Hungry Hearts Page 24

  “She wanted you to meet her granddaughter, but she’s working today.”

  “Oh, at the theater?” I paused from lacing up my sneakers. “Maybe I’ll see her. I was thinking of watching something there this weekend.”

  “We’ll invite them over one day too.” Valimma grabbed the food bag before I could. “She spends her summers here with her grandmother.”

  * * *

  Crocheted doilies. Pastel walls. Flowery curtains.

  The setting of Gabrielle’s film Home Is confronted me when I stepped into Margaret’s living room.

  Gabrielle’s face stared from a large framed photo on the mantel above the fireplace.

  Gabrielle Rose.

  She was connected to Hungry Heart Row.

  She was Margaret’s granddaughter?

  AND she was definitely connected to the missing Barnaby Bennett.

  She was the last person to have seen him last year—at the movie theater.

  Either she was just filming me making a film on him . . .

  Or she had something to hide.

  The only thing to do now was to ask Gabrielle directly what exactly was going on.

  Maybe it was time to go to a Sunday matinee, maybe watch her film again, and afterward, just ask her the truth point-blank.

  Because there was a weird truth going on—connected, but also all tangled up somehow.

  But it wasn’t just linked to Gabrielle.

  It was also connected to Hungry Heart Row itself.

  * * *

  I was the only person in the theater to watch Gabrielle Rose’s winning film.

  It had been odd buying a ticket, with Gabrielle’s eyes on mine, a mixture of familiarity and secrecy in them.

  All the lights suddenly turned off before I got to the best seat—the one smack-dab in the middle of the upper row—but I continued moving in the dark until I reached the prime spot.

  Once seated, I blindly unrolled the top of the slim bag of barbecue-flavored popcorn I’d brought.

  The darkness of the theater was so absolute that I felt like sound had disappeared too.

  Then, with a sudden crackle, the light from the projector flipped on.

  The screen ahead filled with a white square.

  A flickering white square, now turning gray.

  Then—a frozen gray square, no sound.

  Gabrielle Rose walked in front of the screen.

  I drew up my phone and began recording. I wanted everything on film.

  “Thanks for coming to watch my film. Unfortunately, there’s a glitch, so . . . so instead, I wanted to tell you something.”

  “You were filming me making a film,” I said. “You were being clever.”

  “No, I wasn’t.” Gabrielle put a hand at her forehead to block some of the light shining on her from the projector. “Though that would have been cool.”

  “Who’s the boy on the security camera?”

  “That’s what I want to explain.” Gabrielle walked to her left and began climbing the aisle steps. “About him.”

  I tilted the phone and followed the faint figure coming nearer, realizing the closer Gabrielle came, the less that could be seen of her.

  “Is he the lost boy?” If I kept her talking, at least there would be sound captured that I could use. For The Legend of Hungry Heart Row’s Lost Boy.

  Or whatever this film was becoming now. Or—I slumped in my seat—not becoming.

  “No.” Gabrielle was almost at my row now. “He’s not.”

  She began walking toward me.

  Before she got too close, she sat down abruptly, two seats away. “He’s not the lost boy because he’s not lost.”

  I kept filming.

  “It’s Barnaby. He ran away from a horrendous home situation.” Gabrielle sunk her face into her hands. “I helped him. Because I knew him from summers working here. He loved watching movies, they were his escape, so I let him in free. That day he disappeared or whatever, he came into the movie theater and exited that door over there in the corner, in the middle of the movie. He took the crosstown bus right outside.”

  “From the bus stop at Nettle and Caraway,” I said. “But if he ran away, why does he keep getting caught on camera?”

  She sighed again. “You know Old Manila? The Filipino restaurant on Pepper Street?”

  “The Soup Number Five place?”

  She looked at me weirdly. “How—”

  “Adobo? Three stalls?”

  “Yes, that place. Lola Teodora sells this dish called kare-kare, and two winters ago, Barnaby became convinced that eating it at lunch every day was making him braver and braver. So brave that he made the decision to leave home.”

  I thought about it. There it was, the food thing again.

  Does everyone here believe food affects us so much?

  Well, that ojo pastry thing from Panadería Pastelería had gotten me thinking clearly.

  But.

  I shook my head. “Wait. What does Barnaby eating at the Filipino restaurant have to do with him being caught on camera so much now?”

  “Well, he wasn’t just getting braver, he was also unloading his story on the lolas, the three women who run Old Manila. They offered him a job washing dishes after hours so he could save enough money to one day make it on his own. He still comes by in the middle of the night to wash and then leaves before the restaurant opens again in the morning.”

  I guess that’s why he’d stopped coming to the meal service, Daily Harvest. He’d needed it when he first disappeared and was on his own but then, the lolas had helped him get on his feet.

  My film idea was completely shot, but I’d found Barnaby. And this made me weirdly happy.

  Because in finding him, I’d found something else, too. I’d found out a lot about Hungry Heart Row. The kind of home it was.

  It felt okay being in a place where someone showed up to give you a pastry when you needed it. Or a job. And bravery. And deep friendships built around food, like Valimma had.

  I stopped filming and turned on my phone’s flashlight instead. “Is he okay now?”

  Gabrielle looked at me. “He’s safe, happier now. He’s with another friend’s family.”

  “So why were you following me?” I pulled the phone under my chin to light up my face, creepily. “And filming me in the library?”

  “I wasn’t. When my grandma told me you were making a movie on Barnaby, I started getting worried—but not film-competition-wise. Just my-friend-Barnaby-wise. And I guess I tried to see if I could talk to you about it. I’m actually doing a film on . . .” She paused, looked at me, and then burst out laughing. “Okay, I’ll tell you. You’re so funny-looking right now, with the light like that. I’m doing a film on the vibrancy of Hungry Heart Row. Like a pure soundscape film, quiet noises of the library, loud noises of the markets. Just form over story.”

  I smirked in the light. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell Bilal that Gabrielle had arrived at my original film idea.

  “But now I’m thinking . . . meta would have been good. Me filming you. You not knowing,” Gabrielle mused.

  I turned to the gray square on the screen in front of us, seemingly frozen in anticipation of the film to come.

  “Well, we caaan still do that if you want,” I said, something new, a feeling I’d never felt, growing inside me. It was erasing the previous anxiety I’d felt—at the deadline for the film, the move here, everything.

  Hope. That was the feeling.

  Maybe we didn’t have to compete. Maybe we could just do our films Hungry Heart Row style.

  “What do you mean?” Her voice sounded open.

  “Maybe we can mix it up. Me finding out about Hungry Heart Row, my new home, you chasing sounds, filming me getting used to this place, especially its food. Combine it all. One film, two directors. Simple yet complex.” I said all this to the screen, afraid to look at her.

  Then I just had to see her face, so I turned.

  Gabrielle was gazing at the gray screen ah
ead too, seeing what could be, the light of my phone showing a faint smile growing on her nodding face.

  And then, just like that, I got what Valimma had been trying to tell me before about Hungry Heart Row: People here wanted you to love what they offered. They wanted it so much.

  And if you saw this, saw how much this want was, your part in the whole thing would just fall into place: You’d love back.

  I offered Gabrielle a bag of bountiful flavor. “Popcorn?”

  Side Work

  BY SARA FARIZAN

  Sometimes I thought about what my Saturdays used to be like. I’d sleep in, maybe go shopping with my friends, or be dancing at a house party later on that evening. It felt like forever ago, but it was only eight months since the accident.

  Now I had to wake up early so I could catch the bus on time to get to my job at Manijeh’s, my uncle’s Persian cuisine restaurant. No more sleeping in or partying for me. Still, I was grateful to have somewhere to go and something to do.

  I brushed back the wisps of hair trying to escape my high ponytail as I looked at myself in my bathroom mirror. I used to fuss over every little detail of my outfit, make sure I looked better than my friend Stacey did, slay every look, and try to make it appear effortless. These days, I was just happy to have a clean work shirt that didn’t have ghormeh sabzi stains on it.

  “Whoa, Laleh, slow down,” Mom said, drinking coffee at the kitchen table while Dad, dressed in his tech business-casual outfit, read Wired magazine. Sometimes he popped into the office on weekends, even though most of the employees were out enjoying their lives or working remotely. I think it was to get away from me. It didn’t used to be like that. We used to talk about everything. Now . . . well, I made it easier for him to avoid me and stayed out of his way.

  “Sorry,” I said. I felt like all I ever did was apologize in their presence. I had messed up, real bad, and none of us had really gotten over it.

  “It’s okay. Do you need a ride to work?” Mom asked even though she knew I was going to answer the way I always did. I could tell she worried about me. I didn’t even think Dad cared much about what I was up to.

  “I’m taking the bus. Thanks,” I said, glancing at the empty fruit bowl by the fridge. “No bananas?”

  “I’m going to the market today and can pick up some things. Is there anything else you need?” Mom smiled at me, but there was always this sad glaze coating her eyeballs, so it looked like she was going to start crying whenever she talked to me. I knew what she was thinking. Her only golden child, her once Ivy League–bound daughter, was now waiting tables for tips.

  “What time will you be home?” Dad asked, still looking at his magazine. He didn’t even like Wired. He had always been a Popular Mechanics guy. God forbid he made eye contact with me while I was in my uniform. I bet he was thinking I should have been at Columbia, not in his brother’s kitchen.

  “Whenever the last table finishes and we clean up,” I said. He looked up from his magazine.

  “Call me when you’re done and let me know if I should come get you, or if your uncle will be dropping you off,” he said. But he was not going to come into the restaurant. He was not going to see all the stuff I did for Amu Mansour. He was not going to see that I was trying my best to be responsible now. Those days of my dad being proud of me were over.

  “Okay,” I said before heading out the door. I kind of liked it better when they were lecturing me all the time.

  * * *

  “You’re late,” my cousin Arash said as I entered my uncle’s restaurant through the front door. I hated that he thought it was okay to say that to me, since he only worked on weekends, while I was here full-time. We mostly got our regulars for dinner, and it was slow during the day. I had a feeling today was going to be exceptionally slow.

  It was the grand opening of the much-talked-about Zia Sofia Ristorante across the street. It was the first chain to grace Hungry Heart Row, and the mom-and-pop places around here weren’t too thrilled about it. Zia Sofia was only a regional chain, but it was big, it was glossy, it had appropriated Italian culture for profit, and it was very corporate. They had commercials on TV promoting their “That’s A-more Not A-less” pasta platters that only ran out when you couldn’t stuff your face any longer. The balloons on either side of Zia Sofia’s glass doors were swaying in the wind, almost waving at the twenty or so customers who were lined up outside.

  “You couldn’t wait to see me? Did you miss me that much?” I asked him while I leaned over the table and pinched his cheek. He let me tug on his baby face for a moment without any protest. He had his pre-calc textbook open next to the phone and the reservation book. “How’s school?” I asked after I let him go.

  “It’s brutal. I can’t wait for it to be over,” he said. I almost said, Be careful what you wish for, but it would have been pointless. He didn’t know how good he had it.

  Zia Sofia had replaced the dry cleaners owned by the Arkanian family and the Salvadoran restaurant owned by the Flores family. When the new condo buildings came in, some places couldn’t keep up with the rising rents.

  I was pretty sure the people who lived in those condos worked at the same company my dad did. I sometimes felt guilty about that, as though it were my fault. I was an interloper in a neighborhood that wasn’t really mine. Then I reminded myself there was no way I’d be able to afford a condo or apartment in this area or really anywhere, since all of my tips went to paying back my dad for the damages to his car.

  I strolled to the back and swung open the kitchen door.

  The smell of khoresht e gheihmeh immediately hit my nostrils: The combination of tomato paste, dried limes, cubes of lamb, turmeric, cumin, cinnamon, and split yellow lentils all hung sweetly in the air.

  “Laleh! Tudo bem?” Claudio asked me from behind the sauté station. He was still putting all the prepped vegetables and spices where he needed them to be.

  “Bem. Obrigado,” I said. This was about the extent of my Brazilian Portuguese so far. Claudio knew more words in Farsi than I knew in Portuguese, but he and his sister Camilla had been working at Manijeh’s for six years. (My uncle Mansour had named the restaurant after my grandmother. There was a photograph on the wall by table two of her and my uncle in front of his childhood home in Tehran when he was eight. I never met her. She passed away in Iran before I was born.) “How are you?”

  “Good,” Claudio said with a smile. He took his phone out of his pocket, pushed a few buttons, and passed it to me. His chubby baby boy, Aurelio, was smiling at me from his phone.

  “Awww, look at that smile!”

  “He’s showing off his new teeth,” Claudio said. I handed the phone back to him. “Manny wants to see you. He’s in the office.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I strolled past the walk-in fridge and ice machine and stood in the open doorway of my uncle’s tiny closet-size office, where he took care of day-to-day managerial stuff. My aunt Mariam would work in the office at night before closing.

  Uncle Mansour hadn’t heard me creep up to his domain. His shoulders were hunched as he sat at his desk, and his face was so close to the paper he was reading from, because he refused to wear his glasses. It was amazing how much he looked like my dad. Uncle Mansour was about forty pounds heavier than my father, and he had more hair, but they had the same dark eyes, the same strong nose, though my uncle Mansour was the one always wearing a smile. I hadn’t seen my dad smile in a long time.

  I knocked lightly on the wooden door. Uncle Mansour looked up, and, as soon as he saw me, he beamed.

  “Hi, Laleh joon,” he said before he stood up. He kissed me on my cheek. “You ate already?”

  “What?”

  He pointed to the corner of his lips. I realized I had the remnants of the potato knish I had picked up at Pop’s Deli on my face. (Their knishes were phenomenal.) I wiped the crumbs off my face, and he looked at me warmly.

  “I have a favor to ask you,” he said.

  “Of course. Anything,” I said. I owed
him so much.

  “Well, the new restaurant is opening today, and I was going to go over before the dinner rush to welcome our neighbors,” he said. “I was wondering if you would like to go with me?”

  “Me?” I asked.

  “Mariam refuses to set foot in there out of respect for the Flores family. As for Arash, well he doesn’t have much interest in these things,” Uncle Mansour said wistfully. I knew Uncle Mansour wanted his son to pursue his dreams, but I think a big part of him also wanted to keep Manijeh’s in the family.

  Why not visit the hyped eatery and see what we were up against? All we needed to bring with us was a sling and a stone, and we’d be fine.

  * * *

  After I’d done my side work and waited on the few lunchtime customers who had come in, Uncle Mansour, with a champagne bottle in hand, and I crossed Caper Street and entered the crowded restaurant. There was a line of people in front of the host table. We stood behind them and took in our surroundings.

  The checkered black and white tiles on the floor seemed to go on forever. This place was so much bigger than we were. The back dining room looked like it had twenty tables; some were two-tops, and some could seat four. The front dining room had fifteen tables, mostly booths. There wasn’t one empty chair in the place.

  The walls were painted to look like an Italian vineyard, with rows of red grapes hanging on vines and fluffy clouds painted up above them. I could faintly hear Rosemary Clooney’s “Mambo Italiano” playing on the speaker system. It was hard to hear over the noise of the many diners. Sometimes all you could hear was the Persian classical music at Manijeh’s when it was super dead.

  The guests ahead of us put their names in with the pretty young hostess. She handed them a beeper that would buzz when their table was ready. We didn’t have beepers at Manijeh’s, and even if we did, we wouldn’t have had much use for them.

  She flashed us a plastered-on smile when it was our turn.

  “Hi there! Table for two?” she asked us.

  “Hello. We’re your neighbors across the street at Manijeh’s, and we wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood,” my uncle said as he handed her the champagne bottle.