Milton Ramos
Marilys, watch!” Sofia shouted, blow-darting the torn wrapper hanging from her straw across the small table into her father’s chest.
“Don’t call her Marilys anymore,” Milton said.
“Why not?”
Marilys caught his eye: Go slow.
They had never gone out of the house as a threesome before, and this dinner at Applebee’s was something of a test drive. The waitress arrived with their dinner orders, Double Barrel Whisky Sirloin for him, Double Crunch Shrimp for the lady, and a Fiesta-Chopped Chicken and Spinach Salad for Sofia, who immediately went into a jaw-quivering sulk.
“How would you like Marilys to come live with us?” he said.
“Yah! Yah! Yah!” His daughter shouting up a storm again.
“Easy, easy,” he winced, although the din level of the room approached that of a machine shop.
“Can she sleep with me?”
Milton looked at his fiancée, a half-smile threatening to break across his face.
Scraping off the breading, Marilys put one of her deep-fried shrimps on Sofia’s plate. “So this is it, I’m not working for you anymore?” she said.
“Of course not.”
“But we’re not getting married until next month, you said.”
“So?”
“So I can work for you until then.”
“Are you serious? I want you to go home and pack your stuff. I’ll come by tomorrow with a van and move you in.”
“I have a lease.”
“Don’t worry about your lease.”
“So what do I do then?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I do once I move in?”
“Nothing. You know, just be with me, take care of Sofia and the house.”
“Sounds like my job but without pay.”
Milton blushed. “If you want I’ll get you a housekeeper, how’s that.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“All I’m trying to say is, you’ll never have to worry about money again.”
“I don’t want anybody working for me,” she said. “That’s crazy.”
“It’s up to you.”
Marilys stopped eating, stared at her plate. “I got a better idea.”
“What’s that.”
“Can I say?”
Milton waited.
“My mother.”
“Your mother.”
“If she comes to live with us, she can help me with Sofia and the baby. And she loves to clean.”
“Your mother . . .”
“All I have to do is go back and get her.”
“To Guatemala?”
“She’s never been on a plane before.”
Sofia quietly took a shrimp off Marilys’s plate, dipped it in the ketchup atop her father’s fries, neither of them reacting.
“You don’t want her to?” Marilys said. “It’s your house.”
“Our house.”
“Well, you’re the man of it, so whatever you say goes.”
Sofia took another shrimp, a handful of fries.
“Excuse me for a minute,” Milton said, then rose from the table, Marilys tracking him with anxious eyes as he made his way to the front door.
A wife and two kids, OK, Milton mulling it over as he paced the empty parking lot.
But the mother-in-law . . .
Then: Think of it like this: drop the “in-law” part and that leaves you with “mother.”
Which, given that he had just lost his aunt Pauline, the closest thing he’d had to one, was not so bad.
When he returned to the table, he found Marilys, apparently having lost her appetite, feeding the rest of her breaded dinner to Sofia piece by piece.
“She’s good with kids?” Milton asked.
“She raised me. Raised my sons too.”
“How about otherwise.”
“Not great.”
“Pain in the ass?”
“Kind of.”
Sofia had become way too quiet, Milton wondering if it was ever possible to truly talk over a kid’s head.
To repeat . . . New mother, new wife, new son, all in one swoop.
Then, studying his already-child, working her way through the rest of his untouched fries: New grandmother, too.
“All right,” he said, lightly slapping the table, “go get her.”
Marilys put a hand to her heart, huffed in relief. “When should I go?”
“How about tomorrow? I’ll cover the airfare.”
“I swear to God”—touching his hand—“if you don’t like her she can go right back, it’s not like she doesn’t have family.”
“Just go get her.”
“I can save you money on the tickets,” she said excitedly, “my cousin’s a travel agent.”
“Well, there you go,” wishing she’d gone and come back already.
Marilys leaned across the table and kissed him on the mouth again, which this time made him tense up given that his daughter was right there.
“Oh, Milton,” Marilys saying his name for the second time in his life.
“Oh, Milton,” Sofia aped, her eyes as lightless as pebbles.
Later that night it took him most of a bottle of Chartreuse to work up the resolve to quit drinking. He had never been anybody’s idea of a light drinker, but since the day he first saw the adult Carmen in St. Ann’s, he’d gone completely off the rails, each night worse than the last, waking up every morning on the couch wondering how the one a.m. sports recap had morphed into cartoons.
Well, no excuse for that now, Milton pouring what remained of the bottle into the sink.
Still drunk on the liquor that hadn’t gone down the drain, he took to wandering the house in order to start reassigning rooms: his first wife’s sewing nook now a nursery for his son, the sometime fuck-pad guest room—no need for that anymore—going to his mother-in-law, as well as the nearest of the three bathrooms, hers alone. What else. Divide the den and make a playroom. All the hallway closets going to all the ladies. Then, running out of steam, he finally headed off for his own bedroom, walking in and seeing it for the first time as the gray cell it had become.