Never Too Real (25 page)

Chapter 27

L
uz chopped leeks while her husband put some finishing touches on his “gourmet” pizza for the kids. Low-volume old-school R & B played on the mini-speakers in the kitchen. Just husband and wife making dinner together in the quiet of their kitchen after a day’s work.

The quiet was short-lived. Luz felt the floor vibrate even before she heard the roar of her incoming children. All three yelled with fake terror and tore between and around their mom and dad at the kitchen island, bumping both parents on their way to evading what must be some monstrous creature.

“
Ay!
What’s going on here?” Luz called out.

“Maaaaa, she’s going to tickle us until we peeeeeee!” one of the twins tried to explain while running, bobbing, hiding, and screaming with joy.

“I’m coming for you and I’m huuuuungry!” Emeli poked her head around the doorframe, hands like claws, eyes crazy big, mouth smiling.

The gaggle of siblings screeched in anticipation.

Luz smiled. Her husband had just put their pizza in the oven and turned around to help his wife finish up the grown-ups’ dinner—“The kids will never eat leeks,
amor
”—wrapping his arm around her waist as Chris saw her face light up at the sight of Emeli.

It hadn’t been an easy year. For anyone. Emeli joined the family abruptly and her father was going to be in jail for a long time. This meant a new school. New home. New family. New way of life. Ever grateful to her husband for his personal and financial support, Luz was able to build her own business, already nearly as lucrative as her previous position, and work from home on her own schedule, so she could focus on the homefront.

At first, Emeli was resentful beyond belief—resentful of her new family’s affluence, their multicultural ways, her nieces and nephew’s noise and curiosity. But Luz’s daughters and son had won Emeli over and then some. They made her feel needed. Special, despite her surliness. It was as if they just “got” it. Understood where her pain was coming from—fear and insecurity—and rarely took it personally. As for how she felt about Luz, well, the relationship was much more like a stepmother and daughter than two sisters. But Luz was okay with that for now, and so was Emeli. She had needed a strong, older female to hang on to, to believe in her. And Luz knew that things would continue to evolve between them and the family as a whole. And boy did her husband, Chris, know how to crack Emeli up—God bless him.

Luz protected Emeli a bit from the rest of the family—
protected
wasn’t necessarily the word. Luz shielded her, maybe even kept her to herself. Luz wanted to strengthen their own ties before building ones between Emeli and the rest of the family, even her mother and father—the ones who raised her. As for managing the initial mess in her head after learning that her parents had been all too good at keeping secrets—and that a branch of her bloodline led to a prison upstate—she was getting there. It helped that she was inclined to focus on her children and husband instead of herself. She needed to make sure they were happy first. And now they were. So, now it was time.

Seeing Emeli now, running around with her kids, Luz had never felt so fulfilled. There was, however, one more item on her to-do list.

The ominous-sounding doorbell was her husband’s sense of humor. The kids screamed even louder. “Aaaaaiiiii!” They ran back into the hallway. “Hide! Hide! Quick! C’mon!” came their various little voices.

Emeli froze.

“Hon,” Luz asked her, “can you take the kids to wash their hands?”

“Okay,” she answered, looking slightly green with nerves.

“Here we go,
chica
. Hammer time,” quipped Chris.

“Seriously, brothah. ‘Hammer time?’” Luz dried her hands as she made her way to the door. Luz’s husband playfully patted her ass as she made her way by him.

“Oh, hi, baby,” Luz’s mother greeted her at the door, with a kiss on the cheek and a half hug, her right arm cradling a big, fashionable purse.

“Hey, Ma, Dad.”

Her father couldn’t hug her, his arms full of bags.

“Dad! What’s with all the
bolsas
?”

“Well, you know your mother. Had to shop for this event.”

Luz’s mother rolled her eyes. “
Donde están mis niños?
” she asked.

“Oh, they’re running out back with Emeli. They’ll be here in a minute.”

Luz’s mother was dressed in nearly her Sunday best. More like Saturday at a Broadway show. Luz made a note of her mother’s need to both impress someone important she was meeting for the first time and her need to primp as a way to prepare herself for something that might be difficult psychologically.

“We’re here.” Emeli appeared in the kitchen entryway, standing tall and brave. She was a very different girl than she had been a year ago—and yet much more herself, paradoxically. She was the same Emeli, but without all the armor. Her hair still big and flopped to the side like a cool teenager, but her clothes just a bit looser, less skin showing, and the skin on her face clear of the stacks of makeup she’d had when Luz and she first met. Emeli looked refreshed and at ease, her face newly open.

“
Abuelaaaa!
” the younger children yipped as they ran to their grandmother.

“
Ayyyyy!
My babies! Mmmwah mmmwah, come here, more
besos, mas besos!
” She took each one’s face in her hands and offered each a “You’re so beautiful,” a “You’re so strong” in Spanish. It was like a beam of strength transferred from one generation to the next. Luz’s kids would internalize these moments and turn to them during hard times as talismans, sustenance.

“What am I, chopped liver?” asked Roger.

“Grandpaaaaa!” Nina, ’Fina and Nico made his legs disappear in a cloak of loving little arms and torsos.

Emeli still stood. Smiling and quietly watching, not knowing her place.

Luz took her mother by the arm and led her to Emeli.

“Mom. This is Emeli.”

Altagracia locked eyes with the teen. Emeli seemed vulnerable. But, she need not have worried.
Abuela
took the girl’s hands in hers, and said in Spanish, “Emeli. So nice to meet you.”

Emeli tried to respond in kind. She managed, “
Sí . . . gracias
. . .”

In that awkwardness, there was a shift under their feet. Decades of lives lived and hearts broken flew past and between them. The older woman lowered her shoulders, smiled sweetly, and took Emeli’s beautiful, light coffee-skinned, blue-eyed face in her hands.

“
Que bella,
” she said, as her eyes welled and a tear broke free.

Emeli’s eyes welled up, too, for the first time in months. The two women embraced, two generations far apart yet held together by history and by a man who made some bad choices but also, one truly good. Altagracia and Emeli held each other with equal intensity.

Luz wiped away a tear.
My mother. My sister. My life.

The sniffles and silence were broken by a friendly, “Group hug!” Roger wailed as they all made their way to the women, piling into a scrum.

“Yes! Group hug!” Chris and the kids joined in, all making squishing noises of joy. Luz watched it for a beat, taking it all in. Then, she, too, joined, her arms spread as wide as they could go, encompassing her beautiful, expanded, family.

Emeli and
Abuela
laughed at the wiggling kids, angling to get a piece of them. Luz cried, happily.

For years Luz had wondered about herself. Who she really was. Where she fit in. Who she wanted to be.

Right here,
she thought now.

Chapter 28

T
he host pulled a bang behind her ear. “So, this book really came out of a hard time for you. Tell us about that.”

Gabi was on the set of the number-one network morning show on television, kicking off a round of interviews to promote her new book,
Super (Single) Mom
. She looked different from how she had a year ago. She sat up straight, still in her boho-chic gear, but looking much less frazzled than before. She radiated positivity and was markedly more magnetic than she’d ever been before.

She smiled at the host, who seemed genuinely intrigued.

“Well, Natalia, yes. My whole practice, my whole career, has been about healing in relationships and bringing joy and fulfillment to our lives as spouses, couples, parents.” Gabi paused before continuing on commandingly. “But as I was taking care of so many others, I discovered that I had disappointed a tremendously important person: me.”

“And that’s a big deal, right, to help others so much only to realize that you’re not doing the same for yourself?”

Gabi had known Natalia for years and had been a guest on her show, giving advice, dozens of times. To sit in the same spot and admit that she had fucked up was a big deal. Well, her husband—ex-husband—fucked up, too, hurting her in some of the worst ways you can hurt someone. But Gabi had done something truly wrong. She had ignored the wise voices in her head and she had tried too hard to fix things, to the point of not letting Bert breathe. Or herself, for that matter.

She had known when he started working out again after years of lying on the couch. She had known when he said he was taking a walk and returned hours later, smelling of booze. She knew when he stopped wanting to go to bed with her. Yet, she kept hammering at it, at their household, trying to fix things by simultaneously appeasing him as much as possible (home-cooked meals and doting) and haranguing as much as possible. But she couldn’t face the truth, couldn’t confront him. Instead she chose to maintain the façade, maintain the semblance of family no matter how false. No one is blameless even in a betrayal so dire. She now knew that.

And Gabi didn’t even realize how bad and wrong and hard it all had been on her (
sublimate!
) until she, now on her own with her son, started her first session with a personal trainer, a gorgeous, Irish twenty-something with livid blue eyes, and a mess of black curls. All he had to do was touch her legs to guide them in a stretch after their first workout. It set off electricity of such force that she was sure she was shaking. It was the first time she’d been touched by a man in nearly two years. After she got home from training, Gabi collapsed onto the floor of her shower, crying. She cried painfully. Now she was fully, physically awake. The realization of how she’d put herself, in effect, to sleep, her body and her needs, threw her into a new kind of mourning that day.

But Gabi’s mourning quickly turned into awakening. And she began doing one of the things she’d always told others to do: She took her own advice. She worked on getting herself physically into shape. (And yes, continuing to see her trainer, though never crossing that boundary. She’d get there, physically, with several others soon enough.) And even more importantly, Gabi understood that the unhappiness at home and the now-clear depression in her ex had made her son anxious and fearful. So Gabi dropped all her corporate consulting work for months, instead seeing just a few clients at a time and writing her new book, to focus as much energy as possible on the true, lasting love of her life, her child. Gabi lived in daily fear of her drop in income and the possibility that she’d end up worse off after the legal battle of divorce, but she stuck to her guns with her time and making Max her priority. And now, here she was again. Back in the saddle, so to speak. Back on the high chair, on people’s television screens. Another book. And this one was her most personal yet. She’d soon find that her authenticity was contagious and it was to be her most successful book yet.

“I was like a doctor who smokes!” Gabi blurted out to Natalia.

The host sat back in surprise.

“It can be hard to direct that same helpfulness inward, toward ourselves. But it’s such a powerful thing to be able to help yourself, to look at yourself, and ask, ‘What do you deserve? Where is your joy and truth?’ and then make the changes that get you there, to your answer.”

“Those changes included a divorce in your life, right?” Natalia flinched a bit at this question—not an easy one to ask publicly of a regular guest.

“Yes.” Gabi set up a boundary. She was classy like that. She’d acknowledge her divorce and her situation—after all, it was in the book title—but, she would not speak badly about her son’s father or drag either of them into the spotlight.

“And now you’re a single mom and that’s who you wrote this book for, all the single moms out there.”

Gabi smiled at the jolly swing of morning anchors. “There are few things like being a single parent—a mom or dad—and I frankly wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But! Life happens, and there are times when it’s actually much better to go it alone.”

“But we do hear a lot about kids in broken homes and the spate of single mothers and how awful it is, bad for the kids— and some folks may say that you’re celebrating what they think is a negative situation.”

“Here’s what I know. I know that a happy parent is a better parent. And a happy home is a better home for a child. And if you find yourself, like me, doing it alone, the time to beat yourself up over it is over!”

“But what do you say to these folks—I mean, it’s a big deal now, so many children in single-parent homes, and mostly women, right?”

Ooh, Natalia was pressing.

“Yes, it is mostly moms, like me.” Gabi paused. “As I said, a happy and fulfilled mother is the best mother of all. Sometimes that means making changes and all the time it means listening to yourself, knowing yourself, and putting yourself up as just as important as your kids’ needs or your partner’s needs. As I’ve said for years, put the oxygen mask on you first, then on those who depend on you. ’Cause, hon, if you ain’t breathin’, you can’t be there for anyone else.”