Gujilio’s office that afternoon.
She had screwed up.
They were going to have to build a Museum of Famous Screwups just to
have a place for a statue of her, so people could come from all over the
world, from France and Japan and Chile, just to see it. school kids
would come, whole classes at a time with their teachers, to study her so
they could learn what not to do and how not to act. Parents would point
at her statue and ominously warn their children, “Anytime you think
you’re so smart, just remember her and think how you might wind up like
that, a figure of pity and ridicule, laughed at and reviled.”
Two thirds of the way through the interview, she had realized the
Harrisons were special people. They probably would never treat her as
badly as she had been treated by the Infamous Dotteriields, the couple
who accepted her and took her home and then rejected her in two weeks
when they discovered they were going to have a child of their own,
Satan’s child, no doubt, who would one day destroy the world and turn
against even the Dotterfields, burning them alive with a flash of fire
from his demonic little pig eyes. (Uhh. Wishing harm to another. The
thought is as bad as the deed. Remember that for confession, Reg.)
Anyway, the Harrisons were different, which she began to realize slowly
such a screwup-and which she knew for sure when Mr. Harrison made the
crack about caviar pajamas and showed he had a sense of humor. But by
then she was so into her act that somehow she couldn’t stop being an
obnoxious screwup that she wouldn’t find a way to retreat and start
over. Now the Harrisons were probably getting drunk, celebrating their
narrow escape, or maybe down on their knees in a church, weeping with
relief and fervently saying the Rosary, thanking the Holy Mother for
interceding to spare them the mistake of adopting that awful girl
sight-unseen. Shitú (Oops. Vulgarity. But not as bad as taking the
Lord’s name in vain. Even worth mentioning in the confessional?) In
spite of having no appetite and in spite of Carl Cavanaugh and his crude
humor, she ate all of her dinner, but only because God’s policemen, the
nuns, would not let her leave the table until she cleaned her plate. The
fruit in the lime Jell-O was peaches, which made dessert an ordeal. She
couldn’t understand how anyone could think that lime and peaches went
together. Okay, so nuns were not very worldly, but she wasn’t asking
them to learn which rare wine to serve with roast tenderloin of
platypus, for God’s sake. (Sorry, God.) Pineapple and lime Jell-O,
certainly. Pears and lime Jell, okay. Even bananas and lime Jell-O.
But putting peaches in lime Jell-O was, to her way of thinking, like
leaving the raisins out of rice pudding and replacing them with chunks
of watermelon, for God’s sake.
(Sorry, God.) She managed to eat the dessert by telling herself that it
could have been worse; the nuns could have served dead mice dipped in
cheni fat-though why nuns, of all people, would want to do that, she had
no idea. Still, imagining something worse than what she had to face was
a trick that worked, a technique of self-persuasion that she had used
many and other games, or to the TV room to watch whatever slop was on
the boob tube, but as usual she returned to her room. She spent most
evenings reading. Not tonight, though. She planned to spend this
evening feeling sorry for herself and contemplating her status as a
world-class screwup (good thing stupidity isn’t a sin), so she would
never forget how dumb she had been and would remember never to make such
a jackass of herself again.
Moving along the tile-floored hallways nearly as fast as a kid with two
good legs, she remembered how she had clumped into the attorney’s
office, and she began to blush. In her room, which she shared with a
blind girl named Winnie, as she jumped into bed and flopped on her back,
she recalled the calculated clumsiness with which she had levered