"You know you have a lot to do during the next two years. You will be graduating high school and thinking about a college education. You will be thinking about what you want to do with yourself. Have you given it any consideration?"
"Yes,"
"What ideas do you have?"
"I think I want to go into psychology. too." I said "I think I want to help people."
"That's very nice. Willow. I think you could be very successful at that. If you ever have any questions you want answered, please come to me. okay?"
"Yes." I said.
"I'm already very proud of your
accomplishments at school," he said.
"When did you know what you wanted to be?" I asked him.
"Oh, not until my first year of college, really. For a while. I thought I might go into teaching, and then I thought I would like to do something about the so-called unteachable, those troubled souls who are too often forgotten or discarded. Bringing someone back from that is like..."
"-What?"
"Bringing someone back from the dead," he replied. He smiled. "We don't have that sort of success all that often, but when we do, it makes you feel it's all been worth it. I know I should be spending more time with you, but that's been what's kept me from doing it. Maybe now, I will he suddenly decided. "I will."
"I'd like that," I said.
He nodded and we drove on in silence, my eyes and my ears filled with Amou's last moments with me.
I had no idea what his were filled with, but when I looked at him, he seemed just as sad, if not sadder than I was.
And I wondered why, what it could be that would have such an effect on him.
It wasn't going to be for a while yet before I would find out, but when I did. I fully understood every dark moment I had ever caught him having.
.
Postcards from Brazil began arriving within two weeks of Amou's departure. I wrote her long letters, sometimes spending more time on them than I did on my homework. I wanted to get every little detail of our lives in the letters. I knew she would enjoy hearing about the three new maids my AM hired and fired within weeks of each other. If one cooked well, she didn't clean well: if she cleaned well, she couldn't cook: and if she could do both well, she had no idea how to brush out a wig,
"I guess Isabella was worth what we paid her after all." the Doctor said one night.
Finally my AM had no reply. Her silence was her admittance of being wrong. What she did instead was turn to me and say, "You should be doing more around here until we find someone suitable. Apparently, you're smart enough to be on the honor roll at school all the time. Nothing here should be a challenge."
It was almost a compliment. The Doctor looked at me, his eyes twinkling with amusement.
"I'll do whatever I can to help. Alberta."
She said nothing, but when we were between maids. I prepared one of Amou's favorite dishes: peixe oporto, which was baked white fish with a port wine sauce. I had stood beside her and watched and helped her do it many times. She always welcomed me in the kitchen, teaching me all sorts of little culinary secrets. I knew my AM loved this dish. When I brought it out and she and the Doctor began to eat it. I could see the pleasure and surprise in both their faces, especially hers.
"Brains, looks, and this, too," the Doctor said,
It wasn't that often that he gave me such compliments in front of my AM. I blushed with pride. and I saw her turn to me and look at me with an expression I had not seen before. It was as if she finally had taken a good look at me and at who I was. I could almost hear something click in her head.
I did some more cooking for us after that, but a week later my AM did find a cook and a maid who satisfied her. She was in her late fifties. Her name was Molly Williams, and she appeared to have the sort of personality my AM appreciated: a private person who was efficient and wasted few words. At times I thought she was robotic, but by now, as Amou predicted, my interests were developing in things outside our home. I participated in more school activities, was in a school play, and was even on the girls' field hockey team. The Doctor attended some of the games, and to my surprise. my AM accompanied him to the school play. I didn't have that big of a role, but it was enough for me to make an impression.
Whatever had clicked in my AM's mind that night I made my first dinner had an effect afterward on the way she behaved toward me. It began in little ways. She would make a comment about my hair and then, to my surprise this time, suggest some product she was using that would improve my texture, bring out the color, and keep it softer. She began to do the same with makeup, and especially her miraculous skin creams and facial treatments. She even invited me to join her at her spa one weekend. I began to have the feeling I had become a project for her. On a few occasions I heard her brag about how much of an improvement in my appearance she had made.
The Doctor seemed amused by all this, but also quite happy. Our once quite estranged little family began to take on the semblance of a unit. My Al was always quite involved in a variety of charity functions and always as a cosponsor or co-chair, always someone important. She surprised me again by inviting me to volunteer to help with some of these events.
Perhaps time and the inevitability of my continuing existence in her life finally had a positive influence on her. I did not know the reason. but I was grateful for the little truces between us. This didn't make a significantly dramatic change in her personality. She was still hard and cold more often than not, and her suggestions for my improvements always came on the heels of some nasty remark.