“You have a heck of a kick.”
His grin started at the corner of his mouth and then spread. “Alex said I might get to play goalie or center forward. He wants me to try both.”
Isa curled the corner of her mouth. At least Alex wanted to play with one of them.
“He said he wanted me to show up early for practice so we could see.” Andrew munched happily on his fries, having cleared his conscience with his mother. “Do you think Tía Susan can take me on the days you have to stay late?”
“Maybe. What about asking your dad?”
“Alex might be able to pick me up.”
She looked down and realized she’d eaten nearly all of her fries. She could almost hear the fat stampede to the backs of her thighs. No amount of butt clenches she would do while grading papers could stop the infestation of cellulite.
“We’ll see,” she grumbled.
“Okay.” His socked feet bounced off the legs of the chair. “Are you going to tell Dad about my games?”
“I think you should.”
Andrew shrugged, keeping his eyes glued to his plate.
Her maternal antenna picked up on something.
“Is there something you want to talk about?”
“No.” He stabbed a fry into his ketchup.
She pushed her plate away. “Is the weekend bothering you?” Andrew’s last visit with his father hadn’t gone well.
“I wish you had stayed together. I want to be in one place.”
As a kid, she thought her father had the handle on guilt, but in truth, no one could send you on a guilt trip like your own kid. “I wish you could, too. Do you know what you guys are doing this weekend?”
“Nothing. I’ll probably stay at Grandma and Grandpa’s like I always do.”
“Well, maybe your dad will get his own place soon.” As soon as Isa made the dig, she regretted it. She didn’t want to be one of those mothers.
“I’d rather stay here this weekend so I can go to Josh’s house.”
“Maybe your dad will take you.”
“I asked and he said I had to stay with the family cuz it’s the only time he gets.”
Even though it was the last thing she wanted, she asked anyway. “Do you want me to talk to your dad?”
“No.”
“Maybe I can see if he wants more time with you.”
Andrew gripped his fork in one hand but shrugged his shoulders. “It would’ve helped if you stayed together.”
“Andrew—” She caught herself before she said something he didn’t deserve to hear. Anger flared hot and fresh inside her, darkening her cheeks and tightening her grip on her fork.
She was trying; boy, was she trying to forgive Carlos for not being man enough to keep his family together. He never even made an effort. He just did whatever he wanted without caring that it cost them their savings and their home. Isa’s blood still simmered when she remembered the afternoon she came home and found him and a nineteen-year-old in their bed when he was supposed to have been at work.
And how many times had Isa slept in those sheets before she caught them?
Don’t. Don’t go there. She loosened her hold on the fork and forced herself to breathe.
“I want to stay with you.” With sorrow in his eyes, Andrew blinked and then looked down at his plate.
She grinned, barely keeping from bursting into a million pieces. “Me too.”
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” Susan cried, sailing through Josie’s new French doors into the new sunroom. Why Josie’s husband and not Susan’s husband built one for his wife irritated her, especially since her friend—God bless her soul—decorated with fake flowers.
Bending down to give her comadres, Josie and then Patty, pecks on the cheek, she took her chair facing the roses that Josie’s husband planted around a stone birdbath he installed for Josie’s fiftieth birthday.
“I have something very important to tell you,” Susan started.
“I was just telling Patty that Mireya was arrested for check fraud,” Josie bragged excitedly. “She made copies of her own checks and then cashed them at one of those check and go places.”
“And I was telling Josie that Yolanda cancelled her weekly mani-pedi just the other day,” Patty added, not to be outdone. “Yolanda hasn’t been seen ever since.”
This was good dirt, Susan realized. But hers was more important. “I need to get Isa and Alex Lujon together.”
Patty winced like she bit into a lemon. “That old viejito?”
“No not that one!” Even though she didn’t need it, she slid a cookie off the plate. “His son, Alex Lujon.”
“Ohhh,” they both chimed knowingly.
“Pero what about Tamara and Will?” Josie asked.
“They’re getting married,” Susan said confidently, sneaking another cookie off the plate. “I know it’s happening this year. I can feel it.”
Josie and Patty exchanged dubious glances that Susan chose to ignore. “Has Tamara said anything?” Josie ventured diplomatically.
“Not yet. But they’ve been together long enough.”
“Young people don’t do it like we did, Susan,” Patty said through the cookie in her mouth. “They could be like that…that Susan Sarandon or Oprah.”
Susan slowly lowered the rest of the cookie from her mouth. Her daughter wouldn’t dare do that to her. And Will, she had made sure he understood that the only reason why she allowed Tamara to move in with him was on the condition of marriage. Now Tamara had her degree and they had a home. Any day now, she reminded herself as the menopausal heat flushed her cheeks.
But she was here to talk about Isa and Alex. “We’ll worry about Tamara later.”
“Pish. Don’t get your hopes up,” Patty muttered while Susan dotted the crumbs off her lips with a napkin.
“They have the spark,” Susan insisted. “I saw it with my own two eyes.”
Josie started, “Susan, we shouldn’t—”
“Spark? What spark?” Patty demanded. “There’s no such thing as no spark.”
“They’re attracted to each other and they’re perfect.” She didn’t refer to Alex’s less than enthusiastic response to her suggestion that he ask her out. “Alex will make the perfect Daddy for Andrew and he’ll take care of Isa.”
“But he ain’t going to want another man’s child,” Patty blurted and then wilted under the scathing looks from both Josie and Susan. “Es cierto.” She crunched on another cookie.
“Maybe you should let nature take its course,” Josie suggested. “Remember what happened when you made Ruben propose to Tamara at Mireya’s party?”
“I didn’t tell him to propose,” Susan argued. “I just suggested that because he and Tamara were arguing that he might want to think—”
Patty swatted Josie in the shoulder. “Please. This is us you’re talking to. Remember when you nosed into Memo’s business with that girl he brought home? That pobrecita’s never been seen since.”
“You know I forgot all about that,” Josie mused. “Susan, let the kids figure it out on their own. They get so embarrassed when you—”
“But wait,” Patty cried, reaching around for her ten-pound purse. She muttered as she shoved around the accumulated flotsam until she pulled out a bite-sized camera. “We could try this.”
“Try what?” Susan asked skeptically.
“It’s the Magic Eye camera.” Patty widened her eyes and held her hands up. “It takes pictures of your aura.”
“Oh, Patty,” Josie sighed.
“We could take their photos and see if their auras match up,” Patty continued, ignoring Josie who attacked a cookie in exasperation. “If they match, we’ll set them up.”
“Let me see that,” Susan insisted, holding out her hand. “What does it do?”
“It takes a photo of the person and their aura energy around them.” Patty wound her hand in the air. “It’s like reading their mind.”
Susan turned it over. It was made in China but she like
d the part about reading someone’s mind.
5
HEADLINE FROM THE SWEETWATER STAR NEWS:
CHEERLEADERS SUE DISTRICT
FOR WRONGFUL SUSPENSION
PARENTS ALLEGE A PRANK TAKEN OUT OF HAND.
SCHOOL OFFICIALS WILL NOT COMMENT ON SUIT.
“Are you done yet? My arm’s tired.”
Isa tore her eyes from the headline to Andrew who held up the soggy edition of the Star News. She ripped it out of his hands and read the story. The edges of the paper gave under the pressure of her fists as she took in quotes about how suspensions on the students’ records could compromise future college careers. Alivid flush burned her skin when she got to the thinly veiled attacks on the eleventh-grade ESL teacher the girls claimed had been persecuting them since last year.
“Shit!”
“You said a—”
She handed him the keys. “Get in the car. And I know what I said but do not repeat it.”
The reporter mentioned nothing about Myrtle, who broke down in the library when students started laughing behind her back or the snickering that followed Isa every time she walked through the halls. Now her humiliation was complete.
“Am I going to school today?” Andrew asked.
“Yes.”
She threw the paper back where it belonged, down in the gutter filled with a shallow puddle of sprinkler water.
“What was it about?”
“Three bi—” she cleared her throat. “Girls who go to my school.”
“Oh. You’re not mad at me, are you?”
“Of course not.” Do not take this out on him, she warned herself as she got into the car. With a deep breath she started it and sat there, dreading to go to work while the engine warmed to life.
“Who’s taking me to practice after school?” Andrew asked.
“We’ve already been through this, Andrew. Your Tía Susan will pick you up.”
“Are you sure you can’t come?”
Isa sucked in breath to keep from exploding at her son who had done nothing to deserve it. “I’m sorry, but I have open house tonight. It’s the only practice I’ll ever miss.”
“I hope Dad will be there this time.”
Tears bit the back of her throat but she managed to put the car in gear. “I’m sure he’ll try.”
“I doubt it,” he muttered as they pulled away from the curb.
Thank God Andrew said nothing more about this afternoon’s practice or else she might not have made the drive without losing hold of her tears. When he hugged her goodbye, she almost didn’t let him go.
The second she stepped on school grounds she was having a few words with Dr. Quilley. She would be professional and matter of fact, but something had to be done about this. She worked too damn hard for her reputation to be destroyed again. She wouldn’t be the subject of anyone’s pity, derision, or contempt.
When Isa arrived at her class, she’d worked herself into a quivering froth. Breathing fire from her nostrils, she nearly marched past Mr. Weisshaar and some of her first-period students outside her classroom. But when he ran over, his eyes filled with tears, she immediately knew something was wrong.
“I swear I didn’t bring it to school,” Mr. Weisshaar sobbed. “I’d never in my life…I don’t want to lose my job. I swear, I’d never even seen one—”
“What?” she demanded in front of several curious students.
“Th-th-this—the—”
A chorus of excited students rose up all around her while Mr. Weisshaar babbled about the cops and parents.
She took his arm, steering him to his class across from her mobile unit. “Show me.”
And when she stepped into his class, Isa didn’t see what was wrong. “I don’t know why this is happening,” Bildo said. Mr. Weisshaar, she reminded herself. “All I want to do is teach. It’s all I ever wanted to do and look how they—”
Isa couldn’t handle the man falling apart on her. Not with heckling high schoolers smelling blood and fear through the thin wall of the mobile class unit. She turned to buck him up and then her eyes snagged on the blonde blow-up doll seated behind Mr. Weisshaar’s desk.
“What the fuck?” she exploded.
“Ms. Avellan,” he exclaimed like the old maid he was.
“I don’t know, darling,” that familiar voice sighed beside her. Isa turned and Joan Collins was looking at her nails. Joan realized she had an audience and smiled like a cat. “He looks like the kind that would use one of those.”
Joan inclined her head in the direction of the doll. Isa opened her mouth to defend Bildo, but her teeth clinked when she snapped it shut. Seeing Joan Collins was one thing, talking to her would be taking it to a whole new level. It was certain: Her day had officially hit the fan and splattered the walls.
“Now before you do anything—” June said when she saw Isa’s face as she burst into the main office.
Isa barely ground out, “Is he in?”
“Honey, I’m not lettin’ you in because you look like you’re about to shit your eyeballs.”
Just then Principal Quilley happened to step out of the break room with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. One look at Isa and he set it down with a decisive snap. “Now Ms. Avellan, I know what you’re going to say and we’re deal—”
“How? How the hell are you going to deal with this now?”
“Well I…I won’t take that tone from you. Just take your students back to your class—”
Isa’s voice hurt her own ears. “No! Bil—Mr. Weisshaar has gone home so he can call the union. You know why?”
June and Principal Quilley—as well as the entire office staff pretending not to listen—shook their heads.
Isa wrestled the blow-up doll onto the counter, the plastic groaning like a balloon.
“Get that thing away from me,” June yelled, jumping out of her chair, which rolled into the desk behind her.
“Touch it dude,” one of Bildo’s students said, his voice filled with awe.
Isa slapped his hand away. “What,” she challenged, “do you plan to do about that?”
Everyone’s mouth dropped open, much like the doll that stared up at the ceiling.
“Well?” Isa demanded and instantly felt regret for spraying the room with her anger, especially on the man who had showed her only kindness and encouragement. “When are you going to pull your head out of the sand and realize this is a war?”
Principal Quilley’s eyes flashed with hurt, but then he resumed his mantle of authority. “Ms. Avellan, I suggest you return to your classroom immediately.”
“Not until someone—”
“Go to your classroom, Isa,” he shouted. That knocked her speechless. Not only did he never raise his voice, he never addressed anyone by their first name. “Let the superintendent and me handle this.”
Isa took a step forward to apologize when his door slammed behind him.
“Whoa, honey,” June said, thoroughly impressed. “Do you need me to walk you back to your class?”
Her anger had been stripped bare and Isa stood there, aware that everyone in the room looked at her as someone who’d completely unraveled before them.
She left the blow-up doll on the counter and shoved the door open, the curious crowd pulled back in case she spit fire. The students looked at June for guidance.
“Get on out! Go to class before you get tardies.” That’s all they needed to spill out the door.
With a sigh and a gentle pat to her hair, June looked at a tardy student. “What are you waiting for?”
“I didn’t get to touch it.”
June plucked a Kleenex out of the box and pulled the doll off the counter. “What’s your name?”
“Ramiro.”
“Ramiro, if you don’t get yourself out of my office, I’m calling your mother and that’s after I have you speak with the assistant principal about who put this here item in Mr. Weisshaar’s class. Understand?”
She smiled with some satisfaction when h
e turned heel and booked out of there.
6
Alex tapped his chin with his cell phone’s antenna, debating if he should call Isa just to find out if her head was all right. But he felt bad saying to June that he wasn’t interested and part of him was too chicken to call Isa.
But then his worries drifted away when Erin from HR smiled at him as she sailed by.
His eyes wandered down from her model-perfect smile to the blonde curls that pointed down to her impressive chest, which filled the wings of the glittery butterfly on the front of her blouse.
And then the most unlikely thought popped in his head. Isa didn’t need all the makeup Erin wore to look pretty.
Before he could wonder where that came from, his boss, Peter, appeared in the hallway, nervously tugging at his right sleeve. “Hey, Alex…uhh…Come in and have a seat.”
“Thanks,” Alex said, abruptly springing to his feet and then plopping into a black leather chair in Peter’s office. “I guess you want a progress report on the Anderson jo—”
“Actually no. I already got your email and so we’re up to speed on it.”
Alex sucked in courage, seeing the direct route to ask for his raise. But he wasn’t getting a good vibe from Peter. Then again, as operations manager, Peter was always strung tight and Alex knew how to play him. He was walking out of here with the money he’d earned as their top foreman.
Before Alex could launch into his speech, Peter looked straight up at him. “We lost the bid in Vegas.”
Alex felt the loss in the pit of his stomach. Construction in L.A. and Orange County slowed to the point where the firm was wrapping up the jobs they had with no other new bids going out.
Slumping in his seat, the last thing Alex wanted to plan was which of his guys to lay off. There was Jim, whose wife was having their first and unplanned baby. Then Mike, who had just closed escrow on a duplex he bought with his brother.
So if it was his raise and their jobs, well, he’d take one for the guys.
“It’ll only be temporary,” Peter said. “Maybe just a month or so until we get things back on track.”
In Between Men Page 3