Chapter 40
LEO
IN THE OVERGROWTH IN FRONT of our house, we check our ankles for chiggers. Weeds run rampant. Crabgrass and nutsedge and dandelions. A crow caws, and the house is so damaged that it seems to beg for death. The words total loss swim through us like minnows through the creek down the hill.
What this means on the surface: money.
What this means beneath the surface: it’s over.
I didn’t tell April I gunned for this. It was a long shot.
When the contractors said girder beam, I appealed for more money, because total loss would give us options.
We can cash in to finish the rebuild, then sell the house.
Or we can cash out to demolish, then sell the property.
A nest egg with no nest. Demolition is surprisingly expensive.
But now, with no loans and just a few signatures, this could all be done and dusted.
Leonardo Torres on one line and April Torres on another, a notary public watching us with her bored eyes.
I stare at the plywood windows. We’ve been trying to save a dead thing.
We enter the house in search of a firm decision about whether to rebuild or demolish.
The kitchen has been gutted and scooped clean of the past, the fire, the old pipes.
Workers have constructed a makeshift table that’s covered with headlamps, battery-powered fans, and Tabasco bottles.
I’ve been speaking Spanish with them, which is one of the reasons I was hesitant to hire workers in the first place.
I don’t like the obvious divide, the reminder that I don’t belong.
I don’t like exposing my white-collar life or my rusty Spanish.
April sneezes from the dust. Rebuilding would be a big commitment for two people who are trying to sever our relationship.
As we walk into the shell of our living room, I look at her and my throat tightens, because I can predict the exact conversation we’re about to have.
I’ll tell her it’s most practical to demolish and sell.
She’ll argue and try to make this about us, make it more difficult than it already is.
But then she says, “We should demolish,” and her voice is steady.
I get the ridiculous urge to argue. I look up at the ceiling I once accidentally painted white and then repainted ceiling white as April stood at the foot of the ladder, bouncing her eyebrows and saying, “I don’t see a difference, but I don’t mind the view.”
I clench my jaw, stupidly upset that this won’t be a fight, and I say, “Just a container, right?”
April once said this about her body, and I responded, “So far from just.”
Our memories are the cells in these bones. For a flash, I want to kiss her inside the skeleton of our home. Just like the day we got the keys, when we were bright with plans and paint swatches.
But we do not kiss, and we do not fight. We only make the necessary call to confirm the decision: our U-shaped house in Argyle is coming down.
Good choice, they tell us. The documents will be prepared.
We spend the rest of the day working through the storage unit like a backward wedding registry, bringing possessions out of the cold-formed steel and into the daylight for division.
What’s that for?
You want this one?
Those side tables should probably stay together.
By sundown, there are Docusign links in our inboxes.
Two days later, the divorce petition still not signed, April knocks on the door of my trailer with a book in her hand. Her eyes glimmer like flames. “Guess what.” She bites a smile, hugging the book to her chest to hide the cover. A small curl of hair wisps out above her ear.
Confused by her happiness, my own mouth ticks up in a curious smile. “What?”
She reveals the book—a novel, hardcover—but I don’t recognize anything about it. The title is Identity, and the cover has a mask of many colors with a black teardrop beneath one of the eyes. The spine bears the logo of one of the big publishing houses.
April flips it over, where bolded words grab my eye. Modern-day reimagining of The Count of Monte Cristo. I know she loves that book, but I don’t know why it would warrant a trip over here of all places. Today of all days.
She opens it to the back flap. “Look familiar?”
My gaze falls to the author photo. A young man with a familiar face. This is when I notice his name, which I glossed over on the front cover: Jonathan Gutierrez.
I look back to the photo. “No way.”
“Yes way!” April is practically squealing. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her like this. She opens the book from the back, flipping some pages. “And that’s not all,” she says.
I angle myself behind her shoulder as she opens to the acknowledgments page. Halfway down, this line of text: Thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Torres, without whom this work would not exist.
“No shit.”
“Yes shit!” Her fingers rest on the page. “Jonathan Gutierrez said whom!”
I laugh. We haven’t heard from Jonathan in years.
April turns toward me. “We have to read it.”
And this is the moment the excavator turns onto our driveway: it’s demolition day.
April lets the book fall shut. Her voice can barely be heard over the incoming growl of the excavator. “Do you need to stay here for it?”
I shake my head. “Everything’s set.”
“Want to go to Ellipsis?”
I look at her, the house, her. And I say, “Okay.”
What I want to say is, Okay, let’s go to Ellipsis and Mesero and your parents’ house and South Padre. Let’s make plans and babies and art. Let’s go back to—
But no. I can’t cherry-pick chapters. I can’t ignore the broken trust, the breached treaty, the old idiom: those who forget history are bound to repeat it.
Are those who remember history bound to do better? Is memory what binds us?
We walk toward the car, stopping to look at our home one last time.
Men are hopping down from groaning vehicles in hard hats and neon vests. They’re carrying clipboards and walkie-talkies, pointing at the house like it’s a target, nodding their next steps. One of them looks over and waves, and I lift my chin in return.
The bright-vested man turns back toward his crew, toward the task at hand. I squeeze my eyes shut, letting the smell of dust and diesel surround me.
Through the awareness of all that can’t be undone, April’s hand finds mine. I force myself to remember how she hurt me. So recently. So sharply.
I open my eyes and drop her hand.
We get into the car. And we drive away.
Behind us, the excavator arm tears into our house, and crows lift from the trees.
At Ellipsis, we buy another copy of Identity and find a tucked-away table where we can read aloud.
I start: He was a man before he was a prisoner, and a boy before that. Too many of the others, however, were prisoners before they were men.
An hour zooms by. Jonathan’s book is good, and not just I-know-the-guy-who-wrote-this good. It’s honest and accessible, neither so lowbrow that the eyes droop in boredom nor so highbrow that the eyes dry out.
When April goes to the restroom, I lean back and look around.
Out of nowhere, guilt pelts me. You were gone before you left.
This bookstore is one of the places I’d come in order to give April space.
Many of those times, Kim would join me here to grade papers.
I would take solace in sitting with someone who actually wanted my company, unlike April, who turned from my advances and sighed when I messed up baby stuff and didn’t even look up when I walked in the door.
So I tried not to walk in the door more than I had to, and we became a completely different couple than we had been.
Why did you give up on us? Tell me why.
Truth slants and slides across my memory.
I can grant that April’s distance probably wasn’t entirely about me.
She had two little people hanging from her all day and night, and she might have needed me to push my way back through her fog.
Maybe it’s not bad to become a different couple—not a sign that I’m unwanted, but that love can take many forms throughout a long marriage.
Maybe she was depressed, and I was so afraid of being a burden that my absence became a burden too great to bear.
My jaw goes slack. Is that what I did to her? Was I gone before I left?
She rounds the corner on her way back to our little table.
April the respondent. Leo the petitioner.
But just because she’s guilty doesn’t mean I’m innocent.
She sits. “One more chapter?”
We’ve been saying this for at least six chapters.
“Yeah.” I swallow. “One more.”
We’ve hit the point where we might as well just finish the whole story.
She resumes reading, but as masterful as Jonathan’s writing is, I have one foot in the prisoner’s world and one in my own. It’s how I’ve lived my life: half present and half imprisoned by my past.
On occasion April mumbles, “Wait,” and replaces flow with follow or bake with back. It’s easiest for her to read when it’s out loud. And it’s all about context—each part needing the others in order to make sense.
My phone buzzes, so she stops reading.
I look at the screen and frown. “Cameron.”
She nods for me to answer it.
I click the speaker button. “Hey, Cam.”
“Hey, is April with you? We tried to call her. It’s Dad.”
The hospital waiting room is filled with three things: germs, questions, and Russos.
Otto is asleep on Rachel’s lap, his eyelashes like butterfly wings. Sadie is at a friend’s house. Cameron is texting Josie. And Deb is staring blankly at a House Hunters rerun. We rush over to her.
April sits. “Mom?”
“He’s okay.”
“What’s going on? All Cam said was severe stomach pain.”
“They’re removing his appendix now.”
My shoulders loosen. Appendicitis. He really is okay.
I sit on the other side of Deb and ask, “How are you?”
“Me?” She pats my leg maternally. “Freezing.”
The AC is blasting. So I unbutton my flannel shirt, which Deb accepts, leaving me in an undershirt. “Thank you, sweetheart.”
I wonder if anyone would have told me about Billy if I hadn’t been with April today.
Deb nods toward the television. “Wallpaper, I tell you what. Everything comes back around eventually.”
She and April start talking about interior design. It’s hard to know how to bide time when a loved one is in surgery. I go check on Otto, whispering to Rachel, “Thanks so much.”
Soon, a doctor approaches and we all stand except Rachel, who is serving as Otto’s pillow.
The surgeon smiles at Deb. “Billy did great. Nurse Diane will let you know once he’s settled in a room.
They’ll go over everything in detail, but basically it will be twenty-four to forty-eight hours before discharge, then a few weeks of restricted mobility as he recovers.
” Another smile to bookend the good news.
Deb’s relief is palpable, and I smile at how my shirt swallows her.
I often forget how small she is. The doctor moves on, and we buzz with next steps.
April picks up Otto and says she needs to go get Sadie.
Cameron and Rachel ask if they should stay, but Deb says, “He’ll just be asleep. I can tell him you were here.”
Cameron hesitates. “You sure?”
I pull April aside. “I can take Otto and get Sadie. You stay. Give your mom some food and company.”
“Really?” In our unofficial schedule, it is not my day with the kids.
“Yes.”
She shifts a groggy Otto into my arms. “Thanks.” She smiles weakly. “Don’t finish Identity without me.”
A ballcapped man in the waiting room is having a coughing fit, and another man is sharing his unsolicited opinions about vaccines with a poor woman who is just trying to watch House Hunters.
April decides she’ll go get a Chipotle bowl for Deb and some plain rice for Billy.
So we turn to walk out of the hospital together.
April tells Deb she’ll be back shortly, and I tell her to keep the shirt.
Otto tells her bye-bye, and Nurse Diane tells her, “Room 236.” She points down the hall.
“He’s sleeping at the moment, and still coming off anesthesia, but you can go on in. ”