Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson Page B

She’s dealing with it fine.”

    As he walks down the hall the music stops. The CD
    player cli-clicks and changes disks: Tchaikovsky, Swan Lake . Jennifer tells Emma to wipe the cheese sauce off her chin.
    Half an hour later, Dad opens the door to Mom. Her voice in the hall lashes me to my chair with prickly vines. The last time I saw her was August 31, the day I turned eighteen.
    I can’t see her see me now strong/empty/strong.
    The breakup with my mother was the same old story told a million times. Girl is born, girl learns to talk and walk, girl mispronounces words and falls down. Over and over again. Girl forgets to eat, fails adolescence, mother washes her hands of Girl, scrubbing with surgical soap and a brush for three full minutes, then gloving up before handing her over to specialists and telling them to experiment at will. When they let her out, Girl rebels.
    Mom walks into the dining room, and Jennifer vanishes, poof! It screws up the laws of physics for her to occupy the same room as the first wife.
    “Late rounds?” Dad asks.
    Mom ignores him and walks toward me. She kisses my cheek and pulls back to study me with her X-ray/MRI/
    CAT scan–vision. “How are you feeling?”
    “Great,” I say.
    “I’ve missed you.” She gives me another kiss, lips cool and chapped. When she sits in Jennifer’s chair, she winces. Her knees act up when the weather changes.
    “You look tired,” she says.
    “Pot calling the kettle black,” I say.
    Dr. Chloe Marrigan wears her fatigue like a suit of armor. To be the best, you have to give everything all the time, then you have to give some more: hundred-hour weeks, crushing patient loads, working miracles the way other people flip burgers. But tonight she looks worse than usual. I don’t remember seeing those lines around her mouth. Her corn-yellow hair is tamed into a tight French braid, but a few strands of silver hair flash in the candlelight. The skin on her face used to be tight as a drum. Now it’s sagging a little at her neck.
    Dad tries to make small talk again. “Was it an emergency surgery?”
    She nods. “Quintuple bypass. The guy was a mess.”
    “Will he make it?” Dad asks.
    She puts her pager next to Jennifer’s dirty fork.
    “Doubtful.” She measures the three bites of turkey left on my plate and the bread crumbs that I scattered next to it. “Lia looks pale. Has she been eating?”
    “Of course she has,” Dad says.
    It took her seven sentences to piss me off. That’s an Olympic-qualifying accomplishment. I lock my mouth, stand up, pick up my plate, pick up my father’s plate, and walk out of the room.
    Jennifer and Emma are at the kitchen table, a stack of flash cards between them so the quizzing of division facts can continue. I load the dishwasher as slowly as I can and signal the answers to Emma by drawing numbers in the air behind Jennifer’s back.
    Dad calls to me from the dining room. “Lia, come back in here, please.”
    “Good luck,” Jennifer murmurs as I leave the room.
    “Thanks.”
    I put Emma’s silverware on her plate, but Dad says,
    “Don’t worry about the dishes. We need to talk.”
    Talk = yell + scold + argue + demand.
    Dr. Marrigan pushes up the sleeves of her green silk turtleneck. Her nails are short and polish-free, the magic fingers connected to the hands connected to the forearms roped with steel muscle and tendons that lead to shoulders, neck, and bionic brain. Her fingertips drum the table. “Sit down, please,” she says.
    I sit.
    Daddy: Your mother has a concern.
    Mom: It’s more than a concern.
    Lia: About?
    Daddy: I told her that you’ve been fine since we got the news.

    Lia: He’s right.
    Mom, spine not touching the back of her chair: I’m afraid Cassie’s death might trigger you. The research shows—
    Lia: I’m not a lab rat.
    Mom glances at the blank screen of her pager, hoping it will go off.
    Lia: We stopped talking months ago.
    Mom: You were best friends for nine years. Not talking for a