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“Alfred didn’t realize until one of the other actresses confessed upon hearing what my mother had done. There was nothing he could have done to stop her. He was only doing his job. Alfred is a good person. One of the few. Good people don’t understand how bad people think. He’s spent his life trying to take care of me while the person who did it and those who knew what had happened continued acting and living their lives while forgetting their pasts. ‘They didn’t kill her, she killed herself. They’d only been messing around. This type of thing always happened’… they will make excuses until the end of time before they take responsibility.”
I now understood why my grandfather never let me go any deeper into the arts. I think every kid thinks at one point they’d like to be in the movies…but my grandpa always pushed me away from it. And I, being the easily distracted person I am, even worse so as a child, would find myself enjoying everything so I went to piano classes and volleyball club instead.
“You aren’t crying.”
I focused on him and found him staring at me intently, waiting to see how I’d react. I reached up to touch the corner of my eye.
“I guess not.”
“So you only cry for romances?” He teased.
“I guess so.”
“You know, your answers are a little disconcerting for a therapist.”
I smiled at that as I put my fork down and rested my elbows on the table. “Friend, remember? With a therapist’s ear then?”
He leaned forward too. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar,” he whispered. “When you aren’t talking you’re thinking, Oshaberi.”
I groaned as I put my hands to my face. “I hate that nickname so much.”
“I like it.”
“Only because no one is calling you that.”
“True. And now you’re deflecting.”
Why was he reading me so much? I guess it was fair to pry after I’d just drilled into his life. Frowning I looked down at my now empty plate… apparently I’d eaten on autopilot.
“My grandpa is a good person,” I said my voice barely above a whisper. “But I’m not.”
He frowned. “I don’t think everyone who came up to you to say good morning would agree.”
“That’s because they don’t know me. You don’t know me either.”
“Are you a serial killer?” He asked me.
“NO!” I said a little too loudly and a few people turned to stare at us. I nodded to them before glaring at him. “I don’t feel like a good person because… because I feel like a fraud some days. I try to do the right thing—be kind, respect and help others. But sometimes I feel like I’m doing it not because I really care about other people… but because I want people to think I’m a good person. Most people know who my grandpa is back in the city, so they know who my mother was, and so when people look at me it’s with this look of e
xpectation. Is she going to crash and burn and throw away her life like her mother? Or is she going to become something great like her grandfather? In school I didn’t want to be the loud black girl. So I didn’t speak much and buried myself in books. I dressed as rich as I possibly could because I didn’t want people thinking I had no class. I wanted to be the best so that I could make grandpa proud. So they would say good things about me. Look how well she plays Mozart. Did you know that she won the chess tournament? Oh, she clocked the most volunteer hours. She’s one of the good ones…I feel like I’m a fraud.”
“You’re not,” he replied and I realized he was sitting there again while I was merely talking and voicing my thoughts.
“You don’t—”
“I know bad people and bad people don’t care if they’re being fake. Bad people don’t worry about whether or not they’re being good for goodness sake. They don’t care. You do. And you do so thinking of others, therefore you are not a bad person, Esther Noëlle.”
“Could you say the same about yourself?”
He glanced back up at the poster on the wall. He didn’t need to think much because he was already nodding his head yes. “I’m a good person. I am not the best of the good people. I’m probably last among the good people, but I am a good person.”
I smiled as I rose from my seat. “As a good person will you accompany me to the festival tonight?”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Not a chance in hell.”
