The Scenic Route (15 page)

“Is Mandy being silly?” Dallas asked Coal in a singsong voice, shepherding him away from Mandy before she could do more damage. “Coal is proud of his peanut allergy. Aren't you?” Dallas said, and Coal nodded. “Because it makes him special.”

Mandy was glad there were no peanut butter Popsicles around, because she was afraid of what she might be tempted to do with one.

Dallas and Coal headed upstairs, with Coal negotiating the required length of his nap. Mandy noticed that Dallas didn't retrieve his navy fleece from the kitchen floor where he had discarded it.

Once they were out of earshot, Austin sat down across from Mandy and asked “So?” Like Mandy was supposed to be able to read everyone's mind in this family. They were too interdependent. Their roots were too entwined. It inhibited photosynthesis.

“So what?” she responded, feigning obliviousness.

“What do you think of Dallas?” he asked in a low voice, picking up Coal's diminutive jacket and folding it over the top of a chair.

“The question's what do
you
think of Dallas?”

“I asked first,” he said, smiling.

“I hear she's half-Armenian.”

“She is,” he said, scrunching his brow as if trying to see where Mandy was going with that. “She's also half-Jewish.”

“I think it's a little weird that you're dating someone with the same color hair as me.”

“I wouldn't really call it the same color,” Austin said, using his cautious, don't-disturb-the-sleeping-lion voice.

“Do you mean she has vibrant-colored hair and I have mousy-colored hair?”

“No—”

“Because we both have red hair, don't we?”

“So now I can't date a redhead or I'm secretly wanting to have sex with you?”

“Ew,” Mandy said, recoiling. “Don't be gross.”

“You're the one who brought it up—”

“I said it was weird. I didn't say it was sexual.” Mandy shuddered. “I think she has a nice kid.”

“She does,” he said. “And?”

“And what, Austin?” Why was he pushing her? She wasn't in the mood to be pushed. “I barely know her. And what I do know about her, frankly, is a little odd. I mean, she named her son ‘Coal.' Was ‘Nuclear Waste' too many letters for the birth certificate?”

Now she was just being ornery. She needed to get away from her family. She needed to get out of this house. She needed ice cream. Surprisingly, Austin smiled. “It just so happens, I asked her about the name. And she chose it because coal is a source of power. Both positive and negative. It's a name with responsibility. It's also a pretty common name when it's spelled ‘C-O-L-E,' which has exactly the same meaning, and Dallas is big on transparency.”

Transparency? Really? Then she should have named her kid Saran Wrap. Mandy wanted to be supportive. She truly did. But Austin was pissing her off with the infatuated way he was talking about Dallas. What irked her was that not long ago it was Naomi he'd been talking about. And talking about. He had carried on nonstop about Naomi for more than eight months, and then simply switched horses. Was it really that easy for guys?

“I'm thinking of proposing,” he said.

For the second time in an hour Mandy found herself gasping. “You've only known each other a few months.”

“We're not going to get married right away, but going back and
forth to Chicago is exhausting. I'd like her to move here, and with Coal involved, I feel like I need to make a commitment.”

“You feel or she feels?”

“Same thing,” he said, looking down at the floor.

“It's not the same thing at all.” This woman seemed to have her brother twisted around her finger, and what Mandy wanted to know was how she'd done it. “Proposing is a big deal, Austin.”

“She doesn't want to uproot her life and her kid's life unless the plan is to get married. And I don't blame her.”

“Do you love her?”

He rummaged through some utility bills lying on the table. “You're better at discussing that kind of thing than I am.”

Were all men clueless when it came to expressing their feelings? “What about Naomi?” she asked.

“Naomi's not an option.”

“Do you still have feelings for her?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“That's not an answer.”

“For God's sake, Mandy!” Austin bolted up from the chair. “I'm talking about Dallas, not Naomi.”

“No, you're not talking about her at all. You're asking me to talk about her. Am I supposed to tell you what you feel about her?”

“Do you mind?” He gave her the same sheepish grin she remembered from childhood, and he was once again the geeky boy who was embarrassed to buy his own hair gel. “I like being with her,” he said. “I like the way her mind works. I like not always understanding how her mind works.”

Was that enough? And if it was, why wasn't it for Tad? Why wasn't she enough for Tad? She started to tear up.

“What did I say?” Austin asked, seeming both baffled and guilt ridden. He looked at her like she had lost her mind. And maybe she
had. “We don't have to talk about Dallas. Okay? We can talk about your new boyfriend. When do I get to pass judgment on him?”

“I don't have a boyfriend,” Mandy mumbled.

“Mom said you were seeing someone.”

Everything was too intertwined. Everything was everyone's business. They weren't a family. They were a group therapy session. “I made him up.”

“She said he was coming for the holiday.”

“He's my imaginary boyfriend, so he's here standing next to me.”

“Mandy—”

“No, actually, he isn't here. Because even my imaginary boyfriends abandon me. Because that's what men do. They leave.”

The moment she said it she knew she shouldn't have. Not because she didn't believe it. It was the one thing she fervently believed. In fact, it was the cornerstone of everything she believed. But she made a point of never saying it out loud. And if there was one person she shouldn't have ever said it to, it was Austin. He stood there, looking sad.

“You can't go through life thinking like that, Mandy.” Now he was going to comfort her. She felt like she was seven years old again. And the worst part was she felt like crying on his shoulder, exactly the way she did back then. “It's not true,” he said, “and it's not good for you.”

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I know,” she said. It was just sometimes hard for her to remember.

E
verything took so much effort.

Carlos could see how hard Naomi was working on her
feuilletée
. Or
hojaldre
as his mother used to call puff pastry. He would have offered to help Naomi, but it would just have upset her. He would have offered to have someone do it for her at the restaurant, but that would have upset her even more. She had already spent days making gazpacho,
tortilla española
,
croquetas
,
almendrados
, and flan. She wanted to impress her friend from America. But it was more than that. It was what she did. She worked hard at cooking. She worked hard at their relationship. She worked hard at everything. So much effort. So American.

It wasn't that Carlos didn't work. But work was fun for him. Work was passion and fire. Smoke and sweat and magic and tantrums. But it wasn't hard. It had never been hard for him. Maybe when he first started out. But by twenty-five, he had his own restaurant. He worked eighteen-hour days, six days a week to make it happen. It was exhausting. But it wasn't hard. Life should not be so hard.

He watched her fold the butter into the dough on his grandmother's pastry board, the way her small but strong hands pressed into the dough.
The way her pink fingernails skimmed its surface as she sprinkled more flour. She pushed a strand of her shiny hair behind her ear. And the motion was perfect. He could spend hours watching the light play on her hair. He still wanted her. Although the sex had never been all that great. She was a little too inhibited. That was not an American thing. That was her. But Carlos had found in his life, the better the sex, the less interested he was in having a relationship. Something about completely letting loose and devouring a woman in bed made him uncomfortable around her out of bed. It would be easy to analyze some Catholic guilt thing in there. But he didn't really go for all that.

Naomi was rolling the dough with his great-grandmother's wooden pin. He wanted to tell her she was rolling too much. Too much rolling and the butter would leak. But she knew that, as she undoubtedly would tell him if he interfered. So instead he watched as her entire body moved back and forth. Her slender shoulders. Her delicate breasts. He watched the way she clenched her jaw, the way she often did when she was concentrating on something. He studied the tight, unblemished skin along the edge of her jaw. Yes, he wanted her. She made him feel young. She made him remember what it was like when his stomach did not hang over his waist. And his shoulders did not curve forward. Lying with her in bed, he dreamed a young man's dreams. And then he woke up in an older man's body.

Ah, there was the rub. She also made him feel old. The velvet texture of her skin made his feel parched. When he looked in the mirror his hair looked grayer. His face hung lower. He saw how people looked at him when he was standing next to her. First there was envy. And then there was pity. Because no matter how tightly he held her to him, he could not reverse the years. They were not equals. He could never again have what she had.

“Are you going to get dressed?” she asked, her face glistening from her efforts. A smidge of flour on the bloom of her cheek.

“I am dressed,” he said.

She looked at him with disapproval while continuing to roll the dough. He noticed butter leaking out as he headed to the bedroom to change.

No, he would never again have what she had. But she would
never
have what he had.

He picked a linen shirt and a pair of jeans before washing up. He hoped Naomi wouldn't be annoyed if he wore jeans. But why shouldn't he be comfortable in his own home? He would put on loafers rather than sandals. That should make her happy.

He was not looking forward to the evening. The friend visiting from America sounded like a bit of a twit. But that was unfair. He only heard one side of the conversation when Naomi spoke with her on the phone. And Naomi said the same thing over and over: she told her friend to remember that she loved her husband. If she had to be reminded so many times, it was more likely that she didn't, Carlos thought. But it was none of his business. He would be a pleasant host for his bourgeois American guest, and he would act as if it was his greatest privilege. He was good at that. It came with running a restaurant—and with being Spanish.

What he wasn't good at was spending hours listening to two girls talking about relationships, especially since he was a participant in one of those relationships. They would be speaking English all night,
por supuesto
. It took so much effort to follow along. He had lived in America for more than a year, and he was proud of his English. But it was hard to think and talk in English while following two other people talking. He wasn't used to it anymore. He spoke English now only with Naomi, and when he thought about it, he realized they didn't really talk so much. They didn't need to. He had hoped she would have learned more Spanish. It was almost two years. But to talk to her in Spanish was more effort than talking in English.

The phone rang. It was probably the concierge announcing their guest, so Carlos let Naomi pick it up while he went into the kitchen and opened a bottle of Rioja Reserva he had brought back from the restaurant. Good enough for an American he had never heard of before. In two years, he didn't remember Naomi mentioning her name, which didn't suggest they were very close friends. He could smell the
palmeras
baking in the oven. He wanted to add a pinch of cinnamon, but he resisted the temptation. He took a quick peek. They looked good. Maybe the leaked butter wouldn't make a difference.

Naomi entered the kitchen. She was wearing a loose-fitting Adolfo Domínguez maxi-dress he had bought her. The light material floated from her body, making her look like Venus stepping out of a cloud. She looked bewitching in the dress, and he couldn't wait to take it off.

“What are you doing?” she said. “Steffi's on her way up.”

“If we turn off the light,” he said, “she won't know we are here.” He wanted to taste the pinkness of her, the wetness of her, the tautness of her breasts and the give of her thighs. She let him fondle her, but when he went to kiss her she turned her head away.

“I just put on fresh lipstick,” she said.

For a moment, she sounded exactly like her mother.

Steffi was not what Carlos expected. She strutted in wearing Manolo Blahniks from the new summer collection and a sleeveless dress that hugged her impressively full and firm breasts. She bubbled over with energy like a boiling pot of pasta on high heat. But her eyes were laser focused. This was no social visit. There was no talk about her husband, whom she may or may not have remembered when she held Carlos tight to her chest while greeting him.

She had a business proposition for Naomi.
Por
supuesto
, of course, she was American. Everything is about work. Even when on vacation. He wondered if Naomi knew that was part of the reason for the visit. Was it why she had been so nervous? He had thought it was something else.
Maybe it was just his ego, but he thought it was about a man. He had a feeling, a fear, there was someone connected with Steffi. Someone Naomi was thinking about. Someone younger, no doubt. Carlos had taken Viagra every night for the last week. He had even tongued her butthole. An acquired taste. But he wanted to make her happy. He wanted to satisfy her. He wanted to prove he was not getting bored of her. He was getting old for such games.

Steffi had some kind of European import-export idea that she talked about incessantly as they ate. “Why should people have to come all the way to Europe when FedEx delivers everywhere?” she asked. Carlos guessed the question was rhetorical.

“What people need are middlemen,” Steffi said. “Or middlewomen. And that's where you come in. I want you to be my partner.”

“In what?” Naomi asked.

“In the Web site I want to launch. It's called Steffi's Stuff.” Carlos noted the company name didn't sound like a partnership. “And it would be stuff from everywhere. Stuff that people can't get easily. Or stuff that only a few people know how to get. And we curate that stuff. We pick and choose and put it all together in one place. Basically, we get paid to go shopping, and what could be more fun than that?”

The words poured out of her at a rapid pace, and Carlos was confused by a good many of them. He sipped his Rioja, letting the spicy wood and cherry notes swirl around his mouth. He noticed Steffi wasn't drinking any of hers. But Naomi had already filled her water glass several times. Americans could be so puritanical.

“For example, there's marzipan here people would kill for back home. And the chocolate. Oh my God, the chocolate.”

“It sounds like Spanish Stuff, not Steffi Stuff,” Carlos quipped. Naomi glared at him.

“We would start with Spain,” Steffi said, “because you're here. But then we could expand.” Naomi nodded encouragingly.

Carlos realized she was considering doing this thing. This tacky American thing. But why? The sum total of Steffi's business experience seemed to be a penchant for shopping. And he couldn't see Naomi getting creative satisfaction from packing up boxes of chocolate and marzipan. What would motivate her to even consider such a time-consuming and unworthy project?

And that was when he realized just how hard she was working at pretending to be happy with her life. She wasn't with him because of love. Or lust. Or even idolatry. Which he could live with. She was with him because of entropy. The work required to stay was less than the work required to leave. And the reason he understood this so clearly was because he felt the same.

He didn't want drama. He didn't want tears. He didn't want to sleep in separate rooms while she looked for another place to live. He didn't want to have to find someone new, and he didn't want to worry if they would be as forgiving about his back hair and his acid reflux. He didn't want any of it. But he also didn't want this. He didn't want to claim to love someone when in truth he was hurting her. And he was hurting her more than he liked to admit. He was hindering her ambitions. He was siphoning her youth. Every day they remained together left her with one day less vitality, and in time she would blame him for it, if she didn't already.

Steffi and Naomi were talking with increased animation. Naomi was taking notes. They discussed numbers and dollars and clicks and eyeballs. There were apps and aggregators and search engines and site optimization. There were unfamiliar words and words that came in unexpected combinations. They kept coming faster and faster. And it wasn't just the words; it was the world that was moving faster. Carlos felt less and less motivated to try to keep up.

It just took too much effort.