Fireside

by Susan Wiggs

  She was friends with Max Bellamy, Mrs. Bellamy-Shepherd’s son. Here was something AJ had noticed about being in a town this small. Everybody was connected to everybody else, eventually.

  Not AJ. He didn’t belong here. Didn’t want to belong. What was the point? If he started feeling too much at home here, he might lose sight of the fact that his mother was far away and in danger of never seeing him again. That was the scariest part of all. He was already losing little bits and pieces of her and had to work to bring her back into focus. He shut his eyes, trying to picture her hand, tucking a curl of hair behind her ear and the flash of her eyes as she smiled at him. He listened deep in his mind for her voice, calling his name. The need to be with his mom was like the need to breathe, and his chest felt tight all the time, his stomach in knots.

  He decided to kill time by getting his homework out of the way. He had Spanish, which was a no-brainer for him, and English vocabulary, which, unfortunately, wasn’t. The teacher had this word-of-the-day thing going, and she believed the way to learn a word was to study its roots and put it to use. Today’s word was churlish. The root word was churl. According to the textbook, churlish meant rude and boorish, having a bad disposition; surly. Its root came from an old word for peasant. The rude and boorish type. AJ wasn’t quite sure what boorish meant, so he looked that up, too. “Ill-mannered, coarse and contemptible in behavior or appearance...”

  He drummed his pencil on the edge of the table, trying to decide how to use the word in a sentence. The churlish boy was sick of waiting around for his turn on the computer, he thought. He got up and paced restlessly. Being ignored by the other kids made him feel churlish.

  Lately, AJ was learning a lot of big words, like detention. Deportation. Expulsion.

  “You waiting for this computer?” asked Chelsea Nash, taking off her headset. “You’re circling like a buzzard. I can’t stand that. Pisses me off.”

  She had a way with words, that was for sure. He indicated the sign that noted a thirty-minute time limit on the terminal.

  “Whatever,” she said, gathering up her backpack. “I missed the bus today, so I had to call my grandfather to pick me up. I think he forgot.”

  AJ shrugged. “Call him again.”

  “My grandparents won’t let me have a cell phone,” she said. “They won’t even have internet in the house. Pisses me off.”

  AJ handed over his mobile phone. “You can borrow mine.” Ever since the New York incident, Bo made him carry a cell phone wherever he went.

  “Thanks.” She made the call, and sure enough, her grandfather had forgotten. She exhaled an exasperated breath as she handed back the phone. “Now it’ll take him like an hour to get here, because he drives really slow. Especially when the roads are bad. We had another six inches of snow on Lakeshore Road last night.”

  She sure did talk a lot, AJ observed as he took his seat. She acted as though she’d known him forever.

  “I’m Chelsea, by the way,” the girl said.

  “I know. I mean, I’ve seen you at the animal hospital,” said AJ.

  “Oh. You know Dr. Shepherd?”

  “Mrs. Bellamy-Shepherd is doing some legal work for my dad.” AJ hoped she didn’t get too nosy.

  “Who’s your dad?”

  Great. She was going to be nosy.

  “His name’s Bo Crutcher.” More and more, it was starting to feel normal, calling Bo his dad. Anyway, that was the simplest explanation, so he stuck with it.

  “Oh! I love Bo Crutcher!” Her face lit up and she looked almost pretty, in a chubby way. “I mean, he’s a really good guy. He’s always helping out with fund-raisers and stuff, on account of he’s semifamous.”

  Only in a town like this would a guy like Bo be considered semifamous. Of course, if he really did make it with the Yankees, he’d be legitimately famous. “What do you mean, helping?”

  “Like last year at the Wildlife Shelter Auction, he donated private baseball coaching to the highest bidder, and people went crazy, bidding on it. And when his band won the battle of the bands the other day, it was a benefit for juvenile diabetes. That kind of thing. Everybody thinks your dad is a totally good guy,” Chelsea concluded. “So did you move here to live with him for good?”

  “No,” AJ said swiftly. “Just until...just for a while.”

  “Yeah, trust me, I know what ‘a while’ means. My parents left me with my grandparents for ‘a while’ and it’s been years.”

  Nothing like a word of encouragement from a stranger. A talkative stranger. She told him her grandparents were really strict and old-fashioned. But she didn’t say much about her parents, like why they had left her and where they were.

  She changed the subject back to him, her features sharpening with curiosity. “You’re new, aren’t you? What’s your name?”

  “It’s AJ. AJ Martinez.”

  “What’s the AJ stand for?”

  She had to ask. He didn’t even know this girl. Why should he tell her anything? Because it didn’t matter. He didn’t care what she thought. “I go by AJ for a reason,” he muttered.

  “Is it something really dorky or out-there? Like Ajax, or Apollo Jehosephat, or Able Janitor...”

  He tried not to laugh.

  She slid a notepad across the table toward him. “Here, write your name on this piece of paper. I’ll take one look at it, then destroy the evidence.”

  Geez, this girl was relentless. He wrote his two given names on a piece of paper and slipped it to her. Of course she couldn’t keep her mouth shut, despite her promise.

  “Angel?” she said, her voice a sharp exclamation that made heads turn. Noticing, she switched to a whisper. “Your name is Angel?”

  “It’s pronounced Angel,” he muttered, not that the Spanish g made it any better. “Angel Jacinto. And we had a deal.”

  “Right,” she said. “Ahn-hell. Sorry, AJ.” She ripped the scrap of paper into tiny bits of confetti. “I actually like how it sounds in Spanish. Are you fluent in Spanish?”

  He nodded. AJ had grown up never sensing any boundaries between English and Spanish. Thoughts and words flowed freely across the divide, and until he started school, he hadn’t realized he was speaking two different languages. In school, he’d been taught that English was the way to get ahead, but Spanish always echoed through his mind, somehow more expressive, more meaningful. It was the language of his dreams.

  “That’s lucky,” Chelsea said. “Are you taking Spanish?”

  Another nod. His teacher, Sr. Diaz, was from Puerto Rico. His Spanish sounded different from the language AJ was used to, but it was the one class he knew he’d ace without studying.

  It was funny how Chelsea deemed him lucky. He didn’t feel so lucky. He felt like a fish out of water, even in Spanish class. And she didn’t seem to realize a lot of people in this country, even in Texas, considered his knowledge of Spanish a reason to hate him.

  Chelsea turned out to be as good a listener as she was a talker. Without really planning what he was going to say, or knowing why he needed to talk, AJ told her what had happened to his mother. It was really the first time he’d told anybody, blow-by-blow, about that day.

  He’d gotten up as usual. He could hear Mama in the kitchen, singing “Livin’ la Vida Loca” along with Ricky Martin on the radio, a tune that suited her unselfconscious, happy voice. His mom was young and pretty, and she dressed for work like a kid, in jeans and sneakers. At her job at the rice-packaging factory, she had a locker where she changed into a coverall and hairnet. Since Bruno had left, she worked overtime whenever she could, but the mornings before school always belonged to AJ.

  They’d had breakfast together that day as usual. She quizzed him on his spelling words because there was always a test on Friday. His mom had never finished school. She claimed helping him with homework helped her improve her English. This made homework seem important. He
got all his words right except disinterred. She made him spell it three times and use it in a sentence: The cats disinterred a fish carcass and had a smelly feast.

  It was a completely normal morning, and AJ probably would’ve forgotten all the details, except it turned out to be their last day together. He’d gone to school like normal, moved and jostled through classes, lunch, recess, study hall the way he always did. The nightmare had started last period. Mrs. Alvarez came and got him out of science class. The teacher’s aide explained that there’d been a raid on the packaging factory where his mother worked. She’d been handed over to ICE—Immigration and Customs Enforcement—and detained.

  AJ had never really thought about the word detained. He quickly learned that in his mom’s case it essentially meant she’d been sucked off the face of the earth.

  Mrs. Alvarez hadn’t seemed concerned at first. She’d been sure there would be someone to look after AJ. Nearly everyone had relatives or someone with the church. AJ was the exception. He was the only child of an only child. His grandma lived in the valley, on the Mexican side. Bruno, his former stepdad, had been out of the picture since he’d left them high and dry. Which was how AJ ended up flying through the night to be with Bo Crutcher, the father he’d never met.

  “That’s completely freaky,” Chelsea said. “And totally unfair. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Too bad Chelsea’s opinion didn’t matter.

  Without being invited, she dragged a chair over to the terminal and started searching the internet. She was like a dog with a bone, typing in phrases like immigration law and naturalized citizen and trying to figure out why his mom could be living like a regular person one day, and an outlaw the next. Mainly, like AJ, she wanted to figure out how his mom might be allowed to stay in the U.S.

  “Let’s write a letter to your congressman. Who is it?”

  “No clue.”

  “Well, geez, let’s find out.” Chelsea was pretty good at all this, and within a short time, they had sent a note via the websites of a Texas representative and a senator. For good measure, they sent the same message to the assemblymen from New York, too.

  “Says here a medical situation would warrant special permission,” Chelsea continued, “if it’s a condition only a special doctor in the U.S. can deal with.” They both leaned toward the monitor and stared at before and after pictures of conjoined twins. The family came from a remote atoll in the Pacific, and a famous surgeon at Vanderbilt had separated the babies.

  “Doesn’t look like anything that could help my mom,” AJ said, feeling relieved when Chelsea closed that particular website. Although the story had a happy ending, he was weirded out by the photos.

  “Can she prove she’s in danger in her country?” Chelsea asked. “What about seeking temporary asylum?”

  Asylum. It had been on last week’s vocabulary list. A place where crazy people are kept. The lunatics are in charge of the asylum.

  “That won’t work,” he said.

  “Then how about this? Bingo.” She printed out a page and handed it over. “Give that to Bo.”

  AJ scanned the page. “Oh, sure. So he’s going to marry her just so she can be in the U.S.”

  “It could work.”

  “Or not.”

  “Have you talked about it with Bo?”

  AJ had a hard time talking to Bo about anything. Every once in a while, they connected. Like when they built the snowman together. And then there was that moment, when Bo had come to the city to get him, when AJ had felt a deep connection, safe in his arms. It had felt so good and so safe, that long hug. During moments like that, AJ could feel himself starting to like Bo. Really like him. But enough to talk about stuff like this?

  He forced himself to step back, and to remember that he didn’t want to get attached to Bo. It was crazy to get attached to somebody you were trying to get away from, someone you never planned on seeing again.

  On the other hand, what if crazy Chelsea was right? What if this could actually happen? AJ would have a real, actual family. Two parents and him. The thought made his stomach hurt, he wanted it so bad.

  “He’d think I lost my marbles.”

  “Why?” Chelsea demanded. “You said your mom’s single, right? Bo is single. They could—”

  “That’s dumb. Just because they’re single doesn’t mean they should be together. They haven’t seen each other in thirteen years.” He ducked his head so she wouldn’t see his face, because without even trying, she had found AJ’s most secret dream—having a mom and dad.

  “Well, I bet they were totally in love when they um, you know,” Chelsea said. “Maybe they’ll fall in love again.”

  “You’re completely nuts.”

  “Have you figured out a better idea? Has your lawyer?”

  She was nuts, but she had a point.

  “I bet it’s more complicated than that,” he said. “They don’t just let people get married so one of them can stay in this country.”

  “I’ve heard of worse reasons for getting married,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “We’re not in Kansas anymore,” Bo said, looking around the suite at the Pierre Hotel. He and AJ were on the 34th floor, with a view of Central Park. They had ridden up on an elevator operated by an actual elevator man. The old-fashioned rooms overflowed with luxury—fancy furniture, amenities they didn’t know they needed, like little linen mats beside the beds, so their bare feet didn’t have to touch the carpet. There was a room service menu filled with stuff he couldn’t pronounce, but no minibar, because this hotel was too classy for a minibar. The bellman who had delivered the bags said if they wanted ice or a little jar of peanuts, they just had to pick up the phone and someone would bring whatever they wanted.

  This was all Kim’s doing. The reception at the hotel tonight, staged for media and sponsors, was going to be key to moving up the career ladder. Amid the hot, young rookies and early-round draft picks, Bo was an unlikely candidate, but Kim had made sure he was front and center. You become a star by acting like a star, she’d said.

  She had also said she loved him. She loved him. He’d never realized how bad he wanted to hear that phrase until it came from Kimberly van Dorn’s mouth. The moment she said the words, he felt as though he could suddenly fly.

  Yet AJ kept him grounded. Bo had insisted on bringing him along, hoping it might distract the boy from worrying about his mother. But it hadn’t, really. Bo could see it in his face—the tension and despair, even though Bo had vowed he wouldn’t rest until he brought her back.

  “Get it?” he said. “Not in Kansas anymore—that’s from The Wizard of Oz.”

  “Ha-ha.” AJ stood at the tall, heavily draped window, gazing down at the stark, bare trees of Central Park. “I’ve seen it.”

  There was a knock at the door. A housekeeper came to deliver extra towels. “Here you are, sir,” she murmured, a Spanish accent thick in her voice.

  Just for a moment, AJ locked eyes with the woman. She was small, and wore her hair pulled back. Her uniform was embroidered with the name Juanita. In that brief instant of connection, Bo could sense a recognition between them, two strangers bound by the deep ties of language. The woman offered a quick smile but ducked her head in deference. As she left the room, Bo gave her a twenty-dollar bill.

  “Thank you, sir,” she murmured, quietly shutting the door behind her.

  Bo could see everything in AJ’s face—yearning, frustration, fury. The housekeeper was simply a reminder. It must be hard for AJ to see Bo getting everything he wanted while Yolanda was suffering in some detention center across the border.

  “I know you’re worried about your mom, but she’s going to be all right,” Bo said. “Mexico’s a free country.”

  “She’s not free to come and see her own son.”

  “We’re working on that, AJ. Your mother’s c
hanged status is a setback. You’ve got to believe it’s one we can deal with.”

  AJ swung around to face him. His eyes were puffy from tears he refused to shed. His small frame was backlit by the pale light through the window. The kid hadn’t been eating well, and now Bo saw his thinness starkly outlined. For the first time, Bo realized with a lurch of panic that AJ’s physical health was threatened. And there was no cure for a broken heart.

  The boy took refuge in anger. “How do I even know you’ve been trying to help her?”

  “I’ve been trying to help your mother since day one, and you know it. I just hired a private investigator, because Sophie wants to get more information about your mom’s family background.”

  AJ narrowed his eyes. “Anything to get rid of me, right?”

  “Don’t be a little shit,” Bo snapped, panic giving way to anger. “Your mom’s back in Mexico and I know that sucks for you, but copping an attitude won’t help a thing. Believe me, nothing will stop me from trying to bring your mom back.”

  “You can’t wait for me to leave,” AJ persisted.

  “If that was so, I wouldn’t have invited you to the city for the weekend. I would’ve left you behind in Avalon.”

  “Why should I believe anything you say?”

  “Because I love you, dammit.”

  AJ looked as if Bo had hit him. “You love me.”

  “Hell, yes, I love you. You’re my boy. My flesh and blood. And you’re an awesome kid, and after you’re back with your mom, I still want to see you, no matter what she says.”

  “So when did you decide this? All of a sudden you want to love me.”

  “It wasn’t all of a sudden. Ever since you were born I’ve wanted to love you, but your mom was in charge. Even though she had her reasons, it didn’t stop me from wishing we could be like father and son, at least some of the time. It’s a terrible thing, the way we were brought together, but I’m glad I’m getting to spend time with you. Anyway, yeah. I always wanted to love you. I’m trying to do it right.” He didn’t know how else to explain it. Getting to know AJ was like falling in love—not in a romantic way, of course. But it was a kind of anticipation, something he felt in his heart. He couldn’t wait to get up in the morning—couldn’t wait to see what the day would bring. Couldn’t wait to see his son’s face.