“No, you never told me much of anything about yourself,” she said. “Which is funny because it seemed like you were always bragging about something or trying to teach me a lesson, running your mouth like a carnival barker.” She felt a tumbling of old anger. “You never fuckin’ shut up.”
Manny smiled apologetically. “I was pretty selfish back then,” he said and held the towel under a hot tap, rinsing and squeezing rhythmically. “You know,” he said, “my father was an immigrant, he came over here as a teenager from Cuba on an actual raft with his uncle. When he got to Miami, he wouldn’t take just any job in a kitchen like all the other guys he knew. He was trying to be somebody.” He folded the towel symmetrically in half and squared it to the edge of the counter. “My mother’s family was rich rich, not that any of it ever came my way, and she spoke that standard English like they did in the movies. She was as American as Jane goddamn Russell. Even Cubans couldn’t tell she was one of their own. And he worshipped her. I remember he was always taking classes to lose his accent. Always trying to cover up the fact that he was foreign. When I was born, they would tell me, my eyes were so blue the nurse crossed herself, and my father got on his knees and prayed, like I was some kind of gift from God.”
Kit was torn between her genuine interest in the story and her reluctance to reveal this to him. The tension between the two was making her surly.
“What’s your fuckin’ point?” she said.
“Nobody in my family had blue eyes. They were all brown, brown, and brown. How did I get blue eyes? Some little drop of conquistador blood from five hundred years ago just waiting for its moment to shine? To them, it was a God-given blessing. They treated me like I was the center of the universe. They spoiled me. And my little brother hated me for it. You’d think I would be so full of their love and kindnesses that I’d have to turn out good. But all it did, all that fuss, was make me feel invincible. And the more people fawned all over me, the more I hated them. I was bad, okay? That’s my point. I want you to know that I know I was a shit.”
Kit waited for more to determine if this was for real, aware that beneath the flowery speech he could be gaming her. “Okay?” she said.
“Kitty, I’m telling you,” he said, his eyes direct and warm, “because I want to make amends. What do I need to do to get you to forgive me?”
Again, the mention of forgiveness set something alight in her. To forgive was frightening, and yet she sensed how much she needed to let down her arms. It had hardened her to begrudge him, and others, for so long. His eyes, a warmer blue, reached out to her, and she was blinded, for a moment, to why she could not trust this new Manny, the kind and modest incarnation of the rat she once knew. He seemed reformed, and everyone else thought so, too. He wasn’t hiding his old ways; in fact, he wore them plainly.
But the force of her memories pushed back against the Manny in front of her. She tried to hold down the images as if drowning them, but they broke the surface and sputtered to life. The creak of the glider and the painless cut; the stolen bouquet begging on the pillow; the casual expression on his face as he held a family in terror; the way freedom sang through her on that highway without him.
She bolted upright, toppling the chair on its side.
“This was a bad idea. You need to get out of here.” She began to tremble. “Now-now-now!”
Manny looked confused, hurt even.
Her breaths were quick and short, the jolt of last night still in her blood.
Manny reached his hand over toward her. “Hey, now. I’m not mad at you for ditching me.” He grabbed her eyes with his. “I’m not. You were always free to leave. From day one. You know that.”
She bit the side of her tongue to taste her blood. “You’re a bad man.”
“Yes, I was,” he said. “The worst kind.”
He took her hand. She jerked it away, but he held tight and looked her in the eyes.
“Hey, if I were you, I’d have left, too.”
She turned away, blistering under his gaze, hating the way he disarmed her.
“You know they asked me about you when they took me in, questioned me about my partner, who you were, what you’d done. I told them I had forced you into it.”
“Why though?” she asked, hoping she hadn’t given away that she had seen how he was quoted in the paper.
“You’re all I thought about in there. I couldn’t let you get locked up. I needed to know you would be there when I got out. Even if it meant I had to come find you myself.” He ran his thumb along the vein that snaked over her wrist and across the back of her hand. “The thought of seeing you again was what kept me from hanging myself on my sheets.”
The image of him dangling by the neck in a prison cell shook her, but she steeled herself. “I would have left you even if you hadn’t done what you did.” She sniffed and held his gaze.
She could tell by the way he sat back in his chair and tilted his head to the side that she had gotten his attention.
“Don’t act like you don’t know. You wanted me to— You made me kill our baby,” she said, as heartbroken as if it were actually true.
“The abortion?” he said and squinted, disbelieving. “You left me because of that?”
Kit nodded, trying not to let the hurt show. “There were other things, too.”
“I just had no idea,” he said and shook his head, like he was sifting through the implications of this turn. “If you could have seen your face when you told me you were keeping it, all full of bluster. But you were scared, just a baby yourself. It was the only way.”
She paced the length of the braided kitchen rug.
“Listen, I don’t regret a thing. God’s wisdom is infinite and we are just where we should be. Turns out you were right, after all.” He paused, as if waiting to let a revelation sink in. She let the pieces lay and did not put them together.
“I know Charlie is mine,” he said.
Kit’s ears rang. She ran his words over in her mind to make sure she had heard right. Mine. She couldn’t seem to get enough air in her lungs and the collar of her shirt felt like it was cinched around her neck. She was hot and cold, the slimy way she felt when she was about to puke. He was saying something but she couldn’t make out the garbled, foreign sounds.