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23
JAY
“What are you doing?”
I look up from the little plastic tent I have set up on the counter. Maria has let herself into my house—as I told her to do. She’s standing on the other side of my kitchen island, watching me with a puzzled expression.
The house smells faintly of woodsmoke. Which it should since I’m juggling a handheld smoker trailing clouds of burning applewood chips. The fan whirs, doing its best to draw up the smoke.
“Hush,” I say. “I’m nearly done smoking the beans.”
“You’re smoking beans?”
“Yes.” I set down the smoker and juggle the beans out of the bag and into a container. I sprinkle bread crumbs on top.
She sets her bag down. “You promised me beans on toast. Isn’t that normally like canned baked beans on bread? And less like…?” She gestures.
I haven’t seen her in days. Of course I broke out one of my dad’s more impressive cassoulet recipes for her.
“Deconstructed toast,” I say, gesturing to the breadcrumbs. “Deconstructed beans. Be quiet. I’m trying to impress you.”
One hand goes to her hip. “Which is why you told me you were making me beans on toast.”
“Lowering expectations is a fundamental part of making a good impression.”
She just shakes her head.
“And it was either impress you with my cooking skills or, you know, lasers. I have a limited repertoire.”
“Ha. I can think of other things you can do.”
I turn off the smoker and put my cassoulet in the oven.
“Then come here and let me do them,” I say.
She stalks around the counter. Comes up to me.
I wrap my arms around her and kiss her.
Two weeks should be nothing in a relationship. But every day I was gone, I felt her absence in my bed like a palpable thing.
The kiss ends, but I don’t want to let go. “Did you have a good time with your grandmother?”
She shakes her head and lets out a little gurgling laugh. “She’s still at trial. I went over and made her eat food, and she made a few protesting noises. I’m not sure she even noticed I was there.”
“Poor Em. Everyone ignores you. I was out of town. Your grandmother was at trial.”
She shrugs. “I’m used to it. I don’t mind.”
“Want a glass of water while we’re waiting?”
She comes with me to the refrigerator and watches as I pour water from a filter pitcher. Her eyes narrow, and she reaches into the fridge and removes a plastic container of cream cheese.
She opens it. It is, unsurprisingly, cream cheese.
She nods. “I thought so,” she remarks in a grim tone.
“It’s almost like you’re psychic,” I comment. “Or—alternate explanation—you can read.”
She shakes her head, as if I’ve said something amusing, and takes the glass of water.
I wait until we’re sitting down on the couch. “Speaking of your grandmother,” I say slowly, “I want you to meet my parents.”
Her eyes widen. She doesn’t pull away from me—not really—but she leans forward to set her water glass on the table, and when she comes back, somehow, we’re not touching anymore.
“Maybe we should hold off on that.” Her voice is flat. She presses the palms of her hands against my thighs.
“If you want.” I already told them about her. “But they would like you.”
She gives an involuntary shake of her head. “You don’t know that.”
“I do, actually. My parents have a pretty firm no-bullshit clause for significant others. It comes from their own relationship.”
This doesn’t calm her down. She shakes her head again and looks away. Her breathing is rapid, too rapid. Her lips look pale.
“Em. Are you all right?”
“Fine.” She grinds the word out in the exact tone that suggests she is anything but fine.
I set my hand on hers. “Maria?”
“It’s fine.”
I don’t say anything. But maybe she can read the disbelief in my expression. She looks up at me and exhales.
“It’s not fine,” she finally says. But she leans into me when she says it.
“Bad experience with someone’s parents not liking you?”
She stares at her hands. “Jay,” she says slowly, “my parents don’t like me.”
Oh. I don’t speak out loud. Truth is, I met her parents once. They came out to visit Gabe at Harvard, and took a bunch of his friends out to dinner. They seemed nice. I don’t say this.
“It’s complicated.” Maria’s hands tangle with mine. “They kicked me out when I was twelve, and sometimes I wish that was all it was. But it doesn’t work that way. There are no clean breaks.”
I pull her closer. Her skin is cool against mine.
“There were summers when we tried to work things out. And sessions with therapists. Every time my mom would call and say she wanted to try, I’d get my hopes up. I’d start daydreaming. And then we’d try, and I…listened to my mother explain how hard it was for her, how all she wanted was for her children to have the safe place she never had as a child, and how it was my fault it hadn’t happened. I had my list of things that I wanted. It wasn’t long. But I never got to present it. She thought that if I just understood how my existence hurt her, I would change.”
“Oh. Em.”
She brushes off this sympathy. “And it’s fine. It’s fine now. But every time we’d try to work things out, I’d start believing, and…” She smashes her hands together, squelching those hopes. “So I have issues with things like this. I had this period in high school where I had massive anxiety attacks. My grandmother would come home late from work and I would work myself into a state thinking that she left me.”
The closer I hold her, the more I can feel the little tremors in her shoulders.
“And here’s the thing that made it better,” Maria said. “Part of it was seeing someone. Getting a prescription. Having people tell me that what I was going through was a normal reaction to trauma. But have you ever read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler?”
I shake my head. “Sorry.”
“Well, you should. It’s about a couple of kids who run away from home and live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In any event, I decided that if my grandmother ever threw me out, I’d hide out in the library. I had a plan. I hid boxes of granola bars behind the encyclopedias and everything. Every time I started freaking out, I’d tell myself it was okay because I had somewhere to go.”
I’m playing with her hair as she talks. She’s not shaking an
ymore.
“I’m a lot better,” she says. “I don’t have an active prescription right now. But weird things still freak me out. It took me years to believe Nana when she said she loved me. I used to wonder if she was trying to lull me into a false sense of security.”
She shrugs. I’m still not sure what to say.
“People talk about unconditional love,” she says quietly. “But all love is conditional. I’m just a little neurotic until I figure out the conditions. And until I do, I need to take things slow. Have a place to hide. Just in case. So can we hold off on meeting your parents?”
I think my heart is breaking for her. I think of my father’s book. Of his dedication. Of my mom, taking me out to lunch in the middle of her day. I spent years wondering how to make up my mistakes to my parents. I’m slowly beginning to understand that I don’t have to. All love is not conditional. It sucked when I thought it was. I hate that she lives in a world where she still has reason to believe it.
“You’re not neurotic,” I say. “My parents adored me, and when my brother died, I disappeared and drove to Vegas to get these.” I hold out my arms so she can see my tattoos. “I wanted to piss them off. I wanted them to get mad at me and blame me. They didn’t.”
She gives me a wan smile. “Did you keep on trying?”
“Of course. I had applied to Cambridge for university on a whim. I told them I was going. I think I really wanted them to say, ‘No, that’s too far, you can’t do it.’ But they didn’t. So, seven and a half years later, I had a PhD.”
She begins laughing.
“What?”
“You may be the first person in the entire world who rebelled from his parents by getting a PhD in physics from Cambridge.”
“I doubt it.” I lean in. “You’re not neurotic. You’ve built emotional muscles that most people never need to use. You’re not standard, but I adore every nonstandard inch of you.”
She looks up at me.
“Does that freak you out?”
She nods. “A little.”
