“Can I get you anything else?” she asked, standing with her hands folded in front of her.
I shook my head and signed Amy King to the bill, and then she left.
We were subdued, not giddy over the food like we’d been the night before. Me, because of worrying I’d messed up my best chance to leave. Dixie, probably because she knew it was unlikely now that she could avoid trouble with Dad. We decided to move the table over to the window. We sat down with our view of the water, the islands, the ferries coming and going, me in the armchair and Dixie in the desk chair.
“I can’t eat,” she said, staring down at the white tablecloth.
But after a second she took a Danish out of the basket and nibbled at it. I poured her some coffee, then she poured that into her hot chocolate. She added sugar and kept her eyes on the window while she chewed and sipped. Maybe it was that she needed to think, but it felt like the silent treatment.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked.
“What am I going to say?” she asked. “When I call him? I have to tell him we spent some of it.”
I tore into a croissant; it collapsed and shed flakes all over my plate, the table, the front of my robe. I, she said. To Dad, I guess, it was all about her—after all, he hadn’t mentioned me in his text. I could be I, too. I’d found the money. I didn’t have to show it to her.
“You don’t have to call,” I said.
“Yes I do.” Then she said, “You should have left it there like you said you would that night. This is so dumb.”
This is so dumb, Gem. You are so dumb, Gem.
I did show it to her, though. And since then I’d been thinking of us more and more as a “we,” whether or not I wanted to, whether or not I should.
“We” was a trap. I could almost feel it on me like a straitjacket.
What’s the box? Mr. Bergstrom had asked when I drew it around the whiteboard version of me.
What I should have drawn was a cage.
The cage was Mom. The cage was Dad. The cage was our apartment, the empty fridge, the trips to the dark laundry room. The cage was Dixie—pushing her in her stroller and walking her to school and feeding her and dressing her and keeping her busy when she was scared, entertained when she was bored. The cage was me being responsible for all of it, all of them, being the responsible one in the family as far back as I could remember. It was guilt, it was being misunderstood and feeling accused.
Dixie stared at me, waiting for a reply.
I hadn’t lost it in months and I wouldn’t do it in front of her. I breathed. My fingers itched for a Hacienda. The pebble-tears built up inside my throat. This time I wasn’t going to let myself be responsible.
“He’s the one who put it there,” I managed.
“I know, but—”
“He’s the one who put it there.” I let my fist pound on my leg. Just once, enough to hurt. A tiny release. “He’s the one. He’s the one.”
She set her Danish down. “Okay. Don’t get like—”
“He’s the one. And Mom.” I crossed my arms over my body and held on to bunches of my robe, pulling at them as hard as I could. “Him and Mom, and our whole lives they didn’t take care of us.”
“Gem,” she said slowly, “do not go apeshit right now. Please.”
“I’m not going back home.”
“You—”
“I mean it, Dixie. I’m not going back.” The more I said it, the more the straitjacket loosened.
“What are you going to do? You can’t just . . . not go back.”
“Yes I can.” It would actually be easy. Simple, anyway. As simple as never setting foot in that building again. My breathing got deeper.
I could be responsible for me, no one else.
“You’re not taking the money, Gem,” she said, almost with a laugh. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I already took it.”
“I can’t go home without it, Gem. He’ll never believe I don’t know where it is.” She shook her head. “You didn’t even know how to get into a hotel. You’re gonna, like, strike out on your own now?”
I stood up. I imagined throwing myself onto the bed and smashing my face into a pillow and screaming until all of the pebbles were out of my throat. What would she think of me then? Would it make her understand me, or understand anything? Would it only prove she was right, that it was stupid to think I could go out into the world on my own?
Maybe she was right.
Don’t think that, Gem. Don’t betray yourself now.
“Okay,” I said. “If you really want to give it back to him, if that’s what you want to do, go ahead.” I pointed to where I’d stashed the backpack, knowing I still had my seven thousand dollars under my pillow. “If you feel guilty about taking something from him after a whole life of him taking from us, if you think giving this money back is going to . . . I don’t know, make him love you or something, if you think it’s going to solve all the problems and he’s going to come around and be a great father and have an explanation that makes total sense for why he’s stashing drug money or whatever it is in our room the day after coming back out of the blue with hardly any warning or reason, then good. Good for you. Maybe you’re right. Maybe he has an honest reason. Maybe he’s a great father. Turn the phone back on. Listen to the voice mail. He probably called to come clean about the money and say how much he loves you and that he understands why you might be upset about him leaving it there. That’s probably what he said.”
Her face had slowly closed while I talked. Her eyes had filled; then the tears dried up. Her mouth didn’t tremble like it did when she was going to cry. She was steady as a rock.
I let my robe drop to the floor and stood there naked. “I’m going to take a shower. Call him if you want. I don’t care. As long as you know that he’s using you.”
Then her mouth did give way, a little bit.
“He uses you,” I said. “Not me. Because, of the two of us, you’re the one who falls for it. You’re the one who mistakes it for love.”
Under the shower, I began to shake. I covered my face with a washcloth and let the scream tear through me until it was gone.
When I came out of the bathroom—wrapped in towels, my throat raw—Dixie was on her bed, holding her phone. “Fine.”
“Fine what?” I asked.
“Fine whatever. I won’t call him.”
I just stared at her, and she put her phone on speaker and played me his voice mail: