Sam: Then why is the world so screwed up?
Me: Because of us, Sam
Sam: We suck
Sylvia. Goodbye.
IT WAS SUNNY and cold that day.
Sylvia’s body was cremated. She hadn’t wanted a church service. But in the end, for Sam, Dad and Lina decided to have a quiet Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. There weren’t a lot of people there—?a few—?some of Sylvia’s coworkers, who seemed to be genuinely sad. Lina was there with her husband and her three children, older cousins whom Sam barely knew—?but they were very nice and friendly. And Fito was there. I’d texted him about what happened. So he just showed up. He was wearing a tie and a black sports coat. Fito, he had some class, that’s for sure.
Sam wore a black dress and her mother’s pearls.
For a moment I thought she’d suddenly become a woman.
Me, I felt awkward in the suit I was wearing.
The thing that impressed me the most about Sam was that she didn’t fall apart. She sat next to me, and there were times during Mass when she grabbed my arm and I could see the tears running down her cheeks, but she seemed in control of her emotions. Then I thought of the word for the day: dignity.
The Sam I knew was never in control of her emotions.
But on that day she was wearing dignity.
So much more beautiful than pearls.
It was only on the short drive to the house that she leaned into me in the back seat of my dad’s car and sobbed. Like a hurt animal. And then she was calm again.
“I’m a fucking train wreck,” she said.
“You’re not,” I said. “You’re a girl who lost her mom.”
She smiled. “Fito was there. That was really sweet.”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me again why I never liked him.”
There was a small reception at our house. I guess that’s what people do. Not that I knew. Lina told me I was a handsome young man. “Not quite as handsome as your father,” she said. And then she winked. She was a very decent human being. I knew that much. And though I knew she had been angry with her sister, I knew there were reasons behind her anger, because a woman like her, well, she didn’t seem to be an angry person. And she really liked my dad. So I asked her. “How do you know Dad? Through Sylvia?”
“No. Actually, I met your dad years ago at an art gallery in San Francisco. I bought one of his paintings.” She smiled. “Imagine my surprise when I found out that we had Sylvia in common.”
That made me smile. “How close with her were you?” I asked.
“Not very. I didn’t like Sylvia very much. But I loved her anyway. She was my sister.”
Somehow that made sense to me.
“You know, Sal,” she said, “there was a time I threatened to take Samantha away from her.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Your dad. We talked. I knew Samantha would be okay.”
“Because my dad said so.”
“Yes.”
“You trusted him that much?”
“Men like your father are very rare. I hope you know that.”
“I think I do know,” I said. “You don’t mind that Sam’s going to live with us?”
“Why would I mind? I want to be close to her. I’ve always wanted to be close to her. But her mother wouldn’t allow it. If I took her to live with me, she’d begin to hate me—?and she’d probably wind up running away. She’d run straight here. She’d run back to what she knows, to what she loves.”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. I wanted to tell her that I thought she had a beautiful heart. But I realized there would be time for that. Or maybe I was just scared of saying something like that to an adult I barely knew.
Sam held the urn that contained her mother’s ashes. “What am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re no help.”
“Nope.”
She finally put the urn in front of the fireplace. We just sort of looked at each other.
Sam and Fito and I sat on the front steps. Sam was staring at a piece of cake as if she didn’t recognize what it was. I was drinking a cup of coffee. Fito was on his third serving of potato salad. I swear that guy just couldn’t get enough to eat.
Then Fito looked at Sam and said, “What about your father?”
“My father? I met him once. He showed up at the door asking Sylvia for some money. A real winner.”
“So why’d your mother marry him?”
“That’s an easy one. He was good-looking.”
“There must have been another reason.”
“My mother wasn’t that complicated.” She laughed. I think she was laughing at herself. “I’m just being mean. My mother wasn’t as shallow as I make her out to be. Yeah, my father must have had some good qualities. Maybe he was smart, who knows? He was broke, that was for sure.”
“Well, at least you met him. That’s something.”
But what? I thought. Why was that something? What?
“You can always look for him, Sam,” Fito said.
“Why would I want to do that?” Sam said. “I’m just not interested.”
“Why?” I asked.
“The day he came over. He wasn’t interested in me. Not at all. Funny thing was, I wasn’t interested in him either. It was just this weird and awkward moment. He didn’t care. And for some reason, it didn’t hurt.”
I wondered about that. I guess Sam and Fito and I had a lot in common. We had this absent-father thing going on. Except that I did have a father who took care of me and loved me. And now Sam and I had this dead-mother thing going on—?except that was different. Sam had actually known her mother. And just like the dad thing didn’t hurt her, I guess the mom thing didn’t hurt me. Sam said it did hurt me. But I wasn’t feeling that. I wasn’t.
And then it was like Fito was reading my mind. “You ever think about your mom?”
“Yeah, but it’s weird—?since I don’t really remember her.”
“And you’re never gonna look for your bio dad? I mean, you said you think about him sometimes.”
Sam decided to enter the conversation. “Sally, you’ve never told me you thought about your birth father. Not ever.”
“I hadn’t thought about him much. Until recently.”
“How recently? Since the letter?”
“Yeah. Well, maybe a little before.”
“Hmm,” she said. “There’s a lot of things you’re not talking about these days, Sally.”
Fito was just looking at us. “What letter?”
Sam answered his question. Of course she did. “Sally has a letter from his mother. She wrote it before she died. And he’s afraid to open it.”
“Open it, dude. I’d open it. What’s wrong with you?”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to open it. I just haven’t done it yet.”
Fito shook his head. “What are you waiting for, dude? Maybe you’ll find out some cool stuff about your parents and shit.”
“I have a dad!”
“And he’s the bomb, dude. But you’re sounding all pissed off and shit—?and there is definitely something goin’ on with you.”
“Something’s going on with everybody, Fito.”
Sam kept looking at me. That I’m-studying-you thing she did. And then she smiled. “At least you’ve given me something to think about besides the fact that my mother’s dead.”
Everybody had gone home.
Except Lina.