“Still alive and well,” he said. “And eager to sneak outside.”
They filed in after him and stood in the warm living room. Logs burned in a small stone fireplace. A tidy little house. The minimum furniture necessary. The kitchen had pine cabinets aged to a deep honey color and the counter was dark orange Formica. But the wood floors looked refinished. A beat-up acoustic guitar leaned against the wall in the corner.
Edith, still in Ryan’s arms, let out a scraped yowl. Ryan released her and she took a few stiff steps. Andrea knelt to pet her. Edith took one look at her and then, with miraculous speed, bolted under the couch.
“Oh, come on,” Andrea said. “Is she mad at me? The nerve. Edith! I didn’t abandon you.”
“How do you know her?” Lucia managed to say.
Her mother looked up at Ryan for a moment. “She was a stray who moved into my house.”
“She ended up coming with me when I left Portland,” Ryan said carefully.
Lucia knelt beside Andrea and peered under the couch. Edith was a hunched mound, her back turned to them. “Why would she be mad at you?” she asked her mother.
“Because I didn’t say good-bye.” Andrea gazed at her knees. Then she stood with a brusque laugh. “No, I doubt she even remembers me anyway.”
“Well, she doesn’t run from strangers,” Ryan said.
“Okay, so it’s personal,” Andrea said.
“Cats.” Beatriz smiled tensely. “They’re deep.”
Ryan said, “Who’s hungry?”
While she poured four glasses of water from the tap, Andrea tried to swiftly process the literal reappearance of Ryan Coates in her life. He was nervous tonight, she could tell, but at the core he seemed steadier, more grounded, than when she’d seen him last. His dimple still showed through the gold and silver scruff of his short beard. His hairline had barely receded. His neck was lean. She saw Lucia-like elements where she’d expected them, like in the color and shape of his eyes, and where she didn’t, like the look he sometimes got before he answered a question, as if he were peering through an invisible window. She eyed him with a reverse heredity—to her he looked like Lucia, not the other way around. Did Lucia see it too? She wasn’t saying much but Andrea could tell her entire body was an antenna right now.
And Andrea couldn’t help but wonder what Beatriz, she of many strong opinions, thought of all this. If she looked at him and thought, That guy?, if she judged Andrea for sleeping with him, if she were the kind of jealous person who would picture Andrea sleeping with him; oh, the thought made Andrea squirm now—what had that even been like? Out of flummoxed curiosity she tried to recall it for a moment, but all she could remember was a patch of fur on his stomach. On the one hand, she wanted Beatriz to see Ryan as no threat at all, and on the other she hoped Beatriz wasn’t repulsed to the point where she questioned Andrea’s judgment. A touch of nonthreatening gentle mockery, later when they were alone, would strike the balance. It might be more than she could hope for tonight.
Andrea took a seat next to Lucia at the table, where Ryan set out snacks. Beatriz stood behind Lucia like a bodyguard, leaning on the counter. There was a jar of peanut butter, a bowl of crackers, a block of cheese, a bag of baby carrots, corn chips, and a jar of salsa. “What is this, a backstage rider?” Andrea said.
“Old habits,” Ryan said. He handed Beatriz a small juice glass of bourbon, neat.
Andrea sawed off a slab of cheese for Lucia, offered another to Beatriz, who refused, and kept it for herself. She was starving. The cracker level was scant. “You have a beard now,” she remarked.
“Just like everyone in Portland.” Beatriz took a swig of her bourbon.
“This isn’t fashion,” Ryan said. “Keeps my face warm.”
“I forgot what it’s like to live with real winter.” Andrea shuddered pleasantly. “How do you like all the snow?”
“I love it. But shoveling it’s a bitch.”
“Why is it a bitch?” Lucia asked.
“Ryan,” Andrea said.
He said, “It looks all light and easy, but it’s super heavy to lift.”
“Like records,” Lucia said, and Ryan nodded with approval.
Andrea gave her a surprised look. “Yeah.”
Beatriz asked for a refill of bourbon. Andrea said, “You should eat something.”
“No appetite,” Beatriz said. “I’ll eat later.” Ryan poured more bourbon into the glass.
“So, Beatriz, how long have you . . .” Ryan waved a cracker in the air.
“Been in this country? On and off since last summer. Don’t worry, I’m legal.”
“I was going to say ‘known Andrea.’”
“We’ve been together a year and a half,” Andrea said. “Beatriz is amazing. She’s great with Luz.”
“I am,” Beatriz said.
“I’m great with her,” Lucia said. That made Beatriz laugh. Beatriz held out her palm for a low five under the table and Lucia smacked it. Andrea watched Ryan watch them. His smile was impossible to read.
“So how’s your band doing?” Ryan asked Lucia.
Lucia shrugged. “Fine.”
“That guitar working out for you? Not too heavy?”
“Would you ask her that if she were a boy?” Beatriz said with a cool smile.
“I don’t know,” Ryan admitted. “She’s just . . . small. There’s a lot of hardware on that one.”
“I like playing it,” Lucia said, worried. “It’s not too heavy.”
“She’s good,” Beatriz said. “She can really play.”
“Beatriz just taught her ‘All Apologies,’” Andrea said.
Lucia rolled her eyes at Andrea. “I can play lots of things.”
“Want to play something? I have a guitar out in the living room. It’s acoustic, though.”
Beatriz said, “She can handle an acoustic too.” She took a deep gulp.
Ryan raised his hands. “I don’t doubt it. It just feels different when you’re used to an electric.”
Lucia looked nervous. “I have to go to the restroom.”
“Down the hall,” Ryan said.
Beatriz said, “Make sure the seat’s down.”
Lucia didn’t really have to go. She stood at the sink and looked in the mirror to try to see what he saw. It was weird to look at him. Lucia wished that he would lie down and go to sleep, or that she could shoot him with a tranquilizer dart like a cougar or bear, so she could stare at him, study everything. Hold her hands up to his. Look at his face. Study the shape of his ears. But he was moving and upright and tall and live, and so she kept averting her eyes instead.
She wondered if he thought the same about her. Every once in a while they would make eye contact and both almost seemed to blush. Like each wanted to stare at the other. But they couldn’t. It was too much to be in the room with him, especially with Beatriz and her mother there.
In the medicine cabinet there was nothing interesting. In the drawers of the sink, an electric trimmer, a deodorant that smelled like pine candy, some stray Band-Aids and ointments.
When she came out, he and her mother were the only ones at the table. She didn’t want to sit there between them. The air was too thick. “Where’s Beatriz?” Lucia asked.
“She stepped outside,” Andrea said.
This fucking cold dead corner of Earth, Beatriz thought as she fetched her secret cigarette from its deep corner of the glove compartment. Her hands shivered so much she could hardly even light it. Andrea’s dread, she realized now, had been a source of comfort all this time. Beatriz had been the buffer; she got to be Lucia’s good guy and Andrea’s rock. But now, here, what was she? An extra. As soon as she saw that hello smile crack Andy’s face, she’d felt an ice cube in her chest. And Lucia, staring at Ryan like that, eyes wide with wonder. In an instant, with zero work, he got to be the real parent. She was the latecomer, the immigrant, the speaker of English as a second language—third, for her, but no one was counting. The person she’d married to stay with Andy
wasn’t even Andy.
She hated him, hated him, hated him, and especially hated the little glimpses of Lucia she saw in his face. She was glad he had a beard that covered half of it up. She was glad the cat had run away from Andrea, either didn’t recognize her or rejected her, a sign of how long and how deep the rupture had been, and she hoped Lucia took note. Why had Andrea been so worried all this time? No matter what happened, Lucia was indisputably her kid.
For the first time Beatriz felt truly homesick. Not just I miss the food, I miss the slang, I miss the music, but that feeling of home as a place where you currently are not. She dragged slowly on the cigarette and tried to locate the source. She wasn’t homesick for São Paulo, or for Portland, or for any particular place. She was homesick for Lucia and Andrea. They were her home now. Suppose the worst happened and Lucia and Andrea pulled away from her, and reconfigured around this biological triangle. Where would Beatriz go?
Smoking as a form of deep breathing. It steadied the breath, kept the tears at bay. If Beatriz let herself cry out here, she was certain icicles would form on her face. Plan: to get through tonight without fucking it up for Lucia. That might mean: stay outside until they’re ready to go. She wrapped her scarf more tightly around her neck.
Lucia pulled on her coat and mittens and picked up Ryan’s buffalo plaid hat with earflaps. Her mom had one like this too. No one was looking—she couldn’t resist. His hat was huge on her head; it wobbled there like a large lid on a small jar. She took it off and put on her own snug knit cap.
Beatriz stood by the garage, lit like an animation, a crisp black figure in a pool of light on the packed snow, a ghost of smoke ribboning from her mouth. She turned at the sound of the door closing and looked startled to see Lucia. “Luz.” She dropped the hand holding the cigarette to her farther side.
“Hi, B.” Lucia jammed her hands in her puffy pockets and walked to her. “You shouldn’t smoke.”
“I don’t. Only when I’m really—” She looked down at Luz. “I’ll put it out.” The cigarette fell to the ground and she crushed it into the snowy gravel with one precise stamp of her boot.
“Promise you won’t do it again?”
Beatriz thought for a moment. “No. I won’t make a promise I can’t keep. But I promise I won’t do it much.”
Lucia shivered and pressed herself against Beatriz’s warm side. Beatriz wrapped an arm around her and said, “How are you doing?”
Lucia shrugged and kept her eyes on the ground. “Good.”
“I bet it’s kind of weird for you?”
“I don’t want it to be weird.”
“Oh, meu amor. Me neither.” Beatriz rubbed a hand up and down Lucia’s arm, then stopped and held her tight for a moment. Lucia sank into Beatriz’s coat, detected her familiar warm smell under the less-familiar scent of the cold wool. It anchored her. “Hey,” Beatriz said. “I want to take a little walk to the end of the driveway. Join me?”
They walked down the long curve of the drive and the trees slid a screen over the house. They were in darkness. No streetlights. But the moon was nearly full and reflected off the thin snow enough so they could see. The air was acutely clear. They breathed deep, cold, brain-cleaning breaths. The trees opened up and they came to where the driveway met the long road. They stopped, mittened hand in mittened hand.
“Hey, look up,” Lucia said.
The sky was black, crazy with stars so thick they smeared in white streaks. “Holy hell,” Beatriz said. “That’s a lot of stars.”
“Isn’t it weird that they’re all dead and we’re just seeing their light now?”
Beatriz shot her an amused glance. “That’s awfully goth.”
“I read it in National Geographic.”
“Well, you know, in Brazil, they’re seeing the same stars, but they’re reversed.”
“What?”
“Yeah. And it’s summer there right now.”
“Brazil is upside down.”
“Maybe this place is upside down,” Beatriz said.
“I want to go to Brazil,” Lucia said. “Can I go with you?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, obviously,” Lucia said. “Would you ever take me with you?”
Beatriz’s eyes were tender. “Of course. I would love to take you to Brazil.”
Lucia couldn’t help herself, she hopped up and down. “When?”
“We have to save up. It might be a while. Practice your Portuguese.”
Lucia breathed a long sigh, pursing her lips so her breath poured out in a faint narrow cloud. “How about this,” she said. “Estou com frio.”
“Sim! Tão frio.” Beatriz shuddered deeply.
“Can we go in now?”
“Yes. I’m ready. Vamos, Luz.”
Ryan had thought that seeing Andrea might nudge awake all the old hard stuff, the resentment and longing and sick feeling, the love. But here she sat at his table, a familiar face—if etched a little deeper, the shape of her features more defined—and the feeling was more like a small old room lit low inside him. Storage. No need for the contents anymore, but here they were, a lantern passing over them. For the first year or two after Andrea, he’d thought, at times with resolve and at times with remorse, that he’d never fall in love again. But he’d found that there were different ways to be in love. Never again was it as hot, as consuming; gone was the scorched-earth feeling; the thrill of new discovery was now a gently tempered one. But he knew the terrain better and never again got lost in it. It was a relief that she could show up like this, walk into his house and pour herself a glass of water with one ice cube in it, and the feeling it stirred up in him was simply recognition.
“Beatriz okay? She seems a little on edge,” he said.
“She does,” Andrea said. “But she wanted to come. She urged us to, once Lucia asked for it. She’s big on transparency.”
“She good to you?”
“Crazy good. The best. I didn’t expect to find anyone like her. I got lucky. How about you? Anyone in your life?”
“Yes,” he said hesitantly. Why? He didn’t want her to think he was all alone. Foolish. But he wasn’t much of the time, so why not just round it up to yes.
Andrea sat up straighter, almost too enthusiastic. “That’s great. What’s her name?”
“Kelly?”
“Is it serious?”
“Fairly.”
Andrea looked around the place. “Like, move-in serious?”
“Nah,” he said. Whenever the time came and a girlfriend started talking about moving in together, he got skittish and it fell apart. He’d worked hard to have his own place, his own space, and he couldn’t stand the possibility of that falling apart. He’d rather lose the relationship. Maybe with Kelly he would do it. Maybe. But probably not. “She’s great, but I’ve found I really prefer to live alone.”
“I’m not the last woman you lived with.”
“Actually, you are,” he said. Andrea’s hand hit the table. “Am I the last guy?”
“Uh, yeah. To my mother’s dismay.” (That conversation had nearly shut down their shaky truce for good. Mom: If you did it once, would it kill you to try it again? I don’t understand you. I don’t understand you people. Andrea: I just don’t feel it. Mom: Don’t tell me it was only him. Andrea: It was only him, Mom. And barely him. Mom: That child needs a father. Andrea had hung up the phone and did not pick up another Mom call for six months.)
“I never did meet her.”
“Lucky. She might have tracked you down and been here on your doorstep years ago.” Andrea laughed grimly. “She came out after Luz was born and started plotting to sneak her out for a guerrilla baptism. My sister busted her.”
“So your child is a godless heathen?”
“Happily, yes.”
“What’s she like?”
“She’s fantastic. She’s a little weirdo. I have no idea where she’s headed, but I think it’s in a good direction.”
“How so?”
“She’
s quite practical and levelheaded most of the time, and then she’ll get together with her friend Sydney—”
“The Tiny Spiny Hedgehogs friend?”
“How do you know that?”
“She told me on the phone.”
“Oh. Yes, that one. And they set each other off. They get incredibly silly. For a while it’s funny, and then it’s like trying to wrangle drunk monkeys.” She sighed. “But I’d rather that than whatever comes with puberty. She’s starting to get secretive. I want her to have a rich inner life, I don’t want to pry. But Ryan, I’m so worried she’s going to start to hide things from me and hate me.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Because I’m her mom. And that’s what I did.”
“But you’re not your mom.”
“I hope not.” Andrea picked up her bourbon glass and poured the last watered-down drops into her mouth. “I had no idea what I was doing. God, we knew nothing back then.” Oh, those years. She didn’t resent Ryan, hadn’t thought, You should be here, but she did think, many times, This would be a lot easier if I could hand her over to another parent. Then, in those sweet exhausted moments when the baby slept in her arms and there was nowhere to go, nowhere else she could be, she murmured, Look at what he missed. She kissed Lucia’s tiny perfect ear, relished the warm weight of her on her chest. Stupid motherfucker. The love was enormous, painfully large, larger than her own body. Ryan could have been in on that. But he’d bolted. He’d missed it all.
“Oh, Ryan. Did I do the wrong thing?” She folded her arms on the table.
“What? Coming here?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Telling you not to come back.”
He sighed. “Why are you worrying about this? No point in thinking like that now. Here we are.”
“But did I fuck you up? Would you have wanted . . . I thought I was giving you permission to leave. That you wanted permission.”
Ryan prickled. Here was an old familiar feeling from the Andrea days. “I never needed permission from you. For anything.”
“Of course,” she said apologetically. “I guess what I’m saying is, do you wish you’d stayed?”
Stray City Page 31