was the best place you visited?” I ask finally, not so much because I want to know—it’s almost safer not to, I think—but because I can’t imagine what else to ask him and the quiet shreds my nerves. There’s a map of the United States stenciled in bright paint on the blacktop. I wonder if small things like that will ever stop making me sad about everything I missed out on. “What was your favorite?”
Sawyer glances at me once, like he’s surprised, and then thinks a moment. “Nashville,” he decides eventually. “You would really like Nashville.”
I hum a little, noncommittal. “Would I.”
“Yeah, Reena,” he tells me. “I think you would.”
“Out,” Hannah says, quite clearly, and Sawyer grins.
“Out?” he repeats.
“Out!”
“Okay, then. Out it is.” He lifts her from the swing and sets her on the ground; she toddles happily toward the sandbox, quick and unsteady. “My mom says it’s been good for her,” he tells me. “Hannah, I mean, having all her grandparents around, and you, and—” He smiles, a little shyly. “She says she’s really smart.”
Well, that gets my attention. “Your mom said that?” I ask, disbelieving—Hannah’s smart all right, but if it has anything to do with the keen interest shown by her grandparents, then I’m the Cardinal of Rome. “Seriously?”
“Uh, yeah.” Sawyer looks suddenly uncomfortable, like he thinks he’s possibly misstepped—it’s not an expression I remember from back when we were together, him so sure of himself all the time. “Why, is that not … ?”
It boggles me a little, though not as much as you’d think. Lydia’s probably pulling out every stop she can think of to get Sawyer to stick around this time, and if that means convincing him that everybody gets along great around these parts, that we’re all some kind of modern, blended family—well, then, so be it. Still, for some reason I don’t have it in me to give her away, not explicitly: It feels like a lot of work for nothing, on top of which it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility that there’s some small part of me hoping it will work and he’ll stay.
I shrug. “No, she’s definitely something,” I say, not bothering to qualify which
Sawyer looks at me like he’s not totally buying what I’m selling; he doesn’t push me on it, though, like maybe we’ve got some tacit agreement to play nice with each other on this hot, sunny afternoon. “So, hey,” he says instead, as we follow Hannah on a scenic tour of the playground, sun bleaching white on the back of her neck. She squats down to grab a handful of sand and almost loses her balance, and I reach out a steadying hand. “Are you still writing?”
I laugh before I can stop it, a low angry cackle like the Wicked Witch of the West. I try not to feel bitter. It doesn’t always work. “No,” I tell him. “No, not really.”
Sawyer frowns. “That’s too bad.”
“It’s fine,” I say, hoping he’ll drop it, but:
“Why’d you stop?”
“Because.” I shrug and dig some sunscreen out of my bag for the baby. It’s possible this isn’t even the real answer, but at the moment it’s the best I can do. “You can’t be a travel writer if you’ve never gone anywhere.”
Sawyer takes some time to absorb that. With the hat, it’s kind of hard to see his face. “Fair enough,” he says after a minute, and he doesn’t ask me any questions after that. Instead he looks at the swing set, at the baseball diamond, at Hannah. He squats down in the sand and digs in.
We get home and my father is fixing himself a snack in the kitchen, leftover chicken and rice from the other night, skinless and low-fat like Soledad always makes for him. The radio croons, the public jazz station out of Miami that he likes. “Hi,” I say, putting Hannah in her chair and pushing her sweat-dampened hair off her face. I collect a few stray Cheerios from this morning, toss them into the sink.
My father nods at me, impassive. His cholesterol and blood pressure medications are lined up along the counter. In the last year or so he’s put on weight.
“We were at the park,” I tell him.
“So I heard.” He nods again.
“With Sawyer,” I continue.
“So I heard.” Mother of God, he nods a third time.
“What’s that?”
That makes me mad. “You know what,” I say, an edge in my voice I can’t totally file down. “Him being here. Any of it.”
My father sighs. “Reena, I don’t really see that there’s anything to talk about. You know how I feel. You make your own choices. Do what you want.” This morning’s paper sits on the table, and he opens it to the international news. “There’s food,” he says, without looking up.
“Okay,” I say finally, and open the refrigerator. “Just … okay.”
Not so long ago, in my art class we read about the Renaissance and how for a long time afterward it was almost impossible for Italian artists to make anything. All that history there already, they figured. What was the point?
18
Before
“I think you’re sticky,” my father was telling my brother as I came out of the kitchen one windy Saturday night at the restaurant, Homecoming weekend of my third and, with any luck, final year of high school. There was a dance I could have gone to. I picked up an extra shift instead. It was after midnight and Antonia’s was empty, my work shoes squeaking on the hardwood floor.
“Well, what is it? It’s like, a—What’s the word? It starts with a P.” That was Cade, leaning against the bar in his discount-warehouse suit—he’d gotten promoted that fall, was managing days and some weekends. He and his fiancee, Stef, were saving up to buy a house.
“It’s a plasma,” Sawyer said. He was unloading glasses from the dishwasher behind the bar, and he smiled at me as I approached. “Here, ask Reena. Reena will know.”
“What will I know?” I set my plate full of pancakes on the bar and hopped up on a stool. My hair was falling out of its braid, I could feel it.
“Okay,” said Cade, around a mouthful of bar pretzels. “Reena. If I throw a bucket of blood on you”—he paused dramatically—“are you wet?”
I blinked. “What?”
“Are you wet,” my father repeated, like this was somehow a logical question. He was festive and silly tonight—he got like that sometimes, around the boys. It made him seem younger than he was.
I set my fork down. “First of all, that’s disgusting. Second of all”—I turned to Sawyer—“why is that something I would know?”
“’Cause you’re smart,” he replied reasonably. “And smart people know stuff.”
“Oh, well, in that case.” I rolled my eyes, dorkily pleased. I’d taken the SATs again that morning, as a matter of fact, trying to pull my math score up even more—the next in a logical sequence of steps, I thought, toward getting the hell out of town. “Anyway, I think he’s right. I think you’re more sticky than you are wet.”
“Ha. Good girl,” my father said, vindicated. He kissed the top of my head. “I’m going to get out of here before Soledad calls the police. You want to come with me, or have Cade drive you after he closes?”
“Um.” I hesitated, looking in every conceivable direction except for the one I wanted to be looking in. I
