Dad laughed again. “You’re not perfect, Salvie. But there’s so much decency in you that I sometimes wonder where you came from. Take your friend Sam. Now, she’s trouble.” He laughed, not a loud laugh. It was a joke. He loved Sam. “Look,” he continued, “like I said, living is an art, not a science. Take your Mima for example. She’s the real artist in the family.” He looked up at the sky. “If living is an art, your Mima is Picasso.”
I loved the look on his face when he said that. I wondered if Mima knew how much he loved her. I didn’t know anything about the love between mothers and sons—?and I never would.
My father put his cigarette out. “Here’s the thing about the letter. I had to decide when to give it to you. Maybe it’s not the right time. Only you can decide that. Read it when you’re ready.”
“What if I’m never ready?”
He gave me a look, leaned into me, and nudged me again with his shoulder.
We sat there for a long time, the September breeze and the morning sun on our faces. I wanted to stay there forever, just me and Dad and Maggie. A father and a son and a dog. I was thinking that I didn’t really want to grow up. But I didn’t really have a choice.
My dad had a quote taped to a wall along with some sketches: “I want to live in the calmness of the morning light.” I liked that a lot. But I was beginning to understand that time wasn’t going to stand still for me. I had photographs to prove that things changed. I’d been seven once. And I wasn’t always going to be seventeen. I had no idea what my life was going to be like. I didn’t want to think about the letter. Maybe there was something in it that would change things in ways I didn’t want them to change.
I don’t know why she left me a letter.
My mom was dead.
I didn’t even remember loving her. And the letter wasn’t going to bring her back to life.
WFTD = Fear
I STARTED TO PUT the letter in my bottom drawer, where I kept my socks. But I figured that wasn’t a good place to store it, because I wore socks every day, and every time I opened the drawer, I’d think of the letter. So I paced my room trying to think of the perfect place to keep it. Maggie was lying on my bed watching me. Sometimes I got the feeling that Maggie thought I was nuts. Finally I put the letter in the box where I kept all my pictures. I didn’t take that box out very often. That was the perfect place.
I texted Sam: Wftd = fear.
Sam: Fear?
Me: Yeah
Sam: Explain
Me: It’s a scary word. Lol
Sam: Funny boy. You afraid?
Me: I didn’t say that
Sam: Spill it
Me: U ever been afraid of something?
Sam: Course. U?
Me: Yeah
Sam: Talk to me
Me: I was just thinking, that’s all
Sam: I’ll get it out of u
Sam
TEXT FROM SAM: What up?
I texted back: Took a quick rinse. No plans. U?
Sam: Wanna hang out?
Me: Yup
Sam: U got eggs?
Me: Yup
Sam: Bacon?
Me: Yup
Sam: ?! Wftd = breakfast
Me: C u in 5
Sam—?that girl, she was always hungry. Her mother never kept any food in the house. It wasn’t as if they were poor. They weren’t rich, but they weren’t exactly using a Lone Star card to get their groceries. Sam’s mom was more into fast food and takeout. Dad and I almost never did takeout. We did the takeout pizza thing, sometimes Tara Thai. Otherwise we cooked. I liked it.
Dad was talking on the phone as I walked past him toward the front door. “Who are you talking to?” I asked. For some reason I always wanted to know who he was on the phone with. Not that it was any of my business—?but I had a (bad) habit of asking him. “Mima,” he whispered—?then shook his head and kept talking. I think I annoyed my father sometimes. It worked both ways. Sometimes he annoyed me. Like him not buying me a car, even though we had enough money. That really annoyed me. And it didn’t matter how many times I brought the subject up—?he’d shoot it down like it was a duck in hunting season. “But we can afford it,” I’d say. And then he’d say: “No, I can afford it. You, on the other hand, can’t even afford to pay for your cell phone.” He’d give me his snarky smile, and I’d give it right back to him.
Maggie and I sat on the front porch and waited for Sam. She lived a few blocks away, but we never hung out at her place—?not ever. “Sylvia likes to listen in on conversations that are none of her business,” Sam said. She always claimed she liked hanging out with Maggie. “Sylvia won’t let me have a dog.” And even though Sam and Maggie had their own love affair going on, I knew Maggie had nothing to do with her wanting to come over. My theory was that Sam and her mother were too much alike. I told her that once. “You’re full of shit”—?that’s all she had to say on the subject. One thing about Sam, she could be direct as hell. And like everybody else in the known universe, she didn’t always let herself in on the truth.
I saw her walking up the street. I waved.
“Hi, Sally!” she yelled.
“Hey, Sammy!” I yelled back. Maggie ran out to greet her. Sam was wearing a yellow blouse with printed daisies all over it. She looked like a summer garden. I mean that in a good way. She bent down and let Maggie lick her face. It made me smile watching Sam and Maggie loving on each other. I bounced down the steps, and she gave me a hug. “I’m starving, Sally.”
“Let’s eat,” I said. I knew I was going to be making the breakfast. Sam was like her mother. The only part of the kitchen she was familiar with was the kitchen table.
We walked into the kitchen. Maggie scratched at the door, and I let her out. I noticed my father sitting on the back steps smoking another cigarette. That was strange. Dad rarely had a two-cigarette morning. I got that same feeling I had on the first day of school, like something was shifting in my world.
“What’s wrong?” Sam asked.
“Nothing,” I said, grabbing a pan and taking some bacon out of the fridge. Sam poured herself a cup of coffee. Sam, she was a walking advertisement for Starbucks.
“Your house is always so clean,” Sam said. “That’s so frickin’ weird.”
“There’s nothing weird about wanting to live in a clean house.”
“Well, our house is pretty much a pigsty.”
“True that. I wonder why,” I said.
“Funny, funny. The thing is, you guys live like girls, and we girls live like guys.”
“Cleanliness—?I don’t think that’s a gender thing,” I said.
“Maybe not. You know, I think maybe I should move in with you guys.”
That really made me smile. “I don’t think you’d like my dad’s rules.”
“Your dad’s super cool.”
“Yeah, but he has rules. They’re mostly unwritten. Keeping the house clean is one of them. Somehow I can’t picture you cleaning a toilet.”
“I can’t either. Sylvia hires a maid to clean the house once a week.”
“I hope she pays her a lot of money.”
“Don’t be snarky.” She glanced at her cell phone—?then looked at me. “Unwritten rules, huh? Sylvia doesn’t have any of those. She’s not that subtle. She writes down all her rules in lipstick on my bathroom mirror.”
“Serious?”
“Serious.”
“In this house most of the rules are unwritten. No drugs. No drinking. Well, I can have a glass of wine with him on special occasions.”
“On second thought, if I lived here, you guys would bore the crap out of me.”
“Yeah, to begin with, we don’t have lipstick. And we don’t have collections of shoes.”
She shot me a look.