Christmas Kitsch (Hol) (MM) (12 page)

“Don’t worry. I won’t be here for long. Keep texting, okay?” She stepped out of my arms, and I nodded, thinking I was going to have to buy another phone, one of my own, and my own data plan and—

“Rusty, how are you going to live? Your checking account is in our name.”

Oh God. Every argument she was making to keep me here just made me glad I never had to set foot through the door again.

“But my savings isn’t,” I said, swallowing. “And I’ve got birthday money and Christmas money and four months working at a decent wage.” I guess I wasn’t stupid after all, if I could claim that. I opened the backseat of the car and started pulling out my clothes, and my brain, which had seemed to be a big, unholy void at Berkeley, was suddenly moving the nail bucket and figuring out where it went and then jumping to the nail gun and how to use it as a craft.

“Here, Oliver, can we put this in your car? I’ll find a hotel.”

“Bullshit,” he said, taking the stuff from me. “You’ll come sleep on our couch. My dad loves you. You’ll hurt his feelings if you don’t.”

I smiled at him, and even though his face was all blurry, I could still see his supernova white-on-brown grin back.

“I told you, man. Your dad is full-on super-heavy-weight awesome.” I popped the trunk and grabbed my winter coat and the scarf and gloves I kept in there, but I left the blankets that smelled like motor oil.

My mother was watching us the whole time, and I didn’t know what to say to her. I saw my dad walking out of the house, probably wondering what was keeping us, and I decided I wasn’t going to do that shit, not right now.

“I’m sorry you couldn’t love me,” I said simply. “I’m
really
sorry you couldn’t love Oliver. He saved my life when I was gone, but you probably don’t give a shit about that either, so I’ll see you around.”

“I’ll pack your stuff for you,” Nicole said, and Mother glared at her, probably because she was speaking for herself.

“The hell you will, Nicole—”

“Oh, please. Stop me, go ahead. I dare you. I’ll tell the whole world you were too cheap to let Rusty have his own clothes.” Nicole’s voice broke, but she waved us away. Dad was getting closer, and I grimaced.

“When I get settled, you can come visit,” I promised Nicole, and she beamed.

“Happy Thanksgiving, big brother. I’m thankful you’re gonna be okay.”

I hopped up into the cab of Oliver’s dad’s big half-ton company truck and wondered where she got that idea. I kept wiping my cheeks with my sleeve for a really long time, and even when I stopped having to do that, Oliver was kind enough not to say anything for a while after that. I felt as clean and as cold and as empty as the wind in the gray sky, and I didn’t know if the shivers were ever going to stop.

His father’s house looked familiar and alien at once. It was November, so most of the flowers were dormant, but in the foothills, everything was mostly green, too. Oliver pulled the car into the driveway on the side of the house, which is somewhere I’d never been.

It was pleasant. The driveway was weeded and the jasmine and stuff was still grown over the fence. It seemed like someplace exotic, like England or Ireland, which, considering the fact that Europe was where
my
people came from and not Oliver’s, was probably a little funny.

Of course, I’d have to think something a whole lot funnier than that before I laughed.

“Well,
that
sucked,” I said as Oliver and I both grabbed some of my luggage. My mom was right about my clothes. I
did
like the high-end mall stuff, but thinking about it? I could probably live in Wal-Mart jeans without too much trouble. Besides—I had a
whole
lot of clothes at home and back at campus and—

“Shit,” I muttered. “I’m going to need to drive back to Berkeley and drop out officially.”

Oliver made a noise, sort of a hurt one. “After all the work you did . . . I mean, Rusty, you only have three weeks.”

I hefted my duffel over my shoulder and my suitcase in one hand, and Oliver struggled with my winter coat. It could get cold enough to snow up here in the foothills—not often, but sometimes. The coat was big, my size, and slippery, and Oliver was fighting it like a third grader fighting a giant octopus.

“My parents won’t let me stay,” I said with certainty. I knew them. If my dad had found a way to get me in, he’d find a way to get me out. “I need to find a place to live.”  Practicality asserted itself, because the Bay Area was a money suck.  “And I can’t afford to live down there. Besides, I’m signed up for classes up
here
, and so are you. So I need to go down and drop out and get the rest of my stuff. I’ll . . . you know. Saturday. Saturday. And then I’ll apartment-hunt on Sunday, and then I’ll—”

“Rusty?”

“Yeah?”

Oliver reached behind the little gate, opened the latch, and took us through a fence made of jasmine into the backyard.

“First you’re going to have Thanksgiving with us, okay? You’ve got a day and a half not to think about it. Please . . . just . . . just take that time, would you?”

I looked at him, still battling with my slippery white coat, and found I could manage a small smile. All I’d wanted for the last three months was to see Oliver. Well, I was going to see Oliver, and damn it, that would be time well spent.

“Yeah,” I said, some of the tightness easing from my face and chest. “You betcha.”

Oliver started to chuckle as we entered the house. “You betcha? What is this, 1959?”

I laughed a little, and then let him open the side door to take me into his house.

Oliver told me once that he and his dad lived in a two-bedroom house. There was a den at the end of the hall, and they each had a bathroom, but basically, compared to my folks’ house, it was tiny, with a low ceiling from the sixties, and even though the walls were a bright, sparkly white, all of the light seemed yellow and dusty, because the shadows were there to eat it.

But that was okay, because really, there was no dust, not even on the dark wood floors, and the couches were done in a chocolate-brown corduroy—with the small dogs nestled in the pillows for color, I guess—and the floor rugs were navy blue.

It was pretty, in a boy way. Pretty and warm. I looked at the couch, and the four little dogs who eyed me from the throw pillows, and thought they had the right idea.

“I think you’ve scared them,” Oliver said, surprised. “They’re usually happier to—”

And brother, did
that
give them a hot wire up the ass.
Blam
! They were jumping up and down like suction-cup toys with springs. Oliver was suddenly besieged by tiny dogs—I thought a couple of them were Chihuahuas, but one of them was a Pomeranian and I don’t know
what
the tiny one with the ferocious underbite was. But boy, did they all love Oliver.

I laughed a little and dropped my bags behind the couch, because it was out of the way, and then came and took the oversized jacket out of his arms.

There was a peg next to the entryway, and I hung the jacket up there, then went to greet the dogs with Oliver. What can I say? I’d never had pets of any kind—I used to pet random dogs when I walked down the street, which had driven Estrella and my mother crazy.

I squatted down and joined in the insanity, petting little furry bodies when they’d let me. After a moment, Oliver straightened up, and they all stayed within jumping distance. Oliver put his hand on my shoulder and bent down to murmur in my ear.

“Here, you distract them, I’ll go talk to my dad. When they start to settle down, come into the kitchen. You can help with the tamales.”

I nodded, but I didn’t look up. These guys, they were happy to see me, and they held no complications. Not even Oliver could promise me that, and for a minute, I needed them so badly, I sat down, right there in the entryway, and sucked up all of the yapping, snuffly, licking, whining, toe-nail-clacking love that they’d give me. I lost myself in it, and by the time Oliver’s dad came out from around the corner, I was sitting cross-legged, my back to the wall, surrounded by sleeping furry bodies.

I almost closed my eyes and joined them.

“Rusty, he-ey!”

I widened my eyes and shook myself awake, then smiled at Mr. Campbell, who was smiling so much I knew Oliver had told him not to say anything. Oh God. This was going to be awkward.

“Hey, Mr. Campbell. Is it okay if I crash on your couch for the night?”

His smile relaxed a little, and I felt good. I’d given him a way to talk about it without saying too much. “Yeah, Rusty. Stay as long as you want.” He held out a hand and I moved some of the furry bodies (the black Pomeranian in particular didn’t want to leave) so I could let him haul me to my feet.

“Thanks,” I said, trying for a casual smile. “I’ll get my stuff from the dorms over the weekend, and I should be out of your hair by next week.”

I found myself engulfed in a tackle hug from the squat, fireplug-shaped man who looked like he could arm wrestle a bull and tap-dance on its furious head.

“You will stay,” he said quietly in my ear, “as long as you need.” He pulled back and gave me a critical once-over. “And while you’re here, you will eat. How can you work for me when you’re so skinny? No. You have a week before my next job starts. We’ll get you a place to stay, get you fattened up—you will work for me, and it will be good.”

Oh God. My knees almost buckled. I had a
job
, and a place to stay, and someone besides Oliver and my sister and the dogs who was happy I was alive.

I managed a smile and tried not to cry anymore.

“Thank you,” I managed, and my throat was so swollen and raw the words hurt. “Thank you. I won’t let you down, Mr. Campbell, I promise.”

Oliver’s dad waved his hand and made a dismissive noise. “Let me down, don’t let me down. It doesn’t matter. You try so hard, Rusty. You’ll be fine. Now come on in, the tamales are almost out of the oven, and we’re wrapping them. Oliver was going to bring a batch to the homeless shelter later tonight, but there is
more
than enough for us to eat now.”

So I went in and washed my hands and very carefully wrapped the tamales, which were already wrapped in corn husks and saturated in spicy tomato sauce, in tinfoil. Sometimes Estrella had brought homemade tamales and served them to Nicole and me when we were hungry after school. It was funny. Nicole and I were crazy about them, we
loved
them, talked sweet to her to get them, hell, even cleaned our rooms for them, but never, not once, had Estrella served them to my parents.

After spending an hour listening to Oliver and his dad lapse from English to Spanish and back to English again while I helped wrap tamales and pack them in a foil-lined box, I started to figure out why. Man, all I did was
wrap
them—I hadn’t even prepared the cornmeal or the meat inside, or wrap all that in the cornmeal and corn husks—and it was more time than I’d spent on food in my life. You gave that sort of thing to friends or you served them to family or you offered them as a gift.

They were sort of a labor of love.

I got lost in the rhythm of the work, like a dance without music, and by the time we were done, I felt less hollow and achy. Then Oliver told me to wash up and set the table—for seven.

I was surprised, but I did it anyway—wasn’t my house, right?

Just when I was done setting the table, the door opened, and I was under siege.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when Oliver’s family walked in.

First there was Gloria, and when he’d talked about his Aunt Gloria, I’d always assumed she was one of those artsy people, with the long tie-dyed skirts and the flowing coarse, black hair. Maybe it was the health food thing, but whatever it was, I did
not
expect her to breeze in wearing a pair of tan slacks and a bright green Ann Taylor twinset, a lot like the one my mother was wearing when she kicked me out of the house. Even her hair was subdued, pulled back into a clip at the nape of her neck with a fringe of bangs across her forehead.

But unlike my mother in her tasteful pearls, Gloria was wearing big chunky gold jewelry with those bright black stones in it, which was good, because pearls were all about quiet, and quiet was
not
Oliver’s Aunt Gloria.