“You look like a Varren wife. You hate Varren wives. You don’t want to look like me anymore. I mean, how the fuck am I supposed to take it?”
“You wanted to become more you when you dyed your hair that awful color, right?” Arizona says. She doesn’t wrap her arms around herself. She’s decided not to be embarrassed about it anymore. “I wanted to become more me. This feels good for me. This feels better. You want some whole other standard for you than for me? You want me to stay the same but you get to change? I have no idea what you want!” Her voice keeps screeching and breaking and I’ve never heard her quite like this.
“I want one thing not to change. I want there to be one part of our lives that stays the same, that we can depend on. I thought that was you.” I’m clear when I’m hungover. Or less able to twist up truths like they’re straw wrappers or hair bands or hoodie strings.
I’ve finally said a thing that feels true to me, and maybe Arizona will hear the truth in it too. Maybe it will repair something.
“You’re like Dad in so many ways,” she says instead, and I know I’ve failed and that hungover Montana is every bit as irritating to her as sober Montana and drunk Montana. “The way you love and the face you make in the morning when you first wake up and the ridiculous way you hope for something that you know doesn’t exist. But especially in the way you want us to be one very small and specific thing. That you have this idea of who I am, and you’re mad if I don’t meet the standard. You know? You see that, right?”
I slide down, far under a blanket to a place where Arizona can’t see me, can’t see my face, can only see the blanketed outline of my body.
“I don’t want you to think that about me,” I say. I know it’s muffled from under the blanket, but she can hear me.
“You don’t want to be Dad,” she repeats back.
“I’m not Dad,” I say. “I don’t want you to think I’m Dad. And maybe Dad isn’t even Dad! I don’t know. I don’t know.” It has got to be the hangover that’s making everything look different today. The hangover and telling Arizona I love Bernardo and watching Dad propose to the person I thought I wanted to be. They’re all changing the world’s shape and texture and feeling.
“Are you still drunk?” Arizona says.
“You know he never brings up the gift certificate? I think it was all Natasha’s idea. And he forgets so many things and, like, when he was with Tess he was really into running and ran that marathon last year, and I haven’t seen him even, like, speed walk since she left. And when he was with that girl Fuchsia, he went to some weird church thing where they stay in silence the whole time, but now he doesn’t even know when Christmas is.”
“You’re completely still drunk,” Arizona says. She stamps her foot a little, and underneath the new boobs and the way she’s looking at me like I’m a huge disappointment, she’s still the girl she was at eight, at least a little.
“No, I’m not. I wonder sometimes if Dad even knows the mistakes he makes. If maybe this whole thing, this thing that was the worst thing that ever happened to us . . . if it ever even really happened in the way we think it did. Or, like, what does it mean if it happened but he doesn’t know it happened? What if he really does want a nice woman and a good life and for us to be happy? What if he loves us enough? What if he thinks we’re great and he’s actually in love? What if—”
“No.” Arizona doesn’t even leave room for me to breathe. She gets so close to my face I think she’s stealing the air. She’s more sure of this than I’ve ever been about anything.
And I guess this is what she meant, about hope and me having it. Because hope is space. It’s having room for something even when things are cramped and hard to move around.
There is space for our father to be a little different than we thought. There’s room for us to have a different ending, a different situation.
“I’ll show you why you’re wrong,” Arizona says. “But you’re not going to want to see.” I follow her like a zombie to my dad’s office. “They’re out to brunch,” she says, as if I’ve asked where Dad and Karissa are. “She looks excellent in the mornings, by the way. She was wearing one of his shirts and acting like nothing weird happened last night. You better not trust her. These people aren’t real. This isn’t real life.”