I GOT TO THE RESTAURANT by seven thirty, half an hour before my dad said to meet him, but it was a mistake to come so early: it meant I’d be at a table by myself for thirty minutes, different overweight waitresses asking me, You sure someone’s coming? ?Estás segura? I was groggy enough to be confused at their questions for a second, thinking, Of course no one’s coming! I made the Omar thing up! I flipped over the laminated menu and thought of Jillian, of how whenever she was up against a due date, she’d spend all night alone at the one diner in town—a dingy place open twenty-four hours that was called, for no reason connected to anything Latino that I could discern, Manolo’s—claiming she’d return only once she finished this goddamn paper. I imagined her sitting in a booth, her notes and books strewn over a sticky table as other overweight waitresses (white versions of the ones here at Latin American) poured her cup after cup of coffee but otherwise left her alone to work. She always went by herself; I never offered to come along and she never asked for my company. I sat up straighter, imagining Jillian’s black hair cascading down my own back. I called a waitress over and asked, in Spanish but not inflecting it as a question, for a café con leche.
The minute the café—in its small Styrofoam cup—and the mug filled with steamed milk arrived, I felt more at ease. The task of pouring the froth-topped espresso into the milk, of stirring in several heaping spoonfuls of sugar, of making the whole thing the right shade of creamy brown before tasting it and then adding more café—these small maneuvers consumed my attention. To anyone watching, I was a woman preparing her morning coffee, not a girl made jittery by the clang of silverware and chairs and plates around her, not one surveying the surrounding patrons in an effort to decide if she looked like she belonged there. I was doing something I’d done hundreds of times before, but I was suddenly aware of my performance of making café con leche, of trying to pass for what I thought I already was. I shook loose my shoulders, then watched the milk’s spin die down. I poked the spoon’s tip into it and lifted off the skin that formed on the surface, flicked it onto my waiting napkin. I was camera ready, a total pro.
My father’s van pulled into a spot in the parking lot just as that first sip scorched my top lip, the roof of my mouth, my tongue. My eyes watered immediately and I tried not to cough too loudly, but the damage was done: a different waitress altogether hustled to my table and slid me a glass of water. I hadn’t asked for it, and no one around me seemed to have one.
My dad was ten minutes early and no doubt banking on my own tendency to be late, so he was surprised to see me there already, table obtained, café procured and prepared, glass of water pushed to his side, a still-wrapped straw waiting beside it. I waved as he swung through the restaurant’s door, a bell jingling overhead, even though he’d seen me from the parking lot; I wanted him to understand that I didn’t expect him to recognize me—this young woman with better posture than he remembered who could sit alone at a restaurant and order her coffee and take care of her business.
He looked mostly the same. He wore his work clothes—a white V-neck T-shirt, stonewash jeans splattered with ancient paint—but also his gold chain and wristwatch, which meant he’d dressed up to meet me. I stopped breathing for an instant at the sight of his chin and upper lip: he’d shaved the goatee he’d sported almost every day of my life so far. The only other time I’d seen his face bare (one of my earliest memories), I clung to my mom’s shirt, crying, That’s not Papi! over and over again, cords of spit and tears soaking my mom’s blouse until sections of it turned sheer. Despite years of work in the sun, he only had a few wrinkles around his eyes and only a smattering of gray hair at the temples. He looked much younger than a man with two grown daughters should look.
—I got you a water, I said when he was still a few feet away.
I pointed at it, focusing on the cup’s bumpy plastic so I wouldn’t have to watch him as I decided whether or not to risk looking stupid and stand to greet him. For all my earlier anger, and then my confusion at what Rafael did and didn’t tell me, I had no idea how to feel now, how I should act toward my father at this moment—had no clue what I expected either of us to do. On the way to his apartment the day before, I’d hissed some challenge into the rearview mirror at every red light: So what, you’re too busy to give us your home number? Or: You didn’t have the balls to tell Mom to her face you were selling the house so you send some bitch from the bank—real fucking brave of you, huh? But watching Rafael’s broad hands flip through the pages of the viewbook I’d hidden from everyone, out of which I’d torn an application I mailed off in secret—it mattered now, that Papi had kept it, had even moved it to his new home. When Papi’s feet stopped just by my chair, I couldn’t help but look up.
He stood at the edge of the table, his shirt stretched a little tight over his belly, faint yellow stains nestled near his armpits, his arms spread out wide to hug me.
—Come on, he said. And as I got up, deciding not to think and just reaching to him, my chair scratching the floor, he whispered as he squeezed me harder than he ever had, You look like shit.
I stayed tucked under his arm, smelling the mix of sweat and deodorant.
He clapped me on the back, squeezed me again, and then just as abruptly dropped me. As he pulled away his eyes were locked on the table, and I wondered how shitty I really looked; it seemed hard for him to face me. He scooted his chair in and pointed to my seat, as if he’d been the one here early holding this spot for us.
—Sit already! he said. When I did, he said, So what’s going on? You a doctor yet?