The Five Wounds

by Unknown

  Amadeo feels squeezed out and retreats to his bedroom. Usually when he’s feeling like this, Yolanda notices. She’ll sit on the edge of his bed, say, “Tell me what’s wrong, hijito,” or “You have to get up; look, I made you beans.” And she’ll talk to him and try to make him laugh, and when he snaps at her, she’ll be hurt, and then he’ll apologize, and sometimes he’ll lay his head in her lap.

  But none of that happens, not with the baby screaming and Angel sobbing and all of Yolanda’s friends coming by with their beribboned gift bags to fight over who gets to hold him and to congratulate Angel and stroke the silken head. “Oh, he’s such a little miracle,” his mother’s friends say again and again. Right. A miracle that a sixteen-year-old figured out how to fuck. The thought shames Amadeo. But still.

  At least he has Creative Windshield Solutions. He’s read and reread the booklet and committed the DVD to memory, but he’s nervous about actually attempting a repair. Now, though, with everyone so grouchy, he’s got to escape the house.

  Fortunately he has two dings in the windshield of his truck. He gathers his kit and heads out into the bright day, leaves Angel with her bad temper and the sweet milky smell of spit-up. He’ll start with the little one near the bottom right corner.

  The procedure is simple enough. You’re supposed to align the suction cup over the divot, inject the clear resin into it, then cover it with a sheet of film to preserve the surface. When the resin is dry, you peel off the film and then scrape away the dried excess with a razor blade.

  The result isn’t invisible to the naked eye, as in the video, but it’s definitely better than it was, a shining uneven mound of clear resin that could almost be a floater in one’s vision. He does better with the second, larger chip. When he’s done, he sits in the driver’s seat and watches the sunlight ripple through the gelatinous-looking patch. He’d like to show off his accomplishments, but Angel and his mother aren’t a receptive audience right now.

  EVER SINCE THE BIRTH, Marissa has been calling Angel on her cell, and then, when Angel disregards the calls, on the landline. Amadeo listens to Angel’s monosyllabic responses to whatever her mother says. He wonders if Marissa ever asks after him, but Angel just hangs up and returns to her grumping. Since their pleasantly unconflicted interaction at the hospital, he’s found himself thinking about Marissa; she’s cropped up here and there in his idle sexual fantasies. He can only think that his newfound interest in her has something to do with his heightened role as Angel’s preferred parent; they’re equals now; Angel herself proved that he’s no longer a deadbeat when she moved in with him.

  One evening Marissa arrives unannounced, bringing a plastic bag filled with rattles and blocks and musical stuffed animals, toys that even Amadeo can tell are for a baby much older than Connor, a baby with some modicum of control over its own limbs. For Angel she brings fancy truffles in a golden box.

  “Super,” Angel says, not getting up. “I’ve been trying to get fatter.” She flicks her eyes to her mother and then back to the TV.

  Marissa’s face falls. She sets the truffles on the coffee table.

  “Hey now,” Amadeo tells his daughter. “Your mom’s just trying to be nice.” He hopes Angel will open the chocolates now and offer him one.

  “Which is more than I can say for you,” Angel shoots back. “How old’s he going to be before you change a diaper?”

  Amadeo tries to meet Marissa’s eye, ready to shrug. What can you say, she’s a teenager. It could have been a nice moment, the two of them united by Angel’s brattiness. But Marissa bites her bottom lip and frowns, deepening the two creases between her brows.

  “I’ll change him,” she says. “Give him here.”

  “He doesn’t need changing.”

  Marissa digs in the bag and holds up a painted wooden stacking tower, shakes it weakly. “You used to have a toy almost exactly like this. There was this one blue ring that you especially loved to chew. I was always afraid you were going to get splinters in your gums.”

  “Lucky Connor. Lead poisoning and gum infection. Thanks a lot, Granny.”

  “Can I hold him?” Marissa’s voice is pathetic, supplicating. She gazes at Connor as though she might absorb him with her eyes.

  “Whatever.” Angel sets Connor on his back beside her on the couch and looks away. The baby kicks and flaps his arms as if trying to take flight.

  Marissa approaches and gathers the baby to her chest. She’s hunched so far over him Amadeo can’t see her face.

  The television keeps jabbering away relentlessly, spewing the screeching announcers’ voices and frenetic jingles. “Wanna shut that thing off?” asks Amadeo. “So we can talk or something?”

  “No,” says Angel aggressively. “I don’t wanna. Taking a cue from Aunt Val?”

  Marissa kisses Connor once on the forehead, her lips lingering, eyes closed. There’s an almost religious solemnity to her manner with the baby, which seems too weighty, too private for Amadeo to witness. In embarrassment he counts the small items scattered on the carpet: a plush Very Hungry Caterpillar, a bootie, a plastic ring of clacking keys, a used diaper wrapped tightly on itself that he wishes they’d thrown away before Marissa’s arrival.

  “Well,” says Marissa, after many long minutes have passed without Angel speaking. “I guess I better get back home.” As if she’d just stopped by on her way. As if Las Penas was on the way to anywhere.

  Angel doesn’t shift her eyes from the TV as she accepts the baby from her mother. “Mike needs his dinner?” she asks bitterly.

  “I made him move out.” Marissa stands in front of Angel, awaiting her pardon or approval. She clasps and unclasps her hands, then crosses her arms as if shivering. “I wanted to tell you that.”

  Angel’s eyes dart almost imperceptibly toward her mother’s face, then back to the screen.

  Marissa kisses Angel on the head, but Angel doesn’t move. “I love you.” Marissa pauses, and then, when she gets no reply, gives a strand of Angel’s black hair a gentle tug and crosses the living room, her steps jerky and self-conscious. “Take care, Amadeo,” she says from the door. “Say hi to your mom for me.”

  “What was that about?” asks Amadeo. “Why’d she make him move out?”

  Angel’s gaze is locked on the television. For a very long time she says nothing, cheeks flushed and eyes dry and bright, until Amadeo figures she’s ignoring him. Then she says, “How should I know.”

  THREE WEEKS AFTER the baby’s birth, Tío Tíve agrees to come for dinner. Amadeo’s mother, has, of course, arranged it, with her usual optimism that this time everyone might get along. Angel’s been stomping around in the same puke-covered cupcake-print pajamas, but today she showers, blow-dries her hair, puts on a strange shimmering mauve shirt with blousy sleeves and a bow at the neck and a line of unnecessary buttons up the back. “What?” she challenges Amadeo when she catches him looking at the bow. “Gramma loaned it to me. She says it draws the eyes up. Away from this.” She thumps her soft middle with real hatred. Honestly, if Amadeo didn’t know better, he’d think she was still pregnant.

  In the kitchen, Yolanda is whipping potatoes with butter. Amadeo swipes his finger in the bowl. Uncharacteristically, his mother doesn’t swat him away. Instead she waits for him to remove his hand a second time before grinding pepper. Without raising her head she says, “Your sister’s coming to meet the bobby, so you need to be nice to her.” She pauses. “The baby,” she corrects slowly. “She’s coming to meet the baby.”

  Amadeo snorts so vigorously that a droplet shoots from his nose to his shirt. “What happened to Amadeo is a drunken psycho? Jesus, Valerie can’t stand to miss nothing.” He yanks open the fridge and all the jars clank in the door. He searches the shelves. His mother’s back is tense over the bowl. “You hid the fucking beer from me?”

  “It’s not there?” asks Yolanda in a voice so transparent he almost laughs again. “Well, a night without beer won’t hurt any of us. And you’re being sober now.”

  M
aybe he wouldn’t even drink it, but it’s up to him. Hasn’t he been sober since Easter? Hasn’t he been doing fine on his own? He doesn’t need her condescension, her punishments, as if she’s withholding a treat from a bad dog. “One mistake and you think I’m a fucking alcoholic.” He slams the refrigerator so hard the ceramic fruit and vegetable magnets drop and scatter.

  “I told Valerie you weren’t drinking, honey. She’s proud of you. We’re all very proud.” He feels a pang when, with a sigh, she kneels to gather the magnets herself. He’s relieved that the beer is gone, because it’s out of his hands.

  “And otherwise, what? She wouldn’t come meet Connor? She’d punish a little baby to make a point?”

  “Otherwise I’d have to ask you to leave for the evening. So be good.” The firmness of her tone stuns him into silence.

  When Valerie shows up, she takes one look at Amadeo, then grabs each daughter protectively by the hand. His nieces gaze up at him with clear, distant eyes. “Hello, Amadeo.” She arches a skeptical eyebrow, then turns smoothly away. However, her stony face softens when she sees Connor lying in his little bouncy seat. “Oh, look at you.” She drops her daughters’ hands, leaving them to fend for themselves in the presence of their monstrous uncle, and advances on the baby.

  Because Amadeo’s plan for the evening is to prove to all of them what a good grandfather he is, he gets to Connor first. He lifts him by the butt and head, supporting the fragile little neck the way he’s been instructed. Connor makes fists and squints crossly into the overhead light.

  “Oh, let me see him,” croons Valerie, arms extended, crowding Amadeo.

  “I’ve got him.” Amadeo swivels, blocking his sister with his back.

  “Jesus, Dad,” says Angel, pulling plates from the cupboard. “You can hold him whenever you want.”

  Connor gives a twitching half-smile. “See?” Amadeo says. “He wants to stay with me. He’s smiling.”

  Angel glances. “Gas.”

  “Bullshit. No one smiles when they got gas.”

  “Seriously, Dad. Give him to Valerie.”

  Amadeo complies grudgingly. “You got to hold his head. He don’t like to be held too loose.”

  “Doesn’t,” Valerie corrects automatically. “Loosely. I’ve held babies before, Amadeo.” But her voice is sweet, because she’s already nuzzling Connor.

  Amadeo has a memory of Valerie hugging him tightly on the couch when they were kids. After their father died, they did this every day when they got home from first and sixth grade: had their snacks—ramen noodles or cheese melted on their grandmother’s tortillas—and then just clutched each other as if their lives depended on it while they watched TV. They never, as far as Amadeo can remember, spoke about their long silent hugs. Amadeo remembers his arms reaching up and around his sister’s neck, his own neck cricked, his hand turning numb from where it was caught between Valerie and the back of the couch, remembers not wanting to shift even a fraction for fear of reminding them both of the strangeness of what they were doing. Eventually they must have untangled themselves, because certainly they’d have parted by late evening when their mother got home from Santa Fe with cold caught in the seams of her coat, kissed them tiredly and started dinner. Amadeo wonders if Valerie remembers any of this—she must, she’s vain about her ability to remember obscure moments from her childhood. He wonders if, as she’s treating him like shit, she thinks of it.

  He watches his sister cradle little Connor, her face bright with happiness, and misses her, misses himself as he once was. When he was in elementary school, he’d depended on his big sister; while his mother was at work, Valerie helped him get ready in the morning, assembled his lunches, after school she helped him with his fractions. Even when she bossed him, she’d been there for him, which is maybe why he resented her so much when, as a teenager, she became focused on her own life, on getting herself into college and away from Amadeo and his mother.

  Tíve shows up late and grunts in reply to the women’s enthusiastic greetings. Honey the dog pokes her long snout past the door, eager to join the party, but finds herself forced back by Angel, who briskly latches the screen.

  “Hey, Uncle,” Amadeo says, but Tíve just nods and allows Yolanda to kiss his cheek and take his jacket.

  The food, as always, is perfect: the mashed potatoes, of course; also gloriously crunchy green beans and slivered almonds sautéed in butter; golden pork chops with a mustardy breadcrumb crust, edges caramelized; and, because it’s Angel’s favorite, a whole baking dish of red chile enchiladas, the heat of the chile tempered by the tang of the cheddar. Amadeo’s mother has always been able to pull together varied and flavorful meals with barely any effort at all.

  All through dinner, Amadeo feels an itchy unpleasant impatience as the voices swim around him: Angel’s high, Yolanda’s oddly muted and careful, Valerie’s fake and patient. Periodically one of his nieces will pipe up with a precocious observation that will be met with enthusiasm only by their mother.

  Lily holds her speared pork chop aloft, regarding it with skepticism, then drops it back on her plate. “Do you know pigs are smarter than dogs?”

  “Smarter than most humans, probably,” says Valerie. “So when are you going back to your program, Angel?”

  “Our Open House is next Friday.” Angel looks from her grandmother to her father. “You guys remember, right?”

  Amadeo rolls his eyes. “Yes, Angel.” The Smart Starts! Open House is a very important event, Angel has informed them. She’s kept the flyer on the kitchen table and has read it aloud to Amadeo and Yolanda. Come meet the Smart Starts! family! Get involved! See why EVERYTHING starts at Smart Starts!!

  “I was so worried I’d have to miss it due to labor, but we’ll be there. And then I’ll start up again on Monday.” She ducks her chin to address Connor’s head. “And so will you. You will start school, too.” Angel turns to Lily. “Have you read anything good lately?”

  Lily pushes her glasses up her red nose, as if trying to determine whether her cousin is making fun of her. Reassured, she tosses her thick hair. “Of course. There’s this one book? Called Into the Breach? It’s about a World War II girl who disguises herself as a soldier”—and for the next ten minutes she recounts the intricacies of the plot.

  Amadeo sips his soda, sets it down. What’s the point of being sober if no one notices?

  Tíve has planted a hand on either side of his plate, and he scowls at his food. Since Easter, Amadeo can’t stand to be around Tíve, who has been privy to Amadeo’s most recent major failures. Over and over he is beset with shame flashbacks: his uncle standing in the bright glare of the police station, checkbook in hand; his uncle waiting in the truck to ferry Amadeo to one court-mandated appointment or another. Even more shameful is Amadeo’s memory of his own earnest absorption in his role of Jesus, his immersion in—what? Hope? Prayer? No, Amadeo was immersed in something even more ludicrous than that: belief in himself, belief that he might actually succeed at something difficult and pure. Night after night in the cement quiet of the morada, Tíve witnessed Amadeo trying to lose himself, on his knees. Amadeo wouldn’t be more humiliated if his uncle had caught him masturbating.

  Tíve’s hands are unsteady as he lifts his laden fork. His uncle’s mouth waits, agape and straining, for the trembling mound of potatoes.

  Panic swipes at Amadeo’s heart. His uncle is aging. One day soon, he will die, when Amadeo has yet to earn his good opinion. As a kid, he had a fantasy that his great-uncle would one day treat him like his missing son, a fantasy encouraged by Yolanda, who is always putting Amadeo in Tíve’s way like some kind of irresistible treat. An inheritance, it’s true, was also part of his fantasy. But what Amadeo really wanted was a father figure. Isn’t that how things should be? That the man who’d lost a son and the boy who’d lost a father should find each other? Now the thought occurs to him, as though it was original, that there is no way things should be, only the way things are, and the way things are is going to keep changing.<
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  His expression must be bleak, because across the table his mother tips her head inquiringly, but Amadeo turns away.

  After dinner, as they eat cake and coffee ice cream in the living room, Tío Tíve leans across the couch to peer into the baby’s sleeping face. “He’s a looker, ain’t he?”

  “Want to hold him?” Angel turns the sleeping Connor face-out, gripping him under the armpits so his onesie rides up and his limp, dimpled thighs dangle. His jowls droop over her fingers as if his entire musculoskeletal system were composed solely of dried beans. At his perfectly formed lips, a single bubble rises and pops.

  “He don’t want to go to no old man,” Tío Tíve says, but he smiles, showing his teeth worn to brown nubs. The skin cinches around his eyes. He sets his untouched slice of cheesecake on the end table.

  Angel lowers Connor into his arms. With a deep shuddering breath, the baby settles against the old man’s skinny chest.

  “You okay? I know he’s heavy.”

  Tíve waves her away with his wrinkled chin. “He’s just a little thing, ain’t he?”

  The room is silent as Tío Tíve regards the baby, bewitched. He holds the baby in a stiff high cradle and looks down at the creased little face, the swollen eyelids. “I haven’t held a baby in a hunnerd years.” His knees in their polyester pants are large and square. His shiny black socks have sagged, revealing thin, nearly hairless ankles.

  When the old man looks up at Angel, it’s with a kind of open amazement that strikes Amadeo as sweet. His sister also watches their great-uncle, as surprised as Amadeo by his interest in Angel and her kid.