I was lying on my bed when my phone rang. My eyes were closed, but I wasn’t asleep or trying to be. After the grocery store disaster, I got my mom home and into her room. Then I sprawled facedown on my bed and tried to think of nothing. I wished my bed could come to life and transport me to another world. Like in kids’ books.
I’m not sure how Whitney got my number, but she wanted to know if Vivi was with me.
“Not since this morning,” I said, sitting up.
“She never showed up for work, and she isn’t answering her phone. I’m a little worried.”
I worried a lot after that call, until Whitney called back to say she heard from Vivi.
“She went on a day trip,” Whitney told me. “She forgot she was supposed to work.”
That’s not true. She knew she was supposed to work. But somehow I pissed her off so much that I drove her out of town. It was a matter of time, if I’m being honest with myself.
Now I’m sitting on our driveway with Leah and a box of sidewalk chalk. She’s drawing the ocean and a dolphin diving over it. I’m drawing a cluster of question marks in every color. In between them, random arrows spiking up at every angle. Next up: a self-portrait of me tearing out all my hair.
On some level, I’m mad at Felix for not sensing that there is a problem. He came by the house every day for the first month after my dad died, filling our refrigerator and talking with my mom in her room upstairs. Then he stopped. He replaced his visits with the almost-daily question: How’s your mamí?
I couldn’t verbalize the answer. I couldn’t tell him she was asleep for most of the day in a bed covered with crumpled-up tissues. It felt too soon to be seriously worried, even though I was. And talking about it felt like I was betraying my mom. So I said, She’s all right. Besides, I didn’t want him to ask. I wanted him to stop by the house and see for himself. Then I wanted him to swoop in and fix it. Be the grown-up.
In a desperate moment nearly two months after my dad died, I invited Felix to family dinner. My plan was that I’d wait for him to come over that night. I hoped to work up the nerve to stand on our porch with him and admit my mom needed more help than we could give her.
“You know I’d love to have dinner with you all,” he told me. “But your mamí, she asked me not to come by for a while.”
I was transported to my childhood days in the kitchen, listing off every question that entered my mind. “She did? When? Why?”
“About a month ago.” He sighed. “She needs time to figure out how to be alone, kid. I know that’s hard to hear. But if I’m coming by the house, doing things your dad would have done, I’m taking that from her.”
“She told you that?”
“She did.” He laced his big, square hands together. “This is man-to-man talk, sí? Stays between you and me.”
It didn’t. I told Naomi and Silas, when we discussed what to do. As usual, we were in our separate corners or the ring: Naomi pushing for therapy and Silas arguing that we need to leave her the hell alone and me caught somewhere in between and bloodied.
A vroom noise pulls my attention to the street. It gets louder and louder until there’s an ice-blue Vespa parked outside our house. Its rider is bare-legged, and when she pulls off the helmet, I’m surprised to see familiar white-blond curls.
Leah bounds toward Vivi, squealing out some very valid questions. Where did the Vespa come from? But Vivi’s striding toward us. We have bigger things to talk about.
“Why don’t you go look?” I say to Leah as we meet Vivi halfway.
“Can I sit on it?”
“No,” I say before Vivi can give her permission. “But you can put the helmet on.”
“You can touch the blue plastic parts,” Vivi says. “She’s like a pony, loves to be petted.”
Vivi takes me in, and I realize I’m dusted in chalk, sage green and ground-mustard yellow. She wipes a smudge off my forearm, thinking hard. Finally, she looks up at me.
“It was an emotional day,” she says. I want to ask what, exactly, I did to make her so furious. But I don’t want to bring it up when she seems . . . not mad.
“I know. And I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you into that situation.” I rub at the dull headache that lives above my eyebrow. “That wasn’t fair of me. It’s not your problem, and—”
She places her fingertips over my mouth, halting my clunky apology. “Let’s not talk about it anymore. Will you come over to my house and make me dinner? My mom’s driving down to San Francisco for a gallery opening.”
And just in case I was going to say no, she drops her hand and kisses me. I pull her in, hands behind her neck. This girl witnessed my mom having a meltdown. And me having a meltdown because I have no idea what I’m doing. And she still comes back.
“Ew!” Leah shrieks from across the lawn. “Vivi! That’s my brother.”
I look down at Vivi. Wipe a smudge of blue from her jaw. “Wow, lucky you. Covered in sidewalk chalk, getting heckled by a five-year-old.”
She smiles, like she’s in on a really good secret and says quietly, “I like it.”
The damnedest thing is, she does.