We both laughed at that. He pushed the platter of spicy salmon toward me then took some for himself. Alex waved his chopsticks at me.
“So...how was your...meeting...last Friday?”
I paused. My once-a-month dates with Esteban weren’t a secret, exactly. Alex had no problem with me rearranging my schedule to accommodate appointments. Well, once a month, always on the second Friday, I had a “meeting.” I’d never told Alex what it was for, nor had he asked, until just now, though I could tell by his tone he suspected I hadn’t been seeing a chiropractor.
“It was very productive,” I told him.
He waited. I smiled. He shook his head.
“What’s your story, Elise?”
I gave him a falsely innocent look. “I don’t have a story.”
“Everyone has a story,” Alex said. “We all have secrets. What’s yours?”
“If I tell you, it would hardly be a secret, would it?”
Alex grinned. “C’mon. You know you wanna.”
All at once I did want to tell him, the sudden urge to share swelling up inside me with unexpected fervor. Why? I didn’t know, other than I hadn’t told anyone about the lover I’d been seeing once a month or so for the past year and a half, not even my best friend, Alicia. She’d moved to Texas two years ago, which had made it easier to keep Esteban a secret. If I hadn’t shared our relationship with the girl I’d known since elementary school, it certainly wasn’t something I should share with Alex.
My phone booped with my nephew William’s ringtone and saved me. I swiped the screen to take the call. “Hey, kiddo. What’s up?”
“Can you come get me from my lesson?”
I paused, dragging a piece of sushi through a puddle of wasabi-smeared soy sauce. “When are you finished?”
“I’m supposed to go until six-thirty but the rabbi had another meeting so he let me go now. I texted my mom a couple times, but she didn’t answer me.” William hesitated. “I texted my dad but he said he’s in a meeting and asked if you could get me.”
“Maybe she’s stuck in traffic,” I offered around a mouthful of rice and fish. “Can you give her a few more minutes?”
Another short pause came, then William said quietly, “Can you please come and get me, Auntie?”
He hadn’t called me that in a while. Heading toward thirteen, William had taken to calling me Elise without even an aunt in front of it, a habit that made me sad but one I didn’t denounce. Kids grew up. It’s what happened.
“Sure, kid. Let me finish up my lunch, and I’ll be right there. Another fifteen minutes or so, okay? If your mom gets there first, text me.” I disconnected and gave Alex an apologetic look. “My nephew needs to be picked up from his Bar Mitzvah tutoring. I guess his mom’s late. I’m only a few minutes from the synagogue. Mind if I run to get him?”
Alex shrugged. “Sure. Are we all done in the office?”
“I am.” I gave him a significant look that he returned with a grin. “I guess you are, too. Thanks for the sushi. See you tomorrow.”
It took me about ten minutes to get back to the parking lot in front of the office. Another ten to get to the synagogue, and only because I hit every red light on Second Street. I spotted William sitting on one of the benches at the shul’s front doors. He was tapping away on his phone, head bent, still wearing his kippah as was required by the synagogue for males while in the building, though he didn’t usually wear one outside it. He looked up when I pulled into the half-circle drive, his expression wary. I hated to see that on the kiddo’s face, not sure why he looked like that.
“Hey,” I said through the passenger-side window. “Is your mom on the way or do you still need a ride?”
“Yeah, I need one.” William slid into the passenger seat, backpack at his feet, and put on his seat belt without being reminded.
God, I loved that kid. I had a strange and winsome flashback to the smell of his head when he was a baby. My brother and Susan had gotten pregnant and married at age twenty, one year before we all graduated from college. I’d lived with them for the last four months of her pregnancy and the entire first year of William’s life, both so we could all save money and to help them out with the baby so they could finish their degrees. I’d changed diapers and done midnight feedings, the whole bit. William would kill me if I leaned over to sniff him now, though, not to mention that I was sure the experience would not be the same as it had been when he weighed ten pounds and fit in my arms like a doll. Instead, I waited until he’d settled before pulling out of the synagogue driveway and onto Front Street.
“Your mom didn’t get back to you?”
“She said it was okay if you took me home.” William’s phone hummed, and he looked at it. “She says she was running late at yoga and to tell you thanks for picking me up.”
“No problem, kid. My pleasure.” Traffic was still fairly light, though in another half an hour it might start to get heavier with rush hour commuters all trying to merge onto the highway. It was only late April, but one of the first days that promised summer after a bitter and seemingly endless winter. “Hey, you wanna go get some ice cream?”
William shifted to look at me. “Right now? Before dinner?”
“Yeah, of course, before dinner. That’s the best time to eat ice cream.” I shot him a grin that he returned.
Instead of turning right to head over the bridge to get him home, I kept going a little ways so I could head across town to our favorite ice cream shack. Every year I figured would be its last, that competition from chain frozen ice places would put it out of business, but so far the Lucky Rabbit was still around. My twin brother, Evan, and I had both worked in the Lancaster location during the summers in our long-ago teenage years, flipping burgers and scooping the homemade churned ice cream into waffle cones. Time had weathered the Lucky Rabbit sign and left huge potholes in the parking lot, but that was what Pennsylvania winters did to all the roads, left them pitted and rough.
I pulled into the gravel lot and avoided the ditches as best I could and found a spot near a splintery picnic table. We ordered not only sundaes but also onion rings. Not even a bare nod to providing a reasonable dinner, because aunties don’t need to do that.
“So, how’s it going?” I asked around a mouthful of hot fried onion dipped in chocolate ice cream.
William shrugged. He’d ordered mint chocolate chip with caramel sauce, a combination that made me shudder. “Okay, I guess. My Torah portion is really long.”
“You have time. Another three months or so, right?” His Bar Mitzvah was scheduled for his birthday weekend in late July, which meant a sucky early summer of tutoring and attending services.
He shrugged again. We ate mostly in silence after that—William devouring most of the onion rings, all of his ice cream and the rest of mine that the late sushi lunch had left me incapable of finishing. We talked a little bit about the school year that was coming to a close. His new video game. His best friend, Nhat, who might be moving to another school district. William lingered over the last few bites, drawing it out until I finally asked him what was wrong.
“I don’t want to go home,” he said.
“How come?” I gathered the trash and watched him from the corner of my eye as I got up to toss it.
William shrugged again. It was becoming his favorite response. “Just don’t.”
“Is something going on at home?” I sat again on the picnic table bench, wincing at the scrape of the rough wood on the back of my thigh below my hem. I’d be lucky to get out of