by Unknown
Amadeo reruns the calculations, and it comes out the same: fifty dollars a pop for four hundred repairs, and he’ll clear twenty thousand. And now that he owns the kit and the tools, he need only buy new supplies and resin. In a year, Amadeo figures, he can repair twice or even three times that number. Once he’s taken care of all the windshields locally and in and around Española, he can work his way south. Just think of all the cracked windshields in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, in all of New Mexico.
Sixty thousand a year isn’t bad, not at all. He can help out with the baby, start a college fund for him, and one for Angel, too, and still have enough left over for a new truck. Also he wants a Suzuki four-wheeler, but he’d be fine with a used one. Maybe he’ll charge a hundred bucks a repair and clear a hundred and twenty thousand. People will definitely pay a hundred bucks for his services—people drop a hundred bucks on lots of things on a daily basis: traffic tickets, groceries.
His prospects look excellent. For the first time in a long while, since Good Friday, in fact, Amadeo is happy—happier even than on Good Friday, because then he was worried about his performance. Now, though, he is filled only with certainty. There was a time when he would have been afraid, embarking on a new business venture like this. But that was before Amadeo asked for the nails, before he flushed his painkillers and gave up booze; anyone with that kind of courage is a man who can succeed.
It feels good to be an entrepreneur, to be a mover in the world, to be a man who plans and creates and gets things done. For so long he’s resented people in power, but now he’s seeing the world through new eyes, and everywhere he looks is opportunity.
Amadeo crawls through the plastic wrappings to the television and loads the instructional DVD. The video opens with five minutes of footage of happy people driving and their windshields being pelted. “You’re minding your own business,” the voice-over says, “when trouble is thrown up in your path, and before you know it, you have a crack.”
“Dang!” says the mustachioed businessman behind the wheel. He swerves dangerously and claps a despairing hand over his head.
In the next scene, the businessman has pulled onto the side of the road. He bends over the shoulder of a happy and helpful windshield repairman. The repairman grins into the camera. “Bingo!” Behind him, a flawless windshield glints.
The production is low budget—in the background is a whirr of white noise and the shots are overexposed, and the editor has leaned heavily on canned effects for transitions (yet another picture explodes into a starburst)—but Amadeo is trying his best not to see that. Now a new guy in a striped polo shirt and gelled hair stares dead-eyed into the camera. “Not many people know that windshields are actually made of two panes of glass sealed together,” he says in a monotone. If the delivery leaves something to be desired, the information is solid, and Amadeo grabs a notebook from the coffee table. In the majority of cracks, the man explains, only the outside layer of glass is damaged. The key is to fill in and smooth that top layer, to restore the windshield to its original appearance, preserve its integrity.
Amadeo likes these words: restore, preserve, integrity. He jots them down. He’s always known he wasn’t the type to sit in an office or follow orders. An independent contractor, a small-business owner, that’s him.
Angel bangs into the house. “Did Santa come? What is all this crap?”
“Shh.” Amadeo indicates the TV. He’s taking notes.
“Simply scrape the excess resin off the windshield with the razor blade,” intones the man on the video, “and the repair is invisible.” It does look simple. Amadeo can’t tell from the video, though, how invisible the crack really is. It looks pretty invisible.
“Hey,” objects Angel. “That’s my math notebook.”
Amadeo looks up, hassled.
“It’s fine, whatever. Just don’t use too many pages.” She drops onto the couch and unties her sneaker one-handed around her bulk, grunting.
Amadeo explains the finances to his daughter. “So in a year, I can be clearing a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. That’ll be good for the baby, no?”
“If it’s such a great business opportunity, why aren’t more people fixing windshields?”
This stops Amadeo. Maybe people are doing it. Maybe the world is glutted with windshield repairmen, all of them working from the same kit they ordered from the same late-night infomercial, and he just doesn’t know it.
Angel nudges her chin at the pile on the floor. “How much was that stuff?”
“A thousand.” He intends his tone to be casual, easy, to convey how seriously not a big deal the sum is in light of the vast profits he’s about to reap.
“A thousand?” Angel toes the toolbox with her bare foot. The lid bobs precariously on cheap hinges. “As in a thousand dollars?”
“Angel, the average start-up cost for a small business is over thirty thousand dollars. Look it up.”
“Yeah, but that’s, like, for a store or something. Or a software company. Maybe that’s the start-up cost for whatever company sold you this crap.” She raises a skeptical eyebrow at the molded plastic mass on the carpet. “I doubt it even cost them that much, though.”
“It’s called an investment, Angel.”
“Where’d you get the money?”
“Mind your own business.”
“Oh god, Gramma. How’d you convince her this was a good idea?”
Actually, it was easy. He simply told his mother about the infomercial, and she nodded tiredly and gave him her credit card. Amadeo began to launch into his calculations, but Yolanda waved him away, saying, “Just stick with it.” Amadeo felt deflated as he typed her credit card number into the website.
Outside, his mother’s car trundles up the drive. From the window Amadeo can see her bend to root around for her purse and coffee mug and water bottle and the rest of the millions of items she drags along every time she ventures off the property.
Quickly, because he wants this sorted before his mother gets in, he sternly reminds his daughter, “You know, my mother gave you a pretty hefty sum not two weeks back. And I don’t see you starting no business.”
“Right. I’m just saving it. To pay for college for the human being I’m growing. No big deal.”
“Hey, hijitos.” Yolanda pulls the door shut behind her quietly. She glances at the mess in the living room. “So it arrived.” She lets her bags and jacket slide off her shoulders and onto the floor. She drops even her keys and travel mug onto the pile at her feet. Closing her eyes, Yolanda presses the heels of her hands into her temples.
Amadeo feels a thread of alarm—she looks exhausted. “Maybe one day I’ll have a shop,” he says to cheer her up. “My own windshield repair shop.”
Yolanda seems about to say something, then shakes her head ever so slightly. “Well, good. If it’ll get you on track, hijito.”
Angel stands to hug Yolanda, then starts gathering the stuff by the door. She deposits cups in the sink, hangs Yolanda’s purse off the back of a kitchen chair, then goes back to wash up.
“Oh, I’ll get all that,” says Yolanda, but she makes her way to the couch. She sits gingerly on the edge of the cushion, hands planted squarely on her thighs, as though she’s waiting at the dentist.
“I’ve got it. You want a drink, Gramma? I can make you some chamomile tea.”
“My mother used to make that from the flowers. Used to grow them in the garden.” Her voice is thin and high. Amadeo peers at his mother. There’s a thin stripe of silver along her part. The skin under her eyes is purple and dented.
“So you want some?”
“No. Thank you.”
The ice machine growls, and Angel emerges with a glass of water, which she hands Yolanda. Without taking a sip, Yolanda places it on the coffee table. On TV, the polo-shirted man is frozen in his explanation of the nuances of windshield repair. The ice crackles as it settles.
“If you guys don’t mind, I’m just going to keep watching?” Amadeo hits play.
“Oh, sure
. Anyway,” says Angel as though continuing a conversation, “it’s cool that Gramma’s your investor. So now she gets a cut of your earnings.”
Amadeo pauses the DVD again. This has not occurred to him, and it probably hasn’t occurred to Yolanda, who is accustomed to investing in him without any return. Now that Angel has said it, Amadeo can’t not give his mother a cut, not without looking like an asshole.
“Of course I’ll pay her back.” Already Amadeo can see his income being eaten away. He thinks with despair about advertising. And taxes. Why hadn’t he thought about taxes? “You think I won’t? I’ll pay you back,” he tells his mother.
He waits for her line—No, mi hijito, you save your money—but she doesn’t say it. Instead she looks at her hands, traces the veins that pop out. “Okay, honey.”
His mother doesn’t have savings beyond her retirement fund; he’s aware of that, but, especially when he’s thinking of borrowing money, he prefers not to think too closely about her financial situation. “Look, here. It’s all official.” He arches his ass off the couch to slide some business cards out of his back pocket and hands one to her. She turns it in her hands, smiles dimly, and places it beside her glass on the coffee table.
His only hope is if she doesn’t cash his checks. Or if he gives her a payment the first couple months and then they both gradually forget.
Angel shrugs. She’s enjoying this, he can tell. “You don’t just got to pay her back. You got to pay her back, then give her a cut of every repair. So, like, if you charge ten bucks for each windshield, maybe you give her, like, five. She did cover all your starting costs. That’s how investment works.”
He looks at her, incredulous. “You learn this shit at Smart Starts!? Your precious Brianna teach you all this?”
Angel twists her mouth. “Don’t you know anything? Don’t you even pay attention when you watch TV?”
What he wants is for his daughter to be on board, to support and cheer him, to admire him and believe in his business. He wants the same from his mother, but he can understand why her faith in him might be faintly shaken.
“So, what,” Angel says, “people are just going to, like, stop by Las Penas to get their cars fixed? Because it’s such a thoroughfare? How’re you going to do all this with a suspended license?”
Amadeo freezes. Somehow he’d overlooked the fact that his suspended license would make it virtually impossible for him to get the business off the ground. “Ten bucks?” he says. “You think you can get a windshield repaired for ten bucks?”
Angel regards the kit spread out across the carpet, the empty little baggies. “Just keep that crap away from my baby. I don’t want him choking.”
Mike moved in with them nearly two years ago. He was supposed to be the good guy, the sensible choice. He doesn’t smoke pot or drink overmuch. He isn’t handsome, like the men Angel’s mother often goes for. Mike is forty-five, fourteen years older than Marissa, with a soft belly and a baby face, thin brown hair flecked with gray at the temples. He is an architect and works for the state, working on teams to design various nondescript buildings: rest stops and DMV satellite offices and the like, buildings that Angel hadn’t even realized required architects.
He and Marissa had been dating for three months before Angel met him, and for all that time, Marissa had been giddy, buying forty-dollar face creams and new lacy underclothes, which she would hand-wash and leave dripping from the shower curtain rail. Those months were suffused with festivity, and Angel felt close to her mother, proud of her beauty: her full lips, shining dark eyes, her thick, glossy hair. Before her dates—three or four a week—Marissa modeled her outfits and consulted with Angel on eye shadow colors, and then Angel stayed up as late as she could, usually falling asleep on the couch, so she’d know when her mother got home and could ask how it had gone. This business with Mike seemed to Angel to be a joint project, and her advice was crucial to the success of the courtship. She also had the sense that she was her mother’s apprentice; now that she was in eighth grade, Angel must pay attention, keep alert, learn what she could about relationships.
The evenings Marissa stayed home, they ordered pizza and rented movies. If it was a weekend, Marissa let Angel invite Priscilla to sleep over, and all three of them would stay up late, laughing and baking cookies like girls in teen movies.
“Architects are rich, right?” Angel asked on one of these nights, made braver by Priscilla’s presence.
Marissa explained regretfully that, sure, Mike made decent money, but he owed it to his ex-wife in California. He had two kids, teenagers, a boy and a girl, whom he saw only rarely, and though Angel hadn’t even met Mike yet, the mention of this distant, nameless daughter caused a fillip of envy.
Mike lived in a tiny apartment in Santa Fe, a quick bike ride to his office. “It’s nice, though,” Marissa assured Angel. “Right downtown. He just doesn’t care about things.”
“Do you think you’ll get married?” Priscilla asked.
Marissa laughed. She always pretended nonchalance when talking about Mike, but then would be unable to stop herself. “Maybe? Who knows! But the other night we were watching this movie set in India and he said, ‘Let’s go there for our honeymoon.’ ”
“What movie? Did you go to a movie theater or did you rent it?” Angel asked, not quite liking the thought of her mother snuggled up against a man in an apartment in Santa Fe she’d never seen.
“Oh!” cried Priscilla. “You could do an India-theme reception! Like, bright silk tablecloths and little wooden elephants for centerpieces. The cake could be, like, spicy.”
Marissa pushed her hair back from her face, seeming to take Priscilla’s idea seriously. “I don’t know, I’ve just always thought a traditional wedding is better. What do you think, Angel?”
“Oh, definitely,” said Priscilla. “I’m totally going traditional. Next time I’ll bring my magazines and we can plan it!”
Angel loved this new, delighted version of her mother and also felt repulsed, because now she had to think about her mother and this Mike character having sex. A region between her stomach and her pelvis quivered, as though a dozen flashing silvery sardines were flipping around there in the dark.
Angel frowned. “Why doesn’t Mike see his kids?” This seemed to be a warning sign.
Marissa shrugged. “His ex-wife’s kind of a control monster. And Stockton is far.”
The first time Marissa introduced them, it was at Serafina’s, a nice restaurant just outside of Santa Fe. “It was Mike’s idea,” Marissa said, looking around the patio strung with white lights while they waited for him at the table. “He wants to do things right.”
Her mother was stunning in a burgundy dress with a deep neckline. Angel had also dressed up for the dinner, in a flattering sundress and the shoes she’d worn to the eighth-grade end-of-year dance; Serafina’s wasn’t the kind of place she and Marissa frequented. The sun had set, though the sky was still bright, and Angel felt glamorous, here among other well-dressed people, sipping her ice water.
“Can I get you a drink while you wait?” the waiter inquired, but Marissa shook her head tightly, as if afraid that Mike might not show.
But he did show, looking round and tidy in a V-neck sweater and khakis. He pulled Marissa in for a kiss on the mouth and extended a confident hand to Angel.
“The famous Angel. You look just like your mother. And that is a compliment.”
When the waiter came again, Mike took charge, urging Marissa to get a drink and then ordering guacamole, which, to Angel’s astonishment, was made fresh from a cart, right there at the table. The waiter sliced and scooped avocados into a molcajete with quick, practiced motions, squeezed limes, then mashed it all up and served it to them with a bowl of hot, salty chips. It was the most delicious guacamole she’d ever tasted.
Angel felt shy, but she answered Mike’s questions about school and hobbies with the pleasant carefulness she used when addressing teachers. To her relief, he soon turned his attention to her mo
ther, and Angel was allowed to sip her lemonade and watch them laugh.
Her mother was a fresher, more alive version of herself with Mike, Angel decided that first night. The tension that sometimes made Marissa’s face rigid at the nostrils and along the jawline, as though a complex network of wires were stretched just beneath her skin, had gone. She looked soft and radiant, and Angel saw her as she’d been when she was young, as Marissa still must see herself. “You don’t know what it’s like, always doing things alone,” she’d once told Angel, looking up from an impossible spread of paperwork, but Marissa was wrong. Angel knew exactly what it was like. Hadn’t she been coming home to an empty house since she was seven? Also, her mother didn’t do things alone. What about Angel, who took on fully half the chores and did her best to be a friend to her mother?
But that night at the restaurant as they ate their enchiladas and fajitas, Marissa laughed and joked, and her jokes seemed more sophisticated than Angel would have given her mother credit for. When Mike started complaining about the Republicans for blockading some bill or other, Marissa joined right in, adding facts and perspectives of her own, though Angel hadn’t known her mother followed the news or cared much about politicians. They’re all assholes, she’d once told Angel.
“I shouldn’t have had a second one,” Marissa said, tapping her empty margarita glass. The straw was waxy with lipstick and most of the salt had been licked off, but still, Marissa extended the tip of her tongue shyly to the rim.
Mike laughed. “Better for me. I get to enjoy your company until you sober up.”
So Marissa and Mike each had a third, and Angel tamped down the flare of worry as she watched her mother sip, and they ate their dinners slowly and then ordered sticky flan and creamy chocolate cheesecake and the fanciest, most delicious pile of churros, chewy and crunchy, with cinnamon sugar that spilled on Angel’s dress. On the side of each dessert plate was mounded whipped cream so thick it was almost cheesy, and Angel, imitating her mother, ate the whipped cream one delicate and distracted half-spoonful at a time, setting the spoon down after every creamy, dreamy bite, as if each extension of the spoon was singular and decadent and they had no intention of gobbling the whole mound, though Angel knew they both did.