“You too,” she said.
It was a good game, but it was serious. Sometimes, what ifs could make us sad. And I thought, What if I hadn’t punched Enrique? Then—?then what? Then things would be the way they always were? Not. Not, not, not. Things weren’t going to be the way they were. Senior year. College. Change. And what if Mima’s cancer hadn’t come back? Then I would have her forever. Not.
Dad and Me and Silence
DAD CALLED ME on my cell. He was still at Mima’s. “You going out tonight?”
“Nah.”
“Want pizza?”
“Yup.”
“Eat in or out?”
“In. Let’s watch a movie.”
“Be there in an hour. Order the pizza.”
As soon as I finished talking to my dad, Sam texted me: Should I wear red or black?
Me: Red. Out w/ Eddie?
Sam: Jealous?
Me: Lol have fun
Sam: I think I’ll wear black Me: Tht’s wht I’d wear if I were going out w/ him Sam: Dn’t be a shit Me: Try & b gd Sam: Ur no fn
Me: Fn is overrated Sam: Get a girlfrnd Me: Been there done tht Sam: Try try again oh gotta go
Sam, she always had to have a guy. Me, well, the last girl I was with, she was all about me. I sort of felt like she’d been in a race and I was the trophy she’d won. I was way into her—?way, way into her. Turns out she was also seeing some guy who went to Cathedral High School. Her nice way of dumping me was by telling me, “You know, Sal, you’re just way too smart for me.” Melissa—?that was her name—?she liked her guys dumb and good-looking. Not that I was ugly. It’s just that, well, Melissa needed to be the smart one in a relationship. Do we have relationships in high school? Maybe so. Anyway, I’m not into playing dumb. And besides, she hated Sam. And before Melissa, there was Yolanda. She told me it was either her or Sam. “Sam?” I said. “I’ve known her since I was five. We’re just friends.” She dropped me like a water balloon. I went splat. I’m not sure what I was looking for in a girl. Some guys just wanted sex. Not that I didn’t want sex, but, well, that wasn’t happening for me. Not yet. Well, there was always hope.
Sam had this to say about my dating behavior: “You’re way too invested in your identity as a good boy.”
Shit, I couldn’t pull off the bad-boy thing. I did think Jeff Buckley singing “Hallelujah” was badass. Didn’t that count for something?
And I wasn’t a good boy. Not a real good boy. And what was that whole good-boy, bad-boy thing anyway? What did any of it mean?
My dad was a little low-key when he got back. “Your Aunt Evie and I are taking Mima to the Mayo Clinic.”
“Where’s that?” I said.
“In Scottsdale.”
“Scottsdale?”
“It’s a suburb of Phoenix. It’s about seven hours from here. If you’re driving.”
I nodded. “When?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“That’s soon,” I said.
“Time is something we don’t have,” he said. He had a can-we-talk-about-this-in-the-morning look on his face. Some days I gave that same look to him. Guess he was entitled.
We ate pizza and watched an old movie—?To Kill a Mockingbird. Dad loved old movies. He liked Gregory Peck. Definitely old-school. Nobody at El Paso High even knew who Gregory Peck was. Well, except for Sam. She was all about movie trivia. That had been one of her phases—?between her hummingbird phase and her famous architects phase, then back to hummingbirds. She was currently in her shoe phase. For a while before that, she’d worn only flip-flops and tennis shoes. I thought the shoe phase was probably here to stay.
It was a quiet night. Before I went to bed, I asked Dad, “Are we still making lunch for Mima tomorrow?”
“Well, we’re going over. But your Mima said nobody was going to cook in her kitchen except her.”
We both smiled. That’s how she loved people—?by feeding them.
Before I went to bed, I studied a photograph of Mima and me. We were sitting on her front porch, and we were both laughing at something. All the pictures I had of Mima and me together were happy pictures. I wondered if happiness would go away when she died. But maybe she wouldn’t die. Maybe she wouldn’t.
I opened my laptop and looked up the Mayo Clinic. It seemed as if those people knew what they were doing. And then I looked up cancer. Serious business. But I had no idea what stage Mima’s cancer was in. Stage one: lots of hope. Stage four: not so much. Not that I was about to throw hope out the window. I didn’t consider myself a very serious Catholic. I mean, my dad was gay, and the Catholic Church was not big on gay people. Guess you could say I held a grudge even if my father didn’t. But Mima and the Catholic Church got along just fine. I took out my rosary and prayed. Mima had given it to me when I made my First Communion. So I prayed. Maybe it would help.
Sam
WHEN MY CELL phone rang, I was still clutching my rosary. My phone kept ringing and ringing, but by the time I found it in my pants pocket, it had stopped. Maggie was growling. She hated cell phones. I looked at the time: 1:17 a.m. The call had been from Sam. Then the phone rang again.
“Sam?”
“Oh, God,” she said. “Sally, Sally, Sally—” She was sobbing into her phone.
“Sammy? Where are you? What’s wrong?”
Finally she calmed down enough to spit out, “Can you come get me?”
“Where are you?”
She started crying again.
“Where are you, Sam?” I think I was almost yelling. “Where are you? Where are you?”
“I’m just outside the Walgreens.”
“Which Walgreens, Sam? Shit! Which one?” I was getting scared. “Are you hurt, Sam? Are you hurt?”
“Just come get me, Sally?” God, she sounded hurt.
“Sam? Sam, are you okay?” She was crying again. “Sam? Hang on, Sam. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right there. Just hang on.”
Part Two
We’d been so sure of ourselves, but now we were lost.
Sometimes in the Night
“DAD? DAD!” I was glad he was a light sleeper.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Sam.”
He reached over and turned on the lamp on his nightstand. “Is she okay?”
“I don’t know. She couldn’t stop crying. She sounds really scared.”
“Where is she?”
“Walgreens.”
“I’m driving.”
I didn’t argue with him.
She was sitting on the sidewalk, her head down. My dad saw her as soon as we drove up. Walgreens wasn’t exactly crowded at that hour of the morning. He jumped out of the car, and I was right behind him. “Sam?”
She ran into his arms, sobbing.
Dad put his arms around her. “Shhh. It’s okay. I gotcha, Sam. I gotcha.”
Sam and I sat in the back seat as my dad drove. I squeezed her hand. She’d stopped crying, but she was still shaking. Almost as if she was cold. I pulled her closer, and I could feel her shivering against my shoulder.
“Do we need to take you to the hospital?” I knew my dad had thought carefully about what questions to ask—?and what questions not to ask.
“No,” she whispered.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Where’s your mother?”
“She’s on a date. She turns her phone off.”
“You sure you don’t need to go to a hospital?”