Chapter 39
Thirty-Nine
KIERAN
Rocío loans me clothes from Inigo. He’s much taller than I am, so they’re long on me. We spend the day watching cartoons in bed, Isabel between us, while Tita Vanessa is out at work.
Isabel barely speaks. She naps intermittently in my arms and only leaves to eat or use the jacks. I wish she’d tell me what’s on her mind and how I can best help her. Until then, I give her what I can. If it’s to lay there quietly holding her, watching television, then so be it.
Tita Vanessa arrives a little past six. “Get ready,” she says to Isabel. “We have dinner.”
Rocío, Isabel, and I sit up, wearing equally confused expressions.
“With who?” Isabel croaks.
“Basta. Get ready,” says Tita Vanessa.
“Can Kieran and Rocío come?” Isabel asks.
Tita Vanessa sighs. “No, honey. It’s just us, okay? Rocío, maybe you can help Kieran get his things from the Aranazes.”
“Yes, Tita,” comes Rocío’s quick reply. We all scramble to get ready.
“Can we come drop you off at least?” I ask Tita Vanessa. She chews on her bottom lip, considering, then relents. Rocío’s driver comes and picks us up, taking us to an upscale restaurant in a place they call Rockwell. I press a kiss to Isabel’s temple as she slides out of the backseat.
“Call me,” I say, “if anything.”
The fear is evident in her eyes. I graze my thumb against her cheek. “You can do this. Whatever this is.”
Her lip quivers. Her eyes water. I reach out to pull her into my arms, but she rears back, sniffling and swiping at her eyes as she shuts the door. I can only watch her steel herself, square her shoulders, and disappear into the restaurant.
* * *
It’s a trip to return to Exeter Park after everything.
Rocío has to name her godmother to get through the gate, and from there we head straight to Natalia’s.
I don’t know what to expect when I get there, whether I’ll be let in or if Natalia’s already ordered the maids to throw my things.
I don’t even know what I’ll say to my friends, if I can still even call them that.
“We have to pass by my Ninang’s after, just to say hi,” Rocío says. “Or else I’ll never hear the end of it. Her maids are such snitches sometimes.”
“Okay,” I say.
Rocío fixes me with a look. It’s calculating, as if she’s a robot scanning my face to reference her database of emotions for a match.
“Don’t be nervous,” she says. “I’ll be with you. If they try shit, I’d be happy to get into a screaming match on your behalf.”
I laugh. I can see why Isabel loves her so much. It’s hard not to feel safe and protected in her company.
We step out of the car and ring the bell. A security guard steps out of his guardhouse, a questioning look in his eye.
“Hi. Hi. Um—I’m a friend of Natalia’s,” I say. “Is Shirley there?”
The security guard says nothing to me. He radios for Shirley, who appears not a minute later, a little confused and then pleased (or at least pretending to be pleased) to see me.
“Sir Kieran! Welcome back. Are you here for your things?”
So, she’s been kept abreast. I nod. She waves us in as I introduce her to Rocío.
“Everyone is at the polo club,” Shirley explains.
“So, your timing couldn’t have been better.
” We follow her into the house, where instead of leading us upstairs or to the pool house, she takes us to a backroom.
They wasted no time getting rid of any evidence of me.
There, whatever is left of my paintings sit propped against the wall next to my suitcase.
It’s not enough for a full exhibit, but it’s something. Maybe the Riboulets will still take it.
I offer Shirley a thin-lipped smile and start collecting my things.
“Your sketchbook is in your suitcase,” Shirley says. She looks as though she wants to say something more but is distracted when the bell rings again.
“Oh, that must be them,” she says, excusing herself. Under her breath, she mutters, “They’re back early.”
Rocío takes some canvases and laughs when she sees the slashed painting of Isabel naked. “Jesus,” she says. “No wonder Natalia was so pissed off.”
Fuck. I should have taken that with me when we left.
“Oh, this is too good. You two are hilarious. I love it.” She takes an extra canvas and heads out. I wheel my suitcase after her, the remaining canvases propped against the extended handle.
My friends are milling about the front door when we exit. Curiously, Natalia is nowhere to be found.
“Kieran.” Cisco steps forward. “Hey, man. You haven’t responded to my texts. How are you?”
I’m too tired to be angry. I can only nod.
“How’s Isabel? Where have you been?”
Behind him, the others eye us warily. Luz is full-on scowling at Rocío, who is inspecting her nails, pretending not to care.
“C’mon, man,” Jaime says, clapping Bo on the shoulder and gesturing for everyone else to follow him.
“Wait,” Cisco says.
“You should go,” I tell him, already heading for the door. “We were just leaving.”
“Kieran, wait!”
I should’ve known Cisco wasn’t going to let me get away that easily. He trails after us, pulling on my wrist to stop me.
“Think about what you’re doing, Kieran,” he says.
I jerk my hand away from him. “Look at what’s happening.
You’re brainwashed, man. Nat told us all the shit she wrote about us.
How can you stand for that? She’s driving a wedge between us.
Is that the kind of person you want to be with?
Someone who turns you away from your friends? Your family?”
Rocío scoffs. Cisco glares at her but carries on.
“You just met her, Kie. We’ve known each other forever. We just want what’s best for you. We want you to be happy.”
“And you think treating my girlfriend like this, talking about her like this—that’s going to make me happy?”
“This isn’t like you, Kie. Come on. We know you.”
I shake my head. “You don’t know me half as well as you thought if you think any of this is okay with me. Let’s go, Rocío.”
My heart breaks when I walk away. I grew up with these people.
We’ve spent so much time together. But I can’t stomach it.
I can’t stomach any of it. How can anyone claim to love me, to want what’s best for me, and stand in the way of what makes me happy?
I might have just met Isabel, but I’ve carried her with me for the past year.
You can’t claim to love me and cut out a huge part of me like that. You just can’t.
* * *
“Who was that?” Rocío asks on our short drive to her godmother’s house. We’ve tucked my things away in the back, and she’s offered to house my paintings in the meantime. I couldn’t be more grateful to her.
“That,” I say, “was one of my closest friends, Francisco. We call him Cisco, though. Chico, sometimes.”
“Was? Past tense?”
“Dunno how I can be friends with a fence-sitter, you know?”
“Most people are too afraid to rock the boat,” she says. “Nobody wants to have to be that guy, you know? The one who kills the mood in favor of setting everyone straight. That’s why Natalia gets away with things. Everyone else’s silence enables her.”
That’s the term I’ve been looking for. Enabling. I tell Rocío about Araceli, how everyone turned their backs on her as soon as things got tough. How I enabled that, too.
“Well,” Rocío says. “Then this is as much a lesson for you as it is for anyone else. If you don’t speak up in defense of someone else, no one will speak up for you. If they can do it to your friend, they’ll do it to you.”
Her words sit with me as we meet with her godmother, a tall slender woman dressed in a silk muumuu and who has a penchant for calling us her darlings. Rocío introduces her to me as Ninang Mercedes, but tells me to just call her Tita.
“Is this your boyfriend?” Tita Mercedes asks with a wiggle of her brow.
“Oh, God, no,” Rocío answers with a grimace. “Isabel’s. We went to pick up his things at the Aranazes.”
Tita Mercedes makes a face.
“Yeah, I know, ick,” Rocío says. She fills Tita Mercedes in, who grows angrier and angrier on behalf of Isabel.
“You know what,” Tita Mercedes says. She seats us in her sunlit living room and beckons for a maid to bring us cold drinks. “I’m amigas with Leticia. And Letty’s always been such a brat, ever since we were in Assumption. I’m not surprised her daughter turned out just like her.”
Tita Mercedes seems all too happy to be dishing out hot gossip about the Aranazes.
She goes on and on, citing this rumor and that.
Her favorite is the paternity of the fair-haired second son, who looks nothing like Alvaro, Natalia’s father, who has dark hair.
Eventually Rocío cuts her short and says we have to go.
I thank Tita Mercedes for her hospitality and check my phone as soon as we’re back in the car. No texts, no calls. I wonder how Isabel’s doing.
Rocío sighs dramatically as we pull away from her godmother’s house. “I love her, but God, she can talk for hours.”
“Where are we going now?” I ask.
“We’ll drop off your paintings at mine, then we can wait for Isabel at her place.” She reaches into her bag and shakes out her keyring. Of course she would have a spare key to the Martinez residence.
Traffic extends our car ride for nearly two hours. It’s bumper to bumper, and there’s nothing to do but sit back and listen to the beeping of cars manned by impatient drivers.
“How do you think she’s doing?” I ask.
“She’s a strong girl. She’ll pull through.”
“Do you have any idea who they’re having dinner with?”
Rocío shakes her head. “Tita was pretty hush-hush about it, huh? But it’s not like Isabel won’t tell me as soon as she gets home.”
“You tell each other everything, don’t you?”
She shoots me a look. “Yeah, Mr. Anti-Safe Sex.”
“Okay, I’m not against it,” I say. “We were just very in the moment.”
She laughs. “Did you guys discuss your alibi together? God, keep a condom in your pocket. How hard can that be?”
“I wasn’t going to be presumptuous? I didn’t go there with the intention to bed her.”
“You had to have known it was coming.”
“Cut me some slack,” I say. “It was my first time, too. We were both unprepared.”
Rocío rolls her eyes. “Dibs, ninang.”
“What?”
“Dibs, ninang. I want to be your kid’s godmother.”
I laugh. “She’s not pregnant. She got her period.”
“Not yet,” Rocío corrects. “But if you two keep this up—”
“Oh my God.”
Rocío snorts. After a moment of silence, she says, “I’m really glad Isabel has you now. I’ve never heard her as happy and excited as when she first told me about you.”
“I’m happy to have met her, too.”
“Is it true, you used to have dreams of her?”
I nod.
“That’s crazy,” she says. “How is that even possible?”
I shrug. “I’ve been asking myself that question every day since we met.”