Because I Said So

by Karin Kallmaker

  This was turning into an eggshell conversation. “I can’t tell you what you feel. I can only decide if I trust your description of it.” Well, that sounded terribly clinical, didn’t it? “I trust that you are sure of it.”

  “Well, that’s something. I don’t think Kesa can understand. She’s never been in love. Have you?”

  “Yes.” Then Shannon realized she’d said it aloud.

  “Why didn’t it work out?”

  “There were lots of reasons.” Sure, she chided herself, now you can lie. There had only been one reason. She went on lying, hoping that Josie didn’t know her well enough to tell. “What you’re talking about sounds like love at first sight to me, and I have no proof that love at first sight exists.”

  She heard a noise behind them and wondered how much Paz had heard. His glance was inquiring, but he resumed stirring the chili without comment.

  The conversation was considerably easier over dinner. Josie totally loved the addition of nonfat Greek yogurt spooned atop the chili, along with a sprinkling of grated cheddar cheese.

  “It’s a diet compromise,” Shannon said.

  Josie had another bite and made a satisfied sound. “This is so much better than what I’d make for myself. I always cook for myself on Wednesdays.”

  Shannon tried hard to sound very casual. “Your sister is busy on Wednesdays?”

  “She plays Mahjong. Says it’s relaxing. The Mahjong gang is fun, but it’s not my kind of game.” Josie seemed about to roll her eyes but instead added, “It really is the one thing she does every week to take a break from working.”

  Mahjong? Shannon knew nothing about the game. “She really has to hustle for work, I bet.”

  “It’s endless. She has a couple big name clients, like Jennifer Lamont.” Josie clapped a hand to her mouth as Paz whistled. “Please, please don’t tell anyone! I’m not supposed to say her name. I saw a picture of her online and recognized the dress from when it was on a dress form in our apartment and that’s the only way I even knew. Kesa doesn’t say names very much, but I overhear sometimes. There’s these agreements she signs.”

  “Non-disclosure agreements,” Shannon said automatically. Her head was spinning a little. “Sounds like a tough business.”

  “She’s really good at it, but she has zero private life time. Work and more work.”

  Did that mean Kesa didn’t have a girlfriend? As much as she wanted to know, Shannon was not about to ask for clarification. They’d think she was angling for information because she was interested herself. Which was true, but they didn’t need to know it.

  Paz refilled his bowl. “I looked at some of the stuff she spread out when we moved her into the workshop, so it wouldn’t wrinkle. It’s engineering with cloth instead of bricks and mortar or solder and silicon. More unpredictable and very fragile.” He glanced at his hands. “I’d ruin some of those fabrics.”

  Josie twined her fingers with his. “Don’t sell yourself short. You have a very sensitive touch.”

  Shannon laughed as his face flamed. “Do you enjoy doing that?” she asked Josie.

  “He’s so adorable when he blushes. I try not to take advantage of how easy it is.”

  Paz swatted at her as Josie poked him in the ribs. Though Shannon was still largely filled with unease about their precipitous plans, she was surprised by the unvarnished wave of envy she felt. They were comfortable and fearless.

  Exactly what she wasn’t.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Cami seemed more composed when Kesa arrived with lumpia. Auntie Ivy’s pinakbet was bubbling on the stovetop and Marisol had brought an apple crisp fresh from her oven. The pungent mix of cinnamon and cardamom in the air made her stomach do a happy dance, and she loaded her plate with extra chunks of squash and eggplant from the stew.

  “You all spoil me. I feel bad that I don’t make anything from scratch.”

  Auntie Ivy bit appreciatively into one of the lumpia. “These make up for it.”

  Kesa savored her first bite of veggies and ground pork from the pinakbet. Ginger filled her nose and cleared her head, which still felt muddled from the conversation in the coffee shop. Truly, this was miracle food. “The truth is, you don’t want me cooking for you. I’m not much good at it.”

  “You always say that, but I’m not sure I buy it,” Marisol said. “You follow incredibly complicated directions when you make a garment—a recipe is the same thing. Practice is what you need.”

  It was hard to argue with that. “Well, me lacking practice, you don’t want to eat my food. Josie puts up with my stir fry three nights a week because it’s free to her. Tonight I think she’s really happy to be having dinner with her new boyfriend. Who apparently cooks.”

  “She should snap him up right away,” Auntie Ivy said. “A man who cooks? They’re rare.”

  “She’s snapping him up all right,” Kesa muttered. She dipped the end of her lumpia into the pinakbet shrimp sauce and savored the result before continuing with the big news. “They want to get married.”

  Marisol’s eyebrows shot up. “She’s still a child!”

  “How old is this boy?” Auntie Ivy’s face went from intrigued to stormy. “I have never approved of child marriage.”

  “As Josie forcefully reminds me, she’s not a child. She’s nineteen. Old enough to vote and join the army and get married in California. Her boyfriend is twenty.”

  “Was that his mom in Nom Nom Pocha?” Kesa’s wide-eyed glare of warning came too late. Cami gulped and had another bite of lumpia.

  “Not his mother,” Kesa said quickly. “She’s a guardian of sorts and concerned, like I am, that they’re both too young.”

  “What will you do?” Marisol began choosing tiles and they all followed suit.

  Kesa paused to enjoy the snick-snick as the tiles were stacked and aligned. “I’m open to ideas. I mean, they think they fell in love at first sight. That’s so ridiculous. They’re completely focused on the intensity and not how they’ll pay the bills.”

  “They’re too young to know what they want,” Auntie Ivy declared. “Who they really are.”

  Kesa made herself not look at Cami. “They don’t think so. He’s a very nice young man. I just want…” She swallowed, thinking that what she really wanted was to know that Josie would be safe and okay and happy. As much as she had sometimes out of weariness wished someone would take the burdens of caring for her sister off her shoulders, she didn’t want that to happen if Josie wouldn’t be safe. And have a chance to make the most of her life that she could. Josie still needed someone to look out for her, guide her. No matter how nice Paz was, he was still a kid too. “I just want her to think through how they’re going to live. At least neither of them wants to become parents yet and they seem very aware of the necessary precautions.”

  “Thank goodness for that.” Marisol claimed Auntie Ivy’s discarded four-dot and added two fours of her own to create a pong. “Because nature doesn’t always go along with our plans.”

  “Love at first sight, huh?” Cami played chow with Marisol’s discarded five-dot. “Sounds romantic.”

  Kesa stopped herself from remarking that “wasn’t Josie lucky to have time for romance.” The jealous pang she felt gave her pause. “I’m sure it was.”

  Auntie Ivy snorted. “Romance is a luxury. It’s lovely to have it, and I did with your lolo, may he rest in peace. But flowers and chocolate won’t get you through the hard times. Then it takes both of you rowing the same direction and a lot of trust.”

  “Romance isn’t only flowers and chocolate,” Marisol said. “I think all the romance in the world can fit into a smile hello. It’s little things—knowing how much sugar someone takes in their tea.”

  “I’m afraid that Josie wouldn’t take either of our opinions about romance very seriously. She’s ‘in love’ and we’re not even dating anyone. We can’t possibly understand.”

  “Youth is wasted on the young,” Auntie Ivy said.

  Cami spread her h
ands. “Sitting right here.”

  “I know, bata. Experience is the great teacher.”

  “So how is Josie supposed to get the great teacher if she doesn’t have experiences?”

  Kesa frowned at Cami’s question. “I don’t wish a broken heart on anyone.”

  Marisol played her second pong, this time red dragons, as she said, “How do you treasure and protect love if you don’t know how easily it can be broken?”

  Not for the first time Kesa wondered what Marisol’s untold story was. There might be a potential beau in Manila, but she’d lost someone to death and rarely brought it up.

  Kesa had lost her parents and that still felt like a gaping wound sometimes. Losing Shannon was different but had felt equally deep—and now the pain was fresh all over again. It still ached. She’d put her heart out for Shannon to see and Shannon had looked away.

  Cami slowly picked up Kesa’s discarded north wind and added it to her hand with a look that Kesa knew too well. If Cami didn’t have Mahjong, she was close. “It sounds like you are making a case that broken hearts are an essential experience.”

  “I don’t know about essential,” Kesa said. “They may be unavoidable.”

  Marisol gave way to a fit of giggles. “Like a mammogram or Pap smear.”

  Auntie Ivy laughed along with Kesa, but Cami took a deep breath and blurted out, “I think I like girls.” She tipped her remaining tiles face up onto the table. “Mahjong.”

  Kesa’s heart stopped as Auntie Ivy gasped and said accusingly, “I knew you were hoarding winds!”

  “Everybody hoards winds,” Cami snapped. “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Yes, and I don’t want you to get some bug from Kesa’s sister—no dating just one girl and thinking you’ll get married, not at your age.”

  “Okay, lola. I’ll date lots of girls.” Cami’s smile crumpled and she burst into tears.

  The old lady left her seat to wrap her arms around her granddaughter, saying something tenderly in Filipino and adding, “I suspected. Your parents will be fine, you know that.”

  Kesa battled with her own tears at Cami’s courage. “This calls for ice cream,” she heard herself saying. “I’ll run down to the market.”

  She was out the door before anyone could point out there was a nice apple crisp warming in the oven. The cooling spring air helped to clear her head a little, but she felt as if she was running ahead of a demon of truth. It chased her into the market where she stewed over the choice of mint chip or caramel toffee.

  Cami had been so brave, and Kesa couldn’t help but think of the moment she’d said, “I love you” to Shannon. She’d offered up her feelings like a precious crystal and hadn’t known Shannon would let it shatter. She’d been sweeping up the pieces for the past four years, and seeing Shannon again had undone all that work.

  She wasn’t going to break any piece of herself over Shannon, not this time. That they’d gone right back to bed had been catharsis. She needed to hustle some new orders and make her workshop pay for itself. There was no room in her life for heartbreak. Not again.

  Her mind was made up about Shannon, which was more than she could say for the ice cream. Mint chip or caramel toffee? She decided to get both and diets be damned.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Too many nights in a row spent staring at the ceiling. Now it was too many mornings unable to meet her own eyes in the mirror as she brushed her teeth. Shannon would have liked to pretend she didn’t know what the problem was. But she did. She’d buried the guilt under worry for Paz, good food and fresh air in Portland, and focus on work.

  Coward.

  She was schooled by the younger people, who were fearless about their feelings. She wanted to call it reckless, which was an easy out and said in her aunt’s voice. The practice of incessant caution made her good at the work she did, which she not only loved but thought helpful in the world.

  Other times it quite clearly got in the way.

  Kesa had been fearless, once upon a time.

  Shannon gripped the sink, unable—unwilling—to hold back the memories. After their skin-searing first night she had arrived home the next day to spin through the living room like Julie Andrews on a mountaintop. She’d felt like sunshine itself.

  With a parting breathless kiss, Kesa had agreed to come to Shannon’s at six for pizza and a movie. That gave Shannon a few hours to clear away all the telltale signs of Single Woman Living Alone. She tsk’d at her lazy habits: sink full of coffee mugs and spoons, tampon box on the floor in the bathroom, a pile of suits for the dry cleaner, and three containers of science experiments in the refrigerator. Why hadn’t she gone ahead with her plan to change the thick living room drapes and replace the thinning carpet? The house still looked as if Aunt Ryanne was alive.

  She flung open every window she could, set alight lemongrass-scented candles, and attacked the bathroom with bleach. The antique sideboard’s collection of washed but not yet put-away dishes was quickly dealt with, and she revolved through the living room, picking up her aunt’s many knickknacks to put in a box buffered by newspaper—a task she’d meant to do on the first anniversary of her aunt’s death. Energized, she cleared a small space in the cluttered garage to house the arrangement of pressed flowers in glass frames from the living room. She unearthed a poster print by Clyfford Still she’d bought last year with the intention of finding a better frame before she hung it. The cheap plastic one would have to do. She hung it over the couch where the pressed flower collection had been and was happy to see that the tawny browns and oranges with shocks of blue and black looked as vibrant as she’d hoped.

  There was no helping the couch. She pulled a throw of gray and black Drummond tartan out of the hutch. Clan Drummond, her aunt had said, was the source of the Dealans many generations ago. It covered the aging upholstery at least.

  The trouble with the sunshine now streaming in through the French doors was how well it showed off all the dust. She could take care of that after she changed the sheets on the bed and put fresh towels in the bathroom. And wiped out the microwave so the movie popcorn wouldn’t smell as burnt when she popped it.

  The sunshine also showed off the neglected backyard. It was going to be a lovely evening. They could sit outside—if only. Weeds, leaves, cobwebs…

  She heard the thunk-dunk of the basketball next door and dashed out to the backyard to stand up on a deck chair so she could see over the fence.

  Paz and another boy were engaged in one-on-one, but the promise of ten bucks each for a half hour of yard work was tempting enough for their always empty wallets. They made good work of it, too, filling up her yard waste can and two lawn trash bags as well. Then they attacked the fence, patio furniture, and eaves with brooms, whisking away old webs and a first layer of grime from the patio table surface. For good measure they used the seat cushions to whack each other with all the energy and abuse that sixteen-year-olds could dish out, creating clouds of dust in the air.

  Amused by their vigor, Shannon made short work of the weeds that obscured the ailing herb garden. Aunt Ryanne had had a green thumb, but Shannon didn’t have the time for it. At least the backyard no longer looked like she was prepping for a haunted house event.

  As she handed over the cash to the boys, she asked Paz, “Could you run an errand for me, to the corner market?”

  “I could,” he answered blandly. His housemate had already disappeared next door.

  “Smartass. Would you run an errand for me?”

  “I’d be happy to.”

  She gave him another twenty. “I need something fresh. Like apples or oranges or both, or flowers. Like I could put them in a bowl or vase and make my dining room table look like I wasn’t raised in a cave.”

  Paz whistled. “You have a date!”

  She gave him a narrow look. “A friend is coming over for pizza and a movie.”

  “Sounds like a date to me.” He shoved her money into his pocket. “Want me to text you a photo of stuff before I
buy it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Next time I want a ride to the movies…?”

  “You got it.” It was always easy to strike a bargain with Paz. They shared a finely tuned sense of fairness.

  She tackled the bedroom next, filling the laundry bin and pushing it into the closet. Luxurious sheets were a personal indulgence and she had to shake away visions of Kesa—her skin, her hair, the line of her body—against the deep midnight blue cotton she chose. So, so distracting.

  After approving a collection of apples and oranges and a small bouquet of harvest-themed flowers Paz sent jpgs of, she cleaned out the fridge and regretted its barren, echoing interior. If Kesa stayed over they’d be having canned soup for breakfast. At least she had cold beer. She quickly texted Paz to buy a lime too, catching him in time. Corona and lime didn’t scream “date drink,” but it would suit them both. She’d order the pizza after Kesa arrived.

  She was a whirlwind after that, running through the house with the old Kirby vacuum and tattered feather duster, wishing she’d paid attention to the commercials promising her the dancing bliss a Swiffer was supposed to bring to her life. All the while a voice inside kept a countdown: “You see her again in 47 minutes… 46 minutes… 45…”

  She was out of the shower, dressed in her softest jeans and an untucked slim men’s blue-on-white J.Crew button-up, when the doorbell rang. A last look around confirmed big improvements, but there was still far too much of her aunt’s aura present. It was a good thing she didn’t believe in ghosts, or she’d be picturing Aunt Ryanne’s reaction to Shannon’s plans. They’d only had one conversation about Shannon’s sexuality. It had been extremely uncomfortable and brief and had ended with her aunt’s declaration, “It’s between you and the Lord. Talk it over with him.” Her aunt had retreated to her airless rooms and comforting books.

  She definitely would have been full of panicked predictions of mayhem and doom at the thought of Shannon admitting a stranger to the house, let alone one she was hoping to spend the night with again. Her own lack of nerves about it was bizarre and disconcerting, but she would go with the feelings for now. Why not?