Page 25 of Stay With Me
“Oh, pizza!” I tell her once I figure it out.
“Pizza?”
“Yeah, he was eating pizza. It has a flat bread as a crust and normally comes with tomato sauce and then cheese and other various toppings. Then it’s baked, and you can eat it.”
“It looked very good. Is that something we could maybe try?”
“Of course we can.”
I pull out my phone and call in the pizza for delivery. I order one with just cheese and another that’s all meat with spinach and mushrooms.
“What are you doing? I thought you said we could eat pizza?”
It’s moments like this that I forget how much of the outside world is so new to her. “We are going to eat pizza. I was just ordering it, but don’t forget it might make you not feel good, and we’ll make a small salad to eat on the side with it.”
“Order it? I don’t understand.”
I walk closer to the table and pull out a chair for her and one for myself as I lay my phone on the table. “Well, my phone is like a computer. Have you looked at the computers at school?”
She shakes her head.
“That’s okay, you will. But I can order food or groceries and pretty much anything else we might need, and we can either go pick it up or we can have it delivered right to the door.”
She looks at the phone wide eyed. “I only know how to use a phone to make a phone call. How does the person know where to bring it?”
“I put my address in, and then they know where to go.”
“And this is not the work of the devil taking over?”
“Umm, no. Sometimes technology can distract you or tell you the wrong thing, but it isn’t the devil taking over.”
I worry this is getting deeper than I know how to handle. She’s only met with the therapist once, so I’m afraid of saying the wrong thing. How do I tell her that everything she was taught with The Family might not be true?
I clear my throat and redirect the conversation. “How about we do a couple of pages of your homework, then eat, and then, if it isn't too late, we can play a game on the TV.”
“You can play games on the TV?”
“Yup! It’s a lot of fun.”
“Well, what are we waiting for? I would very much so like to try that.”
We dive into some of her writing homework. She amazes me with how smart she is and how fast she picks things up. I have no doubt that she’ll be caught up by the time fall comes around.
About twenty minutes later, there’s a knock at the door.
Jess jumps and starts looking around.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s the pizza being delivered. Why don’t you finish what you were reading, and I’ll get it, then we can eat.”
“Okay…” she says, nervously eyeing the door before returning to her homework.
I stand from the table and walk to the front door. Grabbing the pizza, I thank Travis, the young high school boy who works at the pizza place in town. Back in the kitchen, I set down the boxes and open the fridge, pulling out the stuff to make her a small salad with her pizza.
As she finishes putting her homework away, I fix our plates and set them on the table. “Now remember, if you don’t like the pizza, that’s okay, but I want you to take at least three bites before you decide if you like it or not. My mom called them no-thank-you bites.”
She nods and picks up a piece of pizza, inspecting it. “It smells good.”
“Pizza should be its own food group. I could eat it every day.”
