“How do you feel about what he did?”
Mateo set the frame down, too hard; it fell over, and he righted it. “Can you even imagine what it was like, opening the door to someone who tells you everything you believe about someone you love is a lie?” Mateo’s voice trembled; all ten fingers pressed into his desk. “He did what he felt he needed to do. Of course, I wish he hadn’t. I wish none of it had happened, which is why,” he said, standing, “I also wish this whole damn thing would go away. Please,” he added, a final plea. “Think of my nephews.”
“They’ll find out one day anyway,” I said. “At least this way, they’ll hear it in your mother’s words.”
Face-to-face like this, Mateo reminded me again of a greyhound, the ropy muscle and sinew, bright soft eyes. He extended a hand toward the door. “Your words, you mean.”
Lore, 2017
In September, I drove up to San Antonio to celebrate my birthday with the cuates. They didn’t like me driving. Mateo would come to Laredo, he said. We could go to Palenque Grill or wherever I wanted. Pero por amor de Dios, I was turning sixty-seven not ninety. My blood sugar was “slightly elevated, something to watch.” And my body was taking longer to warm up in the mornings, knees locking, ankles stiff. But even Rolexes need constant motion to keep telling time. I took Crusoe, con su “mucha energía,” for a two-mile walk most evenings. I knew the slide of wet soil beneath my nails, the sun at my back, and it was then I felt young, Marta and I digging holes in the dry grass of our childhood backyard, excavating cold silvery worms from hiding.
Besides, the whole point was to get out of Laredo, out of the same old, same old, for a little while. Talking to Cassie was making me restless. It was making me want things.
I admit, though, the highways did make me nervous. How suddenly the two lanes of I-35 widened into three, then four, with exits flying at you one after the other. At the hospital mural of the child with angel wings, I made the sign of the cross and a wild last-minute swerve left onto 281. I was sweating but grinning. I was glad I’d told Gabriel I wanted to come early, instead of driving up with them tomorrow. I would die for my grandsons, pero road trips with them? No, thank you.
I passed the Pearl on my left, apartment buildings on my right. Now that I had left all the mugrero of downtown, there were gentle hills and thick green live oaks all around. As I drove to Mateo’s town house near the Quarry, I felt my vision widening—exactly how I used to feel when the plane landed in DF. As if I’d had tunnel vision before and now I didn’t. I could breathe deeper, too. It made me want to cry: this was all it took, a little drive to San Antonio.
In the five years since my retirement, my life had become so small. One of the cruelest parts of getting old is how unnecessary you become, like a helium balloon released by a child’s hand, floating and forgotten, drifting toward the inevitable pop. Suddenly I was needed again—by Cassie and her ambition, and by my family. It was up to me to define our legacy.
Mateo made Parmesan risotto for dinner. It was only the two of us at the town house he’d bought after his divorce two years ago. I still wasn’t sure what exactly had happened with him and Liane. I assumed it was all the stress and financial hardship of the IVF. Mateo never talked about it. He was like Fabian that way, holding his disappointments close.
He was forty-six now. He’d have to marry someone much younger if he wanted to have babies. And if he didn’t, well. He’d be saved from certain heartbreaks, yes, but what about when he was old, and I was no longer around? Not that I’d needed to take care of him for a long time. I just hated to think of him todo solito here. Whenever I asked him if he’d met someone, if he was on all esos dating apps, he’d smile and say, “When there’s someone worth meeting, you’ll meet her.”
After dinner, we settled on the big gray sectional and flicked through the TV guide. When I saw Dateline, I said, “Ah, eso.”
Mateo glanced at me, brows raised. “Since when?”
I’d never much been into “true crime.” Even the name was ridiculous. A crime was a crime. It was only in the retelling that it became true or false, and I bet mostly false, because everyone had an agenda. But I was curious now. Cassie had told me she used to watch this show with her mother. I wanted to see if I could feel what she felt back then.
The episode started with an aerial view of a mansion on acres of green land. The teasing of “explosive fights, torrid affairs, deadly secrets—and a wicked plot.” Then the blond reporter started interviewing a doctor about the woman he’d married. There were black-and-white college yearbook photos. The doctor calling her “caring and supportive of me. She was there when I had to study very long hours.”
I snorted.
“What?” Mateo was half smiling, like he was ready to be in on the joke.
“Nada,” I said. “I just hate it when men describe their wives in relation to themselves.”
The reporter was going on, talking about the wife eventually earning her own PhD.
“?Ves?” I said. “Did you hear him call her smart or ambitious?”
Mateo laughed. “It was a two-second clip, Mom.”
The reporter, dressed in a fuchsia lace dress, asked, “When you said your I dos, did you both feel it was right?”
The doctor looked down and to the right. Did that mean he was about to tell a lie, or that he was thinking? I could never remember.
“I did,” he said.
The couple got rich, apparently, and the wife “developed quite an appetite” for the finer things. Forty thousand dollars on her monthly credit card bills. A stay-at-home mom of three with a full-time nanny, who started book clubs and cooking clubs and was out four nights a week, while the doctor apparently worked day and night to support them, aunque I’d never heard of a podiatrist who worked nights before. Eventually, he started having an affair.
“Ah, pues, qué bueno, he found some time after all,” I said, enjoying myself.
Mateo stiffened—I’d stuck my foot in it. He tossed me the remote. “I’m getting up early for a run tomorrow. Night, Mom.”
“Night, mijito.” I stood and kissed him on the cheek. He held his body tight, and I knew he didn’t want to be here with me anymore, thinking of Andres and me and Fabian, Cassie and the book. I paused the show, only resuming once he’d gone upstairs.
I watched the rest of the episode—qué bárbaro. They’d started out as if the doctor were the victim, and now he and his new novia were offering to pay a car salesman $100,000 to run over the wife and make it look like an accident. Apparently, money was making divorce proceedings messy. Pero the car salesman wasn’t cut out to be a hit man. He went to the police and wore a wire for their next conversations. The doctor and the novia were arrested.
“ándale pues,” I said, satisfied. It seemed to me the whole thing was about punishing a woman who wanted too much, and I was glad they hadn’t gotten away with it.
In bed later, I Googled the wife. I watched a press conference where she pushed for a bill that would impose stricter sentencing for conspiracy to commit murder. She was elegant and composed in a black belted dress with gold buttons, straight dark hair past her shoulders. The only time her voice shook was when she said the hit man was told that if the couple’s oldest daughter, who had severe special needs, was in the car with the wife, so be it. But if the other two kids were there, he should not go through with the attempt. She said it was a struggle to get out of bed every day, but that she was doing it for the sake of her children.
The Dateline show was entertaining, I had to give it that. But the only thing that felt true was the shake in this woman’s voice when she spoke about her kids, which to me seemed less like sorrow and more like rage.