On Saturday morning, before Gabriel and his family arrived in town, Mateo treated me to shopping at La Cantera. He bought an iced coffee and waited at one of those iron tables outside Nordstrom while I tried on and squirmed out of silky printed blouses and skinny jeans—those fashion designers must be laughing, no longer bothering to hide exactly who their clothes were meant for—before finally slipping into a red dress. The fabric was stiff on the bodice, supporting and tucking, and flared out softly from the waist down.
Qué vergu?nza, that young salesgirl urging me to stand on a circular pedestal, to consider the fit from all angles. I tried to brush her off, saying, no, no te preocupes, it’s fine. But she insisted. It had been so long since I’d really looked at myself, and now here we both were, bearing witness to my body in a red dress. It felt like saying: I am still alive. I am still a woman.
That night, Mateo arranged for a friend to babysit Michael and Joseph so that he, Gabriel, Brenda, and I could have my birthday dinner on the River Walk. I came downstairs—so many stairs in that pinche town house, three flights—feeling flushed and shy, the red jersey fabric swishing around my knees as I briskly grabbed my purse and phone. It was Michael, five years old and leche-quemada eyes wide, who said, “Güela! You look like a princess!”
I swelled with ferocious love. “No, precioso,” I said, bending to kiss him. “I look like a queen.”
It was still too hot to sit outside, really, but I insisted, hungry for the lights, the laughter, the languorous glide of red tour boats on the river. So we sat at a white-clothed table and ordered wine and I sighed, smiling, watching the cuates scan the menus with the same focus they’d had as toddlers.
They were no longer identical, Gabriel and Mateo. Mateo was training for the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon in December, already running ten miles on Saturday mornings like a loco. He looked . . . essential, nothing wasted. He was so handsome, like Fabian, though it was Gabriel who was built like his father, with those bowling ball shoulders, the wide chest and panza that still looked firm, though it was far from flat. Coaching basketball wasn’t the same exercise as playing, and I bet he missed those days: sneakers squeaking on a polished gym floor, ball sailing into his hands. He’d wanted to play in college, but after everything that happened—junior year hadn’t been an easy time for him.
“So how’s it all going? With the reporter.” Gabriel glanced at me as he tore the middle of the sourdough bread from its crust and sank it into garlicky hummus. Brenda—petite, controlled, opinionated, the kind of person who only needs four hours of sleep each night—watched him with an arched brow. A lo mejor she had him on a diet, not that you could tell.
I smiled as I remembered that first day with Cassie. We’d ordered sushi from Posh for dinner and she’d insisted on paying, aunque I saw her hesitate when she opened her wallet, like if she was deciding which card to choose. I slipped a twenty in her bag when she wasn’t looking, the way I always had with the cuates when they left for A&M after a weekend visit. She seemed younger to me, younger than she probably felt, and it felt good to take care of someone.
Since then, I’d come to look forward to our nightly calls. Sometimes we FaceTimed over triste little dinners of leftovers or sandwiches. Marta owned a restaurant and did catering now. Sometimes she brought over trays of fajitas or mole enchiladas that could last me for weeks. Cassie said she lived on her fiancé’s leftovers the same way.
“It’s fine.” I felt protective. The past had just been waiting there, a sliver of light beneath a closed door, and it was mine.
“She hasn’t asked you to sign anything, has she?” Mateo asked, clipped.
I took a sip of Chianti. White lights in the trees, windows lit across the river. I wondered who was inside, what lies they were telling the people they loved. I thought about Cassie and her mother. Mami and me. The earth rich with mothers’ secrets and daughters’ unanswered questions. I remembered the bookshelves in Andres’s apartment in Tlatelolco, colorful spines out like fish in an aquarium. Imagine a book about me on a shelf like that.
“No, Mateo,” I said. “I would tell you if she did. I’m not stupid.” I couldn’t help noticing that despite having all last night alone with me, he only asked this today, with Gabriel as backup. They were always like that. “It’s actually been nice, though. Telling my story.”
Gabriel scoffed. “Well, I sure as hell don’t want to read it.”
My chest pinched with disappointment, though not surprise. I didn’t like to be sexist, but that’s the difference between men and women. Women are detectives of the heart, constantly seeking, while men prefer not to see what’s right in front of them.
Mateo spoke to Gabriel como si I wasn’t even there. “Look, realistically, it’ll probably never get off the ground.”
What, like my story wouldn’t be interesting enough to publishers? “Well, for all our sakes, we’d better hope it does,” I snapped. “Otherwise, that other writer might come into the picture again.”
I’d called the New York gringo back after that first weekend with Cassie. He’d sounded so smug, as if he’d known I would change my mind. His voice had thinned when I told him I’d decided to talk to someone else. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he’d said, then wanted to know who it was. Afterward I imagined him like a dog, licking his wounds, unable to resist one last snap. “Best of luck going with a nobody.”
“I told you,” Brenda said unexpectedly, looking at Gabriel.
He flushed, dark and blotchy. “Brenda,” he hissed.
Brenda looked from him to Mateo, who suddenly couldn’t keep his eyes off the ducks waddling between the tables in hopes of scraps. Something dawned in her expression. “Shit,” she said, and while normally, just out of habit, los rega?é for swearing, this time I let it go.
“What?” I focused on Mateo. “Dime.”
He pushed his bread plate aside, taking a sip of water. “We—” His we always included Gabriel. Sometimes it only meant Gabriel. “I offered to pay the writer to drop the whole thing. I assumed she would’ve told you.”
“I told Gabriel it didn’t make any sense.” Brenda swept a hand over her already-smooth ponytail, not a single flyaway, even in this humidity. “Then what, the other guy swoops right back in, and you didn’t like him, right, Lore?”
“That’s right.” I was surprised at how steady my voice sounded, because inside I was quaking with rage. I could feel it rolling off Gabriel, too, so I knew it must have been his idea, inelegant and crude, but maybe, they thought, if presented by Mateo, it stood a chance. Only Cassie had said no. I felt a warmth toward her, tempered with irritation that she hadn’t told me. “That was stupid,” I said, directly to Gabriel. “And how dare you go behind my back like that?”
Gabriel snorted. “That’s rich coming from you, Mom. Really.”
“I talked to Dad,” Mateo said, an abrupt subject change as our waitress came to settle our plates before us. She smiled apologetically at the interruption.
“Should we say grace?” Gabriel asked once she left. He and Brenda went to some megachurch in Dallas, but they still said Catholic grace. Apparently you could pick and choose. We clutched hands grimly and bowed our heads.
“I talked to Dad,” Mateo started again after the prayer. He twirled a fork in his pasta primavera. Todavía vegetarian, after all these years. “He says she’s made a couple of interview requests with him. She’s pretty persistent, isn’t she?”
I cut a shrimp in half, speared it, wrapped it in a layer of spaghetti. Si tuviera una hija, I would have liked for her to be called persistent. “She told me,” I said curtly. Eso, at least. I didn’t like it, though I knew Fabian would say no. “And a woman needs to be persistent, in this world.”