The Smallest Part

by Amy Harmon

  ***

  Fifteen

  1992

  From the hill just behind The Three Amigos Apartments, they could see the fireworks display better than if they had tickets to the Fourth of July celebration at Rice Stadium where the Running Utes played. Cora was still at work, so Noah and Mercedes went without her, expecting her to show up when she could. They dragged a cooler up the hill and brought a ratty quilt to lay on. Noah brought his boombox, and they listened to Bon Jovi and Aerosmith and ate Doritos and drank Dr. Pepper while they waited for night to fall and the show to begin. They weren’t the only ones who used the hill to see the display, but they always climbed the highest and stayed the longest.

  “We’ll be seniors next year, Mer. Next summer, we may not even be here on the Fourth of July,” Noah mused, stretched out beside her on the blanket.

  “Where would we be?” Mer asked, her eyes on the darkening sky. They’d watched the fireworks together every year since the summer before third grade.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said softly. “I’m suffocating.”

  Mer sat up and looked down at Noah, her heart in her throat.

  “Where would you go?”

  He must have seen her dismay, because he sat up too, looping his arms around his knees and meeting her gaze. Reaching over, he rubbed out the scowl between her brows with his thumb.

  “I don’t know yet,” he said softly. “Maybe I’ll join the army. Maybe the Air Force. You don’t have to actually fly planes to be in the Air Force. Did you know that? Maybe I’d be stationed at Hill Air Force Base, so I’d be close. Or maybe I’ll just go to Alaska and work on one of those commercial fishing boats for a few months. But I’m going. I have to.”

  “I don’t like the sound of any of that.”

  “How am I going to learn how to be a man if I spend all my time with women?” Noah asked.

  “Helloooo up there!” Cora called, interrupting them. She was waving a flashlight, making a wide arc in the dusk. “Is that you? Why do you two always climb so high? I hate hiking in the dark.”

  “Get up here!” Noah called. “It’s not even dark yet, you dork.”

  “Yeah, but what if it was? How would I have found you?” Cora grumbled. She climbed the remaining distance and collapsed onto the blanket, wiggling into the small space between them even though there was sufficient room on either side. They laughed and parted for her, shoving at her long legs and arms that were sprawled across them. She rolled to her back and crossed her arms beneath her head, and Noah and Mercedes relaxed beside her, their eyes upward, their conversation forgotten.

  “I brought beer,” Cora said, satisfaction ringing in her voice. “Cold. Delicious. Beer.”

  “Beer is not delicious,” Mercedes retorted. “It smells terrible. But hand me one.”

  Cora dug a cold can from her knapsack, popped the tab, and they passed it between the three of them, waiting for the show to start.

  In ten minutes, they’d finished two cans and opened another. It tasted better the more they drank. Mercedes had never had the desire to drink before. Angel and Jose had shown up at the apartment once, completely wasted, and Angel had thrown up all over the living room carpet. It had taken a month of scrubbing to get the smell out. The smell of alcohol made Mercedes think of vomit. But she kept thinking of Noah saying he wanted to leave. Mercedes didn’t think she could survive if Noah left. Drinking the beer was a good distraction.

  When the first colors lit the sky, cracking and shuddering, they’d worked their way through the six pack, and Mercedes began to see why people drank. She couldn’t feel her fear. One color bled into another, gold and green, red and blue, the smell of heat and smoke and summertime filling her senses as the beer dissolved her walls.

  “De colores,” she sang softly. “Y por eso los grandes amores, de muchos colores me gustan a mí.”

  Cora hummed along with her, unable to sing the words but recognizing the tune.

  All the colors. All the colors. All the bright colors made her heart cry.

  When they were finished, Cora started a new song, merging one song about colors into another.

  “I see your true colors, shining through,” Cora crooned. Cora sang “True Colors” even better than Cyndi Lauper, and “De Colores” was forgotten as Noah joined her, his low voice a soft rumble, barely discernible beneath Cora’s full-bodied belting.

  But Mercedes had stopped singing. Instead, she was crying. Her heart was crying too, just like the words to the song. It was the beer’s fault. She sat up and began feeling around for the flashlight. She needed to go home, and she didn’t want to walk in the dark.

  “Mercedes,” Cora said. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m going home. I have to pee.” Suddenly she did. She had to pee so bad her teeth were floating.

  “But you’re crying,” Cora protested.

  “I’m crying because if I don’t cry, I’ll pee my pants. And Noah is leaving.”

  “What?” Cora gasped.

  “Ah, Mer. I’m not going anywhere yet,” Noah said.

  Cora looked at Noah in horror, Mercedes’s tears forgotten.

  “Where are you going, Noah?” Cora cried.

  “Nowhere. I’m not going anywhere. Not yet. Mer’s just drunk. I don’t think someone so small should drink that much beer.”

  Mercedes started walking, not caring that her friends would have to carry everything down without her. She heard them call her name and tell her to wait, but she didn’t stop. For once, they would have to get by without her.

  * * *

  Noah stared up at his ceiling in the dark. He’d read for a while after putting Gia to bed, his eyes continually rising to watch Mer as she played with Oscar, stroking him and whispering to him in Spanish—Noah understood about half of what she said—before she crawled over to Noah, dropped a kiss on his head, and bid him a sleepy goodnight. It was Sunday night, and she was staying in Noah’s guest room again—the way she did almost every Sunday night—so she could watch Gia the next day. She’d made it back to the salon on Thursday and Friday and even donned her heels for work on Saturday, just to prove she could. She’d limped around all Sunday because of it, and Noah had bit his tongue so he wouldn’t chastise her for her vanity.

  She’d slept in his guest room that week more than she’d slept at home, and Noah wondered when they were going to admit to each other that their relationship had changed. The kiss they’d shared Monday night was just one of the indications. Of course, they hadn’t talked about it, and they hadn’t repeated it.

  They were good at that, being vulnerable and honest and real with each other except when it involved romance or their mutual attraction. Then they studiously ignored the fact that they were closer than most married couples. They religiously pretended the love they felt for each other was purely platonic. They fell back into comfortable patterns—bickering like siblings and donning their twelve-year-old selves so they wouldn’t have to face the fact that they were all grown up with very grown-up feelings. They relied on each other, took care of each other, freely admitted they loved each other, and whether Mercedes wanted to admit it or not, they weren’t simply best friends. To pretend otherwise was to lie, and like Mer said, he’d never been very good at pretending. He could be patient, but at some point, Mercedes was going to have to stop fighting the inevitable. And they were inevitable. He believed that.

  He’d never forgotten what Abuela had told him before he left for basic training. She didn’t speak English very well, and their relationship had been more about hugs and unspoken understanding, more about shared affection than long conversation. But she’d told him, quite clearly, that just because something is meant to be, doesn’t mean it’s meant to be right now. He’d thought she was talking about his education, about his studies, about his life in general, but her words had come to mind more than once in the last year, and he’d begun to wonder if she hadn’t been talking about him and Mercedes all along. She’d been one of those people who
just knew things, and he’d believed her then. He believed her now, and he was convinced the timing was finally right.

  He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, tried to think of something other than his complicated feelings and his stubborn best friend. He was just drifting off when the baby monitor on his nightstand began talking to him.

  He groaned. Gia had an aggravating way of waking up just as he was falling asleep, and it was hell getting her back down. He heard her toss a little, and Noah held his breath, hoping she was just talking in her sleep.

  “De kuh wo ways,” she said again, and he groaned, but he didn’t get up. It kind of sounded like she was singing. She babbled a few more words—words Noah couldn’t decipher—and a clear melody emerged. It was familiar, but not overly so, and Noah concentrated on her little voice, singing sleepily in the dark.

  It was the cutest thing he’d ever heard.

  He pushed back the blanket and grabbed the monitor, wanting to share it with Mer, hoping she wasn’t too deeply asleep to appreciate being serenaded by a two-year-old.

  Her bedside lamp was still on, the burnished light so soft and low it wasn’t much brighter than a candle, but Mer’s eyes were closed, and Noah wondered briefly if she was still too afraid after Monday’s scare to be alone in the dark. He closed her door and padded to her bed, whispering her name. Her eyes fluttered open immediately.

  “Mer, you need to hear something.”

  “Is everything okay?” she said, sitting up, fully awake.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Just . . . I want you to hear this,” he soothed. She sank back down on her pillow, and Noah sat down on the bed beside her and turned the monitor up as loud as it would go. For a moment there was simply charged silence, the purring sound of Gia breathing, and an occasional rustle of blankets and the squeak of crib springs. Then Gia started to hum, adding words here and there. Her small voice was like a trail of pearls as she moved through her song.

  “She’s singing,” Noah whispered, as though speaking any louder would cause Gia to stop.

  “Yeah. She is,” Mercedes responded, delighted.

  “I don’t know the song. . . but it sounds familiar.”

  “‘De Colores.’ She’s singing ‘De Colores.’” Mercedes looked as though she wanted to laugh, but wanted to listen more, and held the mirth in her chest, her hand pressed to her heart, her ears straining for the Spanish words that were more sounds and suggestions. But the tune, now that she’d identified it, was unmistakable.

  “Canta el gallo, canta el gallo,” Mercedes sang, matching her voice to Gia’s. “Con el quiri, quiri, quiri, quiri, quiri.”

  “What are the words?” Noah whispered.

  “I taught her that verse because the sounds of the rooster, the hen, and the chicks repeat. La gallina, la gallina, con el cara, cara, cara, cara, cara. Los pollitos, los pollitos con el pío, pío, pío, pío, pí,” she sang.

  “She’s right on tune,” Noah whispered. “Two years old, and she already has better pitch than I do.”

  “I wish Cora could hear her,” Mercedes said softly, and Noah sighed. He wished Cora could hear her too. He wished Cora peace and rest and forgiveness. But he didn’t want to think about Cora.

  “Maybe she can,” Mercedes mused. “If we believe in Moses . . . and crazy Cuddy, I suppose we have to believe that Cora still exists, somewhere.”

  “I guess so,” Noah whispered, still listening. Gia was losing steam, her little voice quieting, her song slipping into silence. “I knew I remembered that song. I just couldn’t place it,” he added.

  “It was another one of Papi’s favorites. I’ve been teaching it to Gia,” Mercedes smiled.

  “I never heard him sing it. But I heard you sing it. Remember the night of the fireworks? You had too much beer and rolled down the hill behind The Three Amigos.”

  “It was the fastest way down, and I had to pee.” She giggled, remembering.

  “You were crying, and your knees were all scraped up. And I felt terrible because it was my fault.”

  “You told me all of us women were suffocating you,” Mercedes pouted.

  “I don’t think I said it quite like that. But I remember feeling desperate. I didn’t have a dad. My best friends were girls. Everywhere I looked, I was surrounded by women. Don’t get me wrong. You, Abuela, Alma . . . I had some amazing women in my life. Heather and Cora too. I had no complaints. But I needed a father figure. I recognized it in myself. I was hungry for it. Remember when that Air Force recruiter came to the school junior year?”

  “You looked like you’d stuck your finger in a light socket.” Mercedes giggled again.

  “Yeah. I probably did. He talked to me for a good hour. Gave me his undivided attention. I went home and cried I was so excited.”

  “I never could figure out why you wanted to go. You had good grades and you could have gotten grants and scholarships and student aid. It just seemed dangerous and unnecessary.”

  “It felt vital. Like . . . if I didn’t go, I was going to explode.”

  “I always thought you were running away. I was mad at you for a while.”

  “I wasn’t running away. I was running toward,” he said, a wry smile on his lips. “I was running for my life.”

  “I just knew nothing would ever be the same. And I was right. You came back, and you were in love with Cora the way she’d always been in love with you,” Mercedes whispered. Her eyes were soft and sad, her dark hair spread across the pillows, and in the ruddy glow of the little lamp, she was so beautiful he could hardly breathe.

  “She always needed me. You made it very clear that you didn’t.”

  “Love and need aren’t the same thing, Noah.”

  He nodded, staring down at her. The silence grew and swelled between them, fat with all the things they felt and weren’t brave enough to say. He leaned over her, hands on either side of her head, and her breath caught as he lowered his mouth.

  He just wanted to kiss her. That was all. Just kiss her, like he had on New Year’s Eve, like he had Monday night. Like he had twelve years ago before their paths diverged. But he took one kiss and then he needed another. Soft lips, soft hands, soft sighs, and he knew this time he wasn’t going to be able to stop himself from taking more.

  The room was shadowed and still, a quiet co-conspirator, keeping the world at bay, and for the first time they weren’t laughing or teasing or even comforting one another. Nobody was crying or scared. Nobody was saying goodbye. Nobody was pulling away. And Noah’s heart began to pound with hope.

  But when Mercedes rose up suddenly and turned off the lamp, Noah realized she wasn’t yet ready to see the truth. She pulled his mouth back to hers, urged his body down beside her on the bed, but she was still pretending. She was pretending that what was between them wasn’t love. She was “giving him what he needed,” like she had the day she’d coaxed him into the shower, all the while denying he was what she wanted.

  Noah knew her too well. Even in the dark, he saw her clearly. He saw her with his hands and his mouth. He smelled her skin, heard her thoughts, and felt her touch, and in his head, there was no pretense at all. She moaned against his lips, anxious, needy, pulling at his clothes and urging his body to settle into hers, but he refused to let her set the tempo.

  Mer wanted a frenzied dance, so she didn’t have to feel too much for too long. Noah understood. But he needed to feel. He needed it so badly that his eyes teared up and his hands shook. He didn’t want to tease. He wanted to taste. He didn’t want to rush, he wanted to relish. Going slow would hurt, because caring hurt. And he cared about Mercedes. He cared deeply.

  There was too much history, too much shared joy and agony not to care. But he welcomed it. He wanted it. He told her after they’d made love in the shower that he’d found comfort in a friend. It was true, but it had been more than that. She knew it, he knew it, and he was ready to admit it. Noah didn’t want comfort from Mer. Not anymore. This time, he needed it to be real. He loved Mercedes, and he wanted to make love
to her. Making love demanded time, and if they raced through the act, Mer could claim it wasn’t love at all. She could flit away into the realm of friendship, where love was about safety and consistency, and no one got hurt.

  “Slow down, Mer,” he whispered, withdrawing, and she stilled, her eyes coming open. Mercedes had beautiful eyes, and in the moonlit darkness they gleamed, questioning and cautious. Her head was framed between his forearms, her hair a black swath across the pale spread. Noah leaned in, inch by inch, his eyes on hers, demanding she pay attention, and he kissed her again.

  “Breathe,” he commanded. She was frozen, her lips parted, her eyes wide. Her careful exhale fluttered past his lips and warmed his skin. He brushed his lips over hers—never increasing the pressure or the intensity—until her eyes closed and her body softened beneath him. Her hands rose to his face, reverent fingers exploring, savoring, as she opened her mouth and quietly bid him enter.

  For a long time, Noah just kissed her. He kept his weight above her, kept his hands in her hair, kept his mouth on hers. Kissing is a thousand times more intimate than sex. He knew some people would disagree, but the first thing that goes when a marriage is coming apart is not the sex. It’s the kissing.

  Mer’s hands were beneath his shirt, hovering at his waistband, pulling and pushing, and even as their clothes fell away, Noah didn’t stop kissing her. He didn’t neglect her mouth when her hands were rapacious and roving, pleading and punishing. He captured her wrists, urging patience, and when he finally began to touch her, it was not a means to an end. He caressed her because he loved the way her skin felt beneath his fingertips, the silken slopes, the soft swells, the warm scent of private places yet unexplored.

  “Noah, please. Noah,” she begged, her hips rising, her hands escaping his hold to clutch and coax. He capitulated slowly, mouth to mouth as he sank into her, and was so overcome with emotion, he had to pause. He was Atlas, holding the weight of the world on his shoulders, suspended above her, reveling in the exquisite agony of servitude.