* * *
HOME. OLGA HADN’T lived here in over fifteen years, but time did not matter. It was bigger than its physical size, this house. It housed all her grandmother’s hopes and fears for her young family on the mainland, all of her children’s dreams and sorrows, and those of her grandchildren, too. Had her grandmother laid the stones and mortar herself, this place could not embody her more. When they first came from Arecibo—Abuelita, Abuelo, and their brood—they lived in a tenement in Spanish Harlem with another family. Abuelita saved her pennies, little by little, to buy their own house, but when her husband left—fed up with this mainland experiment—she had to adjust her plans. She found the rental apartment upstairs through a woman at the garment factory where she worked. How nice it would be to have a big apartment so close to her job, all to themselves. The neighborhood was Scandinavian and Irish back then and the landlord, Mr. Olson, did not want to rent to a Puerto Rican family. That he made plain. But her grandmother charmed him: she was high-heeled and lipsticked, and she had left her four young children at home. They rented there for years, living in the unit upstairs. Little by little, buying furniture, saving more money, warming Mr. Olson to their family. When he finally decided he’d had enough of Brooklyn, enough of the Puerto Rican wave flooding Sunset Park for the factory jobs nearby, he didn’t just want to sell. He wanted Olga’s grandmother to buy it. To give her a taste of the American dream. And somehow, she did it. Little by little, she used to say, everything impossible can come to pass. So, the family moved from the rental upstairs to the owner’s unit downstairs. The first thing her grandmother did, or so everyone said, was to sit her children down and tell them that no one in their family would ever have to worry about having a roof over their head again. And no one ever did. The next thing she did, according to lore, was put on her music nice and loud so that they all could dance.
* * *
OLGA TURNED OFF the main avenue onto her block, a line of attached limestones glimmering in the summer sun. Each just like her own: garden level and two short stories. A tiny wrought iron gate out front, bounding in the smallest patch of concrete front yard, large stone steps with a black iron banister leading up to the parlor floor. Like hers, most of the houses were owner-inhabited, landlords presiding over the bottom two floors, a rental unit up top. Like hers, the renters were almost always relations, someone in need of a reasonable place to lay their head while they finished school or got on their feet after a divorce or simply tried to make their way in a difficult world. As such, the block took on the nature of a long-running telenovela, with series regulars and guest stars, multigenerational feuds and intricate plot points. Already ladies were sweeping stoops and setting out their lawn chairs for a day filled with the busywork of neighborhood bochinche: watching the comings and goings of the street to see what this week’s episode would bring. Her phone rang. It was Matteo.
“Whatcha doing, girl?” he asked.
She smiled. “I’m in my old neighborhood, hanging with my niece today.”
“Aw, have I found myself a Tender Roni girl?” he asked.
She laughed. “I guess! What are you doing?”
“I’m…” He hesitated. “I’m picking up a sofa.…”
As they had only hung out a couple times, and always ended up at her place, Olga had managed to forget about Matteo’s hoarding, and in fact, could not wrap her head around it. She despised clutter of any sort and had shocked herself by pushing past his confession. Yet, it was likely his openness about this defect drew her to him in the first place, her fear of her own imperfections softened by his acceptance of his own. Before she could figure out the appropriate response, he jumped in.
“But look, ma, the reason I called is because I’ve got a hundred dollars of yours, and I wanted to let you know.”
“What?”
“Apparently you left Sylvia a hundred-dollar bill on the bar the other night and she’s not gonna take your money like that.”
For some reason, Olga felt embarrassed. No money had exchanged hands between Matteo and Sylvia, despite numerous drinks consumed and tons of time on her barstools. While she was certain they had some kind of arrangement—clearly Matteo was a regular—she felt strange about not compensating the woman for her time and hospitality. Yet she also felt strange that Matteo knew she had done it.
“I wanted her to have it,” she said. “She was so lovely to us.”
Matteo sighed. “That’s sweet, but Sylvia is stubborn, and believe me, she will check to make sure I gave you your Benjamin back. In other news, it’s nice to know I have a crush on a chick who’s such a generous tipper.”