“Probably.” Lore’s father will think this is evidence of a weaker generation of men.
“I won’t eat it, either,” Gabriel says to Mateo, and they grin at each other, the twin grin. In her womb, their limbs had been intertwined, indistinguishable, as they pushed her belly up in different places, her skin like sand dunes reshaping in the wind. Now here they are, still each other’s fiercest protectors.
“Well, then, that makes three of us,” Lore says as they head for the house.
Lore’s childhood home is an unintentional shrine to the past: the kelly-green shag carpeting in the living room that covers a loose floorboard in the corner, the whole thing pulling up like a scab for the perfect diary hiding place; the black rotary phone on a lace-covered hall table, where she used to whisper to Fabian on the occasional daring late-night call; the tiny galley kitchen—woman-sized, she and Marta joke, no architect or builder ever considering the need to accommodate a man’s height with a higher ceiling.
All the furniture is the same heavy wood polished to a lemon-scented shine. The white walls are almost spartan, save for the occasional crucifix or biblical painting, a blue-robed Madonna cradling her improbably blond infant, her eyes holding the knowledge of future sorrow. Lore’s mother loves white walls. With five kids, she used to say they were the only peaceful thing in the house. Once, Lore’s brother Pablo brought in used matches he’d collected from around the rusted barbecue pit outside and ran them all over his bedroom, creating wild charcoal loops and swirls. Lore remembers how he wailed when Papi—after the belt—handed him a brush and a can of white paint and said, “Fix it.” Pablo had sobbed, “I already did!”
God knows how her parents had done it with the five of them. Papi had inherited his own father’s store downtown, selling secondhand jewelry and home electronics. Mami had stayed home until Lore, the last one, was finally in school, and then she’d gone to work at the store. Their house was small, only three bedrooms, and if her parents struggled with money, which they must have, the five of them never knew. There was always enough food, and Mami worked miracles on the sewing machine, turning outgrown jeans into shorts, old sweaters into vests, dresses into skirts. On weekends, the kids took turns “helping at the store,” which usually meant smudging the glass cases with their fingerprints, leaving early with a dime for pistachios at City Drug. They roamed the city like a pack of wild dogs, feral and fearless. Such innocent times. The world is different now. Though perhaps every generation feels this way; the children grow more insulated from one kind of danger while others grow out of the gloom.
“?Hola, hola!” Lore calls, pushing open the front door with her hip as she balances the Holloway’s box and her mother’s wrapped birthday gift, a pair of plush house slippers from Dillard’s. Her mother deserves a little luxury.
Lore’s greeting is lost in the din. There are Marta and Sergio, Marta wearing jeans instead of scrubs, for once; and Lore’s brothers, Pablo, Beto, and Jorge, and their wives: Lisa of the fairy-tale strawberry-blond hair; Melissa, all biting sarcasm and legendary tortillas; and Christie, who even now, all these years after joining their family, has not yet found her voice among them. Mami is bustling around the table, straightening the edges of place mats, and Papi is limping back and forth from the yard with platters of sausages and fajitas. The kids, all eleven of them, ranging in age from three to fifteen, weave in and out of rooms calling, “Did you find it? Where was it?” Gabriel and Mateo instantly disappear among them, with Lore shouting after them, “Did you say hi to Belo and Bela?” Then her attention turns to her brothers, sitting with beers cracked. “Ay, qué padre. None of you can go help Papi?”
Pablo, the youngest of the three and her closest sibling besides Marta, grins. “What, Fabian’s gone so you have to nag us instead?”
Beto, the oldest, laughs, claps Pablo on the shoulder. Only Jorge groans and stands. “We’ve only been out there with him for an hour, but what the hell?”
“Oh.” Lore grins, chastened, then ducks into the kitchen to leave the Holloway’s box. From the fridge, she pulls out the jug of Carlo Rossi sweet red wine and fills a glass. She’s told Mami time and time again that white is chilled, red is served at room temperature. Mami just flicks her hand and says if Lore doesn’t like it, she doesn’t have to drink it.
“Can I help with anything?” Lore asks Mami, giving her a kiss on the cheek.
“Looks like you’ve helped yourself already,” Mami says, arching an eyebrow at Lore’s wine.
“Which one do you want to be,” Pablo calls to Lore, “the pot or the kettle?”
Lore laughs. “Oh,” she says as Papi returns with what must be the last trays of meat, “before I forget.” She glances toward the hallway, making sure the cuates are out of earshot. “Mateo is a vegetarian now,” she says with a straight face.
“Veggie-qué?” Papi wipes his brow with a pot holder, ignoring Mami’s glare.
“Vegetarian,” Lore stage-whispers as the kids’ voices grow closer—they can always sense when food is about to be served. “He saw something on the TV about how the animals are treated—don’t ask—and he’s giving up meat in protest. Gabriel, too, in solidarity. Me too,” she adds with a wink, grabbing a sausage link.
“Lore, grace!” Mami scolds, and Lore drops the sausage onto her plate.
Papi shakes his head. “Cuando ustedes eran ni?os, you ate what we gave you or you didn’t eat at all. Los estás chiflando, Dolores.”
Lore fights the urge to snap at him. They’re too alike, she and her father. They’ve butted heads her whole life. “They’re allowed to have convictions, Papi. It’s a good thing.”
“Convictions!” he scoffs. “They’ll forget about this in a week.”
“We’ll see.” Screw it, now she really won’t eat meat, at least today. If Gabriel can show his support, so can she.
“I think it’s sweet,” Christie says unexpectedly.
Jorge, who’s brought in the smell of cigarette smoke, says, “Sure, say that when we’re eating pinche tofu.”
Christie flushes. “There are worse things.”
“Tofu’s pretty damn bad,” Pablo chimes in. “Has anyone tried it?”
They all look at Lore, as if suddenly she’s the authority on vegetarianism. “I don’t even know what it looks like,” she says, and they all laugh. “Is it white? It’s white, right? And squishy?”
“?Ni?os!” Papi bellows.
The kids rush in, a stampede of child-sweat and wild hair, a couple of the young ones still clutching handfuls of pecans from the trees out back. The mothers rise to cut strips of meat into bite sizes and ladle rice and beans into plastic bowls, while the older kids bury their torsos in the fridge looking for the coldest Cokes. Mateo and Gabriel appear at Lore’s side, Mateo’s eyes anxious as he glances at his grandfather. Lore gives her father a warning glare. Papi says, “Boys need iron. You think I got these by eating broccoli?” He flexes, showing off biceps still burly from daily push-ups and pull-ups, and for a second, Gabriel looks torn. But Mateo sets his jaw and says to Lore, “No meat.”
“No meat it is,” Lore says, and serves both boys extra rice and beans.
Lunch, as usual, passes quickly. They talk about who’s taken the kids to see A Christmas Story and begin making plans for Thanksgiving, which will be here in less than three weeks. A tense hush falls over the table as they all consider Christmas, and then Papi, forever a marine, brings the subject back to the Beirut barracks bombings last month, nearly 250 marines and 58 French paratroopers killed by two simultaneous truck bombs.
“Cowards,” Papi says, sinking his teeth into a pork rib. “These ‘Islamic jihadists.’ No match for us on the battlefield, so they hit us at rest.”
“Never mind about that.” Mami glances pointedly at Papi. “We have something we need to tell you all.”
Silence descends.