The Beautiful Between - Alyssa B. Sheinmel [16]
But I’m not done searching for answers, or at least clues, so I say, “Still, they mean something to her, for whatever reason. A person should have the things that remind her of her father.” Gram shrugs; it’s clear she doesn’t see that this has anything to do with me, with my father. Maybe I lost my father so young that she doesn’t consider me as even ever having had a father.
“I don’t have anything that reminds me of mine,” I say. Gram looks at me sharply. Under the table, I tap my left foot rapidly against my chair.
“What do you need to remember him?” she adds, then pauses, seeming startled by what she has just said. She adds quietly, “What do we need to remember anyone?”
I can hardly play the pity card with someone whose whole family is gone, even if she is my grandmother and is therefore slightly more inclined to feel sorry for me. She never had anything to remember her family by, and moreover, she doesn’t need anything. I’ve played this all wrong. I’ll never get anything out of her that she doesn’t want to give me. My grandmother May love gossip, but gossips only give out information when it’s fun for them.
I decide to walk home, across Central Park, where the leaves are changing and beginning to fall off the trees. I’m hoping the walk will wear me out a little, calm my body down. It’s surprisingly hot, and I wish I wasn’t dressed in such warm clothes. I’m thinking so hard that I get turned around and end up on Central Park South instead of Fifth Avenue. This adds about twenty minutes to the walk, but I don’t care, even though I’ve begun to sweat. It gives me more time to think. I feel like Gram did give something away that I never saw before. Some look in her eye said something, and my feet have begun to hurt when I understand completely. When she said, “What do you need to remember him?” she didn’t mean, “What do you need to remember him by?” What she meant was, “What do you need to remember him for?”
She doesn’t think he’s worth remembering. Suddenly my theory that his death is a hoax to keep him away from me seems less ridiculous. I mean, I don’t think that’s it—I believe that he’s dead—but there’s something he did that she’s angry about, something she’s ashamed of. Some reason he’s not worth remembering.
7
Jeremy doesn’t come over for his nightly cigarette, but that doesn’t surprise me, since it’s Saturday. Surely he has better things to do on a Saturday night: hot parties, hot girls. Princes don’t get carded, so I’m sure he’s at one of those fabulous Manhattan spots, dancing with the latest It Girl, or at least with members of her entourage.
And the thing is, I’m not jealous, not exactly. I have a lot of work to do—I may have the verbal half of the SATs down, but the math is still kicking my ass. But I do wonder what that sort of life would be like. I don’t want to live that way all the time, but maybe once in a while—be bad, freak my mother out by coming home at four in the morning, try drinking or smoking pot and just seeing what it is about being one of the cool kids that’s so appealing.
Jeremy would never invite me—I’m the girl he smokes private cigarettes with, sits with for a few minutes during lunch. I’m not a girl he’d invite to go partying. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t, because I’m sure I don’t seem the type who would go. It’d be too embarrassing for him, for me, for everyone.
On Sunday, my mother and I have brunch. As we walk to the restaurant, I wonder what would happen if I asked her about my father, if I asked her how he died. But after so many years of silence on the topic, I’m not about to just bring it up over bagels and lox. But I wonder what would happen if I did.
We order, and she waits until the food comes to broach the subject I’m sure she’d been dying to talk about for a while now.
“So, is Jeremy Cole going to be coming over to study this week?”
I think it’s funny that she calls him by his full name. I decide to do the same. “I