Where It Began(29)
And I go, Shit, Gabriella, this is your dad having a nervous breakdown. You’re supposed to feel something and do something and help him or something.
But I don’t. Short of wanting him to magically turn into someone who vaguely resembles an actual parent, all I want is for him to retract the eel and go away.
“Oh, Gabsy,” he says, like the guy hasn’t even noticed what people call me for the past seventeen years. “I can’t help but think that if only I’d wrestled with my own demons sooner, you wouldn’t be going through this.”
Right.
Unless, of course, he’s talking about the demon that makes him a sub-regular, totally incompetent businessman, which, if he could have managed to wrestle it into the corner and slide past its defeated husk and into the richer than richer-than-God category, I could have been popular even if geeky.
“It’s not like it’s genetic, Dad,” I say, just wanting him to take the eel and go back into the den, only the fish-head hand has grabbed onto my arm, hard.
“You are so wise for such a young person,” he says. Then he sighs with what sounds a lot like relief and he slinks away. Marking the end of our father-daughter breakfasts.
For a couple of days, I am so freaked out by the possibility I’ll run into him somewhere other than dinner where Vivian provides the complete antidote to any kind of emotional gushing, I only come out of my room to eat French toast in the kitchen really early with Juanita, like I always did before. Watching the telenovelas that got me my one and only flat-out A—other than the A’s in art that don’t even get calculated into your academic GPA—in Honors Spanish.
Juanita, who my mother has hired full time for the week supposedly to help with me but really so Vivian can go shopping without feeling too guilty, doesn’t go in for all this pointless affirmation: I don’t even think you go, girl translates as a Salvadorian expression. What she does is make me a lot of hot chocolate with high-cal whole milk she carries up the hill to our house in a little paper bag with contraband canned whipped cream and tiny marshmallows. Which is the highlight of my day.
This is so not turning into the best extended spring vacation ever.
XXII
THE ONLY PERSON WHO MANAGES TO GET THROUGH to me, despite Vivian’s best efforts to keep everyone away until my skin goes back to being unbruised and lifelike all on its own, is Lisa.
“The hospital said you weren’t there anymore. Thank God! You’re out of your coma. You remember me, right?” She sounds exactly the same.
“Duh. Who said I was in a coma?”
“Your mom. Kind of. And Gabby, people gossip. Everybody knows. Are you all right?”
It is hard to know which aspect of not all right to start with. “My face looks like it belongs in a body bag, but yeah. And no coma. I just don’t remember the crash.”
“Well, people can probably fill you in.”
“Yeah, people in police uniforms. I crashed Billy’s car, so apparently they’re interested.”
“What are you talking about?” Lisa says, clueless as ever. “I’m coming over there, okay?”
“Are you sure your mom will drive you over now that I’m Evil Delinquent Girl?”
“Gabby! You are not an evil, delinquent girl,” Lisa says, delusional but perpetually supportive.
But even if she refuses to believe I am a wayward, felonious teen, evidently I still qualify as a charity project, because her parents are letting her jump into the Saab every day to come see me, which is a little unnerving because they only ever let her drive it to community service and youth group at her church. Not only that, she is bringing Anita, who is generally only allowed to sit in cars driven by moms and people over the age of twenty-five who are related to her and have Volvos with front, back, side, rear, floor, and roof air bags.
Lisa seems to find this all extremely amusing. She says she hopes I’m ready for a whole lot of salvation because unless she brings me some on a regular basis, she is probably never going to get to drive a car somewhere other than church again until she graduates from college, gets a job, and buys herself one, a fact that she seems weirdly fine with. Then she starts beating herself up about how she’s a twit to talk about herself when I’m bedridden and mangled, and at the point when I am pretty sure she’s on the verge of hauling out our Lord and Savior, I tell her it’s okay but I’m too tired to talk.
Meanwhile, Anita keeps sending me text messages about how worried about me she is and am I having cognitive problems and do I want her to show me how to meditate or go back over the SAT flash cards we’ve already done. She doesn’t sound amused at all.
I’m not all that amused either. In fact, Anita’s text messages are making me crazy, not because there is anything inherently annoying about them, but because every time my phone makes its little got-a-text bleep noise, I think it might be Billy but it isn’t.
Meanwhile, Lisa and Anita show up at the front door with one of those Save the Children blankies they make for godless, impoverished children with no electricity or blankies, with my name embroidered on the yellow silk border.
“You don’t have to let them see you,” Vivian whispers, sticking her head into my room when they are pounding on the front door. “It’s not too late. Nobody has to see you like this. Do you want to put on more concealer?”