“Then I’d be safe with Lina,” she says, because of course she makes a valid point, because she is five going on thirty-five.
Lina decides to help. “Your dad’s right about that, Frankie. We should always let him know where you are.”
“Fine,” Frankie grumbles.
Nice to know Frankie listens tosomeone.
* * *
I’m still feeling prickly later, after Frankie goes down and we’re getting ready for bed.
“That wasn’t very cool,” I tell Lina.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I should have told you, but she specifically asked me not to. I was in a difficult position. I figured she was safe with me, and that she would tell you, or both of us really, when she was ready to talk about it, which she’s clearly not.”
“That’s just one piece of it. It’s also probably not easy to have a five-year-old sitting in your office while you’re trying to work. I don’t like that it’s an extra thing to pile on your plate?—”
She turns from the sink to look me directly in the eye. Her eyes are glowing hot, ready to eat me alive, but in such a different context than the way she looked at me at the beach house. “How many times do I have to tell you that it isn’t a big lift before you actually believe me? What are you more mad about, anyway?—”
“I’m not mad?—”
“—that you didn’t know where she was or that you think you’re ‘imposing’ on me? What the hell is your deal with this imposing business, anyway? With Mama Flores? With me? People help other people, Dom. Parents get help all the time—it doesn’t make you any less of a dad.”
This is a direct hit to the sternum. I feel it there. I’m surprised at her ability to target the issue with alarming accuracy. I exit the bathroom.
“You’re just going to leave?” she asks from behind me, sounding surprisingly fragile for someone so normally fierce.
Fuck. I turn back. “Sorry. No, I’m not walking away from you. I’m never going to do that.” I wrap her in my arms, and she burrows her face in my chest. I take deep breaths. “Can we finish up and talk about this in bed?”
She nods.
We finish up the chores in silence. I take the time to gather my thoughts while I pick up stray clothing from the living room. Lina starts making Frankie’s lunch. I watch her take out the bread and the Totoro cookie cutters and am about to blurt out that she doesn’t have to do it, when I realize thatthis, this right here is my problem. I keep my mouth shut.
We finally crawl into bed, sit up with our backs on the headboard. I pull her into my side, and she snuggles into my chest.
“Dime,” she commands.
I wonder what it is about her that is able to claw this information out of my black heart. I wonder why I got so prickly. It’s probably because I’m falling a little in love with her.
I shove this realization aside, because whoa.
“My parents…” I attempt to search for words that are diplomatic and mature and don’t reveal that I’m still mildly traumatized. “…had really, really high expectations of me,” I decide to say. “To an extreme degree, most people would probably say. I didn’t have your typical American upbringing, which makes sense, because they immigrated here right before I was born. Most of the time, their values didn’t… match what was going on here culturally.”
“Can you give me examples?”
“Everything I did had to revolve around their idea of perfectionism. I needed to be the perfect student, get perfect grades, perfect test scores. Needed to be well-rounded, play exactly two instruments. I wasn’t allowed to leave the house to do normal kid and teen shit, like hang out or go to sleepovers or anything.” I pause. “I was allowed to play soccer, though. I could leave the house for practice. But anyway, it was expected that I stay home all the time and study. And I did, for the most part. All so I could get into the top high school in the city. All so I could go to a top Ivy League college, become a doctor, or a lawyer, or something.”
“Where’d you go to school?”
“Stuy for high school,” I say, assuming she would know about Stuyvesant, the top specialized public high school in New York City, feeder school to the Ivies, since she’s born and bred Brooklyn and all. “And then I went to college outside Boston.” I mumble this last part.
“If what you’re not saying is that you went to Harvard, then I’m leaving,” she says pointedly.
“I didn’t go to Harvard,” I mutter.
“Where’d you go, then?”
“MIT,” I whisper.
