by Unknown
“So don’t say it, then.”
Ryan sniffs Connor. “Can I try to do his diaper?”
“Whatever.” She brings the bag and sets up the changing pad and watches anxiously as he blunders his way through it.
“There you go, little guy. They’ve got videos online. You can learn anything online.”
Connor gazes at the ceiling with glossy eyes. Ryan has strapped him into his clean diaper but has not yet put his legs back into the sleeper. Instead he prods the baby’s smooth chest as if checking a nectarine for ripeness.
Angel swats his hands. “What are you poking him for?”
“I was just wondering if he got my sternum thing.”
“Your what?”
“You know, that weird thing I had.” He’s nodding at her like she’s stupid. “My missing sternum. My chest bone. I told you about it. You know, my scar? I’m self-conscious about it.”
Angel strains to remember their conversations before and after geometry, the night she slept with him. “That’s not a thing. How can a whole bone be missing?”
Ryan is turning redder. “I don’t know. It just was. They gave me a surgery when I was a baby. I kind of wondered if Connor got it, but he didn’t.” Ryan looks almost disappointed. “I mean, it’s pretty rare.”
He can’t help looking so defeated, Angel thinks. He didn’t even get his share of bones. He needs a stand and a metal rod to keep him upright, like one of her grandmother’s porcelain dolls.
“Well, Connor got a sternum.” Her tone is defensive. “Give him here.” She taps around his chest, but everything seems solid enough.
“It was good they fixed it when they did. Because otherwise if I knocked into anything it could go straight through to my heart.”
Angel doesn’t remember a scar. She should have noticed something like that. But the truth was that she wasn’t noticing him at all; her memory of that night is just a vague impression of pale boniness, some grateful muttering that made her despise him, and her own pleasure that made her despise herself. She doesn’t remember whether his eyes were open or closed, can’t even remember feeling him above her or inside her. She was noticing herself, her own nudity and her sense of power, as if she were a beneficent fairy bestowing a blessing, or a superhero with a cape saving him from his own pathetic life. The Devirginator. She imagines her costume: slimming black leather, a red satin cape.
It must have been his virginity that attracted her to him in the first place, she thinks, eyeing him. Otherwise she can’t fathom what induced her to set down her beer at that party and lead him to the filthy back bedroom—some man’s surely, a brother or uncle or even the boy throwing the party, unmade bed, the random tangle of video games and electronics, the warm thick animal smell like a ferret’s cage. Certainly she led him. There is no way he would have had the balls to make the move on her. Which is both disturbing and comforting; disturbing because it is Angel’s own fault she got pregnant, comforting because it is her own fault, which makes her feel free somehow, defiant, in charge of her own destiny.
What was she thinking? Look at him: skinny, narrow-chested, and apparently skeletally incomplete, less of a person than a regular person. Through his pale hair, his scalp is spotted with scaly barnacles. The thought of sex with Ryan is incomprehensible and also a little gross, particularly when she considers Lizette, with her beauty and presence and swagger. Angel’s heart stutters.
“You have all your bones!” Ryan tells Connor. He pushes the baby’s kicking legs through the leg holes, does the snaps, one, two, three. Now he lifts him high, their eyes locked on one another’s, Connor shrieking with joy and grasping at the air. “Superbaby!”
Monday morning, Amadeo leans into the dark upholstery of his mother’s car. It’s just after dawn, but he is alert and excited, the plastic toolbox stowed carefully in the trunk. He shaved and dressed in a plaid button-down shirt, and drank three cups of coffee for maximum alertness.
On Saturday, when Amadeo wandered into the kitchen, his mother withdrew her head from the oven, steel wool in hand, and announced, “I got you a customer. Monica’s got a big crack, size of my fist.” She demonstrated, fingers ensconced in yellow rubber gloves.
“Ha,” said Angel from the table, bringing a spoonful of rice cereal to Connor’s mouth. “A big crack.”
“Watch it,” says Amadeo, swatting her with the dish towel.
Amadeo kissed his mother. “Well, you need to work, honey.” As if Amadeo didn’t know that. “You know how busy that Monica is; she’s very important. She can’t just be taking off work to get her car repaired.” Yolanda straightened, pleased. But then she looked at Amadeo sternly. “So you need to be ready to go with me Monday morning.”
“Hell, I’ll be ready.”
“Dang! I’ve got school,” Angel wailed. “I can’t believe I’m missing our first job.”
“Also, hijito,” his mother said, “I said you’d do it for free, but don’t worry, I’ll pay you.”
“Okay,” agreed Amadeo, crestfallen, because he was looking forward to cashing that first check. “I guess word of mouth is the best advertising a business can get.”
“You can’t pay him, Gramma. This is like his training. His internship.”
“I see,” Yolanda said.
Now, she drives, both tense hands gripping the wheel, her face pinched.
“What’s your deal?” Amadeo asks, wounded. “Are you mad at me, Mom?”
She flashes a wan smile, glances without seeing him, and says vaguely, “Oh, no, hijito. I didn’t sleep too good.”
Amadeo also had trouble sleeping the night before—it’s his first job, and though he doesn’t like to admit it, he gets nervous, talking to people like this, professionals, people with degrees and paychecks and power.
The rest of the way to Santa Fe, Amadeo sits back, listening to the inane chatter of the morning DJs, uneasiness forming and re-forming behind his rib cage.
Chief Clerk Monica Gutierrez-Larsen meets them in the parking garage under the Capitol. The woman is miniature in a miniature beige suit. Her clicking heels echo as she approaches. “I’m so glad to meet you,” she says, smiling a glossy, white-toothed smile and shaking his hand with a tiny, powerful grip. “Your mom talks about you all the time. You’re so nice to do this.”
She is attractive, intimidating, and younger than Amadeo expected, mid- to late thirties; for a moment he’s indignant that his mother should have such admiration for someone so much younger than herself, someone, in fact, awfully close to his own age. Amadeo pictures this woman out on the campaign trail, a pocket-sized powerhouse beaming her way into office.
Repair kit in hand, he follows Monica to her car in its reserved spot, a black BMW about six or seven years old, and though the bull’s-eye is obvious, she points it out. It’s the circumference of a Little Debbie cupcake, webbed with cracks and positioned near the bottom of the windshield on the driver’s side.
“Can you fix that, hijito?” Yolanda asks. “You can fix that, right?”
“It wouldn’t be a problem for a normal-sized person, but I’m so short”—Monica Gutierrez-Larsen laughs agreeably—“it’s always right smack in the middle of the left lane. At night it catches the taillights and the whole thing blazes up like a big red snowflake.”
“Huh,” muses Amadeo. He sets his kit on the grease-spotted concrete, runs his finger over the crack and flinches. A line of blood spreads on his fingertip. He taps the windshield more gingerly, then bends to look the chief clerk in the eye. “I can repair your windshield so this”—he taps the bull’s-eye once more—“is invisible. It will be fixed both aesthetically and structurally. I can guarantee that you’ll see better and be safer.” A feeling of competence swells in him.
“Great,” Monica says, looking at her watch. “I’ve gotta run. Nine o’clock meeting.” She pulls a face at Yolanda. “See you in there, Yo.” And then she is off, feet fast and fierce in their tiny shoes.
Yolanda hands him a twenty. “Get yoursel
f some lunch downtown after, and we’ll meet back here at five fifteen. I’ll pay you a little something later. Good luck, hijito.” She kisses Amadeo on the cheek, leaving him beside the BMW.
Cars stream into the garage, doors and trunks slam, alarms beep and squawk as doors are locked. Other people click past him and into the building. Amadeo kneels beside his kit, enjoying this busy feeling of purpose. He wishes someone would stop him, question his presence, so Amadeo can say, “Hell yes, I have business here. See this Beemer I’m fixing? It belongs to Monica Gutierrez-Larsen. The chief clerk? You may have heard of her.” Amadeo wishes he had more clients so he could spread this directed, occupied feeling over more of his day.
He imagines Monica’s gratitude. She’ll come down, eager to see his progress. She’ll have taken off her suit jacket and, impressed by his abilities, will look at him more closely. This time she’ll see him not just as her secretary’s undereducated son, but as a doer, a fixer, a man who’s good with his hands, at ease in his body. She won’t know why, but she’ll find herself attracted to his nonchalance, his smooth sexual energy that’s understated yet nonetheless exerting a pull on her.
He winces at this fantasy, but then he’s imagining telling Brianna about today. “Oh, the chief clerk’s a family friend. We’re pretty close.” He’ll imply a flirtation between them, maybe even a full-blown sexual past, and then he’ll get to assuage Brianna’s jealousy. “You got nothing to worry about. I’m into you,” and she’ll raise her gaze to meet his, eyes dewy and grateful.
They’ve continued to meet up, he and Brianna, every week or so, nearly always at her house. Once she made him dinner—quinoa salad, tofu stir-fry—and once they watched a raunchy buddy comedy (his selection—he immediately realized it was a bad choice, but she laughed along) on her laptop. Dinner in Española is out: “Someone might see us,” she said.
The gulf between them—educational and aspirational—seems to make her more uncomfortable than it makes Amadeo. Once, lying in bed after sex, she chatted merrily about the Obama administration’s new federal grants for social programs in disadvantaged communities.
“I’d love to design something even better and more comprehensive than Smart Starts!, you know, that looks at the health of whole families. I’m applying for MPH programs, either in New Mexico or back in Oregon.”
“What are those?” Amadeo asked.
“Master of Public Health?” She reddened. “But it’s not like everyone needs to go to grad school.”
“I know that.”
“I mean, yeah. And it’s not a given that I’ll get in. It’s a total privilege that I even get to consider it. Not everyone has the luxury, and I totally recognize that.”
“Okay.” The silence lay between them, morphing into a kind of discontent. Amadeo was about to say, “I could have applied to MPH programs, too, I just never wanted to,” when, thank god, she stood, clutching her discarded shirt to her chest, and slipped into the bathroom, indicating that this date was over.
The uncertainty between them has allowed Amadeo to dodge the question of whether he should tell Angel. A few times, she’s asked, “Where have you been? Another hot date?”
He said he was out with a friend, and she asked, “You have friends?”
When he’s finished fixing the chief clerk’s car, Amadeo decides, he’ll walk around the Plaza until noon, then get a good lunch at Tomasita’s, in celebration of the Creative Windshield Solutions launch. He imagines a cold beer sweating circles on the tabletop, then catches himself.
He sticks the largest adhesive rubber donut seal he has around the crack. The hole in the rubber isn’t big enough to encompass the bull’s-eye, but he figures he can repair it in stages. Then he places the clear suction cup over the seal.
He likes pressing the trigger of the syringe, likes watching the liquid resin squirt, its chemical acetone smell. He puts a little extra for good measure.
But he’s put too much, and because the seal is too small for the bull’s-eye, there is no vacuum. The resin oozes under the seal and pools around it like mercury, a shining, quivering meniscus. Also, his hands are shaking, probably from the coffee. The light in the underground parking structure is flickery and orange. He places the sheet of plastic film over the resin to contain it. The liquid spreads. He swabs at the excess, but it’s begun to drip down the clean slope of the windshield, and soon Amadeo’s fingertips are tacky.
Also a bit of resin drips on the hood. Amadeo swipes at it with the heel of his hand, but it only smears across the black paint. The quick-dry formula is drying quickly.
He needs paper towels. He tries to get inside the building, but the lock requires an ID, so he bangs on the door until someone pushes it open.
“Yeah?” asks an old guy in no-iron pants and a bolo tie.
Amadeo explains himself, but the guy, bored, waves him through and continues down the circular hall.
Amadeo doesn’t know which way to turn to find the nearest men’s room, so he jogs, eliciting dirty looks from women in their frumpy office wear.
Apparently the State of New Mexico, in a push to embrace green technologies, has done away with paper towels, opting instead for low-energy hand dryers. Amadeo grabs a wad of toilet paper from the stall, then, pleased with his good thinking, grabs a second, which he runs under the tap.
In the garage, Amadeo leans over the hood of Monica Gutierrez-Larsen’s car and begins to scrub. The toilet paper sticks, leaving fibrous white tracks in the paint. “Fuck,” he mutters, and tries to rub them away with his thumb, but they only become grubby and smudged. He tries to wipe up the mess on the windshield, but the resin has already dried. It looks like a jumbo tube of superglue has exploded.
Only now does Amadeo panic, looking around—for what? Help? Witnesses? He makes for the bright daylight at the garage exit, leaving behind the mess and his open toolbox.
In the glare of morning, he hoofs it downtown. The sky is blue and wide, the air cool. He needs a drink, but nothing is open except some breakfast places. Up and down the narrow porticoed streets, people are beginning to unlock their shops.
He’s jogging now, up San Francisco Street, through the Plaza, trying to outrun his failure. He pictures Monica Gutierrez-Larsen in her silk blouse, discovering what he’s done to her paint job. She squints at the streaks in the dim orange light, irate, disgusted. But no: it’s early still—only fifteen minutes have elapsed. The chief clerk won’t know what he’s done for a long time, and somehow this fact only makes the situation worse; for now he’s the only one who knows.
The blunt square towers of the cathedral rise beyond La Fonda. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll be hearing confession. He likes the idea of spilling his guts to someone who is required to forgive him. When he pushes open the heavy door, though, he sees that an early and sparsely attended Mass is in progress. One or two old faces turn to look at Amadeo as he hesitates in the doorway, wild-eyed and sweating, and the priest drones on. If he joins them, and closes his eyes to pray, there’s a chance God will hear him, but there’s a better chance that he’ll have to sit with the intolerable, spinning anxiety that’s expanding in his skull and chest and throat. Amadeo backs out, and the door shuts with finality.
He cuts over to Alameda, runs, then walks back west through the narrow park along the river, breathing heavily. The light is so dry and bright, it’s like grit in his eye. Birds call to each other in the tall, drooping cottonwoods, and the leaves make rocking shadows on the dry grass. The river is just a concrete riverbed with a few puddles here and there reflecting blue. It should be peaceful, but it isn’t. It’s a pathetic, skinny little park, parched and studded with dog shit. A homeless man with a full blond beard sits on a picnic table in his drab-colored layers.
Whatever is building in Amadeo needs a release. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he mutters, and he thumps his head with the heel of his hand over and over for the metallic jolt. He winds up and kicks the trunk of a cottonwood, but his foot bounces off ineffectually. Infuriated, he kicks a
gain and pain shoots up his shin. “Fuck!” he shouts. At the intersection down the street, the man selling newspapers turns.
From behind his facial hair, the homeless man watches Amadeo with intelligent eyes.
“Take a picture, asshole,” Amadeo snaps, then feels sicker. The homeless man averts his gaze, as if Amadeo might be dangerous, and Amadeo’s eyes smart. He kicks the tree again, and for an instant the punishment is so intense he thinks he might have broken his foot. Feeling marginally better, he limps off.
The pain doesn’t last. Up and down streets, he walks, then runs, then walks again, fueled by vibrating self-loathing. In his mind, his crime balloons to fit his shame, and as it does, so does his pity for himself. He ruined a car, his prospects, his entire life. He’s a failure, an idiot, a fucking waste, his father’s son, and none of it is fair because he tries. He can never catch a break, can never dig himself out of this hole he was born into. He tried to do something nice—to fix some bitch’s window—for free! And here’s the thanks he gets? Monica Gutierrez-Larsen despised him, he could see that. She was patronizing him, the no-good son of her secretary. She didn’t even say thank you, just felt entitled to free work on her fucking BMW. She’s lucky he didn’t smash the entire fucking windshield.
He jabs at the scars on the front and back of both his hands, willing them to hurt, but they don’t. His life isn’t supposed to be like this. Good Friday was supposed to save Amadeo. He was supposed to be past the shame and failure and the mistakes that hardly seem to be his own and that unravel beyond his control.
Amadeo feels cheated. By Passion Week, by the penitentes, by Jesus himself. The fact is that no one can be crucified every day—not even Jesus could pull off that miracle. Jesus never had to face the long dull aftermath of crucifixion, the daily business of shitting and tooth-cleaning and waking reluctantly to a new day. Jesus never had to watch people return to their own concerns and forget what he did for them.
No, instead Jesus died on the cross, and before the women quit weeping outside his tomb, before all those Marys had to deal with grocery shopping and returning to work and paying the bills, Jesus rose from the dead! Oh, he must have felt smug, up there on the cross with that trick up his sleeve. He was spirited away to heaven where he lives in the lap of luxury, looking down on the people with their big endless worshipful party. Because what is Christianity except a never-ending memorial service with people singing his praises and invoking his name until the end of fucking time, just because one day he got three nails and a poke in the ribs?