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“Well, ooh la la!” I quip, then laugh, but they don’t and I wonder,How does he know, anyway? Did he give it to her too?
“Are you and Patrick married, Isabelle?” Though she doesn’t wear a wedding ring.
“No, we’re not, but we’re talking about it,” she says coyly.
“Really?” Luis asks.
“That is such wonderful news,” I say, only just restraining myself from clapping. “What a shame Patrick couldn’t make it this evening.”
“He travels all the time, that’s the downside of his work, to me I mean, not to him. He’s an athletics recruiter.” The whole time I’m staring at Luis, searching for clues and finding none.
“How interesting!” I say. “And how did you two meet?”
She says something about being introduced through friends of friends, then Mateo pipes up.
“Mom and Dad met at school.”
“At college, sweetie,” I say.
“And Mom fell in love with my dad”—he punctuates this with a mini eye roll, something about the wordlove—“but he was going with another girl, thenshedied from eating a peanut, so Mom could be with Dad!”
He smiles, like it’s a fairy tale with a happy ending. No one says anything except for Isabelle, who gives a little gasp. Luis stares at me accusingly. I should never have told that story to Matti.
I laugh. “What an imagination you have, Matti! It wasn’t quite like that, sweetie.” I turn to Isabelle. “It was awful. What was her name, Luis?”
“Monica.”
“That’s right.” I turn back to Isabelle. “Monica had a peanut allergy, and she was usually very careful about what she ate, wasn’t she, Luis?”
“Yes, very.”
“So why did she die?” Carla asks. I desperately want to get off the subject, but I know my children. It’s better to tackle things head on and move on.
“She used to bring back cake and sweet things to her room after dinner—we all did—but that one time she got it wrong.” I sigh.
“Didn’t she have an Epipen?” Carla asks. “At school there are two girls with a peanut allergy. They have to carry an Epipen with them all the time around their neck. There’s even a spare one in the school infirmary.”
“I should hope so!” I say.
“She did have an Epipen but it got misplaced that day,” Luis, who has barely spoken throughout this exchange, replies. And it’s my turn to shoot him an accusatory stare. It might be the truth, but I don’t think it’s right to say it in front of the children. It’s the kind of tale nightmares are made of.
He catches my eye and smiles. “And then I married your mother, and you two monsters came along. How lucky was that!” He gets to his feet and starts piling up the plates. “Okay, who’s for dessert?”
Matti screams “Me!”and Luis pretends to cut him into pieces to serve on plates. It’s a standard joke in our house. So, of course, Carla screams, “Me! I’m for dessert!”And Isabelle is laughing so much she’s holding her stomach. I don’t know if she really thinks it’sthatfunny, or she’s just playing it up for the kids. Then Luis asks again, “Who’s for dessert?” and the kids scream, “Isabelle!”But Luis says, “What about Mommy?” Which is nice becauseMommynever gets to play this game.Mommyis never for dessert. Maybe he tried once but I wriggled out of it, I suppose that’s why. I laugh, extend my arms ready to be cut up to pieces but they’re insistent. “Noooo!!! Isabelle’s for dessert!” And I can see Luis doesn’t want to do it. He steals sideways glances at her, probably hoping she’ll saying something like, “No, not me, please cut up Mommy instead.”But she doesn’t and the kids are over-excited and they won’t let up so he relents, does his thing, cuts up Isabelle in pieces and serves her up on a plate. And I have to say, she’s a natural, completely comfortable with my husband’s hands on her and my kids pulling her limbs apart.
“I’ll get the cheesecake,” I say.
Twenty-Three
The first time I ever saw Luis was at the college library. I was scanning the shelves for something and he appeared beside me. He smelt of something warm and sweet, like the whiff you catch as you walk past a bakery.
“Sorry,” he whispered, reaching across me.
I fell in love with him the moment I saw him. Later, I found out he was going out with a girl from my dorm. Monica. I hadn’t forgotten her name earlier, I just pretended to. He told me once that she was the first girl he loved. I rolled my eyes when he said that. I mean, every guy was in love with Monica, and it also betrayed a striking lack of imagination. She was the quintessential pretty girl next door. Perfect white teeth, bouncy blonde hair held back with barrettes.Barrettes.I couldn’t see what she and Luis had in common, although she liked to draw, I remember that. I don’t think she was any good though. She used to do portraits of some of the other girls and they all looked the same, with long heart-shaped faces and wide almond-shaped eyes, like a cross between Barbie and Bambi. A gaggle of Barmbies.
We didn’t hang out, just passed each other in corridors on the way to the bathroom, her in cute animal slippers, tying the belt on her powder blue bathrobe, me in nylon pajamas and flips flops.
Somehow, Luis and I became friends. I say somehow as if it was random, but really, I sought him out, bumped into him on multiple occasions until he recognized me enough to sayHi!I remember what his smile did to me back then. Made me weak at the knees. We hung out sometimes, at the library mostly. I studied a heck of a lot more than he did, and we were not in the same classes, but we would still end up at the library at the same time, and we’d sit together at the big table downstairs, me revising physics, him reading about philosophy. He’d raise his head and catch me watching him, I’d blush furiously and he’d smile, that gorgeous sexy smile. This only happened whenever Monica was in class, obviously. I asked him once, long after we became a couple, if he knew then how deeply in love I was with him and he just smiled that same smile and didn’t say anything.
