10. Catholic Guilt
CATHOLIC GUILT
Dahlia
“Look at this shit…hippies and finance bros…in Bushwick!”
Lyss laughs. “Things don’t stay the same forever, Dee.”
“Gentrification is evil. I remember when no one wanted to touch this part of the neighborhood with a ten-foot pole and now they’re trying to charge $8.50 for a gluten free bacon, egg, and cheese. It’s absolutely sick. Sick and twisted.”
Lyss throws her head back and lets out a howl of laughter that has onlookers sending concerned glances our way. She has one arm looped through mine and I hold her close as we cross the street together.
New York City is an ever-changing landscape of history and culture but every day there are fewer and fewer stores I remember.
More and more neighbors being pushed out.
My grandparents own their home and thank God for that because they would’ve never been able to afford it now.
I rest easy knowing they’re taken care of here.
Visiting them is bittersweet. I do it because I’m a good granddaughter but coming home makes me sad.
It reminds me of a childhood I can never go back to and a family I can never have again.
Nowadays the sting of nostalgia is just that.
Something which doesn’t linger and fades as quickly as a passing shower.
“We should order a pie from Tony’s and sit on the front stoop. Just like old times.” I give her shoulder a playful nudge. “Maybe Bobby Stefon will pass by if we’re lucky.”
“Oh God,” she rolls her eyes at the mention of the cutest boy in our middle school. “Did you know he’s going bald and has three different baby mamas now?”
“What!”
She grins. “Mhm. I bumped into his grandmother at church on Ash Wednesday. Quite the scandal.”
“I wonder what everyone says about me.”
“Everyone thinks you either married a narco or became a sugar baby to a European billionaire.” She tilts her head back and forth. “I mean…”
“Hey, hey, hey!” I protest. “My boyfriend is not a narco. He commits tax evasion like a respectable criminal.”
She snorts. “You’re so ridiculous. I doubt that’s what Alejandro actually does but I’d prefer it if you kept the nitty gritty to yourself. I’d rather not get whacked.”
“Getting whacked is soooo 90s anyway.” We smile at each other and giggle the entire walk to my grandparents’ house.
As we approach the stoop, the front door opens and someone makes their way down the steps. It isn’t until Lyss and I are only a few feet away does the woman descending lift her head and meet our gazes.
She stops in her tracks.
I hardly recognize Karina at first. Her hair is the longest I’ve seen it in our entire lives—nearly as long as mine and grazing the small of her back.
Her petite frame is bundled up in a long trench coat with a fur collar and she has a designer bag slung over her shoulder with stockings and kitten heels to match.
Her blush and lipstick are an unflattering shade of pink and better suited to a woman of much fairer coloring.
When she lifts a hand to grip her collar, I notice her nails are long and baby pink, perfectly manicured and so unlike her. Or at least, unlike the old her.
I nearly spin on the balls of my feet to sprint in the opposite direction.
We rarely cross paths and I’ve made it very clear to my grandparents that I refuse to speak to her.
They don’t know why we fell out only that we did and if they want me to keep visiting, they can’t plot behind my back to get us to see each other.
For the most part they’ve honored my wishes and I haven’t bumped into her since last year.
Lyss keeps an iron grip on my upper arm and refuses to let go. Karina pauses for only a beat and I can’t tell if she wants to say something or is afraid to. In the end she presses her lips together and descends the last step and walks past us without saying a word.
“Hi Karina.” Lyss says.
I yank on her arm. “Alyssa Marie.”
Karina stops. Turns around. “Hi Lyss.”
“We’re so glad we bumped into you.” My traitorous best friend plasters on a smile. “As a matter of fact, Dahlia was just telling me she owed you a phone call.”
Karina’s gaze flickers between me and Lyss. Disbelief mingled with hope brims within the amber of her eyes and I can tell she holds her breath by the way her shoulders still. “Oh?” she says in response.
“Lyss, stop.”
She ignores me. “It was so nice of you to show up at the hospital last month. It meant a lot.”
Whatever I was about to say turns to ash on the tip of my tongue.
“You—” I turn to Karina. “I…”
Words evade me. Karina stands there, silent and unmoving, and for once I wish she would speak to me. Say something, anything.
Instead she gives a polite nod and murmurs a quick, “Of course. I’m glad you’re better.”
My cousin walks away and I’m the stuttering fool on the sidewalk with nothing to say.
All of me has been clawed out of my chest with the ragged edges of an unsharpened knife and laid bare for the world to see.
Vulnerable to the elements like wind, fire, and ice seeping into a poorly cauterized wound.
The urge to cry overwhelms me and I don’t know why.
She was in the hospital…she was in the hospital and didn’t see me. Why?
I turn to Lyss ready to raise hellfire on her. “Why did you do that?”
My voice is raw and angry but she knows me to well. She senses the pain underneath.
“It’s Lent. We should be good people. Forgive.
Repent.” She lists them off on each finger.
“Stop hardening our hearts and being grudge holders like Father O’Brien always taught us.
Remember how bad you felt because he died thinking you were still mad at him for giving you detention?
Well, Karina could get hit by a car tomorrow and then you’ll feel real bad afterward! ”
“Stop trying to use Catholic guilt on me, it doesn’t work! I’m too morally ambiguous for it now.” I reply sarcastically.
I’m about to make my way up the stoop when she grabs me by the wrist and spins me around. “Stop doing that!”
“Doing what?” I snap.
“Acting like none of this hurts you!” she fires back. “Just stop it. For someone who’s made a real ass of herself this past year, you are sorely lacking in sympathy and compassion. Karina fucked up. Fine. Give her a chance to fix it.”
“You say that as if we got into a fight over stealing each other’s clothes. What she did was horrible—”
She cuts me off. “If you can forgive Alejandro, then you can forgive Karina too. I can’t believe you’re willing to let a man you’ve barely known three years back into your life over a cousin who has been like a sister to you. Hear her out.”
“You sound like you know something I don’t.”
She rolls her eyes. “That’s not the point!”
“Yes it is! And I want to know how she knew I was in the hospital. Who told her?”
“Alejandro called her. Look, it’s a long story. Right now you need to go after her!”
“I can’t.”
She has no idea how much I want to. How much I want to undo the last three years of damage done to our relationship and go back to the way things were before. But Karina isn’t the same person anymore and neither am I.
“Why not?” Lyss follows me to the front stoop. “Dahlia!”
“No!”
Lyss staggers back, appearing as startled as I feel.
“Don’t you understand? It hurts. It hurts me to see her, to be around her, to talk to her.
” I’m so flustered and frustrated and my hands are trembling and now I can’t see clearly because my eyes are filling with tears.
“You’re supposed to be my best friend and you’re taking her side over mine. What kind of a friend does that?”
Her expression softens. “Dee, I’m just trying to—”
“Go home. I mean it. I want to see my grandparents alone.”
I don’t wait for her response and make sure to lock the front door behind me.
* * *
I can’t decide who I’m going to kill first. My best friend or my boyfriend.
My visit with my grandparents is brief. We have breakfast, I fix their TV because they have no idea how to use a Firestick, and I spend about twenty minutes explaining to them the difference between streaming and regular cable but they stopped caring the second they found out they could watch Caso Cerrado on demand.
The train ride back into the city is surprisingly quiet but my mind is a mess.
Once I reach Union Square, I transfer to the 6 train and ride uptown.
There’s nowhere to go, nothing to do. I don’t have any online classes today and all my assignments are complete.
If I go home, Lyss and might be there waiting for me. But where else can I go?
Rian isn’t an option. I’m glad we both made amends but it’s going to take some time before we can really be friends again. Damiano maybe? I don’t really want to talk to him either. He’s a good friend but he’s never met Karina and he isn’t the person I need to speak to right now.
I ride the 6 all the way to 68th Street and Hunter College. I exit the station and head into the campus’s west building where I wait in the lobby for four hours.
I wait so long my phone dies and I lose track of time.
Students come in waves. Late morning rush, early afternoon rush, midafternoon rush.
I know when a class period is about to end or when a train arrives downstairs by the influx of students.
In and out, in and out, they are my only source of entertainment for what feels like an eternity.
Eventually, I bum a portable charger off a freshman who looks like they’re on the verge of their thirteenth reason so I help them cheat on their algebra exam.
Not sure if I helped or made it worse but it seemed like a small price to pay for an undead phone.
At a quarter to three, there’s another wave of students, some leaving and some going. Fifteen minutes after that I spot a familiar coat and long dark hair.
My grandparents said she was teaching today.
I don’t know what led me here in the first place. Boredom? Morbid curiosity? I wasn’t even sure what building she was teaching in or what time she’d be done. What were the odds we’d cross paths?