Chapter 55
DEB
A Few Months Later
Or rather, I remember wrong, muscle memory taking over. Nearing the turn for Lexington Avenue, I think, Oh, what the heck. I’m already almost there.
From a ways off, I can see two boys bundled in puffy coats and kicking a soccer ball into a little goal.
I pull toward the curb, my car’s visible exhaust a sign of the season.
The house has been painted white, and I can’t say I care for it.
But even in winter I can tell that the flower beds are well tended, and the windows have gotten a much-needed upgrade.
There’s a yard sign with the name of the neighborhood school.
One of the boys kicks the ball past his brother into the net, and he throws both fists into the air.
Familiar holiday decorations line the street: the Garcias’ giant snowman, the Millers’ reindeer, and the Robinsons’ nativity scene.
The porch light comes on, and the front door opens.
Their mother is calling them inside. Through my car windows, I can hear their complaints.
Aw man, I was just about to beat him! The boys drag themselves into the house.
A few seconds later, the littlest scampers back out to collect the soccer ball, and then the yard goes still with twilight.
I stare, mesmerized. My own children are all over that yard, this street.
I miss it. But we can only return to a place, not a time.
I look over my shoulder at a back seat exploding with Christmas gifts, and I turn to look at the house again.
I imagine what the family might be doing inside, that third stair from the bottom with its slight creak.
Then I imagine my own children currently in their respective homes with their respective evening routines, all of them suddenly so adult.
I think of Billy taking off his Brooks sneakers and probably eating too much beef jerky in my absence.
I shift the car into drive, ready to go home.
The lights are off in our unit, and it’s fully dark now.
I frown. “Hello?”
I hear a shuffle in the hallway and follow the sound, flipping on lights.
“Billy?”
When I round the corner, my husband is cowering beside the coat closet.
I first register his expression—unfamiliar, twisted in shame and anger.
He is trembling.
I then register his pants—one leg its normal khaki color and the other a darker shade of brown. Around his feet, a puddle of urine.
I drop my bags and rush to him. It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re okay.
I take him gently by the waist and guide him to the bathroom.
“Sorry”—he fumbles for words—“I couldn’t—”
It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re okay.
When he is cleaned up and settled on the couch with some chamomile tea, I mop the floor by the coat closet. Put away my shopping bags. And then I go into the bathroom and lock the door.
I grip the marble counter and meet my own gaze in the mirror, leveling with myself, just as I did the night I lost my mother, then later my father.
Just as I did when I got pregnant with April, when I got married, and when—several years later—I realized that I might actually love my husband, that I might be okay.
It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re okay.
My face has changed, time gathered in its creases, yet I still feel like a young girl.
I draw in some air and consider our dinner options: white chicken chili, broccoli rice casserole, or maybe a pasta with an arugula salad.
When I return to the living room, Billy is waiting, aware. He apologizes again. He’s wearing a gray fleece pullover, and he gestures for me to sit with him.
I go to the couch and duck under his arm.
Knowing me, he suggests tenderly, “We should just do a microwave meal.”
“Hm,” I say, and not without judgment. But we do have some Lean Cuisines.
His arm is soft and strong, and his voice is pained.
So I agree to a microwave dinner, and I let myself sit.
On the drive to Cameron and Rachel’s house a few days later, I turn on Rosetta Stone.
Beside me, Billy asks for the second time, “Do you actually know what she’s saying?”
“I’m learning.”
“Oh, that’s so hard. Why would you do that?”
“For Leo.”
“But Leo speaks English.”
“He also speaks Spanish.”
“No kidding.”
“His parents are Mexican, and we’re actually going to see his dad tonight.”
“In Mexico?”
Billy’s sincerity gives me a good chuckle. Even when his questions cycle, there’s always something new to keep me on my toes. “No, just at Cameron and Rachel’s house.” I pause the language lesson.
“You mean Cameron and April’s house?”
“No, Rachel is Cameron’s wife.”
“Oh, Cameron got married! That’s wonderful.”
“Mm.”
Billy is wearing his Christmas tree tie, and I’m in my shimmery red sweater. We repeat a version of this conversation once more before we arrive.
At the house, everyone sheds coats and offers up our usual holiday fare: every kind of tamale, from pork to beef to pumpkin to cinnamon raisin apple.
Josie helps Rachel in the kitchen while Sadie runs around playing something akin to “Jingle Bells” on a recorder despite Bing Crosby being on in the background.
In an armchair, April is folded into Leo. When they told us they weren’t going through with the divorce, Billy made a joke about rekindled flames. I would have elbowed him had I not been celebrating his memory.
Cameron and Otto flip through a picture book as we wait for Rico. Leo has decided to let him meet his grandchildren. But when the songs and books are over and the table is set, Rico still hasn’t arrived.
Leo glances at the clock and then at his phone. “Oh.” He taps his screen. “He texted. Says his alternator went out and he’s on a Greyhound bus. Sounds like he’ll be pretty late.”
Rachel says we’ll wait. She covers the food and crams dishes into the warm oven.
An hour later, Otto is whining, even with a steady drip of Cheerios.
Leo sighs. “Let’s just go ahead and eat.”
Everyone looks around uncertainly, so he adds, “It’s getting late.” And he goes to the oven to get the food. Stomachs growling, nobody argues.
Otto devours a pumpkin tamale and begs for more. Cameron tells holiday jokes that delight his father. And as Otto is polishing off the last pumpkin tamale, there’s a knock at the front door.
Cameron disappears from the room, and he comes back in with Rico, whose hair is slicked. He is holding two gift bags. His fingernails are scrubbed clean.
“I’m really sorry.” Looking at his toes, he says something about his clunker of a car and the bus schedule and—he raises the gift bags a bit—that he didn’t know Sadie’s favorite color.
I smile at Rico with his tidy hair and long trek. Love can hide in our best efforts.
Josie jumps up from the table and goes over to him. “I’m April’s sister, Josie.” She sticks out her hand. “Texas public transportation sucks. You must be starving.”
At her cue, everyone springs into action.
Rachel introduces herself and offers to take his jacket.
Billy says, “Good to see you again.” Which isn’t saying much, because he now defaults to assuming that he should know everyone. I’m curious as to whether he truly recognizes Rico, though I suspect he doesn’t. It has been six months since our one unwitting encounter.
Rico spots Sadie hiding behind her mother’s chair, a finger hooked shyly in her mouth as she eyes this man who looks suspiciously like her dad. It was hard for her to understand that she has two grandfathers. If this is true, she asked Leo, then do I have another grandmother somewhere too?
Rico kneels eye level with Sadie, not too close, and he extends one of the gift bags. Slowly, she extracts a doll in a purple dress, and she grins, shimmying her shoulders back and forth a tad. Chin tucked into her neck, she tells him, “Purple’s my favorite color.”
This is patently false. That girl is obsessed with yellow, she talks about it all the time. But something about this interaction has made her say purple to the man with her daddy’s face.
Rico lights up, his grin silver and sincere, and Sadie considers him. Then she steps forward and wraps her arms around his neck, declaring, “I’m going to name her…Lofee!”
She runs off with Lofee, and Rico rises, his knees cracking.
Otto is in Leo’s arms, eyeing the other gift. He points at it. “My?”
Rico faces Leo now. “Hope I didn’t make you wait too long.”
The rest of us try to give them privacy.
Rico says, “I wanted to be here sooner.”
He wanted to. But he wasn’t. And now he is. It’s so much of life, the timing.
Otto stretches to peek into the gift bag, and Rico helps him part the tissue paper to reveal some Hot Wheels. Otto claps. “Car!”
Rico puts a hand to his grandson’s shoulder and says, “Dios mío.” He shakes his head. “Spitting image.”
“Car,” Otto repeats, sandwiched between his father and grandfather.
At the end of the evening, the kids fall asleep with their toys in hand.
Games and music have been played. Rico has made some frothy hot chocolate.
I have made some valiant attempts at speaking Spanish.
And Billy has squinted at Rico and said, “Did I borrow a hammer from you?” He exists in a thickening fog where he knows that he knows people, just not how.
After the dishes are done, I sneak over to Rico while Billy gets our jackets.
I pull a small package from my purse, wrapped in shiny paper and tied with ribbon.
When I hand it to Rico, he’s horrified to have nothing in return, and I suddenly feel thoughtless.
“No, it’s really not a big deal!” I press the gift into his hand.
“Your son wrote this, and I just thought you might want to read it.” I bought whole boxes of Seventh City when Leo published it, bragging to the neighborhood ladies and also saving a stash for occasions like this.
Billy returns and drapes my jacket over my shoulders. He shakes Rico’s free hand. As before, his skin is a blank canvas beside Rico’s sleeve of tattoos.
The two grandfathers slip into their coats as Billy offers his default, “See you soon.”
Rico gives his shoulder a squeeze. “Take it easy, papi.”
Waving good night to our kids, we take our leave into the crisp December air.
On the drive home, I decide against Rosetta Stone. I’m too tired to repeatedly explain that I can’t understand it, that I’m trying to learn. Yes, even though it’s hard. Yes, even at my age.
Instead, I turn the classical station on low volume, and I get a memory of something Billy’s mother once said as she sat at her Kawai piano with curlers in her hair: Home is the note where the song starts. Come back to it for the resolve.
In the warm calm of our car, Billy begins his litany of confirmations.
My children are April, Josie, and Cameron? Yes.
I have two grandchildren? Yes.
We live on Lexington Avenue? We actually moved to Greenwood Hills.
Oh. We’ve been married twenty-five years? Thirty-five, and going strong.
Wow. And I’m a dentist? Retired, yes.
And you love me?
I snap a worried look in his direction, only to find a mischievous grin.
I give him a playful poke. “You already know that one.”
“Say it, though?” he asks boyishly. “You love me?”
I grin. “I do.”
“And I love you,” he says. “Even more than the memory of you.”
I did not understand this kind of love back in 1988, but I do now.
As a minuet plays softly, I drive us home.
I take no wrong turns.