The Opposite of Love (19 page)

48

ROSE

The paramedics arrived, talking to Mr. P. slowly and loudly, as if he was hard of hearing or stupid. Helping him onto a stretcher. Sticking a thin needle into his vein and taping it there. An IV. One of the attendants speaking into a walkie-talkie. “Possible stroke victim. Nonresponsive to questions. Appears to be in his late fifties or early sixties.”

Stroke? Rose started to shake her head. No. She wanted to say, “This is a heart attack. He has a weak heart and high cholesterol.” But nobody was looking at her. She could barely form the words with her mouth, let alone make herself heard above the commotion in the crowded home. She'd never thought of the house as small, but now with two paramedics and a stretcher in the middle of the kitchen, she felt claustrophobic.

She looked down at Mr. P. then, only to find him staring back up at her. His mouth slightly open, like he was trying to tell her something. She started to reach her fingers toward his, realizing how foreign that felt. She hadn't touched him, nor he her, in years.

Her fingers didn't do more than flutter toward him, though, because they were interrupted by a strange combination of screaming and sobbing. Mrs. P. burst through the door, her flower-print dress swaying with the motion like it was in the middle of a giant tornado. Her eyes looked terrified, like she was about to lose her best friend, and maybe she was. Rose found herself wondering why Mrs. P. had come back so early, except maybe she'd heard the sirens or forgotten something.

One of the paramedics began explaining to Mrs. P. as they secured her husband onto the stretcher, strapping him down. Rose felt herself shrinking, shrinking, shrinking, until she was no bigger than a fingernail.

Even so, Mrs. P. swung her attention around like a whip. “
You
,” she accused through sobs. “You knew he had a bad heart and still you gave us nothing but stress.” Her eyes shone with tears. Even though Hursula had never so much as touched Rose's little pinky, Rose got the feeling that Hursula was grabbing at her like a drowning woman, desperate to latch on to something, but only pulling Rose down with her. “And now all that stress—
your stress
—has killed him!”

The words stung like a swarm of killer bees. Over and over again. Rose replayed the words in her mind long after Mrs. P. had turned and ushered the paramedics out the door. One of the paramedics turned to Rose, looking as though he wanted to say something, but the other barked an order at him, and he went on.

Standing next to the front windows, watching the ambulance drive away, sirens blaring, with Mrs. P.'s car following, Rose thought of comebacks. They popped into her head uninvited, when all she wanted to do was cry.
He's not dead, you imbecile! How could I kill him if he's not dead?
Or
If I was going to try to kill someone, it would have been you!

Tears dripped down her face like water from the leaky faucet in the guest bathroom. She stood with her cheek pressed against the window, feeling the cool glass. Rose pulled the ends of Chase's old Nike sweatshirt over her hands. It was pretty much all she wore those days. She felt so hidden in it. Like no one could see her, let alone hurt her.

Suddenly, Rose felt tired, like she'd been awake for years, not just a few hours. She lay down in her bed, pulling the covers all the way up to her chin. She cried for a bit, then let the sleep wash over her and take her away.

49

CHASE

A slightly irritable Daniel and a nicotine-deprived Becca sat with Chase in the living room of Walter's pink stucco condo, a blank college application open on the screen. When Daniel offered to drive up to Bakersfield and spend a long, focused weekend helping him edit and revise his essays, Chase hesitated only briefly. He agreed the way he would if someone offered him free braces. With both relief and dread.

“No offense, Chase, but you should've gone out for football or wrestling. Something that could've gotten you a scholarship,” Becca informed him while breaking off her split ends. “Your grades aren't exactly stellar.”

“You're a real ray of sunshine, you know that?” Daniel scolded her.

“I try.”

As much as Chase hated to admit it, Becca had a point. Too bad he didn't have some kind of secret talent.
Like Rose
. Rose's grades blew chunks, even worse than his, for sure, but she probably had a good chance of getting an art scholarship someday. He'd never seen anyone so talented. He wondered if Rose would be applying to colleges at this time next year. Thinking of Rose left him with an unsettled feeling in his stomach. He wished she'd respond to his instant messages or emails.

“Chase might surprise you, queen of pessimism. His SAT scores rock. Plus people can do amazing things. Check this out.” Daniel held up a yoga magazine as evidence. A woman stood on one leg, the other pulled behind her back in an arc. The sole of her foot was nearly touching her head. She held her foot with both arms, so that from a distance, her body almost made the image of a backward letter
P
.

“It's called Natarajasana.” Daniel read from the article, stumbling over the pronunciation, but trying to sound like he wasn't.

“If you can't say it, I highly doubt you can do it,” Becca said.

Daniel grinned. “Also known as dancer's pose.”

“The human body is not meant to bend that way,” Chase said, laughing. “You've got to meet my dad's new girlfriend. You guys could be soul mates.”

Daniel slowly unrolled his middle finger for a friendly “f-you.” Of course at that exact moment, Walter and Lex came home from their meeting, smelling like cigarettes and stale coffee. In unison, both Walter and Lex raised their eyebrows at Daniel's finger. Daniel pulled his finger back in real fast, like he thought he'd get in trouble. His cheeks turned sunburn red.

“Oh, you guys are so cute,” Becca said to Walter and Lex, way louder than she had to. “You even make the same expressions!”

Walter and Lex both made “oh, gross” faces and then tried to check each other out without looking like they were checking each other out.

“Sorry,” Becca apologized. “I'm way too hyper. I've been cooped up with these idiots for too long. Plus, I guzzled a couple energy drinks.”

“Maybe we can remedy that,” Lex said, floating over to introduce herself. Before Chase knew it, Lex had invited Daniel and Becca to come take a free yoga class Sunday morning. Then she and Walter whisked Becca out of the apartment to the movies.

Once they'd left, Chase eyeballed the topic question prompt. “Now I have no excuses.”

“It's not as bad as it seems,” Daniel said. “Even though each of the schools has their own personal-statement essay question, and they all word it slightly differently, all the schools basically ask the same thing. Once you finish one, all you have to do is cut and paste, add a little fluff, and ‘voilà!'”

“Easy for you to say. You're not sitting at the computer.” Chase sighed and leaned back in the computer chair. “Okay. Here is the topic sentence. ‘Taking risks may lead to self-discovery. Discuss a risk you have taken in your life and how it has led to you understanding yourself better.'”

With Daniel cracking pistachios in his teeth and looking on for moral support, Chase started to write. At first, he had shied away from writing about the old Walter, the new Walter, and what he'd learned about his father and himself by coming to live in Bakersfield. Daniel insisted, however, that universities loved personal statements about overcoming adversity.

So Chase typed until his fingers felt stiff. Long after Daniel fell asleep on the couch, his legs hanging over the edge, Chase kept typing. His fingers slowed even more, but his brain ran in circles. The one thing, the biggest thing he'd begun to learn about himself was how to tame his own anger. But he couldn't write about that. He'd been too ashamed to even tell his best friend that he hit his mother. Putting it down on paper would make it real.

But then again, Chase realized, staring at the computer screen so hard the words blurred, it
was
real.

50

ROSE

If Mrs. P. had a tail it would have been between her legs as she slunk into Rose's bedroom in late November. Rose sat on her bed, wrapped in a quilt. She watched the leaves drift from the small oak tree planted in their back yard, the one she used to climb before she got too old for that kind of thing.

Rose didn't turn to look at Mrs. P., just stayed staring out the window. Maybe if Rose ignored her, she'd go away. But Mrs. P. didn't take the hint. She sat herself down heavily in Rose's desk chair, then stayed there sighing. Deep exasperated sighs. Rose thought of Nala, curled up asleep in her closet bed, and hoped she'd stay put. Another sigh. Finally, because she wanted to get this over with, Rose sighed herself and shifted her focus over to Mrs. P.

A flicker of relief crossed Mrs. P.'s face but disappeared as quickly as it came. Rose saw her scanning the walls of the room, now nearly covered with tacked-up charcoal and pastel sketches. Mrs. P. sighed again. Rose decided she would count how many more times Hursula sighed during this conversation. Sigh.
Okay, that's one
. “I want you to know that I am in here in part because your father asked me to come talk to you.” Sigh.
Two
.

Mr. P. had arrived home three weeks ago. He'd stayed in the hospital for a week and then transferred over to a rehab hospital for another week and a half. It turned out he'd had a mild stroke, and there'd been something wrong with his heart, as well. It had a fancy name that Rose couldn't remember. But it meant he had to take everything easy. An occupational therapist came to the house twice a week, and he went back to the rehab center for speech and physical therapy.

Now Rose was no longer the only Parsimmon who needed therapy! The thought of it would have made her laugh, if Mr. P. didn't look so goddamn pathetic. Since he came home he looked like he'd aged ten years, like the hospital had sucked the life right out of him instead of pumping it back in.

It didn't surprise Rose that Mr. P. had asked his wife to talk to her. Maybe he'd just softened in the hospital, like ice cream left out too long. Or maybe he'd been softening for a long time. But ever since he came back, Rose had noticed him looking at her,
really looking
, not watching or guarding or supervising. Not looking through her. But looking
at
her, like he really saw her for the first time.

Mrs. P. placed a package of brand-new oil pastels on the comforter. “Peace offering,” she said quietly. Rose's heartbeat couldn't help but quicken, as she stared at the fresh, soft tips, and she wanted to reach her hands out from inside the quilt and touch them. “You've always been such an amazing artist, and I'm glad to see you've been sketching. Dr. Gutman always said that art was a therapeutic outlet for you, that even if you didn't talk to us, at least you were expressing yourself in this way.”

Rose felt her eyes harden, and she dropped her hands to her lap. Did everything have to be therapeutic? Mrs. P. sighed again—
three
. “You're not going to make this easy on me, are you?” Sigh—
four
. “Oh, lord in heaven, give me strength.”

Rose considered flipping Mrs. P. the finger. But all her old sassiness seemed to have evaporated, along with her use of the English language. She just stared as blankly as she could, knowing silence was her strongest weapon.

“Your father wants me to make sure you know that it's not your fault he had a stroke.” Mrs. P. looked unsure, like she didn't fully believe her own words. “He's had high cholesterol and heart problems for years. Runs in his family.” Sigh—
five
. “I don't know what I ever did to you, Rose. All I did was take care of you.”

Rose slid her eyes over to peek at Hursula's face. Crazy as it was, she looked like she meant it. “You always had clean clothes—and new clothes too, whatever the style was. Not that you care. All you ever wear these days is that filthy sweatshirt.” Mrs. P. shook her head, her thin hair wafting back and forth, then settling around her face. “I ordered the Disney Channel the first week you came to us. I bought you toys. You never went hungry. What did I do wrong?” she demanded now, her voice angry.

So your definition of parenting is providing me with stuff? Sitting me in front of the television? Isn't there more to it than that?

Mrs. P. wilted, sitting there on the pink bedspread. “I'd have thought you'd be grateful, seeing as where you'd come from.”

I'd rather sleep on an old mattress in a crack addict's apartment and eat saltines for every meal if I could have my mother's arms around me. My mother's hand to hold across the street, my mother's breath against my ear, my mother listening and touching and watching me as though I mattered. But you took that away from me, didn't you? You couldn't just be my guardian or my foster parent. No, you had to sever ties with my real mother, my flesh and blood, and you never bothered to ask me.

“We always got you the top medical care, even tests and doctors our insurance didn't cover.” Mrs. P.'s voice grew stronger, as if now she was trying to convince herself as well as Rose. “And now you're really worrying us. We're back with the silent treatment, and I'm wondering if you've got some kind of eating disorder on top of everything else.” Rose accidentally made eye contact after that one, but she quickly looked away.

“Oh, you think I haven't noticed? I notice a lot more than you think I do, but sometimes I pretend to be oblivious because it's clear you want your space from us. From me.” Pause—no sigh this time. “
What
is going on?”

Rose tried not to react. She focused instead on the pastels, her fingers itching to try them out, to let them race across a sketchbook page as if they had a mind of their own.

Another sigh, but this one was long and drawn out, like a slow leak from a helium balloon. Long enough to count as three sighs—
six, seven, and eight
. Mrs. P. hunched her shoulders and placed her hands together like she was praying, looking up at the cracking plaster on the ceiling.

“Sometimes, I wonder if I was ever meant to have kids.” Her skin bunched up near her eyes and it looked like she might cry. “I gave you everything we were too poor to have when I was a kid. But I've gotten nothing back from you. No respect. No love.”

News flash. You can't buy a kid's love
.
You could have bought me the moon and all the stars in the sky and let me eat ice cream at every meal and still—you wouldn't have been my mother.
Rose took another peek at Mrs. P. and saw that her eyes were full. Rose didn't feel sorry for her, though, not one bit. Okay, so if she was honest, maybe a little bit.

Didn't you think I might miss my mom? Didn't you think I might like a phone call or a card every once in a while? But every time I've ever brought it up, you cut me off and changed the subject.

“I wanted a child—a little girl—so badly that I could think of nothing else. I knew I would do for you what no one ever did for me. I made sure you never had to go to school in hand-me-down clothes. I remember being so happy—things seemed to be going so well at first.

“But then, you changed and I didn't know what to do with you.” Sigh—
nine
. “You know, no one ever shows you how to parent. You just have to figure it out as you go.” Sigh—
ten
. “I'm not apologizing, mind you. I know I did my best. You were so damaged by your early experiences, and I did my best to help you.” Mrs. P. sounded like she was trying to sell Rose something, and Rose wasn't buying.

Rose stared straight at Mrs. P.'s nose. “Okay, last thing, Oh Silent One. Because we're so worried about you, your father and I are re-evaluating our decision to keep you out of school. I know it's the middle of the first semester, but if you want to go back, you can.” Rose looked at Mrs. P. carefully. That offer seemed a whole lot like a piece of sharp cheddar cheese wedged inside a mouse trap.

For a moment, Rose considered it. She thought about sitting with Becca in the quad while she snapped bubblegum, walking from class to class, working her locker combination. But then she remembered her plan. No—going back to school would only complicate things. So slowly, Rose shook her head back and forth.