Snack (3 page)

My brothers are half-asleep at a table in the café. Sid is propped up at an angle in a high chair; his head bobbing up and down. Clip’s hot cocoa is barely touched. He has his hand around the mug, but he’s staring into space. The chime on the door rings and I see my Mimi has arrived, and Daddy abandons the Eggroll discussion. He hugs Mimi and talks to her, occasionally pointing back at the boys and me. I don’t know Mimi very well. She sends us nice Christmas presents, but I’ve never spent more than a day or two with my grandma. We never see my mommy’s parents at all.

“I didn’t know Miss Janice was your grandma,” Snack says.

“Yep, that’s my Mimi.” I didn’t really know her as anything other than Mimi. Janice? Who’s Janice?

Snack asks a natural question next. “Where’s your momma?”

“She doesn’t live with us anymo-ah. She’s in a hospital. She’s sick,” I reply matter-of-factly.

My six-year-old reasoning was unconsciously protective. Just the facts. No judgment. It is what it is. It would only be later that the feelings of loss and betrayal about my mother would surface.

Snack accepts my explanation with a shrug and an upbeat “Oh,” and we decide to make a Lego pen for Eggroll on the floor of the café. He probably needs the exercise since he’s sort of fat. Eggroll is used to hanging out in my overall pocket, since I trained him over time, but not as long as he’s been in there today
.
We nearly have it finished when Daddy interrupts our play and tells me to gather up my stuff and wake the boys up because it’s time to go.

Snack runs to his mom and asks loudly, “Momma, can my girl spend the night at my house?”

“My girl? Who’s his girl?” Mimi looks at my dad with her face all scrunched up.

Standing right next to Snack, I turn quickly to look at him and scratch my head.

Colette Snackenberg puts her hands on Snack’s shoulder and beams. Her smile is huge—I like it. “Your girl?” She looks over at me and then strokes my chin. Her hands are so soft. “Do you mean Minnie? Is she your girl?

“Yeah,” Snack says and puts his arm around me, pulling me closer to his side. I like his arm around me. Everything in me tells me I should always be this close to him. He’s fun.

Colette glances over at Daddy and Mimi and then laughs. They join in. I don’t know what they’re laughing about. There’s nothing funny about what he said. I
want
to stay with Snack.

If I’m honest, from that moment on… I never wanted to be away from him.

“He’s never acted like this before,” Colette says to the other grownups and then bends down to address Snack. “It’s a school night.”

Snack isn’t backing down. “Friday, then?”

“Sure,” Colette answers. She shakes her head a little and sort of smiles and frowns at the same time. “What’s gotten into you, Snack?”

Snack was very bossy with me and about me from the start. I never let anyone boss me around, but for Snack, I rolled over like a beagle begging to have her tummy scratched.

I’ve come to suspect that Snack claimed me from that moment on. Claimed me, owned me. Ruined me for anyone else. At six years old.

Dad’s call? The one after Henry gave me my toe-curling, Dark Lord, tongue bath? Went something like this: “Snack’s wife is dead.”

A rush of air left my lungs after unconsciously holding my breath, and with relief I blurt out, “Oh, thank God!”

“What?” my father replied, aghast.

“No, Dad, I mean… Oh my God, that’s horrible, but I thought you were about to tell me
Snack
was dead.”

Dad sighs. “He might as well be. The poor guy is really torn up. It was sudden. He’s been back home for a while. I can’t believe this is happening to him again.” Dad briefly relays the story of Megan Snackenburg’s brave struggle against breast cancer after having her last child, remission, then the unexpected recurrence, and death from complications of chemo.

I’m stunned and think
holy shit, not again
but only hear my breath hitch, in a failed attempt to stifle a sob. The odds of lighting striking a person twice in one lifetime are one in nine million. The odds of tragically losing the person you love twice are much lower, but it doesn’t make it less horrible. Snack’s odds suck.

It’s like Dad knows what I’m thinking in that sob when he says in a thick voice, “Yeah, the guy can’t catch a break.”

This makes me laugh inappropriately inside for half a second before I reprimand myself. In many ways throughout his life because of his looks and charm, Snack did nothing
but
catch breaks. But in his current situation, just like fourteen years ago—not so much.

Since I remain quiet my dad continues, “There wasn’t a visitation or funeral. Megan, just wanted a memorial and they did it back in her hometown about a month ago. It was small and private. Snack’s mom didn’t even know about it. Colette’s pretty torn up about that, but she’d never say so. Snack’s moved back to Downers Grove. You know he’s got those little kids and needs to be closer to his mom.”

It strikes me that Snack’s move back to DG is not unlike the one my father made years ago.

“So, Min, can you come? The guy’s a fucking mess. Some days he doesn’t get out of bed all day. The days he does he wanders around like a zombie. I think Snack would really like to see you.”

I swallow a few times and reply, “Yeah, I’ll be there. I’ll come right after work.”

SNACKS has been through several iterations since its establishment. It had been a soda fountain and a wine bar in the past, but I’ve always known it to be a coffee shop. I should really just walk across the street and into the place. I’m being such a freaked out girl-pussy right now. I check on Wookiee in my bag. Even in his little red plaid snow jacket, he’s trembling. He looks up at me and chuffs a breathy bark requesting to “Please, let’s get warm.”

I lean down close to his cold nose, and after kissing him say, “Don’t worry, you’ll be warm in a minute.” Then I look up again.

There’s a man wearing a black beanie, sporting a full blond beard, and talking to two little kids inside the café. He looks familiar, but larger, more filled out than I remember. From the way he moves, I don’t think it can be anyone else but him.

The man glances up and just stares out the window at me. From across the street, through the large pane glass window with the fat snowflakes floating around me, our eyes lock. Nobody else in my whole world looks at me that way. The visual connection is confirmation that it’s him.

Snack.

I suck in a breath of cold, bitter air. It stings my lungs, triggering a coughing fit. I hold my hand to my chest as I cough and try to clear my throat. As I regain my composure, I wipe my watery eyes.
That was graceful.
Snack cocks his head and a gigantic grin breaks across his face. He holds up one finger, indicating for me to hold on, says something to the little kids, and rushes to the front door of the café.

If something could happen in slow motion and super speed at once, it is Snack making his way out to me. The way his body moves, his muscles straining his sweater as he walks, and the stride of his step paralyze my senses. But before I know it, he’s standing right in front of me. I haven’t seen him for eight years. I’ve kept up through my dad, Colette and, I’ll admit, a little social media stalking a few years ago, but for eight years he’s just been a 2-D image on a Christmas card photo.

“Minnie? Is it you?” His voice breaks with emotion. “Is it really… my girl?”

He hasn’t called me “his girl” for fourteen years. Since the night I told him to quit calling me that. I’ve missed it. Being called somebody’s. I love the richness of his voice. The way its warmth wraps around every word like he’s chosen it just for me. My heart instantly recognizes it and slams itself against my ribcage over and over, trying to get to him. “Minnie?” He steps closer when I don’t move.

I realize I haven’t responded. I probably haven’t blinked. He sounds like Snack, but this man looks a bit different—not as “light” as the Snack I last saw in person—exhausted, beat down. I finally, after what must have been a lifetime, nod my head and ineloquently puff out, “Uh-huh.”

“You’ve got to be freezing, Min.” His frosty breath drifts in the air as he speaks. “I know I am.” He crosses his large arms across his wide chest to stay warm, and I pull my eyes away from the face I’ve missed so much without allowing myself. Even through his gunmetal gray cable knit sweater, I can tell how much buffer he is than be used to be. Snack steps a bit closer, unfolds his arms, reaches out, and places this hands on my upper arms, rubbing up and down. Freezing? Is he kidding? Warmth I thought I’d forgotten fills my chest. I exhale three times quickly. What’s happening? Why am I hyperventilating?

I finally let out a deep laugh. “Yeah, freezing.” It’s just a small lie, but I’d say anything to keep him touching me.

When I look up and into Snack’s face, his eyes stop me. His eye color always seemed to be dependent on the amount of cloud cover on any given day. If the day was overcast or about to rain: navy. If there was not a puff of white in the sky and blue skies for miles: ice blue ringed with black. “Like a Siberian Husky,” I used to tell him. Tonight, they looked swollen with fatigue and stormy gray, even though he’s smiling.

“Liar!” he whispers loud enough for me to hear. Liar? That I’m just the opposite—getting warmer every moment I’m near him? As if reading my mind he says, “Just seeing you again has warmed my cold, sad heart.” I immediately recall how Snack could always say things to make me love him without even trying.

“How are you?” I ask because, a) I can’t say what I’m really thinking, which is “Oh my God, you are still fucking gorgeous and perfect,” and b) it’s the socially acceptable thing to say to someone that’s experienced a loss.

Snack presses his lips together and then smirks, “Better, now that I’ve seen you.”

Swoon.

Colette Snackenberg taps on the window from inside the café. She mimes shivering by rubbing her hands on her arms and motions us with a wave to come in. Snack takes my gloved hand in his bare one. I glance at our entwined hands and then look up at his profile as we make our way across the street. When’s the last time I held his hand? It feels the same even through my gloves. Electricity or something shoots up my arm and that familiar warmth engulfs me, starting around my heart and filling my entire chest. I hadn’t realized a void had developed there until just this moment when I suddenly feel wholeness I haven’t in years.

Stepping into SNACKS, I stomp the snow from my boots on the welcome mat. I take a second to appreciate the smell. The same cinnamony smell welcomes me, just as it did when I first stepped in the store when I was six. No other place on earth smells like SNACKS. After the train station courtyard, I’m pretty sure this is my second favorite place. Snack begins brushing snow from my shoulders. He surveys me from head to toe. I’ve said approximately five words since I saw him, but we don’t appear to need them to communicate. After he pulls off my gloves and stuffs them in my coat pockets, much like the first time we met, I reach up and whisk some snow from his beard. Snack grabs my hand and leans his face into it. I cup my palm around his jaw and glide my thumb across his silky whiskers to really feel them and him.

“You look like nobody owned you, as my Mimi used to say.” I bite my lip and half smile.

Snack’s eyes well with tears. Then he closes them, presses his lips together, and swallows a couple of times. I don’t know if he’s smiling or suppressing a sob. “Nobody does… anymore.”

Dammit! I’ve said the wrong thing. I’ve never been good at emotional talk. Perhaps the result of living in a house full of boys.

I fumble an apology. “Sn-Snack, that was insensitive.”

“No, it’s OK. It’s true, and I
could
always count on you to bottom line it.”

“I’m so sorry about Megan. She was always really nice to me. Dad told me what happened.”

Snack’s eyebrows rise. “Really, because we haven’t talked in a long time.”

“I know. I just… I couldn’t. But I’m here now. I’m sorry I couldn’t come to the memorial.”

“Yeah, Megan specifically didn’t want a funeral. She didn’t want anything really, but we compromised on a memorial, only if it was very small. Her parents swooped in after she died and set it all up. Honestly, I was a mess. I had all I could do keeping the kids going. They’re amazingly resilient, but you never know with them. Sometimes they’re just fine, playing videogames or coloring and the next they’re crying and falling apart. I’d like to say I handled it better than they did, but I didn’t. Grief is like that. It’s messy and nonlinear.”

“I really am sorry.” There’s no truer sentiment to be expressed.

Snack turns into my hand and softly kisses my palm. A sensation I’d forgotten, but only felt in my dreams, returns with so much magnitude my first reaction was to let go of him. As much as I like it, it also feels
too
good and uncomfortable being so intimate in public with a man who just lost his wife. I try to pull away, but the sweet, sad sparkle in Snack’s eyes and the warmth of his skin won’t let me. That and the fact that Snack reaches up and holds my hand closer to his face.

Still stroking his beard, I giggle awkwardly to lighten the mood. “Seriously, what’s with all the fucking facial hair?” And just like that, any insecurity I harbored about seeing Snack again after so long and under terrible circumstances, are gone. We are Snack and Minnie again.

“Watch your mouth, Cooper.” Snack smirks and nods toward where the little kids are sitting close by. “Some things never change.”

I’ve always had a mouth like a sailor. Snack was more of a
clean
dirty talker, dropping panty-scorching verbalizations without swearing at all.

I chuckle and pick up on his not-in-front-of-the-kids nod. Bugging my eyes out at him, I say, “I mean…
jeepers creepers
, Snack. What’s with all the facial hair?”

Snack shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “Wow, Min, even when you say jeepers creepers it
still
sounds like your cussing.” Snack removes both our hands from his face, but continues to hold my hand. Still skin-to-skin, our connection is becoming almost overwhelming.