Daughter's Keeper Read Free Page B

better about introducing him to her Anglo friends, putting them both into situations where he would have been forced to listen to and speak some English, but the few times they’d gotten together with her girlfriends had been more or less disasters. Jorge had nothing at all in common with the young law students and software designers her friends were dating. He sat silently through a number of dinners, smiling politely except when someone directed a question directly at him. Then he looked at Olivia, stricken, and she quickly deflected the conversation away. She had been more relieved than sorry when the invitations stopped coming.
    Olivia bent over and planted a kiss on the tip of Jorge’s hooked nose. He grabbed her around the waist and dragged her onto the couch, on top of him. He reached a hand down the seat of her pants and grabbed her butt.
    â€œMmm,” he said, squeezing her.
    Olivia smiled, pleased as always at the obvious pleasure Jorge took in the parts of her that she had used to think of as too fat—ugly even. It was hard not to love a man who frequently commented that no ass that could fit into just two hands was worth grabbing.
    â€œSo, how’s Mamá­ ?” Jorge asked.
    Olivia burrowed down into the couch. “Same as always. I took her to Paco’s and she was scared out of her mind. Not that she’d ever say.”
    â€œDid she give you the money?”
    Olivia shook her head. She had hated asking her mother for money. She hated letting Elaine know that they weren’t getting by, and most of all she hated giving Elaine the opportunity to comment on how she lived and what she did. Olivia couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t resented Elaine’s perennial disapproval. It seemed to her that from the first time she had made an independent ­decision or formed an opinion of her own, her mother had found it wanting in some way.
    Olivia felt everything passionately, and her mother, she believed, felt nothing with any kind of ardor. Olivia followed the compass of her heart, trusting that what moved her, what inspired her, would point her toward the true North. Elaine carefully considered, thoughtfully evaluated, and most often, to her daughter’s disgust, decided to do nothing at all. This difference in the fundamental nature of their personalities was apparent from the time Olivia was a very little girl. Elaine would take her shopping for shoes, and Olivia would spot a pair of red, sparkly, magic slippers, the perfect shoes to skip down the yellow brick road. Olivia would cling to the ridiculous, lovely shoes as her mother fitted her with brown Oxfords, white sneakers, and plain black Mary Janes. When Elaine finally chose the most sensible, most comfortable, longest-lasting shoe, Olivia invariably wept—never once, in all the years, had she anticipated the denial of the object of her adoration.
    When she was grown, and no longer subject to her mother’s prohibitions and demands, Olivia followed her own enthusiasms. What she cared about was something she defined loosely as freedom and equality, and her intent was to work in some way to better the lot of others; she just wasn’t sure how. She was waiting tables while she tried to figure it out. Rejecting the goal of professional achievement that her mother wanted for her meant that Olivia was constantly short of cash, which explained why she’d ended up doing something she found as repellent as asking for money. She didn’t want to rely on Elaine to bail her out, but sometimes it was unavoidable. Nonetheless, the request was always an exercise in humiliation, particularly when it was rebuffed.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter,” Jorge said.
    â€œWas there anything in the classifieds today?”
    He shrugged and focused intently on the television.
    Olivia raised herself up on one hand. “Did you even look?”
    â€œWhat’s the point?” he said, not taking his eyes off