Table nine orders the branzino. When Marco's plate comes up through the pass, I look at it and think about the first night Carmelo sat at table four and ordered it. The second time. The third. The time I told him the pork shoulder was better, andhe changed his order without hesitation because I told him to. A man who doesn't speak, who communicates in single words and silences and nods, listened to his waitress recommend a different entrée and just said yes.
I pick up the plate and carry it to table nine. Hands steady. Face professional. My finger taps the underside of the plate twice.
The fragment comes at eight fourteen.
I know the time because I'm standing at the POS entering a dessert order and the clock on the screen says 8:14 PM. Then I'm not at the POS anymore. I'm somewhere else. Not a place… a feeling. The sensation of being lifted. Arms that aren't mine wrapped around a neck. I'm small, smaller than I am now, face pressed against fabric. Underneath the fabric is skin, and the skin smells like tobacco and something sweet, something warm. There's a voice above me speaking words I can't make out, but the cadence is familiar. The rhythm is familiar. The voice is safe and I am safe and I am being carried somewhere, and the arms around the neck are mine, and I am very, very young.
Three seconds. Maybe four.
Then I'm at the POS again. The clock still says 8:14 PM. My hand is on the screen, my finger tapping the edge of the terminal fast. The dessert order is half-entered and the tiramisu is spelled wrong because my fingers hit the wrong keys somewhere inside whatever just happened.
I delete the order and retype it. My hands are shaking, the tremor deep, in the bones of my fingers, not visible on the surface. I submit the order, walk to the kitchen, and stand in the hallway between the dining room and the pass.
One, breathe. Two, breathe. Three, breathe.
Tobacco and something sweet. A voice I can't identify. Arms around a neck.
This isn't the first time. The flashes have been happening for years. Brief, formless, gone before I can truly remember them. The yellow light last week in bed. The rough cold texture under my hands. They come and go and I let them go because there's nothing to hold on to. No narrative, no context. Just sensation without source.
But this one was different. This one had a person in it. Someone was carrying me. Someone whose neck I was holding. Someone who smelled like home and whose voice made me feel safe in a way that doesn't connect to anything in my memory, because my memory starts at thirteen and there is no one in it who carried me.
Marco yells for the tiramisu pickup. I grab the plate, deliver it, smile, ask if they need anything else. They don't. I walk back to the bar and shake my head at Javi before he can ask.
At home, I sit on my bed and call the Marinos.
I should have called last week. Didn't. Should have called the week before that. Didn't do that either. The guilt accumulates slowly, not because I miss them or want to talk to them but because they raised me and that is supposed to mean something and I can't figure out why it doesn't.
Paul picks up. "Hello?"
"Hey, Paul. It's Grace."
"Grace. Hold on." A rustling sound, the phone being transferred. He didn't say how are you or it's good to hear from you. He said hold on and handed the phone to Linda, because Linda is the one who talks to me. Paul has always been the one who hands the phone to Linda. In eleven years, I can count the number of full conversations I've had with Paul on one hand, and every single one was about logistics. What time to arrive for Christmas, whether I needed money for school supplies, the name of the pharmacy where my prescription gets filled.
He's not a bad man. He's just not anything to me. I'm not anything to him. We've both accepted it without ever saying it out loud.
Linda picks up. "Grace. Hi, sweetie."
She calls me sweetie. Always has. It's never felt like anything. Not cold, not warm. Just a word she chose at random.
"Hi, Linda. How are you?"
"We're good. Paul's been busy with the yard. The forsythia is blooming early this year, you should come out and see it."
I won't come out and see it. She knows I won't. She offers because offering is part of the script. I decline because declining is part of mine.
We both move on.
"Maybe soon," I say.
"That would be nice. How's work?"
"Good. Busy season."
"Are you taking your vitamins?"
Every time. Every call, every visit, every interaction.Are you taking your vitamins. The first real question she asks, before are you seeing anyone, before any of the things a mother would ask a daughter. The vitamins come first.
"Yeah," I say. "Every morning." I don’t say that sometimes I forget and take them when I’m home at night, because then I will hear a whole lecture on timing being important to their effectiveness.