He placed the envelopes, still in their fan, down on the tabletop. The corner of one poked a small puddle left by the glass of water. Darkness rushed into the paper, the envelope’s corner absorbing the water faster than he could slide them away and mutter, Shit.
—Papi, I said. You should do it.
He was putting his wallet back in his pocket. Do what?
—Give them to Leidy and Dante yourself.
—Oh please, he said. He searched the dining room for any waitress willing to make eye contact with him. I’m not interested in the drama, Lizet.
My knuckles were white, wrapped around the handle of my mug. Maybe I was going to throw it across the table. Maybe I was ready to be explicit—to bring up the woman from the bank, the drama of that act. Maybe I just wanted more coffee and was waiting for any of those waitresses to see me.
—Are you kidding me? I said. Yes you are.
His eyes darted from a waitress to me, then moved away again just as fast. He mumbled whatever and I let go of the mug.
—All I’m saying is you should come see them. You should give them this yourself.
He looked down at the dregs of his café, the bottom of his mug home to clumps of bread and undissolved sugar, same as in my cup.
—I can’t, he said. He stopped his search and said, You know I can’t.
I shrugged. Do whatever you want, I said.
He didn’t answer, just placed four fingers on the envelopes and pushed them even closer to my side of the table.
—Listen, you’re not gonna steal this, right?
I blocked them from coming any closer. You know what, Dad?
—I’m joking! he said. Jesus! I’m asking because maybe you need money for stuff up there at that school.
I did. I always did. But I said, I don’t.
He tapped the envelopes and said, Just tell me if you do, okay?
His fingers left them then and touched my wrist. My hand clenched the mug’s handle and then just as suddenly released it, and his hand encircled my wrist completely. He squeezed it too hard, not a comfort but a warning—a parent seizing an arm to wrench a child from an intersection, from the path of oncoming danger. Then he let go, and as he pulled his hand away, I felt the traces of his grip on my wrist, like small rounds of sandpaper taking something with them, leaving only the idea of softness behind.
—Okay, I said. I will.
—Good, he said. Because you can. You can tell me. But you know that, because you’re the smart one.
I didn’t really mean it then but I felt I had to say it: Papi, Leidy is smart, too.
A waitress dropped a small plastic tray with our bill between us. My dad took the same four fingers from before and pulled it to him. He lifted the slip, examined the numbers.
—Sure she is, he said, glaring at the receipt.
*
The envelopes were in my back pocket. In the restaurant’s parking lot, where we said a goodbye that felt more like a see-you-later, my dad warned me against putting the money in so unsafe a place, but I wasn’t worried about losing it: I was worried about how I would explain the money at all when I’d supposedly spent the last hour eating toast and eggs with Omar. I turned the wrong way out of the lot automatically, heading home out of habit, and I figured maybe that was a sign—maybe seeing the old house would give me the answer. The house will tell me what to do, I thought: I’d learned about magical realism in my writing seminar, when the TA had made weirdly consistent eye contact with me during the two class meetings where he was in charge and where we discussed it. He held his palm out to me at the end of every point he made and kept saying, Right?—his assumption being, I guess, that I knew what he was talking about because pronouncing my last name required the rolling of an R. At one point he referred to magical realism as my literary tradition and asked me to explain that concept to my classmates. He held both his hands out to me then, like I was supposed to drop my genetically allotted portion of magical realism into them, pass it between us like an imaginary ball at a rave.
I tried my best. I said, I don’t know if we have any traditions like that, sir. My parents don’t really … read.
He gave a short laugh like I’d just offended him, and, after blinking hard, grinned through closed lips. And I knew from that tightrope smile, from the slow way he talked me through what he presumed I meant to say, that he thought I was an idiot.