Read The Girl in Times Square for Free Online Page B

telling you so you can be prepared. So you know that it wasn’t out of the blue. Your father, if he was a different man, maybe my life would be different. If only he understood me, sympathized with me.”
    “Ma, Papi put food on our table for over forty years. Fed us, clothed us, paid for our college.”
    “Could barely afford City College for you,” said Allison. “Didn’t have anything left for you.”
    “City College is fine,” said Lily.
    “And you’re repaying his kindness by refusing to graduate. You know we can’t afford to keep you. We pay for your apartment and for your grandmother’s house, and taxes and maintenance for this condo. We’re completely broke because we’re keeping three different homes.”
    “I’ll get more hours at Noho Star. I’ll be fine.”
    “Yes, but your grandmother, what about her? She’s not going anywhere, is she?”
    “Guess not. Guess your mother is not going anywhere.”
    Allison said nothing, but busied herself in pretending to pull out pieces of her lobster. “I can’t believe you haven’t graduated. Six years completely down the toilet. Six years of college so you can wash dishes at a diner. Well, I hope you’re a good dishwasher. Certainly you’ve had enough education to be the very best.”
    Lily did not eat one more bite of her lobster. What had Andrew said, she should go to Maui and soothe their mother? Had anyone in the history of the universe ever had such a dumb idea? She was the exact wrong person for that sort of thing. Lily couldn’t soothe her mother into a massage.
    And the next afternoon when she knocked on her mother’s door to ask her to come to the beach, Allison was lying down. “I’ve been to the beach. I don’t want to go anywhere.”
    “You haven’t been to the beach with me. Come.”
    “Leave me alone, will you?” said Allison. “You’re just like your father. Stop forcing me into your pointless regimens.”
    Lily went alone. How could she manage even another day?
    But it’s Hawaii, Hawaii! The rainforests, the volcanoes. What would she prefer, yesterday’s dinner conversation, or the beach by herself? The choice was so clear.
    And so it was the beach by herself, and lunch, and walks through the palms, and the sunsets, and the community pool at the condo.
    Days went by. Concentration drained out of Lily. She was unable to focus long enough to sketch. She kept rendering the same palms over and over. Charcoal was an insult to Hawaii, watercolors did not do justice to Hawaii, and oil paints she did not have, nor a canvas for them. All she had was her charcoal pencils and her sketchbook, and there was nothing to draw in Maui with charcoal except the inside of her mother’s colorless apartment and the numbers 1, 18, 24, 39, 45, 49.
    Andrew had not called to tell her how it was going with Papi. Amy had not called. She had not heard from Joshua.
    For hours during the day, Lily busied her mind with being blighted with the lottery ticket. Cursed.
    Simply, this is what she believed: she believed that the universe showed each of us certain things, that it made certain things open.
    Many people lived a peaceful life with nothing ever happening to them. But into some families other things fell. Some families were afflicted with random tragedies—car accidents, plane accidents, hang gliding accidents, bus crashes, knifings, drownings, scarves getting caught under the wheels of their Rolls Royces, breaking their necks. The lovely girl in the prom dress standing in the dance hall and suddenly a titanium steel pipe from above breaking, falling on her, impaling her through the skull on her prom night! The valedictorian high school graduate headed to Cornell, standing on the street corner in New York City, suddenly finding himself in the middle of a robbery. A stray bullet—the only bullet fired—hitting him, killing him. Lily was not worried about old age or hereditary illness, she was worried about portholes of the universe opening up and