Chapter 43
LEO
A FEW HOURS AFTER APRIL comes out of Jed’s Hardware, I wait at a Slovacek’s table.
In front of me: jalapeno poppers and iced tea.
Above me: animated pigs canoodle and promise You’ll Love Our Sausage.
Around me: work boots scuff the ground, truckers refill Dr Pepper, out-of-towners compare key chains, an acne-scarred boy eats a forkful of buttermilk pie, and a mother hooks a finger on the back of her baby’s diaper, peers downward and says, “Yup.”
Then my father walks in. He looks like a stranger and also like me.
None of these people know that we haven’t seen each other in decades. That this man changed my diapers, fixed leaks over my head, and then disappeared from my life. I have six inches on him, yet I feel as small as I ever have.
He sees me immediately. Walks over and sits down.
“Leonardo.”
Just like that, my dad is sitting across from me, saying my name.
“So,” he says. “You’re married. Felicidades.”
I recalibrate. Nod. Technically yes, I am still married.
“?Y ninos?”
“Dos,” I say, the first word I’ve spoken to him as an adult.
But my children feel private. So I offer no names or pictures.
Emotion moves across his eyes, and I squint as though looking out at an ocean, wondering what exactly I see in the distance.
Unable to wait any longer or to answer more questions when I want to be the one asking them, I blurt out the one I’ve imagined asking for years and years: “Why did I go to Nacho’s? ”
The question sits between us with the untouched tea and poppers. I already know the answer, but I need to hear him say it—that I was too much, that they didn’t want me.
He says, “After the baby…” But then he starts again. “We were kids and had nothing to give you. We thought it would be temporary.”
I say, “You could have called.”
“After the baby, Ana was never the same. She tried for so long, but she couldn’t…”
He pinches one of his hands with the other.
“Couldn’t what?”
He studies me, and then his shoulders slump. “She couldn’t go on. It was too much.”
I frown, my heart gaining speed. “What are you talking about?”
“As soon as she knew you were in good hands with Nacho—” he pauses. “—she bowed out.” His eyes are dry, but there are tears in his voice. “She needed more rest than this life could give her.” Very quietly he adds, “Than I could give her.”
My eyes widen with understanding. Disbelief. “Wait.” I look around, measure my words, and keep my tone low. “Are you saying my mother died and nobody told me?”
“I begged Nacho. Especially when you got older. But he blocked my number. He thought he was protecting you.”
Flashes of memory assault me: Nacho and Izzy’s house, my first months there, the long years, the day I gave back their key and drove away, nobody once uttering my mother’s name.
I find myself up on my feet, my body reacting.
I take a long, hard look at my father. Around us, sausages sizzle and babies cry.
I should ask more questions, but I don’t want more answers.
I should stay, but I don’t want to show my grief to this man who doesn’t even know me.
I should sit back down, but should is so weak beside a lacerated heart.
My mother was not in my life, but now she is not in the world.
I couldn’t find her because she is not here to be found.
The reconnection I always assumed would happen eventually—the stilted hug, the fight about how she abandoned me, how I was hurt but she was sorry—none of it can ever happen.
Mami’s hands appear to me now, out of nowhere.
I can feel them on me, can see them vividly with her bitten, glitter-painted fingernails.
It simply wasn’t a possibility that one of my parents had died—not because it couldn’t have happened in our decades apart, but because someone would have told me.
The smell of sausage is suddenly nauseating, and I can’t stay in this place for one more minute.
Tears threaten as I take a step back from the table.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Rico. “I’m going to need some time.
Sorry.” And with that, I bolt out of Slovacek’s, anger spidering from my father to my uncle to my mother to myself.