by A. L. Woods
She’d scrunched up her nose when her parents suggested she give birth in Connecticut, too.
I’d intended to be here two hours ago, but I found myself held up by a mountain of paperwork that required my signature. My cramped wrist throbbed with a reminder. I’d scrawled my signature enough times today; I was certain that between the City of Fall River and Bank of America, they owned the rights to both of my testicles and had a promissory note for my firstborn.
When and if the latter happened.
I stopped dreaming about a world where that possibility existed months ago.
In the time that I’d been busy autographing document after document, Dougie called me thirteen times, six of which resulted in curse-laden voicemails that I skipped through on the drive to the hospital, and twenty-five text messages giving me the literal and very graphic play-by-play of what was happening to Penelope’s vagina.
Or going to happen, anyway.
I banked that I was going to get torn a new asshole as soon as I got there. I could feel its onset, the way a person with arthritic joints could predict rain.
My fingers worked to undo the buttons at the cuffs of my white dress shirt, rolling them with little finesse. I loosened the tie from around my neck and deposited it on the passenger seat. Pulling the sun visor down to look at the mirror, I gave myself the once-over.
All right, so I didn’t look like complete and utter shit; in fact, I looked semi-human. After four months, I was in a stable enough position to report that I retired the sleep-deprived zombie look.
I looked almost normal, and I use that term loosely going forward. Normal worked for exterior appearances. I wasn’t sure there was enough depth to the word to apply what was going on inwardly. At least the feeling was bearable, for now.
I could pass as a functional, contributing citizen to society and I had every intention of trying to keep some semblance of normality, even after I left this monolithic and ancient building that was harboring my best friend and his fiancée.
To be honest, the lingering loneliness that stuck around after what happened was always present, like background music when you were on hold with a financial institution. Some days, basic things like getting out of bed were hard. I learned to negotiate with myself, to put one foot in front of the other, and had become accustomed to the concept of disengaging with my own inner discourse. I pulled a page out of my ma’s book—I was in mourning in a way—and buried myself into new things, new projects, new hopes.
New dreams.
But never new people, despite Dougie’s well-meaning suggestion that “The best way to get over someone is to get under someone.”
That shit might have worked on all the other women who came and went in my life, but not her. I wouldn’t reduce her to a bed partner or an off-her-rocker ex-girlfriend.
She had been it for me. Or at least that was what I thought she would be.
Trying to forget her by sampling an all-you-can-eat buffet of pussy would have been meditative work, but I’d feel like shit after. Even if it would have been easy, her mark on my life wasn’t just a superficial graze that would heal with time. When she left, she may as well have taken a limb with her. I didn’t want to get under someone merely for the sake of saying it. I didn’t even know if I wanted to just “forget her,” either.
Until I was ready to fathom gaining a new bed partner, or worse, date again, I was in a committed relationship with my hand and my penchant for bad porn. Trina had a point—the delivery guy and lonely housewife trope was, well, so nineteen-ninety-five.
Flipping the visor shut, I opened the car door, nudged it shut with my knee after I was out, and plodded toward the hospital entrance. The sweltering July sun left beads of sweat forming along my spine, the bright ball of light sitting high in the sky. The air was heavy with humidity, a warm breeze tickling the rolled-up edges of my sleeves as my jean-clad legs cut the distance that separated me from my soon-to-be newborn niece or nephew.
The nurse at the desk directed me to the maternity ward, and with hands stuffed in my jean pockets, I followed the overhanging signs and rode the elevator.
Stepping off, I caught the familiar pitch of Dougie’s ma’s Irish lilt in the otherwise quiet ward. “That’s just lovely, dear. And have you got a release date?”
It was a mystery who she was talking to, but whoever it was, they couldn’t contend with Mrs. Patterson’s volume. I doubted it was Penelope’s parents; they wouldn’t be back from the Cayman Islands for another two days. Who took a vacation right before their daughter’s delivery date? Pompous assholes.
“Really? It takes that long?” Mrs. Patterson exclaimed. “I never woulda guessed.”
I couldn’t imagine what she was talking about, but the mystery solved itself once I rounded the corner.
Have you ever seen a ghost before? ’Cause I could now definitively say that I have. They don’t look like transparent figures, or like your ma’s good bedsheets that you cut holes into for a Halloween costume.
No, they’re about five-foot-five with enchanting brown eyes and lips that tasted like devastation and heartbreak—two things that should have scared me off from the beginning but just kept calling me back for more, akin to an addiction I couldn’t control.
Even after I detoxed, ghosts looked good.
Too good, frankly. And that kind of sucked the life out of me momentarily.
The only saving grace was that I realized my reaction wasn’t one-sided.
Raquel looked as though I had snatched the breath from her. Her expression was transfixed, mouth ajar, like she was mid-sentence with Mrs. Patterson before her synapses misfired and all of her cognitive function abandoned her. Her fingers were curled around the arms of her chair, her knuckles straining.
After a beat of a second or so, she rose to her feet. Her dark hair had grown out past her shoulders, the ends curling inwards, like she’d styled it that way on purpose. Since the last time I’d seen her, she gotten long bangs that were styled into wispy-looking fringes that looked like an accessory on her. Her fitted off-the-shoulder three-quarter-length black shirt drew my attention to her exposed midsection, her jeans cinched at her demure waist with a black braided belt.
She looked every bit a California wet teenage dream as she could have.
Until she opened her mouth and took away my ability to breathe without even trying. “Hi, Sean.”
How could two syllables sound so innately South Boston? What did I say about feeling semi-normal again? Right, that I use that term loosely.
It took me two attempts before I could get my greeting out. “Hey.” I was glad it came out brassy like a baritone and not squeaky like I feared it might when this reunion inevitably happened. I knew it was coming; Penelope and Dougie had warned me about it for weeks as Penelope’s delivery date crept closer.
Why shouldn’t Raquel be here? She was Penelope’s best friend; she’d become a confidant for Dougie when he needed a woman’s opinion. She was going to be their baby’s godparent, just like me. We were in this together for…well, life.
To be honest, I’d fooled myself into believing that the baby was doing me a solid by hanging around in uterus utopia a little while longer so I could straighten out the kinks in my shit some more. Now that Raquel was in front of me, where I could see her in the flesh after so many nights where she existed only in the fantasy of my dreams; I realized it didn’t make a damn bit of difference. The kinks would always exist like a wrinkle that refused the steam of a clothing iron. I could work it back and forth until my arm threatened to snap off, but it would be no use.
There was no expunging the way she continued to draw me toward her without even trying. One fleeting look at her, and I almost felt like I was right back to where I started.
But it was the reminder that my feelings were unrequited that had my insides twisting and my pulse racing uncontrollably. I found a scuff that ran along the orangish-brown colored floors, my eyes tracing along it, needing something else to do rather than
stare at her like a lovelorn idiot.
The kink within and Raquel were both here to stay.
“Don’t just stand there, Sean, for heaven’s sake,” Mrs. Patterson trilled, pegging me with a hardened look. My ma hadn’t done me any favors by sharing the details of my breakup with Raquel to good ol’ Eileen. She’d spilled them like Eileen was a priest behind the screen in a confessional booth. “Give the girl a hug and tell her congratulations.”
“That’s unnecessary,” Raquel said, holding out a palm like a flimsy stop sign meant to waylay me. She was speaking to Mrs. Patterson, but she looked at me when she said it.
With careful steps backward, she dropped in her chair, eyes shrewd and tight on me like she didn’t trust me not to pluck her out of her chair and crush her against me. She didn’t trust me to touch her, and with the way my heart was threatening to rip out of my chest, I didn’t blame her.
I lost her trust a long time ago, and bad things always seemed to happen when I touched her.
I cleared my throat, fidgeting where I stood. At a minimum, I needed to try the small talk game. Rocking my jaw from side to side, I gave it my best go. “What am I congratulating you for, exactly?”
When Raquel didn’t reply, Mrs. Patterson intervened. “Well,” she began, rising to her feet. Dougie had inherited his depthless green eyes from his ma. They twinkled under the fluorescent lighting. Something twisted her lips into a permanent smirk, as though suspended in a Nirvana-like state of knowing something before anyone else. “Raquel was just telling me that her book was sold to…” she glanced at Raquel for clarity. “Who did you say it was again, dear? Flamingo?”
Raquel’s gaze pointed down at the toes of her ankle boots like they were the most interesting thing she’d seen in years. Her cheeks tinted crimson, her fingers curling into fists against her denim-clad thighs. “Penguin Random House,” she mumbled.
My chest warmed with pride. She did it. I always knew she could. My hands twitched at my sides, a desperation to hug her flooding me. She deserved it. She was talented, too talented to have spent all those years working at The Advocate. I thought back to her earlier writing style in college, when it was evident she still believed in dreams.
And I hoped like hell that this accomplishment reignited her hope and belief in life’s endless possibilities.
Even if I wasn’t one of them.
The snap of Mrs. Patterson’s fingers pulled me back out my thoughts. “Ah, yes, that’s it. Penguin. Such marvelous news.”
Raquel hooked her feet around the chair legs, her torso squirming with uneasiness in her seat.
Yeah, that makes two of us, sweetheart.
This was my idea of hell, too. Population—you and me.
“And you?” Mrs. Patterson regarded me through her bifocals, interrupting my inner monologue once more. “How are things going at the restaurant?”
I had to keep myself from smiling. I was legitimately proud of what Connie’s—my ma’s given name anglicized—was turning into. The day that my sisters gifted me the knife set, I’d gone home and immediately put them to work. I took those knives as a sign from my dad, his permission and blessing that it was okay to let go…that this could be my purpose again if I wanted it. And I wanted it. I needed something to get absorbed in rather than the endless abyss of my dark thoughts. With cooking, I could channel all of my energy and heart into creating dishes that fed my soul with the hope I needed to attempt to move on with my life.
I went back to the basics. I didn’t return to the institute, but I did dust off my chef’s coat. It was tight in the shoulders and biceps, and when Ma let out the seams and there still wasn’t enough give in the fabric, I got myself a new one. I was thinner back then, there hadn’t been muscle from construction work to contend with. Anytime I wasn’t working on wrapping up the Heritage Park house, I was in my kitchen, getting reacquainted with a space that once caused me so much trepidation.
There was something meditative and soothing about being in a room that no longer gave me crippling anxiety at the thought of cooking. It was exposure therapy in the best possible way, because I could take down my fear to a molecular level and understand it. Not that I was afraid of kitchens or cooking, I simply feared that by giving into the things I wanted, I would be turning my back on the people who needed me.
But I’d forgotten that I needed me, too.
In that kitchen, I was weightless. I didn’t have to think. I could get lost in the repetition and in the heart and soul of food. I could forgive myself for what I did, the things I said. It inspired me, fueled me, gave me renewed purpose again.
I spent all of April recreating recipes I learned at the institute, adding my special twists, but by May, I found I kept returning to my roots, trying my hand at the recipes I loved from my childhood.
Come June, I knew what I wanted, needed to do for me. I wanted to open a place of my own, just like I always dreamed of, just like my dad always saw me doing.
But what kind of place did I want to open? After so many years in real estate, I recognized that Fall River didn’t need another Portuguese restaurant on Columbia Street. We had dozens of those, and I would have felt like an interloper.
But what Fall River didn’t have was something unique, something that wasn’t a regurgitation of Avó’s dinner recipes or carried at every Portuguese bakery like a box of pasteis de nata.
The city that helped shape me into the man I was today needed something sweet, something that could be savory and reminiscent of my childhood with a little creativity.
That was the idea from which sprung the concept of a storefront restaurant that served malasadas in every shape, way, and form. Ma thought I was kidding initially when I pitched her the idea. She had shoved her hands through her hair when I suggested that I wanted to use malasadas as a vehicle for sandwiches.
“You are crazy,” she told me. Maybe I was, but not crazy enough that she wouldn’t help me.
When I wasn’t at the site, I was with Ma, hacking apart her recipe or exploring ways they made malasadas in other pockets of the world, much to her chagrin.
We worked day in and day out on perfecting what would be Connie’s malasada recipe. I tried different proof times on the dough, different styles and iterations when rolling and shaping. Traditionally wide and thin like they did it in São Miguel, and soft and pillowy, like in Hawaii.
It was six weeks before we found an in-between. Something that was inherently Portuguese and traditional with its crispy, thin shell, but equally Polynesian with its puffy and airy center that made it perfect to double as a sandwich.
Connie’s was offering just that.
Ma had gotten almost apoplectic when I started cutting them in half and stuffing them—she assumed I had been kidding about the sandwich bit, but I wasn’t. We were still planning on serving standard malasada as the world knew them—deep fried goodness, plain with a sprinkling of white sugar on top, but I liked the element of surprise with the sandwich option.
We created a lean menu, but it offered something for everyone. There were breakfast sandwich options with an over-easy egg, bacon, and avocado in the middle, and a head nod to the lunches from my youth with ground chouriço. The sweetness from the sugar and cinnamon played beautifully with the mild heat and smokiness from the sausage.
I tested almost every variation and idea on the guys at the site and also Trina. You wouldn’t find honesty more brutal than that doled by cranky construction workers.
They’d been a hit, and the last push I needed to take the leap.
The only thing still holding me back was me. I wasn’t willing to do that to myself anymore. I realized that despite how much I loved Raquel, I’d failed to love myself. I’d lost sight of what was important, deprived myself because I thought that was what my family and late father would have wanted from me.
I wanted to be right so badly about doing the “right thing” that I failed to realize it had been wrong all along.
When Livy returned home at the e
nd of her first year, I gathered my sisters and Ma together. I was honest with them, probably for the first time.
I wasn’t happy doing what I was doing, and I hadn’t been for a long time.
My breakup with Raquel was the proverbial Band-Aid being ripped away. Exposing that festering wound in a way I couldn’t ignore was the tipping point I needed to have a hard conversation with myself and my family.
Being with Raquel, even for a short period, had made me happy, but her absence made me aware of what I had been denying all along. Until I could find inner happiness, until I did things just for me, until I learned to love myself…I could never love her the way she deserved.
I think Raquel understood that better than anyone else. She, too, had done the thing that scared her the most. She had to go rediscover who she was and learn to love herself in a way that no one else could.
What was the question again? Oh, right. “‘How are things going at the restaurant?’”
Managing a brief smile, I finally offered Mrs. Patterson a reply. “Slow and steady.” I didn’t look at her when I said it. Raquel, who was avoiding me like it was her full-time job, kept me too entranced. “Should be good to open in eight weeks.”
Mrs. Patterson clasped her hands together, grinning. “You’ll reserve me a table on opening night, won’t you?”
Connie’s wasn’t the kind of place that took reservations, but I let her have her moment. It was closer to a takeout place with only a handful of tables to serve those seeking a quick lunch option in town.
“Wouldn’t dream otherwise, Mrs. P.” I could pull a table aside for her and cough up a couple of dollars to get her a Reserved sign.
Mrs. Patterson rose to her feet, her chest puffing with pride. “That’s my boy,” she declared. I leaned forward, knowing what she wanted. Sure enough, she patted both my cheeks with approval. “I’ll be heading to the cafeteria to grab a coffee, since we’ll be at this for a while,” she tittered with a shake of her head. “Poor Penelope. That baby is going to do a number on her. Reminds me of my Dougie; that boy’s head was big.” She tutted to herself as she disappeared around the corner I had come from.