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I laugh again, delighted. “Nobody even notices him except me.”
“I notice everything.” His eyes linger on my face before he blushes. He clears his throat a few times, toying with the pen. “This Christmas menu isn’t working. I don’t know what to do.”
I nudge him with my shoulder. “You always know what to do.”
A deep line has formed between his eyebrows. “I thought so, but nothing’s working.”
“Everything’s working! People have never been so happy to eat here. It’s like they actually enjoy living in Christmas.”
He looks back down at his paper. “Not you.”
I hover, torn between leaning into him and backing away. I can’t commit to this place or anyone in it. I have to be able to leave.
“And not Candy.” He drops the pen. “I haven’t made a single thing she’s liked.”
“Well, she’s puking all the time. Kinda throws things off.”
“I should be able to help. What would she like?”
“I don’t know. She used to be my friend, but then she stopped. She stopped being anything.” Just like my mom. They stopped being the people I needed them to be. “Don’t worry about it. She won’t let you do anything. No one can help her.”
Ben’s brown eyes are so soft, but somehow pierce right through me. “Someone needs to.”
Santa ho-ho-hos the arrival of a customer. Scowling, I head for the door. Ben crumples up his list and throws it in the trash.
* * *
Later that night I storm into the house, pulling on my house jacket with an a
“Maria? That you?”
“Yeah,” I shout, answering my mom.
“How was work, mija?”
The rest of my shift was terrible. Ben was being all, I don’t know, normal—he made people exactly what they ordered. I tried to complain to him about Paul McCartney simply having a wonderful Christmastime, and he just shrugged. Two people stiffed me on tips. And, to top it all off, Candy’s creepy boyfriend showed up early, while she was puking in the bathroom. She still hasn’t told him the news, so I had to lie and say it was food poisoning. His stare was even colder than this wretched duplex.
My mom’s standing over the stove, stirring a pot of macaroni. It gives me a pang of loneliness for Ben. Which makes me angrier, because why should I miss a person who I only left five minutes ago?
“Maria, we need to talk.” She points at a stack of envelopes on the table.
“Were you in my room?” The envelopes are college applications, mailed to me or forced on me by my school counselor. I tried to throw them away—so many times—because they’re pointless. But it felt too depressing to get rid of them, and too depressing to stare at what I can’t have, so I shoved them under my bed. Right next to the duffel bag I keep my tips in. “Did you take my stuff?”
“I was vacuuming. Why aren’t any of them opened? Where have you applied?”
“Did you take my money?”
“I would never take your money. I want to—”
“You take my money every day! I work my butt off at that stupid restaurant and you don’t even let me get my own checks.”
She sets her spoon down, looking worried. “I didn’t take any money from your room. I want to know which colleges you’ve applied to.”
I bark out a bitter laugh. “None. Why would I apply to college?”
Her eyes go wide. “None? You’re going to start missing deadlines!” She grabs at the envelopes, frantically searching through them. “What about this one? It’s in Barstow. It looks nice. Or Cal State San Bernardino. It’s not too far away.”
“I want to go far away! And since when am I going to college? We can’t afford that.”
She shoves the applications at me. “You can’t afford not to. You don’t want to be like me. We work so hard, and so long. We don’t want that for you. You deserve more.” Her eyes are intense, pleading. “Por favor, mija, necesitas aplicar. Para tu futuro.”
It’s the most Spanish she’s spoken to me in years. She always said we shouldn’t leave Rick out by using a language he doesn’t know. But hearing it now makes me feel like a kid again. So, like an obedient little girl, I grab the first application and start filling it out while she watches, holding her breath.
* * *
“Can you help me with a project?” I ask Ben, two days before Christmas. He’s slammed, doing as much prep work as he can, but he immediately stops.
“What do you need?”
“I want to make something. For my mom. Something special. But I don’t know how.”
“What were you thinking?”
“She used to tell me about rice pudding. Her grandma made it for them every Christmas. And she tried to make it a few years ago, but then she got sad and dumped it all down the sink, said it wasn’t right. She’s never tried again. She works really hard. She deserves some of your magic.”
Ben’s smile is the powdered sugar on top of a cookie. “I think we can do that.”
We work all morning. He shows me how to get the milk simmering at just the right rate. I scorch the first batch, and we have to throw it out. But Ben insists it’ll be more magical if I make it myself. So I try again. This time I keep the temperature steady. I skim the surface like he shows me, so that the milk doesn’t get a skin. We add the rice, and I tend to it with feverish intensity. He takes over the stirring while I mix together eggs, sugar, vanilla, more milk.
“It needs…” I tap my finger against the counter, glancing at him for clues. “Nutmeg?” He smiles wider. I sprinkle some in and pour the mixture into the rice on the stove. His body is next to mine, and we both lean in, breathing the sweet steam as it rises up. I turn my face and breathe him in, too. “Keep stirring?” I whisper.
He nods. And doesn’t move. So we stand, occupying the same space, watching as ordinary ingredients combine into something I hope will be magic.
* * *
“Mama?” I push the door shut with my foot, carefully holding the still-hot dish. Normally rice pudding is served cold, but when I sprinkled the ci
“We’re up here.”
I hurry upstairs. They’re just off a super-early morning shift. My mom wears her weariness beneath her eyes and in the slope of her shoulders, but she manages a smile for me. “Sit down,” I command. I put the pot on the stove as I get out two dishes. I hear Rick pop a disc into his DVD player. The familiar sounds of Bonanza’s opening theme trigger memories of insomnia-plagued nights.
“Does he still stay up watching that show until four every morning?” I stir the rice pudding one last time.
“Hmm? Oh, no. Why would he?”
“I thought he liked doing that.”
“You know he only did that for you, right?”
I stop stirring. “What?”
“I can’t stay awake for the life of me. Never been able to. But he didn’t want you to be alone, so he’d come out and watch television with you until you fell asleep.”
“He—but—I thought he didn’t need much sleep?”
“He was exhausted. But when he was growing up, he had a few years where he had insomnia, too. He said being awake when everyone else is sleeping was so lonely it made him feel crazy. He didn’t want you to feel that way.”
“That’s weird.” All those nights, all that sleep he gave up. It doesn’t make sense.
“How is it weird?”
“Well, I mean, he doesn’t really like me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He never talks to me. And when he does, he talks about when I leave. Like he’s counting down the days.”
“Sweetheart, Rick doesn’t talk much, period. And he is excited for you to leave. Who do you think tapes your report cards up on the fridge?”
I’m shocked. Rick? Plastering my name all over something that belongs to him?
“It was his idea to drive you to and from school. He didn’t want you wasting your time waiting for city buses. He worried your grades would suffer and you wouldn’t get into college.”
“I can’t afford college! And besides. The food. All the labels. The pe