Flower(6)
When we were younger, Carlos dubbed her “Grandma Garbo,” after the stunning Greta Garbo, who was a cinema actress and Hollywood starlet during the twenties and thirties. Grandma has always loved that comparison. And watching her now, it’s easy to see why. Grandma’s dark auburn hair sweeps over her shoulders in gentle waves; her figure is still trim, her face free of wrinkles. Unlike other grandmothers, she’s always seemed ageless. Beneath the crisp white collar of the maid’s uniform she wears, I can just make out her favorite gold necklace—the one she got as a wedding gift from her mother-in-law when she walked down the aisle at seventeen. She was six and a half months pregnant when she said her vows and married my grandfather—because it was the right thing to do back then. You didn’t have a baby if you weren’t married to the boy who knocked you up. But they never had a honeymoon, never even saw their first wedding anniversary. Her husband left her shortly after the baby—my mother—was born.
And like some predetermined, screwed-up twist of fate, all the women in my family have made the same mistake. When my mom was seventeen, she got pregnant with Mia. And Leo was born before Mia even graduated high school. Already I’m beating the odds just by having made it to my eighteenth birthday without a kid in tow.
Grandma places two new boxes of cereal in the cupboard, folds up the grocery bags, then goes to the refrigerator and pulls out a pitcher of water, slices of lemon bobbing at the surface. “There’s chili in the fridge for dinner when you get hungry. I’ll be gone until ten,” she says, taking down a glass from the cupboard and filling it, a single lemon slice slipping into her glass at the last moment.
“You’re working?” Mia asks. Grandma works long, often late hours cleaning offices downtown. She might be young for a grandmother, but at her age, she shouldn’t be lugging heavy cleaning carts down hallways or bending over a vacuum for hours on end. Yet she refuses to let me help pay any household expenses with my Bloom Room paychecks; she says that everything I make should be for college. And whenever I protest her latest double shift, when it’s obvious she’s exhausted and her body aching, she waves me away. “How do you think I stay in such good shape?” she’ll ask. “This job keeps me young.”
“Amelia called in sick, so I’m covering for her,” Grandma explains now. If she’s unhappy at the prospect of another five hours on her feet, she doesn’t show it.
“But I already made plans,” Mia whines, and I wonder how she can even want to go out, given the shadows under her eyes. “My date’s picking me up in an hour.”
“I’m sorry, honey,” Grandma says, her voice slightly strained. “I can watch him tomorrow,” she offers placidly, setting the pitcher back in the refrigerator and reaching out to take a squirming Leo from me. Even though she disapproves of Mia’s mistakes—mainly getting pregnant so young—she loves Leo every bit as much as I do. And she tries to be supportive of Mia whenever possible—including watching Leo so Mia can get out of the house when she grows restless. Which is more often than she probably should.
“We’re going to see a band. They’re not playing tomorrow.” When Grandma sighs and shakes her head, Mia turns to me. “Charlotte,” she pleads, drawing out my name. “Please? I really like this guy.”
“I can’t, Mi,” I say. “I have to be at work in twenty minutes.” I feel a pang of guilt. Maybe I should help my sister, call in sick. But it also might be better if Mia stays away from guys for a while. Isn’t that how this all happened in the first place? A careless party hookup that resulted in pregnancy, the guy vanishing from her life just as quickly as he entered.
Mia turns on her heel, her mouth pinched shut in irritation, and marches back into her room, kicking the door closed behind her.
Grandma nuzzles Leo, who’s busy trying to cram her necklace into his mouth, and shoots me a reassuring smile. “She’s just upset,” she whispers. “It’s not easy with the baby.”
“I know.” Mia used to be my world, my best friend. We were the only two planets in each another’s orbit. Queen Honeydew and Princess Poppyseed we called ourselves when we were little. We belonged to each other. But now Mia belongs to whichever boy will tell her that he loves her and give her extra money for diapers and new clothes. They don’t realize it, but she uses them more than they use her.
I glance back at her bedroom door and wonder, not for the first time, how we could have ended up so different.
*
It’s a slow night at the shop and I find myself staring out the front windows at the fading sunset, the sky dissolving into ribbons of pinks and orange. I check my watch: ten minutes past closing. Holly left thirty minutes ago and asked me to lock up. But not before we spent nearly the entire shift talking about my mystery admirer.
She’d gotten a call right after she’d opened the store this morning asking that the bouquet of purple roses be delivered to Charlotte Reed at Pacific Heights High, as soon as possible. And she’d spent the rest of the day about to burst, waiting for me to get to the shop so she could ask me nine hundred million questions about the boy who sent me flowers.
Holly knows I don’t date. She knows I’ve never had a boyfriend. But she’s a hopeless romantic and she wanted every detail—from what he was wearing, to exactly what he said, to how I felt when I saw the flowers arrive in my classroom. Annoyed, I told her, not that she believed me.