Christmas Kitsch (Hol) (MM) (21 page)

He gesticulated wildly at the futon parts on the floor, and the boxes with the dresser and the coffee table, and the mattress rolled up in plastic, and started swearing in Spanish. He was furious and irritated, and I’m sure he was very serious about wanting all the bastards dead or something, but he was just so damned cute—he even stamped his foot.

I took his pointed, dimpled little chin in my hands and kissed him mid-rant. When he had his composure again, I backed off and said, “See, you never look at those diagram things; you gotta hook that one part to the other part, like this, and then you get out the screwdriver—it’s on the bag on the table—and if you do
this
—”

He nodded his head like he was following along, but I’m pretty sure he was as lost doing this as I was figuring out the SATs. That was okay, he held stuff when I told him and didn’t ask too many questions that needed words to answer. We fell into a rhythm, and for a little while, I forgot why I hadn’t wanted to come back.

We were halfway done, and I was thinking about taking a break and going to Target while it was still open so I could at least buy some fuzzy blankets and sheets, when there was a knock on the door.

The twins walked in with about a zillion plastic bags dangling from their hands. They both dropped the bags underneath the little kitchen counter-way thing, and Sal said, “Wait right here, we’ll be back.” and the two of them disappeared out the open door again, where the night was getting frosty cold. I grabbed all the bags and put them up on the kitchen counters, the better for Oliver and I go through them.

One held an inflatable mattress, in the box but obviously not new, and another held sheets to fit it. A couple held staples—peanut butter, jelly, ramen noodles, bread, boxes of mac and cheese, a big plastic jar of applesauce, tortillas, a bag of shredded cheese, margarine in big plastic tubs, a zillion boxes of spaghetti, garlic salt, bottled sauce, bananas, apples, cereal, and a gallon of milk. And oh, thank God, toilet paper.

And as we were clearing away the bags and looking at the groceries on the counter, the guys came back. Joey carried an old, faded box with a used set of cookware in it, and Sal carried a brand-new set of Corelle dishes, complete with a four-pack of glasses and a four-set of silverware.

“Mom and Maria-Athena say hi,” Sal said, and I opened my mouth and closed it and made a whole other start before I could find a coherent thought.

“Your mother knows about me?”

Sal shrugged. “Yeah. Joey and I ate dinner there. Joey, like, spilled the whole story. He was pissed about you being out on your ear, because he knew she’d never do that to
us
, so she got the old cookware and the dishes for you to help you out.”

I swallowed. I’d never even met this woman. “And Maria-Athena?”

It was Joey’s turn to talk. “She likes to look in on us. Dad sucks at keeping the fridge stocked. We told her we were running stuff up to you, and she bought extras, so you could eat.”

“Yeah,” I said, thinking that it was late enough to break out the cookware. “I could definitely eat. What about the mattress?”

“Oh!” Sal was opening the box of cookware like he’d read my mind. He grabbed the pot and started filling it with water, and I guessed we were in for either spaghetti or mac and cheese. “That was Dad’s, after he and Mom split up. His first apartment was a real shithole—he wasn’t smart like you were; he didn’t let Gloria help him. So Uncle Arturo ran that over on his first night, so he didn’t have to sleep on the floor.”

“Oh shit!” Joey sort of powered me aside and grabbed the spaghetti and the sauce and put them next to the stove, and I caught a clue and grabbed the milk, cheese, and margarine to put in the fridge.

“Oh shit what?” Oliver was sort of leaning against the wall, letting us clowns amble around the kitchen.

Sal turned the stove on and then reached around and smacked his brother on the back of the head. “Yeah, idiot—you don’t just leave ‘Oh shit!’ hanging like a cat in a tree.”

Joey glared at him. “Dumbest analogy ever. Anyway, we were supposed to bring
blankets
, dumbass, you remember that? Crap—and it’s getting cold tonight.”

Sal let out a whine. “But I was making us food. I’m starving, and I don’t have any money for McD’s.”

“That’s okay,” I said, because I’d caught a glimpse at what was in some of those boxes as I’d unpacked. “I got blankets, at least for tonight. How about you guys cook and . . . kitchen, I guess, and Oliver and I will keep on—”

“Bad idea,” Oliver said, looking at the futon parts with haunted eyes. “You assholes get out of the kitchen and let me do that.
You
get to go be all power jockeys who can build things.”

It was agreed, and for a minute, between Oliver putting away pots and pans and dishes and me and the guys knocking stuff together with the hammer, wrench, and screwdriver I’d bought at IKEA, it got loud in there.

It settled down after a bit, and by the time we had the futon assembled in the corner of the living room, Oliver was dishing bowls of spaghetti. I gave Oliver and the twins the futon, and ate sitting with my back propped against the kitchen counter.

“Is that thing holding your weight?” I asked, and Sal and Joey both wiggled their asses experimentally.

“Yeah, it’s holding up okay,” Sal said through a mouthful of spaghetti, cheese, and sauce. “What’s our next project?”

By the time the guys left that night, I had a dresser, a coffee table, and a mattress which had been inflated by
all
of us because the little electric motor kept spazzing out. (One of us would get light-headed mid-blow and tap out.)

Sal set up the DVD player and small television on the dresser across from the futon, Oliver put the sheets on the bed, and I opened the boxes with my stuff in them.

I don’t know what kind of sound I made when I got to the bottom of the last one, but suddenly everybody stopped what they were doing and looked at me.

“I, uhm, didn’t know they’d kept these,” I said, feeling stupid. I had reached into the box first to pull out the comforter I’d slept under before I left. It was the one I’d seen when I told Sal not to get blankets, a basic comforter in plain blue and brown. I liked the colors, but they were so . . . just . . . plain. Not the dancing little squares on Rex’s quilt. Underneath that was the comforters I’d had as a little kid, the kind you get with cartoon characters on them. There was one with
Star Wars
and one with
Toy Story
, and the twin-sized sheets to match. I would have thought my mom would have given these away. And then I saw what was at the bottom of that and realized why she hadn’t.

My baby books, photo albums, laid out like little grids with dates and doctor’s printouts and percentile charts, and well, commentary written next to the dates, all in my mother’s handwriting: Rusty’s first steps—graphed at the 77th percentile. She’d written, “Promising in athletics.” Rusty’s measurements graphed on the curve—90th percentile height, 85th weight—and again, in Mom’s handwriting: “Not intimidating, but powerful.”

She’d had me tested when I was around three, and there was the psychological profile in my baby book, along with her notes for what it would mean for my future: “High interpersonal skills—will network well. Substandard symbolic logic skills—will need help in math. Average verbal skills—should be able to succeed in language with enough effort.”

In the middle of one album were my first soccer pictures, a little white clone with a game smile, and the trophy I was so proud of. I heard my father’s voice in my head.
Oh, Rusty, everyone got one. It’s not that special.
I swallowed, suddenly six again. The coach had said I was good at cheering people on. I’d
felt
special. My sixth-place spelling bee trophy from middle school, and more of those damning photo albums with that cold-blooded commentary from my parents. After the baby albums, when I got to grade school, my father made notes too. “Rusty’s friend Clayton has a father in business. A good contact for later. The football team is made up of parents from the Rotary. Better that than baseball.” I’d liked baseball. I’d been better at it than football. I could vaguely remember my father saying something about not being ridiculous, one sport was as good as the other.

I swallowed. Then swallowed again. There was really only one reason my mom would have put all this stuff in the bottom of the box. All this stuff was grooming me to be a good little businessman, another cog in the family machine. I had obviously failed at that; there was no reason for them to keep all this data. I took a deep breath and remembered there were three other people in the room with me, trying to see what I’d do next.

I pasted a smile on my face and straightened with the blankets in my arms. “Well, good news is I won’t freeze. Let’s get the bed made. We can put the kid ones on the futon, they’ll work.”

“What about this stuff at the bottom?” Before I could stop him, Oliver bent over and started rummaging through the same things I’d just seen.

“No, you know, Oliver, that shit just needs to be shoved in a closet or burned or . . . It’s stupid. It’s . . . it’s not necessary. It’s . . . it’s . . .”

Oliver made the same hurt sound I had, and I dropped the blankets on the futons and took the stack of albums out of his arms.

“It’s embarrassing,” I said with dignity. “I’ll put them in the closet in the bedroom. There’s a shelf, they’ll get dusty, maybe when I leave, I’ll forget they’re even there—”

“Don’t you dare,” Oliver said, and his face was tight with anger. “I’ll take them to my house. We’ll salvage the good stuff.” He wiped his eyes furiously. “The pictures are great. You were fucking adorable. The rest of this shit we can burn.”

Sal and Joey looked at Oliver and me, and then looked at each other. Sal said, “Okay, you know, that’s our ticket to—”

And Joey stood up from putting the last screw in the coffee table and yanked the books out of Oliver’s arms. He looked through the first one, the baby one, and grunted, and then turned a couple of pages, and then grunted again.

“Yeah,” he said roughly. “Oliver’s right. The pictures are good. The rest of this shit we can burn.” He shook his head. “Man, I used to have some cherished fantasies about growing up rich and white. Thanks for killing that shit dead. I ain’t ever gonna dream that way again.”

“I don’t think it’s all white people,” I said, depressed. “My sister’s okay.”

“Your sister is awesome,” Oliver said gently. Sal was looking over Joey’s shoulder by this time, and I had to move.

“I’m going to make the air mattress,” I announced to nobody. I had the sheets from my old bed in my hand. They would have fit, but I folded them up and grabbed the ones Manny had sent. They were bright red, but they felt cleaner than the ones in my hand. I mean, I
had
to sleep under that comforter, because it was all I had, but right now, the more things that didn’t remind me of home the better.

A couple of minutes later the bed was made, the trophies were shoved in the back of the closet, and Oliver had set my clothes in the dresser and put the photo albums in one of the smaller boxes. The guys had broken down the bigger boxes, and they were all flat and ready to be taken to Manny’s house—I guess he wanted them for a project or something—and basically, my apartment was almost my apartment.

The furniture popped up in the middle of the cold off-white rooms like mushrooms on the beige carpet, and the things that should have made it better, made it mine, the baby pictures and the soccer trophies, had been poisoned, turned to fungus with my parents’ inhumane commentary on what should have been good memories.

I longed for Oliver’s father’s house, with the warmth and the coziness and the flowers in the garden.

Then Oliver said, “Wait—here. We’ve got a hammer, you bought some small nails—let’s put Rex’s quilt on the wall behind the futon.” His pocket buzzed, and he grimaced. It was after eleven. He had school in the morning, and I was going to meet his dad so I could start on the next project. “It’ll be the last thing before we leave.”

Joey and Sal exchanged looks. “You guys can do that without us,” Joey announced. “And you need to . . . uhm, snuggle or something.”

Sal looked at him. “Subtle, Joey. Fuckin’ subtle.”

Joey grimaced. “Hey, I pound people on the head, you talk them out of suing.”

I went for the handclasp-chest bump with Sal, thinking that would be the way to go, and I got hugged instead. And Joey too.

“Thanks, guys.” Gratitude rushed like warm water in my throat. “Let me know if I can return the favor.”

They said good-bye and grabbed the cardboard boxes and disappeared into the frosty night, and I turned to Oliver, who was suddenly in my personal space when I’d been so very careful to keep everyone outside of it. The things in the bottom of that box had left me raw and uncomfortable, and I hadn’t wanted anyone in my space, because it would be like rubbing an open wound with sandpaper.

“I’ll walk you out. I, uhm—”

And Oliver put a hand on each cheek and pulled me into a kiss.

I needed that kiss. I needed that kiss so badly. I opened my mouth and let him inside, and he kissed me harder and deeper and harder until I shivered and wrapped myself around him and groaned.

Our bodies were so close, I could feel the insistent buzzing of his phone against my thigh. Pulling away felt like ripping my own chest hair out. (Hair. Singular. I didn’t delude myself.)

I rested my forehead against his and caught my breath. “You’ve got to go.”

“I don’t want to leave you here.”

A sudden thought. “I don’t have toothpaste. Or shampoo. You
definitely
don’t want to be here in the morning.”

“Rusty—”

I’d taken my shoes off, but I’d also unpacked my flip-flops, and I was still wearing my hooded sweatshirt. Everybody had been too nice to say so, but although the electricity was on, the heat didn’t go on for another two days. Before the twins had left, our fingers had grown stiff with the cold. I slid into my flip-flops, which were by the door, looking at my feet and nowhere else.