I stared at my plate for a long time, suddenly wishing I could get up and go to my room. But if saying grace had been childish, running away would ice that particular cake. And for some reason, I didn’t want Nathan to think that about me. He could find out I was an idiot and a flighty mess. But he didn’t need to think I was a coward too.
“Well, I’m not bright either,” I told him. “I’m pretty sure I graduated high school only because my English teacher had a crush on me, and two of my Spanish teachers made out with me after school. Pervs. They were so old.”
Nathan didn’t say a word; he just started eating again while I continued.
“School was never easy for me, unlike everyone else in my family. It took me a really long time to learn to read, and even now, I’m slower than most and can’t spell atall. Math was horrible—don’t ever ask me to recite my times tables. I wasn’t trying to fail, but I could never seem to remember to do stuff. It was too much—the homework, the projects, the books, the classes.” I dropped my foot to the floor, where it tapped automatically on the rug. “Things that came easy to others were always too hard for me. Not that bright. Get it?” I looked up. “Actually, I bet you don’t. Doctors kind of have to do well in school, huh?”
Nathan seemed to take an extra-long time to chew and swallow. Then he sat forward and steepled his hands over his plate. “We only covered mental health for a few weeks in med school, but it sounds to me like you’re neurodivergent. Possibly in multiple ways.”
“Neuro-what?” He might as well have spoken Mandarin.
“It means your brain might work differently than others.”
I blinked. “Oh. Well. Haven’t I just been explaining that?”
Nathan turned to me like I was one of his patients. “Neurodivergence doesn’t necessarily indicate intelligence deficits. I’m not a psychiatrist, but based on what you said and what I already knew about you, I’d guess ADHD, plus maybe a learning disability like dyslexia or dyscalculia. However, there are plenty of things that can interfere with different types of cognitive processing. Have you ever been evaluated?”
I shook my head. “Evaluated for mind issues? That would be a no.”
“This can’t be the first time anyone has suggested something like this. One of your teachers must have said something to your parents.”
“Probably not, since my dad died when I was a baby, and my mom was in and out of jail until I was twenty-one.” Apparently, I was droppingallthe bombs tonight.
Nathan frowned. “Who raised you, then?”
“My grandparents.” I sighed. “Well, until my grandpa passed away. I was seven when that happened. Then it was just Nonna with six kids.”
“She’s the one who just moved to Italy.”
I nodded.
He contemplated that for a minute. “And she never said anything?”
I snorted. “Did my conservative immigrant grandmother straight out of the nineteen-fifties say something about my weirdbrain? Ah, that’s a big negative, man. Look, I don’t know what school you went to?—”
“My brothers and I all attended the Highland School, followed by Episcopal.”
“Those all sound very fancy and maybe religious. Private?”
Nathan nodded.
“Figures.” I toyed with my pasta but found I’d lost most of my appetite. Talking about this crap tended to have that effect on me.
Under the table, I tapped out the opening steps to my first ballet recital with my toes. God, I wished I could dance.
“Matthew, Lea, Kate, and Frankie all did elementary school at Our Redeemer—that’s the local parish school,” I said when Nathan kept waiting for me to fill him in. “But after my grandpa died, Nonna couldn’t afford the tuition anymore, so Marie and I just went to the local public school in Belmont.”
“That’s in the Bronx?”
I nodded. “Yeah. They were fine. I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I mean, as good as school is gonna get with thirty kids in a classroom, and half of them don’t speak English.” I picked up a shriveled carrot and let it drop back on the plate as I slouched around it. “The teachers had bigger problems to deal with than a little girl who couldn’t read super well. Not when a lot of their students couldn’t read at all. Skip to me barely graduating, then flunking out of community college twice. Cosmetology school too. Dance was the only thing I was really ever good at.”
Nathan blinked, almost as if in recognition. “Dance. So that’s what you meant.”
Sadly, I nodded. “Pretty much.”
