Mister smiled at his mother as he stood at the door. He was perfect when he smiled. Young and optimistic and undamaged. She wondered, for an instant, how she could have thought that her son and Andrés Segovia looked alike. Maybe it had been the light.
Grace smiled back at him. As if he came by every day. As if nothing was wrong between them. Her dog, Mississippi, fourteen years old and legs beginning to go unsteady, looked up from where she was sitting and barked.
“Love you, too, Missah.” He walked over to the dog and kissed her. “You think I look okay?”
“She’s going blind. And I’d lose the tie. Looks like you’re trying too hard, Mister. Who wears a tie to meet a three-year-old boy?”
“A lawyer.”
“Where did I put the three years while you were in law school?”
He started to take off his tie. “You’re a million laughs, Grace.”
“Relax.”
“Okay,” he whispered.
“Just then you looked like your father.”
“I miss him.”
Grace nodded.
“We never talk about him.”
“Do we need to?”
“Maybe I do.” He took a deep breath, then another, then pushed the hair out of his eyes, something he did when he was nervous. “God, Grace, I’m a wreck. What if he doesn’t like me? What if I don’t pass the test?”
“This isn’t a college exam, Mister. If he doesn’t like you or if things aren’t right, well, then, it wasn’t meant to be.”
“Grace, since when did you start believing in fate?”
“Day before yesterday, when I was crossing Stanton Street.”
“You really are a million laughs today.”
“You used to laugh when I’d say things like that.”
“Did I?”
They looked at each other. We won’t fight. Not today. “Listen, Mister, do you think this child will save you? Is that why you’re doing this, because somewhere deep down you feel you need to be rescued from your life?”
“I don’t need rescuing, Grace.”
“I hope not, Mister. Salvation is too heavy a load for a child to carry.”
The Rubios lived in the middle of a working-class neighborhood near Ascarate Park. Some of the houses were neat and well kept; some of the houses were run down and showed all the signs of careless owners who were either as worn out as the houses they lived in or too wrapped up in other pursuits. “Drugs,” Grace said, “and alcohol—look what it does to us.” She shook her head—and then, typically, tired of her own lectures, she changed the subject. “What do you know about the Rubios?”
“Not much. They have three grown kids, and they’ve adopted two other children, one is in his teens, the other is nine or so. Linda tells me they’re good people. Humble. Love kids, can’t stand to see them hurt. They’d adopt Vicente except they feel they’re just getting too old.”
Grace nodded as she stretched out to see the street sign. “It’s the next street over.” She knew these streets, this neighborhood, she remembered all the details, white and pink oleanders in every other yard, shirtless middle-aged men watering their front lawns, a beer in one hand, a watering hose in the other, Sam riding a bike, twelve and talkative and happy as a Saturday morning. Happy Sammy. “You like my bike?”
“Looks like an ordinary bike.”
“It’s not ordinary.”
“What’s so special about it?”
“I’m riding it.”
“Conceited boy. I don’t like conceited boys.”
“Hey! Hey! Don’t go. Where you going?”
“Home. And you better not follow me on your ordinary bike.”
“If I told you you were pretty, would you stay?”
“You’re conceited and you’re a liar.”
“I’m not a liar.”
“Yes, you are. I don’t think it’s funny or nice to make fun of people. Everyone knows I’m not pretty. Everyone.”
“Everyone thinks you’re beautiful.”
“Please, stop it, Sammy.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m as ordinary as your bike.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I don’t like to be teased. I don’t like it. And I don’t like you, Sammy. I don’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“When I grow up, I’m going to find you, Grace. And I’m going to kiss you. And you’re going to kiss me back. And you’re going to whisper my name—except I’ll be a man and you won’t call me Sammy, you’ll call me Sam. You’ll see. We’ll kiss.”
“Grace?”
“What?”
“Are you okay?”
“Your father and I grew up in this neighborhood.”
“I know.”
“He used to speed down the streets on his bike and tell all the girls they were pretty.”
“Did he ever tell you?”
“It was a long time ago. No me acuerdo. There—is that the address?”
Mister parked in front of the house, but kept the car running. “Just one more thing, Grace. Something I forgot to mention.”
“What?”
“Vicente. He’s blind.”
Mr. Rubio was a quiet man with a friendly smile. Fifty-eight, thin, a careful way about him. He opened the door as if their coming was both something unexpected and something completely familiar. Ordinary as their lives that were as ordinary as a thousand other Mexican families in this city full of ordinary families that were ordinary and not ordinary at all. He led them to the kitchen, where Mrs. Rubio sat looking over someone’s homework. “I don’t understand this,” she said. “How can the children understand? How can anyone? Yo no se. Soy muy burra.”
Mr. Rubio shook his head. “We weren’t meant for school, vieja. Y no eres burra.”
Mrs. Rubio nodded, slightly amused by her husband’s endearment. Vieja. Neither she nor Mr. Rubio seemed to be at all self-conscious about letting people see them as they were. Perhaps it came with having social workers dropping in on them unexpectedly. Perhaps it came with the trappings and the freedoms of their class—they did not expect or privilege the god of privacy. Let them come in. Let them see us. She stuck her hand out. Grace reached back, and as their hands met, she uttered her name. “Grace Delgado.”
“Esperanza Rubio.”
They smiled at each other as if already they were on the same side against an ill-defined enemy. Mrs. Rubio turned her attention to Mister.
Mister smiled awkwardly, then reached out to shake her hand. “Mister Delgado.”
“Entonces eres un joven muy formal?”
“No, no. My first name’s Mister.”
“Your name is Mister?”
“Yes.” He smiled at his mother. “Blame her.”
She smiled—then laughed. She enjoyed the joke. “I like it,” she said. She stared at him again, then looked at Grace. “He’s a beautiful son. Muy alto.”
Grace nodded.
Mrs. Rubio didn’t say anything else. She’d made up her mind about him. She looked at her husband, who took the signal. Like a handoff in a football game.
“He doesn’t speak, your Vicente. Sometimes he points. At first we thought, pobrecito, ciego y tartamudo. But we knew he could hear, reacts to everything. Loves to touch, and he’s not afraid to explore. The doctor says there’s nothing wrong with his hearing and that he’s very intelligent, and that there’s no reason at all why he shouldn’t be talking—except that maybe he hasn’t been—” He looked at his wife. “¿Como dijo?”
“He said maybe Vicente hadn’t been stimulated enough.”
They both nodded as if they were pondering the meaning of that word, stimulate. Mr. Rubio studied Mister’s face for a minute. “Tengo un hijo. As tall as you. Older. And your wife?”
“Her father died. She went to his funeral.”
Mister Rubio made the sign of the cross and nodded. “She wants this boy?”
“We both want him.”
Grace watched the expression on his face, then looked over at Mr. Rubio. He was a man who liked to nod and ask uncomplicated questions. His nods were more a conversation with himself than a means to communicate assent to whomever he happened to be talking to. He seemed satisfied enough with Mister, though he didn’t seem like a man who was demanding and difficult to please. “If you lead Vicente into a room, he’ll smell the air. He knows about chairs and tables, and he knows to keep away from hot stoves. I think he’s burned himself before. He has a scar on one of his palms. Not a big scar—but a scar, ¿sabes? He likes baths. He knows how to wash himself. Lo dejó solo por muchas horas al pobrecito—so he’s used to being alone with nothing to do. But I think he writes stories in his head.”
Mrs. Rubio shook her head, “It’s you who writes stories in your head.”
“We all do,” he said, “¿A poco no?”
He winked. And Mister had a sudden urge to hug this man who behaved as if he wanted to become everyone’s grandfather. He patted Mister on the hand. “Mi’jo, you have to listen at night. Sometimes he sleep walks and he runs into things and he cries—so you have to make sure there’s nothing in the house that can hurt him. Sometimes he wakes up crying in the night. He won’t let Esperanza comfort him. Only me. He’ll let me hold him until he feels better, then he pushes me away. Sometimes I think he wants to kiss me, but he won’t. He likes to eat. But he only eats a little. He likes orange juice mixed with Coca-Cola. He likes chocolate and tacos and burritos and hamburgers—but he doesn’t like French fries. He’ll smell everything. And he likes to study people. He listens to their voices. Esperanza’s training him to use the bathroom.”
“Ya mero,” Mrs. Rubio said, “Ya mero aprende. He’s very smart, and he’d know by now if his mother had taught him. But she did teach him how to brush his teeth.” She shrugged. “No entiendo.”
“Dios la perdone. We don’t know what she’s been through, Esperanza.”
“I don’t forgive people who treat children as if they were no better than dogs.” Her eyes were hard as stone for an instant.
Mr. Rubio shook his head. He looked like he was having another conversation with himself. “No sabemos,” he whispered. “And anyway, her son isn’t ordinary.” He looked at Mister and ran his hand over the young man’s hair, as if to comb it.
“My hair can’t be tamed,” Mister said.
The old man smiled. “Are you patient?”
“Yes.”
“I think Vicente is going to need a lot,” Mrs. Rubio said.
Mister nodded.
“He’s watching TV with the kids. Not that he’s very interested in that thing. Maybe because all he can do is listen to it. I don’t know what he gets out of it, but he sits there. I think he likes the company—you know, after being alone so much.” He shrugged, then stepped away, disappearing down the hall.
Mister looked at Mrs. Rubio. “Does he know—I mean, does—?”
“He doesn’t know anything. Or he knows everything. Solo Dios sabe. Sometimes I think this child is very old. He hates the social worker. When he doesn’t like someone, he wants them to know it. And if he likes someone, I think he gets afraid. I think. I don’t know. Really, I don’t know. He’s not ordinary.”
Mr. Rubio walked back into the kitchen, three-year-old Vicente Jesús in his arms. He put the boy down and placed his small hand on the kitchen table, so the boy would know exactly where he was. Mister studied him as his small hands searched the table. He had black eyes that were a smoky gray with clouds in them. He had thick black hair, dark skin, and dimples. “This is Mister,” Mr. Rubio said. “And sitting right next to him is Mrs. Delgado. She’s Mister’s mother.”
Vicente turned to Mr. Rubio and put his hand on his face. He nodded, then turned in Mister’s direction, as if he could sense his presence. As if he knew exactly where he was sitting. He remained expressionless, and again he turned toward Mr. Rubio. “It’s okay. You want to meet Mister?” The boy did not assent with a nod. But he did not reject the offer with a shake of his head, either. Mister moved closer to the boy, then bent his knees until he was eye level with him. He stuck out his hand. “Hi,” he whispered. The boy awkwardly reached, gently slapping at Mister’s arm. He took Mister’s hand and began turning it over in his own small hand—almost as if he were sighted and looking for a promised toy that was hidden there. After he had examined Mister’s hand thoroughly, he dropped it. His searching hands reached for Mister, first touching him in the chest, and then slowly, his hands moved over his neck toward his face. He felt his chin, his jawline, his ears, his lips, his nose, his eyes and cheeks and eyebrows and forehead. It was impossible to tell who was more fascinated by the experience—Mister or the boy. And after feeling the entire surface of Mister’s face, the boy smiled and held Mister’s face between his small hands.
And then he laughed. His laughter filled the kitchen, then the house. The entire world, it seemed, was filled with this boy’s laugh. And then he let go of Mister’s face, patted his right cheek—and kissed him.
“Bendito sea Dios,” Mrs. Rubio whispered.
Grace saw it happen in an instant. It passed between them so quickly. Just like that—in one apocalyptic moment—simple and beautiful. A birth. But also a kind of death. Like lightning in a storm. In one flash of light, the whole desert was lit, and you could see the universe. That’s what she had seen—the universe in the hands of a child feeling the face of a man. The Rubios had known it, too. It was so clear—and yet nearly impossible to comprehend. She reran the image in her mind, the boy touching Mister’s face, the look in her son’s eyes as the boy laughed—and kissed him. She had seen that look in Mister’s eyes a hundred times, a thousand times. When he’d looked at his father, that is the look he’d worn. And there it was again, that love, confronting her, asking her to be a part of it. She’d grown so hard the past few years, as if all the softness inside her had been worn away.
“What are you thinking, Grace?”
She was glad it was night and that Mister had his eyes on the road, glad he couldn’t see the expression on her face.
“He’s really very beautiful,” she whispered.
“That’s not what you were thinking.”
“The Rubios are good people.”
Mister nodded and kept driving. He didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, he glanced over at Grace. “That wasn’t what you were thinking.”
“The neighborhood. We used to call it ‘Dizzy Land’.”
“Dizzy Land?”
“On certain days, the wind would blow the smell of the sewage treatment plant right into the neighborhood. It was a joke.”
“Getting nostalgic, Grace?”
“I’m too mean for that.”
“You’re not mean, Grace. Just a little hard, sometimes.”
“I lied. Earlier. Your father told me I was pretty. I told him I was as ordinary as the bike he was riding. I told him he was a conceited boy. I told him to stop teasing me.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said when he grew up, he was going to find me. And he was going to kiss me. And he said I was going to kiss him back.”
“And is that the way it happened?”
“A day before my twentieth birthday, he walks up to me on the campus of the university. He looked at me and said, ‘Grace? Is that you?’ I hadn’t seen him in five or six years. His family had moved out of the neighborhood. But I knew him. God, I’d have known him anywhere. Really, your father—” She stopped talking.
They were quiet again. Mister turned on the radio, Frankie Valli’s falsetto voice melting into the voices of the Four Seasons. He imagined his mother and father, young, kissing on the campus of the university. He had seen their wedding picture. They were beautiful, both of them. To have been that beautiful—if only for a blessed second. “Is that when he kissed you?”
“Yes.”
“And you kissed him back.”
“Yes. In one apocalyptic moment, I kissed him. It was like I had died.”
He parked the car in his mother’s driveway. Neither of them made a move. He wanted to ask her more questions, but decided against it. Grace was private. She always backed away when she started talking about herself. Sam had always said it was because she was shy. But Sam always made excuses for her. “So do you think I’ll get to keep Vicente?”
“The mother’s relinquishing her parental rights. You’ve had a home study done. You have a good lawyer. The Rubios like you—”
“Actually, I think they liked you, Grace. They only liked me because I was your son.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is. That’s okay, Grace. Being your son has made this process a whole lot easier.”
“When they did your home study, how many interviews?”
“Three or four.”
“When they interviewed you, and interviewed you again, and then interviewed you one more time, was I there?”
“Hell yes, you were there, Grace. The first thing out of everyone’s mouth was, You’re Grace Delgado’s son, aren’t you? That’s all anyone needed to know.”
“That’s not true.”
“Okay, it’s not true.”
“You don’t think they’d have approved you and Liz as potential adoptive parents if I wasn’t your mother?”
“Being your son didn’t hurt.”
“There’s a little edge in your voice when you say that.”
“Is there?”
“What exactly is so bad about being Grace Delgado’s son?”
“Everyone thinks you’re perfect.”
“I’m good at what I do.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“Mister, I’m not responsible for what other people think—about me or you or anyone else. And why do you always have to pick a fight with me?”
“I pick fights, Grace? Me?”
“We used to get along just fine.”
“We got along when I agreed with you. When I went along with what you wanted. We always got along Grace, so long as I did things your way. Which is why you can’t forgive me for staying with Liz.”
“She left with another man, Mister.”
“And I forgave her, Grace.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“It’s not yours to forgive. And you know who you don’t forgive, Grace? Me. Because I didn’t do what you would’ve done. Well, I’m not you. And I don’t do things the way you do them. That’s what you don’t forgive.” He took a deep breath. “Are we going to sit here and fight all night, or are you going to ask me in?”
“No, Mister, I don’t think I will ask you in.”