We Never Asked for Wings

by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

  “I’m guessing now would not be the time to offer to buy her a coloring book?” he asked. High on the back of the chair, Luna resumed her wailing. “Breaking every parenting rule?”

  Letty sighed. “Do I look like I know any parenting rules?”

  Rick walked over to Luna, and Letty watched as he attempted to coax her down from the back of the chair. Whatever he was saying seemed to be working. Luna nodded and stuck out a snot-smeared hand; he took it and shook hard before leading her away, down the hall and around a corner. When they reappeared ten minutes later, Luna carried a licorice rope longer than she was and Rick held a stack of coloring books that looked like it might keep her busy for the rest of her life.

  “What’d you make her shake on?” Letty asked.

  “Her firstborn.”

  “You can have it,” Letty said, but she stopped rolling silverware into linen tubes, waiting for him to answer in earnest.

  “That she would stop crying,” he said. “And that she would apologize to you.”

  Letty didn’t see that happening. “Well, thanks,” she said. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “I work here.”

  “You aren’t on the schedule until four. Don’t think I’m splitting tips this hour. I need the money.”

  He looked out into the hall, and Letty followed his gaze. Luna had popped off her shoes and was scratching her cheek with a crayon. The collar on her white polo was crusted brown; her tears had dried in muddy lines on her face, as if she hadn’t been bathed in a week, even though she’d had a bath just the night before. Letty didn’t need to tell him she needed the money. It was obvious.

  “It’s cool. I’m not on the clock.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “Just setting up.”

  From a stuffed backpack he pulled a small blackboard, a pencil box full of chalk, and tiny brown bottles labeled in a delicate script: SMOKED ORANGE, BERGAMOT, SOUR CHERRY, PASTICHE. He lined the small bottles up and then pulled out two bigger bottles, unlabeled, one filled with a clear liquid and the other with a bright pink syrup.

  “What else you got in there?”

  She was joking, but he kept them coming, more bottles and then a stack of books: The Savoy Cocktail Book, The Bon Vivant’s Companion, The Art of Mixology. It felt like watching a magician pull objects out of a hat.

  “Seriously? Does management know you’re doing this?”

  “No. But as long as they’re making money, they don’t care.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t want to be stuck here forever.”

  He frowned as soon as he said it, turning red.

  “Like me,” Letty said. “You don’t want to be stuck here forever like me.”

  Rick shook his head and looked into the hall. Still in her chair, Luna had tied one end of the licorice to her ankle and had the other end in her mouth. Every time she took a bite, the rope pulled her leg another inch off the chair.

  “It’s a fine place to work. But there’s a brave new world of bartending out there. People want their drinks like their technology. All new. And there’s serious money to be made.”

  “Not here.”

  “Nope, not here. But I had to start somewhere.”

  He wasn’t that young. Her age or a little younger, and she wondered what he’d been doing before this. Not everything about Rick added up. Just below his collar, where he kept his shirt unbuttoned (one button too far, in Letty’s opinion), a tattoo stretched from one collarbone to the other, something scripty in Latin that Letty thought out of character with his otherwise young-Republican look. And where did he learn how to bargain with a six-year-old? But before she had time to ask, a middle-aged man in a business suit took a seat at the counter. Letty placed a napkin in front of him.

  “What can I get for you this afternoon?”

  He scanned the row of alcohol spotlighted behind the bar and squinted as if trying to read something too far away to decipher. Letty followed his gaze and saw him watching Rick write the word SPECIALS across the top of the board and beneath that SAZERAC, BLOOD & SAND, and RANGOON GIMLET. She’d never heard of any of them.

  “Those look different.”

  Letty glared at Rick, who attempted, too late, to turn the chalkboard away from the bar. “I’m sorry. The specials aren’t available until four.”

  The man checked his watch. “I’ve got way too much time before my next flight,” he said, pulling out a laptop and opening it on the bar. “I’ll wait.”

  Yanking back the bar napkin, Letty scowled. He hadn’t planned to split her tips for the last hour; he’d planned to steal her tips. She wanted to protest, but she was exhausted by Luna’s outburst. Untying her apron, she tossed it toward the laundry bag, where it landed in a crumpled pile on the rubber floor.

  “All you,” she said, clocking out. “Have fun.”

  She turned to find her purse and caught sight of the bartending books stacked on the counter. Rick was deep in conversation with the businessman about the merits of the “craft” movement. Without thinking, Letty pulled the top book off the stack and stuffed it into her bag before walking out of Flannigan’s.

  “Come on,” she called.

  Luna jumped off the chair and raced after Letty, a trail of licorice following them through the crowded terminal.

  Four weeks of observation and Alex had learned the following things about his father: (1) He subscribed to the San Francisco Chronicle and The New York Times. (2) His housecleaner came on Tuesdays and brought her own supplies. And (3) He left for work at seven and got home between six and six-thirty, usually carrying takeout. Alex watched all this from the corner, sometimes with Yesenia, sometimes following behind as his father walked a letter to the mailbox or bought a half gallon of milk at the corner store, always careful not to be seen. Never did he see any sign of another human being—no wife, no kids, not even the grandparents Alex had expected to see.

  It was becoming obsessive, this daily tracking of a man he’d never met. Halfway through the summer, while his mother and sister slept in the bed across the room, he promised himself he wouldn’t go again, but by noon the following day there he was, dragging Yesenia back across the freeway.

  The walk was hard for her. On the wire-caged pedestrian bridge they paused, looking through a mended hole in the fence at the speeding cars below. The same faded silk roses had been tied to the spot for all the years Alex had been alive. He fingered the dusty petals as Yesenia sat down and rested against the low cement wall.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m okay.” She always said she was okay, no matter how her heart beat, no matter how long it took her to catch her breath. For a long time Alex believed she was embarrassed, or too shy to tell him the truth, but lately he’d started to think she really was okay; even though it looked hard to Alex, it was just normal life for Yesenia.

  When she was ready she stood up and they continued over the bridge and up the hill, settling into their usual place on the corner.

  “What are you looking for?” Yesenia asked.

  She’d asked him this before, but he didn’t have an answer. He just felt compelled to watch, to do everything he could to learn about his father, about himself. Everything, that was, except speak to him. Alex shrugged his shoulders.

  “Why don’t you just say something to him?” she prodded.

  “Because I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  He tried to find the words to describe how much it had hurt when his father looked him right in the eye without the slightest glimmer of recognition. “Because he doesn’t want to know me. He chose that.”

  “You don’t know the whole story. You don’t really know anything.” She paused and squinted at the big white house, opened her mouth as if she was about to say more, and then closed it.

  “What do you mean?” Alex asked, prompting her. When she didn’t respond he reached out and touched her chin, lifting it until she looked at him. Sunlight filled her eyes honey-y
ellow; her skin glowed dark, darker even in contrast to the neon pink bathing suit she wore underneath her white tank top. If she hadn’t been sitting next to him, he wouldn’t have believed she was real. Every morning all summer he’d woken up fearing it was all a dream; that there was no Yesenia, that she wouldn’t meet him where she said she would, and he waited on their rock with the same anticipation he’d felt as a little boy when he would run to his grandfather’s bedroom every morning and Enrique would lift him up to the window and together they’d wait for whatever rare bird they were expecting to appear at the feeders below. Yesenia, though—Yesenia was more beautiful than every one of those birds.

  “What?” he asked again.

  “Just that,” she said finally. “You don’t know the story. Sometimes you think you know the story, and you don’t.” A car turned down Elm, driving so slowly that Alex and Yesenia stopped talking, but it pulled into the next-door neighbor’s driveway. “Do you remember what I told you? That my mom left a bad relationship in Guerrero, and it wasn’t until she got to California that she realized she was pregnant?”

  Alex nodded. “It’s not true?”

  Yesenia shook her head. “I never believed her. And last week I found my birth certificate. I’ve been looking for ages, whenever my mom is at work.”

  Carmen was always working. It was one of the first things Alex had asked, embarrassed, when he’d seen Yesenia back at school after the night she fed him grape-flavored Tylenol and put him and his sister to bed: wasn’t your mom worried about you? But Carmen hadn’t even known she’d been out late. She cleaned houses during the day and medical buildings at night, and in the few hours between she cooked dinner and watched American soap operas in an attempt to learn English. Except for five o’clock, when they ate dinner together, she was hardly ever home.

  “Where was it?”

  “Under a loose corner of carpet in her bedroom. Yesenia Lopez-Vazquez. Mother: Carmen Lopez-Vazquez, born 11:30 A.M., March 16. Nuevo Rosita. Mexico.”

  They sat in silence, thinking about everything written and unwritten, and what it all meant for Yesenia.

  “No father.”

  She shook her head no. “But I expected that. What I didn’t expect was to find out I was born in Mexico. I put it right back, so my mom doesn’t know I know.”

  Yesenia was not a U.S. citizen. All her life she’d been here illegally, and she hadn’t even known it. Alex didn’t know what to say, but before he could think of something, Yesenia stretched and stood up. “Speaking of my mom. I should go home soon. She’s making you dinner.”

  Alex hadn’t met Carmen. His stomach leapt at the thought. “She’s making me dinner?”

  “Don’t you want to come over?”

  “Of course I do.”

  She grabbed his hand and pulled him up, but instead of turning home, Alex walked across the street and sat on the front porch swing, as he did almost every day, for just a minute, before walking home. Yesenia sat beside him.

  “You know you have to say something to him, or stop doing this. It’s going to make you crazy.”

  He couldn’t argue; he was already starting to feel crazy. But before he could say anything, a brown mail truck pulled up. The driver hopped out the open door.

  “Package for Wes Riley.”

  “I can sign,” Alex said, jumping up. To see his father’s name on the electronic board gave him a quiet thrill. He reached for the signature pad.

  Alex Riley, he wrote slowly, trying to call up an image of the boy he’d be if his father had stayed, if he’d given him his name and his home and his family and his love. But nothing came to mind. Alex Riley simply didn’t exist.

  And in the eyes of his father, Alex Espinosa didn’t either.

  —

  Three hours later, Alex stood at Yesenia’s door. He’d gone home and taken a shower, washing his hair and ironing his clothes and putting on so much deodorant that he feared his arms wouldn’t lay flat against his sides. He checked his watch as he rang the doorbell. He was a little early. But girls liked that, didn’t they? He had no idea what girls liked, but before he could change his mind and disappear down the stairs, Yesenia opened the door.

  She had flowers in her hair. Fake flowers, but still, Alex broke into a smile when he saw the yellow orchids tied haphazardly to her ponytail, the wire stem sticking out like an antenna.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  They’d said good-bye only a few hours before, but standing there, clean and in slightly different clothes (Yesenia with the flowers, Alex with a shirt more pressed than wrinkled), Alex felt suddenly shy. Yesenia stepped to the side but did not invite him in, and he stood there, wondering what to do, when Carmen appeared in the hallway behind her daughter. She had the same dark hair, but instead of messy and striped red, she wore it slicked back in a tight bun. The bun, along with glasses and an embroidered apron, made her look older, even though her face was almost as soft and smooth as her daughter’s. He guessed she was young—younger than his own mother, even.

  Squeezing Yesenia’s shoulder, she said something softly to her in Spanish. “Sí, Mamá,” Yesenia replied, and Carmen smiled. Squeezing her daughter a second time, she said, “Pues, presentámelo,” and extended her hand to shake.

  “Alex, this is my mom, Carmen,” Yesenia said. “Mom, this is Alex.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Alex,” Carmen said, putting the emphasis on the second half of his name.

  “It’s nice to meet you too. Thank you for inviting me to dinner.”

  From far away he felt his grandmother smile at his manners. Carmen stepped aside. “Pásale, pásale,” she said, waving him down a dark corridor. Through a door on the left he saw the kitchen, peach tiled counters and something fishy steaming in a soup pot that made his stomach turn. Carmen stirred the pot while Yesenia pulled him past the door.

  The living room was dark, with thick woven curtains hung across the only window. Yesenia pulled them apart, revealing a beige-carpeted rectangle similar to his own apartment, with the couch against the longest wall, the TV across from it, and a coffee table in between. A row of photographs lined the wall over the couch—school portraits in identical gold frames, Yesenia in kindergarten through eighth grade, hair long and then short with bangs and then long again. He remembered her at every age, but it was weird to see her like this, her development on display.

  From the coffee table he picked up a book: Top 50 Math Skills for GED Success.

  “My mom just passed last week.”

  “Wow.”

  “It’s why I invited you over, kind of, to celebrate.”

  “I should have brought something,” he said, glad she hadn’t told him. The pressure of having to figure out what to bring to celebrate the mother of his almost-girlfriend passing the GED would have kept him up at night.

  “It’s okay, she doesn’t like much fuss.”

  From the kitchen, Carmen called them. She’d set the table with a turquoise cloth and clear plastic cover, paper napkins, and a cluster of tall, saint-wrapped glass candles. They washed their hands at the kitchen sink and Carmen said something in Spanish that Alex didn’t understand.

  “She wants to know if you pray,” Yesenia said as they sat down.

  “My grandmother did, when she lived with us.”

  He bowed his head, but not before he saw Carmen flash a conspiratorial grin at her daughter.

  “We usually just eat, if that’s okay with you.”

  Alex looked from Yesenia to Carmen and back again. There was more to the story, but they weren’t saying, and he saw for a moment how it was between them every night, mother and daughter at the kitchen table together.

  Carmen took his bowl and brought it back filled to the brim with soup: potatoes, onions, carrots, a whole green pepper, and a chunk of white fish, still wearing its silver scales.

  “I hope it’s okay,” Yesenia said. “My mom was worried you wouldn’t like fish.”

  He didn’t—Maria Elena had st
opped cooking it years before because it was the only thing he wouldn’t happily eat—but of course he wouldn’t say that now. Instead he broke a chunk off with his spoon and nodded with what he hoped was the right amount of vigor to be believable. He took a big bite.

  Carmen watched him eat with satisfaction, her own soup untouched in front of her. When he’d swallowed and wiped his mouth, she asked where he was from.

  “I was born here,” he said. “But my family is from Michoacán.”

  “Yesenia was born here too.” Yesenia’s eyes flickered to Alex’s, and for only a moment it filled him with happiness—being on the right side of a secret this time—before he realized just what this secret meant to Yesenia and her mother. This home—the photos on the walls and soup on the table and fresh flowers in the windowsill; this life—Yesenia’s school and surgeries, Carmen’s work and studies, everything they’d built here together—it could all be taken from them at any moment. Alex couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live knowing that, and he understood why Carmen wanted so much to believe the story of her daughter’s birth that she’d created.

  Turning back to Carmen, he congratulated her on passing her test. She looked to her daughter, who translated.

  “Yes,” she said, beaming. “Thank you.”

  While they ate, Yesenia told him how her mother had done it: the eight years she’d studied, the community center where she took English and math, the three failed attempts before she passed. This fall she would quit her day job and enroll in Cañada College’s medical assistant program, Yesenia said. She would keep working nights and go to school during the day.

  “It usually takes eighteen months, but it might take my mom longer, because we have to pay full tuition. She can’t apply for financial aid, because…well.”