15
Spencer
Mrs. Shaw’s kitchen table wobbles a little on one leg, and I’ve been careful not to lean my elbows on it since we sat down, because I watched Milo notice me noticing and go a shade paler, like I’d caught him out.
The apartment is small, two bedrooms up a flight of stairs that smell like somebody’s been frying onions for twenty years, and every surface in the kitchen has something on it that means a person actually lives here: a calendar from a church, a jar of pens, a Statue of Liberty snow globe.
Milo’s been rigid in the chair beside me since dinner started, his knee bouncing under the table.
“Eat, eat,” Mrs. Shaw says, ladling more of whatever this stew is onto my plate before I’ve made a dent in the first serving. “There’s more in the pot. You should put on more weight, Mr. Rhodes. Isn’t Milo feeding you properly?”
“Call me Spencer, please,” I say. “And don’t worry. Milo feeds me plenty.”
I look over at him and smirk. Milo chokes on his water and starts coughing.
“That’s good to hear,” Mrs. Shaw says, missing my innuendo. “And what do you feed him, Milo?”
“Um. He’s very into protein,” Milo says, glancing sideways at me.
“Protein? What is that, a sports food?” Mrs. Shaw shakes her head like this confirms something she’s always suspected about men. “You need to come around more, then, so I can put some actual food in you.”
I want to tell her I’d come around every week if she’d let me, that I’d fix the wobble in the table with a screwdriver from my trunk before dessert if she said the word, that there’s an apartment three blocks from here with better light and a dishwasher that isn’t held together with a rubber band, and that I could have the lease signed by Friday.
I don’t say any of it, because Milo would never let me.
So I eat what’s put in front of me and keep my mouth shut.
“So,” Mrs. Shaw says, finally settling into her own chair, “you want to hear about the time Milo decided he was going to be a chef?”
“Ma,” Milo says.
“He was seven when he saw a man on TV making a cake, and he took my good apron and cut it down with the sewing scissors so it would fit him.” She points her fork at Milo. “I still have the apron.”
“You said I could use it.”
“I said you could wear it.”
“That’s a translation problem,” Milo says. “And I was seven.”
Dean’s across the table, quieter than I expected. He catches me looking once and lifts his glass a half inch.
He showed up in court on the ninth and answered when they called his name, and the city sent the ten thousand back to me a few weeks later. Whatever else is true about Dean, he went through with it, though not without Milo getting him there.
Mrs. Shaw clears the plates herself, waving off Milo and me when we move to help, and comes back with a cake she has to carry in both hands.
She pours coffee into mugs that don’t match, one of them printed with a faded Yankees logo, the other blank white with a chip out of the rim.
She sets the chipped one in front of me without a word, like there’s a hierarchy to the mugs and I’ve just been promoted.
Dean waits until she’s back in her chair, until the cake is cut and passed, before he clears his throat.
“So I’ve been thinking,” he says, turning to Milo.
“Not the sneaker thing. Different one. There’s a guy from the old job, he does moving, trucks and everything, and he needs somebody two, three days a week, no experience needed, he’ll train me on the truck.
” He says it fast, as if getting it all out at once will keep it from being examined too closely.
“It’s steady. Real work. I just need, like, four hundred to get the CDL permit stuff sorted, the class, the fee—”
“Dean,” Milo says. “No.”
He says it before Dean’s even fully finished, quiet, no heat in it, and I keep my mouth shut and my eyes on my coffee, because this one is not mine to referee.
“It’s not like before,” Dean says. “This is a job, Milo, this isn’t—”
“I know what it is.” Milo sets his fork down. “And I’m not giving you the four hundred.”
The table goes quiet.
“Listen, I love you,” Milo continues. “But I’m done financing you like that. It’s not helping you, Dean, it’s just letting you keep doing this again and again, and I can’t… I won’t do it anymore.”
“I’m not asking you to bail me out again or anything, I’m asking for a permit fee—”
“I know. And it’s still no.” Milo doesn’t look away from him.
“If you want the job, get the job. Figure out the fee. I’ll help you look at what’s actually out there.
I’ll sit with you and figure out what the permit and the class actually cost. I’ll even call the guy myself and ask if there’s a payment plan on the class. That kind of help.”
Dean looks at him for a long second, jaw working.
“Fine,” he says finally, and picks his fork back up like the conversation’s already old news. “I’ll think about it. The sitting-down thing.”
“Okay,” Milo says.
Mrs. Shaw is watching all of this over the rim of her coffee mug.
“Well,” she sets the mug down. “Now that that’s out of the way, Milo, tell me about this new job of yours.”
Milo straightens up, and his face loosens. “I got into an apprenticeship. Pastry, at a place in the West Village. Real kitchen, real chef, the whole thing. I started two weeks ago.”
Mrs. Shaw’s hand comes up to her mouth, and for a second I think she’s going to cry before she laughs instead, swatting at the table. “You’re kidding me. You’re not kidding me?”
“Not kidding.”
“Honey, that’s amazing!”
“It’s just an apprenticeship,” Milo says, though he’s smiling now. “I’m basically laminating dough and getting yelled at in French. And it’s all thanks to Spencer. He pushed me to try for it.”
“You give me too much credit,” I say.
“Yeah, but you pushed me. I had the idea parked in a drawer somewhere labeled someday, and you’re the one who told me to go call the guy.”
“I told you just once. You’re the one who called him back after he said no the first time, and called him again after that, and showed up to ask him for a trial shift. That’s all you, finally doing the thing you always wanted to do.”
Mrs. Shaw looks between us. “Look at you two,” she says, and then turns to me. “I’ve been waiting a long time for him to find somebody like you.”
I say thank you, which isn’t the right size for what she just handed me, but it’s what I’ve got. Milo reaches under the table and puts his hand on my knee, and leaves it there.
After, Mrs. Shaw won’t let Milo or Dean near the sink, but she doesn’t say a word when I stand up and start running water. Milo tries to argue for about four seconds before Dean pulls him toward the living room to look at something on his phone.
So it’s me and Mrs. Shaw in a kitchen the size of my walk-in closet, her drying while I wash, and she talks the entire time, stories stacking up one after another.
Milo at nine, refusing to eat anything that wasn’t a specific shade of golden brown.
Milo at fourteen, saving up three months of allowance to buy a stand mixer off a neighbor, and carrying it up several flights by himself because he wouldn’t let anyone help.
Milo learning to make his grandmother’s bread, burning four loaves before he got the fifth one right.
I hand her plates, she dries them and stacks them in the cabinet, and there’s a rhythm to it that doesn’t require either of us to think too hard.
I stand at a strange sink in a strange kitchen, scrubbing at a pot that’s seen decades of Sunday dinners, and I haven’t felt like this since before my mother passed.
“Even as a kid,” Mrs. Shaw says, quieter, drying the same plate a beat longer than she needs to, “you’d try to help him with something and he’d take it out of your hands and say he’s got it, don’t worry, he’s got it.” She looks over at me. “So whatever you’re doing. Keep doing it.”
I don’t have an answer, so I nod.
By the time we say our goodbyes at the door, Mrs. Shaw is hugging me and telling me to come back soon and bring my appetite. I’ve got a container of leftovers in one hand and Milo’s in the other.
The drive home is quiet at first, city lights sliding past the windows, Milo with his head tipped against the seat, watching them go.
“You did good tonight,” I say, eyes on the road. “With Dean.”
“Yeah?” Milo turns to look at me. “Thanks for not stepping in.”
“Wasn’t mine to step into.” I reach over to find his hand, and he laces his fingers through mine. “I’m proud of you, sunshine.”
He goes quiet for a second, and when I glance over again, he’s smiling.