23
They drove up just as Socorro was crossing the street in front of the bridge; she waved back before she realized Don Celestino and his brother were sitting in a taxi.
“She changed her mind, then?”
“A man should be able to take a trip if he wants.” He had come around the car to kiss her on the cheek and open the door, but she wasn’t responding to either gesture.
“Celestino.” She stayed where she was on the sidewalk and a man pulling a mini–shopping cart had to step into the grass to avoid bumping into her. “You talked with her, yes or no?”
“So she could tell me no?”
“She got that from her mother,” Don Fidencio called out from the backseat. “The both of them were born with heads as hard as that pavement.”
“Then what, Celestino?” she asked. “You stole him?”
“How could I steal him?” he said. “If he came on his own, that’s not stealing.”
Down the street the traffic had just stopped at the light and a moment later a patrol car eased up behind the other cars.
“You took an old man without permission.”
“Why when I call him an old man, you say he’s my brother, and now I help him, and you say he’s an old man?”
“You know what I mean, Celestino.”
“You were the one who said we should take the trip.”
“For all of us to go together, yes — not for you to steal him!”
“Please stop saying it that way and just get in the taxi.”
“For what?” she said. “So they can take us all to jail?”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” he said, and tried not to flinch when he heard what he thought were sirens. The traffic at the light was pulling to one side.
“Answer me,” Socorro said. “How could you, knowing the problems you were going to cause?”
“He promised he would go back,” Don Celestino said. “Just for a couple of days. We take him to see the ranchito and after that we can come home.”
He had more to say about this, but he was watching the patrol car turn the corner that led away from the bridge, back in the direction they had come from earlier.
Socorro walked away, toward the front of the taxi, as if she might suddenly turn and cross the bridge. Most of the other cleaning women had either caught their rides or taken the bus. When she glanced back, the old man was in the backseat, fiddling with his suspenders, causing his shirt to untuck. He had buttoned his shirt the wrong way and it looked as if one shoulder was higher than the other. They must have stopped along the way to eat something because crumbs and grease stains blotched the front of his clothes. Beneath his cap, the sleep had stayed crusted to the corner of his left eye.
“And the medicines?” she asked.
“The medicines?” Don Celestino said.
“Please tell me you weren’t going to take him without his medicines.”
“No, no, of course not,” he said. “I was going to buy them for him. How could we go without the medicines?”
“So, then?”
“Maybe your friend that works at the pharmacy can help us.”
“No, no more medicines,” the old man said, and wagged his finger at them.
“Please, Don Fidencio, this is so you can go on your trip.”
“Ya, I have taken enough pills!” He was still motioning with his finger. “No more, I tell you. At least that, at least let me live like a normal man.”
Don Celestino squatted down next to the rear door of the taxi. “Look, you want to go on this trip or you want us to drive you back?”
“You already said you would take me.”
“Not if you were going to get sick on us. So you can end up in the hospital? Is that what you want, to be sick in another bed?”
This seemed to quiet the old man. He shook his head a little longer before he swung open his door for Socorro.
“Stay where you are, Don Fidencio.”
“No,” he said, “so you and your man can be together in the backseat.”
He planted his feet squarely on the curb but kept rocking back and forth, not quite making it off the seat, until his brother gave him a hand. After he was finally standing on the sidewalk, Socorro brushed off the crumbs and then redid the buttons on his shirt while he stood there looking like a man being measured for a new suit.