Season 9, Episode 8
"I'm sure there are a lot of boys that miss you very much. Back home."
"Not really," Connie laughed. "Not right now."
They were in the back room of the church, the one that served as a storage closet most of the time and a makeshift office when Pastor Hector needed one. The space was small enough that Connie could touch both walls if she stretched her arms out. A single window let in a square of afternoon light that fell across the desk where they'd been sorting through old hymnals, separating the ones that could be salvaged from the ones that were too water-damaged to keep.
Rosa looked up from the stack in her lap. She'd been running her thumb along the spine of each one, checking the binding, setting the good ones to her left and the bad ones to her right. She didn't look surprised.
"Good," Rosa said.
Connie glanced at her.
"You're young," Rosa set another hymnal on the left pile. "You're beautiful. You have time. Un novio will find you. A nice, handsome man, I'm sure."
Connie picked up another hymnal. The cover was warped, the pages swollen and yellowed along the edges. She set it on the bad pile.
"I don't know if it's that simple," Connie smiled.
"It's not simple. But it's true." Rosa turned a hymnal over in her hands, studying the water stain that had bloomed across the back cover. "You have to know what makes you happy first. Tienes que saber lo que quieres antes de darle tu corazón a alguien. ¿Me entiendes?"
Connie caught some of it. "I think so."
Rosa smiled a little, like that was the right answer. "Good. How old are you?"
"Twenty-one."
Rosa nodded slowly. "Ay. Tan joven. You have time. No dejes que nadie te apresure." She glanced up at Connie's face. "Don't let anybody rush you. Tell you what you should be doing."
"I won't," Connie said.
Rosa set another hymnal on the good pile. She was quiet for a beat, her fingers resting on the cover. "I was younger than you. Cuando estaba embarazada."
Connie hesitated. "Embarrassed?"
"No, no," Rosa laughed softly, shaking her head. "Pregnant. It sounds like embarrassed, yes? That’s funny. But it means like have baby."
"Pregnant," Connie nodded.
"Yes, pregnant. I was sixteen."
Connie looked up.
Rosa wasn't looking at her. She was looking at the hymnal in her lap, her thumb tracing the embossed cross on the cover. "I didn't even know at first. My mother thought I was sick. We went to the doctor and—" She paused. "No recuerdo qué sentí primero. Creo que sentí todo al mismo tiempo. El miedo. La vergüenza. La confusión. Y luego nada. Como si mi cuerpo se hubiera ido a otro lugar."
She stopped. Looked at Connie.
Connie shook her head slightly. "Scared?"
"Sí. Miedo. Fear." Rosa set the hymnal down.
Connie set the hymnal she was holding down. She didn't pick up another one.
"Hector was only a year older, if that," Rosa continued. "He came to the house that night. My father wouldn't let him in. He stood outside the door for two hours. My mother finally went out and talked to him, and he told her he was going to take care of me." She smiled faintly. "Diecisiete años, diciéndole eso a mi mamá. ¿Puedes imaginarlo?"
She shook her head. "Can you imagine? Seventeen years old, thinking we can have baby together?”
Connie could imagine.
"But he did," Rosa said. "Nunca se quejó. Ni una vez. En treinta y dos años." She paused. "Not once. Not in thirty-two years."
Connie didn’t understand, but she did all the same.
"I was so scared," Rosa said. "Asustada. Todos los días. Every day I woke up and I was scared. Scared I wouldn't know what to do. Scared I would hurt the baby. Scared Hector would leave. Scared he wouldn't leave."
She ran her thumb along the spine of the hymnal, testing it.
"And then the baby came, and I was still scared. Solo cambió de forma. Se volvió algo más silencioso. Algo que vivía aquí—" she pressed a hand flat against her chest, "—instead of here." She touched her throat.
"It’s still there," Connie said quietly.
"Sí. Exacto." Rosa nodded.
She set the hymnal down. Good pile.
"I watched the girls I grew up with," she said. "They went to school. They got jobs. They went to different places. Se enamoraron. Se desenamaron. Se volvieron a enamorar." She smoothed her hand across the cover of the next hymnal. "And I was here."
"I loved him," Rosa said. "I loved Hector. I still love him. But there were years—" She paused. "Hubo años en que lo odié un poco."
Connie looked at her. She'd caught enough of that. "Odié?
"Un poquito," Rosa held up two fingers close together, a smile forming on her face. "He gave me the life that he promised my mother but some days, quería más que eso and then I’d feel bad and lo odio aún más por hacerme sentir mal."
Connie waited.
"Y lo culpé por eso. No porque fuera su culpa. Sino porque estaba ahí. Porque era él quien tenía enfrente cuando necesitaba a alguien a quien culpar." She picked up another hymnal. "I had no one else to be mad at. Everyone else had left."
Connie caught pieces of it. The room was quiet. The square of light on the desk had shifted. It was smaller now, the angle sharper.
"How long did that last?" Connie asked.
Rosa thought about it. "Mucho tiempo. Más de lo que quiero admitir." She set the last hymnal on the pile and brushed her hands together. "It didn't go away quick. It was slow. Como un moretón."
"And now?" Connie asked.
Rosa smiled.
"Now I look at him, and I see the man who was there. Who was always there. El hombre que me sostuvo la mano en tres partos y un aborto espontáneo." She paused. "You’re right. Love isn’t simple. But sometimes it is"
…
"It’s not like you’d have to talk to them. I mean you could if you wanted to. Not that I’m saying you shouldn’t, or I don’t want you to," Brice found himself stumbling over his words. "I’m just saying it wouldn’t be just you and my parents is all. It’s a pretty big suite. I’ve got a couple of friends from high school and shit coming. Some of my old coaches. Probably like 30 people last headcount I got from my mom.”
"I didn’t expect Brice Colton, Indiana’s favorite White son, to have some rinky-dink suite," Mel rolled her eyes, hiding her smile, "I just don’t know if being around thirty people that can stand Brice Colton is how I want to spend my Saturday.”
"Thirty other people that love Brice Colton," Brice teased, "And Indiana’s favorite White son is a bit redundant."
"Michael Jackson?"
"You mean a literal pedophile?"
"You’re a fucking idiot," Mel laughed, tucking a braid behind her ear.
"For real, though. This is like a six thousand dollar invite. People would literally kill for this."
"What does that mean to me?” Mel scoffed.
"Okay. It’s an important game. For me. I’d like you to be there."
Mel's pencil stopped moving.
"Brice."
"What?"
She let out a breath through her nose. "Look, I don't want to make things any weirder than they already are, okay? She's got a gripe with me. I get it. I totally understand where she's coming from. And me showing up to your game, sitting in your family's suite, that's not going to help anything."
"I don’t think it’s that serious."
"To you."
Brice leaned back in his chair. He studied Mel's face.
"Is it that serious?" he asked.
Mel shook her head. "Drop it."
"Mel."
"Drop it, Brice."
He held up both hands. "Fine. Fine. Dropped."
The silence that followed wasn't comfortable. It was the kind of silence that had edges to it, the kind you could feel pressing against your skin. Mel picked up her pencil and started writing again, but the strokes were shorter now, more deliberate, like she was trying to look busy.
Brice watched her for a second. Then he picked up his own pencil and went back to his problem set. He got through two lines before the numbers stopped making sense.
"How'd it go with Nia's lawyers?" Mel asked, not looking up.
The question caught him off guard.
"It went."
"Helpful."
"Something like that."
Mel glanced at him over the top of her notebook. "You're being weird."
"I'm not being weird."
"You're being weird."
"You’re being weird."
She set her pencil down. "How'd it go?"
Brice picked at the edge of his notebook. The paper curled under his thumbnail.
"It was fine. They want me to write a letter. Tell the court how I feel about what happened. What I think should happen to her."
"And?"
"And I told them I'd think about it."
Mel waited.
"It was nice," he said finally.
"What was nice?"
"Talking to someone who knew him."
"You talked to her?"
Brice nodded. He looked down at his hands.
"She called in," he said.
Mel didn't say anything.
"We talked for almost an hour."
"About the case?"
"Not really." He let out a short breath. "About her life. Before all of this. About—" He paused. "About Jimmy."
The word sat between them.
"She knew him," Brice said. "Like, really knew him. Not as my little brother. I don’t know, it was kind of dope to like hear stories about him that I never heard about. Never knew about. He had like a whole different side to him that I never knew about."
Mel's pencil was still on the table. She hadn't picked it back up.
"I can tell they used to hang out a lot," Brice continued. "They’d hang out at the park. Even went up to Lake Michigan once with their friends. When the fuck did he do that? I’d always invite him when we were going there with my friends, and he’d always just rather stay in his room or some shit. I know it sounds like super narcistic or whatever, but it’s like he had this whole other life that I knew nothing about, and it’s like was he hiding it from me or just I didn’t look hard enough? Didn’t look past him just being my brother?"
He looked at Mel like she might have the answer. She didn't.
"I don’t know," Brice laughed, but it came out dry. "She never said it, but I think they were together. I don’ know if that makes it more sad or better, but I don’t know, I kind of like the idea that he got to experience something like that."
"Brice," Mel said quietly.
"What?"
"Jimmy clearly cared about this girl."
He looked at her.
"And this girl clearly cared about Jimmy," Mel held his gaze.
"I know."
"You owe it to him," Mel's voice was steady. Not gentle, Mel was never gentle, but steady. "You owe it to Jimmy to look out for her."
…
"Some of these prices are outrageous. What is this, The Great Gatsby?"
The kitchen table was still covered in the wreckage of dinner. Tom's plate sat pushed to the side, a smear of marinara sauce hardening along the rim. Sophie's fork was still in her hand, but she'd stopped eating about a while ago and was now just pushing a single piece of penne around the plate in slow, concentric circles. Tom was on his phone. Had been on his phone since he'd set his fork down.
She clicked through to the next page. A dessert table setup. She bookmarked it.
The memory surfaced before she could stop it. Skylar standing in this same kitchen, leaning against the counter with James on her hip, saying something about having it at the river walk. He loved being outside, she said.
Liz closed the browser tab. Opened a new one. Typed "first birthday party themes" into the search bar and pressed enter.
"Does anybody have any ideas?" she asked the table.
Tom didn't look up. His thumb kept moving.
Sophie stabbed the piece of penne and put it in her mouth. Chewed. Slowly.
"Sophie?"
"I don't know," Sophie said around the pasta. "Balloons?"
"Balloons," Liz repeated.
"Or like, a cake."
"Balloons and a cake. Revolutionary."
Sophie shrugged and went back to her plate.
Liz looked at Tom. He was smiling at something on his phone. The screen's light reflected off the underside of his jaw.
"Tom."
"Hm?"
"James' birthday. Ideas."
"Whatever you think is best," he said, still not looking up.
She held his gaze for three full seconds. She turned back to the laptop.
The search results loaded. Facebook, Pinterest, Etsy. She clicked the Pinterest link. Safari-themed. Woodland-themed. A baseball-themed one that made her pause for half a second before she scrolled past it.
She bookmarked a balloon garland tutorial. Then a cake design. Then a dessert table that was almost identical to the one she'd just closed.
Sophie set her fork down. The metal clicked against the ceramic. She picked up her plate and carried it to the sink. Ran the water. Set it in the basin without washing it.
"Homework?" Liz asked.
"Already done."
Sophie crossed the kitchen. Her socks made almost no sound on the hardwood. She disappeared through the doorway, and a moment later Liz heard her footsteps on the stairs. Then the distant click of her bedroom door.
The house settled.
Liz closed the laptop.
"Tom."
He looked up. Finally. His eyes met hers for a fraction of a second before dropping back to the phone.
"That's not what we agreed on."
His thumb paused. "What?"
"You sitting there on your phone while I plan our grandson's first birthday party. That's not what we agreed on."
Tom set the phone down. Face-up. The screen was still lit. She could see the message thread from where she sat.
"What do you want me to say, Liz? I'm here. You asked for ideas, I said whatever you think is best. What else do you want?"
"I want you to be present. I want you to participate. I want you to—" She stopped herself. Took a breath through her nose. "We agreed on that."
"I am present."
"If you can call it that."
Tom leaned back in his chair. The wood creaked. "Liz, it's a birthday party. For a one-year-old. Balloons, cake, food. We’ll figure it out. Brice will figure it out."
Liz looked at him. "Brice has never planed something before in his life. Not even his own birthday."
"Then maybe he should learn."
Liz closed the laptop again.
"If Brice plans this party," she said, "He’ll dump it off to his little girlfriend or that nanny of his and it'll be Hennessey and a cookout in somebody's backyard, and we will be eating mac and cheese off a paper plate while somebody's uncle plays music too loud."
Tom opened his mouth.
"And I will not," Liz continued, "have my grandson's first birthday look like a tailgate."
"Fine," he shook his head. "What do you want me to do?"
Liz opened the laptop. She turned it toward him and pointed at the screen.
"Tell me which one of these looks like something you'd want to show up to."
"If Brice plans this party," she said, "He’ll dump it off to his little girlfriend or that nanny of his and it'll be Hennessey and a cookout in somebody's backyard, and we will be eating mac and cheese off a paper plate while somebody's uncle plays music too loud."
TOLD YA
So Liz and Tom have an agreement now, hm?
And ALSO
told ya bout Mel. He gonna dump Serena's gold digging ass with a switfness
and he gonna get Nia out of the chair as a tribute to Jimmy
"If Brice plans this party," she said, "He’ll dump it off to his little girlfriend or that nanny of his and it'll be Hennessey and a cookout in somebody's backyard, and we will be eating mac and cheese off a paper plate while somebody's uncle plays music too loud."
TOLD YA
So Liz and Tom have an agreement now, hm?
And ALSO
told ya bout Mel. He gonna dump Serena's gold digging ass with a switfness
and he gonna get Nia out of the chair as a tribute to Jimmy
Liz gonna Liz. I love writing that woman.
We shall see about Mel/Serena. Certainly an interesting dynamic #nogaslight #nocaesar
Why would you shake your head at him helping Nia not get the death penalty
