Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac(27)

Sitting in the driveway, I really wished I could go somewhere. Anywhere.

Dad came out about a minute later. He must have tended to the incinerated eggs first. I pressed the button that locked all the doors, so he couldn’t get in the car.

“Naomi.” His voice was muted through the window. “Please let me in.”

I put my brain-damaged head on the steering wheel. It made the horn beep, but I didn’t mind. I just let it blare. The horn was screaming for me and saying all the curse words that were running through my head. It was so satisfying that I sat like that for a few minutes. I would have let it go on even longer except my head started to throb from the racket.

“Naomi,” Dad said after the noise had stopped.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I yelled.

“This has gone badly. It was a stupid way for me to tell you about my getting married,” Dad’s voice was still tinny and distant through the glass. “And that crap I said about your head injury being a good thing. Of course I don’t think that.”

“Just go away!”

“Please let me in, kid. I feel like an * standing out here like this. At least roll down the window a little.”

Dad was trying. He always tried.

Every year for my birthday, my dad gave me a single book. He always put a lot of thought into the selection. It was a big deal to him, because books in general are a very big deal to him. When Dad says he’s going to church, he actually means that he’s going to a library or a bookstore. For my third birthday, he gave me Harold and the Purple Crayon; for my tenth, Holes; for my twelfth, the last birthday I could remember, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. He would inscribe the books, too. The messages were long and detailed, sometimes sentimental and usually funny. This was how he talked to me. This was how he told me the important things.

I didn’t unlock the door, but I pressed the button that lowered the window.

“What book did you get me for my sixteenth birthday?” I asked.

“Why are you thinking about that?”

“I don’t know. I just am.”

“Possession by A. S. Byatt.”

I couldn’t remember having read it, which of course didn’t mean that I hadn’t. I asked him why he had chosen that one.

“It’s about a lot of things, but mainly it’s a love story. I was worried that you had gotten a bit, well, cynical with everything that had happened between your mother and me. I wanted to remind you about romance. It was probably a stupid notion. A sixteen-year-old who’s not an expert on romance ought to be brought to a lab and dissected.” Dad laughed. “I was considering Jane Eyre, but I know how you feel about orphan stories.”

“What’s her name again?” I asked finally. Something to do with flowers, or had she just smelled like them?

“Rosa Rivera,” he said.

“Do I call her Rosa?” I asked.

“No, you call her Rosa Rivera. Everyone does.”

“Why?”

“I always assumed it was because of the enticing alliteration of her first and last names.” I couldn’t tell if he was serious.

“What do you call her?”

“My darling, mostly,” he said with tender notes I’d never heard him use before. “Sometimes my love.”

I studied my dad. He was like an alien version of himself. I wondered how long he’d been this way.

When I was back inside, I called Will. He was my only source of reliable information, though I was starting to question how reliable anyone was. Ask two people to tell you anything, you’ll get two versions. Even easy things like directions, let alone important or semi-controversial topics like why a fight started or what a person was generally like. If you don’t know something for yourself, you just can’t be sure.

“Did you know my dad was getting married?”

“Of course. In June,” Will answered. “And nice talking to you, too.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded.

“Well, it’s not exactly your favorite subject. And I assumed your dad would have covered that.”

“Why don’t I like her?” I asked him.

“Basically, you think she’s fake and trying to be your mother,” Will said. “Something along those lines. And you said she smelled funny, like an old lady. One time, she bought your dad a gray fedora for his birthday. You thought it made him look, uh, effeminate, and then you donated it to Goodwill without telling him. To this day, I don’t think he knows what happened to it.”

“I gave away my dad’s hat?” What a weird thing for me to do.

“Well, you really were not fond of that fedora,” Will answered. “Your dad would probably look better in a bowler.”

“Do you like her?” I asked him.

“I’ve only met her once, but she seemed all right. She’s not gonna be my stepmother, though.”

“But my dad…” It was hard to talk about Dad this way. “He really loves her, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, Chief, I suspect he does.”

On Wednesday, Dad suggested we go to Rosa Rivera’s house in Pleasantville for dinner. Since our meeting (reunion?) seemed unavoidable, I agreed. Besides, I was grounded anyway.

When she answered the door, the first thing I noticed was that she definitely looked older than Dad. She had her black hair in a tight bun and was wearing her work clothes, which consisted of black tights, a black leotard, a black shawl tied around her waist, and high-heeled shoes. Pretty much everything she wore was black except for her lipstick and the rose tucked behind her ear, which were both a dramatic crimson. Dancing had given her really excellent posture. I stood up straighter just looking at her.