Her mom continued scrubbing, then finally said, “I have no place to go.”
What was going on now? Was her mom depressed? Marissa was tempted to blurt out, What’s wrong, Ma, boyfriend trouble? She managed to keep this to herself but couldn’t help smirking.
“What’s so funny?” her mom asked.
“Nothing,” Marissa said. “Why?”
Her mom gave her a look, then continued scrubbing- too hard, like she was trying to sand a piece of wood. Finally, maybe to herself, she said, “We have to find a new maid.”
Marissa had been trying not to think about Gabriela; it was too sad. “Is there anything new about that?” she asked.
“No,” her mom said, and she finally stopped scrubbing and dropped the wipe into the garbage. “But can you believe her sister called and asked me if we’d pay to have the body shipped to South America?”
“What did you say?”
“She was so upset, I didn’t want to be rude. I said I’d have to discuss it with my husband.”
“That was nice of you, I guess. I mean, we still don’t know for sure Gabriela had anything to do with the robbery, right?”
“Oh, come on, you sound like Dad now. She was dating that guy Sanchez, for God’s sake.”
She didn’t know what was up with her mom’s attitude, why she was acting so irritable. She wondered if it had to do with her affair. Maybe she was feeling guilty or something.
“I can’t believe she and that guy were together,” Marissa said. “I had so many talks with her about boyfriend stuff, you know, and I didn’t think she’d been with a guy since her fiancй died. She’d never said anything about any guy named Carlos.”
“She obviously had a lot of secrets,” her mother said. Then she made a face, as if she’d caught herself saying something she hadn’t meant to-Gee, Marissa thought, what ever could that be?- and said quickly, “Anyway, the answer’s no, I’m not paying to have her body shipped anywhere.”
“How much do they want?” Marissa asked.
“What difference does it make?”
“I mean if it’s only, like, a thousand dollars-”
“I’m not giving them a thousand dollars, I’m not giving them one dollar, I’m not giving them one penny. That woman hurt us, don’t you get it?”
Well, so much for trying to have a conversation with her mom. Marissa took her coffee and went back to her room, back to her PC. From now on maybe she should just stay in her room all the time, not even talk to her parents. Her parents should stay in different rooms, too. Maybe they’d all get along better if they never had to see each other.
She checked her blog and saw that she’d already gotten sixteen responses in the backlog, mostly from friends, but a few from random Web acquaintances. Everyone was very supportive, writing about how sorry they were and how bad they felt, et cetera. Marissa added her own comment, thanking everybody and writing that she was “feeling a little better today.” Then she checked Yahoo! Messenger and MySpace to see which of her friends were online and started IM- ing with Sarah, a friend from Vassar. Sarah lived with her boyfriend in Boston, but she said she was coming into the city tonight and planning to stay for a few days with her brother in Hell’s Kitchen. Marissa was excited. Hanging out with Sarah would be a great distraction from all the crap that was going on in her life.
Sarah typed, So you going to the party at D’s to night?
“D’s” meant Darren’s, but Marissa didn’t know about any party. Hmm, strange, what was up with that? She hadn’t heard from Darren at all the last couple of days, come to think of it, and hadn’t even gotten any response to the SOS e-mail she’d sent him about how he had to get rid of his drugs before Detective Clements busted him. Now that Clements had found out that the break- in had nothing to do with Marissa or her friends, she doubted he’d wasted his time with some low- level drug dealer, which meant Darren was blowing her off because (a) he was pissed off at her for trying to rat him out or (b) he wanted to make her think he was pissed off at her for trying to rat him out. Darren had played immature, hot- and- cold head games with her before, so choice (b) was much more likely. He was probably trying to get her to contact him and be all apologetic and clingy.
Marissa thought about it for several more seconds, then typed, What party?
Sarah typed, You weren’t invited???? and Marissa replied, Nope. Then Sarah typed, thats such bullshit hold a sec.
Perfect. Sarah was a big drama queen and loved stirring things up. If Sarah got Marissa the invite, at least it wouldn’t look like she was desperate.
Waiting for Sarah to get back to her, Marissa checked out the Daily News article about the shooting, the one her mom had told her to avoid. God, it was like a freaking nightmare. Anyone who read it would think her father was a nutcase or something. She felt bad for her dad, but she was angry at him, too, for dragging her and her mom into this. Their names were right there in the paper, for the whole world to see. She wondered if it would blow over or if for the rest of her life when people found out she was Adam Bloom’s daughter they’d hate her, treat her like she was Charles Manson’s daughter or something. She was so panicked that she researched how to change her name. It was apparently complicated for post- 9/11 security reasons, but it was doable. Her middle name was Suzanne, so she could be Marissa Suzanne. She was going to seriously consider doing it if things got any worse.
She was still reading the article when she heard a beep, announcing a new IM. She switched screens and saw that Sarah had invited Darren into their IM session. Darren was playing dumb, writing that of course she was invited to the party and he was so sorry he forgot to tell her about it. Meanwhile, it was so obvious that he hadn’t invited her on purpose to try to get her upset. What he was doing was so immature, so ju nior high school.
So, you going? Sarah typed. Marissa replied, yeah I’ll be there, and Darren wrote, Sweet.
Marissa was nauseous.
The rest of the day, Marissa browsed job listings and sent out a few rйsumйs, but she wasn’t hopeful. She thought she had a great cover letter that she tailored for each job she applied to, but no one seemed interested in hiring her, and she was running out of places to apply to. Suddenly afraid she was going to be unemployed and living with her parents forever, she downloaded grad school applications for master’s programs in art history from a number of schools including Yale, Bard, and Brown. She doubted she’d actually apply to the schools- she wasn’t sure if she wanted to go to grad school at all, and she definitely didn’t want to go for a year or two- but at least it made her feel like she had a fallback plan.
Her mom had gone out shopping, and when she returned Marissa wanted to avoid another depressing conversation, so she stayed in her room and locked the door. She read an e-mail from her friend Jen: don’t know if you saw this yet, this really sucks but thought you’d want to read it anyway, sorry. Marissa clicked on the link to Daily Intel, where there was another scathing article about her dad. This one was an interview, and her dad sounded like he was boasting about the shootings, like he was so proud of himself. God, what the hell was wrong with him anyway? Weren’t things bad enough? Did he really have to go ahead and make an even bigger ass of himself? People actually read that blog; people Marissa knew read that blog. This was starting to get seriously embarrassing. Jen had already read the article, and she loved to blab and would probably tell everybody she knew, and Marissa and Jen knew pretty much the same people.
At around seven, Marissa left to meet Sarah for drinks at some new bar in midtown. As Sarah went on about how happy she was in Boston with her boyfriend in their great new apartment, Marissa couldn’t help feeling a little jealous. She’d hooked up a few times with Darren and one night with the bass player from Tone Def, but she hadn’t had a serious boyfriend since ju nior year of college, in, God, almost two years.
Later, in the cab to the party, Marissa felt so desperate that she was seriously considering sleeping with Darren tonight. But then she weighed all the pros and cons and only came up with a long list of cons. The only reason she’d gotten involved with Darren at all over the past few years was because she hadn’t had much choice. The ratio of girls to guys at Vassar had been high to begin with, and the ratio of girls to straight guys had been even higher. Things were so bad for girls that a lot of Marissa’s friends had been lesbians in college, or at least bi, but the idea of being a LUG- lesbian until graduation- hadn’t appealed to Marissa so whenever she got really hard up she wound up settling for Darren. It wasn’t that he wasn’t good- looking, because she actually thought he was pretty cute- tall and lanky with short curly hair and big brown eyes; goofy, but in a cool way, like Josh Groban. The problem was she didn’t feel any real connection with him. They didn’t have a lot in common, and whenever she
