Chapter 40: Don’t look at me like that. I’m serious. What? You think I can’t do it?
Monday morning
You know what I hate worse than airports? Hospital waiting rooms. There’s not a single thing about a waiting room I like. I don’t like the elevator music. I don’t like the mind-numbing women’s magazines. I don’t like the chairs — which, okay, is not entirely the fault of the hospital. When you’re just fucking big, it’s hard to find a chair that’s actually comfortable to sit in for longer than five minutes at a time.
Maybe this was the hospital they took Amy to last night. But now I’ll only remember it forever as the hospital where my mom had surgery for her osteosarcoma.
“Anika. Will you please stop pacing?” Dutch says.
I stop my trek across the waiting room, turn around. Lots of people multitask, but Dutch? Dutch multi-micromanages.
“Sorry,” I mutter. I head back to a chair across the coffee table in front of my siblings, drop into it. Bounce a knee up and down.
Across from me, next to Dutch, Gerry. He’s slouching slightly down, elbows on the chair arms, hands laced across his chest. His eyes are closed, but I know he’s not asleep. He kind of looks like he’s meditating. A half-black Buddha with a baseball cap.
Next to him, PJ straightens, studies me for a moment. “So how was Grace’s wedding?”
“Shitty.”
Dutch glances over. “Don’t cuss in front of the baby.”
I shrug.
But her curiosity’s stronger than her annoyance. “What made it so bad?”
“Jenny.” I shift in my chair.
Gerry’s eyes open. Fix on me.
I hate it when they all stare at me like this.
“Are you going to elaborate?” Dutch asks.
“No.”
My gaze flits to the old-fashioned clock above her head, watching the red second hand circle smoothly around the face. I think about my dad, standing in the surgery viewing room, watching the whole procedure anxiously. He’s not supposed to be there. Viewing rooms are supposed to be for visiting doctors only, but they must’ve picked up on the fact that my dad was going to have a fucking nervous break down if he didn’t get to be as close to her as possible, so I guess they made an exception for him.
“It’s already been three hours,” I say. “I thought they said it should only take two hours?”
“Two to three,” says PJ. “They said two to three hours.”
I pull my phone out from my pocket. My property manager in Phoenix hasn’t gotten in touch yet. But I suppose that’s not surprising; it’s only about eight-thirty in the morning there.
“Should we call Becker?” I ask Gerry. “Tell him he might need to open up without us?”
“I’ll go,” Gerry says without moving from his meditative posture. “If we don’t hear anything in a half hour, I can leave and help him open.”
I shake my head. “Don’t. I’ll go. I’m supposed to meet Jenny there at eleven fifteen anyway.”
My statement earns a row of three sets of surprised, raised eyebrows and a gurgle from baby Sherry.
Dutch clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “I thought you said the wedding was bad because of her? But you’re not even waiting for the carcass to cool, are you?”
“What?”
“Jenny’s divorce. From what Jodie told me, it’s not even finalized yet. You’re swooping in a little fast, don’t you think?”
I give Dutch a look that I hope is completely fucking incredulous. This woman.
“It’s not about her divorce. I need her to sign some paperwork. I’m selling the house in Phoenix.”
“Really? Why?” PJ asks.
Jenny and I never sold the house when we moved back to Marcine. And when we split up, we kept it in both our names, even though I was the one who’d bought it and the one who was still paying the mortgage. My property manager had reliably kept a tenant in it ever since, bringing in a nice, tidy little sum of money every month. A good supplement to my income, considering that female professional athletes don’t get paid nearly what our male counterparts get.
But since the house was still in both of our names, I still needed Jenny’s cooperation to sell it.
“Well,” I say carefully, “I kept it as an investment property, and it’s appreciated in value even more than I expected it to. I’m ready to cash it in.”
Dutch narrows her eyes, immediately suspicious. “Cash it in for what?”
I hesitate under three stares. For a second, I think I’ll deflect. Change the subject. But I need to talk to them anyway, and now might be the last time for a while that we’ll all be in the same place at the same time, with nothing else to focus on but each other.
“I’m going to talk to Mom and Dad once all this stuff with the surgery is over,” I say. “I, uh, I’m going to ask them to sell me Soul Mountain.”
I get three shocked reactions simultaneously:
(1) Dutch lets go of the toy she’s holding for baby Sherry as her head spins towards me. “What?!”
(2) Gerry’s hands come unlaced from his chest and his eyes open wide. He leans forward as if he’s going to spring out of his chair.
(3) PJ’s mouth literally drops open at the same moment that his eyebrows fly upward.
“You want to buy the restaurant?” PJ asks. “Do you even know what kind of work it takes to own a restaurant?”
Now, that is just fucking offensive.
“Let me think about that a second, Peej,” I say, pretending to think. I snap my fingers like I’ve had a brilliant idea. “Yeah. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure I know exactly the kind of fucking work it takes, since I’ve been working there on and off since I was — wait for it — thirteen.”
Dutch shakes her head. “You haven’t been working there. Okay — maybe in high school for a while, weekends and summers. But then you ran off to Rosemont — ”
“I didn’t ‘run off.’ I had a basketball scholarship to one of the best schools in the country. And worked every school break that I was home. As if I didn’t have anything fucking better to do.”
“It’s not the same,” Dutch insists. “PJ worked there all through high school. I worked there through high school and college. Every weekend. Sometimes during the week, too. And even Gerry…” She glances sideways, thinks better of completing her statement, shakes a thought away. “It’s not the same,” she says again. “You’ve never had the patience for it, you — ”
“You always said you hated the restaurant,” PJ says. And he sounds hurt when he says it, as if it’s his girlfriend we’re talking about instead of Soul Mountain.
“I do — or, did, I mean,” I say. “But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since I got back. About a lot of things.” My mind flashes back to the day I asked Gerry to cover the restaurant while I hit the basketball court.
Love.
Family.
Connection.
Getting my life together.
I turn towards Dutch. “As fucking rude as you were the other day — ”
She throws her hands in the air. “Stop cussing in front of the baby!”
“Sorry. As rude as you were the other day, you were right about a couple things. My basketball career is basically over.” I look from her to my two brothers. “And I haven’t been here for you guys. Or for Mom and Dad. Not the way I should’ve. I’ve been running from Ohio for as long as I can remember, and… well, I think it’s time I man up. For lack of a better fuh… for lack of a better word.”
There’s this frozen moment where all three of them continue to stare at me in utter silence, and I would swear that when Dutch opens her mouth again, she’s going to tell me I’ve completely fucking lost it, but instead, she says,
“Oh my God, Anika. I think that’s the first adult thing I’ve ever heard you say in your entire life.”
For the second time in the past ten minutes, I give her a look that I hope is incredulous.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Gerry asks.
I nod.
“Are you sure?” PJ asks. “Are you absolutely sure you want to take this on? Restaurants aren’t easy.”
“I’m sure,” I say, trying and somewhat succeeding at pretending that PJ isn’t being more fucking patronizing than usual. “I made my mind up a few days ago. This is what I want to do.”
“It means staying in Ohio,” says Gerry.
I meet his eyes, and an unspoken conversation passes between us. Gerry, the black sheep. Anika, the dark grey one. Gerry, the reformed junkie who had the courage to come back home, to face his demons, to pay off the invisible debts that dragged him down for so long. We have a lot in common. We both know it. We both understand why I’m doing this.
After a few seconds pass in silence, I shrug. “Ohio’s home,” I say. “Right?”
He hesitates. Nods. “Yeah. For better or worse. It is.”
I lean back, slouching low in my chair, lacing my hands behind my head. “I’ll need to go back to Switzerland, once things settle down here. I have things to clean up there. Move out of my apartment. Officially get fired from my basketball team. But then… Yeah. If Mom and Dad agree to sell me Soul Mountain, I’m coming back. Maybe buy a house.” I glance at Gerry. “I’ll need a roommate.”
He grins. Nods again, but it’s relaxed this time.
I sit back up, watch the red second hand make another trip around the clock face. I surprise myself by managing to sit still for almost an entire fucking minute before I push up to my feet.
“Speaking of Soul Mountain, I’m gonna go ahead and get there. I’m sure Becker and Emir don’t want to be by themselves for the whole lunch shift.”
“And Kiersten,” Gerry puts in. “Don’t forget she’s doing a double for us today. She’s supposed to be there by about ten-thirty.”
I manage not to roll my eyes. Fucking Kiersten. If my parents agree to me buying the restaurant, Kiersten will be one of the first things to go. That, and the bad, stained canvas paintings that are supposed to be the Himalaya Mountains. Both of them are nothing more than poor imitations of something far more fucking original. The paintings try and fail to capture the majesty of the Himalayas; Kiersten tries and fails to capture the real glory and attitude of a Strong Black Woman. She has nothing on my mother. And for that, she can kiss my Blasian ass.
I say goodbye to my siblings, make Dutch promise that she’ll call me as soon as Mom gets out of surgery. On my way out the front door, I text Amy.
Can we talk? Please?
She hasn’t answered the other two texts I’ve sent. I don’t have high hopes she’ll answer this one.