I don’t like running, but I do it any time Silas can be home in the morning. My feet plod along the sand. Really, it’s a fast-paced slog. I have an old iPod with shitty battery life, but it works. When running along the beach, I listen to metal. I used to hate the sound of all that screaming, but now it helps. It usually drowns out my thoughts, but not today.
Vivi has been by my side for almost two weeks now, but I needed to angst alone this morning. My worries woke me up early, pestering me like Leah on Christmas morning. I crept through rare silence in our dark house, left a note, then drove the car a few miles down the coast. I didn’t want to run in Verona Cove, down Main Street or along the beach path like I normally do. I needed to run in a place where memories don’t fill my peripheral vision, the ghosts of who we used to be watching me like marathon spectators.
I’m following a trail of questions down this long stretch of sand: What the hell are we going to do? Will Silas really defer college? Do I finally tell Felix that I think my mom needs real help? And my dad’s heart problem—I know it was genetic. Can I even get checked for that?
After my dad died, I looked up the most heart-healthy foods. Now I make oatmeal almost every morning for my brothers and sisters. They seem to understand that I have to do something. So I invent flavors to keep it interesting—peanut butter–banana oatmeal, maple syrup–walnut oatmeal, strawberry–powdered sugar oatmeal. When they demand pancakes as a change of pace, I use a recipe that includes oatmeal and chocolate chips. I’m not sure if shoving the maximum amount of oats down all my siblings’ throats is the best heart-health plan, but it’s better than nothing.
My dad was naturally big. Not round, but tall and wide. Vivi would say he was descended from redwoods. All of us kids have my mom’s build—medium height and lean. Naomi and I have my dad’s Sicilian dark hair and eyes. The rest of my siblings have the lighter coloring from my mom’s side. Ever since he died, I’ve been looking for my dad in Silas and Isaac, watching their faces for his nose, his expressions, his eye crinkles. Felix says I’m more like my dad every day, but I don’t see it.
Vivi relieves me of these thoughts. She lives in overdrive, and I have to work to keep up. It takes so much energy that I can’t concentrate on my own crappy life. She fills everything with new memories so that my life feels like more than “exactly like it was only minus my dad.” She makes me drive an hour to the nearest Target so we can ride the bikes up the aisles, and Leah can play with the bouncy balls until the manager asks us to leave. She writes a play with Isaac about an old-timey baker named Paunchy Paul and the many critters that sneak into his bakery late at night to eat his bread. In the one-night-only performance, Isaac played Paul, complete with our dad’s chef hat, a pillow stuffed down his shirt as a fat belly, and a mustache drawn with Vivi’s eye makeup. Vivi was costume director, lighting director, and Head Mouse. Bekah played a mouse in one scene and a raccoon in another; Leah played the squirrel that persuades Paul to bake them miniature breads stuffed with acorns. I baked bread to use as a prop, and Silas and Naomi whistled as they bowed. My mom didn’t come down. But the next morning, the littles reenacted their parts in her room. She laughed at their silly happiness until she cried. I hustled them out the door and left her in peace.
The memory makes my legs push harder against the sand until they burn. Vivi never gets weird when I’m sad or frustrated or pissed about the state of my family right now. I don’t know much about dating, but I know enough to be grateful that Vivi doesn’t push.
I dated a girl named Sarah last year, my longest relationship ever, and she pushed like a wrecking ball. I still like her as a person, but not as a girlfriend. She’s tiny and feisty, like a little Yorkie dog. I liked that she was in charge of about half the clubs at school. When we were little, she was the girl who got every colorful Girl Scout badge and outsold everyone in the tristate area during cookie season. She thinks success is a quick one-two punch of deciding what to do and doing it.
In the first days after my dad died, Sarah was nice to have around. She’s prepared. Just, as a lifestyle choice: prepared. For any situation. She does things like pack a whole purse full of tissues when she attends your dad’s funeral. She even had a bottle of baby aspirin, like she knew my sister would cry until her head throbbed.
But then I became her project. She was extra peppy—all positive thinking and up-and-at-’ems. When I couldn’t decide to be happy and then do it, when my grief wasn’t an easily conquerable goal . . . well, the yipping grated against my eardrums.
Jonah, she told me. It seems like you’re not even trying to be happy.
Happy? I thought. I’m nowhere freaking close to happy. Happy is a distant continent. I was thrashing in the storm. Sarah didn’t understand anything about my life. I hated being hustled out of pain I earned.
It’s why I broke up with her.
It’s why I won’t hustle my mom out of pain she earned.
Sarah didn’t cry when I ended it. She got huffy and mad. I guess I was probably the one project that talked back to her. Also the only one she couldn’t finish, with honors.
My life still sucked. But at least it felt like mine again.
The sweat cools on my body as I head back toward the car. I’ve been impaled by my own thoughts this morning, and it’s time to get back to distracting myself. When I can’t actually cook to get my mind off everything, I make up recipes in my mind. Like arugula salad with grapefruit and avocado slices. And feta. With a champagne vinaigrette. Maybe some kind of nut—macadamia? I’m not sure yet. I can’t always try them in reality because some of the ingredients I’d want to use are expensive. And not practical for a family of seven. But I do think I have some tip money at the restaurant from a wait shift I covered for Felix last week.
Money is complicated right now. My parents inherited our house from my grandparents, so at least that’s paid off. Since Naomi, Silas, and I all work, we pool enough money to buy groceries and gas every week. Naomi takes care of finance stuff, so she talks to my mom about paying bills. There’s money from life insurance. But it won’t last forever. During the third month of our mom’s departure from reality, Naomi downgraded our already-meager cell phone plan, got rid of the landline my dad insisted on keeping, and canceled our cable. Ironically, my mom has a degree in accounting. She did the restaurant’s books and worked a little during tax season. Not this year, though.
When I pull into the restaurant parking lot, Felix’s car is already there. It’s weird that he’d get in at 8:00 a.m. and that he’d drive. He always walks from home. I use my dad’s key—now mine—to the back door, and I’m surprised to see, not Felix, but his daughter Ellie. She’s peeking around the prep counter. “Oh, hey, Jonah. I thought someone was breaking in.”
“Ellie, hey. What are you doing here?”
“Freezer inventory. Just finished.” She gestures to a piece of paper on the counter.
“I thought your dad was doing that later today.”
“Yeah. But I lost a bet. Family game night thing. He and Lina smoked me and my mom. We bet freezer inventory, so I had to pay up.”
As she steps around the counter, I can’t help but notice she looks more like her mom than ever. She’s almost as tall as me, all arms and legs and thin torso. And she’s holding a frying pan in one hand.
“Making an omelet, too?”
She wrinkles her nose. “Grabbed it out of reflex. In case you were a burglar.”
“A burglar with a key?”
“You never know.” She spins the pan around once, like we’re going to duel. It makes me laugh. “So what are you doing here?”
“Getting tip money out of the safe,” I say. “I covered a wait shift for your dad last week.”
“Ah.” She smiles, up on her tiptoes to put the pan back. I’ve wondered before if Ellie does yoga or something. Everything about her is relaxed. Her movement, tone of voice. “Well, I’m glad to see you. How’s your summer going?”
“It’s . . . okay, thanks. How about you?”
She shrugs. “Pretty good. I got back from my grandma’s a few days ago, and the rest of the summer is wide open. Working here a little. I heard you have a new girlfriend—good for you.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Is Vivi my girlfriend? It’s only been two weeks, but it feels like a whole summer already. But I don’t know what to call her, and she’d tease me if I tried to bring it up. Sometimes she treats me like a boyfriend, other times like a friend with benefits, sometimes like a science experiment. She pokes and prods at me, asks me strange questions.
“Are you guys coming to the bonfire next week? I’d love to meet her.” Ellie slips into the office, setting down the inventory list.
The bonfire is an annual tradition for Verona Cove locals and the two tiny towns nearest us, right after the Fourth of July. “I think so. Silas drew the short straw, so he has to stay home with the littles. But I’ll be there and probably Naomi, too.”
Ellie looks back at me, frowning. “Is your mom out of town?”
Stupid, stupid, stupid. I let it slip that my mom can’t watch three kids. “No. Yes. Well, kind of. Just for that night, she’s driving down the coast to meet up with an old friend. Or something. I think.”
“Oh. Okay.” She slides out of the office and past me, smiling hesitantly. “Well, see you guys there, then.”
I can’t believe I lied to Ellie. When I was eleven, I split my knee open trying to keep up with Silas and Diego, Ellie’s brother. Ellie, even though she was only ten at the time, dabbed ointment on the cut with a cotton swab and smoothed a Band-Aid over it. She’s good to her core.
I step into the office, stooping down to the safe. I sift through to a little plastic bag with my name on it. As I’m squeezing out of the office, I shake my head, smiling. As usual, there are papers strewn all over the desk and even taped up on the wall. Felix, like my dad, takes the “it’s not messy if I know where everything is” approach.
But my eye catches on something. A red stamp on an envelope, blaring PAST DUE. It’s half-hidden behind another envelope, but I lift it up. There are a few more below it, all stamped in bright reds. Addressed to my dad. So much for the oatmeal and the running. I’m about to have a heart attack.
The sound of knocking at the door nearly does me in. I grip my chest in surprise, and it takes me a moment to recover. I slide the envelopes back under the papers.
I figure it’s Ellie, back because she forgot something. Instead, I open the back door to Vivi. “Um . . . hey.”
“I’m on my way to work, and I saw your car parked here.” But she doesn’t look happy to see me. She looks wounded. “Who was the girl I saw leave?”
“Oh. Just Ellie. Felix’s daughter.”
I swear I see her lip tremble. “You were here, alone, with her?”
Aw, crap. I am in a situation. “I wasn’t with her. I stopped in to get my tip money, and she was doing freezer inventory.”
She watches me still, judging every movement. “She’s pretty.”
I’ve never seen Vivi be anything but . . . joyful, and I can’t tell if she’s teasing me. She could actually be jealous or mad. I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything wrong, but there’s no handbook. “I’ve known her my whole life, Viv.”
She considers this. “Almost like she’s a sister to you?”
No, not exactly. “Yeah.”
“That was not convincing, Jonah.” She crosses her arms, waiting for me to plead my case.
Okay. Switching tactical approach away from defense. I’ll play flattery on the offense. It’s easy because I mean it. “Viv?”
“What.”
“You are the only girl I ever think about.” It’s true.
This makes her smile, almost shyly, which is not a typical Vivi adjective. The smile spreads—bright red and scheming.
Without giving me even a moment to prepare, she leaps onto me, locking her arms around my neck. She kisses me like someone with failing lungs, like her only source of oxygen is me.
If someone had asked me before I met Vivi, Hey, Jonah, would you like a girlfriend who is all over you?, the answer would have been yes. But, of all the quirks about life with Vivi, her ready-or-not approach to kissing me is the most disorienting. She goes from zero to pouncing in less than three seconds. I never see it coming. She’ll be barely paying attention one second and then, in the next second, grab my face like she’s been marooned on an island, and I’m the first guy she’s seen in years.
I’m not complaining. But I can’t do this here, not in my dad’s kitchen. Not with those envelopes tormenting me. My mind can’t shut off enough to kiss her back. I expect my dad to walk in any moment and ground me until the apocalypse. He won’t, of course, and that thought makes everything worse. Really, the place where your dead dad feels most alive is probably the least sexy location ever.
“Viv,” I say, setting her down on the prep table. She keeps her legs hooked around my waist. “I can’t, okay? Not here. Where my dad . . . I just. Sorry.” I wince preemptively. There’s a good chance she’ll storm off.
Instead, she releases her legs and wipes her lipstick smudges from my mouth. “Of course. Rain check. I just couldn’t resist, you handsome devil.”
We stay there together for a moment, eye-to-eye. She slides her fingers into my hair as if she can actually get ahold of my brain. Then she gives me that look, her blue eyes trying to cut right through me. She searches. “All right. What’s going on in there?”
I shake my head, and she moves her hands down to my neck. The way they’re wrapped, her thumbs could get an easy read on my pulse. “The restaurant . . . I don’t think it’s doing as well as I thought it was. I think there might be some money problems.”
“Oh.” Her lips twitch downward for a split second. Then she hops off the table. “Then you should fix it.”
“Fix it?”
“Yeah. Make changes to improve business.”
I hold my arms out at my sides because I can’t quite speak the word: What?! I’m annoyed that she’d treat this like nothing. My dad’s legacy, his life’s work—failing. And I’m helpless. “I’m not an econ major, Viv. I don’t know a damn thing about, like, finances.”
“Jonah.” Vivi squares her hands on my shoulders. “You know this restaurant better than you know most people. You know what it needs the way you know what Leah needs. Yeah?”
I can take care of Leah, sure, but I can’t take care of everything. I can’t take care of my mom. I have no idea what she needs. Nothing Vivi ever says is as simple as she makes it out to be.
“Okay, listen, I know what you’re thinking.” She pulls out a lipstick from her purse and reapplies it. “You don’t want to make changes to something that was your dad’s. Because then you’d be admitting that there are imperfections to his work here and, by extension, that he had imperfections, too. And I get that; I honestly do. But you’re not dismantling his work if you’re adding to it. You’re helping a dream grow more, not cutting it down.”
I hadn’t even thought of any of that. Now I will. I can’t keep up.
“Okay,” she says, standing on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek. “I’ve gotta get to work, but you percolate some ideas like the little coffeepot of genius that you are. If I were you, I’d start with redoing the patio space, and I’d do it soon so you can throw me a birthday party there. Because that’s what I want—officially. Okay? That is my formal birthday wish, and you should be glad because I was going to ask for a Vespa. Now I’ve decided all I want is a party on the Tony’s patio, so make it happen. See you tonight, at which point I will be redeeming my make-out session rain check. Fair warning.” She turns to wink at me, then disappears out the door.
Vivi has this way of leaving me shell-shocked. She never notices. Or maybe she does it on purpose—I have no idea.
In the quiet of my dad’s old kitchen, I find that Vivi’s right. Somewhere in the folds of my brain, I’ve been storing ideas for the restaurant for years. Since way before my dad died. I’m not saying the ideas will work. But I do have them—menu changes and updates to the design of the space and different ways to draw tourists in.
I wander out to the patio space, which I’ve never really thought about. There’s not much to it. The restaurant has this built-in nook made by the exterior—two perpendicular brick walls. Years ago, my dad poured cement for a floor and installed a low wrought-iron fence in the two open sides, making an L shape. But that’s kind of it. There’s an old grill out here, a rusty ladder, an extra propane tank, and a bunch of other crap.
From the street, you can see the patio if you’re walking from uptown. That must have been how Vivi saw it. I don’t know if outdoor dining would draw more customers. I don’t know if it would be worth the work. But it’d be nice to put my backbone into something. Especially if I can make this old, broken space into something nice for Vivi’s birthday.
So I sit on a stool by the prep table, with a piece of scrap paper from the office. I’m not sure how long I sit there, scribbling down ideas. Entrées that have never sold particularly well that could probably be replaced. Foods people ask for that we don’t have—but we could.
I’m still writing when Felix comes in the back door. “Hey, Maní. I saw your car. I thought you were off today.”
“I was just stopping in.” Now or never, Daniels. No wussing out. I just hope Felix takes me seriously, man to man. “But I got to thinking about the patio. We could fix it up for almost no money. It might be a nice draw for customers.”
“Hmm,” Felix says. “We always did mean to but never got around to it.”
“That’d be good for business, right? Outdoor space?”
He nods. “Could be.”
“Business is okay, right? I mean, decent.” The words flash in my head: PAST DUE. PAST DUE.
“Oh, sure.” Felix waves me off, but I watch his eyes. I know his eyes like I know my dad’s. Protecting me from something. “Ebb and flow, the restaurant biz. We’re always fine.”
I don’t buy it for a second. “Well, I’ve got some other ideas while I’m at it.”
“Let’s hear them,” he says, and slides onto the stool beside me. Then he rubs his brow, shaking his head even though he’s smiling. “Hoo-boy, Maní. Sometimes it’s like looking right at your dad.”
I take this as a good sign.