Emily Goldberg Learns to Salsa (13 page)

She shakes her head. “We'll be stuffed.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

We'll be stuffed, but we'll be happy. It's a great idea.

 

Dinner is as successful as I expect; Rosa was taken aback to find our “surprise,” but in a good way. I think she and Lucy are going to have to reconsider their idea of me as, well, less than useful. My mother, for her part, seems proud that we showed some initiative, that we contributed something completely on our own.

I can't say what compelled me to tackle
arroz con gandules
(
con
hot dogs). To say that it had anything to do with my mother's little breakdown might be an exaggeration.

But I can't come up with a better explanation.

 

I call my father later that night; he's a little bit taken aback but sympathetic, understanding, and ultimately not too sorry to be spared the expense of the plane ticket. Max is more blasé, obviously. “As long as your present is on its way.” I promise him that it is and sign off quickly before I can give in to crushing second thoughts. I think to call Noah, to tell him that I'm not coming home after all, and then I remember: I never told him that I was in the first place.

“
Mira
, you got a postcard.” Rosa brushes past me and drops a small, colorful rectangle onto the little mail table in the front hallway.

A postcard? I can't remember the last time I got any piece of snail mail. I grab at it eagerly. The image is one of three women in period garb churning butter while soldier types in uniforms stomp past. GREETINGS FROM COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG. I smile, wondering just what exactly Ade had to promise Izzy to get her way with this little pit stop. Isabelle is not the type who likes to watch people make jam, quilts, etc. Though she is a sucker for hand-spun cashmere.

I flip the card over.
Don't be fooled—the colonials all wear digital watches and Nikes under their dresses. Must've been one advanced settlement, right? We miss you. Xs.

I'm overcome with a wave of homesickness, which is silly, because Ade and Izzy aren't even at home. I wouldn't have seen them even if I had taken my father up on his offer. I push away the friend-sick feelings and vow to be merely pleased to have gotten some mail. Take that, Yahoo, and your zero messages. Who's a total loser now?

“Is it from your
boyfriend
?” Ana singsongs.

I shake my head.

“Are you in a fight like Lucy and Rafael?”

Ana's words stop me cold. I'd forgotten that things were allegedly on the rocks with them. Lucy's three younger sisters aren't exactly the most reliable sources, but still . . .

Lucy sits in the living room with a paperback in hand. It's cracked open and she marks the place with her finger, but she's not even looking in the general direction of the book. Instead she stares off into space, impassively. I don't know about Ana's sixth sense—I mean, I probably wouldn't put money on it—but something's up. No doubt about it.

I contemplate going over to Lucy and saying something. What, I have no idea—the last thing she'd want would be sympathy from the gringa. But it's not like I don't have some sense of how she must be feeling.

Boys. Do relationships always suck?

Things were never sucky with Noah exactly, but they were sort of . . . bland. It'd be nice to have real feelings, strong feelings for someone—as a person more than just a romantic entity.

I'll bet that Lucy has real feelings for Rafael . . . which in turn leads to the suckiness.

So unfair, life.

Inexplicably, at the notion of “real feelings,” Ricky's face pops into my head. It's gone almost as quickly as it appeared, leaving me dazed.

Huh? He makes me laugh, true, but no matter what, I'm still technically with Noah. At least until we actually get in touch with each other and decide that we aren't. Ricky has nothing to do with that, and anyway, this is about Lucy.

Lucy and
her
romance woes. Not mine.

Lucy snaps out of her trance. She shakes her head, dog-ears the page in her book, and closes it. She places it on the coffee table and looks up, in the process making inadvertent eye contact with me. I look down. When I look up again, she shoots me a dirty look, rises, and stalks off to her bedroom.

I decide against approaching her about Rafael, for obvious reasons. Better safe than sorry.

O
n Wednesday my mother and I go to the art museum in Old San Juan. Much of what there is to see in Puerto Rico, culturally speaking, at least, is in Old San Juan. Coming from New York, this place is a little smaller scale than what I'm used to, but I have to admit, it's a nice way to spend an afternoon. The bright, bold paintings, most of which are by native artists, are appealing.

I think of Ade and Isabelle at the Washington Mall and how humid it must be. If nothing else, I definitely have the best summer weather here. I bet my hair kicks their hair's ass. I mean, if hair had an ass or whatever.

It's cold comfort, but less so than I would have thought a few weeks ago.

Mom is different too. I can't pinpoint the exact moment that it happened, but whatever she was looking for out here, she seems to have found it. Maybe it had to do with reconnecting. She felt guilty about leaving her family behind when she went off to college. That would make sense. Now she's made those connections whole again.

 

We're home in time for dinner, natch, but Lucy has a surprise for me. “Ricky's coming over tonight,” she says.

I flush. I haven't spoken to or about him since my spontaneous spazzy thought of him last night, which of course Lucy would have no way of knowing. I feel self-conscious even still.

“He wants to go see—” She names a summer blockbuster action movie that opened the weekend we left, star-ring a hipster-come-lately dressed in tights and a cape. A superhero thing.

It's a few weeks old back in New York; I'm sure Noah has already seen it. We would have seen it together if I were, um, there instead of here.

“They have cheap tickets on weeknights at the place down the street,” Lucy explains.

“Who's going?” I ask, as though I'm seriously curious about the guest list. Which I sort of am. But only for one reason.

“Pia, Teresa, Ricky, me. You,” Lucy says pointedly. “Ramona has to watch her baby brother.”

She doesn't offer up any suggestions as to where Rafael might be or what he might be doing other than seeing the movie with us. I don't ask.

Since that slight glimmer of warmth that I saw back at the mall the other day is all but gone, I choose to give Lucy space, both literal and emotional. I like my head where it is, attached to my neck.

 

The movie theater is dingy and much, much dirtier than the antiseptic mall-type multiplexes that have threatened to overtake the Westchester County landscape. But the tickets are five-fifty. Five-fifty! In Westchester the weeknight matinees are seven dollars. It's too bad they are so far behind with their movie releases in San Juan or I'd spend every night here, even with all the gum underneath the seats.

As we take our places, Ricky asks if I want anything to eat. I'm not hungry at all, but I have an almost Pavlovian response to entering a movie theater: I'm instantaneously overwhelmed by a craving for popcorn.

I nod, dig into my bag for some cash. He pushes me off. “I've got it.”

I'd rather he not—it's too date-like—but he's gone before I can protest further. He asks everyone else what they want, which at least makes him seem less like my own personal cabana boy, but they demur. Lucy rolls her eyes. I have utterly failed in winning her over.

“I hope the line's not too long,” I say, trying desperately to fill the awkward silence. “I don't want him to miss the coming attractions.”

Teresa laughs, flips her long blond hair over one shoulder. “Don't worry, movies here start on Puerto Rico time. Like everything else.”

She means late; this much I know.

“Even the commercials won't start for at least another”—she frowns at her watch—“twenty minutes.”

She's right: fifteen minutes later Ricky's back with popcorn and a Coke the size of a swimming pool. I'm slightly disappointed that it's regular, not diet, but I don't exactly feel right saying so. “I love this actor,” Ricky tells me, which surprises me somehow. I didn't figure him for the last-action-hero type. I'm a little surprised to find that I even considered his “type” at all.

“He's Noah's favorite too,” I say reflexively, because he is. But why bring up Noah now? The name floats out of my mouth, into the air, and drops like an anvil with a thud. At least, in my head it does.

“Noah?”

“The boyfriend,” I clarify.

“Ah,” Ricky says. If he's in any way bothered by the mention, he's covering really well. I myself am completely confused. What sort of weird, reverse speech impediment caused me to bring up Noah? No clue. Perhaps it's worth thinking about, but just then the theater goes black and a trio of boldly dressed Latina women fill the screen, trilling about their favorite soft drink. The movie has started, or at least the commercials have. I need to pay attention. Put all thoughts of Noah—and Ricky—out of my mind.

Focus
, I tell myself sternly. Hot guys in tights, after all. That should help get my mind off anything. I cross my fingers and stick them into the pockets of my hoodie, where no one else can see this furtive bit of superstition.

 

Ricky is one of our two drivers, Lucy the second. Through some bizarre confluence of the cosmos, Ricky decides to ignore the fact that driver the second is actually my host for the summer and would therefore make the more-logical choice of chauffeur. He offers me shotgun. Lucy makes a pissy face—and says that Teresa needs to get home early. She's obviously suggesting that Ricky make it his priority to get Teresa home posthaste.

“If that's the case,” Ricky says, undeterred, “then you should take her. I want pizza.”

“Ooh,” I say impulsively. Pizza sounds
fantastic
. I don't care what the Puerto Rican interpretation of the classic Italian fast food is; I just know that I want some, and I want it now.

I also don't care that Lucy is shooting daggers at me. Well, I don't care much, anyway. It's been a while since I've gone for a late-night munchie run. It's a very suburban thing to do. Ade and I would split cheese fries. I wonder, do they have cheese fries in Puerto Rico? If so, would Ricky share them with me?

“You're hungry?” Ricky laughs. I nod. I feel like a cartoon character whose thought bubble is visible to the entire viewing audience. I'm seeing Lucy trussed up as a turkey or decorated in slices of pepperoni. I wasn't hungry before the movie, that's true, but sharing popcorn with Ricky seems to have awoken some sort of latent appetite.

Ricky laughs, as he always does when he's sort of seeing through my thoughts.

Again, I'm surprised to have an “always” thought about Ricky.

“Then it's settled.” He turns to Lucy. “You can take Pia and Teresa home. Emily and I will get pizza.”

“But—”

“Do you want pizza too?” Ricky asks. It's a smart tactic: she can't brat about it if he includes her. Then again, knowing Ricky, it probably isn't a tactic as much as just him being an all-around thoughtful guy.

Lucy opens her mouth to reply—something tells me she'd rather gouge herself in the eye with a knitting needle than send me out for pizza with Ricky alone—but before she can answer, Teresa jumps in. “No way, Luce. My mom's going to kill me if I'm any later, and you promised if I came out, you would get me home in time.”

Lucy seethes. Her eyes narrow into tiny slits, but she acquiesces. A few moments more and I'm strapped into the shotgun seat of Ricky's car after all. Lucy and her friends pile into Lucy's car. I wonder briefly what I've gotten myself into, and I have a feeling, as Lucy's car pulls smoothly out of its parking spot, that she's wondering the exact same thing.

 

Pizza in Puerto Rico isn't all that different from pizza on the mainland. At least, not if you go to Pizza Hut. It's nice to know that franchises are the same all over. Nice in sort of a scary way, that is. In the event of a nuclear holocaust the only things left standing will be cockroaches, Starbucks, and chain restaurants. It is a comforting thought.

Ricky and I share a pie, half veggie, half pepperoni. I'm not a vegetarian and I'm certainly not kosher, but the fluorescent orange hue of the pepperoni makes me shudder. I try not to gag as he shovels the entire half pie down his throat at warp speed.

“You must have a crazy metabolism,” I say.

He grins and wipes a smudge of grease off his chin. “What? I'm a growing boy.” In that case, I think, he has a lot more growing to do—he's just barely bigger than I am—but it's endearing, definitely.

“Noah would never . . .” I trail off.
What
is wrong with me? Why do I constantly need to bring up Noah? Do I have some sort of mental disorder, like those people who are in car accidents who forget how to say everything except for one word? Super.

My entire thought, FYI, is,
Noah would never eat half a pizza without worrying about the fat and calories
. Does that make me like Noah more or less? Interesting question.

“Is he a wrestler or something? I thought those were the only guys who watch their weight,” Ricky says.

“No,” I tell him. “He's not. I guess he's just . . . vain?”

As I say it, I realize it's true. And also that it bothers me a little bit. I try to laugh it off. Ricky is kind enough not to press.