“Too loud,” I hear myself moan. “Shut up.” Now, I have never told my mom to shut up in my life, and I’m in this twilight state, so I can’t tell if I said it aloud or not.
“Daisy, what a terrible thing to say!”
I said it out loud.
“But I’m so glad you said something. You were in shock, so they put you under for the pain. Do you feel any pain?”
“What pa—” I don’t even get the word out. “My wrist!”
“You’ve got third-degree burns, but only on a very small part. Most of them are second-degree, but that’s what hurts,” my mom says. “The kids at the party said you saved a lot of lives by shutting off the gas valve.”
“Couldn’t find it.” I shake my head. “I didn’t—”
“Couldn’t find what, honey?”
“Water,” I tell her. She holds a cup up to my lips, and I sip the cool water.
“The police want to talk with you when you’re ready,” the doctor says.
“No, not yet,” Mom says. “I told them later.” My mom busies her hands by moving the blankets around my feet. Just her slight action induces so much guilt. That’s the thing about having the Holy Spirit. You can’t get away with much, not without conscience anyway. Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial. Don’t I know it. “You shut the barbecue lid.”
“Claire?”
“Claire’s fine, honey. She wasn’t hurt. She won’t be fine when her mother gets home, but for now, she’s fine. She’s going to be staying with us until her mom flies in tonight. Her dad is still trying to get a plane.”
“Max?” I croak.
“I haven’t heard about him.” Mom puts her hand on my hip gently. “Is he a friend of yours?”
My hand is throbbing, and though it’s loosely wrapped, I can feel a blistering wound underneath. “Where’s Dad?”
My mom doesn’t say anything. “Are you feeling all right, Daisy? They gave you something to help with the pain.”
I look at my hand. “It hurts.”
“Second-degree burns hurt more than third, apparently. They don’t kill the nerve endings. Luckily, you have third-degree only in a very small area. That’s great, isn’t it?”
I laugh. “Now who is giving the facts?”
My mother starts to sob in her hands. “What were you doing, Daisy?”
“Why isn’t Dad here?”
She busies herself with pillows, walks around the room, and finally sits down next to me. “I haven’t told him yet.”
I swallow hard. “Why not?”
“Because his baby girl, whom he has worked so hard to protect, doesn’t appear to value the life she’s been given enough to act responsibly.”
“Excuse us, Mom,” a nurse says. “We need to check and dress the wound. Would you please wait outside?”
My mom gives me that look that makes me want to scream, but the simple act of the nurse moving the wrap on my hand causes it instead.
My mom is there in a second, and when she looks at my hand, she starts to bawl. “Daisy! No!”
The nurse escorts her out the door again while another one smiles sweetly at me. “You got off lucky, you know.”
“Is Max Diaz here? Is he all right?”
“I’ll have to check for you. We’re giving you fluids to replace anything lost. Your blood pressure looks great, though.”
“Is this going to scar?” I ask, looking at the oozing, pale skin.
“Probably,” she says. “But you were so fortunate.”
“I feel so weak.”
“That’s your body healing. I’ll let you rest, and I’ll send your mom back in.”
After a few minutes, the curtain pulls back and shuts again. Claire is standing beside me. “Oh my gosh, Daisy. I thought you were dead or something. What are you doing to me?”
I laugh, which makes me hurt more, and I laugh again. “Only you would blame me for this. I was on the porch, having a lovely time dancing the tango with a hot Argentine who looks like Taco, and you—you were throwing a keg party.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“Nacho,” I say. “He looks like Nacho. Have you seen Max?”
She shakes her head, with that sad look people give you when they don’t want to tell you bad news.
“If you know something, you’d better tell me.”
“I promise, I don’t know anything. Amber Richardson is alive and well. Never thought I’d be happy to hear myself say that, but I am.”
“Did you talk to your mother?”
“No, but I listened to her quite a bit. She’s on her way home now. So’s my dad.”
“I blame you for this. If you hadn’t numbed yourself with all that shopping, you would have been fine with going with me and soothing yourself. How many times have I shadowed you at the mall, lusted over what you’ve bought, and come home totally empty-handed, and now, in my time of need, where were you? Getting a job at the wiener barn and planning a Gossip Girl gig.” I shake my head. “I knew when you started playing terrorist with Greg in his front yard that you were up to no good.” I exhale. “Normal people don’t blow things up in their front yards.”
“I blew it.”
“What’s your house look like?”
“Like we had a barbecue.” She laughs. “Oh, Daisy, I am so sorry. I never should have gotten you involved in this. Now you’re going to be under house arrest until you’re thirty. We probably won’t graduate with our class, and Amber’s hair didn’t even get singed.”
“It had to happen. At some point my parents were going to find out I’m not perfect. Why not have it be in a blaze of glory? Literally.” I grab her hand with my good one. “Go find out about Max. He went back in the house to get Amber.” Recognition hits me like another flame. “Chase left. He just left.” The shock I feel is incredible. “He was my hero. How could I have it all wrong? All these years?”
“He hasn’t had basic training yet. Maybe he’ll learn something about being a hero after that.”
“He’s no hero. Not to me. All the emotion I’ve wasted—”
The curtain snaps back, and my mother stands there. “Claire, sit down. I need to talk to both of you.”
I swallow all thoughts of wasted emotion. Something tells me I’m going to need to save some strength for this talk: a verbal beating to conquer all sermons.
Claire sits down as she’s told. Her dress is a wreck, and we both smell like a fireplace. The painful reminder of our evening, and what disasters we are on our own, rushes through my head.
“Daisy’s father can’t take this kind of stress,” my mother begins. “It’s going to break his heart, so I haven’t told him yet.”
Here we go. “It would stress me out to dress as a pirate with mutton chops and rap too. You know? This isn’t all our fault.”
My mom is quiet. She pets her own hand like a lap dog, takes a moment, and then starts again. “Your father had a series of small strokes a few years back, Daisy. He’s not the same as he once was.”
“Mom, I feel guilty, all right! You’re going to make something up to make me feel worse? What more can I do, Mom? I screwed up, I know it!”
My mom, who never yells, snaps, “Listen, Daisy! You are acting like a spoiled brat! Did you hear what I said? Your father could have taken you out of that school when he lost his permanent job after the strokes, but he didn’t. He did whatever he could to put food on the table. He couldn’t drive at night, so he knelt by his chair every night until you came home safely. This is how you repay him! You make fun of him, you laugh behind his back, you have no respect! What’s the one thing the Bible asks of you as a child? To obey your parents, and you can’t even do that!” She sobs again, but her scowl returns. “You think you know it all, don’t you, Daisy? You’re too good for the likes of us!” She storms out of the room.
Claire blinks repeatedly. “Your dad had a stroke?” she asks.
I blink away the tears. “No, she’s just making it up.” I shake t
he thought away. “Don’t you think?”
Claire shakes her head slowly. “I don’t think so. Your mom doesn’t lie, and I can’t imagine she’d lie about that.”
I think back to the wad of cash my mother gave me for clothes, and it occurs to me that my parents are total strangers to me. My dad, the man who always has everything under control and never lets anything ruffle his feathers, had a stroke. It’s almost too much to digest. But for some reason my thoughts go back to that foreign wad of cash and the realization that my parents harbor a separate, inner world not discernible from my vantage point, which makes me question everything.
“I wonder where she got that money.”
“I don’t know.” Claire shakes her head. “I may have burned my parents’ house down, and I’d still rather be me right now.”
“Ever the supportive one,” I tell her. “I seared my flesh for you.” I hold up my arm and moan. “Go find out about Max. I have life to digest. I’m a terrible, miserable person.”
“Aren’t we all?” She pats me on the knee and leaves. I close my eyes and picture my father praying for me on the side of his beat-up chair.
“I am a spoiled brat,” I tell the wired ceiling. “I get it, all right?”
“Are you talking to me?” An older nurse has come in. “Your blood pressure is doing well, so let’s not get upset.”
“The guy I loved was a figment of my imagination, the guy I could love is MIA, my dad is disabled, I helped burn my friend’s house down, and the back of my wrist is burned, probably scarred forever. What’s to get upset about?”
“Oh, honey, at your age everything feels dramatic.”
I stare at the nurse with my mouth open. I’m sure something on the list passes the realm of your standard drama queen. Maybe it’s me, but . . .
17
My mom comes back in the room. The green of her eyes is illuminated by the transparent red around them, and her nose is bulbous and pink. Great, more guilt.
“Mom?”
“I’m sorry I lost my temper,” she says.
“No, I deserved it.”
She searches the room, looks everywhere but at me. What I’d give for one of those shaming looks at the moment. I mean, I finally deserve it! “Why didn’t you tell me about Dad?”
“One day when you’re older, you’ll understand how important a man’s pride is to him.”
“Is he all right?”
“He’s fine. He has residual symptoms, that’s all. You have your studies to worry about. We didn’t want to alarm you.”
“Mom, that’s alarming. My dad had a stroke. Claire’s parents are divorcing. Her house caught on fire. Sometimes life is alarming.”
“I want you to live carefree as a child. These are adult concepts.” She still hasn’t looked at me. “You know, he doesn’t see as well. His mind gets a bit slow when he’s tired.”
“You should have told me.”
“I probably should have,” she admits. She finally looks at me. For a split second. “I found your friend Max.”
Of all things, I feel his right hand on my back, leading me. “Is he all right?”
Her head snaps up. “He’s being monitored. He had smoke inhalation.”
“Monitored? What does that mean?”
“I don’t want you to have to keep your dad’s secret, Daisy, but I don’t want you to treat him with kid gloves either. He would hate that.”
“Mom, what about Max?”
“I don’t know, honey. I know the police are waiting to talk to him. Did you know there were drugs at the party? And alcohol?” My mother shakes her head. “I know you had nothing to do with that. I told the police that. You had nothing to do with that, right?”
“No,” I tell her.
“That Amber girl, the one you’ve never gotten along with very well—do you remember when she threw your collectible Barbie down the sewer?”
I nod. My mom doesn’t remember that Claire proceeded to throw Amber down the sewer after the doll. She never did ask how I got the filthy doll back.
“That girl was such a mean one. Do you know she stuck her tongue out at me in preschool Sunday school when I taught? Preschool!”
“Mom, what about Amber?”
“Well,” my mother says, coming closer, “it appears she was drugged. I cannot believe you were even at a party where a girl was drugged! Daisy, what were you thinking?”
“Chase.”
“Chase is fine. He’s at home. He wasn’t at the party, was he?”
“He drugged her!”
“Oh no, honey. Chase wasn’t there. It appears she came down with that boy you’re asking about.”
“He went in to get her, Mom. I sent him in after Claire!”
“You sent someone into a fire? Daisy, you know better than that.”
“Well, I do now! He went in, Mom. I couldn’t stop him.”
“Of course you couldn’t.”
“Mom.” I force her to look at me by pausing.
“What?”
“Chase tried to buy drugs off Max.”
“Is Max a drug dealer?”
I bang my head against the pillow. “Never mind.”
“I’m going to drop Claire off at home. I suppose I’ll have to tell your father what the two of you have been up to.” She stands up and brushes her dress down.
“Mom, you’re so thin.”
She twists a bit. It’s the closest my mother will ever get to vanity. “Forty-five pounds.”
“I’ve been so busy, I haven’t really noticed how much it was—not until I saw you dance. I couldn’t believe you could actually dance again, Mom.”
“I have reason to dance, sweetheart. My family is alive and well.”
She shrugs, and it makes me sad. She’s used to not being noticed, that’s the truth of the matter, and the fact that I’ve ignored her as much as everyone else has makes me see a truth in myself I do not want to face.
“Is there anything I can get for you from home?” Her eyes well up with tears. “I’m sorry I’ve made you wear those clothes,” she says. “I wanted you to be loved for you, not your fashion sense.”
“Mom, what’s the matter?”
“You’re a good girl.”
“I’m not perfect.”
She laughs. “Did you think we were under the delusion that you were?”
“I think you expected it, yes.”
My mother nods. She appears resigned.
“Did you hear me?”
“I heard you,” she says. She faces me and unties the macramé knot on top of her purse. (Yeah, I know.) She pulls out a wad of cash.
“What’s this?”
“It’s your tuition for college. Do you think I’m perfect, Daisy?”
“Not if I go by your handbag choice. Absolutely not.” I count the money. “This is six hundred and seventy-five dollars. Where did you get this?”
“Put it away.” She pushes the cash down on the bed. I hand it back to her, and she wraps it in the hammock moonlighting as a purse. “I earned it, it’s legal.”
“I know it’s legal. Why do you have it?”
“Your father isn’t very good with money. If I don’t hide it, he spends it.”
“You hide money from Dad?”
“He’s a good man, your dad.”
“Mom—”
She leans in and whispers, “We don’t have health insurance at the moment. I couldn’t make that payment and the house payment. I chose the roof over our head. That’s what Dave Ramsey says to do.”
I notice she has a waist. My mother has a waist. I realize it’s an odd thing to note at the time of hearing we have no health insurance, but it’s such a testimony to who my mother is. She fought to get herself a waist, and she did, even though she never seems to leave her sewing machine or my dad’s side.
“How will we pay for this?” I stammer.
“That’s just it. I’m not certain, honey. But Jehovah-Jireh will provide. He always does.”
“Wha
t about focusing on the inside?” I feel a little betrayed. “You said if you focused on cleaning the inside, God would take care of the outside, but look at what’s happened. We can’t take care of the outside or the inside, for that matter.”
“I did focus on the inside. That’s how I lost the weight. I asked God why I overate, and I’m treating my body like a temple.” My mother, whose long, dark hair is usually in a sloppy ponytail, has a hairstyle—with what looks like a bump-it on the back.
“Who are you? And what did you do with my mother?”
“There’s a lot you haven’t taken the time to notice. You’re so worried about your makeup and your social life and your prom date. There’s an entire world functioning around you. Look up once in a while.” She touches my chin and lifts it so I look her in the eye. “You might be surprised at what you see.” She cinches her purse. “I’ve got to get home and tell Dad what’s happened. He had a late job.” She stops. “Oh, and don’t mention the insurance. Your dad gets so worried about money.”
“Yeah.” I mean, I would have asked her about the insurance, but I didn’t think there was any way she’d go along with it.
She turns back toward me one last time. “You know the costumes I make your father?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve been making aprons of polished cotton and French oil cloth. I’ve got a pirate, French maids, princesses . . . oh, and a turtle.” Her voice trails off.
“You sell them?”
“Well, the children’s sizes are thirty-five dollars and the adult sizes are forty-five to sixty dollars, depending on the style. They’re for women who entertain and want to let their friends believe they actually cooked for them.”
“Sixty dollars! For an apron?”
“You know those women with the big, fancy kitchens? Like Claire’s mom? They hire a catering truck.”
I know because Claire hired a catering truck. I don’t know what scares me more—the idea of my mother making money, or the idea of her noticing that she’s not dressed like others.
“It’s like my whole life’s been a lie,” I say.
“We just tried to shield you from the hard parts. Your father and I took so much on for our own parents. We didn’t want you to have to deal with adult things until you had to. I guess we were off on our timing.”
Perfectly Dateless Page 17
