The Do-Over, page 9
Juliette was left standing in the middle. She looked down at her shoes and lifted the bag she was carrying higher on her shoulder.
Dad took out his phone and scrolled. “I’m sorry, I don’t see any messages about dinner.”
Raquel felt Lu’s eyes on her, but she ignored them.
“Why don’t you make the chicken,” Dad went on, “and we’ll eat the carnitas for lunch tomorrow? They’re even better the next day.”
Sylvia sighed. “No, you’ve gone to so much trouble,” she said. “But please tell me you haven’t already made dessert.”
“We have not made dessert,” Dad said, smiling.
Sylvia’s face brightened. “Perfect, because I brought a citrus olive oil cake—we picked the oranges this morning. I’ll go set everything inside for now. Jules has a surprise, too, but no peeking till I get back!”
Everyone seemed to exhale as Sylvia carried her cooking supplies to the kitchen. It hadn’t been an argument exactly, Raquel admitted. But the mood had changed. #TeamSylvia wasn’t going to win without a fight.
As soon as Sylvia returned to the patio, Raquel slipped inside the house. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for exactly, but when she saw Sylvia’s cake on the kitchen counter, she knew.
It sat on top of a crystal cake stand, golden yellow and covered in powdered sugar.
Raquel hurried to the pantry and found Dad’s container of garlic powder. Then, pulse racing, she sprinkled it all over the cake. “Buen provecho,” she whispered as she snapped a picture and sent it off to the newspaper club with the caption #TeamAndrea.
Lucinda pushed the cake around her plate, afraid to look Sylvia in the eye but unable to take another bite. Mom strategically covered her slice with a napkin, and Raquel was tossing bits of hers to the sparrows that had gathered at the edge of the cement, waiting patiently for crumbs.
Dad lifted a big forkful to his mouth and ate it. “Mmmm.”
Sylvia tossed her napkin to the table. “Stop,” she said. “I know you’re just being polite. You don’t have to eat it. None of you do.”
Jules brought her plate to her nose and sniffed. “What happened to it? It tasted fine when I tested the batter!”
“I don’t know!” Sylvia said, covering her eyes with her hands and making a noise that was like something between laughing and sobbing. “I swear, I’ve made this cake a thousand times, and it has never turned out like this before.”
The cake had looked beautiful on the fancy stand Sylvia brought over from her house. But it tasted like the time Mom left a loaf of frozen garlic bread in the oven too long. Lucinda had a feeling her sister had something to do with this. She leaned closer to Raquel, who sat next to her at the picnic table.
“What did you do?” she whispered.
“Me?” Raquel whispered back, phony shock sprinkled all over her face like powdered sugar and whatever else she had poured on the cake. “Sylvia’s the one who made it.”
Lucinda kicked her under the table. Raquel needed to stop these travesuras—as Abuelita would have called them—before they got in trouble. Or before someone’s feelings got hurt.
Sylvia put her fork down. “I think it’s safe to say that dessert is officially over.” She turned to Jules. “What do you think? Is it time for presents?”
Jules smiled. “Definitely!” She stood and got the gym bag she had brought over earlier that afternoon.
Raquel cringed. Lucinda did, too, but she suspected it was for a different reason than her sister. The thought of Sylvia buying gifts for them made her feel even worse about the whole face mask fiasco. Jules hadn’t mentioned it so far. Lucinda wondered if she even knew, and if she did know, what she thought.
“Presents?” Mom said. “Sylvia, you really didn’t need to.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Sylvia said. “You’ll see.”
Jules opened the bag and pulled out two big boxes, wrapped in glittery red holiday paper.
“Sorry about the wrapping,” Sylvia said. “It’s all we had at the house.”
“It’s pretty,” Lucinda said. “It reminds me of one of my skating dresses.”
Raquel snorted.
“What? It does!” She peeled back the paper to reveal a worn box, its edges crushed, with a picture of Rollerblades on the front. Lucinda lifted the top off the box. The skates inside were a little scuffed, but hardly used.
“They were mine,” Sylvia explained. “But I haven’t used them in ages. I thought you might enjoy them, at least until you can skate on ice again.”
“Thank you!” Lucinda said, already loosening the laces. “Can I try them out?”
Raquel glared at her and hurled a chunk of orange cake at the sparrows, who didn’t seem to mind the garlic.
She hadn’t even unwrapped her box yet.
“Of course!” Sylvia said. “Jules brought her skates over from the house. And we ordered a pair for you, too, Kel. They just arrived this morning. That was the real reason we needed another day at the loft.”
“Thanks,” Raquel mumbled. “But I don’t skate.”
Lucinda already had one skate on and was lacing up the other. She paused and turned to her sister. “Come on, Kel, just give it a chance,” she said. “Maybe you’ll change your mind.”
She meant about the skates, of course. But not just about the skates.
Raquel ran her finger along an edge of the wrapping paper as if she might just open it after all. Then she stopped.
“Not now.”
It wasn’t exactly like figure skating, Lucinda decided once she made a couple of laps around the cement. Dad and Sylvia had moved the grill and some flowerpots to the edges of the patio to give her and Jules more room.
For one thing, she had to push harder on the Rollerblades to pick up any speed, and she was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to spin in them. But after so many weeks, it was good to feel herself glide again.
“Are you sure you don’t want to try, Raquel?” Dad asked. “It looks like fun. And everyone needs a quarantine hobby.”
Lucinda sped toward her sister, then swooped to a stop in front of her. “We would help you, Jules and I.” She wanted to show Raquel that plans could change. That you could feel wobbly—you could even fall—and still keep going, even if it was in a new direction.
Raquel crossed her arms. “I said, no thanks.” She looked at Lucinda like she didn’t quite recognize her.
“Maybe later, then.” She skated away. “Hey, I wonder if I can land a loop jump in these.”
“No!” Dad, Mom, and Sylvia said all at once. Then they all started laughing.
After their laughter faded, Lucinda noticed Mom clear her plate and walk back inside the house.
When she came out again, she was carrying her duffel bag. She walked over to Raquel, squeezed both her shoulders, and whispered in her ear. Raquel turned her head away as if she didn’t want to hear it. Then Mom waved to all of them. “Thank you all for a wonderful dinner—and dessert,” she said. “I’m going to go settle into the loft.”
Just like that? Had Mom been hurt that Lucinda was so excited about Sylvia’s skates? Suddenly, she didn’t want to be wearing them anymore. She stopped and forced herself not to chew her thumbnail. “Mom?”
“Keep skating, mija,” she said. “Really. I’ll come see you all in the morning.”
Lucinda wanted to follow Mom to the loft, but Sylvia distracted her. “Your dad says you skate in competitions?” she asked. “I’d love to see one.”
Lucinda took a last look at Mom walking through the orange trees in the twilight. Then she answered Sylvia. “I have a competition coming up in June,” she said. “The Pacific Coast Classic. It’s in LA, but that’s not too far, really. I just hope the rinks open in time for me to get some practice in.” She pushed off to the center of the patio and lifted her right leg, attempting a spiral.
“I don’t think you have to worry,” Sylvia said. “They’ll probably cancel anyway, and you’ll have plenty of time to prepare before they reschedule.”
Lucinda felt her leg teeter, and she caught herself just before tumbling over. “What do you mean?” In the back of her mind, she had always known it was true, that the competition would be canceled. But she didn’t want to believe it. To hear Sylvia just … say it like that—as if it was final—felt like the ground was sliding out from under her.
Sylvia leaned on Dad’s shoulder. “It’s so unfair, isn’t it? This disease has brought so many hardships and disappointments,” she said. “If there’s any silver lining, it’s that it also brought us all together. Here. I never want to leave this place.”
This time it was Jules who stumbled forward, nearly crashing on the cement. Raquel jumped out of her chair and stormed inside. Lucinda’s eyes widened. Never? She couldn’t pull the skates off fast enough.
Raquel flipped on the lights in the dining room. The laptop was on the table, right where they had left it at the end of the school day, when it was time to get set for dinner. She sat and powered it on.
Before Mom left for the loft apartment—abandoned them there with Sylvia—she leaned down and whispered in Raquel’s ear, “I know it doesn’t seem like it right now, but I promise you, all the things that matter are still the same.”
Raquel shook her head again in disgust. How could Mom have said that? How could she believe it? When absolutely everything they cared about was so different. They couldn’t go to school. They couldn’t see their friends. They couldn’t leave the house without worrying about an invisible danger floating in the air all around them. And now, when it was most important for them to come together, to take care of one another, Sylvia was forcing them apart. No one—not even her own twin—was doing anything to stop it.
Well, she wasn’t going to give up. She clicked on the computer folder where she had saved the video she made of the four of them making escabeche the other night. She paused on a frame that showed Mom chopping carrots on Abuelita’s cutting board, which was stained with years of salsa spills and water rings that Sylvia would never ever know the stories behind because she hadn’t been there. Mom had. In the picture on her screen, Dad was reaching around Mom for a dish towel to wipe up the vinegar that had splashed out of the saucepan when Lu dumped the onions in from too high. In that frozen moment, Mom and Dad were looking right at each other, eyes glittering with surprised laughter. She could show it to anyone and they would see that Mom belonged in that kitchen just as much as the ancient cutting board that was older than any of them. And Dad belonged with her. They all belonged with one another. To one another.
The back door creaked open. “Everything all right in here?”
It was just like Sylvia to barge in where she wasn’t wanted.
“Everything’s fine,” Raquel said. She expected Sylvia would go away after that, but she didn’t. Instead, she walked over and sat down across from her.
“You left in such a hurry that I was a little worried.” Her voice was different. Still, instead of carbonated the way it was when Dad was around.
Tears welled in Raquel’s eyes all of a sudden, and she blinked hard to stop them from spilling over. She was so angry with herself for crying that it made her tear up even more. Sylvia didn’t mention it, though. She didn’t try to give her a hug or offer to get a Kleenex, which, in a weird way, made Raquel like her just a tiny bit. But it didn’t mean Sylvia knew anything about them.
“You shouldn’t have said that to Lu, about the competition being canceled,” Raquel finally managed to say without choking. “She wasn’t ready. You have to give Lucinda time.”
Sylvia nodded. “Thank you for telling me. I’ll do my best not to make that mistake again.” She pointed at the laptop. “Are you working on another project? May I see?”
Raquel’s hand flew to the keyboard to close the video window. But then she stopped. She dropped her hand. Maybe she should show Sylvia the video. Maybe then she’d see what was so clear to Raquel.
“Go ahead,” she said, and turned the laptop around.
Sylvia leaned forward. A curl fell in her face, and she tucked it behind her ear as she pressed Play.
Raquel heard Dad’s voice: “Right behind you.”
Then Mom’s: “Careful! I’m holding a knife.”
And Lu’s at the stove: “It’s boiling, you guys. Is it supposed to boil?”
Then Dad looks over Mom’s shoulder and says, “Are you sure you aren’t cutting those too small? No las haga mushy.” And both of them laugh.
Raquel studied Sylvia’s face as carefully as Sylvia studied the screen, looking for hints of what she might be thinking. But she couldn’t find any. Sylvia paused the clip and looked back at her.
“This is a great sequence, Raquel,” she said. “How you move from a wide, establishing shot of the kitchen to a tighter shot of your mom and dad at the counter. But look here.” Sylvia moved to the chair next to Raquel and positioned the laptop between them.
It wasn’t that she necessarily wanted to be getting video advice from Sylvia at that moment. In fact, if someone had asked her ten minutes earlier, Raquel probably would have said it was the last thing in the whole world she wanted. But Sylvia was so eager and interested that Raquel couldn’t resist hearing more.
“I think,” Sylvia said, making small adjustments with the keyboard, “you have just a little too much headroom above your dad. But if you were to crop it a bit … There! Better, right?”
The frame seemed to draw Raquel in now. She wasn’t just looking at it. She was almost a part of it. “Thanks.”
“Anytime,” Sylvia said. “I mean it. You have excellent instincts and a strong perspective. That makes all the difference.”
She pushed the laptop back toward Raquel and stood. “I hope I get to see more of your videos—and I hope we see you outside again.”
So that’s what this was all about. Sylvia wasn’t really trying to help her. She probably wasn’t even really interested in her video. She was just trying to save her “big family dinner.”
Well, that was too bad. Because Raquel was trying to save something more important: her family.
At last, Sylvia left. The back door swung gently behind her, but it didn’t close all the way. Raquel got up to shut it, but with her hand hovering just over the doorknob, she changed her mind. Sylvia should have thought of that herself. Crybaby was safe inside the bedroom for the night, but what would Dad and Lu think, Raquel wondered, if they saw that Sylvia was so careless about something so important?
Lucinda paused halfway up the staircase that led to the loft apartment. Maybe she should have gone to check on Raquel. But that’s probably what her sister was expecting. That Lucinda would follow her the way she always did. Raquel probably had an emergency newspaper club meeting all set up and everything. She was probably telling everyone all about what happened at dinner, and they were probably figuring out new ideas for how to chase Sylvia off once and for all. #TeamAndrea.
The thing was, she was on Team Andrea, too. Which was why she wanted to be with Mom right now. She climbed the rest of the stairs and turned the doorknob. It was unlocked.
“Mom?” Lucinda said as she pushed open the door.
“In here!”
The whole loft probably could have fit on Dad’s patio. To the right as you walked through the door, there was a bedroom that was barely big enough to hold a full-size bed and a short brown dresser. On the other side of the entryway was a sort of living room with a foldout couch where they used to build tent forts with their cousins when they all visited during the summer. Straight back was the bathroom and the kitchen with a refrigerator, a sink, a two-burner stove, and a small, square table. Dad and Abuelito had built it themselves using some of the wood from an oak tree that fell over in a windstorm. Mom once said it was her favorite piece of furniture ever.
See, Lucinda could remember important details, too.
Mom sat at the table with Abuelita’s old sewing machine. It made a chuk chuk chuk chuk sound as her foot pressed down on the pedal. Even though the loft was so much smaller than the house, and even though the sewing machine was so old and clunky, Mom seemed at home here, Lucinda thought. Maybe more at home than she had been all week. Lucinda pulled out the chair across from her and sat down.
Mom took her foot off the sewing machine pedal. “Did you have fun skating?” she asked. She snipped a piece of thread, then placed a finished face mask on a pile with some others.
“It wasn’t that fun,” Lucinda said, taking a spool of thread out of Mom’s sewing box. “It was just okay.”
“Hmm,” Mom said. “It looked fun. And it was pretty generous of Sylvia to give you the skates.” She took two pieces of fabric—more of the rectangles they had cut earlier that week, Lucinda realized—matched the corners, and started to pin them together.
“Really?” Lucinda asked. “You didn’t feel …” She looked down at her lap. “I don’t know. Left out … or anything?”
Mom put down the fabric and stuck the pin she was holding back in the pincushion. “No,” she said. “Not left out. I won’t lie, this week hasn’t exactly been easy for me—but then, it hasn’t been easy for anyone, has it? We’re all doing our best, aren’t we? Sylvia seems like a good person. She cares about what you care about. How could I have a problem with that?”
Lu rolled the spool back and forth on the table. “Then, how come you left?”
Mom took the spool away and gave Lucinda a roll of elastic and some scissors. “Here, if you need something to keep your hands busy, cut me some more ear loops,” she said. She watched as Lucinda measured and cut two pieces, then, sure Lucinda was doing it correctly, continued. “I left because I wanted to give Sylvia a chance to spend some time with you and your sister. And I knew this sewing machine was up here, waiting for me.” She held out her hand. “Ear loops?”
Lucinda passed her the strips of elastic and watched Mom sandwich them between the fabric rectangles that used to be a dish towel. She started sewing again.
