Signs of You Read Online Free PDF Page A

eggs, cuts wheat toast down the middle and covers it with butter and blackberry jam. He softly whistles as he puts fruit on the side, a grapefruit already cut into little wedges. I smile and know that each egg is a word, each wedge of fruit, punctuation . They don’t actually spell anything, but their meaning is crystal clear: if I could f ix your heart I would. My father and I share the same blood, the same loss, the same wish to f ix each other, and the same sadness that we can’t. And sometimes, we both just drift around the house like two rainclouds trying desperately not to storm. But as he proudly sets my Special Plate Breakfast down on the table in front of me, I see it—through his deep, dark sadness, I see his hope for my life, I see his love for me glimmer in his eyes like sunshine glinting off a windswept lake. If only you and Mom had never had me. She’d be here, alive, healthy, happy. I wasn’t worth it. This breakfast should be for her.
    â€œGreat eggs, Dad,” I say. “They’re perfect. Really perfect.”
    He smiles then puts some eggs and toast on a plate for himself. I wonder what he’d say if I told him that I saw Mom. The f irst time I can remember running to him with really big news was when I was f ive years old. As I was bathing, I noticed something I’d never noticed before. I jumped out of the bathtub and ran down the hallway trailing bathwater behind me.
    â€œDad!” I screamed.
    He was in his room buttoning up a favorite red f lannel shirt.
    â€œLook!” I said, pointing down. “I’m growing a penis!”
    My mother had not explained to me that my anatomy was as it should be and would not be getting any bigger. My father looked at me, his soaking wet daughter, who thought she was growing something only her dad would understand, and searched for a response. I was expecting him to be stoked, celebratory. Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest and smiled at me nervously.
    â€œWell, blow me down,” he announced.
    And then he walked away.
    That night, he made my favorite homemade pizza—pepperoni and ham with the ideal 3:1 pepperoni-to-ham ratio. I ate the pizza, but I was mad. How could his only response to my news be pizza ?
    Now as I sit in the kitchen, eating my perfectly cooked eggs, bursting at the seams to tell him what happened, it occurs to me that I am still that little girl—the one who ran to him with all her big news that she needed him to explain. What dish would he prepare in response to hearing that his daughter thinks she saw her dead mother? A souff lé? A pork loin, perhaps? Maybe three-cheese vegetarian lasagna—complicated with a lot of layers.
    â€œAre you sure nothing is wrong?” Dad asks as he takes a bite of eggs.
    Don’t tell him. Don’t do this to him. He needs you to be okay.
    â€œWhat’s wrong is that you’re a shift-eater,” I say, trying to steer him off topic, knock him off the scent of my sadness. “It’s annoying. Live a little.”
    â€œA what?”
    â€œA shift-eater. You eat in shifts. One thing at a time. Currently, you’re on the egg shift. Next, you’ll move on to the toast.” He tries not to, but he smiles again. Mission accomplished .
    In the morning, I drive myself to school as usual in my red station wagon—which is not sporty, racy, or really that awesome in any way, shape, or form. Plus, I’m pretty sure it’s the off icial car of the forty-something, risk-averse crowd. Dad bought it for me because he thinks it’s the safest car on the planet, and I guess as cars for high school kids go, it’s not all that bad. My friends have decided its pet name is the Dragon Wagon.
    I wheel into the school parking lot and scan the front lawn, looking for my friends among the mass of students. I don’t see them right away. Woodhull High is ridiculously huge. This is what happens when you cram the ’burbs of