How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [130]
When he’s gone, I carry the wine inside and up the steps. Katie has done all the dishes and left the house kitchen exquisitely tidy. Seeing it, the action she took before she found out her father had attempted to kill himself—kill himself!—makes me furious. If he was close, I would shake him.
But anger will not help any of this. Squaring my shoulders, I head up to the third floor, where it’s stuffy enough that I go into Sofia’s bedroom first and open the windows. A breeze wafts through immediately, blowing away the scent of disuse.
Katie’s door is closed. I knock. “Katie? Can I come in?”
“No. I don’t want to talk.”
I let the words fade away completely before I say, “I need to talk to you.”
“No!” she cries, but I open the door anyway. As I come in, she screams, “Get out!” and flings a pillow at me.
I grab it and stop where I am. In here, it’s cooler, with the wind coming through the screened balcony. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
She rolls away, pulling the pillow over her head. “Go away.”
Merlin is sitting by the bed, guarding her. He’s panting softly, giving his face the appearance of a grin. I think about that day I had hysterics after my mother hauled me out of the record shop, remembered how exhausted and overwhelmed I felt, by the pregnancy, by hormones, by the whole wide unfairness of the world.
How much worse to be Katie right now!
“You don’t have to say anything, Katie, but I want to talk. Take the pillow off your head, please.”
She hauls it off, leaving her hair in a wild mess over her wet red face. I desperately want to put my hands on her, smooth away her suffering, but I dare not. Suddenly I am my mother, looking down at me in my misery, helpless to change anything, and it makes me ache. “I wish things were better for you, sweetie. I wish I could wave a magic wand. But I can’t. Nobody can make your life happy for you except yourself.”
She sits up, her arms behind her on the bed, and looks at me with utter disdain. Her eyes glow against the tears. “Really.”
“Sorry, that was stupid.”
She stares at me, then, with an old expression, she says, “I’ve already heard all that stuff. You can’t find a way to say it new.” Her voice goes singsong. “ ‘Things work out for the best. God has a plan. Life is what you make it.’ ”
I want to say I understand how it is to be exiled, to be alone with people you like but don’t feel entirely comfortable with, to face something that seems almost insurmountable. But—and this is the first time I have ever had this thought—I had advantages that have not been given to her.
Still, in the mothering arsenal, it’s about all I’ve got for this child in this moment. “How about, you didn’t do anything to make this happen? How about, your dad loves you, but he’s afraid? How about, you have a home here and you’re safe and I care about you?”
Her voice is absolutely calm when she says, “Whatever.” Her eyes bore into me. “Can I be alone now?”
My mother and Poppy tucked me into bed and left me to grieve. I can do the same for her. “Okay. Good night, sweetie.”
Katie
After Ramona leaves, Katie sits up against the wall and stares out the window while the fan moves air around. Pretty soon Ramona will go to bed.
All of a sudden it’s like she can see again after months of being in a bubble—a pink bubble where everything was all sweet-smelling and full of flowers and good clothes and the smell of bread. But tonight the bubble broke, and she can see that she has been really stupid. She’s gotten as soft as a cheerleader living in one of those big houses near downtown El Paso. Houses like this, she thinks.
No wonder.
Bad things happen when you let yourself get soft. Over and over Katie has had to learn that lesson, so many times you’d think she’d remember not to do it. Soft as a little girl in her happy family, before her dad went to Iraq. Then her mom deployed, too, and she had to live with her grandma. Then everybody was home again—a happy soft life, until her mom and dad started fighting all the time and they got divorced. That was when Katie had