My Name Is Venus Black(54)
When Leo continues to say them, Mrs. Langhorne wants him to stop. She shushes him and asks him to remember the other students. People at school always interrupt you. They want you to answer questions, and then when you are asking questions or talking, they tell you to stop.
* * *
—
TESSA STABS THREE potatoes with a fork, placing them in the microwave on a paper towel. She should have started dinner sooner.
She goes to tell Leo it’s almost time. He’s watching bowling, his longish blond hair hanging across his face. Tessa thinks, as she often does, that at a glance you would never know about Leo’s differentness. You’d just think he was a handsome thirteen-year-old boy.
After six years, she still has moments like this—where, for just a second, it doesn’t seem far-fetched that Leo should look up and smile and ask if he can help make dinner.
“Leo,” she says.
He grunts.
“Ten minutes.”
He grunts again. The ten-minute warning is a fairly new routine. She blames herself. With Leo, you have to be very careful not to do the same thing the same way too many times in a row, or he’s bound to notice and then turn it into yet another requirement.
She goes out to the back porch to check the steaks on the hibachi. Now that they have an actual private deck, it’s her favorite way to make dinner.
They rented this house—a humble rancher in a so-so Oakland neighborhood—shortly after Leo came to stay. They needed another bedroom, and with rental rates skyrocketing, her dad realized he could afford to let out both apartments above the tattoo shop and rent a small house for them.
She lifts the lid and checks the steaks, but they’re thicker than usual and not near done.
Leo won’t be happy if she’s late getting them on the table. But at least he doesn’t throw tantrums all the time anymore. He’s really matured in the last six years.
Still, all the routines and demands have made her life harder. Whenever she resents this, she reminds herself how sad it was before he came. How she and her dad were just two lonely people and their biggest connection was the shared gap where her mother should be. Adding Leo made it three, more like a real family.
For a long time, Tessa thought if she just loved Leo hard enough, he would get better—all the way better, meaning he would be more like a regular boy. She used to pray to Mary for a miracle, too, but it never came. He still makes a strange humming sound when he’s happy, but she’s never actually seen him smile or heard him laugh. She wishes he would look her in the eye and share his feelings. But no matter what special gifts Leo has or what he learns to do—converse, follow directions, read, and even play music—part of him is still trapped somewhere Tessa can’t reach.
What hurts most is that Leo doesn’t seem to care.
Yet she knows that in his own strange way, Leo does care about people. Whenever she—or anyone, really—is upset or sad, if Leo is nearby, he will start to gently rock. Her dad says Leo has empathy.
Tessa turns the steaks, sees they still need time. She absently thinks about a boy she wishes would ask her out. She’s seventeen now, and she’s been allowed to date since she was sixteen. It’s beginning to embarrass her that she hasn’t gone on a single date. At the same time, she’s pretty sure her dad isn’t going to like it if she gets too busy with a boyfriend, because he still needs her at home a lot.
A breeze comes up and she zips her sweatshirt, grateful for the small rise of her breasts. Because she was a late bloomer, she’s still getting used to the idea of looking and feeling like an actual woman. It makes her feel closer to her mother, almost like she’s becoming her.
As she continues to wait for the steaks, she notices a single star in the dusky sky. She guesses it’s probably Venus.
Sometimes she still feels a twinge of guilt about not telling her father that Leo might have a sister named Venus somewhere. That first Easter, when Phil had let Leo come to their apartment for dinner, Tessa had been anxious to get Leo alone and learn more. Leo had said, “My sister is Venus. Venus is red.” But he had refused to answer her questions about Venus—or, for that matter, anything in the past. To this day, he’s made it clear that nothing makes him madder than being asked to “remember.”
He always blurts out, “I don’t know before.”
But Tessa does know. And as hard as she tries to pretend it doesn’t matter, the truth is like a tiny splinter lodged in her conscience that hurts when she touches it.
* * *
—
TONY IS STANDING in the doorway, waiting for dinner to be ready. He should go help Tessa, at least set the table, but a patch of winter sun is slanting through the front window onto his face and he can’t make himself move. He studies Leo, who is watching bowling on TV. With Leo, you can do that, watch him. Tessa would never allow it.
As usual, Leo is tipping his head to the left. The doctor says there’s nothing wrong with his neck, it’s just a quirk of Leo’s. But at least they eventually managed to break him of pulling on his hair. Now it’s long and blond and hangs in his eyes. Tony thinks a man pony is a good idea—like father, like son. But Tessa says it makes him look like a girl. “His face is too pretty,” she says.
On a whim, Tony asks Leo if he remembers when he took him bowling.