The Best Possible Answer(58)

“Are you saying we were a design experiment?”

“I’m saying that human impulses are larger than any physical reality. It’s impossible to make predictions about a human life. You just never know what the right answer is. You never know exactly what the outcome will be.” He looks at me. “I certainly couldn’t have predicted this.”

“Dad, are you ever able to give a straightforward answer?”

“I am not a liar, if that’s what you want to know. I have been honest about my love for all of you.”

“You know what? I can see that. I think you perceive the world as you want to. Someone else, who doesn’t know you as well, might say you’re lying to us, to the world. But the very sad truth is, you’re lying to yourself.” I push back my chair and stand up. “And you’re the one who’s going to collapse.”

“What do you want me to say?” He stands up and hovers over me with his height, with his anger. “I’m your father, and you can’t change that.”

“No,” I say. “You’re right. I can’t.”

“What do you want from me?”

“To go live your life with Paige and your other, perfect family. I want you to leave Mom alone. To leave us alone.”

“You know I can’t do that,” he says. “Your mother wants me here.”

“You’re only going to hurt Mila worse if you stay.”

He shifts uncomfortably. “Are you going to tell her?”

I hear myself say, “I’m not sure yet. I mean, she’ll find out eventually.”

He looks down at the table. “You disappoint me, Viviana.”

“Dad, I’m always disappointing you. All you ever wanted was for me to be like you, to be smart like you, to be exactly like you.”

“I never said I wanted you to be like me.” He looks up at me, adjusts his glasses again. “I said I wanted you to learn from your past mistakes, to learn from my past mistakes.”

“Dad, even you don’t know how to do that.”

I grab my bag and storm out of the apartment. This time, he doesn’t follow, thank goodness. I’m able to leave him there, alone with his twisted concepts and ridiculous theories about love and human impulses and right and wrong answers.

I run to the stairwell and let the door slam behind me.

But I don’t know where I want to go. Not Sammie’s. Not the pool. Not the endless, wandering streets.

I do know that I need to be alone.

I head up the stairs. There are twenty-one floors between the roof and me. I could take the elevator, but I feel like I need this walk upward. I assume that, despite my father’s crazy talk, the engineers of this building calculated that it won’t fall down today. I assume it’s strong enough to hold me, even with the weight of my burdens and regrets.

I feel this deep need to push against gravity, against my father’s sick and twisted ideas about how the world works, about how life works.

So I walk up and up and up.

*

I return to my apartment a few hours later and find my father’s gone. I find my mom on the balcony, alone with a glass of wine. I open the sliding door. “Can I join you?”

She nods.

“Did you talk to him?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“It is over. I will not allow him to lie to us anymore.”

I sit down next to her. “Really?”

“Yes,” she says, taking a sip from her glass. “Really. I got the cancer removed from my neck. Now I will remove your father from my life. He is another kind of cancer.”

I sit back in my chair. “What about Mila?”

“She will see him when he is in town. But he will not stay here.”

“Oh.”

“You can see him, too, if you want.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Okay.” She nods. “But he will pay for your college. He’s promised me that.”

I take a deep breath, try to hold back the tears. “What college? Dad was right. No one’s going to accept me, not after what I did.”

She puts down her glass. “You will get in somewhere. Plus, there are many options, many routes toward many different futures.”

“I don’t think so, Mama.” I think about Virgo’s texts to Sammie. “That picture has me doomed.”

“Viviana, no.” She reaches her arm around my shoulders. “You are so very young. Your life has only just begun. Don’t let your mistakes define you.”

I want to believe her. I want to so much.

The tears start to come. The tears and the nausea and the dizziness.

The city below us sways and swirls.

“I don’t know, Mama—”

“Come here, honey.” She pulls me toward her. I rest my head against her chest. The tears come fast, but I don’t try to hold them back. “It’s okay. You can cry. Let it out.”

So I do.

I cry until I’m nearly out of breath. My mother rubs my back. She doesn’t tell me to calm down or stop crying or anything. She just lets me be.

Finally, when I feel like I’ve run dry, I lift my head. “Are you getting a divorce, then?”

My mom looks at me. “Viviana, there is no divorce.”