Second Hand (Tucker Springs) (7 page)

“There’s no better smell in the world than puppy breath,” I said to Nick.

He laughed. “True enough. It’ll cure what ails you.”

I spent so much time helping Nick that half of my regular work didn’t get done. “Do you want me to stay late?”

“Your call. Stay, if you’d rather do it today, but there’s nothing there that won’t keep overnight.”

Yes, it would be a bit more work the next day, but it had been worth it. Working in the exam room with him had cheered me up. I was in a good mood until I pulled up in front of my house. Bill was nowhere to be seen, but across the front of his house, where the day before there had been only grass, stretched a long line of rose bushes. Leafy and beautiful and so fragrant I could smell them when I got out of my car.

“Son of a bitch,” I mumbled. “He would have to buy flowers, too.”

The next day at work, I was pleased when Brooke called in sick for the second day in a row. I knew it was a bit sadistic of me to be happy about her having the flu, but I was thrilled to have a second day helping with the animals. I rushed to get my other work done in between the times Nick needed me. It was draining, but worth it. I was more than a little disappointed when Brooke showed up for work on Wednesday and I had to go back to answering the phone and shuffling papers.

Bill’s lawn was looking better than ever, which annoyed me to no end. I eyed the rest of the houses on my street. I wasn’t sure if they looked any different than they had last week or not, and of course there were two more blocks of houses in our neighborhood I couldn’t see from my own yard.

On Thursday, I logged into the Curb Appeal site. Houses in the neighborhood were rated one through ten, ten being the ideal, and one meaning burnt couches and rusty cars on cinderblocks in the front yard. Nobody had tens yet, presumably to give everybody incentive. In fact, the highest rating in the entire neighborhood was an eight, somewhere on the next block over. There were a few sevens. Bill was one of them.

I rated a six.

There was still plenty of time for me to win. But where would I get the money?

I spent the last half of the week worrying over my bills. Between credit cards, student loans, rent, and utilities, my finances were a disaster. I could pay everything, but with very little to spare for non-essentials. My mind kept returning to the Curb Appeal contest. Five hundred dollars would come in handy, but in order to beat Bill, I’d need to invest what little cash I had left in more flowers. Was it worth it? I wasn’t sure.

One night I wandered into my pantry, looking for dinner. The light switch was fussy, and it took me several tries to get the lights to stay on. Fiddling with it reminded me of how Stacey hadn’t ever been able to get it wiggled into the mysterious halfway point where the connection would take, of how I always had to do it for her. It was probably one of the few real assets I’d brought to our relationship.

Larry’s house had great wiring and no trick light switches. I was sure of it.

Dodgy wiring aside, the real issue on my mind that night was food. I wouldn’t be able to go grocery shopping until after payday, so I had to make do with whatever I had. Sadly, what I had wasn’t much. A box of Rice Krispies and one of Cheerios. Some stale hotdog buns. Half a box of Girl Scout cookies. A package of Ramen and three cans of tomato soup. The rest of the pantry was taken up by small appliances. A George Foreman Grill, a waffle maker, a cappuccino machine, a bread maker, a food processor with a billion attachments, a wok, and a turkey fryer. A rice cooker and two different crockpots. A panini press, a funky little hand-blender that confounded me, and a fondue pot we’d used exactly once. They were all things Stacey had insisted we needed at one time or another in our six and a half years together. I’d bought them for her because I’d wanted to give her the life I thought she wanted. I’d wanted to prove I could be what she needed.

Somehow, they’d all been status symbols, and yet, how could any of it matter if nobody knew about them anyway? What good did they do us?

How often had she used any of them?

I thought about the things Emanuel had said about possessions.
Stuff
. Now it was nothing more than wasted money on a shelf.

But I had a plan.

On Saturday, El’s family reminded him why his fondest wish through junior high and high school had been to become an orphan.

Everything with his family was a battle. Family gatherings were not quiet idylls on the back patio sipping beer while the kids ran in circles after a couple of dogs. In fact, usually the Rozals looked like the highlight reel from a documentary film about troubled families right before the film crew gave in and called the cops. Someone shouted while someone else cried quietly in the corner, and the doors always slammed. The kids usually did a kind of warm-up to the adults’ drama, fighting over who had brought what toy and how long they’d played with it and whether or not it had been broken before they had it. The adults argued over who had done what family chore or drunk the last beer. Even if El managed to stay out of the opening act, he’d be dragged into it eventually as someone’s unwilling ally, at which point he’d have to say he did or didn’t agree, immediately putting himself on a side. He couldn’t even walk out, because Uncle Mariano would follow and read him the riot act for disrespecting family. El’s defense for dealing with his relatives had been to be so “busy” with work he couldn’t come.

When Abuela called and told El she needed help moving some things from the attic, however, El didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t say no to his grandmother, and she knew it. After closing the shop early and bracing himself for a long, grueling afternoon, El coached himself for the reality that he’d likely leave the house frustrated and angry. He warned himself not to engage, to let everything roll off his back, and under no circumstances to get embroiled in the drama.

He rounded the corner of his grandmother’s street, saw the pile of crap teetering near the edge of the front porch, and plugged in so hard and deep it was like he’d never left.

While he’d known his mom’s hoard would be worse because it always was, and because it had been three months since he’d last been over, the reality of what she’d done to Abuela’s house hit El the same way it always did: as a bitter cocktail of frustration, fear, and loss. The porch swing, where he’d sat joking with the neighbor boy, had snapped and broken beneath the weight of plastic bins, broken yard tools, and God knew what else. Junk. Shit that should have gone out with the trash years ago. Not to his mom, though. Nothing was ever trash to Patricia Rozal.

She met El at the door, embracing him like the prodigal son, smelling like tortillas and cinnamon. “Emanuel, so good to see you.” She kissed him hard on the cheek and pulled him by the hand deeper into the house.
“
Mami, Emanuel ya está aquí
.”

The path to the kitchen was as circuitous as ever, taking them around the dining room table—piled two feet high with paper and boxes—around a precariously stacked mess of Rubbermaid bins, and through a tunnel of hanging clothes clogging the doorway. The kitchen itself was mostly okay, because that was Abuela’s domain, but El couldn’t help noticing the piles of mail and the latest shopping on the table.

He smiled and hugged his grandmother, accepting her kisses as she fussed in Spanish, telling him he was too thin and smelled like smoke.

Though he could hear the telltale shrieks of Rosa’s eldest drifting in through the window, Rosa wasn’t there, which was a blessing because Lorenzo’s wife Anna was, and as far as El knew, she and Rosa were still fighting. Anna sat at the table with Sary, Miguel’s wife, and Sary’s eldest daughter, Lila, the three of them filling tamales. They’d broken up the tasks, Lila drying the husks, Anna pressing out the masa, and Sary adding the meat and rolling the whole thing up and adding it to the pan of items waiting to be steamed.

Anna smiled and waved at him, looking weary. “How’s it going, El?”

“Good.” He moved junk from a chair and sat down between her and Lila. “What about you?”

El listened as they took turns talking about work, school, and kids. Lila rolled her eyes a lot and played the part of a disinterested pre-teen, abandoning her assigned task of drying the soaked husks to check her constant stream of text messages. Sary asked about the shop, poking El for funny stories about things people tried to sell, and he told her a couple.

When Patti started to inventory her latest Goodwill purchases, though, El left the table and went to Abuela at the stove.

“Smells good.” He tried to sneak a bite of beans from the back burner, and smiled when she smacked his hand and waved a finger at him.

“I know your tricks. No fingers in my pot.” She smiled, though, and turned toward El as she worked. “Thank you for coming,
mijo
. I miss you when you stay away too long.”

El missed her too. But admitting that would open up the old argument about his mom, so he didn’t go there. He pointed to the pan of beans in front of him, instead. “Can I stir this for you?”

“
Sí.
You stir, we talk.” She handed him a spatula. “So. Emanuel. You meet a nice boy?” He tried to laugh her question off, but Paul’s face drifted into his head. El became very busy stirring the beans, but there was never any getting past Abuela. She sighed happily and patted him on the shoulder. “You ask him out,
sí?
You bring him to your Abuela. I make him tamales.”

He didn’t argue because it would only make things worse. Besides, he was distracted by the mental image of Paul tasting his grandmother’s food, face lighting up in joy.

Of course, the fact that it would happen in his mother’s hoard cooled the image pretty quickly.

“I don’t have anyone to ask out,” El told her. “Don’t worry about me, Abuela. I’m fine.”

She clucked her tongue and touched his hair. “You are lonely, Emanuel. You need nice boy to make you happy.”

“I am happy.”

She made a face and waved his idea away. “You sit in pawnshop and smoke cigarettes all day. That is not happiness.”

“Abuela,” El complained.

“You hide from life. You have no joy, no family, no passion. You sell other people’s things and get cancer and break my heart.”

“
Abuela
.” He stopped stirring and reached for her arm, but she moved it away to wipe tears from her eyes. Before he could figure out what to say, she recovered, patting his hand as she took the spatula back.

“Let me cook. You go talk with your brothers. Go,” she added, when he tried to protest.

With little left to do, El kissed her on the cheek and went outside.

Lorenzo and Miguel stood with Uncle Mariano on the back porch, sipping beer and watching the kids run around the yard. They nodded and greeted El as he approached. The kids were crazy loud, cutting off any chance for real conversation, though Lorenzo and Miguel had long since become immune to the noise. Adding to the chaos was occasional static from Miguel’s radio, which meant he was on call for the volunteer fire department.

“What are we moving down from the attic?” El asked his uncle.

The grim look on his face didn’t bode well. “Mami wants to try and get rid of a few of Papi’s things.”

El wished he’d grabbed a beer from the fridge. Hell, he wished he’d snagged a bottle of vodka. “Shit.”

Uncle Mariano held up a hand. “That’s why the girls are here. They’re going to take Patti shopping while we work. Mami thought maybe you could take some of the things right to your shop so she wouldn’t even see.”

He was going to need
two
bottles of vodka. “That’s the first place she’s going to look.”

“I know.” Mariano sighed and handed over his beer. “I know.”