Hello Stranger(49)

Joe was quiet after I finished. “You really know it all. Even down to the pauses.”

“I’ve listened to it a thousand times. At least.”

“It’s so heartbreaking,” Joe said. “But she’s just talking about spaghetti.”

“Because she died the next day,” I said. “That’s why.”

“So you know the day she died.”

“I don’t, actually. I can’t remember what day it was. It was sometime around now. Sometime in the spring. Sometime before her birthday. But as for the actual day? No idea. So funny. That day changed my life more than any other ever has. But it’s just one day. You know? And it’s not exactly a day you want to remember.”

Joe nodded. I could feel his reaction. I’d worried the mundanity of it might be underwhelming. But he wasn’t underwhelmed.

He seemed to get it.

“Anyway, that’s what I do every year, but this year got a little wonky. But I guess it’s okay to miss it once in a while.”

“There’s still time,” Joe said then. He checked his watch. “It’s only ten.”

I wrinkled my nose. “I’m too tired to bake a cake now.”

“What if we go get a cake?”

I frowned.

“There’s a dessert place not too far from here. I’ll take you.”



* * *



IT WASN’T UNTIL we’d made it all the way downstairs that I realized he meant to take me on a Vespa. Which was probably medically ill advised.

“My dad’s a doctor,” I said, as Joe worked the lock.

“Yeah?” he said, like I was just making chitchat.

“He always called motorcycles ‘donor-cycles,’” I said.

Joe lifted his eyebrow like he’d caught me on a technicality. “This isn’t a motorcycle. It’s a Vespa.”

“Isn’t it dangerous?” I asked.

“At ten o’clock at night when downtown is deserted?” he said. “No more than anything else.”

Good news: The helmet fit in a way that didn’t touch my surgical scar, which I was still tender about—emotionally, if nothing else.

With that, Joe sat on the front part of the seat and motioned for me to climb on behind him. Then he wrapped my arms tight around his torso and said, “Just lean however I lean.” Then he clicked the motor on, cranked the handle, and shifted us into motion. Confidently. Easily. Like a person who knew exactly what he was doing.

And we were off.

Next thing I knew, we were motoring through the deserted nighttime downtown streets, my arms snug around him. If you go exactly 20 miles per hour in downtown, you can time it so you never hit a red light. And so we just cruised along, slaloming a bit in our lane, the wind caressing us and the motor vibrating beneath, never having to stop or wait, just swept up in a current of motion.

It was highly relaxing—for such a dangerous thing.

It didn’t take me long at all to melt into the moment. Joe clearly knew this scooter back and forth, and everything he did had the ease of muscle memory.

We didn’t talk.

We just flowed along. Summer in Texas is deathly hot, but spring is cool and lovely. The March air felt like rippling water over my skin. We took a road that curved along the bayou, and we positively floated along it. We passed street art, the Dandelion Fountain, and the Downtown Aquarium, with its light-up Ferris wheel. It was a little like drifting through a dream.

How long had it been since I’d had someone to hold on to?

The dessert place was open—packed, in fact, with folks gathering for sweet treats and coffee after their evening’s activities, crowded at tables both inside and out on the sidewalk. I’d passed this place a million times. I’d just never had a reason to come in.

A bright, bustling, cheery place. It felt like a party.

Now, we ordered slices of cake—mine, a yellow diner slice with chocolate icing; his, death by chocolate—and then we wedged ourselves into a small table in the middle of it all. Joe had insisted on paying, and he must have told them we were celebrating a birthday, because when the slices arrived at the table, the waiter lit two giant sparkler candles, stuck them in the slices, and shouted, “Everybody! Let’s sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to—”

And then he looked at me.

“Nora!” I shouted—and it felt so great to just shout my mom’s name.

And so the whole room began to sing. And I swear I had never thought of the “Happy Birthday” song as anything particularly special until that moment—but sitting in front of that sparkler candle as the entire room launched into a rich rendition of it, I suddenly wondered why that song didn’t bring me to tears every time. Maybe it was how crowded the room was, or the acoustics, or the sound of all those people singing warm wishes to my long-lost mother: Happy Birthday, Dear Nora …

But my voice got too wobbly to sing.

I spent the second half of the song just taking it all in.

Savoring it, the way I know she would have.

It was nothing like what I usually did to celebrate my mom’s birthday.

But maybe different wasn’t so bad.



* * *



THERE WERE LOTS of upsides to that night.

It had felt surprisingly good to help out the girl in the coffee shop, and it had been surprisingly satisfying to tell off Parker. Sue, while woefully off target, had at least been sweetly trying to cheer me up. Joe had turned out to be great at anti-panic back rubs. And creating power outages. And I had celebrated my mom’s birthday not alone for the first time since she died.