“Why?” Fabian holds up his wineglass, and she clinks it. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
Lore murmurs noncommittally, though a part of her glows at his knowledge of her, how she hates reaching the end of a good night. When they host family, she’s always the one waving the bottle, asking, ?Uno más?
“Just a lot on my mind,” she says. Though Lore doesn’t want to dampen Fabian’s mood, it will be a no-fail subject changer: “How’d it go with Juan?”
Fabian cuts grimly into his steak. “He begged me for his job. Begged, Lore. He practically fell to his knees.”
“Oh, no.” The image is horrifying—proud Juan, who serves as an usher at St. Patrick’s, where they go to Mass at noon every Sunday. Fabian and the cuates probably saw him at church today, passing around the basket for the offertory. “Fabian, what did you say?”
“What could I say?” He looks up at her, and for a moment Lore thinks he’s actually expecting an answer, a solution that will let him call Juan in the morning and make things better, the way Fabian always tries to make things better. “I told him how sorry I was,” Fabian says, “and that as soon as I can, if he still wants the job, I’ll hire him back.”
“Well, that’s something.” Lore sips her wine. “A lot of employers wouldn’t say that.”
Fabian grunts, forking steak into his mouth with sharp jabs. “Anyway,” he mumbles, “how was the wedding?”
“Oh, my God, Fabian, you wouldn’t believe it,” and Lore describes every opulent detail she can remember, every fragment of conversation she thinks he’d find amusing. She feels like she’s creating the night more than recalling it, emphasizing and erasing like an artist at her easel, until this alternate version feels more immediate than its fading counterpart, and so, too, does the man before her. How could she? How could she just . . . forget him? It’s this pinche recession. It’s making everyone crazy.
Once Lore has cleaned the kitchen and the cuates are in bed, Fabian opens a second bottle of wine and they take the glasses to their bedroom. Before she can take a sip, Fabian’s lips are on hers.
“Hold on,” she laughs, fumbling to set her glass on the nightstand. “Let me take a shower. All the travel—”
“I don’t care.” Fabian’s hands are at the buttons of her shirt, nimble and sure. “You were right. It’s been too long.”
Interrupting the moment would ruin it, but letting Fabian continue to kiss her feels like daring him to discover the invisible hieroglyphics of another man’s hands on her skin and lips, so she does the only thing she can—pulls him with her to the shower, where she grips the rippled ledge that holds their Suave shampoo as Fabian pushes inside her, water dripping from his head to her shoulders as he kisses her neck. She closes her eyes, remembering the Bosque de Chapultepec, her back against a tree, Andres yanking up her dress. She imagines the cool air, the dress ripping, her hands and arms scraped on ahuehuete bark, and one hand dips between her legs, one finger, a tiny motion, and then she is crying out, and Fabian thrusts twice more before groaning into her hair. When she turns around, she is almost surprised to find herself here, with Fabian, but she is glad, too.
The first alarm goes off at 5:50. Fabian rolls toward Lore today, instead of away, and she sighs and burrows against him. His chest hair makes her back itch, a familiar, younger feeling, reminding her of when they used to sleep skin to skin all night long. When the second alarm goes off ten minutes later, she groans and throws off the comforter.
Last night, after the shower, they’d turned on Late Night with David Letterman, dipping into the second bottle of wine as they laughed at interviews with John Candy, Teri Garr, and Dom DeLuise. It felt like a vacation, a reprieve. But she’s paying for it now, head throbbing, and the usual resentment crawls up her throat as Fabian stays in bed while she goes to make breakfast. It was one thing when she stayed home with the cuates all day, but still she’s the one in charge of sating everyone’s morning appetite, rewarding them all for the hard work of sleeping, like no one else could pull a soggy box of waffles from the freezer and slide the icy disks into a toaster.
Lore trudges to the kitchen, turning on lights and brewing a pot of coffee, making noise the way she always does. She might never get to wake up with a leisurely shower, like Fabian, or breakfast hot and ready, like the cuates, but she’ll be damned if she’s going to tiptoe around like they’re all a bunch of kings in the last few minutes of royal slumber.
The kitchen is U-shaped, with dark oak cabinets, Formica countertops, and green-and-cream striped wallpaper that reminds Lore of Christmas. When they’d moved in, she’d planned to replace the wallpaper with something more modern, a geometric design, maybe, in warm colors that would complement the Saltillo tile with which she’d replace the linoleum. Now they’re stuck with everything they’d intended to fix.
They bought the house three years ago, at the height of the boom. The gray brick ranch in Hillside was such a step up after the two-bedroom condo they’d been renting while they saved for a down payment. She remembers how the cuates, then nine, had instinctively chosen “their” room, not realizing it was possible to have one each. The house was ten years old, practically new, but she and Fabian still made plans: updating the wallpaper, for one. And the master bathroom, where Lore dreamed of adding a Jacuzzi so she could light candles and sink into scented bubbles after the cuates were in bed. And the backyard, more than big enough for a pool! She and Fabian would invite the whole family over for carne asadas, fajitas sizzling over charcoal while the kids cannonballed into sun-toasted water. But the only thing they’d gotten to was building the carport out back so she and Fabian weren’t constantly asking each other to move their car to unblock the other. A narrow driveway built for two vehicles bumper to bumper—whose good idea was that? Now at least they each have their space, Lore in the driveway and Fabian in the carport, complete with an automatic wrought iron gate he fabricated himself.
Lore sighs, glancing up at the skylight she’d once found romantic and now hates for the way it silhouettes the Rorschach blurs of bird shit. When the waffles are stacked, she strides to the cuates’ room and opens their door. Gabriel lies spread-eagled on top of the covers, his skinny chest—he recently started sleeping shirtless, and she’d caught him flexing in the mirror—rising and falling. Mateo sleeps on his stomach, arms stiff and straight at his sides. Their hair is rumpled and wild, the sun striping their carpet and the piles of dirty clothes and Nerf guns. They’re in seventh grade this year. Soon they’ll be teenagers. How is that possible? Only yesterday they were at her breasts, slack-jawed and determined, connected, even when they pulled away, by delicate silver strings of saliva. Now they’re all so . . . separate. She can feel the passing of time, its devouring mouth at her back, and has an overwhelming urge to draw their bodies close, as if that might keep them young like this forever.
“Morning, calabazas!” Lore turns on their light, and they groan.
“Mom!” Gabriel throws an arm over his eyes. “Do you always have to do that?”
Lore’s sentimentality fades. “Breakfast. Apúrense, before it’s cold.”
This gets them, as always. Coltish limbs unfolding, exaggerated yawns, gusts of morning breath as they push past her through the doorway, no greeting or recognition.