Chapter 2 #3
“I mean that my grandfather, a man I didn’t know very well, offered to have me come stay with him for the summer. He asked me to intern at his company here, in the Detroit area,” he explained. “We got along and he said that he would pay for my education.”
“You must have made a good impression. I could see that happening.”
“Could you?” he asked me, and I nodded.
“You made a good impression on me. I was remembering how you didn’t tap the glass.”
“Pardon?”
“When I said that your fish were lethargic, you didn’t go up and tap the glass, which is something that they hate.
” There were other things that had impressed me, other qualities that I’d noticed in him.
But I didn’t know him well and I was trying not to move too fast. My sisters had lectured me about jumping into relationships like that.
“You hardly know the guy,” Brenna had said not very long ago. “What’s his last name?” When I hadn’t been able to answer, she’d shaken her fist in triumph. “Then you can’t go to Borneo with him! By the way, you would need a passport for that and you can’t even find your driver’s license.”
“I’m glad that I made a good impression with my fish tank etiquette,” Theo said now. “I guess I did with my grandpa as well, but for other reasons. But again, I’m supposed to be interviewing you.”
“Go right ahead,” I encouraged.
“Ok. I bet that Regina will sit with us tomorrow morning to make sure I cover everything on her checklist, so I’ll ask a few questions that aren’t on it.” He thought for a moment. “What’s your favorite childhood memory?”
“My grandparents used to have a cottage up north and we would go visit them. Nicola would let me swim if she came with me, and she put her hands under my back so that I could float and look up at the sky. She smiled and the whole thing was so big, so much blue above me and under me.” I had loved that feeling.
I looked over at him because he had stopped walking and was looking at me with an expression of… I thought it was surprise.
“What?” I asked.
“What?” he echoed. “What? Uh, nothing. Who is Nicola?”
“She’s my biggest sister. I used to call her ‘Mom’ when I was little, though, because I got confused about who she was. She took care of me,” I explained. “What’s your favorite memory?”
“My favorite memory,” he echoed. We walked a few paces and he watched the fountain in the middle of the artificial lake. It sprayed water up into the rain that was falling harder now. “My favorite memory is riding horses. I grew up on a farm.”
I looked over at him, because he was lying—at least, he wasn’t telling the whole truth. “You don’t have to tell me the real one,” I said. “It’s ok. We don’t know each other very well. It’s too bad that we won’t get the chance.”
Now he looked back at me. “We won’t?”
“We might have become friends,” I said. Not now, of course. “Ask me more questions because I liked that one about the memory.”
“Ok, let’s see.” We walked a little way before he came up with another. “Do you have any hidden talents?”
“I can write backwards just as easily as I can write forwards,” I said. “It’s the same to me.”
“Mirror writing,” Theo said. “Did you start that when you were a kid?”
“Yes. I always could.”
“Are you left-handed?”
“I am.” He was an amazing guesser, or maybe that was a medical knowledge thing. “How about you?” I asked.
“I don’t think that I have any hidden talents.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I repeated. “Keep it hidden. It’s in the name, after all.”
He smiled for the second time. “I memorized the periodic table. Does that count?”
“It’s a good start. Any more questions?”
He had a few, mostly about my siblings since I’d mentioned my sisters several times in our conversations.
Anyway, they were the most interesting thing about me.
People always wanted to know about our big family and if my parents had planned for seven kids: Nicola first, then Sophie, Addie, Patrick and Juliet, Brenna, and me.
“I was definitely a mistake,” I said.
“How do you know that?”
“First, Brenna told me so. It would be easy to think that she was lying because she hates me and that she only said it to make me feel bad. But then I also heard it from my parents. My dad was kind of lamenting, ‘Why didn’t we stop after the twins?’” He had wanted to have a son, which was funny because he and my brother Patrick didn’t get along at all.
He was closest to Sophie, and she was the most like him.
“Your father made that remark in front of you?”
“No, he said it to my mother when they were arguing, and I was in the vent above their heads, listening. I fit in there until I was thirteen and grew breasts, and that was the year I got stuck. Both Brenna and I were born after the twins but I never told her that our dad didn’t want her, either.”
Theo looked uncomfortable, as people usually did when you talked about your breasts in a job interview. “I’m sorry you heard that. Do you often eavesdrop?” he asked me.
“Not in that vent. I would definitely get stuck now, because my chest is even bigger than when I was thirteen. Oh, sorry,” I said immediately. “I won’t talk about that. It was because I never knew what was going on.”
“No one had explained human development to you?” he asked. “Not even in school?”
“I knew about breasts. Sorry for bringing them up again, but you did ask,” I told him.
“I had to eavesdrop because I didn’t know what was happening in our family.
Everyone thought I was the baby and that they didn’t have to tell me things, or they kept secrets from me because they hated me.
That was mostly Brenna. Sometimes they thought that I would ruin stuff so I wasn’t allowed to know.
That was mostly Juliet, but also Sophie.
Patrick ignored me, and Addie was always nice but she was busy trying to make friends. Then I lost Nicola.”
He opened his mouth and then seemed to consider before he spoke. “Did she actually get lost, or did she pass away?”
“Neither. She went to college and moved out, then she started working all the time and she didn’t want to be around us for a few years.” That had been hard.
“I’m glad to hear that she’s all right. You’re shivering,” he said.
He was a doctor, so he was able to notice the physical signs of someone being cold like I was.
Maybe other people would have noticed too, since my arms below the short sleeves were dead white and covered in goose bumps. “We should go inside.”
“You go ahead,” I said, and I didn’t move. “It was nice talking with you. Maybe I’ll see you again someday.”
Theo stopped, too. “You will, because you’re supposed to come tomorrow morning. You’ll have to deal with Regina’s checklist if you want a job, even a temp position.”
“I understand that I won’t be hired. It’s ok,” I told him.
“I already know it, so we don’t need to waste our time.
” I had noticed how Regina was looking at me and now I’d just talked way, way too much about my breasts.
It was the kiss of death in an interview, that and mentioning insider information about unsolved murders.
“You don’t know how it will go,” he argued. “Neither does Regina and neither do I, in fact. She, Pinar, and I are a team and we’ll decide together. You should give us a chance.”
I still hesitated, because I had seen how Regina was looking at me when we left the office.
But maybe there was an easy fix. “I’m not wearing my interview outfit,” I mentioned.
That could make a difference. “Brenna picked it for me and she said that I was only allowed to wear exactly the clothes she chose, nothing else. She included shoes and underwear, and it’s warmer that way. ”
“Usually, when it gets colder, we wear something long-sleeved under our scrubs or Regina puts on a cardigan sweater,” he told me. “You’ll absolutely have to wear shoes every day.”
I nodded slowly, thinking that it was good advice. He hadn’t mentioned anything about underwear but I would put that on, too.
“Did she tell you about her kids? Sometimes she forgets and calls me her son’s name, especially when she gets mad.
” He had started to walk again, and since he had the umbrella, I went along with him.
“Regina and Pinar are actually great and I couldn’t get through the day without them.
I couldn’t get through an hour without them, and they need help. ”
That was what I had heard about him.
“It would be a relief to have someone in the office to help the fish, too. The tank was Dr. McGonagle’s idea and none of us took it on when he left. I’ve been worried ever since that ammonia scare.”
“Did it make you grind your teeth more?” I had asked Nicola about bruxism.
Theo put his hand on his cheek. “I’ve been meaning to make an appointment.”
We could do that when we got inside. He was asking me to give them a chance and they were doing the same thing for me. Also, it seemed to make sense that they would need a fish caretaker. If that was the main qualification for the job, then I would be a shoo-in.
Maybe this would all work better than I’d previously believed. I realized that I really hoped so.