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The next morning, I payfor it.
I wake up with a pounding headache and a vague memory of our finishing off her bottle of Jameson. The sun is up, the light in my bedroom is blinding, and I can barely open my eyes in the glare. I look at the clock and groan when I see it’s already noon. Never again will I try to keep up with Agnes. Some superhero I am, when a seventy-eight-year-old woman can drink me under the table.
I sit up, rubbing my temples. Through the pounding in my head I hear the chime of the doorbell.
The last thing I want is visitors, but I’m expecting a package from Vince so I slide my feet into slippers and shuffle to the foyer. I’m taken aback when I open the front door and find Tricia Talley standing outside instead of the UPS guy. These past few weeks she’s put her parents through hell; now she’s standing on my porch, her eyes downcast, her shoulders slumped.
“I found this wedged in your door,” she says and hands me an advertising circular for the local pizza joint.
“Tricia.” I sigh. “I know you’re not here just to hand me coupons.”
“No.”
“You want to come in?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Look, can you just wait in the living room for a few minutes? I had a really late night, so give me a chance to get dressed, and I’ll be right out.”
I go back to my bedroom to splash water on my face and comb my hair. As I pull on jeans and a fresh blouse, I wonder why on earth that girl has suddenly turned up to talk to me.Isthat why she’s here, just to talk? Or will I walk out to discover she’s made off with my silver or something? With teenagers, you just never know.
When I come back out, she’s not in the living room where I left her. I smell coffee brewing and I follow the scent to the kitchen, where Tricia is standing at the counter, pouring coffee for both of us. She sets the cups on the table and sits, looking at me expectantly. I don’t remember my kids drinking coffee at age sixteen, but obviously she not only drinks it, she knows how to brew it.
Point for Tricia.
As I sit down, I see her hands clenching and unclenching, as if she can’t decide whether fists are necessary for this particular conversation.
“It’s my fault, what happened,” she says. “I mean, I’m not the one who screwed up everything in the first place, but Ididmake it all worse.”
“I’m not quite following this conversation.”
“It’s all because of biology class.”
“Now I’mreallynot following it.”
“See, just before the school year ended, we did this lab about genetics. We had to poke ourselves in the finger and collect our own blood.” She winces at the memory. “I hated that. Sticking myself.”
I nod in sympathy. “I could never do it myself. My lab partner had to poke me.”
She frowns. “Youdid biology?”
“Yes, Tricia. Believe it or not, I was in high school once. I got in fights with my parents too. And by the way, I was a very popular girl. What does all this stuff about biology class have to do with anything?”
“We were studying blood types. You know, A, B, O. And after we poked ourselves, we were supposed to type our own blood. I found out I’m B positive. Which is, like, nine percent of the population. Not that unusual.”
“Okay.”
“So then, ’cause we’re learning about principles of genetics and how blood types are inherited, I wanted to find out my mom’s and dad’s blood types, for an extra-credit paper.”
Uh-oh.And that is where our education system fails us. It doesn’t foresee disasters. It doesn’t plan for the consequences of too much knowledge.
“My mom keeps her blood donor card in her wallet, so I already knew she was A positive. Then I asked my dad, and he told me he was O positive. That’s when I knew.” She took a deep breath. “There isnopossible way you can cross an A positive mother with an O positive dad and end up with a B positive kid, okay?” With an angry swipe of her hand, she dashed away tears. “My mom denied it, but I knew she was lying. I couldn’t stand to look at her. I couldn’t stand to see her and my dad together, pretending everything was fine, while all the time I knew.” She looks straight at me. “That’s why I took off. I had to get away from them for a while. But Ididcall my dad, to let him know I was okay. He tracked me down at my friend’s house and started yelling at me about how ungrateful I am and what a little shit Iam, and I just couldn’t hold it in. I told him he isn’t even my dad. I told him we’ve all been living a lie.”
“You’rethe one who told him?”
Her head drooped. “That was a mistake.”
“Then he didn’t hear this from any private detective.”
