Rolling in the Deep (2 page)

If there’s one place I never imagined I’d be it’s in the boondocks upstate working at a Cogmans. They don’t even allow that chain of stores in the city. Not that there’s much respect for the dying mom-and-pop places, either, but still. City folk, by their own estimation, are far too sophisticated for the likes of Cogmans.

It’s different up here in the country. Quieter. Whiter, for sure. Here in the store parking lot I’m definitely on the margins in a way I rarely felt in Queens. Same with the night shift I work at the restaurant—everyone assumes I’m the dishwasher. They practice their high school Spanish on me and occasionally I play along for fun. I spoke in broken Spanglish to one of the waiters for a week before someone told him I was born in midtown Manhattan. It’s fun to mess with people sometimes.

I guess how I look is just more of an obvious difference up here in the country. In the city you’ve got people from all over and no one pays much attention. Or if we do, we just talk about it straight-up instead of dancing all around it like they do here.

Still, it’s prettier in the country. Calmer. All you need to do for quiet is drive a few miles out of town. Soon it’s long empty roads. Fields of frogs and crickets. It’s like another world.

I guide my truck out of the lot and into light afternoon traffic. Every mile or so is another gas station, but I wait to buy the Powerball ticket until I’m closer to home. I like the little deli down the street from my house. Reminds me of a bodega, although unlike in the city it closes at 7:00
PM
. If you want a midnight pint of ice cream in the country, you’d better plan ahead. Only one of many things I’m still getting used to.

Still, I’m finding my way. I’m supposed to do six months at a quality restaurant before I apply to the Culinary Institute. Well, technically I could apply at any time. I just need to have six months’ experience before I enroll, and apparently growing up in the kitchen of a Queens diner doesn’t count.

I promised my mother before she died that I’d get a degree, become a real chef, start my own restaurant. It seemed plausible at the time, and the last thing I wanted to do was let her down.

I crank down the window to get a breath of fresh air. It’s cold and drizzling, but I don’t mind. The worst thing about Cogmans is how stale it feels in there. Like you’re trapped in an underground bunker or something. If the world outside ended, you’d have no idea.

Funny how that’s what I’ve escaped to. Mom was always telling me to leave the diner, to find someplace better. Just because it was her job didn’t mean it had to be mine and all that. She wanted more for me. Dad would have wanted more for me. Something bigger than slinging hash or pouring concrete. I should honor his memory by making something of myself like my brother, Tony, did. I doubt Cogmans is what she had in mind.

Anyway, despite her protests, I know she liked having me nearby. Her whole world was that diner. It was all she’d ever had time for. Life was hard enough when she was young and married, trying to figure out how to get by in New York City with two little kids. But after Dad’s accident, forget it. She lit a candle for him every morning and started working double shifts at the diner, six days a week. The only way we’d see her was to hang around in one of the booths after school, doing our homework.

Homework doesn’t take forever, though. When we were done, Tony would head off to baseball practice, and I’d be left at the restaurant with my comic books and a few hours on my hands. Eventually the owner, Thomas, took me back into the kitchen and started showing me how to cook, simply to pass the time. Nothing fancy—just eggs and bacon, Cobb salads, burgers and fries. I got the hang of it quickly, and soon enough started breaking various child labor laws by helping out at far too young an age. I loved it, though. Loved the flavors I could make from scratch, the presentation on the plate. The way people dug into that food, laughing or crying with their families, their friends. Sometimes alone. It comforted them. It cheered them up, our diner food, which was a cut above your normal fast food fare. I learned to cook good food quickly, which is a pretty solid skill in the grand scheme of things.

I stayed on after high school. Why not? Plenty of people leave home and move to New York City to find themselves. I was already there. I had every museum, every theater, every stage I could ever want, right at my fingertips. I took the subway to Manhattan or Brooklyn every weekend. Went to Shea Stadium, and later Citi Field, to see the Mets lose all season long. A few years in, I started teaching some basic food prep classes at the local middle school. There was nothing more I needed. I wasn’t thinking about the future.

Thomas had been doing most of the cooking himself before then, but he was getting older. He wanted to travel. And he’d taught me everything he knew, so why not hand the grill over? I was good at it. It was easy. And while Tony went away to college and started building his business, I stayed close to home and kept an eye on Mom.

She never would have admitted she needed help. But the lady worked like a dog her whole life, and my staying home meant she could cut her hours and see a movie once in a while. Get her nails done. Play cards with her friends. It was the least I could do.

Who knows how long that would’ve gone on if she hadn’t had a stroke. One minute she was fine, taking burger orders on the lunch shift. The next her speech was slurred and she couldn’t move her left arm. I rode with her in the ambulance and stayed by her side, along with Tony, at the hospital, where she was conscious for a few hours. That’s when she made me promise to go to cooking school.

“I didn’t bust my ass all these years just so you could waste away at some dump in Queens.”

“Mom, it’s not a—”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. It’s a good place. A decent place. But you have talent, Ray. You could have more.”

More than what, I wanted to know. I was happy at the diner. But she was tired and it was Tony’s turn to be told what to do with his life. She said her piece to both of us, and that night a cerebral hemorrhage hit while she was sleeping. She never woke up.

Just like that. That’s how fast life moves, and how fast it can be taken away.

So am I going to buy a Powerball ticket? Hell yes I am. And if I can recruit Holly of the heart-crushing blue eyes into the operation, all the better.

The fact is, it’s lonely up here in the country. No one from Queens is about to take the train up to visit, and so far it’s just me, my two jobs, and my one-bedroom second-floor rental in Hyde Park. I can’t deny that Holly’s provided a bit of a welcome distraction.

My first day, she introduced herself and offered to help if I needed anything. That was pretty much all it took. I tried telling Tony later what it was about her, when he drove up to check on me.

“It’s just, you know, her voice or something.”

Tony pushed his daughters on the swings at the park, stepping back and forth between the two of them while they complained good-naturedly that he should really make them go higher. He looked at me sideways. “Her voice.”

“Yeah. I don’t know.” I leaned against the swing set pole and shrugged. “It’s calm. You know what I mean?
Es tranquila.
”

“What’s she look like?”

I moved in and started pushing one my nieces, who squealed because she knew how high I’d make her go. “You would ask that, Tony. Real shallow, man.”

“Don’t push her so high, Prince Charming. And it’s not shallow. Trust me, you need some heat to start out with so ten years in, when you’re armpit-deep in diapers, you’ll have something to fall back on.”

I winced. “When do you sign the final papers?”

“Next week.” Tony glanced at his kids, who were gazing sleepily at the sky and not paying us any mind. “She’s already living with the guy, though. You believe that?”

“Wow. Girl moves fast.”

Tony sighed. “Yeah. But that’s what I’m saying. You know, we’ve talked, believe it or not, about what happened. Why we couldn’t, you know, make it work. The fact is, we weren’t having…I mean, we weren’t doing…you know what I mean. Pretty much at all after Ana was born. It wasn’t ever big fireworks for us, but by then—”

“Mierda.”

“Yeah. Tell me about it. At the end of the day, it wasn’t enough. For Alexa, anyway. So what I’m saying is, what does Holly look like? Are you attracted to her? I mean, really? Because if not—”

“I’m attracted to her.”

Tony smiled.

“She’s got these eyes, man. And, I don’t know, this kind of…dignity or something.”

Tony snorted.
“Dignidad.”

“Also when I see her I get a gigantic hard-on. That what you want to hear?”

“Pues sí.”

I punched him in the arm, which made Ana laugh, and we spent the next ten minutes wrestling for her amusement.

Since then it’s gotten worse with Holly. I find every reason there is to accidentally run into her at the store, and I’m not exactly being smooth about it either. It’s only a matter of time before she gets the picture I’m spastically painting.

Maybe I should pass her a note in math class. “You like me? Circle yes or no.”

Or, like the world’s most obvious dumbass, I could go in on a Powerball ticket with her. Then we can win the lottery and run away together. Because that’s exactly how the world works, no doubt about it.

Anyway, I did promise the ticket. So I’d better follow through and actually buy it. I’ve been watching the deli owner sell them all week. When the drawing goes this high, everybody gets real excited about it. They start telling strangers what they’d do with the money. I’ve heard lots of grandiose plans this week at the cash register. Why is it that everyone dreams of buying a yacht?

We always gave scratch-off tickets as gifts when I was a kid. Mom would stuff them in our Christmas stockings and tuck them into birthday cards. The fun wasn’t even in the winning, although from time to time we did score a ten or twenty. It was the anticipation, the sense of promise. The feeling that anything could happen.

It’s not that different from what I feel around Holly, actually.

I park the truck and step out into full rain. Before I get to the door of the deli I’m drenched. I push my way inside to the tinkling of cowbells.

“Ray! Hey there.” The owner stands behind an old-school register, cleaning the keys with a damp cloth. She’s got a sweatshirt on that says, “I’m Kind of a Big Deal.”

“What’s up, Patty?”

She polishes the keys without looking at me. “The sky. The clouds.”

“Funny.”

“I know, right? Whatcha need?” She looks up and smiles. She’s got a little pink lipstick on her teeth and is at least eighty years old. I’ve lived down the street for six weeks, but from Patty’s point of view, I’m as good as a close relation. “You get curtains up in your place yet? You’re gonna give somebody a heart attack looking at that naked chest of yours.”

I wipe a hand over my wet face. “You’ve been looking at my naked chest?”

“Through your curtainless windows, Ray, yes. That’s what I’m telling you. Me and every other red-blooded woman in this town. Not that I’m complaining. But for the sake of the other menfolk, you might want to cover up. You’ll give them a complex.”

I grab a newspaper and cover my damp shirt with it. “Patty. I’m shocked.”

“Sure you are, you little tease. Get some curtains.”

“I’ll pull the blinds down.”

“See that you do. Now what can I do you for?”

I move up and peer over the register at the Powerball display. “I need a ticket. Please.”

“Oh no, not you, too.” She shakes her head, and throws her soggy cloth on the counter for good measure. “You seem like such a sensible young man. And here you go falling for the oldest trick in the book. Old Uncle Sam pulling one over on the working people. A tax on the poor, that’s what the lotto is. Everyone so desperate for a free buck they’ll piss away their hard-earned paychecks a dollar at a time on the infinitesimal, completely impossible chance that they’ll win it big and retire to Florida. Gimme a break! Donate your money to charity, why don’t you? For the love of God! Stupid, stupid people.”

“Patty, please. Tell me how you really feel.”

“Oh shut up, you.”

She tosses the wet towel at me and I catch it just before it hits the floor. “Why do you sell them if you hate it so much?”

“If everyone else is making a dollar, might as well get my take.” She grins her lipstick grin again and hands me a ticket.

To be fair to my agreement with Holly, I play only the one game. I fill in “QP” for Quick Pick to let the computer generate my numbers, and hand the ticket back to Patty, along with my two bucks.

Patty eyes the ticket as she tucks it away and prints out my copy. “You don’t have a special birthday date in mind or something? High school locker combination? Nothing?”

“Nope. Gonna let a computer decide my fate this time.”

“You’re living on the edge, my friend.”

“That’s me. I’m a loner, Patty. A rebel.”

She hands me my copy of the ticket and pats the back of my hand with a smile.

“Good luck, Pee-wee. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

As I pull open the door and set off the cowbells, Patty calls out. “And by the way. Forget what I said about the curtains. I could use a little excitement around here.”

Drew sits across from me, pouring buckets of maple syrup onto his pancakes. Since it’s the one night a week we don’t eat vegetables from the garden or co-op, I let him.

“Mom, guess what. Me and Charlotte? We played this game at recess? And it was called Shark Hunter. I was the stingray, and Charlotte was this…like…electric eel? And we were both chasing this shark because the other day he killed our mother.”

My fork stops midway to my scrambled eggs. “Wow.”

“Yeah, and we were, like, orphans. And we had to get this shark for revenge and everything? But we had to use a time machine because we didn’t just have to get him, we had to go back in time and stop him from even killing anybody ever. Not our mother or anybody else’s, but we had to go really far back because guess what about this shark? He really, really, really enjoyed killing people’s mothers. He’d been doing it for, like, a super long time. It was really cool.”

“Sounds like it.”

“Charlotte let me pick the game. Next time it’s her choice, and we’re gonna play space aliens.”

“She’s a good friend.”

I reach across the table and run my thumb over Drew’s wrist, which makes him smile. He’s still young enough not to mind things like that, which is something I thank God for every day. Ever since he was a baby, I’ve been surprised each time he’s leaned in to a cuddle. Surprised that he loves me, I guess. That he loves me even just a fraction of how much I love him.

“Are you looking forward to the weekend? Sounds like Daddy and Emma have some fun things planned.”

Drew lights up. “Yeah! We’re going skiing before all the rest of the snow melts. Last time the ski teacher said I was doing really well at Intermediate and I should try snowboarding. Dad said maybe but I think that means yes, especially because of my report card, which he said if it was good then I could snowboard.”

“Wow. That’s…that’s really exciting, honey.”

“Yeah, and after we ski we always go out to lunch at this big restaurant and Emma gets a salad but I get to have a cheeseburger and this big kind of cake that’s all hot in the middle and chocolate, and it comes with ice cream. Vanilla! And then we go to the game room and I play Pac-Man against Dad, except he never lets me win but that’s okay.”

“That sounds like a lot of fun.”

Amazing is what it sounds like. Like every little boy’s dream childhood. I try to imagine being able to take him skiing. All the gear alone—the snow pants and goggles and helmets, the skis themselves. Even renting all that is more money than I make in a week, probably. I save up all month just to take Drew out to a diner for dinner, and the next night he’s eating gourmet food at a ski resort like it’s nothing. I press the heel of my hand to my forehead and close my eyes.

When I open them, Drew is staring at me with a scrunched-up face.

“It’s not that big a deal, though, Mommy. It’s nice and all, but it’d be funner if you were there.” He blushes. “I mean, not there with Daddy or anything. But just, you know, it’s not that fun. Because I miss you and everything.”

My stomach turns over. Now the kid feels guilty about having fun going skiing, for God’s sake. He has to pretend he doesn’t enjoy it because he doesn’t want me to feel bad. What kind of mother does that to her kid?

And how long before he starts to resent the burden of worrying about my feelings? One day I will reach across a table and he will recoil. Because I’m a killjoy. Because I need too much from him. Because he wants to enjoy the good life he has and not feel bad about it.

Maybe I should let him recoil. Maybe I should even encourage it. His life would be a lot simpler without me in it. Emma takes good care of him. He wouldn’t have to keep going back and forth between having and not having, between two polar-opposite households. Maybe it would be kinder to let him go.

Not today, though. I’m too selfish, maybe, but I can’t push him away. Not yet.

“Baby, listen. I don’t want you looking at my face and worrying about how I feel, okay? I just looked sad for a minute because I was thinking how much I’d miss you. But you know what makes me feel better?”

Drew tilted his head. “What?”

“Thinking of you racing down a hill with the wind in your face, having fun. And then knowing that when I see you again you’re going to tell me all about it.” I take his hand, and he curls his warm fingers around mine. “You’re going to tell me all about it, right?”

“Right.”

I push his milk toward him and he takes a long sip.

Brett’s house is large and set back from a long rural road. The lawn in front is close-cropped and green, and the nearest neighbors are a mile or so way, through a patch of uncut trees. I pull up the winding drive and park in front of the entrance.

It’s not a door, of course. That would be too pedestrian. It’s an
entrance
.

As I turn off the ignition, Brett comes out to meet Drew. He goes straight to the rear and leads my son out by the hand, dragging his backpack behind them. He gives Drew a quick hug and then wrinkles his nose.

“Why does Drew smell like fried bacon, for God’s sake?”

I take a deep breath and open the driver’s-side door. The sun is just beginning to set. It will be dark for the drive home. “We had an early dinner.”

Brett rolls his eyes. “You have to do that every time—seriously? Fill the kid with garbage before you bring him here? He’ll be bouncing off the walls. Nice hair, by the way. I see you’ve stopped trying entirely.”

Drew stands very still beside my beat-up Ford Focus and eyes us nervously. I think briefly of my messy ponytail—so different from the manicured polish of Brett’s wife—but I can’t let myself be baited by him. I won’t do that to my son every goddamn time I drop him off. I drop down to one knee and hold out my arms.

“Come here, honey.”

Drew folds himself into me and I smell his hair—the honeysuckle scent he’s had since he was a baby. His arms squeeze tightly around my middle.

“Love you, Mommy.”

“I love you, too, teddy bear. Be a good boy, okay? Have so much fun. I’ll call you tomorrow at bedtime and you can tell me all about snowboarding.”

Drew smiles and runs into the house, and I take a second to watch him go. It’s a high-wire act, to be open the way my child needs me to be, and then to shut myself down before I turn to Brett. I never quite manage the balance.

I try for diplomacy, so that I can get out of here without a fight.

“We can go to the diner a different night if it bothers you.”

Brett smirks. “It would bother anyone with a nose. So yeah, please do.” He looks me up and down, like he still owns me, like it’s his personal privilege to take stock of my body and see how it’s holding up. “You’re picking him up from school on Friday. Don’t forget.”

“I pick him up every Friday. I won’t forget.”

“Yeah, well. You never know with you.” He starts to lean in, as though whispering something to me, when Emma comes out the door.

“Hey, Holly.” She’s wearing skinny jeans with a camel-colored blouse and gold earrings, and is just as perfect as always. I wish for the thousandth time that I could hate her, but she gathers me into a hug before I can even form the thought. “Thanks for bringing Drew over. We have a fun weekend planned for him.”

I return the hug, because it’s impossible not to, and think of Drew hugging her like this before he goes to sleep tonight. If there’s one thing Emma has taught me, it’s that envy and gratitude make a bittersweet cocktail. “He’s really excited.”

Emma smiles and pulls back, holding my shoulders in her slim hands for just a moment before releasing me. “Is he? I’m so glad. We’ll take good care of him, okay?”

She glances at Brett, and if I didn’t know any better I’d think she was deliberately stepping in to help me, to protect me from him and see me out without a scene. Could that be true? It wouldn’t surprise me, knowing her.

Not for the first time I wonder what in the world a good woman like Emma would see in Brett. He’s handsome, sure—tall, blond, broad shoulders—like an investment banker who surfs on the weekends. And his arrogance has a certain pull; I can attest to that. But why does she put up with his cruelty? Why did I?

Brett stands in the driveway with his arms folded, watching us. Then he reaches for Emma and throws a possessive arm around her.

“Yeah, bye, Holly.” He thrusts his chin toward my car. “Better hit the road before it gets dark.”

Maybe he means that as concern for me, I don’t know. Maybe I’m the one being touchy and defensive. Maybe Emma has made him a better man. Anything is possible. She’s probably more patient than I was. More compassionate.

If someone like her could choose Brett and be happy with him, maybe he wasn’t the problem at all.

Maybe the problem is me.

I was a good student back in the day—straight A’s. If I’d gone to a school like Drew’s I might have eventually managed to become someone like Emma. Sometimes I think maybe I just didn’t try hard enough. I know that’s what Brett would say.

My plan was to go to community college first, and then transfer the credits to a higher-ranking school where I could earn a decent degree. It was a sensible strategy, and I made it through almost two years of part-time classes while waitressing at the coffee shop. But then Mom had a heart attack, and everything went completely on hold.

She was only fifty years old. She woke up one morning, put on her uniform, and drove off to clean bathrooms at the dorms at Vassar. I was in class at Dutchess when I got the call.

She’d been out on a cigarette break. They found her behind Jewett House, unconscious. She died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

I didn’t even get to say goodbye.

A few months later, I met Brett. I’d had boyfriends before, but not many, and Brett made me feel special. Cherished. He was like some kind of Hollywood version of a boyfriend, bringing me flowers, cooking me dinner, taking me to the city for shows. And when he became gradually less charming, I didn’t notice at first. When he started criticizing me, and disparaging my friends, I blamed myself. Maybe I did need to pay more attention to my appearance. Maybe my friends were a little wild and irresponsible.

I did my best to change, to try to please him, but every day it seemed his expectations became higher, his condemnations harsher. Then Drew was born, and I was stuck. As bad as it was, I didn’t want my child to be the product of divorce. I held on to the fantasy that I could make it work.

But I couldn’t—not when we were married, and not now. When Emma is here, sure, he holds his tongue for the most part. But as soon as she leaves the room it’s no-holds-barred.
What kind of loser works at Cogmans,
for example. What kind of mother would let her child see her like that?

For some reason I think of Ray as I pull my car out of the drive and Brett’s house recedes in the rearview. He was flirting with me at work today. Even I am not blind enough to miss that. It felt good, I can’t lie. Like I was a person worth noticing.

I see Brett, though, and it all disappears. I’m somebody’s ex-wife, and a shitty one at that. I’m a woman who can’t provide for her son.

I wish I could be normal and, I don’t know, go on a date or something with a guy like Ray. No, not a guy
like
Ray. Let’s face it.
Ray.

It’s not going to happen, though. Drew has enough drama in his life without my adding boyfriends and dating to the mix. Not to mention that Ray would probably run away screaming if he knew I was a single mom.

Nothing spells boner crash like a woman with a kid.

In other words, maybe Brett is right. At this point, I
have
stopped trying. All things considered, it’s just easier that way.