Imperfect Spiral (30 page)

“I thought I'd walk,” I say. “It's not too far.”

“Let me drive you, Danielle.”

I really was looking forward to the walk. But Marissa has sort of an ache about her. Like she really wants to drive me home. So okay. She points down the street to where she's parked and we walk in that direction.

“I was surprised to see you here,” Marissa says. “I didn't realize you'd be speaking.”

That answers the question of whether she came to lend moral support: no.

“I guess I'm surprised to see you, too,” I say.

“It's … not like you, is it, to speak in front of people like that? At least not like the you that I know.”

“Hard to know how to take that,” I say. I suddenly realize that I haven't even thought about the wave of panic since Humphrey's image appeared to me, like Mom's cardinal, and suggested that I say something highly interesting.

“You did well,” she says. “Actually, outstanding. That's how you should take it.”

“Thanks. But, Marissa, why were you there?”

“There's this group,” Marissa says. “It's involved in promoting legal immigration. I'm starting to get a little bit involved in it.”

“Huh,” I say. “There were people yelling about
illegal
immigration in the meeting. I didn't hear anything about
legal
immigration. And anyway, the hearing was supposed to be about road safety.”

I'm being a little bit of a hypocrite here. After all, I'm the
one who brought up the immigration issue toward the end of my testimony. But I'm going to let myself be that much of a hypocrite.

“It wasn't supposed to be so rowdy,” Marissa says. “Actually, it wasn't supposed to be rowdy at all.” She explains that the man who asked to speak at the end of the evening was supposed to say something like, “These are the people of your community who support legal immigration and are concerned about unlawful immigration.” Members of their group—organized by the Alliance for Legal Immigration, just as Becca said—were then supposed to stand up. Quietly.

“I don't know why people starting yelling things out,” she says. “It's like, once they did, they acted like they had permission to do and say whatever they wanted.”

“It was pretty ugly,” I say.

“I want you to know that I wasn't there to yell and stomp around,” Marissa says. “If I'd known you were testifying, I probably wouldn't have come at all. Or I would have come for a different reason: to support you.”

“Okay,” I say. “But why do you say you might not have come at all? Because you're embarrassed by what you stand for?” I don't mean for that to sound as harsh as it probably does.

“Because I respect what you were trying to do,” she corrects me. “You were speaking from the heart. Other than you, everyone else was just repeating the same canned speeches we've all heard before. So it seemed fine to raise the issue that the
council always wants to duck—immigration. But as soon as you spoke, it wasn't fine to do it anymore. Except—it was too late to change the plan.”

“Well,” I say. “It's too bad you weren't in charge.”

“It is too bad,” she says, and we both smile. I think we both know that one of these days, Marissa will be in charge. Of something.

Marissa presses a button on her key, and a car twinkles.

Here I am, it says. This one.

A silver Volkswagen Jetta.

A shiny silver car.

We get in. In the darkness Marissa turns to me.

“I need to tell you something,” she says.

Matt and Martin had been arguing over the car. According to the infamous “car wheel” posted on the Martinezes' refrigerator, that Friday was Martin's turn to have the car. As a new driver, Martin wasn't allowed to have his friends as passengers in the car, because they're all under eighteen years old. That's one of the state's rookie driver rules.

“But—you drive Marco places,” I say. Marissa is not a rule-breaker.

“Yes. You can have family members as passengers. Immediate family members, but no one else, not until you get your full license.”

So Matt had heard Martin talking to one of his friends, James, making plans to pick him up to go to a movie with a group of their friends. Earlier, Matt had tried to get Martin to
change car days with him; Matt had his own plans downtown and didn't want to take buses and the subway to get there.

“He offered to drop Martin and James off at the movie on his way downtown,” Marissa says. “Mom or Dad could pick them up later. Martin said forget it. It was his turn to have the car, period. He also said Matt was wrong about him planning to drive James. But I knew he'd made plans to do that, too; he wasn't telling the truth.”

“Martin, not telling the truth?” I don't know him that well, but I've always thought of him as pretty much of a Boy Scout.

“He's changed this year—so much. My parents are blind to it because he's always been such a star. They'll be in for a shock when we get second-quarter grades. I don't think he'll qualify to play lacrosse next spring.”

“Wow.” A Martinez not on a school sports team.

“So this becomes a huge argument. Martin needs to leave if he's going to be on time for the movie, so he goes to get the keys off the hook in the pantry. They're not there. Matt has taken them. Martin goes ballistic and jumps on Matt.”

“Where are your parents?”

“Out to dinner. So the guys are fighting over the car keys. Hitting each other. It's ridiculous.”

It's also hard for me to picture. The brothers were always so buddy-buddy.

“Martin gets the keys away from Matt. He runs out the door, yelling about how he's late. You'd think he was going to miss a plane or something. He was so mad.”

“Sounds like a bit of an overreaction,” I say.

“A
bit
? He was crazy,” Marissa says. “But this is how he's been lately. Something weird is going on with him and, so far, like I said, my parents are blind.”

“I'm sorry, Marissa,” I say. “This sounds upsetting.”

“It is upsetting. But I'm telling you about it because he runs out the door, gets into the car—this car, this silver car—and heads over to James's house. Which he has to get to by going down Quarry Road. And I'm also telling you, the way he left the house, I would not have wanted to be in the car with him. Or walking alongside any street he was driving on.”

Is she saying what I think she's saying?

“When I heard about the accident,” Marissa says, “I didn't even think about the timing. I had no reason to. I mean, I didn't read anything about what time you and Humphrey were there. On Quarry Road. I had no idea it was—when it was. I guess I assumed the accident happened earlier in the afternoon.”

Until tonight. And she heard me talk about the silver car.

Silver cars are not unusual, are they? It seems to me there's a good chance that more than one silver car drove down Quarry Road in the westbound lane sometime between seven and seven thirty that night.

“Marissa, it wasn't Martin,” I say. “Why should you assume it was him? I mean, what are the chances? I'm sure it was some other silver car. There are tons of silver cars.”

“Tons of silver cars driven by stark raving teenage lunatics?”

No. Probably not tons of those.

“I was there, Marissa,” I remind her. “I'm the one person who was there for sure. And I can't say that it was a silver Jetta, or a stark raving teenage lunatic.”

“The odds seem good, though, don't they?”

Do they? I am suddenly very tired of trying to understand what happened that night, when it happened, and where everyone and everything was when it happened. Meanwhile, Marissa's got her hands over her face. She's usually so cool and collected.

“First of all, the silver car didn't hit Humphrey,” I point out.

She moves her hands to her lap. “No. It only scared him into running into another car. I think that makes whoever was driving the silver car more to blame than the driver of the minivan.”

“Second of all, we don't know who was driving the silver car. Martin went to his movie, right?”

“I guess so,” Marissa says.

“I bet he would have said something if he thought he was anywhere close to the accident.”

She snorts, which is a very un-Marissa thing to do.

“I don't know about that,” she says.

“This was a tragedy without a villain,” I say. “I'm quoting Adrian here.” When he says it, of course, Adrian is usually trying to help me forgive myself.

“Maybe,” Marissa says. “But that family would be quietly living their lives if it wasn't for … whoever was driving. This isn't the way I would want them to be found out. Because of
something some speeding driver did, and got away with. Some speeding legal citizen who just could be Martin.”

The way she says “that family” and nothing more specific, I know that she doesn't realize that it's Justin's family. Did she not see Justin with his mother tonight? I guess not. She doesn't know. I decide that she doesn't need to know. I make comforting noises.

“I know you love your brother,” Marissa says.

Huh. Where does this come from? I wait for the “but.”

“You are about the most loyal sister I know,” she continues.

“Okay,” I say.

“And I love my brothers, too. All of them. And I'm a loyal sister, too. But Martin—”

She has to stop to steady her voice.

“Martin,” she resumes, “is really testing my loyalty. The stuff I could tell you that he's up to. The stuff I could tell my parents. I don't want to. I want to be loyal. But—dang.”

That is as close as Marissa gets to a swear word.

“It's like he's trying to become another person,” Marissa says. “And not a better one. He's got these new, dodgy people he's hanging out with. I don't like them and I don't like him these days. And I really don't like feeling there's nothing I can do about any of this.”

“I'm sorry,” I say.

“I'm sorry, too.”

“Are you talking to him?” I ask. “He always listened to you, I thought.”

“All of our ‘always' are changing,” Marissa says. “He doesn't want to talk to me.”

“Well—you can talk to me about Martin anytime,” I say. “I really do understand how you're feeling.”

I know how important family is to Marissa. For Martin to be wandering off the straight and narrow path—that has got to be painful to her. So much for the picture-perfect Martinez family; I guess every family has its wrinkles, even though it looks perfectly smooth from the outside.

We've been sitting in the car for a while by now. She never did turn it on. I put on my seat belt.

“Danielle … about the other thing. The ALI group tonight.”

“ALI?”

“Alliance for Lawful Immigration.”

“Right.”

“I'm not a hater,” she says. “It's important to me that you know that, that I'm not a hater.”

“I do know that,” I say. “I just don't entirely get why you've chosen this as your cause.”

Marissa was about to turn the car on, but my question distracts her. “First of all,” she says, “it won't be my so-called cause for long if the people involved act like they did tonight.”

I believe it. Marissa is not one for rowdy, rude behavior.

“But second of all,” she says, “you know how I feel about following the rules, like my family did when they came to the U.S. And third of all, you know how I feel about how people lump together everyone who has a name like Martinez. To them,
we're all Mexicans, or, more likely, just generic Hispanics. They read about undocumented immigrants with Hispanic names, and we're all the same.”

“I know it bothers you,” I say. “You could take a different approach. You could make it your mission to educate the ignorant people who are doing all that lumping together. To let them know that you can't just assume that everyone with a Hispanic name is the same.”

Marissa seems to think about this.

“But—” she begins.

“So,” I continue at the same moment, “your problem would be about the people who are doing the lumping together, rather than about the people you're being lumped with.”

About the lump
ers
, not the lump
ees
.

“You have a point,” Marissa says. “But I'm not sure I can give up my resentment so easily. What if I'm not that generous?”

“Well,” I say. “Actually, you are generous. You've got a big heart. But I guess you're talking about a different kind of generous.”

“It's complicated,” we both say at the same time.

I've been tired of talking ever since I finished speaking at the council meeting. Now I'm completely and totally done for.

“Marissa,” I say. I hear my voice; it's practically croaking with burnout. “Can you please take me home?”

She does.

IMPROVEMENTS VOTED FOR QUARRY ROAD

by Diana Tang

Observer
reporter

Responding to a deadly accident that occurred after years of concern over pedestrian safety on Quarry Road, the Meigs County Council has approved the expenditure of $1.4 million on a stretch of that thoroughfare that runs through the Franklin Grove neighborhood. The vote, taken last week on December 2, was 5–2 in favor of improvements recommended by safety experts, including sidewalks, streetlights, crosswalks, and a crossing signal. The projects will
be undertaken in cooperation with the State Highway Administration.

Last July, five-year-old Humphrey T. Danker was struck and killed by a minivan when he ran into the street while walking home with his teenage babysitter. Since then, residents of the leafy neighborhood have ramped up efforts to convince the county and the State Highway Administration to take action on a package of road improvements.