keep the relief out of her voice.
“Definitely.” Sam made a show of sniffing the air. “You could both use it.”
Maria picked up a pillow and threw it at her. “Very funny, wise guy.”
Pauly stood rooted in place, scratching his head, still puzzling over the alarm clock mystery. Maria spun him around and gave him a gentle shove toward the hallway. “We’ll be quick,” she said as they retreated to their respective bathrooms.
Once the noise of the showers drowned out their voices, Eva grabbed Sam’s arm and laughed. “We did good.”
“That was the hardest part. I really wanted to be here when they were showering. I think everything will fall into place now.” She snatched up the remote and flipped channels before landing on cartoons and lowering the volume. Five minutes later, the water in both bathrooms had been turned off, and she and her mother strained to overhear the exchange between Maria and Pauly.
“Hey Sis, did you buy new soap?” Pauly called from his bathroom.
The door to Maria’s master bedroom opened, and Sam imagined her sticking out her head out. “Nope. But where did you put all my shampoo?”
“Your shampoo? Nowhere. I didn’t touch it.”
“Well, it’s all gone except for this airplane bottle, and the shampoo in it smells funny.”
“You told me not to touch your products. So I never do.”
After a slight pause, Maria asked, “What’s up with your soap?”
“It was weird. Like, it never got foamy. It just wasn’t working.”
“Buddy, if you still stink, just wash up again.”
“No, that’s not it. I swear, it won’t work.”
“Soap’s not a thing that works or doesn’t work. It’s just soap.”
“Well, you use it then.”
“Forget it. Hurry up—we’ve got breakfast to make.”
As they closed their doors, Eva giggled and Sam hurriedly turned up the volume. “Shh, Mom, you’ll give us away!”
Eva poked her. “You…no straight face. Straight…not your thing.”
She burst out laughing. “Fine, let’s just say we were telling jokes.”
Maria emerged with her long, wet hair dampening the back of her sweatshirt. She looked significantly more alert now, and happier at the prospect of cooking. “Who’s hungry?” she asked, rubbing her hands together.
Eva and Sam relocated to the stools at the breakfast bar, and Maria bustled around the kitchen.
Sam inhaled deeply. “Maria, I’m kind of in the mood for pancakes.” She sniffed again. “I just kind of want…pancakes and syrup. Yeah, that’s it. Pancakes and syrup.”
Maria, who had been fussing in a low cabinet, stood and turned, glaring suspiciously at Sam. “Syrup?” she asked, and her hand instantly went to her hair. Her eyes narrowed, and she slowly crossed the kitchen until she was standing across from Sam, the island between them. “Samantha Latham. Did you by any chance put maple syrup in my shampoo bottle?”
Sam licked her lips. “What a ridiculous idea. How would I even do that?” She leaned forward and put her nose close to Maria’s damp hair. “But you do kind of smell sweet and sugary.” She pulled back. “Or French toast. I’d eat French toast for breakfast, too.”
A little laugh escaped from Eva and Maria spun to her. “Were you in on this?”
Eva shook her head solemnly. “Was thinking about…joke Samantha…told me.”
Maria ran her hand through her hair. “You two aren’t fooling me you know. But I’m starving, so why don’t we just focus on breakfast?” She turned and headed to the fridge, and while she was pulling some vegetables out of the crisper for an omelet, Sam and Eva grinned at each other.
“So what was this joke Sam told you?’ Maria asked, a knowing smile on her face as she headed toward the sink to rinse some spinach.
Sam panicked for a moment. She didn’t know any jokes. Wait, Jack used to tell really corny jokes, and surely she could remember one of them. While she wracked her memory, Maria cut in.
“Uh-huh. Thought so. You weren’t telling jokes—you were playing jokes.” She reached for the faucet.
“No, no, it goes like this. A mushroom
walks into a bar—”
But Sam was saved from having to recall the punch line when Maria turned the water on. Instead of flowing down from the faucet, water burst forth from the sink sprayer, the handle of which had been rubber-banded down. Maria sputtered and struggled to figure out the problem before slamming the faucet handle down. Water dripped from her bangs, off her nose, and down the front of her sweatshirt and this time Pauly, who had just sat down next to Sam, joined Eva in laughter.
Trying to keep it together, Sam grabbed a kitchen towel and hurried over to her. As she began wiping off Maria’s face, Maria snatched the towel from her.
“I suppose you think you’re funny!” she huffed, which only generated more laughter from Pauly and Eva.
Sam put her lips right next to Maria’s ear and whispered, “Payback, baby.” Her lips skimmed the excruciatingly soft skin there, and she pulled back quickly.
“All right, fine. Good. We’re even now,” Maria announced before pulling off her sweatshirt and throwing it at Eva, who, surprisingly, managed to catch it. Even Maria’s T-shirt was wet.
Changing the subject, Sam turned to Pauly. “So, this mushroom walks into a bar. And the bartender says, ‘We don’t serve your kind here.’ And the mushroom says, ‘Why not? I’m a fun guy.’ Get it, Pauly? Fungi?”
He grinned and nodded.
Maria threw a dishtowel at her. “You do know that joke’s not even funny, right?”
“Oh, come on, I’m hilarious.”
Maria brushed past her to continue prep for breakfast, whispering in her ear, “You know what’s hilarious?”
At the feel of breath and heat and Maria’s body, Sam jumped about three feet in the air. Maria proceeded to the stove, laughing. “That’s hilarious.”
Pauly set dishes and flatware on the island countertop, and a still-jumpy Sam returned to her seat.
“Hey Pauly, why don’t you tell Sam about your soap,” Maria suggested as she heated a skillet and began whisking eggs.
“Oh yeah, good idea! Sam, it was the weirdest thing. My soap wouldn’t work this morning. Has that ever happened to you?”
“Hm, maybe. What do you mean, it wouldn’t work?”
“Like, it didn’t get soapy.”
She contemplated the soap quandary for a minute. “Why don’t you go get it and maybe we can figure out the problem.”
“Okay!” He headed down the hallway.
Maria glanced in the fridge, and discovered it had been emptied of all forms of juice. “Did you drink our OJ?”
Sam shrugged. “We got thirsty.”
Shaking her head, Maria headed to the garage, which held a second fridge filled with backup supplies. Sam and Eva both leaned over a bit to see around Maria’s body as she grasped the handle and turned. As soon as she pushed the kitchen door open, small tinkling sounds hit their ears and Maria squealed, then burst out laughing.
“You’re kidding me with this, right?” When she finally stopped laughing, she stood to the side and allowed Eva and Sam a full view through the door to reveal the fridge and, lower, the contents of an entire box of Dominos, which were no longer in their intricate zigzag pattern just on the other side of the door, but were now fallen here and there all over the floor.
“That’s adorable,” Maria admitted. Stepping over the collapsed Dominos, she grabbed a jug of orange juice out of the garage fridge and returned to the kitchen at the same moment as Pauly.
“See, look, it even feels weird,” he said, thrusting it toward his sister. She took it in her free hand and brought it to her nose.
Knitting her brows, she glanced at Sam. “Why does my brother’s soap smell like acetone?”
“Oh, um. Maybe because it’s got a coat of clear nail polish on it.”
“Hm. That would explain it.” She handed the soap back to her brother. “Just throw it away and get a new one, bro. Samantha ruined it.”
Pauly stuck his tongue out at Sam as he left to replace his soap.
“You know,” Maria began, pointing her spatula at her guests, “you’re lucky you two are cute.”
“Eh, you’re lucky we’re cute. You’re the one who has to look at us,” Sam said.
Imitating her brother, Maria stuck her tongue out before turning back to the stove.
Reentering the kitchen, Pauly resumed setting the table with silverware and napkins. The cabinet that usually housed the glasses, however, was empty. “Maria, where are the glasses?”
She flipped the omelet. “Probably in the dishwasher.”
“Oh. Okay.” He crossed to the dishwasher and pulled open the door. Long, skinny, green balloons—the type that clowns twist into animals—erupted from dishwasher and floated into Pauly’s face, through the air into the sink, and all around the floor.
Pauly looked up, startled and confused, until Eva and Sam yelled, “Zucchini balloon bombing!”
“Oh!” Pauly exclaimed. “That’s funny!”
“You’re just lucky they didn’t land in our breakfast!” Maria pointed out before stepping around the snake-like balloons covering her floor to serve up the eggs.
The food was, unsurprisingly, delicious. Underneath her light banter, Sam could tell Maria was relieved that breakfast was uneventful.
After the dishes were cleared, Sam and Eva grabbed their coats. “We’re off to do some Christmas shopping,” Sam said.
“Get me something nice!” Pauly said. “Maria, can I watch some TV?”
“Go for it. And as for you two,” she turned to Sam and Eva. “I hope you enjoyed your little pranks. You’d better get each other something very fancy for Christmas, because Santa is always watching, and he might not bring you any presents this year.”
“Don’t forget to change the a.m./p.m. setting on your alarm clocks,” Sam said, grinning.
From their position by the front door, they could see Pauly plop into his favorite spot on the couch. A loud, long, juicy, flatulent sound burst forth from underneath him, and Maria exploded in laughter. Pauly reached under the pillow he had sat on and pulled out a deflated whoopee cushion.
“Pauly! It’s polite to say ‘excuse me’ when that happens,” Sam said.
He tossed the whoopee cushion at her. “No, excuse you!”
Laughter from the Sanchez siblings serenaded them as Sam guided her mother down the path and to the car.
“Payback, baby!” Maria called out before Sam could close the car door and drive away.
WINTER 2009
Despite vowing not to drink and dance in Maria’s basement ever again, Sam was doing just that a few months after the fiasco with Natalie. Sam and Maria were dancing to Sly and the Family Stone’s “Thank You” and debating the lyrics. “There’s no way those are the words,” she said and stopped dancing long enough to put her hands on her hips.
“Samantha, I swear to you, the true parenthetical title is ‘Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin.’”
“Where’s your laptop? I’m looking this up.”
“Suit yourself, but I’d rather be dancing.” Maria’s heels clicked on the dance floor as she twirled.
Sam smiled at Maria’s laptop’s wallpaper, a photo of Pauly wrestling in the grass with Zeus. While she Googled, the song ended, and Maria changed her dance style to accommodate the strains of “The Way You Do the Things You Do,” swaying her hips and snapping. Sam grunted as she realized Sly and the Family Stone had indeed spelled the subtitle to “Thank You” phonetically. Sort of. “You were right,” she mumbled.
Maria sashayed over to her and, removing the computer from Sam’s lap, grabbed her hands and pulled her up to the dance floor. She tossed her arms loosely around Sam’s neck and grinned at her. “Wasn’t the first time. Won’t be the last. Get used to it, baby.” Sam rolled her eyes and tried to weasel her way off the hardwood and onto the much safer carpet.
Maria wasn’t having it. “Sam
, dear, you need to let loose. I know you’re anxiously awaiting UVM’s response to your application, but you’ve got at least a month before you’ll hear from them, and you can’t spend that much time this tightly wound.” She twirled Sam clockwise, then counterclockwise, then back again, until Sam felt the room spin.
“You want my stomach to let loose?”
“Okay, grumpy pants, why don’t you play DJ? Find something you’ll dance to.”
Sam headed to the record player in the corner and leafed through the vinyls. She selected Janis Joplin, and soon the two of them were jumping around and singing. Maria grabbed her and threw their bodies into a rigorous tango, than a cha-cha, reveling in the incongruity between their dance moves and Janis’s beat. When the song ended they fell into each other’s arms, breathless and laughing.
Maria pulled away, but Sam reached out and tucked an errant black curl behind Maria’s ear. Maria’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion when Sam snaked her hand around the back of Maria’s head and began pulling her closer. As Sam’s eyes closed in advance of kissing her, Maria pushed her away. “Sam, no.”
“What? I thought…wait, Maria, I thought you…I thought you wanted this.”
“I do.” But she made no move to close the distance between them.
Sam took a hesitant step toward her. “Then, what’s the problem?”
Backing up, Maria shook her head. “Not like this. This isn’t what I want from you.”
Sam felt hazy all of a sudden, as though she were lost in a San Francisco fog. “What? What do you want from me?”
Maria closed her eyes, and Sam watched her shoulders rise and fall with each breath. A full minute passed in silence. When Maria finally looked at her again, her eyes were almost black. “Everything. I want all of you. You’re right; I want to kiss you, touch you. I want to feel you quake beneath me, and I want your sweat all over me. I’m in love with you, Samantha Latham. I won’t have a one-night stand with you, or casual kisses. I want to make love to you seventeen different ways until you shatter into a million pieces only I can put back together. I want you when you’re an arrogant asshole doctor and when you’re a vulnerable mess. I want the best and the worst of you, and I won’t settle for anything less.” Maria caressed Sam’s cheek. “But you’re still taken with the idea of someone else. You let me know when you’re free of her.”
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