“Do you agree with her?”
“With what?”
“That it was all for nothing.”
She didn’t look at him, just scratched at an old scuffmark on the table. “Not all of it.”
He understood without having to ask. Things here were new, clean, better. But there were days when he felt he had traded his life for somebody else’s and gotten the wrong size.
“And the rest of it? About you and Martin staying behind?”
She recoiled as if she had bitten into something sour. “She’s crazy. To even think about separating father and son . . .” Elda shook her head and looked down at her lap, her chin pressed close to her neck. Her silence shifted into something dense, as if she were straining to carry it.
Omar bent down and placed his hands over her knee, peering up at her face. He had sensed this for so long, but had been afraid to acknowledge it. Her pain was a short pause between moments; only off rhythm if you paid close enough attention. He’d felt it when he spooned with her at night; how it took her longer to fall asleep. In the mornings she would wake as if she had never been resting in the first place. When she used the bathroom, Omar would hear her flush and wash her hands, and then he would wait. She always stepped out a few seconds after he expected her to. He always wondered how she filled that time.
“Vida. I wish I could suffer instead of you.”
Her fingers found their way to his, and she squeezed his hand. “I just think about him all the time, growing up without his father. All because of me. What if he’s not okay? What if I’ve ruined that poor boy for good?”
Omar was not convinced Tomás would have been better off with a father like his, but he didn’t say so. He knew there was nothing more haunting than a what if. If Elda hadn’t defended herself that night . . . There was no alternate ending he could see them living in. This pain was waiting for them all along, unavoidable, in one shape or another.
“Even if you could, would it help to know how he was doing?”
She sighed, her breath wet with tears. “Sometimes I want to know, and sometimes I just want to forget.”
Two weeks later, Omar walked into the restaurant and got his second job.
He was wiping down one of the booths near the front of the restaurant, catching glimpses of passersby outside the window, when he saw him.
It was a Tuesday afternoon, and classes had let out half an hour ago. The school’s basketball coach had brought in the boys’ team for a meal before their away game. Omar counted them, scanning their faces as their clumsy bodies trickled in, then helped the hostess group several tables together for the large party.
It was their slow time of day—just a few customers who had come in for a snack or a cup of coffee—and the coach’s voice filled the space as he began giving the team a pep talk. He asked them a string of rhetorical questions (“Are we gonna go out there and give our all today?” “Are we gonna stay focused and play smart?” “Who’s number one?”), and the boys responded in grunts and cheers in the affirmative.
Their young enthusiasm amused Omar, who laughed as he leaned over a booth to clean it. As he looked not just at the window, but through it, he noticed three boys on the other side. One was holding his backpack open, while the other two looked inside. They high-fived over what they found. The boy zipped up his bag and swung it over his shoulder, turning toward Omar. He didn’t see him at first; Omar probably just looked like a silhouette behind the glass, and the boy was about to turn away when they both paused.
“I’ll be right back,” Omar called to the hostess, who barely looked up from her seating chart as he walked out.
“Tomás.”
His cheekbones were more pronounced than the last time he had seen him, and his jawline tensed as soon as he recognized Omar. His friends mumbled their goodbyes and walked away with a swagger. For a moment they just stood by the trash receptacle, not saying anything. Omar tucked the damp washcloth he was holding into his back pocket.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” he said.
“Were you like, following me?”
“I work here.” Omar signaled toward the restaurant entrance, and the boy nodded. His eyes traveled into the space, scanning the students’ faces in the center.
“Do you know those guys?” Omar asked.
The very suggestion seemed to offend him. “The jocks? They’re not my friends.”
“Don’t you go to school together?”
“Yeah, but we don’t hang out or nothing.” He put his hands in his pockets and turned away from the window.
“Of course. You have your own group of friends. The ones with the sideway hats, right?”
Tomás smiled and nodded.
“And you like it? It’s going good, I mean? School . . . and stuff at your aunt’s?”
“Yeah, it’s fine. You?”
“Things are going good.”
“You like it? Cleaning up after the school jocks?”
“It’s honest work. And they treat me well.”
Tomás seemed to consider this. He took out a pack of chewing gum and offered Omar a stick before unwrapping one for himself. “What about your wife? What does she think about it?”
“About what?” Of course the boy would ask after Elda; he should have expected as much. But the way he did it so casually rubbed Omar the wrong way. Tomás was one of the only people who knew their deepest secret, and yet here they were, talking about nothing and perhaps everything.
“I don’t know. About all of this.”
“Everything is good. Life here isn’t easy, but it doesn’t give false promises like back home. A person can build something if they work hard enough.”
The boy looked like he had already lost interest. From inside the restaurant, they could hear chairs scraping against the floor as the students gathered their bags and lettermen’s jackets. He gripped the straps of his backpack and shifted his weight between both feet. “So you think you’ll be here for a while? At the restaurant?”
Omar wondered what was in that bag. What would have provoked him to high-five his friends when he was a teenager? A dirty magazine, perhaps, or a pack of cigarettes, or alcohol. “I’m here from mornings until four, most days. You should come by, you know? I’ll buy you a sandwich.”
Tomás’s face lit up at the offer. “And my friends?”
“Don’t be fresh. I don’t own the place, remember?”
The boy smiled. He stepped aside as the basketball team poured out the door, rushing past him and Omar toward the yellow bus in the parking lot. The bus rumbled as they climbed in. It became a tunnel of shouts and laughter as windows snapped open, and then a whistle blew and all was quiet.
Omar heard the coach’s voice boom: “On three. Onetwothree!”
“GUERRA GREEN JAYS, THIS MEANS WAR!”
CHAPTER 29
NOVEMBER 2, 2015
YEAR THREE: LEATHER
The walls throbbed. The air around her pulsed. In her own silence, Isabel could hear the static of her thoughts, crackling and sparking beneath the surface.
This is what happens when you drink like a teen in your thirties, she thought.
Still in bed, she raised her arms and brought her hands in front of her face. They were swollen, and they itched, but when she scratched at the skin, the sensation spread down her arms like a bruise. She flipped them over: black nail polish and faded-purple ink made the wrinkles on her fingers look deep and dry. Over the course of last night, she and Martin had gone to four bars and been stamped five times—once by each bouncer that asked for ID, and twice by an overzealous doorman who probably resented all the other bars they had visited before his. Isabel’s hand looked like a passport that’d run out of pages.
She got up and went to the bathroom, nearly tripping over her shoes, tossed to the side of the bed. Ignoring the light, ignoring her lack of balance, she ran the bathwater as hot as she could and pulled out a facial wipe.
If her mother could see her now, hungover wi
th makeup still caked all over her face. It was the most she’d worn since probably her wedding, but when Claudia called insisting they come out for a few drinks to toast both her engagement and Isabel and Martin’s anniversary, Isabel had gotten an urge to feel glamorous. Eduardo was on a school trip to Six Flags Fiesta Texas in San Antonio, and this time (sensing he didn’t want her tagging along for his senior trip to the theme park) Isabel had not volunteered to chaperone.
With the house finally to themselves, barhopping had not been on her list of to-dos. But it felt nice to be invited, and it seemed one of those rare chances that, if turned away, would never resurface. Martin had begun ironing his shirt as soon as he got off the phone with his sister. Pressed for time, Isabel had dug a black skirt out of the closet and paired it with a sleeveless sequined top.
“Are we going someplace fancy?” Martin had asked. “I was planning on wearing jeans.”
She’d laughed and said it was not like they had to match.
Of course, none of this amused her now.
She dipped her naked body into the scorching water, relishing the initial burn, how something so painful could become so soothing. It was not unlike drinking, or the first few times she had had sex. Except this asked nothing of her. In this, she was alone and warm, and she could float without feeling like she was falling. She couldn’t remember the last time it’d been like this.
She tried and began to cry.
Her body, shaking in the tub, created a gentle wake. The water slapped against the white tiles. She slid her head beneath the surface, and her sobs became muffled, her outburst, just harmless bubbles.
Last night while she and Martin took one, then two and three, then countless more shots with Claudia and Damian, she had felt the world shift a little. With each drink they toasted the engagement and new beginning. With each drink, gravity seemed to loosen its grip on her, and she had drifted away, watching all the tension in her relationships sink beneath her, as if they were held down by stones.
It’d been hard to stop then. Even after Martin switched to water, Isabel kept drinking like she had something to prove. Looking back, she couldn’t remember what it might have been. Worse, she couldn’t bring herself to fully admit it.
They had planned nothing for today. No gifts, no special dinner. If she was lucky, she would get a peck and a happy-anniversary mumble mixed with morning breath. It felt silly to care; she never thought she was the type to bother with romance—until it was gone.
She sat up in the tub and took a deep breath. For a brief moment she thought of Omar, but he, too, seemed distant and unimportant. Last week, Martin had slipped her a copy of the police report from his father’s arrest.
“Thought you might like to read this,” he’d said, as if each handwritten page were a bedtime story. The report was not as detailed as she would have liked, but it painted a clear picture, nonetheless. A drug deal gone bad. Such a petty way for a person to die. Omar had confessed to everything: one stab to the left side, and the victim had bled out. Isabel studied the report night after night for nearly a week, rereading the lines, the names of the officers and victim, in hopes of catching something new.
“What is it? Not what you expected, right?” Martin finally said.
“It just doesn’t make any sense. Was your father an addict?”
“I didn’t think so, but that shows how much I know. Just don’t let yourself get obsessed, okay?”
The next day, Isabel scanned the report onto her laptop and gave the hard copy back to Martin. She didn’t ask where he had been hiding it all along, and he didn’t offer to tell her. He folded the pages in half and then in quarters, then kissed her on the cheek as if to say thank you for laying it all to rest.
Except now she had more questions than she had started with, and they made her feel tainted and unfaithful. She was more determined than ever to get answers and be done with it, convinced that the truth would wipe the slate clean for all of them.
On the fuzzy floor mat next to the tub, her phone vibrated. It was a text message from Claudia asking Isabel for a ride to pick up her car. They had left it parked overnight in a garage off of Seventeenth Street, and now she was worried it might get towed.
Martin won’t pick up. Damian’s at work, Claudia wrote.
Nice to be your last resort, Isabel typed. But instead of sending, she deleted it and replied she was on her way.
In the garage, she cringed as the metal door slid open. Martin didn’t have to be up for another half hour, but the roar of the door’s motor was so loud, she was afraid it would wake him. She took a step toward her car and immediately jumped back.
It already had a passenger, sitting and waiting, as if she were simply returning from getting something she’d forgotten inside the house.
Had he ever arrived without startling her? That first time, that day in the car after the wedding ceremony, she had been frightened less by his presence than by what he represented—a gaping, invisible hole in her and Martin’s relationship, one she had never seen until Omar arrived, so big that he could fit in it.
He smiled at her and shrugged. He had the look of someone caught in a lie, afraid and relieved. The car dropped a little as she rushed in and closed the door.
“This is getting old, Omar.”
“Thankfully, I’m not.”
“Don’t do that. This isn’t funny anymore. Is this all a joke to you?”
“Possibly. Is there any other way it makes sense?”
“I’m tired, Omar. I’m not here to solve your riddles. I have a life to . . . figure out. It’s our anniversary today. Or did you already forget?” Taking her eyes off the road for a quick moment, she caught him crossing his hands in his lap and closing his eyes. She wondered if this helped to absolve the hands that had taken a life. “What is it? You look like you just found religion or something.”
He laughed. “Please. I’m only here for one day.” He put his elbow on the window and rested his chin against it, looking outward.
They got on the highway overpass, heading west. Palm fronds peeked over the edge of the road, dwarfed only by a series of strip malls and fast food signs that jutted toward the gray sky.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she told him. “Is your mood-sense or radar thing or whatever you call it not working?”
“I don’t scare off easily. And I thought, maybe it’s about time I apologize.”
“I’m not the one who needs your apologies.” She felt sour, as if everything she had learned about Omar had gone bad inside of her.
“Maybe. But you’re the only one who’ll hear them.”
“I don’t want to. You’ve done nothing but keep secrets from me. You made me keep them from my family. Do you know what that’s like? To feel like you’re lying to them even when you haven’t said a word? And for some crazy reason, I trusted you. I felt sorry for you. And you let me.” She gripped the steering wheel tight, catching her breath.
“It felt nice to have someone on my side for once.”
“When were you going to tell me about prison?”
Omar rested his head back. Drops of rain had accumulated on the sunroof. The clouds were clearing now, and he let the sun shine on his face, not bothering to squint or close his eyes. “Did Martin tell you? Or Elda maybe?”
“He’s my husband. Did you really think he wouldn’t tell me?”
“And Elda?”
“She doesn’t know we know. When were you going to tell me?”
“She doesn’t know.”
“That’s what I said. Now answer me or go. Please.”
“You’re not listening. Elda doesn’t know. Any of it. She doesn’t know I went to prison.”
Isabel slowed the car, for once grateful for the red light near Claudia’s house. “How is that possible?”
“It’s . . . it’s a lot of things.” He made no effort to say anything else.
“So what, she just thinks you left her?”
“It was better that way.”
“For her, always. You don’t know the half of it.”
Though his words carried more sadness than anything, they were the closest he had ever come to anger, and they stung.
They passed the first two entrances into Claudia’s neighborhood and turned into the third. “I need you to go now.”
“So soon? I’m sorry. It’s just not easy for me to talk about Elda.”
“It’s not that. It’s just, your daughter’s expecting me.” She came to a full stop at the end of a thin road. There were no cars behind them. Once she made this right turn, they would be just a few houses away from Claudia’s. She took a long moment to finally look at Omar.
“You’re going to Claudita’s?” His smile, usually so natural, looked vulnerable. “You get to see her. Just like that? Anytime?”
Not exactly, she wanted to say. “I’m sorry.”
“I won’t say anything. I just want to see her. She won’t . . .” But he didn’t finish his sentence.
“She’s getting married soon.”
He nodded. “I’ll stay in the back. I won’t say anything. It won’t be like last time, I promise.”
“Do you know what that put me through? Last time? I nearly had a breakdown.”
“I just want to see her up close, hear her voice. She won’t even know I’m here.”
“How can you be so sure?”
He tapped his fingers against the center console; she wanted to put her hand over his to stop the tapping, but didn’t. “Because I’ve tried. Please. I know it’s a lot to ask. But she’s my little girl.”
It almost felt like they were talking about different people. Claudia had been many things to Isabel, but never little. Back when they had tied her bedsheets to her closet doorknobs and created a canopy under which they dreamed of growing up, it always felt like Claudia was years ahead of her. She never cried, never apologized, never bothered with crushes and hurt feelings. In her mind she was already living a life far from the Valley, while Isabel couldn’t imagine calling another place home. Nothing ever fazed Claudia; she was like a giant stone, jagged and impenetrable, but also too quick to turn cold.
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