Where are we going?”
“To our new house.”
Ileana squealed. One of those squeals only a five-year-old could manage. One of those infectious squeals that made everyone who heard it happy. “A house! A house!”
Everyone in the car laughed. “Can we go for a picnic, Mando?” she jumped up from the back seat and threw her arms around Mando’s neck as he drove.
Andrés smiled. Maybe everything would be all right. Mando looked handsome in a nice shirt. He was different. He remembered that his dad was always yelling at Mando and telling him he was too fucking irresponsible and that he’d never amount to anything. But maybe his father had been wrong. He seemed responsible now, and old, like a father—because that’s what he was, now, their father. And maybe he’d saved lots of money. Maybe they would all be happy. And maybe his mother and father were happy, too, because they’d found their way to heaven—because of his mother’s light. The light the angel gave her.
“Does Mrs. Fernandez know you came to take us to our new house?”
“Yes. I told her.” Andrés knew his brother was lying. Sometimes you couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. But sometimes you could.
“Why weren’t they there to say good-bye, Mando? Don’t they like us? I thought they liked us.” Andrés thought Ileana always asked the right questions.
“Of course they do. They just had some important business.”
“Will they come to visit us in our new house?”
“Yeah,” Mando said, lighting a cigarette.
Ileana looked at Andrés and laughed. “He’s just like Dad, isn’t he, Andy?”
Andrés nodded. “Sure,” he said, “like Dad.”
Yolie lit a cigarette, too. She turned on the radio. She and Mando started singing along with the song. They were happy, emancipated. So this had been their plan. He knew they had been planning this since the night of his parent’s funeral. Planning and planning. And so they were happy, because their plan was working. Yolie turned around and smiled at Ileana and at Andrés. She saw the look on Andrés’s face. The apprehension. “Are you worried about your bike?”
What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen to us?
“‘Everything’s gonna be just fine, Andy.’ That’s what Yolie said. And then she added, ‘You look like you could use a cigarette,’ ‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘Mom wouldn’t like it.’ She laughed, and then she looked at me. And then she said, ‘Don’t ever tell me what Mom would or would not like—not ever again.’ She was hard as stone. And I hated her. I think I still hate her. Though in between then and now, I loved her. I would have done anything for her. And I did. I did everything she asked.” Andrés played with the cigarette he was holding. He put it back in his pack. “Have you ever smoked?”
“Yes. Sure. I used to smoke.”
“You don’t sound sorry.”
“I’m not sorry. I smoked. I liked it. I quit.” It wasn’t necessary to tell him she was currently backsliding.
“How long did you smoke?”
“Three or four years—I can’t remember exactly. Maybe a little more.”
“I started smoking when I was thirteen.” He looked at his cigarettes. “My oldest friends.” He laughed. “How’d you quit?”
“They weren’t good for me. It’s a sort of self-hatred, isn’t it?”
“I never looked at it that way. It’s a way of coping.”
“It’s a way of not coping. Name one problem a cigarette’s ever solved.”
“Maybe they’ve stopped some men from killing someone.”
“I don’t think so. I think a lot of men smoke a cigarette after they’ve killed someone. Probably smoked one right before.”
“Okay. So maybe it’s just an addiction.”
“So why don’t you quit?”
“Because I’ll explode.”
“Maybe you’ll explode anyway.”
“Of course, you fucking know I have exploded, don’t you?”
She didn’t smile, didn’t frown. “I guess I do,” she said. Calm as a breeze.
“Are you afraid of me?” He knew she wasn’t.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“When we’re afraid of someone, that means we think they might hurt us. You won’t hurt me.”
“How do you know?”
“You’re not a saint, Andrés. But you’re not the devil, either. You won’t hurt me.”
“You know, huh?”
“Yes.”
“What if I do—hurt you, I mean?”
“I’ll scream.”
They both smiled. He was ashamed of himself for the silly game he was playing. He took a cigarette out of the pack and lit it.
He looked beautiful with a cigarette in his mouth. It was an aesthetic Grace had always appreciated. She looked at her blank pad. She wouldn’t write. Not today. He’d told her he didn’t mind if she took notes, but he wasn’t telling the truth. He minded like hell. “Did you ever see the Fernandezes again?”
“No.”
“Did they ever try and find you?”
“I don’t know. Yes, I think they did.” He paused to search through the clutter in his mind. Sometimes he felt his mind was like a room filled with a stack of newspapers, and his whole life was there—but he never knew where to find the information he needed. “Yes,” he said finally, “they tried to find us. I found that out later. I don’t remember when exactly.”
“Have you ever looked for them?”
“Once I went to their house. They weren’t home. I sat there for a while, outside the house.”
“When was this?”
“Oh, ten years ago. I was sixteen. I was going to be placed in a foster home at the time.”
“Why didn’t you go back?”
“After what we’d done?”
“You didn’t do anything, Andrés.”
“I didn’t run away from Mando or Yolie, did I?”
“You were ten when they took you.”
“And I knew what we were doing was wrong.”
“So it’s your fault, then?”
“I didn’t say that. I just said I couldn’t go back to the Fernandezes after the way we’d played them.”
“So you never saw them again, either of them?”
“Mrs. Fernandez—she went to my trial. Every day, she was there.”
“Trial? I don’t see anything in your files about a trial.”
“There wouldn’t be a record of that. I was a minor. I was tried in juvenile court. And I was acquitted. Or maybe not acquitted, but found not guilty. Or maybe the charges were dropped. I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember?”
“I didn’t care what happened. Dave cared. All I knew was that somehow he got me off.”
“Maybe Dave got you off because you were innocent.”
“I don’t think so.”
“So the only reason you were let off was because you had a good lawyer?”
“Something like that.”
She nodded, then looked at him. She wanted him to know he might be wrong. She’d decided that Andrés Segovia was incapable of believing he had any virtues. “I think your lawyer had something to work with—if you want to know what I think.”
“You don’t even know what I did.”
“No. I don’t.” She decided now wasn’t the time for this particular conversation. Not today. “Did you ever talk to Mrs. Fernandez ever again?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I was too ashamed.”
“Is she still alive?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“I went to Mr. Fernandez’s funeral.”
“When did he die?”
“Six months ago.”
“How did you find out?”
“I read it in the obituary section.”
“Do you normally read the obituaries?”
“No. People your age, they read them.”
She smiled. In acknowledgment of his joke.
He smiled back. He looked like a summer morning when he smiled, exactly like a summer morning. She was certain no one had ever told him that. “So how’d you happen to see his name in the obituaries?”
“This guy at work. His name’s Al. He was going to cut out the obituary of someone he knew. And there it was—Mr. Fernandez’s picture.”
“So you went to the funeral.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Did you talk to Mrs. Fernandez?”
“No.”
“Did she see you?”
“Yes.”
“Did she recognize who you were?”
“Sure. I don’t know. I didn’t go up to her or anything. But our eyes met, and I thought that—I don’t know.”
“And that was all?”
“Yes.”
“Our eyes met. Maybe she did know. I thought about my bike.”
“You think she still has it?”
“She probably got rid of it a long time ago. I think she fell in love with us, though. With all of us. I think we hurt her.”
“It wasn’t you who hurt her.”
“You weren’t there.”
Grace nodded. “Are you tired?”
“Not really.”
“You want to go on?”
“Sure. But can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“How well do you know Dave?”
“Why is that important?”
“It probably isn’t. But I think you know him pretty well.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I don’t know. I just think you do. When he gave me your card. It seemed like—he must know you. He seemed so—”
“So what?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think if you really want to know, then you should ask him.”
“Maybe I’ll do that.”
“Good.”
He liked the way she handled herself. “Good.”
They crossed the Santa Fe Bridge into Juárez, the smell of exhaust all around them from the line of cars streaming from one city into the next. There were men and women and boys his age selling things, holding things up for the whole world to see, candy, curios, crucifixes, buy this, buy this. Maybe some of these boys had lost their parents, too. Maybe he’d wind up like them, selling things on the streets. Somehow, Andrés had sensed that their new house was going to be in Juárez, just as he knew that the Fernandezes knew nothing about any of this—just as he knew he would never see his bicycle again. He kept quiet. It was better not to say anything. And what was there to say, anyway? He was ten. He wasn’t emancipated.
Mando bought two packs of cigarettes from a vendor, one for him and one for Yolie. Andrés had only been to Juárez with his father, and they’d always walked across the bridge on foot. He’d always liked it here, in Juárez. He liked the smells and the way people talked and the busy streets, with people walking, and his father had told him it was more civilized to walk to places than to drive, and his father had explained the word civilized that day, and he was remembering all these things as they drove into Juárez. All the smells reminded him of his father, of how things had been. He remembered how he’d gotten haircuts here and how his dad always bought vanilla for his mother and corn tortillas that melted in his mouth and tasted like Mexico. That’s what his mother had told him, that Mexico tasted of maíz and the hands of the women who’d made tortillas for a thousand years. And remembering all these things made Andrés as sad as he had ever been. For a long time, he had tried not to think about his mom and dad, but now, on the Santa Fe Bridge, all he could think of was that they were dead.
Mando turned right off Avenida Benito Juárez, and down some narrow streets. The streets were crowded, and they passed a lot of bars—or it least it seemed that way to Andrés. He had been to bars with his father, and he knew the look of them. Later, he was to learn that they had been in Calle Mariscal, the district where all the prostitutes made a living. He would learn the streets of this district better than he had learned the streets of his own neighborhood. But today Andrés only had the vaguest idea of what a prostitute was.
On a small narrow street, Mando parked outside a house. It wasn’t a house really, not like the houses in his neighborhood, which all had fences or rock walls or walls that were made of bricks or cinder blocks, fences and yards and flowers and grass and all that. There was none of that in this neighborhood. These houses looked like one long house with doors and windows every few yards, a cement sidewalk for a front yard, a few sad trees trying to grow here and there. Each door, he guessed, was some kind of house. Like apartments, and so he asked Mando, “Are these apartments? Are we going to live in an apartment?”
“No,” he said. “These are houses. Houses aren’t the same everywhere, Andy.”
Mando walked up to a door that had the number 12 on it, and he took out a set of keys and opened the door. They all followed Mando inside the house. Andrés was the last to walk in. The front room was dark, but when Yolie pulled the curtains open, the room was brighter. But not beautiful. The walls were a dull gray and had water stains from a roof that leaked when it rained, and Andrés thought he smelled urine. There were holes in the wall that made the whole room look like maybe someone had fought a war in here.
The floors were covered with old linoleum, pale yellow flowers and green vines running in patterns on its worn surface. It might have been very nice when it was new, but now it was old and pale and sad, and worn down from being walked on by the parade of people who had lived here. The front room led into a kitchen, and the kitchen had a big shelf, like a bookshelf, and a table made of wood, a nice table, and six wooden chairs around the table. And there was a refrigerator and a small gas stove. “I brought the tables and chairs last night,” Mando said. Proud. “The refrigerator and stove need cleaning—bought them secondhand. But they work.” The kitchen led into another room, which Andrés guessed was a bedroom. And that room led to another empty room, which Andrés guessed was another bedroom. And that bedroom led into a small yard, which was as small as the two back rooms. “A courtyard,” Mando called it.
“This is our house,” he said. Proud. Sure. A man.
“It smells bad,” Ileana offered. “I don’t like it.”
“I’ll make it smell good,” Yolie said. “I promise.” She looked at Mando.
“And guess what we’re gonna do, Ileana? We’re gonna paint this place and make it look real nice.”
Mando had been planning and planning and planning. Mando opened a closet in the first bedroom, and he took out the cans of paint and brushes and mops and a broom and all kinds of stuff to clean their house with. “We got everything,” he said. “And we’ll paint all the walls white. So it won’t look so dark. How does that sound? And we’ll paint the kitchen yellow. How does that sound?” He looked at Ileana.
“That sounds good, Mando,” she said. She was happy with his answer. He was the father now.
Even Andrés liked the way Mando sounded. He didn’t sound mean or angry, but nice and soft. So maybe everything was going to be all right.
But the rooms were so dark. And there weren’t any windows except in the front room. “But the darkness keeps the house cool in the summer,” Mando said. And so they started painting. And just as soon as they started painting, there was a knock at the door, and a girl—she was pretty—a girl and two guys, they were at the door. And the pretty girl hugged Mando and kissed him. “This is my girlfriend, Xochil,” Mando said, “and these are her brothers,” Enrique and Jaime. And Andrés shook their hands, and Mando’s girlfriend kissed Andrés on the cheek and told him he was better looking than Mando, and that made Andrés smile.
Mando and Enrique and Jaime went out, and they unloaded four beds. Each bed was small, for one person. Twin beds, one bed for each of them. And mattresses and pillows and sheets. They weren’t new, the beds, Andrés knew that. But they seemed like they were good beds, though he knew he didn’t really know anything about beds. But Yolie said they didn’t smell like urine and that they didn’t have stains or anything like that. And so he inspected the mattresses closely and he smelled them, and they didn’t smell bad. Not good. Not new. But not bad. Like old rain, maybe, almost sweet. Something like that.
So that first day in their new city, in their new neighborhood, in their new country, they all painted and cleaned and worked to make their new house into something that was good, something that was worthy of them, something that the rats wouldn’t like. That’s what Mando said. It was a joke. He said, “If you keep a house painted and clean, then the rats won’t like it.” Rats. Sure. It wasn’t rats Andrés was worried about. But he didn’t know exactly where the worry was coming from. He just had a feeling. Like thunder in the sky. Only the thunder was in his stomach. There would be a storm.
Yolie and Xochil cleaned the refrigerator and stove and painted the big shelf in the kitchen. Mando and Jaime and Enrique painted the living room and the kitchen, and by late afternoon, they had started to paint the front bedroom. Mando gave Yolie some money and told her to go buy some food. He gave her directions to a grocery store and told her what the exchange rate was so she would know what things would cost in pesos even though she was paying in dollars. In Juárez, you could always pay in dollars. He’d seen his father pay like that. Sometimes they gave you back change in pesos. Andrés knew that. And he kept the exchange rate in his head like he kept other things. In case he ever needed to pull the information out.
That first night, Yolie and Ileana made tacos. Andrés remembered that tacos were the last thing his mother had ever cooked for them. He was sorry he remembered. But the tacos were good, and everyone ate. But Andrés felt the thunder in his stomach. That night, when everyone was asleep, Andrés walked into the bathroom, knelt down in front of the toilet, stuck his finger down his throat, and vomited the tacos his sister had made.
It wasn’t bad the first few weeks. Like they were really a family, everything new and different. But they didn’t know what they were doing, not really, just a game. Mando would go out in the morning, like he was a dad and going to work. And Andrés always wondered about that, and wondered if he were working in El Paso or Juárez—but Mando never told them. When Andrés asked him where he went, Mando said, “I go to work. So we can live here.” He knew Mando didn’t want to talk about it. And sometimes Mando went away for a day or two. And Andrés would ask him where he was. And he would say that sometimes he had to travel. For his work. Ileana asked him where he traveled. He said he didn’t like to talk about work. “Only old men who are about to die talk about work.” That’s what he said.
Yolie would pick up the house, like playing Mother. And she would cook. And the three of them, Yolie and Ileana and Andrés, would walk to the market and buy food. Andrés loved the market, the tomatoes and the nopales and the limes and the different kinds of chiles, jalapeños and chile de arból and anchos and pasillas, and chiles negros and chile pasado. He loved to stare at the chiles, so beautiful, all the food and the way it was displayed—like jewels and diamonds. Yolie seemed to like the market, too. She was happy when they were there, and she always knew how much to buy and always got a good price.
But she was restless. Sometimes she would go out in the afternoon, and she told Andrés and Ileana not to tell Mando. And they never did. They never knew where she went. And Andrés thought maybe it was like riding his bike around the neighborhood. Because it felt good to get out and be by yourself. And not be inside all the time.
Ileana and Andrés would stay home, and Andrés would make up stories to entertain her. Ileana and Andrés learned to keep the house pretty clean. Mando got some bricks from somewhere, and they bricked in the dirt of the courtyard, and it was like having an outside room. And he bought some pots, and Yolie planted a banana tree and other kinds of bushes and flowers in the big clay pots Mando had brought home, and it was nice. Andrés liked that courtyard. He would sleep there at night. He would count the stars. But as the days passed, he was getting as restless and bored as Yolie.
He missed school. He missed riding his bike. He missed speaking English. They had a new rule. Speak Spanish. This is Mexico. But really, they spoke both. For some reason, they hung on to their English.
“…Mando had saved money and he’d thought of everything. The problem was, he’d only thought of the practical things. An affordable place to live, simple pieces of furniture, a couch, chairs, money for food. If we needed something, he always seemed to have the money to buy it. Nice rugs to cover the old linoleum. It wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t that simple. Not for Mando or Yolie. Not for any of us.”
“Did you ever find out where Mando was working?”
He liked her voice. He liked the way she said Andrés. He looked at her. He knew he was wearing a numb look on his face. But he could make himself look numb, even if he didn’t feel that way. He wondered where he’d learned that.
“Are you all right?”
“Just wondering.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” She wouldn’t push him. He knew that. If he didn’t want to answer a question, she left it alone.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Sure.”
“There’s a little coffee shop on this floor. I’ll buy you a cup.”
They didn’t say anything as they walked down the hall. It was odd, to be walking next to her—as if somehow he was a part of her life. But he wasn’t. He knew that. She was a counselor, a therapist, a beautiful woman. He was nothing. That’s what he was.
As they stood in line at the coffee shop. Grace ordered two cups of coffee. “Small or large?” the guy asked.
“Small for me.” She looked at him.
“Small. Black.”
The guy nodded, and handed them their cups of coffee.
“When did you start drinking coffee?”
“My first foster home. I was sixteen.”
He thought it was all right to ask her the same question. Maybe that was all right. “How about you?”
“When I got married.”
He nodded. “You started late.” He felt stupid.
“Yeah,” she said. “My husband loved coffee. So I learned to like it, too.”
He thought the seconds it took them to walk back to her office would last forever. And when he was finally sitting back down across from her, he felt better. He knew what he was supposed to do when he was in her office.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” She asked the question almost as a matter of small talk. But it wasn’t. He knew that.
“I thought we were supposed to talk about my past.”
“We can talk about anything we want. And you don’t have to answer the question.”
“I know.” He tapped his finger on the table. “No.”
“Are you straight?”
“Yes.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being gay.”
“Do you think I’m gay?”
“No.”
“But you think I might be, because I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“You sound angry. I didn’t mean to make you angry. It was an honest question. I don’t assume anything about anyone. I don’t jump to conclusions. I ask questions because—” She stopped, then looked at him. She wanted him to understand. “I only asked you if you had a girlfriend because I wanted to know if you were close to anyone. That’s all I’m getting at. Do you have any friends?”
“I don’t have friends, no.”
“You mentioned a guy. Al. Is Al your friend?”
“No. I wouldn’t say that. I work with him. He’s not really my friend. I’m not good about making friends.”
“What about Dave Duncan?”
“I wouldn’t call him a friend. He’s my lawyer.”
“You’re not friends?”
“No.”
“So you don’t have a girlfriend. And you don’t have any friends. Sounds lonely.”
“Look, listening to other people’s problems day after fucking day—that sounds lonely, too.” He was on fire, she could almost touch the rage. He could scare people. He could make anyone afraid, if he wanted to.
He looked at his watch. “Look, I gotta go.”
“Andrés, I don’t want you to be angry.”
He hated her calmness. So fucking easy for her to be so calm, since it wasn’t her life that was under discussion. “I gotta go.”
“See you on Thursday, then?”
“Can’t. I got an interview for a job.” He wasn’t telling the truth. “Can’t on Thursday.”
“Next Tuesday, then?”
“Sure.” He didn’t look at her, didn’t say good-bye. He just walked out the door.
So that’s how he played it when he couldn’t yell at you or hit you. He just looked away, pretended you weren’t there. So, I’ve touched a nerve. She stared at the ringing telephone.
She let it ring. Let them leave a message.