A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow - Laura Taylor Namey Page 0,83

pulls out a spray can of whipped cream. Holds it up.

I take the can, snarling. “I don’t know what’s worse, his prank and sneaking back around to spy on us, or that he dared to bring this processed, fake shit into my kitchen.”

Our faces volley from the can to scheming expressions.

“I know his hiding spot. He’s already out the front door, trust me,” Flora says.

I plunk the can into her hands before we shoot onto the patio. “He has a head start, but we’re smarter.”

Flora’s grin, her sunshine hair after the rain. “He’s gonna look amazing in white.” We run St. Cross like my cousins stealing bases.

29

Instead of Millie, we take Orion’s dad’s Volkswagen to visit his mother. We’ve piled backpacks and insulated totes onto the vintage motorbike many times. But Millie wasn’t built to carry a huge white bakery box.

I bring scones, strawberry empanadas, and cheese pastelitos for the staff, fortifying myself with the lidded box like a makeshift shield. Isn’t this what I always do? Hide behind bread and baking?

It’s not that I don’t want to come to Elmwood House. I want this crucial piece of Orion Maxwell. I want to see the part of his heart that lives down one of these blue painted corridors.

“Sara,” Orion says to a receptionist behind the welcome desk. “My friend Lila made treats for everyone.”

While the grateful clerk sends Orion to the manager’s office to grab some paperwork, the staff swarms like humans usually do around sugar. Nurses appear, followed by a couple of medics and maintenance workers.

Waiting in this reception room with its potted plants and periwinkle wallpaper, I watch as family members are reunited by long-awaited visits, and once again separated by departures that come too soon. My heart tightens as one woman wipes away tears as she leaves.

But she can come back again. I can’t stop the thought. I will never visit Abuela in a home like this.

Recipe for a Funeral

From the Kitchen of Lila Reyes

Ingredients: One grieving family. One coffin (it must be white like flour and sugar). One cathedral. One white apron. One abuela, gone, dressed in her favorite blue vestido.

Preparation: Sit between your boyfriend and best friend as they try to hold you upright in the pew. Clutch a white apron tightly on your lap. Watch your parents weeping one row ahead, and your sister leaning on your mother’s shoulder. Look back once over the massive cathedral, marveling at the crowd that came for her.

*Leave out actually seeing your abuela laid out so lovingly in the white coffin. She is not there. Instead, cry, kneeling during the private viewing with your eyes secretly pressed closed.

Cooking temp: 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The coldest your oven goes.

Months later, no one knows that I never saw Abuela in her blue dress that March day. Is there some ancient Cuban mourning code I’d broken with this behavior? Probably. But I didn’t care. For me, she had to rest where I could hold her forever, a heart-home warm and worthy of her. I decided to leave her where I found her. I left her where she found me as a toddler, at her feet with a clanging set of measuring spoons. I left her where she grew me. No, not a white coffin. And not a long-term care facility. I left my abuelita in the kitchen.

“Lila?” Orion’s voice brings me back to this home, and this day. “Everything okay?”

I nod. The sweet concern in his eyes and his palm curled around my shoulder make it true.

I fortify myself with his hand threaded into mine as we enter the wide hallway. Evelyn Maxwell, the sign at her door reads. Before we enter, Orion takes a moment inside himself. He looks down and away and I wonder if he does this every time. Only a blink or two before he’s back with a soft smile. “Don’t be sad. I mean, for me.”

“Okay,” I promise. Pity, sadness, and grief are not what our visit is about and not what he needs from me.

A nurse in green scrubs exits before we enter. She types into a tablet then says, “Orion. Good afternoon, then. I’m headed to reception. Heard there’s pastries.”

He introduces me, the pastry chef, to Kelly and we learn his mom has just eaten an early supper and she’ll go out to the garden after we leave.

Inside the cozy room, impressionist artwork hangs from pale green walls and a window with floral curtains looks out into a courtyard. A wall-mounted TV is on, but