How to Be Brave(59)

He takes my hand.

“You’re absolutely right.” And when he says it, it’s as though he hadn’t even realized what he’d done. “I’m so sorry, Georgia.”

“Okay, Dad.” I squeeze his hand. “It’s okay.”

“You’re just a little girl. My little girl…”

“No, see, here’s the thing, Dad. I’m not. I’m almost done with school and then I just have to figure out my life. I’m going to go to college and maybe I’ll drink, and I don’t know, maybe I’ll get high, and I’ll definitely date guys—no, Dad, I’ll date men—and I’ll want to move out at some point, and maybe I’ll get married, maybe I won’t, but I have to do it all. And you have to let me, but you also have to be there for me. You haven’t really been there for me, you know?”

I say all this, and while I’m saying it, my heart is pounding pounding pounding, for it’s the first time that I’m able to say exactly what I mean to my dad, and I can see from his old, sad face that it might be too much, but then he does something that lessens the deafening pounding, something that makes it all better.

This is what he does:

He places his hand on mine.

“To kseri, koúkla mou,” he says. “Katalaveno óla.”

I know, my child. I understand it all.

And I really think he does.

*

Tonight, it’s like this:

After dinner I ask him to teach me to flambé.

He protests at first, says it’s been years,

too long to remember,

but then he smiles at the thought

at the memory

at the prospect

of returning to a place

where he hasn’t been

for a very long time.


We heat the oil

add the cheese

and the brandy, and

he tells me to light it.

The flames rise high

blue and gold and bright

in this small, dark kitchen

in this warm, spring night.

My father and I together,

staring into the sun.

*

Evelyn’s mom calls at around midnight. Evelyn’s okay. She’s awake and talking and groggy and in a terrible state, but she’s alive, and she’s going to be okay.

She’s going to be okay.





15

Sunday morning, ten A.M.

Today’s the day to do it.

I pick up the phone and dial his number.

It rings and rings.

He answers.

“Hello?”

Deep breath.

“Hi, Daniel. This is Georgia.”

“Oh, hi!” I can hear him smile through the phone. Isn’t that a funny thing? Even in just two little words, you can tell. The tenor of the voice is so specific that that particular emotion can travel across time and distance through invisible airwaves into the human ear, into the human heart.

I do #13, again.

And he says yes.

We’re going to meet (today!) for lunch and a movie and maybe something after.

I text Liss.

She texts right back with cheers and hoorays.

Time to go tell Evelyn.

Time to do something right.

*

I’m back at the hospital, back at the land of the almost dead, but now this girl Evelyn, who I’ve known for less than eight months, who texted me in what could have been her very last moment on this earth, is awake and alive and looking at me.

She’s only barely alive, though, her arms nearly as thin as the metal rail that separates us, her eyes hollow and red and fixated on her own woven hands.

An IV drips into her veins. The machine behind her head announces the beep beep beep of her pulse. Tulips wilt next to her.

She’s waiting for me to say something.

I don’t know what to say.

At first, I stumble. I say things like “I’m glad you’re okay” and “How’s the food?” and “When will you get out of here?”

She gives me stilted answers like “Yeah, me too” and “Sucks big-time” and “Not for a few weeks, probably, I don’t know.”

I don’t know what to say.

So finally, I say this:

“I’m horribly pissed at you for doing what you did.”

Evelyn turns her empty eyes to look at me. It’s the first time she’s looking at me.

“Thanks,” she says. “Real nice. Way to get mad at a sick person.”

“That’s not what I mean.” I stumble again. I want to get this right. I need to get this right.

I reach into my bag and pull out my mom’s letter. I unfold it. It’s crinkled and worn from me opening and closing it so much. Besides Liss, I haven’t shown it to anyone else, not even my dad.

I hand it to Evelyn. I let her read it.

She looks back at me, her eyes wide and empty, her skin tight and pale. “What does this have to do with me?”

“My mom charged me with this directive to do everything she didn’t do, and I’m sort of pissed at her, too, for not doing it herself. She could have done it. She could have controlled her sugar and eaten right and walked more like she said she was going to, but she never did. Instead, she let herself gain weight and she didn’t control her sugar and then she left my dad and me with the final decision to let her go. There’s this 0.0001 percent chance that she could have fought the sepsis and maybe woken up and maybe lived to still be my mother, but she had signed these papers saying that if there seemed to be no chance of her living a healthy life that we should pull the plug. And it was supposed to be my dad’s decision. He had power of attorney. But he froze. He was lost and sad and he didn’t really understand, maybe, you know, everything that was happening, everything the doctors were saying. He looked at me and he said, ‘What do you want to do?’ He made me decide. I was sixteen. Fucking sixteen. I shouldn’t have had to decide whether my mother lives or dies.