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“Oh.” She racked her brain for something that sounded medical or professional. Oozing sores? Would those help? Contagious foot fungus? Multiple personalities? She could make a case for that last one.
“Good. Stick with your partner. Everybody always wants to change at first.” He piled up his papers and stood to leave. “You’ll do fine.”
God is subtle. But not malicious.
—Albert Einstein
The ferocity was back on Valia’s face, and it was more ferocious than ever. They were due in the hospital again, this time for the double whammy of blood testing for Valia’s kidneys and physical therapy for her knee. She’d refused to get into the car with Carmen, on account of Carmen’s allegedly holding the steering wheel wrong. So Carmen was steering Valia down the sidewalk in her wheelchair, much like a mother pushing the stroller of a very grumpy baby.
Ashes to ashes, diapers to diapers, strollers to strollers, gums to gums, Carmen mused as she pushed Valia along. Who said she hadn’t gotten a babysitting job this summer?
There was a reason she was breezing along the two-plus miles to the hospital in the very teeth of the mid-July heat, but she did not yet know his name. And anyway, how much better it was to be outside, sharing Valia with the universe rather than having her in a small dark room, all to herself.
With one hand on the wheelchair, Carmen opened her phone with the other hand and pushed the Lena button.
“Hi,” Carmen said when Lena answered. “Are you done work?”
“I have lunch and dinner shifts,” Lena said. “I’m on break.”
“Oh. Listen—”
Carmen broke off, because Valia had snapped her head around and was scowling, the lines around her mouth deepening. “I don’t vant to hear you talk on the phone,” Valia declared. “And how you can push with vun hand?”
“You have to go,” Lena said knowingly, sympathetically.
“Oh, yes.” Carmen snapped the phone shut. Ferocity was etching lines on her face too. One of the advantages of a baby over Valia, say, was that not only were babies considerably cuter but also they couldn’t talk.
Carmen pushed the last mile with a clenched jaw. At the hospital she went first to the kidney floor, number eight. As Valia barked at other, non-Carmen people who were trying miserably to help her, Carmen got to roam around in the hallway. In forty minutes she saw many faces pass, but not the one she wanted to see.
It wasn’t until they reached the knee floor, number three, and Carmen had been prowling that hallway for twenty minutes that she saw the guy whom she did not yet hate poke his head around the corner. When he saw her, the rest of his body came too.
“Hey!” he said, striding toward her and smiling. God, he could wear a pair of jeans. Had he grown even better-looking in the days since she had seen him?
“Hey!” she said back. Her stomach reacted forcefully to the sight of him.
“I realized I forgot to ask you your name last time,” he said. “I’ve been wondering for a week.”
“Did you come up with any ideas?” Carmen asked.
He thought. “Um…Florence?”
She shook her head.
“Rapunzel?”
“Nope.”
“Angela?”
She squinched up her nose in displeasure. She had a very fat second cousin named Angela.
“Okay, what?” he asked.
“Carmen.”
“Oh. Hmmm. Carmen. Okay.” He tilted his head, fitting her to her name.
“What about you?”
“My name is Win.” He said it sort of loud, as though he were expecting an argument.
Carmen narrowed her eyes. “Win?…As opposed to lose?”
“Win as opposed to…” He had a slightly pained look on his face. “Winthrop.”
“Winthrop?” She smiled. Had she known him long enough to tease him?
“I know.” He winced. “It’s a family name. I hated it from the beginning, but I didn’t learn to talk till I was two, and by that time it had stuck.”
She laughed. “Why do we let other people name us?”
“Yeah,” he said indignantly. “Why? Somebody should change that.”
“I remember that skier in the Olympics,” Carmen recalled. “Her parents let her name herself and I’m pretty sure she chose Peekaboo.”
He nodded sagely. “Well, yeah, there is that.”
She smiled. Win. Huh. Win, Win, Win, Win. She didn’t mind at all.
“How’s your…” He pointed to her arm.
Not coincidentally, she was wearing her most flattering sleeveless shirt, which offered a long view of her tanned, curvy upper arm. Both of her arms, actually.
“It’s fine. Practically all better.”
“Good.”
“How’s Valia doing? Ligament, right? Anterior cruciate?”
She nodded happily. Carmen’s main problem with guys was that she had nothing to say to them. She loved the fact that she and Win (Win, Win, Win) had all these things to talk about even though they didn’t know each other.
“Carmen? Caaaaarmen?”
It was the sound that chilled her blood, that dried her bones and made her lunch crawl back up her throat. Carmen tried to keep her face bright. “That would be Valia. She needs me. I better go.”
“She doesn’t sound happy,” Win observed.
“Well…” Carmen bit her lip. She didn’t want to vent her suffering to Win. It just seemed wrong here. “Valia’s had a rough time.” She dropped her voice to a low volume. “She lost her husband less than a year ago, and she had to move here from the beautiful island in Greece where she was born and spent her entire life and…” Carmen felt genuinely sad for Valia as she described it. “She’s just really…sad.”
Win looked solemn. “That does sound rough.”
“Yeah. I better go,” Carmen said. She wasn’t sure she could endure the Valia wail another time.
“She’s lucky about one thing, though,” Win called after her.
Carmen turned her head as she walked away, feeling her long hair swing over her shoulder like a girl in a movie.
“What’s that?”
“She has you.”
Lena felt too fragile to go back to drawing class for a few days. She knew her father would be watching her closely now. She waited until she felt strong enough for a confrontation before she dared to go back.
She asked Annik if they could talk during the long break, and Annik agreed. This time Lena led the way to the courtyard. Annik had been so pleased when Lena had first told her about RISD. Annik rattled on about all the teachers she knew there. Now, with the change in plans, Lena felt like she had to tell her that, too.
“So he says I can’t go. They won’t pay for it,” Lena explained numbly.
Annik’s mouth narrowed. Her dark eyes widened within their frames of reddish eyelashes. She seemed to hold back. She probably knew it didn’t help to trash a person’s parent, no matter what he’d done. “He says you can’t go or he won’t pay for it?” she asked finally, flatly.
“I guess both. I can’t go if they don’t pay.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Lena shrugged. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“You should. People go to art school who don’t have any money. There are two ways. I’m guessing that you wouldn’t qualify for financial aid?”
Lena shook her head. They lived in a big, nice house with a pool. Her father was a successful lawyer. Her mother had a good income.
“Then you’ll have to win a merit scholarship,” Annik said.
“How do you do that?” Lena was afraid to be hopeful.
“I could call my friend—” Annik stopped herself. She put her hands together.
Lena counted Annik’s rings, nine altogether.
“If I were you,” Annik went on, changing course, “I’d go on the Web site or call them up and find out. And if they tell you no, then ask some more questions until you get somebody to tell you yes.”
> Lena looked doubtful. “I’m not really good at that kind of thing.”
