Читать книгу My So-Called Ruined Life - Melanie Bishop - Страница 9
ОглавлениеGreta’s in town, partly to attend a few days of the trial, mostly to take me camping. She’s my aunt on my mom’s side and we have gone camping every summer since I was eleven. Well, except last summer, when no one was in the mood. Last summer is a total blur.
Greta is staying in the main house until we leave for the Grand Canyon, but she’s the one adult who would be welcome to stay in my studio. She’s more like a friend or a sister than an aunt. More like me than like Carla, her own sister. But there are three bedrooms in the big house and she wants to give me my space.
She knocks after she gets home from court. I’m looking at colleges on the internet.
“Entré,” I say.
“Hola,” she says. “How goes it?”
“Check this out.” She looks over my shoulder. “These five colleges are all grouped together into something called the EcoLeague. Basically, if you get accepted into one of them, it’s an acceptance into all five.”
“Cool,” Greta says. “Look at the one in Vermont—Green Mountain College—that just sounds fun. And look—that one in Arizona isn’t far from where we’re going camping.”
“You mean we could maybe check it out?”
“I don’t see why not. Leave the canyon a day early, go there, get a hotel. You should call them and let them know you’re coming. Get an appointment.”
While I type an email to their admissions office, Greta browses around the room.
“I like your goals,” she says. “I should get mine big like that. More in-your-face. I put mine on little Post-it notes and then I wonder why I lose them.”
I turn to look at the goal poster with her.
“Number four is about to be crossed off,” I say.
“And if we go see that school in Arizona, we’re accomplishing part of number three,” Greta says. “NO WAY!”
“What?”
“Number ten! I just ordered you a vegan cookbook! It should be here tomorrow.”
“Read my mind.”
“I figured we’d need help with camping food you could eat.”
“Camping vegan is simple. Most of what people bring camping is already vegan—trail mix, peanut butter, power bars…”
“Beef jerky,” says Greta.
I give her a look. “The cookbook will be good for making something nice at home. Maybe I’ll have someone over for dinner.”
“Maybe some lucky guy,” Greta says.
“Have you not read number six?”
“Oh yeah, number six,” Greta says. “Swearing off boys forever? That seems extreme.”
“No, not forever. Till I get my act together. Can you not read anymore?”
“Well,” says Greta, “in my opinion, not that anyone’s asking for it, you have your act together way more than most people I know, and people much older than you, too.”
“That’s your opinion, Garbo. I’ll take it into consideration.” There was once a famous actress named Greta Garbo.
“Jasper is a dunce,” says Garbo, out of nowhere.
“Where did that come from?”
“I know it’s been a year, but I still think it sucks the biggest weenie that a guy would bail on you right when you need him most. Good riddance.”
“He’s an okay guy,” I say. “He just couldn’t handle it. I’m sure his parents weren’t overjoyed to have their son dating the girl who…”
Greta interrupts: “Yeah, but none of that was your fault. Anyway, what I’m saying is there’s someone better out there for you. And, I think you’re wise beyond your years to know that now’s not the best time to go out boy-shopping.”
“Exactly.”
At Greta’s favorite Mexican place, she eats a chili relleno oozing with cheese and I have my first wave of doubt about being vegan. My former favorite food? Pizza. Second place: grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches. Third place: mac and cheese. I’m having the corn tamale and salad. But damn, her cheese looks good.
“Should I have a bite of that?” I say.
“If you want.”
“I’m not eating cheese,” I remind her, indignant.
“Well, I know, nut job. I’m just saying if you want a bite of my food, it’s yours.”
“I don’t. I just had to entertain the idea…nut job.”
“The nut job is you.” Greta takes another bite and the cheese hangs off her fork in strings.
“Is it good?” I say.
“Not gonna answer that.”
“Come on. Is it delicious?”
“No, it’s completely icky and I’m gonna go make myself barf,” she says. “Yes, it is utterly, exquisitely fantastic. Otherwise, I would not order it every time I come here.”
“Just checking,” I say.
“Sooooo…” she says, in a way that I know means she’s about to 1) change the subject; and 2) bring up something difficult.
“Sooooo…” I say back to her.
“I noticed in your ten goals, there was the one about helping your dad through all this, but there was nothing about your mom.”
“Can’t exactly help her now.”
“Well,” Greta says, “it’s not the same as what you might do for your dad, obviously, because she’s not here, but it seems weird to completely leave her off the list.”
“The list is for goals. Get a job. Look at schools.” I take the last bite of my tamale and wipe up the rest of the salsa with it.
“I know. I think they’re great goals—I already said that. I just wondered if there was anything you wanted to do around the loss of your mom.”
“Such as? And please don’t say therapy.”
“I don’t know. Hell, I should let you handle it your way and figure out my own stuff. The truth is, I need to do something myself. Not that Carla and I were even close, because we weren’t. But I lost a sister, in a horrible, unfair, brutal way, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Trial’s got to you?”
“And that woman from 48 Hours. She grilled me throughout the afternoon recess.”
“You talked to her?!”
“Listen to you! You watch those shows constantly. Correction: obsessively.”
“Watching is one thing. But talking to them? What did you say?”
Greta wipes salt from the empty chip bowl with her finger and licks it off.
“I said Carla had been a very troubled person for most of her adult life. And I said it was particularly tragic that just when she was beginning to turn her life around, someone took it from her.” Greta’s voice trails off in my mind, as I choose instead to focus on the mariachi music, the super-bright tablecloths, the sombreros on the wall.
“Can we go?” I say. “I want to stop at Home Depot to look at shelves for the studio.”
Greta wipes her mouth with a paper napkin she’s been shredding in her lap. The waiter never took away the other two place settings at our four-top, so I unroll one of the silverware sets and pass Greta a new napkin.
“Thanks,” she says and looks at the former napkin, barely there. She laughs. “That’s pathetic,” she says.
“You decimate things,” I tell her. “Look at the label from your beer bottle.”
She has peeled off the label, torn it into strips, and twisted each strip between two fingers until the strip of paper is a mere pellet.
“I do, don’t I?”
“Nervous?” I say.
Greta says, “Sad, frustrated, confused.”
“Don’t forget angry. According to everything they have me read, we are supposed to be very, very angry.” The waiter drops off our check. “No flan this time?” he says. We both shake our heads. Usually Greta gets flan and I get Mexican hot chocolate. We both make the universal sign for “full” by touching our bellies.
“Angry?” Greta says when he leaves. “We’re still supposed to be angry?”
“Apparently. Until you get really angry, you haven’t even begun to deal with it.”
“Are you?” Greta asks.
“Mostly at myself. For not speaking to Carla for pretty much the last two years of her life.”
“God, Tate, I know, but she was not easy, and plenty of girls your age fight with their moms over so much less, over nothing. You had no way of knowing her days on the planet were numbered.”
“True. But it still makes me angry.” I turn the empty chip bowl over and perch the salt and pepper shakers on top, like a bride and groom on a wedding cake. The pepper is the guy.
“You referred to her as Carla.”
“Yeah?”
“Not Mom?”
“I haven’t called her Mom for a long time.”
