The Family She Never Met by Caridad Piñeiro

Author:Caridad Piñeiro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2022-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Luis sat back as Manny placed the plates with lunch before them and poured glasses of fresh lemonade.

“Gracias, Manny. It looks delicious,” he said, admiring the artfully prepared plate of poached red snapper beside roasted asparagus and fingerling potatoes.

“It does. Gracias, Manny,” Jessica said and smiled at the older man. After she ate some of the fish and potatoes, Jessica murmured her approval and said, “If I keep on eating like this, I’m going to gain a hundred pounds.”

Luis laughed and shook his head. “I imagine you can work it off on a typical day in your shop.”

Jessica nodded and chuckled. “I probably could. It can be hard work.”

“What made you decide to go into that business?” Carmen asked while she ate her own meal.

Jessica shrugged. “Like your dad, Luis, my dad would sometimes take me with him to one of his contracting jobs. It was fascinating to see them building a home. How it all came together.”

“Why not an architect, mi’jita?” Carmen probed, obviously intrigued by her granddaughter’s choices.

Jessica’s hands flew into motion while she explained. “What I liked best was working with my hands. Feeling the wood. Feeling its history and giving it a new life. New purpose.”

* * *

Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, 2003

The sander sat on the top of the oak table her father and she had found at a local consignment store. Her mother had been complaining about their kitchen table being too rickety, but despite visits to several furniture stores, nothing had seemed to please her.

“Your mom says nothing she’s seen so far has character,” her father said and ran his hand across the surface of the old farmhouse table. “This has character. And those,” he said and pointed to the chairs they’d found at a different secondhand store.

He walked over to them and ran his hands over the curved top of the chair and then down the spindles to the worn seat. “These are Windsor chairs.”

“Windsor like the castle?” Jessica asked.

Her father smiled and nodded. “Exactly like the castle and the nearby town, but it’s Americans who took them over the top. I think your mom will appreciate that,” he said with pride.

Jessica had no doubt she would. In some ways her mother was more American than most Americans, maybe because she understood the blessing that was America. “She’ll like them, Dad,” she said and gestured to the sander.

“What do we do next?” she asked.

Sal dipped his head in the direction of the table. “We’ve stripped off the old varnish. Now we sand and stain. But first, protection,” he said and handed Jessica a mask to guard against the sanding dust and ear plugs to deaden the sound.

She slipped them on and walked to stand beside her dad to watch him sand, but instead he laid her hands on the sander. “You do it. With the grain. Always with the grain,” he said, patient. Gentle as he guided her, helping her sand the tabletop to a smooth finish. The noise of the sander was a low murmur, almost musical as she moved it over the wood.

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