“Look,” she starts, but she can’t go on, and so she doesn’t say that Lucia doesn’t have to, or that she should leave, or that Maggie wants to be alone, because it isn’t true. She doesn’t want to sleep alone, if she can even sleep. She wants Lucia’s teddy bear warmth. She exhales. “Okay.”
AUGUST 21, 2017
In the barely there light of early morning, Maggie pulls her medium suitcase out from under the bed. She doesn’t know if there’s going to be a shiva or not, doesn’t know what her mother would want, if she wanted anything, if she had any plans. Was she too young for that? Maggie has to stop what she’s doing and calculate from the birth year in order to zero in on her mother’s age. Sixty-three, she thinks, sweat pooling in her armpits at the shame of not remembering.
“Can you turn that off?” she snaps at Lucia, who’s making coffee in the kitchen, her phone playing a soothing acoustic guitar playlist. “I need to concentrate.” The music stops mid-strum, and Maggie feels even worse.
She’ll pack enough clothes for ten days, just in case they do a shiva. Her dad is a lapsed Catholic, and she and Ariel weren’t raised particularly anything, though when she was small, when her maternal grandparents were both still alive, they would visit from New York to celebrate the High Holidays, going to synagogue and eating lavish meals at the rarely used dining room table. She has only glimpses of those years, the softness of Bubby’s hands, how everyone said Maggie looked just like Nonno, which confused her because he was bald. She does remember her mother crying when the calls came about their deaths, barely a year apart. And she remembers her mother packing, though that seemed to be a constant activity.
Now it’s my turn, Maggie thinks. She packs work clothes because those are appropriate, some of her all-purpose jeans and tank tops for lounging around or doing errands in, and the obligatory black dress and heels. Why women need to wear heels to funerals, she doesn’t know, especially when everyone ends up poking holes in the grass when they reach the cemetery. What she does know is that it’s expected.
“Are you ready? Got your ID? Money? Phone?” Lucia hovers at the door, clutching a thermos of coffee for them to share. Her hair is pulled back into the severe ponytail she wears on a day-to-day basis, so tight that it flattens her curls to her scalp, leaving the hennaed highlights looking like squiggles in a word processor, and then flares into a kinky puff right outside the hair tie. Maggie often thinks about how lucky she is that she first saw Lucia with her hair free and wild and flying as she danced. She’s attracted to Lucia any which way, but she looks less approachable with this ponytail, more adult and businesslike. Of course, Maggie tends to look similarly grown-up when she goes to work, where she still feels like a kid playing dress-up.
“I’m good,” she says, patting her pockets for the items Lucia listed. Her wallet is there. Her ID is in her wallet. So is her debit card, her credit card, and the emergency card connected to her dad’s account, which is all the money she tends to carry outside of bar- or club-hopping, which is the only time she’ll make the effort to carry cash. Her phone is in her back pocket. She nudges Lucia into the hallway and begins to lock the door. But she remembers—“Wait, shit, I gotta get my weed.”
Lucia grabs her arm to stop her. “No, are you crazy? You can’t fly with that.”
“No, I know,” Maggie says, her voice trembling. Of course she can’t. Though people do. And she wants to. She can’t handle this sober, can she? “But maybe? I can stick it up my vag, I’ve heard of people doing that.”
Lucia shakes her head and yanks the door shut all the way. Maggie doesn’t know what just came over her. She’s always in the mood to get high, but she’s not an idiot. This would be the worst time to find out what the TSA would actually do if they caught her. She doesn’t fight Lucia on it again, and they walk downstairs and get into Lucia’s car. She’ll get some when she arrives, she consoles herself.
On the ride over, Lucia tries to ask Maggie about her mom, like how old was she, and does Maggie know what happened exactly, and how close were they, but Maggie doesn’t really answer beyond sixty-three and car accident, splat, a sound effect she hopes isn’t accurate the moment she utters it along with a loud clap.
“We weren’t,” she tries, “I mean, she— I loved her, obviously, but she was weird about, you know.” She waves a hand between her body and Lucia’s, and Lucia catches it, holds it fast. “She always thought it was a phase. Rebellion or something. And she was gone a lot. We weren’t super close.”
Maggie doesn’t know what else to say. Her mind is already in California, picturing her dad sitting in his office, but he wouldn’t be there now, would he? She hasn’t talked to him yet; it’s an impossible task, to pick up her phone and call him. She texted Ariel the details of her flight before she went to bed, so she knows someone will come get her, and she’ll figure things out from there.
“We’re here,” Lucia says, interrupting the silence that fell between them. She puts her hand on Maggie’s bouncing knee, stilling it. Maggie stares at the hand, a few shades darker than her own skin, which seems to wear a permanent tan. There were jokes throughout her childhood about her father not being the father. But he is, of course. Maggie’s Italian nonno was a Sephardic Jew—his ancestors banished from Spain or Portugal to North Africa or Greece, maybe, intermarrying or having affairs along the way, as people did, before eventually ending up in Italy. At least, that’s what the family always speculated. Maggie’s eyes feel dry, as if she’s been staring at Lucia’s hand without blinking for hours when she’s pulled back to reality. “Babe?”
“Yeah. Okay. Hey, thanks,” Maggie says. “You didn’t have to do this.” She moves to open the door but Lucia pulls her back and kisses her, softly, and Maggie yields to it, kissing back harder. But her desire is shut off, something that she doesn’t think has ever happened to her before, certainly not with Lucia. She pulls away, uncomfortable. Kissing seems like an odd thing to do right now. The slapping of lips together, the lapping of tongues—such a strange way to show affection, to express want. Maggie touches one of Lucia’s breasts and squeezes it a little bit. “Everything is so weird.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Mags.” Tears are gathered in Lucia’s eyes, and Maggie knows she has to keep moving. She hasn’t cried yet, and can’t let herself now; there’s much too much to do.
A loud tap on the window saves her. It’s a man in a neon orange vest, one of the traffic attendants meant to move folks along and prevent loitering. “This is a drop-off zone,” he says sharply when Lucia rolls down the window. “So drop her off and move or you’ll get a ticket.”
“Yes, Officer,” Lucia says.
“What a prick,” Maggie fumes when the window is shut again. “And he’s not an officer, you know, he’s just some security dickwad,” she adds.