“Is it good?” I say.
“Not gonna answer that.”
“Come on. Is it delicious?”
“No, it’s completely icky and I’m gonna go make myself barf,” she says. “Yes, it is utterly, exquisitely fantastic. Otherwise, I would not order it every time I come here.”
“Just checking,” I say.
“Sooooo…” she says, in a way that I know means she’s about to 1) change the subject; and 2) bring up something difficult.
“Sooooo…” I say back to her.
“I noticed in your ten goals, there was the one about helping your dad through all this, but there was nothing about your mom.”
“Can’t exactly help her now.”
“Well,” Greta says, “it’s not the same as what you might do for your dad, obviously, because she’s not here, but it seems weird to completely leave her off the list.”
“The list is for goals. Get a job. Look at schools.” I take the last bite of my tamale and wipe up the rest of the salsa with it.
“I know. I think they’re great goals—I already said that. I just wondered if there was anything you wanted to do around the loss of your mom.”
“Such as? And please don’t say therapy.”
“I don’t know. Hell, I should let you handle it your way and figure out my own stuff. The truth is, I need to do something myself. Not that Carla and I were even close, because we weren’t. But I lost a sister, in a horrible, unfair, brutal way, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Trial’s got to you?”
“And that woman from 48 Hours. She grilled me throughout the afternoon recess.”
“You talked to her?!”
“Listen to you! You watch those shows constantly. Correction: obsessively.”
“Watching is one thing. But talking to them? What did you say?”
Greta wipes salt from the empty chip bowl with her finger and licks it off.
“I said Carla had been a very troubled person for most of her adult life. And I said it was particularly tragic that just when she was beginning to turn her life around, someone took it from her.” Greta’s voice trails off in my mind, as I choose instead to focus on the mariachi music, the super-bright tablecloths, the sombreros on the wall.
“Can we go?” I say. “I want to stop at Home Depot to look at shelves for the studio.”
Greta wipes her mouth with a paper napkin she’s been shredding in her lap. The waiter never took away the other two place settings at our four-top, so I unroll one of the silverware sets and pass Greta a new napkin.
“Thanks,” she says and looks at the former napkin, barely there. She laughs. “That’s pathetic,” she says.
“You decimate things,” I tell her. “Look at the label from your beer bottle.”
She has peeled off the label, torn it into strips, and twisted each strip between two fingers until the strip of paper is a mere pellet.
“I do, don’t I?”
“Nervous?” I say.
Greta says, “Sad, frustrated, confused.”
“Don’t forget angry. According to everything they have me read, we are supposed to be very, very angry.” The waiter drops off our check. “No flan this time?” he says. We both shake our heads. Usually Greta gets flan and I get Mexican hot chocolate. We both make the universal sign for “full” by touching our bellies.
“Angry?” Greta says when he leaves. “We’re still supposed to be angry?”
“Apparently. Until you get really angry, you haven’t even begun to deal with it.”
“Are you?” Greta asks.
“Mostly at myself. For not speaking to Carla for pretty much the last two years of her life.”
“God, Tate, I know, but she was not easy, and plenty of girls your age fight with their moms over so much less, over nothing. You had no way of knowing her days on the planet were numbered.”
“True. But it still makes me angry.” I turn the empty chip bowl over and perch the salt and pepper shakers on top, like a bride and groom on a wedding cake. The pepper is the guy.
“You referred to her as Carla.”
“Yeah?”
“Not Mom?”
“I haven’t called her Mom for a long time.”
They should’ve had me on their list of suspects. It’s the first thing Homicide looks for on all the shows: was there anyone who was angry with the deceased? Any spurned lover or lunatic landlord or irate employee? Anyone she’d recently pissed off? Anyone with a motive?
Not that I would ever kill someone; I’d relocate ants that get inside the kitchen before I’d step on them. But in terms of someone having a motive—she and I did not get along.
Funny thing was, they investigated Jasper. What a joke. I guess they thought that a teenage girl having trouble with her mom would incite her beau to do the dirty work. Jasper heads up a group at school called Nonviolent Communicators. They do volunteer mediation sessions in town. His mom and dad are Quakers. If there’s anyone less likely than me or my dad to harm someone physically, that would be Jasper. So it was humorous, only at the time I wasn’t laughing. They questioned Jasper only two days after. That time period is like thick fog in my head.
They ruled him out as a suspect immediately, but they never even questioned me.
I always think of this when I’m waiting to get in to see Dad. There are certain times you can visit and no matter how often you go, each time they put you through the same rigmarole and search. I’m allowed to bring my dad his favorite sandwich—meatloaf on pumpernickel with spicy mustard—but every single time they’re going to open the sandwich. And look through my backpack, and frisk me. Usually that’s what the wait is—getting a female guard to come pat me down. They all know me by now. It’s evident they feel sorry for me, and I end up acting extra chipper and upbeat in the hopes of convincing them all is cool. Contrary to popular belief, folks, I am not the most pitiable creature on the planet. Take the endangered sea turtle, for instance. The mother comes out of the water to lay her eggs on the beach and then leaves them there, untended. Sometimes the eggs are stolen by poachers and served up at restaurants as a delicacy. Other times, cars run over the nest, smashing the eggs. The lucky babies who do hatch must fend for themselves by making their way to the water. Instinctively, they go toward the brightest horizon, responding to reflected light. These days, street lights, headlights, and even flashlight beams can throw them off course. They need the reflected natural light of the moon. The sea turtle is clumsy on land, and doesn’t see well. The babies have trouble if, in between the nest where they’ve hatched and their future ocean home, they fall into the deep rut of a tire track, or even a moat some kid dug around his sand castle. Often once this happens, they don’t find their way out. They can die, mere moments after they’ve hatched. What kind of a mom leaves her babies to find their own way like that?
Once I’m in, it’s a series of locked doors and then we sit at a table together, Dad and me, no clear panel between us like