Page 94 of Better Than Gelato
Isa has behaved like an angry racoon all week. Yesterday was especially rough. Sofia said she always gets this way when she has to say goodbye. I get it, but I also don’t want to waste our last day together. I can think of zero good ideas for breaking through her funk. So I come up with a terrible idea and decide to go with that.
I slip out of my pajamas and into the dark blue slinky dress Carmen got me for my birthday. I brush my hair and leave it down, rippling over my shoulders in waves. I head to the kitchen and get Isa’s cereal all ready. Angry stomps alert me to her presence in the hall. She stands in the doorway to the kitchen and scowls.
“What are you wearing?” she demands.
“An evening gown,” I say, like it’s obvious.
“Why?”
“It’s the last day of school. I thought I should celebrate.”
“It’s not a big deal,” she says, crossing her arms. “It’s just the stupid first grade.”
“Oh, I’m not celebrating you, I’m celebrating me.”
Isa's face turns even stormier. “Why are you celebrating yourself and not me?”
“For the last nine months, I did a great job of bringing you to school. We didn’t get lost. We didn’t get hit by a car. We were on time. That’s worth celebrating.”
“So you’re actually going to wear that on the bus and everything?”
“Sure. And I thought as we were walking into school, I could do a little celebration dance like this.” I wiggle my shoulders back and forth and then my hips side to side and then my shoulders again. I look ridiculous, I can feel it, but it’s worth it when I see Isa’s lip curve slightly.
“What do you think?” I ask.
“I think it’s a terrible idea,” she says.
“I agree,” I say. “But I didn’t have any good ideas for making you smile, so I had to go with this one.”
At the mention of her smile, the scowl returns. Then she looks me over again. I give another shimmy. She doesn’t smile, but her eyes are twinkling.
I get her some breakfast and when Marco and Sofia come in, Isa announces that I’m taking her to school wearing an evening gown.
“It’s to celebrate neither of us getting hit by a car,” she clarifies horribly.
Marco and Sofia look at each other, as if the other one might know how to appropriately handle this, and then quickly drink their coffees and head off to work.
Isa is smiling all the way now and even starts giggling when we get on the bus and everyone stares at us. It feels so good to hear her laugh, it makes my heart ache. When we get close to the entrance of her school, she stops and looks at me.
“What about the dancing?” she asks. I give a hip shake, a shoulder shimmy and a pretty good twirl.
“My nanny is crazy,” she says, but she’s laughing, and I eat it up.
The last night with the Rossis is busy. They’ll be gone for six weeks, staying with Sofia’s parents down south, and the pile of things they’re taking looks twice as big as their car.
I help where I can, and when I can no longer be useful, I pull Isa into my room, and we snuggle into my bed and readHarry Potter. We read three chapters and get all our protagonists safely out of harm’s way. There’s only one chapter left, where they wrap it all up, but Isa wants to save that for the morning.
I wake up at 6:30 a.m., and I tiptoe quietly into the kitchen. I make pancakes and put some on a tray with silverware and orange juice and bring it into Isa’s room. At first, I think she’s still sleeping, but when I look closer, I can see that she’s awake and staring at the ceiling. She turns when she hears me come in.
“Good morning,” I whisper.
Isa sighs. “Bad morning.”
I nod. “That’s what I thought at first too. But then I made pancakes and turned it into a good morning.”
“That doesn’t work,” Isa says.
“You doubt the power of pancakes?” I say in astonishment. “I thought I could finish readingHarry Potterwhile you eat your pancakes and Polyjuice—I mean orange juice.”
