by Unknown
Even in these long, exhausting days, when she’s constantly yanked by the needs of the baby’s body and her own, Angel keeps the duvet smooth, her lotions and baby toiletries lined up on the bureau, label out, as if they are still on display in the store. In this tiny enclosed piece of the planet, she is in control of her life.
Connor squawks from the floor, first experimentally, then warms to a sustained wail.
“Simmer down, hijito.” She subjects a piece of hair to a mist of hairspray and then coils it around the hot iron until the scorching chemical whiff reaches her nose.
She’s nervous, because it’ll be her first day back at school in a month, and because tonight’s the night she’s going to ask Brianna to be Connor’s godmother. Brianna likes her. Brianna at least likes her more than she likes rebellious Lizette, or sanctimonious Jen. She’s made Connor as cute as possible for the occasion. He’s wearing a mite-sized turquoise polo and tiny plaid golf pants with a little fabric belt, and socks that actually match for once in his life. Earlier, she sprayed his whole head with water, which made him flinch and sneeze, then combed his hair so the long strands at the front cover the bald spot at the back. “Zero years old, and you’ve already got a comb-over. Not good, baby.” His eyes are slits, as if he’s considering sleep but is still interested in the world’s goings-on. He is irresistible. Brianna won’t be able to stand it.
The other part that makes her nervous is that she’s going to be driving the whole way. It will be the longest drive she’s made, and she can do it, of course she can do it. Angel is pretty sure that driving with her father is not technically legal, since her father isn’t technically a licensed driver, at least not until November, but her grandmother is coming straight from work. Her father argued that in a larger sense he is licensed, that his license is merely suspended, not revoked or canceled. Her father knows how to drive. And he’s been sober since Easter—two months—her grandmother and dad have both been making a big deal about it—so that’s a comfort. Anyway, all Angel needs from him is another set of eyes and maybe a pointer here and there. Angel gets quite a bit of pleasure out of driving her father’s truck, because he’s always been so vain about it. She knows it bugs him, riding impotent in the passenger seat as she presses inexpertly on the gas and they lurch forward.
Angel peers at her face in the dresser mirror. She got all-new makeup for tonight: foundation, lipstick, eyeliner. The purchases are technically Wants-Not-Needs, a designation Brianna kept harping on during their budgeting unit, but, looked at in another light, they are needs. Angel needs to feel put together. Angel needs to look and feel like an adult. Angel rubs the foundation along her jawline and down her throat, trying to blend it, which is a technique she read about in Seventeen when she was in middle school. It’s a little dark. And she’s still fat, obviously. But she’s pretty! She’s okay-pretty, anyway.
Angel is generally not impressed with good looks; god knows good looks haven’t gotten her mother anywhere, though Marissa still seems to think her beauty should qualify her for something the world is withholding. When they watch TV, Marissa can’t even enjoy the storylines, she’s so busy evaluating the faces. “I’m prettier than her,” she’ll say with dissatisfaction. Her mother should know that she’s old now, thirty-one, and it’s pathetic to still be waiting around to be plucked up into some romantic story.
She’s going to see her mother tonight, unless Marissa blows it off, and the thought makes Angel so anxious her stomach flops. She thinks of Mike, his hands on her throat. Her mother asked Mike to move out, which is exactly what Angel wanted, yet Angel is still angry with her, and she isn’t entirely sure why.
We are fam-i-ly! asserts her cell phone. Connor stops screeching and listens, frowning at the ceiling, so she lets the phone go for a second longer. The Sister Sledge ringtone is the only ringtone she ever hears nowadays. Her father. A flare of exasperation bursts behind her sternum, because they are due to leave for Española in five minutes.
“Where are you, Dad? We got to be going.”
“Chillax,” he says, to drive her nuts. “I’m outside. I got something to show you in the truck.” Sound of tapping at her window, and there is her father, waving like a goof.
“We don’t have time,” Angel says into the phone, eyes on him. “I can’t be late for this.”
“Just come outside.”
“Fine.” Angel drops her phone into her purse and hooks it and the diaper bag over a shoulder. There’s already a rut pressed into the muscle there that Angel fears might be permanent. She straightens and gives the mirror one more determined grin. “Let’s go, baby.” When she swings Connor up, he lets out a delighted cackle that makes Angel laugh, too.
Her father looks surprisingly nice, standing beside the truck he is no longer allowed drive. He’s got on a striped polo and khakis and his good work boots. And cologne, Angel discovers as she approaches. She feels a pang of remorse for snapping at him. And then she has the thought that slithers through her awareness whenever they’re alone now, that if her father wanted to, he could strangle her. The thought leaves her feeling disgusting and guilty.
“What’s up?” She jostles Connor. “You two are dressed the same. Ready for a day on the links.”
Her father glances into the truck, then steps aside, rubbing his hands nervously. There, hogging most of the narrow back bench seat and sporting a confusing network of straps and buckles and clasps, is a brand-new infant safety seat. It’s as opulent as a throne, all molded plastic and velvety plush cushions, and it is exactly what Angel wanted.
She feels her blood thicken with the sweetness of the gesture. “What’d you do with Valerie’s?” she asks dumbly.
Amadeo jerks his thumb at the road, where the nasty old car seat sits forlorn beside the green plastic garbage bin.
“It’s a Graco. One of the best rated. Not the best rated, ’cause that one was like five hundred dollars, but it was in the top three.” He scuffs the gravel. “I put it in backwards; did you know you’re supposed to put them in backwards when they’re little? The lady told me.”
Angel nods. The old one was also backward, she nearly says, which he’d know if he’d ever buckled Connor into the car. Or even bothered to look in the backseat. She shifts Connor to her other hip and places her palm against the velour where he will go. The seat is upholstered in sophisticated gray, as though designed for a business-class traveler. There’s even a matching curved neck pillow to nestle around his floppy head.
“We should probably keep the old one. For Gramma’s car.”
“Oh, yeah. And I got you this, too.” He doesn’t meet her eye as he hands her a wrapped box. He takes the baby and busies himself with mussing his hair.
Inside is a pair of tiny black basketball shoes. Soft leather booties with little laces, and there, on the side, is the leaping silhouette of Michael Jordan.
Angel takes them from the plastic box, pushes a finger into each one. She walks them up her arm, jumps them into a layup.
“They’re old school. They cost fifty dollars.” He shrugs, puts his free hand in his pocket, then removes it again. “I was like sixteen when I got my first pair. I don’t want my grandkid going through that kind of deprivation.”
Angel stands there, smiling stupidly. She can’t look at her father, so she focuses instead on the black fuzz at the back of Connor’s head, which looks moth-eaten. “He can’t play basketball. You know he just lays there, right?”
Why does she do this? Rankle against her father, resent him for not caring, for never being who she wants him to be—and then when he does do something kind and fatherly, something that another, better father would do for another, better daughter, her happiness is too bountiful to bear, the pleasure intolerable. She must thrust it away from herself, must rush through the moment.
“Tíve drove me out to the mall in Santa Fe,” says her father. “He complained, but when I said it was for you, he agreed. Don’t know what you did to that guy.”
She runs a
finger along the stitching of the bootie. Her father is looking at her too closely, and she sees herself: errant and undeserving. “Thanks,” she says, her voice stiff, even though she is grateful, is pleased, even though that car seat is exactly what she wanted and the miniature basketball shoes are the most perfect things she can imagine.
“I just thought he could use some new stuff.” He shrugs, embarrassed. “Ready to go?” Her dad puts Connor into the seat and starts fiddling with the clasps. Then he backs away and dusts off his hands. “You’re going to have to tie him up in there. It’s too much for me.”
Angel leans over Connor, pulls his limp little arms through the harness, fastens one clasp after another. He smacks his perfect drooly lips, but submits to the manhandling. When he’s been thoroughly trussed, Angel and Amadeo stand side by side, regarding him. He’s dwarfed by the cushions.
“He could go to space and he’d be safe,” says her father. “Anyway, it’s the least I can do, with you being the official Creative Windshield Solutions driver.”
Amadeo and Angel don’t talk on the way to Family Foundations, which is just as well, because Angel needs to concentrate. The low sun is heavy on the alfalfa fields and on the apple and apricot orchards, leaves and trunks glowing reddish gold. In a corral, two skinny horses tear listlessly at grass, and their dusty coats shimmer like velvet. During a straight section of road, Angel cranes to see Connor, who has fallen asleep. His mouth is tethered to the clean upholstery by a cord of drool. She can’t help but smile.
The traffic is light in Española, and she navigates her way easily to the shopping center where Family Foundations is located.
In the parking lot, Angel gets out stiffly and unhooks the baby carrier from the base. Connor shifts and grunts in his sleep. “Dad, wait,” she calls after her father as he strides toward the door. He turns. “Thanks.” She hugs him, and when she pulls back, she’s surprised when he holds on tight.
Here they are, crowded with the other families into the Smart Starts! classroom, drinking neon institutional lemonade from waxed paper cups. With the cheerful bulletin boards, it resembles an elementary school classroom more than any of the bare utilitarian classrooms Amadeo remembers from high school. There’s even a reading nook with beanbags, where, presumably, the girls can go beach themselves with a magazine while they nurse. Across the whiteboard is written Welcome, Families! and, in every color marker, the signatures of the girls: Ysenia, Corinna, Jen, Lizette, Christy, Tabitha, Trinity. The signatures all look bubbly and optimistic, and while no one has dotted their i’s with hearts or stars, hearts and stars wouldn’t look out of place. Someone has also drawn an unsettlingly sexy-looking baby with anime glints in its giant eyes and a single long ringlet sprouting out from the top of its head.
“This is all beautiful,” Yolanda tells Angel. She gestures vaguely around the room, holding her head very still. When she turns, her upper torso moves first right, then left with a slight robotic jerk. Amadeo wonders if his mother has a crick in her neck. Certainly she looks tired, the skin under her eyes bunched and fragile. Her nose is still bruised, as though from a punch. She’s tried to cover it, but the makeup has flaked off.
Angel beams shyly. She seems not to know what to do with her hands, keeps resting them on her hips and then letting them circle around her back. She gives one a good shake, in a gesture of excitement Amadeo recognizes from her early childhood.
“Angel!” cries one of the girls, advancing on them with a dry-erase marker. “You’re here! You gotta sign your name!”
Yolanda removes a stockinged foot from her shoe and rolls the ankle. When she teeters, she grabs Amadeo’s arm.
“Watch yourself, woman! You gotta stay on your feet.” He circles his arm around his mother, and she leans her whole weight against him, laughing quietly.
There are only a few other men. A teenage boy in jeans and flip-flops carries a baby one-handed, with an ease that amazes Amadeo. An older man with a big belly and skinny hips stands near the door, holding up his pants. He peers into the hallway, as if looking for his chance to flee.
It’s obvious who’s a Smart Starts! student: girls swollen in pregnancy or with babes in arms. One girl is both, her round body canted under the weight of an overgrown, tangle-haired toddler who keeps arching his back and squealing irritably. They’re all made-up, several of them in short stretchy black dresses that would be better suited for a nightclub. A few grade school kids run around, brandishing markers, spinning the globe, flinging themselves onto beanbags. These must be the little brothers and sisters of the students. The adults themselves—mothers, mostly—hold back, gripping their paper cups, either admonishing the little kids or smiling determinedly at them, avoiding eye contact with the other adults. They’re made-up, too, many in similarly tight dresses, and they have a heavy aura of resignation about them, as though they’re waiting to be reprimanded.
Angel, however, is in her element, hugging her friends, showing off Connor. The second she walked in, she made a beeline for the young woman who could only have been Brianna, and presented her with the baby carrier as if it were a gift basket. The teacher of Angel’s parenting class is not, as Amadeo expected, a starchy gorgon in a pantsuit. She’s young and earnest in floral rayon, and, Amadeo knows from Angel, childless. Angel stood there, flushed, as the teacher hugged her and admired the baby.
Now the girls cluster around his daughter, oohing and ahhing over Connor, and Amadeo can’t help but feel proud, because, despite the baby acne and patchy hair and plentiful eyebrows, Connor is the cutest one here. Those wide, clear, nearly black eyes, his steady, knowing wisdom: none of these other babies even come close. Amadeo has the urge to move into the festive knot of students, pick up his grandson, kiss and bounce him. He’d turn the baby face-out and make him wave at each of the girls with his little wrinkled hand. Maybe he’d even do funny voices. But Amadeo doesn’t, from shyness, maybe, or from some adult awareness that this isn’t his show.
As if she’s read his mind, Angel waves him over. “I want to introduce you guys. Ysenia, Christy, Trinity, Corinna, Tabitha.” Tabitha is the especially fertile one. Her toddler is asleep now, straddling his mother’s pregnant stomach, splayed-armed across her breasts.
Angel touches the arm of a heavyset girl holding a baby, then cups the baby’s head with a hand. “This is Lizette. And this little cutie is Mercedes.” Ah, Lizette. Mercedes, then, must be the baby she crapped out.
Lizette turns lazy green eyes on Amadeo and smiles. The lashes are thick and dark. The baby has the same eyes—enormous on her—and also a frilly headband strapped to her bald head. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Padilla.” Lizette’s voice is slow, taunting, disturbing. She blinks.
Angel laughs. “Mr. Padilla!” She’s so innocent, so oblivious to the look Lizette is giving him. Amadeo wonders if his daughter could be putting it on, that guilelessness, but no, the laughter is burbling up, genuine. “No one calls him that. Have you ever been called mister in your life, Dad?”
Not by anyone who isn’t a telemarketer, but Amadeo still bristles. After all, he is an adult, a father and a grandfather. Why shouldn’t a teenage delinquent show him respect? Except that he knows it isn’t respect Lizette is showing. “Nice to meet you girls,” he says, coming at each of them with a firm handshake.
“Connor looks like you,” Lizette says. “Same head shape.”
“Well,” Amadeo says, with a jocular nod, “we are related.”
The little girl gabbles and grabs at Lizette’s hair. Lizette turns an annoyed grimace on the kid and unhooks the sticky-looking fist.
Amadeo backs away and joins his mother, who is inspecting a poster of the periodic table. He’s aware that he’s disappointing Lizette, that she’d like to keep up the limp repartee. He feels sorry for her, poor sad kid, spending her days in a girls’ school, saddled with a baby. Of course she wants to flirt with one of the few men she runs into, even if he is completely unsuitable. Her attention is gratifying, he won’t deny that.
When he looks up, Marissa is hovering at the classroom door, tugging at her wrap dress, almost an hour late.
He wasn’t sure if Angel even invited her mother tonight, but didn’t want to ask. Whatever’s going on between Angel and Marissa, it doesn’t make sense, because Angel has always been so forgiving and eager to please.
“Marissa’s here.” Amadeo nudges his mother and she looks at him blankly, then waves. Marissa’s shoulders drop in relief and she makes her way over to them.
“Hey.” Marissa watches Angel, who is swinging Connor gently in the carrier and laughing with the other girls. His daughter looks so at ease, so in control, that Amadeo marvels that he and Marissa managed to create her.
Amadeo’s aware of a contest between him and Marissa, possibly one-sided, to be the lesser fuckup. For years Marissa was ahead. Amadeo understands that his successes are somehow worth more points than hers—that his recent minor achievements (the little sneakers, his punctuality this evening, Angel’s decision to move in with him in the first place) are, at this late date, rivaling Marissa’s sixteen thankless years of basically competent single-parenting.
“I got Angel a new car seat,” he says, gesturing to the carrier in Angel’s hands. “It’s a two-in-one.” He almost says that he didn’t even ask his mom for the money, either, but actually sacrificed, sold his electric guitar on Craigslist to pay for it, but is aware of how lame that would sound.
Marissa nods. There’s an apologetic, furtive slump to her shoulders. Nonetheless, she looks great—hair up in a complicated-looking twist, her color high, and that dress, which is snug in the right places. He wonders, with a proprietary twinge, if she has a date after this.
“I’m also starting up a business. To support them more.”
“Oh,” says Marissa.
He looks to his mother for backup, but Yolanda is failing to take charge. Lips parted, she stares into space. It’s not possible, is it, that Amadeo is the most socially adjusted adult representative of the family?
