How to Be Brave(42)

I can salvage this. I dig through the crap drawer to find the key for the basement storage gate. I head down the back stairwell to the basement and unlock the gate. I switch on the light. Each tenant has been allocated one ten-by-ten section of space for whatever stuff won’t fit into our apartments, like the bikes we never use, the suitcases we never pack, and, of course, our dusty holiday decor that we need only once a year. There are two other apartments in the building, one above us that houses a young hipster couple and one below us where our landlord lives. Janice is a crusty old woman who owns like ten different buildings in the area. We hardly talk to any of them, which is fine. It’s a quiet building, fairly cheap. That’s all that mattered to my parents.

Young hipster couple’s space is filled with things like kayaks and tents and skis. Janice’s space is filled with furniture—mattresses and dressers and chairs. She sometimes rents empty apartments to vacationers or businessmen. I think landlording must be her life because there are no other signature details here to define her. Or maybe she has other spaces in other buildings where she stores her personal stuff.

Besides the bikes and the luggage we never use, there are boxes of books and papers down here that are all my mom’s. And not just a few. A dozen boxes, at least, all from her grad school days. Mostly books on postmodern art and all of her research on Lee Mullican. She couldn’t bear to throw them out, I guess. Besides that last letter, she never wrote anything personal, but she saved everything she read. This is my inheritance. Old musty books in an old musty basement. They’re all mine.

Fortunately, the Christmas boxes are right at the edge. I lift the flap of each one. I don’t need the ornaments, so I put that one aside. The second one has stockings and Christmas books that my mom used to read to me each Christmas Eve when I was a kid, but I figure Santa isn’t coming tonight, so no need for that stuff. The third one has most of what I need. I hoist it out of the space, lock up the gate, and carry it up the steps back to our apartment.

I dress the living room in garlands. I wrap the twinkly lights around the fireplace that’s never worked. I plug them in and shut off the lamps. That’s a start. I dig into the box and find a few candles—cinnamon spice and pine—and I light them. At least we’ll have a hint of home-baked cooking and deep forest air. I pull my dad’s presents out from my closet and place them next to the little rosemary bush on the coffee table. There. That’s a little better. It’s starting to feel like Christmas in here, after all.

My dad’s key rattles at the door. I run to open it.

“Merry Christmas!” I yell. I’m smiling for the first time in two weeks.

Dad looks at the room, drops two heavy bags full of food from the restaurant on the dining room table, turns on all the lights, and goes into the kitchen without saying a word about the decorations. Without wishing me a Merry Christmas back.

“Dad?” I follow him into the kitchen. He’s taken off his hat and heavy coat and thrown them on the counter. He’s drinking a glass of water and shaking his head.

“What’s wrong?”

“Georgia…” He says my American name. That’s not good. “Your art teacher, what’s his name? Mr. Marquez? He called today.”

Oh, shit.

“He calls to tell me that you are not going to school. That you are missing for a whole week? What is going on?”

What the hell? Marquez rats me out on Christmas Eve? I thought he believed in me. I thought I was his star student.

“Dad…” I could tell him everything. That I’m also failing chemistry. That my heart’s broken in eight million pieces. That I’m alone. That I’ve made terrible mistakes. That I miss everything about how it used to be. That I tried to keep my promise to her, but I failed.

No words come, though.

“Where were you?” he demands.

“Nowhere,” I mutter. “Starbucks. Burger King. Just sitting at random places, reading and stuff.” And getting high, I think.

“Why you are not in class? What does this mean?”

“No reason. Just … really, Dad. No reason.”

His eyes scan my face. He’s searching for something in me, but it’s like he doesn’t really see me standing here before him.

He walks past me into the dining room where he left the bags of food. The heavy smell of chicken and potatoes seeps from the bag. There’s probably enough there for tonight and tomorrow, for our holiday dinner.

He pulls out a chair and sits down. I join him.

But there’s nothing to say.

He stares at his hands. “No more of that, okay? I mean, what will people say if they hear Georgia Askeridis is running around the city, cutting school and all this?”

What people? We don’t have any people.

“I want you to be a good girl. You are always good girl. Kaló korítsi, okay?”

“Okay.” I nod.

“Mr. Marquez, he says that you have a big project coming up. A big art project? You have a lot of work, yes?”

My Mullican project. I haven’t worked on it in weeks.

“You do good on it, and he says he won’t record all the absences, he won’t tell the principal. You have to go to him on Monday after your break ends with this big project finished.”

What? It’s not due for another few weeks, after break. Is Marquez seriously going to make me work on my supposed vacation?