Free Lipstick Apology by Jennifer Jabaley Page B

“Available?”
    â€œI mean, she was always there for me. Like, when I got up in the mornings, she was already up, making breakfast. And when I came home from school, she wanted to know about my classes, and my friends, and tennis. She liked to cook. She listened to books on CD all day long while she did housework. Dad said those stupid earphones made her deaf, and she couldn’t hear thunder.”
    Anthony laughed.
    â€œShe was a bit volume-challenged,” I said. “My dad, he was an engineer, kind of quiet, very organized. He would buy duplicates of things he liked. When he found a pair of sunglasses he liked, he’d buy ten pair of them. Every night he’d come home and empty the change from his pockets. Then he’d stack the coins into neat piles on his dresser. It used to drive my mom crazy, those stacks of coins. He would always surprise me.”
    â€œSurprise you? Like how?” Anthony asked.
    I thought for a minute. “Well, one day we were eating dinner and we got on the topic of things we love. I said I loved jeans with a little bit of stretch, and I loved when I hit a back-hand stroke right down the line. Mom said she loved movies that made her laugh and cry at the same time. I’m expecting Dad to say he loved a perfectly grilled steak or season tickets to the Eagles, when he said, I love streets where the trees bend over and canopy the road. And I love Emily’s laugh. My mom got teary-eyed and said, Yes, I love that too. ”
    â€œYour parents sound like they were really great people.” Anthony got up and retrieved his calculator off the floor. He looked at me with a hint of a smile. “ You surprise me.”
    â€œOh, yeah?” I asked. “How?”
    He smiled sort of a secret smile. “You’re different than most of the girls this side of Houston Street. You’re honest and, I don’t know, just a little bit crazy.”
    With horror, I felt a lump in the back of my throat. I looked away. “So, tell me about your parents.”
    Anthony leaned on the table and rested his chin in his hand. “Mom’s a hard worker—never complains about anything except her weight. She wants that gastric bypass surgery, but she says she can’t get it because it would hurt business. She thinks people wouldn’t buy from a skinny baker. She calls me. Constantly. Now she’s discovered how to text. It’s a total nightmare. She texts me jokes all the time. Whose mom does that?” He chewed on his pencil for a minute. “My dad was a firefighter.”
    â€œWas?” I asked.
    Anthony nodded. “He died when I was five. He pulled a woman out of a burning building in Woodside, then went back to get the dog. He never came back out.”
    He said this matter-of-factly. I’m sure there was pain, but he was able to control his emotions as if we were discussing the weather. Maybe time does heal all wounds, I thought.
    â€œI’m sorry about your dad,” I said reflexively, even though I hated it when people apologized for my parents’ death.
    â€œIt was a long time ago,” he said. “I was really young, but I remember how hard it was. How unexpected—our total lack of preparation. Everything was so fresh, every detail available for scrutiny. You think it’ll be that way forever—but here’s the thing—life just keeps on going. People are forgotten and details get fuzzy. You have to work really hard to both let go and hold on.”
    I nodded, realizing that perhaps this was why I instantly felt so comfortable around Anthony, because we had experienced such similar things.
    â€œI look at Dad’s picture,” Anthony said. “And that helps me remember his smile. But I can’t hear his voice anymore.”
    I wondered when the scrawled writing on a tray table would become a distant memory and no longer pierce my heart daily. “Well, maybe it’s better,” I