Chapter Nine

In Which We Find Out the Walls Are Really, Really Thin

With a little over a week until her date with Wick, Elisa had allowed herself to fall back into her normal routine—aside from Colin coming over every single day since she’d returned home, which did, admittedly, throw off her game a bit. Luckily, on this particular day, he had to be home in time for his weekly bridge game with his mother and her friends, so he was out of the apartment and out of Elisa’s hair by suppertime.

She was sitting on the couch, her biology homework on her lap. As she tried to remember what the difference was between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, and why she should care, her mother’s voice drifted in from the kitchen.

“Yes, I’m aware of when the money is due, but I simply don’t have it this week,” she pleaded, her voice high-pitched and strained. “I can get it to you in part, but—yes, I understand that, but—look, is there anyone else I can speak to? No? Okay, is there nothing you can do for me…?” She sighed. “I understand. I’ll—I’ll figure something out. Thank you. Goodbye.”

Elisa heard her mother set her phone down. There was a brief pause, and then a loud groan.

Elisa got to her feet and was standing the kitchen doorway by the time Mom looked up from where she’d placed her head on the table.

“How much of that did you hear?” she asked.

“Enough,” she said, sitting in the chair opposite her mother. She paused before deciding to just ask. “You behind on your student loan payments again?”

She hesitated, then nodded. She ran a hand through her dark hair, pushing it out of her tired eyes. “Yeah. There’s a minimum amount you have to pay every month, and well…” She sighed and shook her head. “Don’t worry about it, Elisa. I’ll figure it out.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Elisa asked, feeling stupid even as she did. What could she do? She didn’t have a job, not even part-time. She’d considered getting one, but to her surprise, her mother talked her out of it.

“As long as we can afford it, focus on school and school alone,” she’d said. “I worked two jobs while I was in college, and I barely had time or energy to study. It probably would’ve made the difference between C’s and A’s.”

“But I want to help,” Elisa had replied. “I’m sure I can manage something on the weekends.”

“Get a degree, and your choices will double.”

“Are you kidding? I’m an English major.”

Even so, she’d heeded her mother’s advice. Her grades were great, but she was just as broke as everyone else in the house, and she doubted Mom would’ve taken any money from her even if she offered.

“No,” Mom said. “Just let me handle this. I’m the adult.” She stood and grabbed a can of soda out of the fridge. “You go to school for four years to get a degree to get a job, and then you spend the rest of your natural life using the job to pay off the degree. But if you don’t have a degree, you can’t find a job at all. It’s a trap.”

“You don’t regret going to college, do you?”

“No,” she admitted. “It was very important to my parents that I went, and I enjoyed my time there. I just wish I’d been able to get scholarships. Honestly, Elisa—if it ever gets to the point where scholarships won’t cover your tuition anymore and you have to take out a loan, it may be worth it to take a break from school to get a job, after all.”

“I know,” Elisa said, sincerely hoping that wouldn’t happen. She liked college, and it was a nice reprieve between the hell that was high school and the hell that awaited her in the workforce.

Seeing the look on her daughter’s face, Mom quickly added, “But I doubt it’ll come to that. You’ve always been good with school. I’m sure you’ll be fine.” She paused. “You’ve applied for scholarships for next semester, right?”

She nodded. “I sent in the general application last weekend.”

“Good. Do not let yourself get trapped in the black hole of student loans.” She smiled, trying to lighten the mood. “It’s too late for me, so just leave me behind. Run. Save yourself.”

Elisa chuckled. She paused, debating with herself whether or not it’d be wise to voice her next thought.

She decided to just go for it.

“If you’re really behind,” she said carefully, “I’m sure Papa would be willing to help.”

Her mother’s smile dropped immediately, and the look she gave her probably would’ve made lesser women shake with fear.

“Don’t even go there,” she said.

“I’m just saying—I doubt he could pay it all off, even if you asked him to, but surely he’d be able to help you make this month’s payment.”

“I’m sure he could. But I’m not asking my ex-husband for a loan,” she said, words clipped.

“Mom, in nine years, has he ever missed a child support payment?”

“No. But that’s money he pays to help support you girls. It’s very different.”

“But if you just talked to him, I’m sure he’d want to help you out. I mean, he still cares about you, and—”

“I have my pride.”

“Okay, okay, fine. Fine…” Elisa said. She and her mother could argue until the Rapture if no one stopped them, but sometimes, she had to pick her battles.

Mom gave a short, exasperated huff. “It’s not that I don’t think your father would help if I asked,” she said, “but the day I ask Miguel for a loan is the day I let you take a job in an Atlantic City strip club.”

“You know, strippers can make really good money. Just saying.”

Mom rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “Like I said, Elisa—they’re my loans, my problem.”

“Okay. I just… I hate seeing you so stressed out about this.”

“I’m the mother of five. I’m always stressed out about something.”

Elisa sighed. “I’m gonna go finish up my homework, okay?”

“Okay,” Mom said. She pecked her on the cheek. “Dinner will be in an hour or so.”

She got up from the kitchen table and headed into the living room, accidentally bumping into the room divider as she moved toward the couch.

A muffled oof came from behind the wall.

Frowning, Elisa walked around, poking her head into the closed-off section of the living room her youngest sister had claimed.

All four of her sisters were crouching on Lucia’s bed. Camila had her ear to the wall.

“Hey, E,” Julieta said, trying to look innocent.

“What the…” Elisa said, keeping her voice down. The last thing her mother needed was to know that the entire household had heard her conversation with the bank. She quickly slipped into the tiny, claustrophobic space, hands on her hips. “How long were the four of you eavesdropping?”

“It was Cam’s idea,” Maria said.

“Liar,” Camila gasped.

Elisa rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I asked. And seriously—et tu, Julieta?”

She shrugged helplessly. “I was worried, okay?”

“We all were,” Lucia added. “I didn’t know Mom still had loans to pay off. Hasn’t she been paying them off for, like, twenty years now?”

“More.” Elisa sighed, sitting down on the bed. It was crowded and cramped, but she made it work—she and her sisters had all forced themselves onto the same bed before. Whether Julieta was reading them all a bedtime story, or Elisa had just had the most awful day and needed a willing audience to rant at, or Camila had been scared by a thunderstorm and needed company, they’d managed to make it work. Granted, the last time had been when they were all much younger and much smaller…

“I still have some money left over from that bet I won against Natasha Bridges last week,” Lucia said, looking like she was thinking very hard. “I mean, it’s not much, but maybe it could help this month—”

“No,” Julieta said, gently but firmly. “Mom would never accept money from one of us. Trust me, I’ve tried. I pay for my share of the groceries, and I help cover the bills sometimes, but she won’t let me touch her loans. And I actually have a job—there’s no way she’d take money from someone who doesn’t.”

“I wish she’d ask Papa for help.” Camila sighed. “I mean, they’re still friends, right?”

Elisa shrugged. “‘Friends’ may be a strong word. They don’t hate each other or anything.”

“Mama was devastated when Papa left her,” Julieta said. “You’re all a bit young to remember this, but she cried a lot for the first couple months after he moved out. Tío Javier moved in for a while to help with the rent and look after things while she tried to find a better paying job and get back on her feet.”

“I’d almost forgotten about that,” Elisa said quietly. Javier was her only uncle, and he lived in Chicago. She hadn’t seen him in a couple of years, but now that Julieta had said it, she could remember him fixing dinner while Mom was out at interviews and driving the sisters to and from school.

Elisa had asked him once if he was angry at her father. At the age of nine, she was too young to really grasp the nuances of marriage and divorce, but she’d understood that there were a lot of complicated emotions for everyone involved.

“A little,” Javier had replied. “I hate seeing Alejandra hurt like this. But I don’t think I’ll stay mad forever. He’s your dad, and that’s the most important thing.” He’d looked at her then. “Are you mad at him?”

Elisa hadn’t said anything at first, but, once she realized she really wouldn’t be in trouble no matter what she said, she’d responded, “Yeah. Kinda. Everything was so nice before. Now it’s all weird and sad. Mom’s sad all the time, and Dad isn’t here, ’cept when he picks us up on the weekends, and… I dunno. It just sucks.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But it won’t be that way forever. You can be mad at him if you want. Just try and keep it from taking over, okay? That doesn’t help anyone.”

Elisa had nodded, feeling like she only sort of understood. At the time, she couldn’t really imagine not being a little angry with her father, but mostly, she’d just been happy to be able to admit it.

“Mom doesn’t like to talk about that time much anymore,” Julieta said. “I mean, she’s doing all right now—I think she knows the divorce was probably for the best. But at the time…” She sighed, shaking her head. “I’m not sure she could ever really be friends with Papa. Even if it wasn’t completely his fault, he broke her heart. In the long run, it had to be done, but…”

“Doesn’t make it hurt any less,” Maria said.

“Yeah. And it’s hard to be friends with your ex at the best of times. When you loved them as much as Mom loved Papa…”

“The higher they are, the harder they fall, huh?” she asked.

“Something like that.”

Maria sighed, picking a piece of lint off of her jeans. “I’m never getting married,” she declared. “Never.”

Julieta touched her younger sister’s arm. “Come on, Maria, don’t say that.”

“I mean it,” she insisted. “Look, it’s not that I wouldn’t like to find love or whatever…but all of my friends have divorced parents, like us. Half of those, the parents won’t even talk to each other. My friend Isabelle, she said that her mom won’t even see her dad. Literally. She goes to her dad’s house on the weekends, and her mom drops her off a block away and has her walk over, so she doesn’t have to see her ex.”

“Most divorced couples don’t act like that, though,” Camila said. “I mean, Mom even has Papa come over for Christmas and our birthdays, and they never argue.”

“Oh, they argue,” Elisa said dully. “They just try not to let us see it.”

“W-well, that’s still good,” she said. “I mean, if they really hated each other, they wouldn’t care about arguing in public, would they?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Divorced couples can get along,” Julieta said, “and it’s not like after you get divorced, you’ll never fall in love again.”

“Mom hasn’t,” Maria said quietly.

“No,” she admitted, “not yet. But some people just take a long time to move on, that’s all. And besides, she’s so busy, with her job and us…”

“I don’t see how a few years of happiness is worth who knows how many years of heartache.”

“Not all marriages end like Mom and Papa’s, though.”

“Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce,” Elisa pointed out.

She paused, flustered, before saying, “But if you assume your marriage is in the fifty percent, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Being pessimistic can really screw you over.”

“Being a pessimist rocks,” Maria said dryly. “I’m always either right or pleasantly surprised.”

This was met with some weak chuckles, but they faded away quickly. The sisters fell into silence for a moment. Elisa could hear Mom’s voice, coming from her bedroom. She was on the phone again, probably talking to her brother or one of her parents; she was speaking Spanish. She didn’t even bother trying to eavesdrop.

Unlike her mother and uncle, she and her sisters had not been raised bilingual. Mom had said that she’d always meant to bring them up speaking Spanish, but clearly, it hadn’t worked out like that. Elisa knew enough to manage basic pleasantries, but anything more complicated than small talk was beyond her. The only Benitez sister that spoke it fluently was Maria, and she’d used an online course to teach herself. This also had the side effect of making her the favored grandchild of their mother’s parents, since she was the only one who could talk to them much.

Lucia brought her knees up to her chest. “I can’t wait to get married and have kids,” she said. “I always thought I’d make a good stay-at-home mom.”

“No career plans?” Elisa asked.

“I mean, I’ve also thought about becoming an internet celebrity.”

She snorted. “Combine those two and become a mommy blogger.”

“I know you’re being sarcastic, but if I can, I totally will.”

“You’re fourteen. You might be surprised what you actually end up doing,” Julieta said. “I mean, I didn’t think I’d end up running my own business, but I love it. And Bobby’s a nice bonus.”

“Let’s be real, raising a family is a full-time job,” Lucia replied. “Probably why Mom’s always so tired. I guess I could be the one that works if my husband really likes kids.”

“My plan is to stay in school for as long as humanly possible,” Maria said. “College, grad school, the whole thing. After that, I might become a professor or something. Getting paid to force people to read books and write papers sounds great.” She nudged Elisa. “I always assumed that was your plan, too.”

“I don’t have much of one,” she admitted. “I’m taking it semester-by-semester. I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up teaching, though.”

“What do you want, though? Dream big.”

“What I want…” She paused, thinking it over. “I want to travel. A lot. I’d love to be one of those people that has apartments in big cities all over the worlds. With books, lots of books… And, you know, if I happened to be able to bring my soulmate along for the ride, even better. Or Charlene. Actually, screw marriage, I want to go on a worldwide road trip with my best friend.”

“I already know what I’m gonna do,” Camila said. “I’m going to do makeup for actors on movie sets.”

“Really?” This was a surprise to her. She’d always known Cam had liked experimenting with different beauty products, and she was very good at it, but this was the first she’d heard of her wanting a career in the field. Actually, this was the first she’d heard of her wanting a career at all, except for that period where she’d wanted to be an Olympic archer when she was five.

“Totally. I’d be great at it, and those skills are always needed. Hair and makeup artists are the unsung heroes of the movie industry.”

“Why do you think I let her practice on me all the time?” Lucia added.

“Huh.” Man, I need to listen to them more often. “Hey, if it works out with Jules and Bobby, he could probably introduce you to some people.”

“Don’t jinx it,” Julieta said. “I really want it to work out.”

“Personally,” Elisa said, “I’m only going to get married if I find the deepest, purest, truest love in the world. Which is why I’m planning my life around the assumption that I’ll one day be the family spinster.”

All her sisters broke into giggles. Elisa grinned.

“It’s a hard job, I know, but someone’s gotta do it,” she said. “I’ll overstay my welcome during holidays at Julieta and Bobby’s mansion, give your kids questionable life advice, tell all the wild and embarrassing stories of our youths, be the one that teaches all the kids at family gatherings about sex and drugs and R-rated movies, drink vodka-laced coffee at the breakfast table… It’ll be great.”

“Can there be two spinsters in a family?” Maria asked, smiling a bit.

“I think, at that point, we cease to be spinsters and become ‘maiden aunts,’” Elisa said. “Which would mean it’d be our job to house any unmarried children of our siblings to help them find husbands, lest they wind up bitter old crones like us.”

“Wait,” Lucia said. “You’d be the Spinster Sisters. You could totally start a band with that name.”

Elisa laughed. “What do you say, Maria? If we’re both still single when we’re fifty, we start a band?”

Maria laughed, too. “Deal.”