He pushed her hair back from her face and kissed her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks, and her chin. His hands searched her body, tentatively, over the heavy black satin. When he discovered the cell phone tucked inside her bra, they both laughed, breaking the intensity for a moment.
Evan tossed the phone to the floor and her bare feet entwined with his. Alma realized that the sting had left them, and with it had gone all her childish preoccupations and worries.
Maybe she was ready, after all.
FOURTEEN
The Clock Is Wrong
The high-pitched noise reverberated through Alma’s head, careening through the space between her ears, persistent and pestering. She opened her eyes to the darkness. Her tongue felt swollen and distorted, pressing its pasty thickness against the roof of her mouth. Her stomach gurgled and lurched. She needed water.
She sat slowly, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, her mind struggling in the silence to shake off confusion. The shrill noise resumed. Alma closed her eyes, registering a faint recognition. This terrible sound was the unrelenting ring of her phone.
As she leapt from the bed and reached toward the vibrating object, Alma’s mind came into focus. She recalled where she was. She remembered Evan’s hands searching her body, their bold laughter as he had grasped the phone from her bra and tossed it aside. The queasiness swept through her again, settling in the pit of her stomach.
She remembered nothing more.
Alma looked at the screen.
Saturday, March 15. 6:02 a.m. HOME.
* * *
The sound of footfalls above him coaxed Evan from a dreamy half sleep. He opened his eyes and tossed onto his side, gazing toward the lake. Morning light drew a line across the horizon.
The grandfather clock churned loudly and then chimed twice. Looking at the gray horizon, Evan’s mind faintly registered that the clock was wrong.
Footsteps continued above him, faster. Someone was opening and closing doors, one after the other, in the upstairs hallway. Glancing across the pool, past the crumpled cover toward the guest house, where several lights were still on, he realized that Alma was the only other person in the house.
Evan set out toward the back stairwell.
He saw her standing in the doorway of his parents’ room, wearing his baggy white undershirt. Evan’s heart filled with warmth and his body with subtle desire. At least this morning the desire was mild—not the overpowering, consuming feeling that he had struggled so hard to control the night before. He knew she must be looking for him, but why the urgency? Was she embarrassed, ashamed?
Her slim silhouette, outlined by the frame of the door and the light from his parents’ room, suddenly folded in on itself. Evan rushed toward her crumpled body. As he stretched his arms to hold her, she stayed perfectly still and let out a deep, quiet sob.
“I need you to take me home. I need some clothes.”
“OK, Alma,” Evan replied gently, “I can take you home, but please tell me what’s wrong.”
Alma leaned against the door frame.
“My dad and my brother. They’re in trouble.” She let her head fall to her knees. “I should have been there. I should have been with them.” Alma released another dry sob. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“What kind of trouble?” he asked. “Where are they?”
“Jail.”
Jail? Evan couldn’t imagine Mr. García and Raúl doing anything that would send them to jail. And what in the world had landed them both there on the same night? DUI? He knew that Raúl drank a few beers occasionally but never excessively, and he had never seen Alma’s dad drinking. Maybe a fight at the party they went to? Manny and his loser friends causing trouble again?
Alma’s phone, clutched tightly in her hand, began to ring. She walked away from him, but he could hear her speaking quietly in Spanish. Evan waited, hesitant, at the doorway. Should he follow her?
He went into his mother’s closet to find some clothes for her. Her own clothes were next door at Mary Catherine’s, where she had planned to spend the night.
* * *
Alma grabbed a towel from the neatly folded stack beside the sink and brought it to her eyes. The crisp scent of fabric softener filled her nostrils, temporarily assuaging the nausea. She carried the towel with her to the bench where Evan had laid his mother’s clothes. She sat down unsteadily and pulled his white undershirt over her head, recognizing his spicy odor. Taking in his scent induced another intense wave of nausea. She slumped to the floor and lifted the white towel to her face.
She wanted to make sense of the void left where her memory should have been. Did she drink enough beer to feel so cloudy? She tried to count back: one, maybe two beers, and then the horrible sweet-salty Jell-O shot. It didn’t make sense. Alma tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter. She had more important issues to deal with.
She struggled into a padded sports bra, slipped on a pair of stretchy yoga pants, and shrugged on the chocolate-brown T-shirt. The snug, fitted T-shirt was the type she often saw on rich women who were running errands in their workout clothes. This one had “tough cookie” written in cursive, under a drawing of a broken chocolate-chip cookie.
Something about being in this over-the-top bathroom and wearing the silly T-shirt brought another sob tearing through her chest.
She wanted out of here.
“Alma, can I come in?” Evan asked, tapping gently on the door.
“I’m ready,” she said. She wiped the tears from her eyes and stepped out to face Evan.
* * *
Evan drove in silence as Alma tuned the radio to a Spanish pop station that he knew she didn’t like. When the music stopped, she turned up the volume and listened intently to the booming voice of the male announcer. Then the radio cut to a commercial.
“He said it was road blocks. My dad and Raúl probably got stopped at the one on Athens Highway.”
“Who?”
“The radio announcer.”
“How would the radio announcer on VIVA 101.5 know about roadblocks in Gilberton?”
“I don’t know. I guess people call in. There’s never been one here, but down in Shale County…”
Alma’s voice trailed off. She looked down at her hands and studied the lines on her left palm. He wanted to take her hand, but something prevented him. She was building a wall around herself, a fortress.
“Was it for DUI’s? Were they doing Breathalyzers?”
“I don’t know. My dad wouldn’t get a DUI.”
Evan started to ask about Raúl, but then the announcer’s voice came back. She brought her finger to her lips and leaned in toward the radio, concentrating hard.
“More than two hundred people taken in since midnight.”
Alma’s phone rang. She picked up and listened silently. She said a few words and hung up.
Evan glanced over to see her squeeze her eyelids shut. She kept them closed for a few moments and then turned directly to Evan.
“We can’t find my dad’s brother or his wife. My grandmother and Isa even tried tracking Manny down to see if he’d go, but he’s in South Carolina, working or something.”
She looked down at her hands, and Evan focused his attention forward as the car sped across a bridge and the lake opened out below them.
“We need your help, Evan. We need you to go to the county jail to post bail.”
“Yeah, definitely,” Evan replied without hesitation. “I can do that.”
He had no idea how to post bail.
“I’m sorry, Evan. I didn’t want to drag you into this, but we don’t have anyone else who’s, you know, legal.”
Alma started to cry quietly.
Evan frantically sought the right thing to say.
“It’s OK, Alma. I’ll figure it out. Maybe your dad just left his wallet at the party, or maybe his insurance expired or something. I’m sure it’s no big deal.”
Alma looked up at Evan, not even trying to hide the tears streaming down her face.
/> “Raúl doesn’t even have a license, Evan.”
She went silent.
“Yeah,” Evan said. It would cost a lot of money to get Raúl out of jail if he was the one driving. Peavey got caught driving without a license when they were fifteen and his parents had to pay a thousand dollars.
“But my dad … it doesn’t make sense. I wish I had been at home when they called. My grandmother was so confused…”
Her face fell into her hands.
“I’m sorry, Alma,” Evan said.
“I should have been with them.”
The sun rose, revealing one of those too-bright March mornings with crystal-blue sky and crisp, cold air.
She had him drop her off in a neighborhood near the jail, in the circular drive of Maplewood Elementary School. Evan had never seen the small school tucked into this modest neighborhood. He’d never had a reason to be here.
They got out, stepping under a bright yellow banner that read, “Welcome/Bienvenidos.” He took off his parka and wrapped it around her. She held up her phone.
“Text me as soon as you know something.”
He nodded. He wanted to hold her, to stand with her and comfort her. But she seemed so distant. He knew, as she’d made it clear all morning, that she didn’t want to be touched. He was worried that something had changed for her last night, that they had crossed some threshold. He wondered whether they would ever get back to their easy intimacy.
He wanted to be back there.
* * *
Alma stepped under the banner, frozen in the entryway she had passed through hundreds of times as a child. She saw herself and her brother, Maritza, and Magda, hunched from the weight of their backpacks, walking to school from the apartment complex across the street where they’d grown up. She heard their laughter and teasing, the plans they made for after school, with hours of free time stretched out before them. She saw Maritza and Magda tumbling down the hill, sweaty and giggling, with bits of green grass sticking to their bare arms and legs. She felt the loud thump of Raúl kicking a soccer ball, over and over, against the building’s brick siding.
She walked slowly along the road that led from their apartments to the Boys and Girls Club. She imagined that it was summer—that she was no longer shuffling under the weight of Evan’s oversized parka. Instead she was running, fast and light, in her favorite turquoise bathing suit with the lime-green piping, racing Maritza to the pool behind the Boys and Girls Club.
As the building came into view, she saw the familiar words painted on its side: “The ideal place for kids to grow up/El lugar ideal para los niños crecer.”
Back then, it had felt ideal. It had felt just right. Maplewood Elementary, Terrace Trace Apartments, the Boys and Girls Club—they all welcomed Alma and her family. In their bilingual signs and their encouraging mottos, in their friendly staff and their pleasant grounds, they took in Alma—and so many others. No one questioned whether they were supposed to be here, whether they were allowed to stay.
It was simply their home, their place.
And then she remembered middle school, and how everything had changed. She remembered going with her father to visit Mrs. King after the incident with Mario, when her dad finally broke down and let her move to Atlanta. She recalled Mrs. King’s house, a yellow bungalow down the road from the Boys and Girls Club. Alma wondered whether Mrs. King still lived there, and whether Mrs. King would let her in if she showed up at the door again. Alma tried not to think about the scholarship applications she hadn’t finished or the college brochures she’d set aside. She tried not to think about the unanswered calls from Mrs. King. The lies to her father. The party …
It was too much.
* * *
Evan slowly turned off Brady Road, following a line of cars into the parking lot. The lot was surrounded by a wasteland—fenced-in plots of unnaturally gray soil with abandoned cars and trucks strewn across. Amid such harsh terrain, the county jail seemed out of place. It was a new building made of red brick with tinted-glass windows gleaming below a large bronze sign that read “Office of the Sheriff, Gilbert County Jail.”
The lot was full. He had to circle twice before finding a spot. He waited, idling behind a cab with “Taxi El Palmar” written across the sides. An elderly woman emerged and shuffled toward the door. He parked near a line of deputies’ cars, aware that he was being watched. He glanced toward the brick building, looking for the visitor entrance. It wasn’t hard to find. Dozens of people gathered around the glass door, pressing in to read notices taped to the inside.
Alma had been right. This was not good. His eyes closed briefly against the bright morning light. He let out a deep sigh and headed toward the throngs of people.
There was a subtle shifting of bodies, and anxious conversations fell silent around him. He felt the gaze of curious eyes as the crowds parted to let him through. Posted on the door was an alphabetical list titled “Current Detention Center Population,” with hundreds of names, almost all of them Spanish. When he arrived at G, his eyes fell upon the names he didn’t want to see:
García, Eduardo
García, Raúl David
A young officer opened the door from the inside.
“We need an orderly, single-file line, folks. Sign in on the clipboard and take a seat.”
Evan went in and waited for the clipboard. By the time his turn came to scratch his name onto the list, the pencil had been worn down to a nub. He considered asking the young officer to sharpen it, but he sensed the urgency of the people pressing behind him. He turned to hand the pencil to a small woman wearing a housedress embroidered with bright flowers.
Then a door slammed behind him and an arm caught his shoulder. Evan turned, startled by the grasp. Sheriff Cronin stood looking at him with a broad, silly grin spread across his face.
“Evan, my boy, what the hell are you doing here?”
Evan, confused by the sheriff’s jovial tone, was unable to produce an answer.
“Aw, hell, son,” he exclaimed with a long Southern drawl. “Don’t you go tellin’ me that the after-party over at your place got out of control.”
Evan shook his head slowly. He couldn’t produce a word.
“I know, son. I was young, too,” he said, jostling Evan’s shoulder lightly. “I guess it’s time for you to call in a favor to your old Uncle Buddy, huh?”
His eyes swept across the crowd gathered in the waiting room.
“You picked a hell of a day to do it.” He scratched the back of his head. “So which one of your partners in crime landed himself in the slammer?”
Sheriff Cronin ushered Evan through a door, and they sat down on molded plastic chairs.
“What’s the matter, boy? Cat got your tongue?”
Evan looked down at his feet and grasped the edge of the chair.
“Don’t worry, son. Old Uncle Buddy has seen just about everything. Hell, remember those stories your momma used to tell?”
Hope flickered in his mind. Uncle Buddy could help, couldn’t he? He was, after all, the sheriff. “Uh, nothing happened last night at the party, Uncle Buddy.”
“Go on and spit it out, boy,” the sheriff said.
“It’s my friend Raúl. He and his dad are here. I need to figure out what happened and try to post bail.”
“Well, where the hell is the rest of his family, Evan? You don’t need to get caught up in this.”
“Like I said, his dad’s in here, too. He doesn’t have a mom. I mean, she died a long time ago, and his sister, Alma, uh … You know, my girlfriend? She asked me to come.”
Sheriff Cronin leaned back in his chair and shook his head slowly.
“It was a mistake, Uncle Buddy. They’re good people.”
“Your girlfriend’s daddy, huh?” He spoke slowly, processing the information coming through Evan’s anxious words. “You’re talking about your momma’s gardener, right?”
“Uh, yeah,” Evan replied, “Mr. García has a landscaping business. He does our yard.”
/>
“Damned shame,” Sheriff Cronin replied, shaking his head again. His jovial Uncle Buddy tone was gone. He had shifted into his Sheriff Cronin voice.
“What the hell was your momma thinkin’ hiring an illegal to do her yard?”
Evan shrugged.
“Doesn’t she know what a mess this will be for Sexton?”
Suddenly, the word “illegal” surged into Evan’s awareness, bringing on a bout of vertigo. How did he know? He leaned back into his seat and held on.
Sheriff Cronin stood up.
“Well, son, I can take you back there to see them, but don’t waste your time postin’ bail. We’ll have to keep ’em here till Immigration comes.”
Evan’s throat produced a sound he didn’t recognize. “But what did they do? What happened?”
The sheriff held the door open and urged Evan out of the interrogation room.
“I haven’t got a clue, son. All I know is they’re here because they don’t have the paperwork to prove that they’re in the country legally. It’s my responsibility to make sure they get on back to where they belong.”
Evan felt his muscles begin to twitch as the heat rose to his face.
“Since when is it your responsibility?” Evan’s anger surprised him. “You’re the local sheriff. You can’t just go and deport people for no reason.”
A smirk spread across Sheriff Cronin’s face.
“You’ve been brushing up on immigration law, have you?”
“I don’t know much,” Evan replied, struggling not to raise his voice, “but I know that immigration is a federal issue, and you’re a county sheriff.”
“So you think I’m gettin’ too big for my britches, huh?” Sheriff Cronin asked, chuckling softly. “Look, son. I need you to keep this quiet for now because we don’t want to stir up commotion. But our county and a few others in Georgia are gonna start helping ICE deal with this illegal-immigration problem. You know what ICE is?”
“Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” Evan said slowly.
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