10. December 1993“I followed you around first.”“I’d like to put it on layaway.”
DECEMBER 1993
“I FOLLOWED YOU AROUND FIRST.”
T he week after Thanksgiving, for the first time ever, William accepted Julia’s invitation for sex in her bedroom after school. Nobody was home, she assured him, not even her sister. Nevertheless, when he arrived, he made her check every room of the house, and he himself plotted all possible escape routes.
“Should I check under my parents’ bed?” she teased as she led him by the hand and pushed open her bedroom door. “What about the attic?”
But he didn’t answer because there he was – his first foray into the mysterious habitat of a girl (his sister didn’t count). Julia closed the door behind them and twisted the lock. She gave him an almost shy smile, and said, “Welcome to my lair.”
What jumped out at him immediately was the tropical aquarium that, though shallow in depth, spanned the width of nearly the entire opposite wall. Like a giant lava lamp, it burbled and swirled with an ever-shifting palette of aquamarine, gold, scarlet, and neon purple. In addition to the half-dozen or so species that he didn’t know, he recognized a seahorse, a sea star, and various corals.
One spectacular fish drew him closer to the tank – a striped mandarin, she explained. At first he didn’t even think it was real, painted as it was in the neon version of almost every color of the rainbow.
He slid his arm around her waist and watched it for a while, along with the other aquarium inhabitants. It was hypnotic. He wondered what would become of all of these creatures, once she moved to Santa Barbara and couldn’t care for them anymore. She’d have to find new homes for them all.
Eventually he looked around some more, and his eyes settled on the colorfully-framed photos on the wall.
“Oh,” he said.
She took his hand and led him to the nearest one – the Castro Theatre, illuminated at night. She had matted it inside of a rectangular frame, covered in turquoise fabric and bedazzled with sparkling beads in various colors. Next to that, the Guatemalan textile market in the Mission, its square frame covered in fabric with a gold and white chevron pattern. Further along the wall, the crab boats at sunset. The sea lions on the Farallon Islands. All of the photos he had given her at Dunphy’s on his birthday.
Then the photos of the blue whale that they had seen on his uncle’s boat, where he had kissed her for the first time. He had given them to her in October, for her birthday.
“Did you frame these yourself?” he asked. The eclectic hodgepodge of frames reflected her quirky personality to a tee.
She nodded. “I made the frames especially for them.”
He had expected to find New Kids On The Block or Johnny Depp paraphernalia on her walls. And okay, so he did find a Benny the jewelry store was about to close. He pushed open the door; bells on the door jangled, announcing his presence. The Chinese woman cleaning the glass display cases peered up at him in some surprise. He wondered if he was the only white person who had ever come into this store. He wondered if she could even speak English. He pointed to the window display and asked to see the mermaid necklace. She lifted it from its display and handed it to him.
It was a bright silver pendant, only about half an inch long, on a thin silver chain. The mermaid was shaped like an S, with her tail tucked under her body and her hair rippling over one shoulder, just like Julia’s .
He asked how much. Twenty-five dollars. He held his wallet open to show her – he had only a twenty dollar bill. She said some things, mostly unintelligible, from which he discerned that she would sell it to him for twenty dollars, including tax.
While she placed the necklace into a black box and rang him up, he peered inside a display case in front of the register. The case’s interior glinted with rubies, emeralds, gemstones he didn’t even know the names of – and of course, diamonds. He squatted to look closer. Among the necklaces, earrings, and bracelets was a small selection of rings.
William recalled the last time he and Nonna cooked together, when she taught him how to sweat eggplant to keep it from turning greasy. Nonna had said, “Will, if you ever fall in love with a woman, don’t degrade her by living in sin.”
It was one of her old-school Sicilian platitudes that she occasionally scattered among the pearls. He humored it, then tucked it out of mind. Yet now his memory exhumed it, for some reason. Probably because until he met Julia, Nonna had been the only one in his life who had ever reassured him he wasn’t some wing nut, something less than , just because he liked poetry, songwriting, and cooking. But then Julia had taken it a step further – she had helped him see that his more artistic inclinations were actually good things. Something desirable – preferable, even. Something worth embracing.
Yes. There was only one thing in life he was really sure about.
Interrupting his train of thought, the clerk pointed to the display case and said, “You want to see?”
He nodded. She unlocked the display case and brought out the ring display with all the different rings to choose from, including the diamond ones. Despite everything, he still felt slightly ridiculous doing this at all, let alone in front of a total stranger who barely spoke English. His palms were moist. He swallowed the lump of embarrassment welling in his throat and pointed to the ring with the largest stone.
“How much? ”
Twenty-three fifty. He knew she didn’t mean twenty-three dollars and fifty cents.
He pointed to the next smallest one. Sixteen-fifty.
To hell with what his Catholic grandmother would say – this was the nineties. He would go right on living in sin.
She asked, “How much?”
He realized she was trying to ask how much he wanted to spend. How much did he have in mind? He couldn’t fathom being able to afford more than five hundred. In response, they went back and forth in mutual misunderstanding for a minute, until the lady shouted back into some covert compartment of the store.
A previously-hidden teenage girl emerged. Oversized glasses, long stringy black hair, braces on her teeth. Her eyes locked on his, and with a jolt, they recognized each other.
“William!”
“Michelle.” From AP Biology. “You work here?”
“Of course! This is my parents’ shop. And this is my mom.” Then she shot William a quizzical look. “What are you doing here?”
“Uh…” His face burned, and he glanced around himself. How quickly could he escape?
Before he could come up with some cover story, the clerk assailed Michelle with a barrage of Chinese. Michelle’s jaw dropped, and she turned again to William.
“Oh my God!” she gushed. “You’re getting an engagement ring for Julia?”
“I… uh…”
She clapped her hands. “Oh my God, that is so beautiful! She’s going to be so excited!” She turned back to her mom and unleashed another barrage of rapid Chinese, after which her mom turned to William with a big smile and said, “Ahhhhhh!”
Once again, her mom exchanged a few words with Michelle, after which Michelle said to him bluntly, “Oh, you don’t want a five hundred dollar engagement ring.”
Taken aback, William said, “Um…”
Michelle seized the smallest diamond ring in the lineup and held it up to him – five hundred dollars. She snatched the ring next to it – also a quarter-carat, identical in every way as far as he could tell. Same setting, same eighteen-karat white gold.
Nine-fifty.
She held them, side-by-side, just underneath his nose, inviting him to spot the difference. His face still radiating hot embarrassment, he leaned over the rings.
“No,” Michelle said, snatching them from the shadows created by his head. “In the light.”
He looked again, this time taking care not to shade the rings with his head. And then he saw it – the nine-fifty ring blew the five hundred ring out of the water. It was noticeably clearer. More brilliant.
“I – I don’t think I can come up with nine-fifty.”
“You can put it on layaway,” offered Michelle.
He hesitated for just a moment. Then he waved it away. “That’s okay. Not now.”
“Aw, really?” Michelle sucked her teeth in dismay. “Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find us!”
Obviously annoyed, Michelle’s mom whisked the ring display away. William snatched the box with the mermaid necklace, mumbled his thanks, and high-tailed it out of the jewelry store as fast as possible.
At least he had a nice Christmas present for Julia.
“I’D LIKE TO PUT IT ON LAYAWAY.”
After the semester ended, William did something unprecedented and requested an entire week of winter break off of work. Julia followed suit, and they had the whole week to spend together. He put her on the back of his motorcycle and showed her all the hidden spots around the Bay Area that he had discovered on his own, spots that no one else seemed to have discovered for lack of adventurousness or persistence. She was game for anything that he was game for.
One morning, Julia propped herself up in his bed and looked at him. “Every time I come here, that guitar case is sitting in the same spot against the wall, looking all shut up and forlorn.”
“Oh, no you don’t.”
“Oh, yes I do. Can you play it?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
He laughed a bit. “Mike taught himself to play when we were kids, and then he taught me. We used to think we were going to have a band one day, Mike and me. Actually, come to think of it, I think that was mostly Mike’s dream.”
“Well, I can’t picture you as a rock star. But I can picture you playing it for me.”
He shook his head. “I want to get you back in my bed again someday.”
She sat upright, completely naked. It was one of many things he adored about her – her complete comfort with her own nakedness. She had never shown a moment’s shame or timidity on that score.
“Oh, see, you have it all wrong,” she said. “You won’t get me back in this bed again if you don’t play for me.”
“You are a vicious tyrant.” But he grinned and got out of bed to retrieve the guitar. He spent a few minutes tuning it, then began strumming.
He had a secret passion for cheesy folk music and singer-songwriters from the sixties and early seventies. He was tempted to play As We Go Along , by The Monkees. He just couldn’t. He’d choke.
A Pink Floyd tune emerged from his fingertips.
“You forget, your brother told me all your secrets,” interrupted Julia. “I know you can sing.”
He put his hand on the strings. “Oh no, I only agreed to play.”
“You have nothing in writing.”
He shook his head. “Please don’t make me.”
She grabbed his hand. “I have a confession to make. I’m getting back in your bed again, no matter what you sound like.”
He grinned and began strumming the guitar again. Played the intro to Wish You Were Here . Paused just before he was about to start singing, reddened and laughed nervously. Started over again, and sang.
He was nervous to be sure, and his voice cracked a bit in the beginning. He avoided her eyes throughout, looked down at the guitar or across at the wall. But after a while, his voice gained strength, he played competently, and when he finished, he lifted his eyes to hers with a little smile. She rewarded his efforts with her own bright smile and applause.
“Now I know the real reason you’re such a Pink Floyd fan,” she said. “You sound just like what’s-his-name, minus the British accent.”
“Don’t insult him.”
She sucked her teeth and admonished him with a little shove on the shoulder. “Your modesty and hero worship are cute. But why such a sad song?”
It genuinely startled him that she interpreted it that way – as merely a sad song . “It’s a beautiful song. Rips my heart out more than almost anything else I’ve ever heard.”
“Exactly. I demand cheering up after that.”
He put the guitar back in its case. “I’ll have to find some other way to cheer you up, then.”
“Oh, promises, promises,” she said as he came to lie next to her.
He draped himself halfway over her and held her face in his hands, inches away from his own. She beamed up at him in anticipation of his next move.
“How do you do this?” he said.
“Do what?”
“Make me wonder why I would ever want to be sad in the first place. Make me feel more like my own self than I have in years.”
She gave a short laugh. “In years? You’re eighteen and a half, old man.” She brushed the hair back off of his forehead, contemplative a moment. “Just be yourself. You don’t need me or anyone else to give you permission.”
His mind drifted toward his bedside table, where he hid the mermaid necklace in its box. He had planned to give it to her for Christmas, but he yearned to do something for her right now. Something to return just a little bit of the contentment she had given him. Something besides another orgasm.
He poked her in the shoulder. “Let’s go get breakfast. There’s somewhere I want to take you after that.”
“Where?”
“It’s a surprise.”
They got dressed, and while she braided her hair in the bathroom, he reached into the bedside table and slipped the necklace box into an interior pocket of his coat. They went to eat at the 46 th Avenue diner, and afterward, he drove her to a hilly residential area of the Inner Sunset and parked his motorcycle.
“This is obviously not where I was planning to take you,” he said. “But it’s not far away from here, if you want to walk.”
“How far?”
“Just over there,” he said, pointing up Turtle Hill. “I think you’ll like it.”
He led her to a large hill with a long set of stairs ascending it. He took her hand, and together they climbed the stairs to the top of the hill. He helped her gingerly down a narrow path and across treacherous, uneven ground scattered with tree roots and rocks.
Finally, he tapped her on the shoulder and pointed.
“Look.”
She caught her breath in a gasp. It was a clear winter morning, and the city spread out before them, with downtown to their right, Golden Gate Park and the bridge in front of them, and the Pacific Ocean to their left. He led her to a bench to sit beside him. There was nobody else there, no one else crazy enough to brave that spot at that time. It was cold and windy, but it was beautiful.
He pulled her close beside him and put his arm around her shoulders to keep her warm. “I didn’t just bring you up here to show you the view and freeze your ass off. I wanted to give you a Christmas present. But I’m warning you, please don’t get too excited. ”
“You can’t give it to me now,” she protested. “I don’t have your present here with me.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
He reached into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out the necklace box. He opened it, and held up the silver chain with the pendant swinging from it.
“This is lame, I know, but it’s just a promise,” he said, fastening the chain around her neck. “I promise I’ll never stop loving you, no matter what.”
She lifted the pendant to take a closer look, and smiled. “A mermaid. Now why on earth would that make you think of me?”
He squeezed her around the shoulders. “I’ll never forget that night as long as I live. I was so in love with you, and when I saw you, I really thought I could have died a happy man, right then and there.”
She looked up at him again, her eyes wide, her mouth hanging open slightly. She searched his face and, apparently finding it sincere, she laced her fingers through his. After kissing him, she whispered, “You make me so happy.”
“Good,” he murmured, touching the pendant. “Wear it as long as you still feel that way.”
She wrapped her arms around him, and they sat there for a long time, not saying anything, surveying the world spread before them. To him, at that moment, it seemed like a vast, open expanse with limitless possibilities.
“Will,” she ventured after a few quiet minutes. “What did you mean earlier? When you said I make you feel more like yourself than you have in years?”
William gave a sheepish laugh and tightened his grip around her shoulders. “You remember when I told you about my brother Jimmy? And how my Nonna was the only one in my family who really supported me?”
Julia turned her gray-green eyes up to his, searching with such earnest concern that his face melted into a tender smile. He paused just long enough to kiss the tip of her nose before continuing .
“After Nonna died, I just kind of gave up on writing poems and songs for a while. And by a while, I mean until I met you.”
“Oh,” she breathed, her face a riot of different emotions – elation, compassion, sadness.
“I shouldn’t have given up, though. She wouldn’t have wanted that,” William admitted.
“You were grieving.”
William hummed. “I let myself wallow in it, though. I just... I guess I felt alienated. But now I know it was mostly self-imposed.”
“It sounds like depression,” Julia said matter-of-factly.
William considered a moment, then slowly nodded. “I guess so.”
One corner of her mouth tipped up. “But you’re not anymore?”
“Depressed?” His features softened again into what he knew was a derpy-looking smile. “Definitely not. You reminded me I had the key with me the whole time.”
She tilted her head quizzically. “What key?”
“The one to the cage.”
Understanding dawned over her face as she rubbed his back, right over his albatross tattoo. His pulse suddenly galloping, he dove his head to capture her mouth in a kiss. She gently tugged at his bottom lip with her teeth, and he answered by licking at the seam of her lips until they parted for his tongue.
After several minutes of heated making out, during which their coats somehow migrated off their bodies and onto the ground, Julia whispered, “You still owe me a cheering-up, from earlier.” Cupping his rigid length over his jeans, she added, “Promises, promises, remember?”
A rumble escaped from somewhere deep in his chest, and William whipped his head around – they were still alone. Then, like a starved man, he devoured her mouth again while she unzipped his fly, snaking her hand inside. He tipped his head back with a hiss of pleasure as she stroked him over his boxers.
“I thought you said I owed you ,” he gritted out. She giggled, but her only reply was to shimmy her hand down inside his boxers.
Approaching voices had them both groaning in frustration, then snickering as William scrambled to contain himself back inside of his jeans. “Come on,” Julia suggested, “let’s get an early lunch at the Cliff House. Hand jobs make me hungry.”
Thirty minutes later, while they awaited their food beside the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ocean and the waves, she excused herself to the restroom. She was gone a long time, so when she finally returned, he said, “I was about to send out a search party.”
“Sorry,” she said with a sheepish smile and no further explanation.
After lunch, they went to explore the Musée Mécanique below the Cliff House, and the Camera Obscura above. They kicked around the ruins of the Sutro Baths and watched the sun set from Ocean Beach.
Once the horizon swallowed the orange disc, they drove to Blockbuster, where she selected Groundhog Day . She had been bugging him to watch it with her for ages.
“It’s very Buddhist,” she tried, and he laughed because he had threatened just the day before to chuck it all, move to India, and become a monk.
“You’re a hedonist. You wouldn’t last two days,” she teased him at the time. And of course, she was right.
Today he felt inclined to oblige her every whim, so he handed over his Blockbuster card.
When he unlocked the front door to his house, the scent of his mother’s cooking greeted them. Turkey tetrazzini, by the smell of it – lately his father’s favorite, made with thawed leftover Thanksgiving turkey.
He popped into the in-law unit for a moment to drop off the video. He flipped on the light, and froze in his tracks.
A dozen or so picture frames adorned the opposite wall, each containing one of the photos he had shown her on Thanksgiving Day. The Cliff House. The Sutro Baths. The Camera Obscura.
Julia followed him into the in-law unit and smiled complacently at him. Not only that, but his mother appeared behind her in the doorway.
“What the…?”
Julia laughed, and the story came out. She had spent all the weeks since Thanksgiving making frames for the photos he gave her, as well as some of the other ones he had shown her that day. The hoary Vietnamese fisherman. The homeless man in Golden Gate Park. The underside of the Golden Gate Bridge.
A week or so earlier, Julia and his mother had conspired to hang the photos in the in-law unit some day when he wasn’t home, as his Christmas present.
But after he gave her the mermaid necklace, she decided the surprise couldn’t wait any longer. When he thought she had fallen into the toilet at the Cliff House, she had really been placing a call to his mother, begging her to hang the photos before he got home that night.
He caught himself looking at Julia in the same incredulous way she had looked at him that morning. He glanced from her to his mother, who smiled in the doorway to the in-law unit, with her arms crossed across her chest.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” his mother prompted.
Julia took his hand and led him to the opposite wall. She had covered the frames in her own room with vibrant patterns and bedazzled them with beads and crystals of every color. But for William’s space, she had chosen a more masculine palette – colors of the ocean. Azure and navy blue, like the water at different times of the day. Ecru, like the sand. Ivory, like the caps of the waves. The odd pop of yellow, orange, or crimson, like the sunset. An occasional ticking stripe or geometric pattern.
Land’s End. Hang gliders launching from Fort Funston. All the photos they had looked at Thanksgiving Day – they were all there.
He found her monitoring him carefully for his reaction.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “You seemed so proud of them. I thought they deserved a place of honor.”
Mortified that he might have given her the wrong impression, he seized her hands. He was all too keenly aware of his mother’s continued presence, so he contented himself with saying, “Mind? This might be one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.”
“All right, all right, that’s my cue – I’m out of here,” his mother interjected, backing out of the in-law unit and closing the door after herself, but not before adding, “Dinner in twenty.”
William squeezed Julia’s hands. “You and my mom really coordinated this together?”
She nodded. “I’m relieved you like it. I didn’t know if you would.”
“Why wouldn’t I have liked it?”
“I don’t know… I was afraid you’d think it was presumptuous. Or intrusive.” She hesitated a moment, then added, “You’re a polymath.”
“I’m… what?”
“You’re brilliant at just about everything you try. You should be proud of your talents. If nothing else, I’m proud of them on your behalf.”
He shook his head in disbelief – at what, exactly? He wasn’t sure. Her kindness, maybe. His own good fortune. He pulled her closer and kissed her.
“After tonight,” he said, “there’s no way I’m not coming with you to Santa Barbara.”
“Will, I love you more than life itself, but I don’t want to talk about this again. I know as well as you do that you’re not going to turn down that scholarship.”
He frowned. “But I don’t know that. Shouldn’t I get a say in what happens in my own life? Or in our relationship?”
“Will,” she began. Considered her words carefully. “Of course you do. But you’ve never been to Santa Barbara, so maybe you’ll just have to trust me when I tell you that you’d be miserable there. You’d fare better in some foreign countries than you would there. It would be a complete and total culture shock.”
“You talk like I’m some kind of unwashed, illiterate peasant,” he balked. “If you can survive there, so can I.”
“I’m sorry,” she said hastily. “I swear, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant Santa Barbara is so... SoCal . And you’re so... not . Trust me, I mean that as a compliment.”
He huffed out a laugh. “You think I don’t know what SoCal is like, just because I’ve never been there?”
She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him again. “Please – let’s just watch our movie and eat our dinner and go to bed. Let’s worry about this another day.”
His brows crashed together. “Fine, but I’m not letting it go. We need to talk about this again soon, okay?”
“Of course,” she whispered, her lips parted against his. His frustration instantly evaporated when confronted with the unmasked love and heat in her gaze. Suddenly, one appetite overruled the other. Within seconds, the door was locked, their clothes littered the floor, and his face was buried between her thighs.
Later, with dinner eaten and Groundhog Day enjoyed, he sat before her on his bed, naked in every sense – his feelings, his arousal on unabashed display. Unrushed at first, building over the course of the night into the sort of crescendo where they chased each other onto the floor, into the shower and out again and onto the bed, still dripping. The kind where he woke in the middle of the night and Hey! What’s this? A naked girl in my bed!
At four o’clock in the morning, in the throes of their second round, he heard his family spill out of the house on the way to the processing plant. By then, the sheets had long since popped off the bed, landing in a defiled heap on the carpet. He gathered her long hair behind her head, wrapping it around his wrist, using it to lift her face from the bare mattress into which she had been censoring herself. Putting his lips to her ear, he whispered, “Go ahead. Scream all you want.”
Afterward, they slept until the sun insinuated itself through the gap in the blinds. Neither of them wished to admit they were awake. Neither wished to acknowledge the time that was passing.
Julia’s stomach growled, and they both laughed. She lifted her head from his chest and kissed him, still laughing through lips pressed to his.
He loved, loved, loved her. Stinky morning breath and all. He stroked her hair, pushed it back off her face and over her shoulder.
“You need some hot guy to cook you breakfast,” he observed.
She lifted the phone receiver beside his bed and said to the dial tone, “Room service? I’d like to order the eggs benedict cooked by a hot guy. Actually, just bring the hot guy and pour the hollandaise over him – thanks. And bloody Marys for me and the old man.”
He took the receiver from her hand and replaced it on the cradle. “Cold mush for you. And decaf coffee.”
They got dressed and climbed the stairs, discussing their plans for the day. At the kitchen, Julia gave a yelp and stopped short.
“Morning,” croaked William’s mother at the stove. She hovered over a tea kettle in her robe, her hair disheveled, a cigarette dangling from her lips. She sucked on the cigarette and promptly doubled over in a coughing fit.
“Mom. You’re here,” William remarked without thinking. His mother’s cough sounded like a sea lion’s bark. Julia stood frozen in mortification, her jaw hanging open.
William’s mother recovered enough to say, “Don’t worry, it’s not contagious. It’s just my asthma.” Then she took another drag from the cigarette.
William knew damn well that it wasn’t asthma. His father told him the doctor had diagnosed her with emphysema, but she was too stubborn to admit it.
He also knew damn well that Julia wasn’t worried about whether or not his mother was contagious. He watched her spin on her heel and flee back through the living room, down the stairs.
He ran after her into the in-law unit. Shut the door behind them and chased her into the bedroom, where she shoved the few belongings she had brought with her into what she called her “jump bag.” It was the backpack she brought with her when she spent the night with William, with her toothbrush and a change of clothes.
She was practically panicking. “Oh my God. She heard everything, didn’t she?” He watched her mentally revisiting all the filthy things she had screamed at four o’clock in the morning and cringing at each one.
There were only 1250 square feet in the house – nine hundred upstairs, the rest down – and the thin walls afforded no privacy. Hell, there were times when he heard noises coming from his parents’ bedroom, and he had to put on his headphones and drop a record onto the turntable.
There was no chance his mother hadn’t heard everything.
Hot laughter burbled up from somewhere deep in his gut, but he stifled it. He stepped forward, stroked her arm and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll smooth everything over.”
“Why isn’t she at the processing plant?” she demanded, almost hyperventilating.
“You heard her. She’s sick.”
She zipped the backpack with a vengeance and slung it over her shoulders. “I have to go. I’m so embarrassed.”
He grabbed her by the shoulders to steady her. Touched her chin, and forced her to look him in the eye.
“Calm down. Everything’s going to be okay. You know she loves you.”
She gaped at him a moment, then gave a ragged sort of laugh. Sprang up to peck him on the lips, then dashed away and out the front door.
He wandered back upstairs and found his mother still lingering over the kettle on the stove. She inquired casually after Julia. She had smoked her cigarette down to the butt. She took a final drag and doubled over coughing again. She wobbled and he caught her by the elbows.
“Here,” he said, steering her toward the kitchen table with its built-in banquette, where she finished her coughing fit. He looked over at the tea kettle, and said, “Mom, you didn’t turn on the flame.”
She gave a short, rueful laugh. “I wondered why it was taking so long.”
He lit the burner and watched as, to his dismay, she lit yet another cigarette. After a moment’s hesitation, he asked, “Should you be doing that?”
“Probably not,” she said drily, and took a drag anyway.
He watched her smoke and noticed she was losing weight. “Have you eaten? ”
She waved her hand dismissively. “What’s the point? I can’t taste anything.”
His mother had already cut up a lemon and set the teapot on the counter with its infuser of loose-leaf tea. He opened the refrigerator and examined its contents. Reached in and pulled out a carton of eggs and some jelly. From the pantry he retrieved everything else he needed.
He heated oil in a pan. Whisked the eggs and popped bread in the toaster.
He said, “I hope you know I mean no disrespect.”
“Mm?”
The oil shimmered. He turned down the heat and poured the eggs into the pan. “Having her spend the night with me.”
“Oh.” She took a drag. The tea kettle threatened to whistle. “And broadcasting it to the whole house?”
Embarrassed, he poured the hot water over the looseleaf tea in the pot. His mother chuckled a bit, low and husky, which soon deteriorated into a coughing fit. When she recovered, she said, “Will, I was young once, believe it or not.” She flicked the cigarette against the ashtray on the kitchen table. “You’re being careful?”
He nodded.
“Good. I’m only forty-six. I’m not ready to be a grandma.”
He pushed the egg curds around the pan with a wooden spatula. Sprinkled them with salt, pepper, and Tabasco sauce. Scooped them onto a plate, squeezed honey and lemon into her tea, and spread jelly on the toast. She stubbed out her cigarette as he served her at the table.
“Can you taste them?” he asked when she tried the eggs.
“I can.” She sipped the tea and made a sound of relief. “Thanks for this, Will.”
He smiled and scooted his chair back, but she squeezed his hand to stop him.
“She makes you really happy; I can tell. That’s all that matters to me. ”
Later that morning, walking down Taraval on his way to Julia’s house, he stopped by the bank and made a withdrawal. Then he stopped into the jewelry store with the Chinese signage. Michelle’s mom, behind the counter, gave a start of recognition. He asked for Michelle, who emerged from her secret compartment in the back with a look of surprise.
“Do you still have the nine hundred and fifty dollar ring?”
“Oh my God, yes!” she exclaimed, and showed it to him again. He opened his wallet and pulled out a hundred dollar bill.
“I’d like to put it on layaway.”