We may be in blazing summer heat, we may be earning more money, but Carlos and I are barely talking.
For the next week we keep to our routines: He does his restaurant work; I help out at the motel. We steer around each other in the small room. Sometimes in the morning when I’m gathering my clothes, I see Carlos sneak a glance at me. I slam the bathroom door. Or he reaches to brush aside my hair, then yanks his hand back. The worst part is the only person I want to confide in is Fatima, but she still hasn’t answered my texts, which kills me. Her shells stay tucked in my bag. At least Bill, the immigration guy, hasn’t returned.
I push myself to swim all the time. Paciencia. Waiting. I go farther out into the pond toward those patches of dark green, slashing the water with my arms, furious at him, at us, at all I can’t change.
On Saturdays, after Carlos’s shift, we pile into the car and drive to Provincetown where Carlos draws tourists in the little alley. Kamal and I climb Pilgrim Monument, ticking off the names of the early settlements—Springfield, Hartford, Providence—carved into its walls. Marge adores Carlos, tells him he’s welcome to come other days too. I think about how welcoming everyone here has been—Doris and Jeff, the manager of the restaurant. Another America, not the one that sent Ammi down the stairwell of our building that night; not the one on the news.
We both spoil Kamal. We play miniature golf. We buy him cheap toys that break after a day. A Styrofoam kickboard that he uses—all the way to the floating dock. “Hermanito, come to me!” Carlos calls from the water. Kamal jumps right into his arms, thrashing his way to shore. This is the part that makes me happy; we’re giving him a childhood. The one that was snatched from us.
At the library, Kamal and I sit at a table and I spread out several postcards. “What do you think Ammi wants to hear?” I ask.
“That I’m swimming!”
“Good.”
“I’m not afraid of sharks.”
“Why don’t you draw that?” Then I add, “But only that.” I have to be careful because I don’t want him to write about Carlos or the Cape. He clutches a pen and soon he’s absorbed in doing his letters and making a drawing, the tip of his tongue showing from concentrating so hard.
Missing you, Ammi.
Having a good summer, Ammi.
Can’t wait until we see you, Ammi.
We’ll be back soon, Ammi.
We live on lies the same way we live on the tufts of summer clouds and taffy and ice cream down at the dock. I never knew lying could taste so good. Disappeared. I think about that word, writing in my notebook.
But how much longer can we keep this up? Today I sign up for my classes, pay the utilities bill, watch Ammi’s bank account slip down to twenty-five hundred. Our mayonnaise jar of crumpled bills covers our weekly expenses, and I’ve barely touched the cash. But we can’t do this forever.
A rapping of knuckles on the doorjamb. Carlos stands there, grinning. “Hola, madam. Would you like to come to dinner with me?”
I look at him, surprised. “But what about the money?”
“Come on. We deserve a little break.”
He’s making a peace offering, I realize, so I shower, shake out my wrinkled graduation dress, and strap on my sandals. In the bathroom I put on kohl and some gloss and wrestle my hair into a bun, letting two curls dangle down my cheeks. When I step out, to my surprise, there’s Carlos in a crisp white shirt and jeans, his hair slicked back.
“Wow,” he says.
“Why do you look like that?” Kamal complains.
“Don’t you think your sister’s pretty?” Carlos asks.
My bare arms tingle.
“No,” Kamal says. “She’s just Rania.”
Carlos laughs. “You need to remember to compliment your older sister, Kamal.”
“You look good too. Guapo.”
“Where’d you learn that?”
I shrug. “I’m a fast learner.”
He blushes. “After you.” He opens the door and sweeps an arm out.
We drop off Kamal with Dimitri, who will babysit, then drive into town and sit at a table at a restaurant overlooking the harbor. The waitress treats us like almost-grown-ups. We get appetizers—slippery oysters; I order broiled fish of the day while Carlos gets linguine with clams. The sun glances off the bobbing boat masts. We talk about silly things—gossip about the kitchen or Kamal’s turning into a stronger swimmer. Nothing serious and Carlos is so polite I can’t tell what this is—a date or an older-brother-sister treat? When our dessert of chocolate mousse arrives, I tell him about how upset I am with Fatima. “She ghosted me,” I say.
“You’re growing, that’s all,” Carlos says. “Like two stalks that lean to different suns.”
“Always the artist,” I tease.
“You’re an artist too, Rania.” He takes a last spoonful. “Don’t get so caught up in the little things. Pay attention to the big stuff.”
But I can’t stop the urgent questions that pulse inside me. What about after the summer? My job? Ammi? Can Carlos be with us?
“Come,” he says, setting down his napkin. “Let’s pay and get the last of the sunset.”
We drive over to a beach on the bay side. I undo my sandals and we traipse through the dunes, to watch the sky swell red, the marsh grasses darken. The air folds around us, velvety, soft.
“I’ve never felt such quiet,” Carlos says.
I look at him, grateful, and let out a breath “Me neither.”
It’s true: everywhere I’ve lived has always been noisy and jammed. Here I can feel my breaths, my pulse slow. The sun arcs and spreads beneath the flat horizon. It feels like the last days of us. Whatever we are.
Carlos puts his arm around me, kisses the top of my head. “You are very special, Rania. Don’t waste that.”
Then he lets his arm go. The air blows between us. “We should get back to Kamal,” he says.
As we trudge back to the parking lot, I feel Carlos watching me. His eyes follow my hands as I grab the clump of keys. “That lawyer lady have any news for you?” he asks.
“Nope.”
“You going to find out about your father?”
“Why do you care?” I ask.
His eyes shimmer. “I do care, Rania.”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” I mumble.
We get back in the car and drive in glum silence. I feel as if I’m breaking apart. Carlos looks miserable too.
The first Saturday in August, when Carlos is supposed to sketch, they predict lousy weather. Not raining, but the sky looks like an old washcloth leaking dirty gray water. We decide to do the whale-boat tour since Carlos figures there won’t be many tourists in P-town. The boat is only half-full and we stand against the rail, mist drops spitting into our faces. The prow churns through choppy swells, its motion surging up from my feet through my legs.
The tour guide calls out to show us a few geysers of white foam in the distance. Kamal jumps up and down, excited. “Look, Rania! Look, Carlos!”
Carlos hoists Kamal up to see better.
“Careful,” I warn. The rocking is giving me a sour taste at the back of my throat.
Carlos smiles. He doesn’t look as tired, the way he’s been these last days. Summer has streaked his orange thatch of hair to blond. They are pointing and laughing.
“Another one!” Kamal squeals.
“It’s a mother and baby,” Carlos comments.
I nudge closer. Our shoulders bump, sending tiny bits of static through my arm. He hands me the binoculars the guide gave us. I squint and can just see the rounded back of the mother whale, then a little frothy spurt beside her. I hand them back.
“This is fun,” he says. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” I tease.
He grins. “Impaciente. Right?”
I smile. “Sorry for the other day. When you asked about my dad.” I look away. “It’s kind of hard to talk about that stuff.”
We stay at the rail, even as my stomach keeps cramping. I want to throw up but I make it back to shore. Back on land the rocking ripples up through my knees, as if we’re still on the water. We eat but the food sits like a heavy balloon under my ribs.
As we’re heading toward the lot, I say, “I don’t feel so well.”
“I can drive.”
“You sure?”
“It’s just a straight shot.”
In the car, I close my eyes. My lids are burning. And I don’t know why, but all the frustrations of the past few days boil up. Carlos is being nice, but why does he have to be so stubborn? “I don’t get it,” I say. “Everyone thinks you’re so great. They’ll help you.”
“I told you already. I don’t need help.”
“Don’t need or don’t want?”
He doesn’t answer.
“What are you going to do? You’ve got to get a lawyer. Lidia says—”
“Lidia this, Lidia that,” he says in a singsong voice.
“You are such a jerk.”
Carlos is gripping the wheel, and we go faster. Kamal starts to whimper. Next there’s a blinding white light flaring into the rear window. A siren shrieks.
“Shit,” Carlos says under his breath.
The siren wails again.
“What should I do?” His hands are trembling.
“Pull over,” I whisper.
There’s a crackling sound under the tires as we come to the shoulder. Carlos looks terrified, the color drained from his face.
A cop is leaning over, tapping the window with his knuckles. Carlos is frozen. The cop taps harder, angrier.
“Carlos,” I whisper.
He can’t move.
“Carlos,” I beg. Kamal starts to cry.
Seeing Carlos unable to press the window switch, I make a flapping motion with my hands, to indicate Yes, sir, we’re on it, and then I stretch across Carlos and press the window open.
But the cop is furious and snarls, “License! Registration!” His flashlight scans across the car interior. His mouth twitches when the beam sets on a frightened Kamal curled in the back.
I fumble in the glove compartment and find the little vinyl flap where Ammi keeps the registration and insurance card, and then I’m nudging Carlos in the arm, begging him to give his license.
“What’s wrong with him?” the cop asks.
“He’s scared,” I say. “That’s all.”
“He was going seventy-five miles an hour.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry? He’s the one that was driving.”
At this, Carlos seems to stir. “Excuse me, officer.” With a shaking hand he pulls out his wallet and hands it to him. Then he squeezes his eyes shut, his face pinched, as if he were bracing for someone to hit him. His right leg is bouncing, up, down, up down.
“You better step out.”
“Sir?”
“Out.”
Carlos unwinds himself from the seat belt and steps outside. My heart is thundering in my chest. Carlos: head bowed, shoulders hunched, hands at his sides. He looks like the men I watched being taken in ICE vans—their bodies surrendered. He looks nothing like the Carlos drawing tourists, teasing Kamal.
I leap out of the car and come around the front of the hood. I see another officer approaching from the patrol car.
“Whose car is this?” the cop asks.
“My mother’s.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s…she’s in New York. Brooklyn. She’s working but she let us have the car—”
Frowning, the cop hands the license over to the other cop, who takes it inside their car. I can see he’s punching something into the dashboard. The interior light makes his face look gaunt and gray, serious. The first cop makes Carlos walk a straight line. While he does, I keep babbling, telling him how it was my fault, that usually I drive but I wasn’t feeling well because I got seasick on the whale boat.
“Where do you live?” the cop asks.
I stammer something about the motel. He looks skeptical, regards Carlos. Then the other cop comes back, hikes up his belt, and hands Carlos his license. “Nothing,” he says, though he sounds as if he doesn’t believe it.
“I’m not giving you a ticket,” the first cop says.
“Thank you!” I exclaim.
He glares at me. “But this is a warning. No more joyriding on these roads. You got it?”
Carlos nods. He takes the license, shoves it into his pocket. We tramp back to the car. Poor Kamal is staring through the window.
“And get that kid to bed!” the other cop calls. “It’s late!” They both laugh.
Their doors slam and then we get in the car, me in the driver’s seat, Carlos slumped against his side, hood drawn up over his head. We turn back onto Route 6 in silence. My queasiness is gone. The black sky is stabbed with tiny stars.
Back at the motel we put Kamal to bed and then sit out on the concrete patio. Fortunately, no one else is around. Carlos is holding his arms tight, rocking back and forth.
“What happened?” I whisper.
“I…I froze.” I hear him suck in his breath. “When they came for my aunt, I wasn’t home. But I knew they’d be back. Three times they came to the house. The cops knocked on the door. I hid out. But they got me the last time.”
“That’s how you came to the shelter?”
He nods. “When I was running back home, in Guanajuato, if we saw police, we just went the other way. We knew they were paid off.” He rubs his face. “I am so…tired.”
He sounds a million years old. Worn-out. Sick of running. This time I don’t stop myself. I put my arms around him and nudge my face into his sweatshirt, which smells of soap and chalky pastels. His hood falls back to his neck. His skin is warm. And then we are hugging and kissing and crying too. We are mouths and hands and touch. But mostly we’re holding each other, under the swarm of summer stars, on this thin spit of land at the very end of America, because we are all we have.