Invisible(34)

“You can’t live like a nun,” Jake scolded her.

“I’m only nineteen. What do you want me to be? A slut?” She was afraid to go on a date now, even a simple dinner. What if something horrible happened again?

“You could try for something in between.”

“Yeah, later,” she said. She always had a good time with him and for now it was enough. Good grades were more important to her.



* * *



—

She decided not to go to San Francisco with Jake for Christmas this year. She’d hardly seen her father since school started in September. He and Lara were staying home this year, and she had a lot of writing assignments to do. She was going to stay in the dorm, and spend Christmas Eve and Day with her father and Lara, and the rest at school, working in the library.

Jake tried to convince her to go home with him.

“I’d love to, it was the best Christmas of my life, but I can hardly keep up with my writing assignments, and I feel like I should spend it with my dad and stepmom since they’ll be here.”

“Christmas won’t be the same without you,” Jake said sadly. “My mom said so too. Genevieve and my dad have a surrogate who’s pregnant with his sperm and a donor egg. It sounds disgusting, and they’re bringing her to dinner. Genevieve just had surgery, she had her eyes done again. She wants to look ‘fresh’ for the baby. Ian finished his latest book, and my mom thinks Eloise and John might get engaged. You’ll be missing all the fun!”

    “I love your family.” She grinned. “Maybe I can come again next year.”

“You’d better!” he warned, and she was sad when he left, but she felt virtuous staying in New York to work on her assignments.



* * *



—

Christmas with her own family was as dreary as she remembered it. Her father wasn’t crazy about the holidays, and didn’t like too much fuss, or the apartment overdecorated. He said it was all commercial anyway. Lara was closing an important deal for the sale of a townhouse in the East Sixties, and was on the phone constantly.

Their family was small, and her father wasn’t the embodiment of the Christmas spirit. By nine o’clock on Christmas Eve, they were in their room, and Antonia was in hers, draped over a pile of boxes, wondering what she was doing there. She was sorry she hadn’t gone to San Francisco with Jake. She could just imagine the loving chaos there. He called to tell her that his mother had been right. John and Eloise had gotten engaged, but were going to wait two years to get married, until they both finished their residencies. And he added, “Dad and Genevieve’s surrogate is a babe! She’s twenty-two and she’s done it before. She says she loves the money, and think, if I go out with her, she won’t get pregnant! She already is!”

“You’re disgusting.” She was laughing at him, and knew he didn’t really mean it.

    “Trust me, she’s hot!”

“For the kind of money they must be paying her, I’m sure there’s some sort of no-sex clause.”

“I think it’s just no booze and drugs, and only organic food. I’ll have to ask my dad if there’s a no-sex clause,” Jake said, laughing.

He told her about everyone else then, and she was grateful to have someone to talk to in the quiet apartment. Brandon kept it a very restrained, subdued Christmas. Lara did her best to liven it up, but Antonia’s father made it clear that he didn’t like holidays, and put a damper on them. He said they had been depressing as a boy after his father died, and he saw to it that they stayed that way now.

Antonia spent Christmas Day with them, and was relieved to go back to school that night. The dorm was silent and empty. She didn’t have a roommate this year, so she had the room to herself, and could work. She headed to the library the next day. She got a lot done before everyone came back from their holidays. And she was thrilled to see Jake when he returned. He brought her a Christmas snow dome, with Santa Claus standing on one of the spires of the Golden Gate Bridge. He had given her gift to her before he left, a beautiful leatherbound first edition of Winnie-the-Pooh. And she had given him a handsome black leather backpack, which he was already using. Her father had given her a check and said that he didn’t know what she’d want, so a check was easier, and Lara had given her a gorgeous black and white cashmere Dior sweater. Antonia was going to save it for a special occasion. One thing she always realized and was grateful for: Her home life was emotionally deprived, but her father was financially generous with her. It was his substitute for love, which he was incapable of, for her.

    Before everyone came back, she spent New Year’s Eve alone in her room, and was asleep by ten o’clock. Her father and Lara had flown to the Caribbean for a week, to a new hotel. She hadn’t planned to spend it with them anyway. And her father would never have invited her. She was still the unpleasant reminder for him of a past life, and he treated her accordingly.



* * *



—

In January, she went to the employment agency to put her name down for a summer job again. She wanted a better one than she’d had the year before. She wanted to learn something this time, and make a little money. They also suggested that she contact the studio where she had worked last summer, and specify what she wanted. With some successful history with them, they might have something better for her, and they knew her. So she wrote to the head of HR and her supervisor from the year before. She didn’t expect to hear anything for a while, and she was too busy to think about it, turning her assignments in.