She looks at me as though she’ll offer me the comfort of her hair.
Just then Manuel lurches, giggling, into the room, bumping my legs, and clamps his mother’s calf. “Mama, I’m hungry!”
In a mad race, the other kids swarm her: Angelina, Roberto, Maria. Chatito, the youngest, cries from his crib in the back.
Lira smiles at me, wearily. “Perhaps you should join us next month for the Day of the Dead,” she says. “When people we love have left this world of sorrows, we prepare their favorite dishes for them. You know the custom?”
“Yes. A sort of communion with family ghosts?”
“And with those of us who must go on.”
“Hungry hungry hungry!” Manuel yelps, and I offer to watch her babies while Lira fixes supper. “Yes yes, read to me!” Manuel says. “Spiderman! Spiderman and Dr. Octopus!”
When I turn to pick him up, I see Julio slouched, motionless, in the doorway. He’s holding a white apron, stained with hot mustard, sweet-and-sour sauce. He’s sweating and tired. “George,” he says glumly.
“Julio.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I dropped by to see how things were going.”
“Lira didn’t tell me you were coming.”
She shivers, just slightly, rubbing her arms. “I didn’t know,” she says. Shadows drape the room now. “Excuse me.” She heads for the kitchen. The kids, a noisy gaggle, scramble after her.
Julio stares at me strangely. Exhaustion? Suspicion? I’ve never seen him this quiet. Have I broken a rule, entering his home, meeting his wife while he was gone?
With tornado-like swiftness, he offers me a smile. “You got the transcript?”
“The what?”
“The last interview we did.” He shuffles into the pantry, next to the kitchen.
I confess, “I haven’t typed it up.”
He squeezes his apron and tosses it into the washer. From the dryer he pulls a wad of laundry, still soggy. “Why not?” He loves reading about his family.
“Julio, the press is in arrears.”
“Rears?” He kicks the machine.
“I told you I’m running out of money. I can barely make my house payments right now. The books don’t sell — ”
“This fucker. We didn’t hook it up right.”
“The chain stores won’t touch them,” I tell him. “The guy at Cal’s — he’s the only one who’s shown any real interest in the past, and even he won’t take them any more. To tell you the truth, I’m wondering if there’s any point in writing a new one.”
“Fuckin Jamón,” he says.
Me?
Yes, he’s staring at me. The tornado has shifted paths again. A can opener buzzes in the kitchen.
Julio shoves a shirt and pants into the dryer. “I gave you all that information for nothing?”
“No, of course not.”
His voice isn’t loud, but he’s tapping his feet: big, bare, brown on the gritty yellow carpet.
I move away from him. Surely it’s the dryer, the long day at work. “I’m looking for funding,” I say. A lie. No one’ll back me, with no hope of profit. “I’ll let you know.”
“To you, it’s just a project, George. But it’s my goddam life.” He slaps himself on the chest.
In his anguished voice I hear my wife. “It’s my body” she used to tell me, whenever we talked about having kids. “One little spurt and the story’s all over for you, George, but me — assuming my plumbing still works — I’d swell up big as the house. No thanks.” “All right,” I told her. “I understand. Forget it.”
“All right,” I tell Julio now.
“No one cares about my life, right? My troubles. I’ll die an invisible man, like all the other wetbacks.”
“Julio — ”
“I have to clean this apron now, George. Excuse me.”
“Okay,” I say. “You’re right. My fault. I’ll be in touch. Julio, your stories are important to me. All right?”
“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe not. How do I know?” His voice shakes with rage. “Why am I the only one carrying his goddam weight around here? Hm? The only one keeping his word?” Lira drops a glass in the kitchen. Julio’s shoulders sag. “Hijo!” he yells out the dusty pantry window at Roberto, who’s just scampered by with a ball. “Get your little ass in here and pick up your room! I can’t do it all!”
The dryer lurches loudly at the wall.
Quietly, I let myself out, catching Lira’s eye. She’s somber, sadly pretty. A pair of kids hops around her. Food steams from crusty pots on the stove. Her face says, I never agreed to this.
In the men’s room at work, I examine my stinging face. Nothing. Back in the newsroom I tell the guys about Cal. I know he’s a poker player, too.
“Hey, if his money’s good, and his card savvy’s poor, I have no objection to letting him in,” Ed says. “I mean, the man owns a bookstore, how savvy can he be, right?”
“Yeah,” Tony says, “the game could use fresh blood.”
I shuffle the deck in my hand. Nine of hearts, three of spades, queen, queen — both Jean. There it is again. A wasp on my cheek.
“Hit me with a big one,” Scott says.
“Two for me.”
“One.”
The nip of a slap.
“George, you in this round?”
“No. Deal past me.” My jaw is throbbing now. The radio hums some “dirty mama” blues.
I stand and slouch against the water cooler. Bubbles blast through the bottle, a tiny depth-charge.
My chest heaves.
You want to hear a story, is that it?
The day of the crash, Jean and I fought before we picked up my folks.
There.
It’s something I hadn’t wanted to dwell on, these past dozen months, though late at night, just before falling asleep, Jean hovering quietly above me, I couldn’t forget, of course.
Kids: our standard disagreement. In the city’s vaporous heat, it got out of hand. We were tired that day. All afternoon we’d been paying bills. Cleaning the house.
“Sixes and sevens.”
“Straight.”
“Your deal.”
“Jean — ”
“Stop blaming me!”
“Sweetie, I’m not blaming you. You said it yourself once. I’m the caretaker-type — ”
She whirled.
Later, on the freeway (her slap still fierce on my cheek), I noticed, just barely, the pickup swerve into my lane. Afterward, an investigator told me, “You didn’t have time to breathe, man, much less brake or change course.”
But I swear, I remember a second or two, an instant of instinct, when I looked into the mirror and found my wife’s chilly anger.
Guilty. And of much more, besides.
Back in my chair. Tony slams the deck in front of me. “Cut ‘em. Okay, low spade in the hole splits the pot. Ante up, boys.”
“Pathetic,” I mumble — to steady my breath.
“What’s that?” Tony asks.
Scott watches me closely. “You shouldn’t be here,” he says, “if you’re not going to concentrate, George.” He chomps an Oreo.
“Hey, I’m a survivor” I say. “What about you?” And I cough up the last quarter from my pocket.
Later, at home, I listen to the rustling of apple leaves outside my bedroom window. The day Jean planted the tree, she told me, “When I was little, my mother used to read me all sorts of bedtime stories, but nothing thrilled me more than the tales of Johnny Appleseed. It was the most wonderful thing, imagining him spreading this lovely fruit around the world. I begged her and begged her for an apple tree in our yard. Finally, my father bought one, and for years I watched it grow.”