Dad was making his famous tacos. Sam loved my dad’s tacos. Me too. Maggie three. Sam and I went into the living room, and I could smell the corn tortillas as my father shaped and fried the taco shells. God, I loved that smell. Sam kept crossing her arms and uncrossing them as she talked. “My mom is such a bitch.”
“Take it back,” I said.
“Once you say something, you can’t ever take it back.”
“Yes, you can.”
Sam could give looks that could stop you in midsentence. But I could give those kinds of looks too.
“I take it back.” She crossed her arms. “She’s mean. She can be really mean.”
I nodded.
“You know what she told me? She said, ‘If you don’t watch yourself, little girl, you’re going to wind up dancing around a pole, half naked, surrounded by salivating dirty old men. And you think you want to go to Stanford?’ She had no right to say something like that.”
“I have to admit that I don’t like your mother very much right now.”
Sam smiled. “Good.” She threw herself on the couch. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Have you ever liked my mother?”
“Well, I don’t really know her. She doesn’t seem that interested in being known. Not by me, anyway.”
“Yeah, guess that’s about right.”
“Do you ever want to be a mother, Sam?”
“I’ve never thought about it.”
“Never?”
“Not really. What about you, Sally? You want to be a dad someday?”
“Yup. I sure do. I want three kids.”
“Three?”
“Maybe four. That would be awesome.”
“Well, good luck trying to get a girl to marry you.”
That made me smile. But then I noticed she had a sad look on her face.
“You know, Sally,” she said, “I think I’d be afraid to be a mother. I don’t think I’d make a very good one.”
“Hey,” I said. “I think you’d make a great mother.”
“What makes you say that?”
I pointed to my heart and tapped on it. “Because you have a lot of this. That’s all it takes.”
“You’re like your dad, you know that? I mean, I know he’s not your real—”
“Yes, he is.”
She nodded. “Yeah, he is.”
And right then I wished with all my crooked heart that my dad had been the man who’d fathered me.
Then his voice echoed through the room. “Tacos, anyone?”
Maggie ate one taco. That’s all she was allowed. Dad ate three. Sam and I had five each.
I walked Sam home. The night was quiet, the weather almost too perfect. “Dad’s leaving tomorrow.”
“He taking your Mima to the Mayo Clinic?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t want to talk about it right now, do you?”
“No, guess not.”
“Do me a favor: Don’t bring up subjects you don’t want to talk about.”
“Okay, okay. Give me a break. I do and don’t want to talk about it.”
“I get it. Your Mima’s really sweet.”
“Yeah, she is.”
“Are you scared, Sally?”
“I never really lost anyone I loved. Well, that’s not true. I lost my Popo.”
“And you lost your mom.”
“Yeah, Sam, I did. But I don’t remember that. If you don’t remember something, it doesn’t hurt.”
“Wouldn’t it be great, Sally, if we could just push the delete button in our brains and forget the times somebody hurt us?”
“Would be nice. But maybe not. I mean, hurt’s a part of life, right?”
“Right,” Sam said. “Sometimes that really sucks.”
“I guess we can’t just pick the good things to remember, can we?”
I watched her walk into her house. I stood there a moment. She poked her head out the door, smiled at me. She waved. Real sweet-like. And I waved back.
Me and Dad
THE WIND AND THE RAIN pelting my window woke me up. Then the lightning started. And the thunder, as if the sky were trying to break itself in half.
I grabbed my pants and headed for the front porch, Maggie following me. I needed to watch the show—?it was one of my hobbies. I wasn’t surprised to find my dad standing there, smoking a cigarette. Watching the lightning and the rain come down. I stood next to him. He put his arm around me. I leaned into him, watching the lightning and hearing the crack of the thunder and the rain coming down in sheets. I don’t know how long we stood there. Sometimes there were moments when time didn’t exist. Or maybe it did exist, but, well, it just didn’t matter.
We didn’t say a word. Dad was right. The world did have too many words. The sound of the rain was all we needed.
The storm was fierce. But I wasn’t afraid. I knew my father’s love was fiercer than any storm.
“Will you be okay?” he whispered.
“Yeah.”
“No wild parties?”
“Just Sam,” I said. “Guess that’s wild enough.”
He laughed. “I’ll call you every day.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“I don’t know.”
I nodded.
“Let’s get some sleep. I have to get up early.”
“No,” I said. “Let’s wait for the storm to end.”
Between Storms
THE AIR WAS CLEAN, the sky as deep a blue as I had ever seen.
I thought of what my father had told me one summer day. I’d fallen down, and my knee was all scraped up and bleeding. We sat on the back porch, and he cleaned my wound and put a Band-Aid on it. The sky had cleared after a summer storm. I’d been crying, and he tried to get me to smile. “Your eyes are the color of sky. Did you know that?” I don’t know why I remembered this. Maybe it was because I knew he was telling me he loved me.
Anyway, my eyes weren’t nearly as beautiful as the sky. Not even close.
I sat on the front steps and breathed in the air as Aunt Evie and Mima drove up in front of the house. Mima got out of the car and smiled as if there were nothing wrong with her. She was standing on the sidewalk, wearing a pastel blue dress that reminded me of a summer day. She looked the way she’d always looked: pretty and strong and happy. I bounded off the steps and hugged her. “Mijito de mi vida,” she said, “you look so handsome.”
“Looks aren’t so important.”
“That’s right.” She held my face in her hands as she’d done so many times before. “Everyone is beautiful,” she said.
“Not everyone,” I said.
“Yes. Everyone.”
I smiled at her. I wasn’t going to argue with her.
My dad came down the front steps carrying a suitcase. I watched as he and my aunt rearranged everything in the trunk.
Aunt Evie winked at me. “Hey, sweetie.” That was her thing. Everyone was sweetie.
“Hi,” I said.
“Are you gonna be a good boy?”
“I’m always a good boy, Aunt Evie.”
“Always?”
“Well, most of the time.”
“Well, that’s good enough for me.”
My dad opened the door for Mima. “Ready?”
She nodded, and something sad passed over her face.
She waved at me.
I waved back.
I hugged my dad.
He looked serious. “Take good care of Maggie.”
“I will.”
“Tell Sam I’m counting on her to keep you out of trouble.”
“I’ll tell her.”
Aunt Evie gave me a hug and jumped into the back seat. I watched as they drove away. I thought about last night’s storm. One had ended, and another one was beginning.
Me. Fito. Friends.