“All for the low, low price,” I said, “of getting gone.”
7
In the mirror, Marisa’s shoulders fell. She started to say something, hesitated. “I knew it was a mistake to come,” she said.
“I would have welcomed it,” I said. “When I wassix.”
“I came then,” she said, not quite looking at me.
I would have remembered that, right? “No, you didn’t.”
“I did. You were still here with Alex, before… It was before you left.”
Before I was shunted off to foster care, she meant. To strangers paid to keep me, like I was the oddest little orphaned critter in a petting zoo.
“I didn’t talk to you, or Alex,” she said. “I just watched from a distance until…”
When I was six, I looked like a prizefighter, a tooth missing and the gap slow to fill in. Alex had trimmed my hair with a pair of kitchen shears.
I couldn’t help myself. “Until what?”
“Until you went into the house,” Marisa said. “You were walking home, from here. I followed you. You had a little yellow backpack. He held your hand the whole way,” she said with wonder. “You stopped to pick up something from the sidewalk. I don’t know, a penny, maybe, or a rock. I always wondered what it was you picked up.”
She looked at me as though I might have the answer.
“And then I watched the house after you went in, until I was sure one of the neighbors would call the police.”
“If that’s true,” I said, “why not ring the doorbell?”
“He held your hand, the whole way. I knew you were where you needed to be.” She caught her own reflection again, and looked away. “You were better off without me.”
Except I hadn’t stayed with Alex, and she seemed to know that.
“I could have been safe in someone else’s home andalsobeen happy to see you,” I said. “Even once in a while. You could have tracked me down—”
“It would have been too hard.”
“Forwho?”
“It’s something I held on to,” she said. “That I had reached out for therighthelp, to the one person who could handle it. He’d always been the one person who could—but foryou, not myself, see? And since then—I’ve been ashamed of how weak and—and, well, I’ve been mostly just ashamed of how things went.” Her confidence was gone now. She looked at the floor.
I felt a rush of anger. I’d come to Alex with a kid-sized cast on my arm. That’s how thingswent.
“Actually, I came here to be honest with you,” Marisa said to the floor tiles.
I turned so she’d have to say it to me, not my reflection. “Okay?”
“I didn’t try hard enough to get in touch, and I’m sorry. You may not understand this, but I think it was because… because as long as I didn’t insert myself into your life, you and Alex were the only people who knew how much I had messed it all up.”
This was a speech that was both better and worse than any I had ever imagined. And it wasn’t true. The state of Illinois knew. Plenty of people who dealt in notarized blah-blah knew all about it, people with clipboards, and northwards of eight sets of foster parents. Marisa just hadn’t had to look anyone from the Department of Children and Family Services in the eye, like I’d had to.
I was nearly sick with fury. “So you’re here now,” I said, “and why is that? You need a kidney or what?”
She looked up from the floor, her color high, as though I’d slapped her. I had no idea what she would say or ask, finally given the chance she’d come for. But she said nothing. She turned to leave.
At the door, she hesitated. “I hope you have a good show, Dahlia,” she said.
“Ialwayshave a good show,” I said.
