Say You'll Remember Me(27)

She gazed at me.

“Chicken,” I said. “For dinner.”

“Oh. I like chicken.”

I smiled and nodded. “Good. Then El Pollo Loco is on the approved list.”

She smiled a little. “That’s settled then.”

The corner of my lip twitched up.

Dad put a bib on her. He buttoned the back and then kissed the side of her head and went to get her a coffee. I studied her sitting there.

We spent a lot of time at my grandmother’s house as kids. We practically lived here in the summer. The room above the garage used to be the company office before they had to go bigger and rent a space. Mom would drop us off to stay with Grandma and Grandpa and Mom would sit right where she sat now to have coffee with her parents before work. She’d be perfect. Polished and made up.

I always thought Mom was the most beautiful woman in the world. I couldn’t wait to grow up and wear red lipstick and high-heeled shoes like she did—that was actually my nightmare now, but still.

Now she was void of color. Pale, washed out. Her hair hadn’t been dyed in probably a year. It was like you could see the moment she lost agency over herself by the amount of growth between the faded chestnut brown she liked to color it and the gray that had come in since.

“I want to do Mom’s makeup every morning,” I said.

Everyone stopped and looked at me.

Grandma blinked. “She doesn’t need it…”

“She does,” I said, looking at the faces peering back at me. “I’ll take it off at night. I think she deserves to look like she’d want to. Or like she would if she could. And I want to dye her hair too. Back to the color she used to do it.”

Jeneva sucked air through her teeth. “There’s no way she can go to a salon, Sam.”

“I’ll do it here.”

“I can do it,” Tristan said.

“You’re going to dye Mom’s hair?” Jeneva said, skeptical.

“Uh, I have a cosmetology license?” Tristan said, like this was common knowledge.

“When did you get a—” I shook my head. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. You do the hair.”

Dad was nodding. “I bet she’d like that.”

I put my hand on her wrist. “Mom? What do you think about getting your hair done? Good idea?”

She seemed to mull it over. “Good idea.”

I smiled. “Okay. We’ll do it today.”

We spent the next half hour going over the family schedule.

Grandma would make breakfast every day. She liked doing it and she was a morning person, so it worked. We’d all pitch in for groceries, split four ways between the siblings and Dad. Jeneva took dinner on Mondays and Wednesdays, Tristan took Tuesday and Fridays, I took Thursday and Saturday and Dad took Sunday. We could swap days if we needed to.

It was a nice setup. The whole thing.

We all paid rent here, but it was a fraction of what we’d pay in the real world. The neighborhood was nice, and the place was more than big enough to fit us all.

It was what everyone needed.

Jeneva needed help with the boys. She was a single mom now. Tristan got to save money, I got to be with my family when my family needed me, Dad needed help with Mom, and Grandma needed help with the house.

She really needed help with the house.

My grandparents had bought it in 1975. Five bedrooms, five bathrooms, not counting the apartment over the garage. Three stories, a sunroom on the third floor that overlooked the yard, mature fruit trees, a pond.

And now it was deteriorating. Grandma didn’t have the funds or the people to maintain it.

It reminded me of Miss Havisham’s mansion in Great Expectations. A wealthy estate, frozen in time and crumbling.

There were remnants of some forgotten party still set up in the backyard. Tables and chairs and dusty catering pans, abandoned and left to rust. The carcass of a petrified broken pi?ata, still hanging from the limb of the big avocado tree, indistinguishable from whatever it used to be shaped like.

I loved this house, but I hated seeing what it had become. It was gray, like Mom’s world. And so ridiculously full of linoleum.

Maybe everyone being here would change that. The capable adults breathing life back into it like CPR.

“What do you guys think about doing some remodeling?” I asked.

Dad put his coffee to his lips. “The house does need it.”

“I agree,” my sister said.

Tristan nodded. “No offense, Grandma, but this place is giving 1962.”

Grandma slid onto a stool. “If you all want to do it, go ahead. I’m too old to deal with it. But how are you going to pay for it, though? I don’t exactly have money laying around.”

We all looked at each other.

“We could take out a home equity loan,” Dad said.

“Split the payments four ways?” Jeneva asked.

Tristan gave a dismissive shrug. “Fine.”

“I’m good with it,” I said.

Grandma nodded. “Well, I’m leaving the house to you kids. Whatever you put into it, you get back when you sell it—”

“I don’t want to sell it,” I said.

“Me either,” Jeneva said. “I want the boys to grow up here, like I did.”

We looked at our brother. He shrugged again. “I like having a place to crash.”