We enjoy the pizza, toasting with virgin mimosas, congratulating ourselves on a job well done. By the time we’ve eaten, then edited and posted the video, it’s time to start lunch.
I had considered a peanut-butter-and-jelly pizza—somehow—to tie into classic lunch fare. But I couldn’t wrap my brain around the hows of it. And, honestly, there’s no way to improve on the sandwich.
Instead, I reach back to another lunchtime favorite from my childhood—tuna.
Beginning with a whole-wheat crust, I slather on a layer of mild chipotle sauce, then top it with wilted spinach, coarsely grated cheddar, and chunks cut from a gorgeously grilled tuna steak. The result, according to Aneesa, is “the best tuna melt you unlucky sods out there in YouTube land have never tasted.”
Edited. Posted. Move on to dinner. No rest, not today.
Unable to help ourselves, we devour each pizza in its entirety.
I prep dinner, which is a super-thin whole-wheat crust with a light oil sparingly applied, really just painted on. I top this with thinly sliced pears and sautéed onions, then add crumbled goat cheese. The goat cheese bubbles and browns as Aneesa breathlessly narrates, her camera zooming in on the glass oven door. I’m sweating so much that I think I might pass out. I reveal the day’s third pie.
“I think I hate pizza now,” Aneesa jokes. “I’m going to excuse myself to the bathroom and stick my finger down my throat.”
“Vomiting up the meal is considered an insult to the chef.”
“Then I’ll make it my middle finger, to be doubly insulting.”
We each eat a tiny wedge. It’s so delicious that we agree we each want more, but it’s been too much pizza for one day, despite the desires of our taste buds.
“I can’t believe I survived this,” she moans, slumped over the table.
“You haven’t survived anything yet,” I remind her. From the fridge, I produce the cookie crust I spent yesterday baking so that it would be ready for this moment.
“For the first time in the history of me,” she says, “I don’t want dessert.”
“Well, our website says ‘Muslim girl eats pizza.’ You got another Muslim girl lurking around?”
She thumps her head against the table. “I hate myself. I hate myself. I hate myself.”
“But you’re gonna love dessert.”
“I hate dessert. I hate dessert. I hate dessert.”
Mom gets home just as I’m prepping for the dessert pizza. She notices the pear-and-goat-cheese pie, the still-on oven, and arches an eyebrow.
“We left it for you,” I tell her. She grimaces, but once she takes her first bite, her expression softens.
“You already cooked. Why is the oven still on?”
“Something new.” I show her the cookie crust and her eyes light up.
“Really?”
“Really.”
Mom glances at Aneesa, who is trying to remain upright in her chair. “Was this your idea?”
“Sort of. It’s all his execution, though.”
“Let’s see how it goes, then.”
The pizza stone is still hot after a day’s use, but I can’t simply lay my cookie crust on it—it would absorb the savory oils from the other pizzas and ruin its own sweetness. So I commit a sin against the culinary gods of pizza and lay parchment paper on the stone, moving quickly lest I burn myself.
Paper in place, I prep the crust, topping it with a layer of pasty fudge, then a drizzle of caramel, followed by sliced banana, a sprinkle of chopped walnuts, and a ribbon of more fudge.
Into the oven it goes, for just a few minutes. Just long enough to make the fudge gooey and to slightly caramelize the banana slices.
When I remove it from the oven—with a motion I feel I’ve repeated a thousand times today—Mom actually gasps and applauds. Aneesa, despite herself, grins broadly and joins in the applause.
“Not done yet,” I warn them.
I spend a couple of minutes hand-whipping some whipped cream and float stiff arches of it over the pizza. When I’m done, it looks like shredded clouds drifting over a delicious, edible field.
I cut small slices, bearing in mind how sick and tired of pizza Aneesa and I are.
We each eat two of them.
Later, I lie in bed in the early stages of a sugar coma, combined with a general food coma. I am brain dead on carbohydrates and complex sugars, unable to move, capable only of staring up at the ceiling. Evan’s bedroom ceiling hosts a complicated, meticulous glow-in-the-dark decal replica of the night sky, with a particular focus on the Big Dipper. Mine features a pebbly popcorn texture and a small crescent of water damage in one corner from when a pipe in the ceiling froze and cracked one winter.
A knock at the door. As per usual, Mom stands in the doorway, not entering.
“Good job today, Sebastian.”
I struggle into a sitting position. “With what?”
“With everything.”
“Oh.”
She sighs and smiles at me. “I’m really proud of you. I told you to do something productive with your summer, and you have. I check your page, you know.”
“Please tell me you don’t read the comments.”
She grins. “I’m old, not stupid. Look, I’ve been watching your views climb. You’re in some pretty impressive territory.”
“It’s nothing compared to—”
“Stop it.” She holds out a hand, like a crossing guard of language making certain no stray words are hit by an oncoming linguistic semitruck. “Stop it, Sebastian. Stop putting yourself down. You’ve built something. You’ve applied yourself. And I want you to know that I’m so proud of you.”
She bites her lip. “Look, I know we don’t always… I know we don’t always talk… about the things we need to talk about. And I’m sorry for that. I just…”
I can’t stand to hear her apologize to me. And it’s been a day. I’m stuffed and logy. “It’s okay, Mom.”
She beckons. Despite the pizza I’ve stuffed into my gut over the course of the day, I swing my legs out of bed, give myself a moment to catch my breath, and then go to her.
She takes my face in her hands and gazes into my eyes. There is something in there—words, I think—that she struggles with. I don’t know if she’s struggling to withhold them or to say them. But after a too-long moment, nothing issues forth. She tilts my head down, kisses my forehead gently, and whispers, “Good night.”
And with that, we’ve recorded our last daily episode for the time being. “Our big season finale,” Aneesa calls it.
We still have the rest of the week. I take Aneesa on a tour of the last few places worth visiting in Brookdale. And then, on a whim on Friday night, just as the sun is setting, I take her to Lola.
There are four graveyards in Brookdale that I know of. My sister rests in the one behind the South Brook Episcopal Church.