Bernardo brings me a bagel the next day.
I got up early and bought us huge blueberry muffins from a place that serves them with clotted cream to dip them in. He shows me the bagel and I show him the muffins and the cream and we marvel at ourselves.
I think that is part of love too. Basking in the wonder of how great you are for each other.
“You are the sweetest,” I say.
“But you are also the sweetest,” he says.
“So we’re going to have to eat it all, right?” I say.
“I see no other option.” He takes a bite of bagel right there on the stoop, followed by a bite of muffin.
“Clotted cream,” he says. “Who knew?”
Being near Bernardo and eating clotted cream feels good, but nothing else does. I can’t even look in the mirror. Errant marks fly up in front of my image, zaps like the kind that happen when you rub your eyes too hard or first try to adjust to the light after an evening of dark.
“You still hurting from the other night?” he asks.
I am still hurting, but not from a hangover.
“Are you ready for today?” I say. I haven’t let go of the Pilates brochure or the idea that seeing Tess will do something, make me see something new. Arizona is so sure that I don’t see anything clearly. Fine. I’ll look more closely. At all of them. At my father and Natasha and Tess and Janie. At my mother. At Karissa. At myself.
“Use more words?” Bernardo says.
“Can we do something kind of crazy today? Are you up for it?”
“What are we doing?” Bernardo says. It’s not yes or no, it’s something better.
“I want to see Tess,” I say. “The most recent stepmom.”
He studies my face, and without thinking I bring my hand to my chin, to cover it up. It’s funny, how aware of my weak chin I suddenly am. I’ve been walking around with it my whole life, barely even noticing, and now that I’ve seen my father’s pictures I can think of nothing else. “You look sad. Are you sad? I haven’t seen you sad before. All kinds of other things. Not sad, though. Is this what it looks like on you?”
I love that everything he says is a poem.
“I’m motivated,” I say.
“And sad.”
“Yeah. And sad.”
He kisses me and I’m almost not sad anymore. I feel almost beautiful again. The Sharpie markings on my arms and chest and thighs are blurry now. Not gone and not distinct. More like a fog over my skin and his. I miss them. Tess will hate it all. The hair and the scarf and the fog and the Sharpie and Bernardo and me being there.
I don’t think I care.
The last time I saw Tess she was in the middle of moving out and Dad forgot to tell me. We have a rule that he’s supposed to tell me and Arizona when someone is moving in or out so that we don’t have to actually see or experience the change. It’s a weird, chosen denial, like it’s not happening if we don’t see it happen. If a stepmom moves out and no one sees it, did she ever really exist?
At the time Tess was wearing pink leggings and too much makeup, and she was shaky and weepy on our stairs. I tried to sneak away unseen, but she heard my shuffling and looked up.
“Did you know this was coming?” she said. She looked young, then, underneath all the makeup and Botox and cascade of tears. She looked like a little girl. It was scary.
“I mean, I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never seen it work, so I guess . . . sort of?”
“I’d never done any of this before,” Tess said. “Movie night and making dinner and worrying about you getting home by curfew and cleaning the blades of the ceiling fan and saying I love you to someone every night before bed. That was all new to me.”
“Yeah. See, it wasn’t really new to us,” I said.
“That’s the worst fucking thing I’ve ever heard,” Tess said. “This should make you feel something.” She pointed to her pile of moving boxes, the truck outside, the burly men heaving the boxes from our apartment to their truck.
“I mean, we’ll miss you for sure,” I said, but I know it wasn’t convincing enough. I couldn’t muster up tears or even a crack in my voice or a big sigh or anything.
“Today I feel bad for me,” she said. “But in, like, six months I’m only going to feel bad for you.” She took one of the smallest boxes out to the sidewalk and stayed there, surveying the house and sipping a big green juice, and she never came back inside.
I don’t have cute workout clothes, so I take Bernardo to the Closet of Forgotten Things, where I’m sure I’ll find stretchy pants and tank tops with built-in bras and everything else I need to pull off Girl Going to Pilates Class.