“Someone else? Who?”
“He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. I just wanted him to talk—and, by the way, can I say thank God that Tamara was taking her good old sweet time in the bathroom, and Ryan had trouble getting the zipper on his rented tux back up, because if not, the conversation would have been super-brief, but”—Marisol takes a huge gulp of air as if she’s about to let out a major secret—“he did say that the person he wanted to ask said that she didn’t really want to be asked, anyway.”
“You think he was talking about me?” I ask nervously.
“What other girl in America would tell someone as hot as Danny that they didn’t want to go to homecoming?” Marisol raises both of her eyebrows accusingly.
“But then why invite Tamara at all?” I think about him slow dancing with Tamara and my heart skips a beat. Then I think about rolling myself into Danny’s arms. The two images collide, and suddenly I feel nauseated.
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. But didn’t you say that Mrs. Diaz said Dalia bought the tickets way in advance? Maybe he already had the extra ticket? It’s possible.” Marisol shrugs her shoulders.
“Wow. Oh, wow. You think?” I ask. How cool would that be if it were true? That would mean that Tamara was his date by DEFAULT!
“Maybe,” Marisol says. “You never know.”
“Okay, so get to the part where you tell Danny that I like him.”
“Give me some credit.” Marisol gives me a dirty look. “I didn’t exactly say, ‘Oh, and by the way did you know that my best friend likes you?’ I just said that I wished Susie were here, but she’s so shy about guys that anyone who probably wanted to ask her would have thought that she didn’t want to be asked, but that that wasn’t necessarily the case. And then I thanked him for the Beatles CD and that was it.” Done with her story, Marisol snuggles back into the covers.
“That’s it?” I lean my head against the wall. That wasn’t nearly enough! I wanted more, and more, and more. I wanted it all.
“So,” Marisol mutters sleepily, “what do you think?”
“I think,” I tell Marisol, “that you did good.”
“I know.” She sighs. “I always do.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
thanksgiving
even with danny in my life, the next few days pass in a blur. The closer I get to my mother’s memorial service, the harder it is for me to feel…normal.
When Thanksgiving arrives a few days later, it’s just me and my dad. All the other usual suspects have disappeared:
Grandma and Grandpa are in Boston with Aunt Emily, although I bet Grandma still thinks she’s here in Miami.
Marisol is somewhere on South Beach, probably trying to hold down her meal. It’s going to be a tough fight, since she’s spending Thanksgiving with her Dad and his life-sized Barbie, a.k.a. his new, annoying girlfriend.
Leslie’s in the Bahamas on a three-day minivacation with several of her coworkers. I imagine they’re painting their toenails peaceful pastels while psychoanalyzing the crap out of each other.
And then there’s me and my dad. Alone.
We make the most of the day. We sit in front of the TV and watch the Macy’s parade. We don’t talk a lot, but that’s not unusual. Still, somehow, words work their way out.
“That’s interesting,” I say at one point.
“Yeah,” he says, some time later.
“Can you believe they used that tired theme again?” I ask.
“Can you turn up the volume?” he asks. “I’d like to hear what he’s saying.”
Then we eat a simple meal: two TV dinners, two Capri Suns. Nothing fancy in our house.
When the sun goes down, we go our separate ways. Like always.
TWENTY-NINE
saturday
on saturday, november twenty-sixth, i remember the death of my mother. Alone. My father is off on his own. I don’t know where he goes. I’ve never asked. I don’t want to know.
I have my own rituals, my own way of dealing with things. And maybe it’s best that we don’t share this day. Maybe it’s best that it stays this way.
So I wake up, I sit in my garden, and I talk to myself. I say, “Today is the day that my mother died.” I don’t say it to be melodramatic. I say it to make it real. Because sometimes it feels like I’ll never fully understand. Like my mind isn’t big enough to comprehend that I will never see her again.
Then I remember, because that’s what today is for. I remember how when I was small and scared, I used to crawl underneath her shirt and wrap my arms super-tight around her waist. She tried to get me to let her go, but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.
I remember the way she laughed when I made my fish face. And that she had her right ear double pierced, and she promised that I could get mine double pierced, too, on my twelfth birthday.
I remember that she liked to read Danielle Steel books before going to bed at night. And that she would lay my head on her lap and clean the inside of my ears with a wet Q-tip. I remember so much about her.
And then I wonder why I remember so much about her and so very little about my dad. My specific memories of him start on the day she died.
Him, at the hospital, talking to the doctors. Me, trying to read his lips, trying to see what they were saying. Him, standing tall, then suddenly his shoulders drooping like somebody sucked the life out of him. The doctor walking away from him, shaking his head, cleaning his glasses with the hem of his pristine white jacket. My dad, there, on the floor, leaning his head against the wall. The hours that passed and passed and passed until I called Grandma and Grandpa and they came to take us home.
Him, next to her coffin, holding her cold hand for so long I thought he’d get frostbite. Me, next to him, watching the way his legs trembled.
I remember it all because I have to remember. I have to let her know that I remember. Because today is the day that my mother died. Saturday. November twenty-sixth.
THIRTY
sunday, the memorial
on sunday my grandfather brings my grandmother over early and leaves with my father to get ready for the big day.
Because my grandmother has trouble remembering lately, I’m supposed to keep an eye on her. So I sit with her in the living room, partially watching her, partially trying to distract myself by reading a book. She’s watching me, too.
Although my grandmother’s crazy, she’s not really crazy. She’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, which is just a fancy way of saying that 50 percent of the time she has absolutely no clue who I am. Which sucks. I guess.
Today is pretty much no different. She’s on her end of the sofa chitchattering about this and that, talking about all kinds of dead people, when suddenly she looks at me and says: “You look a lot like your mother.”
That’s it. “You look a lot like your mother.” And then she’s gone. Moseying her way back to senility. Leaving me to wonder exactly what she means.
“your uncle martin rubbed up on me.” later, over the fruit platter, Marisol and I gossip. “I think he’s finally reached the age where he’s senile.”
“I think he was senile when he hit ninety. Now he’s pretty much infantile.” We both turn to Uncle Martin sitting on the sofa in the living room, drool running down his chin.
“I want to go before I’m eighty-five,” Marisol says. “That way I’ll at least have some decency.”
“Don’t worry,” I assure her. “If you make it to eighty-five, I’ll throw you off a bridge.” I start to smile but then fall short.
“Don’t you find it weird that Marc is here?” Marisol nods in Marc’s direction. He’s sitting with his parents at the dining room table.
“No.” I take a long sip of my tea, which I’m drinking because it’s supposed to calm my nerves. “It’s different now, I think.” I’m pretty sure that once a guy has cried on your shoulder, it will be different for the rest of your life.
“Well, what about Tamara? I can’t believe she had the nerve to show up here with her par
ents.” We turn to look at Tamara, decked out in her it’s-Sunday-and-I’m-at-a-memorial-service best. “She’s such a bitch,” Marisol snaps. “I bet you she came just because she’s hoping to run into Danny. She knows you two are together now.”
“How do you know that? It’s only been a few days of whatever.”
“I don’t know how,” Marisol says, “but she does. Abby, her best friend, asked me what was going on between you two. She said you stole Danny away from her.”
“I what?” I want to laugh. If I weren’t at my mother’s memorial service, I would. “Are you kidding?”
“Nope.” Marisol shakes her head and raises her hand, like she’s being sworn into office or something. “God’s honest truth.”
“Whatever.” Crap like this seems so petty to me today.
“I guess. So, where’s Danny?” Marisol looks around, as if between the two adjoining twelve-by-thirteen rooms, she might have possibly missed him. Then she checks her watch. “He’s coming, right?”
“No.”
“Why not?” She picks at the fruit on the table. “He does know, right?”
“Nope.” I turn my head away, hoping that my subtle body language will communicate that this is not a conversation I want to have with her. But of course it doesn’t.
“Why didn’t you invite him?”
I shrug. “Didn’t feel like it.”
“But he knows about your mother, right?” she asks, looking over at the front door.
“Yeah, I told him. But this is different.” I look over at Uncle Martin. He is leaning kind of crooked against the sofa. His daughter, Cecile, is trying to straighten him by shoving a pillow behind his back, but it isn’t working. “If I’m not dead by ninety, throw me off a bridge.”
“Sure,” Marisol says. Then a few seconds later, she mutters, “Maybe I’ll throw you a little earlier.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I give her a look.
“Just wondering why you’re avoiding my questions.”
“I’m not.”
We turn back to the fruit platter. The fruit platter is safe. It’s freaking Switzerland. It’s not I’d-like-to-kill-my-best-friend territory. Marisol picks up a grape and studies it intently. “I invited Ryan.”
“What?” My mouth falls open in disbelief. “I thought he was going skiing this weekend with his family.”
“Nope, he got out of it. He didn’t want to go without me,” she adds rather smugly.
“Why would you do that? Why would you invite him here?”
“I don’t know,” she says, suddenly realizing that she’s miscalculated the level of pissed-off I would be. “I just did.” Her voice shrinks, and she looks away. “I didn’t think it would be such a big deal. I thought you’d invite Danny.” She touches my shoulder. “Hey, don’t be mad.”
“You should have talked to me!” I was so angry at her that I could feel my insides shaking. This was my loss. My loss. Did she think my mother’s memorial service was, like, a house party?
“I tried calling you last night, but you wouldn’t answer your phone. You wouldn’t talk to me—”
“It was the anniversary of my mother’s death—”
“I know,” she cuts me off, “but you still could have talked to me. So I called Ryan. I was upset because I knew that you were shutting me out, and I told him. And he said he’d come. You know,” she says weakly, “for moral support.”
“You shouldn’t have invited him. This is private. For me, this is private.”
“Susie.” Marisol sets the grape down and grabs my arms so that I’m forced to turn to her. “I understand how hard this is for you. But you’ve got to start letting it go. It’s not a private thing. It’s something that happened to you. And your father. And your grandparents. And me. And my mom. You know, they were good friends. It’s something that happened to all of us. Not just you. Besides, Tamara and Marc are here, too.”
I look over at Tamara talking away to her mother, and Marc sitting uncomfortably between his parents, trying to loosen his black tie. And then I look at Leslie, rubbing my father’s arm consolingly. The doorbell rings. Marisol takes a step forward and then looks at me. “It’s probably Ryan,” she says apologetically.
“I’m going to the garden.” I set my teacup on the table and put my hand on my stomach. It hurts terribly, like someone is kneading my flesh into meatballs.
“Susie,” Marisol’s voice wavers. “This is hard for me, too, sometimes.”
“Yeah,” I look over at Marisol’s mother still rubbing MY father’s arm. “I can see that.”
“Susie,” Marisol begins, but the doorbell cuts her off.
“Answer it,” I tell her, knowing that she will. And, when she walks away, hating myself for being right.
Alone now, I look back at my dad, trying hard to concentrate on what our neighbor, Mr. Mickles, is saying. Then I look at Leslie. She’s nodding in agreement, standing so close to my father that the corner of her silk blouse is touching the left arm of his cotton jacket. I guess she’s lending him her form of “moral support.” Then I look at Marisol, standing in the doorway, smiling up at Ryan, his hand protectively holding hers.
And I try to figure out how, somewhere along the line, everything changed. For a long time, the three of them—my dad, Marisol, and Leslie—were all that I had. And that worked for me. For all of us. But not anymore. I know that because here we are, all three of us together. And I still feel so very alone.
THIRTY-ONE
fragmented sunday afternoon
somehow i find my way outside. amazingly, nobody is sit- ting in the garden. Today has turned out to be one of those freak days at the end of November that makes you think it’s still summer. But the heat doesn’t bother me. I sit on my bench and wait. And after a while, I try to be one of those girls who sits on a bench in her garden and cries for, like, dramatic purposes. But the tears won’t come, just an ache that begins in my abdomen and spreads to my chest, and starts to really, really hurt.
I try to control the pain. I count my breaths. I flex my hands in and out. I bite my lip. Nothing works. I’m stuck in a perpetual state of panic.
later that day, i wander into my parents’ bedroom. or i should say my parents’ old bedroom. My dad doesn’t come in here much. His clothes, his work, his entire life has somehow moved into the study, and when he needs to sleep (which in Dad language means rest his eyes for all of five seconds), he lies horizontally on the sofa in the study.
In my parents’ old bedroom everything is pretty much the same. Except now when the door creaks open, I smell dust instead of my mom’s Estée Lauder perfume.
One day, I made the mistake of asking my dad why we just didn’t sell the house. Just up and move. I guess what I was saying was, Why don’t we move on? Anyway, the look that he gave me was so strange, like someone had stitched invisible strings into his face and then pulled those strings downward as fast as they could. His eyes, his cheeks, his mouth, everything dropped into one big puddle of grief. It doesn’t make sense to describe. It’s one of those things that has to be seen for itself. I know. But still. That look. I’ll never forget it.
after my mother died, i saw my father less and less. he woke me up in the morning and later said good night, but what happened between those two markers of the day, I can’t say. I mean, I knew that he was in his study or at work, but other than that, I have no clue.
Maybe I’m partially to blame for the distance. It’s not like I ever tell my father how lonely I feel, even when he’s around. Particularly when he is around. I don’t tell him how the door to his room seems to make room only for those who exit and never for those who wish to enter.
One time when I was eleven, I stood outside his study with my nose pushed against the pressed-wood door. My bare feet stuck underneath the crack. I wanted to see what would happen. I wanted to see how long it would take him to notice. It was a Saturday, I believe.
I stood there all day. I measured time by my heartbeat. First sec
onds passed. Then minutes. Then hours. And I thought about my father, about who he was, and how I no longer knew what to say to him. In the vacuum of my mother’s death, I had been abandoned.
in my parents’ room, i lie on my mother’s side of the bed. I listen to the voices outside. I watch the light fade through the partially cracked vertical blinds. I count time. I try to be the type of girl who cries herself to sleep on her dead mother’s bed. But this time, I really try only for dramatic purposes.
I do eventually fall asleep, wrapped in my mother’s robe, my head resting on her pillow.
Some time later, I wake up. Marc is sitting next to me. His legs hang over the side of the bed. His back rests against the headboard. He’s watching me.
“What are you doing in here?” My voice is rough like sandpaper.
“What else?” He holds out a half-empty bottle of wine. “Drinking.”
I sit up. My head is pounding. And my stomach hurts even worse now. My heart is rat-tat-tat-ting along my rib cage.
“Why are you here?” I wipe the sleep from my eyes, remembering that day when Danny wiped the drool from my cheek.
“I don’t know. I saw you come in here, and I waited for you to come out, but you never did. So I came in. Can you believe they’re still going out there?” He tilts his head and listens to the din of conversation coming from outside the room.
“What time is it?” I ask. My throat is itchy from dust and dry from sleep.
“I don’t know.” He takes a slow sip of the wine and hands it to me. I take a small sip to keep the cobwebs from my throat. It tastes sweet. A rush of heat fills my abdomen and spreads over my chest and lips.
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