On the plane, she slips the ruby ring—a gift from Fabian when times were good—onto her right hand, then slides the silver band Andres bought her onto her left ring finger.
At the gate, Lore sees Andres before he sees her, so she has time to conceal her shock: he’s lost at least ten pounds, his face drawn, with dark ojeras beneath tired eyes. But when he sees her, he breaks into his familiar grin, sweeping her into his arms and swinging her around widely enough that her legs bump against other people. “Sorry, sorry,” she says, laughing, as Andres kisses her. God, how she’s missed him.
“Look at you,” Lore says, as they walk hand in hand out of the terminal. “You haven’t been eating!”
“No one here to cook for me,” he says, and they both laugh, since he’s the one who cooks for her. “There’s been a lot going on.”
The understatement of the century. Lore gapes at the ruined city, devastated all over again, as they take a cab an hour out to Ciudad Satélite, where Andres has found a tiny two-bedroom apartment. The walls are roughly textured, clay red, and the only furniture so far consists of three beds and a small kitchen table. Sliding glass doors open out toward a back courtyard garden shared by the neighboring apartments.
“What do you think?” Andres asks, watching her expression.
She smiles. “I love it. I can’t believe you were able to find something so quickly.”
“Quick?” Andres jokes. “Did you forget how comfortable Rosana’s floor was? I must have been there at least five years, according to my back.”
“Pobrecito,” Lore says, standing behind him and slipping her hands up his shirt. His skin is warm, his lean muscles tight beneath her palms.
The next day, they go to the Registro Civil to start the legal process for their marriage. A fountain out front lined with Talavera tile; a row of people leaning against bright yellow walls, waiting. The world could be ending, and people would still want to get married. She’d considered forgetting her birth certificate, delaying this part of things, but it hardly makes a difference at this point.
By the time Lore goes home four days later, she is legally married to Andres.
After that first spare Christmas—when she tells Andres she came down with the flu and doesn’t want to get him and the kids sick—and the New Year’s Eve when the cuates go to a party and Lore and Fabian sit on the couch and watch the ball drop, Fabian can’t find even temporary work. Lore startles awake to his teeth grinding. His beard grows, threaded with silver. He inspects the H-E-B receipt every time she buys groceries, asking whether they really need bacon, griping about the prices of milk and eggs as if they’d been set to gouge him, specifically. Sometimes, while he sleeps, she imagines taking a tiny sharp blade to his sternum, a precise cut, releasing some of that toxic, impotent rage.
On top of all that, Lore’s travel is wearing on him. “Lore, I’m supposed to be looking for work,” he says to her Easter Sunday, crabby, as they get ready for Mass. “How am I supposed to find anything when I have to take the cuates to and from school and all their sports and shit? Not to mention making dinner every night.”
“Making dinner takes you away from job hunting?” Lore replies archly, opening a tube of lipstick.
He sits on the edge of the bed to pull on his boots. “You know what I’m saying.”
Lore steps out of the bathroom to look at him. “Fabian, what do you think I’ve been doing for a million years? Both when you were in Austin and before?”
“What, like I’ve never helped at all?”
She raises her eyebrows. “How much help is it when I get home after dinner?”
Fabian exhales, rubbing his beard. “Yes, but I was providing.”
“So was I. So am I.”
Fabian winces. It’s not her fault if he feels like less of a man because she is the one keeping the roof over their heads.
“But do you have to be gone so much?” He walks over to her. Coils one of her still-warm curls around his finger. “We miss you.”
She relaxes into his familiar shape. “I miss you, too,” she says, kissing him.
Married to two men at once. Two families. When she thinks about it, it’s with a suffocating squeeze, like waking up to remember someone you love has died. Or that, perhaps, you’re being hunted. That you can never slow down, never relax. That there is no way out—at least not without hurting one of the people you love most.
Cassie, 2017
My father had been T-boned running a red light. He had three broken ribs, a concussion, and whiplash. He also received a DWI and mandatory substance abuse counseling, and his license was revoked. The other driver had been in some jacked-up Ram, which totaled my father’s Chevy while remaining more or less intact. If it had been a smaller car, or a pedestrian had been crossing the street, or my father hadn’t been wearing his seat belt—safety first!—everything could have been different.
“It’s my fault,” Andrew said on the phone, miserable. “We were supposed to pick up burgers at Braum’s. I was taking too long, and he left without me. If I’d been with him, I could’ve—”
“No,” I interrupted, fierce. “Andrew, this is not your fault. Dad made his own choices.”
So had I. There I was, playing the reassuring big sister, pacing the living room, muting myself so I could scream into a sofa pillow after hearing the Ram had hit the passenger side, which apparently folded in like an accordion. If Andrew had been there, he could have died.
I’d always thought the danger from my father’s drinking was his anger. Now the other possibilities seemed so obvious—my father driving drunk, Andrew strapped in beside him, a child stuck on a broken carnival ride. It had probably happened a million times before, just as it had probably happened when I was a kid, and I was too goddamn trusting and self-absorbed to notice.
When I first told Duke about the accident and said we needed to bring Andrew to Austin, he looked momentarily dazed. “Isn’t there anyone else?” he asked. In his family, there was always someone else.
“No,” I said. “I’m all he has.”
We made decisions quickly after that, the way you do when there’s no other choice. Andrew would stay with a friend until we could get there. I bought an air mattress and sheet set with my emergency credit card. Duke made arrangements for the food truck, let his parents know we wouldn’t be at the farm for Thanksgiving. We’d pick up Andrew, stay the night at a cheap hotel, and drive back the next day. We’d take Andrew to Kerbey Lane or Magnolia for a late holiday dinner. On Monday, he’d start school. On the phone, Andrew sounded stunned by the sudden turn of events, but also a little relieved, as if he was ready to let someone else take control.
Andrew couldn’t sleep on an air mattress forever, of course. We’d have to break our lease, which wasn’t up until June. Move south of Slaughter or, God forbid, up toward Pflugerville or Round Rock. But I’d warmed to the idea of him living with us. It felt that way, a warming, like long-dulled pieces of me regaining sensation. It felt like I was reclaiming my family, or making a new one: Duke, Andrew, and me. I could keep Andrew safe, make up for all the time we’d lost. I could do for him what my mother had never been able to do for me.