Page 24 of A Bookish Story

“Very much so,” I lie.

Honestly we are both much better on paper. Pepper will eventually hear the entire interview and know then that I’ve promised Ryan will deliver another book. The publisher will rejoice, I imagine, and so will his agent. I bet if they throw enough money at him, he will do it. Miserably, but he will.

Pepper points from the screen. “Remember I’m only a phone call or an email away. And though it’s not official, it looks like Soulmates is already gaining ground and may take another run at the list!”

“Great,” Ryan says, not convincingly.

Pepper disconnects and for a long moment we simply stare at each other.

Two placements on the list. For a book without a real ending. Sometimes life isn’t fair.

“I’m no longer feeling guilty that I practically promised everyone another book.”

“You shouldn’t have done that. Now we have to deal with those questions all over again.”

“Yes, I know! We’ll have to figure something out if you continue to refuse to write another book with an actual ending.”

Ryan shakes his head and I know the discussion is over. For now.

CHAPTER 9

When I get home later that afternoon, there’s an email waiting for me from my mother.

To: theghostwriter@hotmail

From: Geneva.Santana

As I said before, I would very much like to come and see you and help choose your dress. I’ve been to so many award shows and galas and I know which dress will be most flattering for your particular body type. Please don’t tell me you’ve already decided on one. I will pay for the wedding dress; money is no object. I know Christopher’s family has money, but don’t forget I starred for years in Desperate Hearts. I couldn’t have lived in Los Angeles for all these years without money, could I?

Ladies and gentlemen, my mother. The soap opera star. The woman who inserts herself into my life whenever there’s drama to be had because she doesn’t leave the histrionics for the screen. I’ve been avoiding her and haven’t told her about my broken engagement, not that we have the kind of relationship where I’ll cry my heart out on her shoulder. She went off to pursue her dream of being an actress in Hollywood, wound up in Puerto Rico for a time on a telenovela, then graduated to soap operas in Los Angeles by way of New York. However, she was killed off Desperate Hearts a few years ago and there hasn’t been much success since then.

But even if I’m only a short plane ride away, I haven’t seen her in five years.

Unlike me, my mother remains the definition of cool. I’d hoped to have her level of sophistication, but I’ve never fully understood fashion. My idea of style is to wear the latest trends and hope they flatter my particular body shape. This happens about two out of ten times so the odds are never in my favor.

The Geneva Santana shape was always in style. Mami was long legged and slender, with the kind of shapely breasts that accentuate but don’t take over the landscape. Later I would learn how much surgery she had in order to look the way she does, even before turning forty. Eddie said she was beautiful, like me, before all the “plastic stuff” ruined her, perhaps ever so conscious of how much I resemble my mother.

The last time I visited her I’d boarded the plane to Los Angeles as a thirteen-year-old unaccompanied minor. I hadn’t seen my mother for a year, and I had so much to tell her. My body had changed, was still changing, and I’d been indoctrinated into the society of monthly menses. Fun times. My moods shifted from Texas hot to Alaska cold and Eddie, with whom I’d always had a close relationship, avoided me, as if I was a creature from another planet. My abuelita and tias did their best, taking me to the pharmacy and instructing me as to the particulars. As luck would have it, I was the first of the female cousins to “become a woman” so I became the practice they would need for their own daughters.

As I boarded the plane that summer, and said goodbye to my cousins, I knew that I’d come back a much hipper version of myself. Mami would be so happy to see me she wouldn’t notice all the extra weight that had bunched on since last year. For reasons not quite clear to me, most of my clothes didn’t fit, and I kept going up in sizes until my tias shopped for me in the women’s section. I thought that since I was a woman, like Mami, we would talk like besties, stay up all night, and she’d give me tips on hair and makeup. We’d go shopping for the best designer clothes and have lunch in Beverly Hills.

But instead, my mother picked me up at the airport with her new husband. Sebastian “Seb” Caballero, a telenovela producer. He was the first man I’d ever seen her with besides my father. Not that I would have ever loved him anyway, but I found him oily, loud, and hairy. Privately I’d always expected Mami would never remarry because she’d loved my father too much to compare to any other man. Seb was the evidence my mother had moved on, and I hated him for that in the way only teens can. That first encounter with Seb was the first time a man spoke Spanish in front of me expecting I didn’t understand a word of it simply because my hair was blonde.

“Ella esta muy gordita,” he’d said with a chuckle as he drove us out of the airport lot.

“My daughter speaks fluent Spanish, Seb,” Mami said.

Her new husband had just called me “very chubby.” It wasn’t the first time I’d heard myself called chunky, but not by any member of my family. Seb wasn’t my family, not technically, and by the sound in my mother’s artic-freeze tone, I knew she would defend me. Any minute now she’d chime in and explain I was her daughter, therefore, this had to be simply a stage I was going through. She would take me to find clothes that would flatter my figure and then hairy Seb would see I was gorgeous, no matter the size.

Instead, Mami muttered, “I can only imagine what they’re feeding her. It’s not her fault. Believe me, if I ate the way her father’s family does I’d be big too.”

And the way she looked at me…it wasn’t disappointment in her eyes. I knew disappointment. This was shame. Her mini-me was not living up to potential.

There almost wasn’t enough room in my still-growing body for the agony that pierced and pulsed through me. My own mother, embarrassed of me. She didn’t disagree with Seb when she had a chance, only offered her feeble explanation of why I might not be thin, like her. The subject of the shape of my body, or anyone else’s for that matter, was not a common one in a Latina household. In our culture, we ate good food, danced, and enjoyed life. Some people were bigger than others and this did not concern us.

That evening, we had salad for dinner. A green salad with five croutons. This was the summer for me to discover carbs were the devil. My mother nearly starved me, even taking me to her doctor for the “stars.”

“She’s a beautiful girl as you can see, is there anything we can do?” my mother asked, wringing her hands, sounding like I might be dying, and he should for the love of God, save me.