Chapter 9
Olivia
Now
For three days, I try not to get in Carmello’s way.
It doesn’t feel good to know that I took time from him and his son.
I don’t want to do anything that’ll cause that to happen again, so I mostly distract myself from the itch to get in the kitchen by getting to know some of the staff at the front-of-house.
Carmello has curated quite the cast of characters.
There’s Debra. The hostess with naturally rosy cheeks, who talks to every customer like they’re besties.
Yesterday, I heard her offering someone a haircut out of her house.
Once, she did the Heimlich maneuver when someone’s kid choked on a piece of steak.
There’s Rebecca, the runner. I caught her putting petroleum jelly on her teeth.
“My uh…sister’s a cheerleader and she said this will help me smile at customers,” she told me.
Bobby and Veronica were born on the same day, dubbing themselves zodiac twins.
Veronica laughs more around him than anyone else here, including me.
I’m trying not to be in my head, but she seems to be keeping her distance since our dinner date.
It was going great until I asked if her cousin was single.
In hindsight, I’m not sure that even matters anymore.
Once a day, I creep by Carmello to go down to the kitchen in the finished basement to bullshit with Paula and try her pastries.
Yesterday, she slipped me a slice of Steven’s tiramisu cheesecake and told me Steven might make the perfect grumpy to someone’s sunshine.
But his personality and proximity to Carmello present barriers for me to learn anything more than that.
They’re sometimes a disorganized bunch, there’s definitely fussing, but they also seem to mesh well with one another.
And right now, I don’t exactly fit in. I wonder if it seems like I’m hovering to study them for mistakes.
Just like it always felt like I was listening in on conversations not meant for me when Denise planned a girls’ night in Houston that I finally could attend.
***
I leave the restaurant early, anxious to do something besides sit around there, and head to Oakland Cemetery adjacent to Roger Williams Park. The sun is starting to set in the sky, and I’m standing outside of the gates trying to force myself to face her.
“Get it together, Olivia,” I mutter to myself, then push open the black metal gate.
The graveyard is quiet in the way they often are.
There’s no one else here but me, and it feels eerie to look for the right name while I’m alone, making sure I don’t step on the hallowed ground above corpses.
Luckily, Celia Rodriguez is easy to find.
Her headstone is white and weathered-looking, made of rock that seems to have mostly been retired for this type of thing.
It’s dome-shaped on top, etched with her name in bold capital letters underneath an intricate design that features skulls.
I take it in, and then I laugh. Something that bubbles right out of me knowing a gothic tombstone that looks like it’d been handpicked in the late 1800s was exactly what Celia probably wanted.
I squat low, touch the fresh flowers in a vase beside her, admire how clean her space is, and imagine how many people come to visit her.
And then I sit in the dirt, as close as I can get. “Why’d you do this, Celia?” I ask.
Memories hit me one by one. When she taught me how to gut and clean the inside of a rock crab, when she let me cook with her on a slow day, how she kept letting me until I was always at her left in the kitchen.
The last time I hugged her and it almost felt like she knew that it would be exactly that.
Mahal kita, Olivia, she said into my hair.
“But did you really love me this much?” I say out loud, tears pricking the backs of my eyes. I suck in a breath, blink them away, and Celia never answers me.
So, I skim the small patch of grass at my side and tell her what I haven’t told her since my last email.
About the new kitchens I’ve been in and the dishes I still haven’t mastered.
I show her some funny videos and read her memes that remind me of her, and I say, “On the outside, it looks different, but your restaurant feels like it did when I was here. It’s inexplicably inviting, and everyone who eats there seems comfortable.
But…I’m not comfortable right now, Celia. Was this only a slipup?”
The wind blows and the flower vase falls on its side.
I pick it up, but most of the water is gone.
I glance at Celia’s headstone. “Yeah, you’re right.
You were more careful than that. It’d make more sense as a prank, but apparently the will is legit.
So, I guess I’m asking for a sign as to why I’m here.
You know how I feel about signs, Celia. Are you matchmaking, or do you think Carmello needed help with something?
Maybe you wouldn’t mind coming to haunt him?
Soften him up some? Because regardless of your reason, there’s no way I can stay in this city if he’s giving me the silent treatment and not wanting me in the kitchen.
I’m going stir-crazy without cooking. You know? ”
I stand and shake the dirt off my pants, but then I read Celia’s tombstone again. The years between birth and death are too close together, and I find myself sitting back down.
“But I can stay right here with you a little longer.”