When tears began to leak down her face, he let go of her long enough to swipe a box of tissues from a decorative stand behind their table. She accepted one and blew her nose, but the tears kept coming. “I’ve made such a mess of my life. I never wanted it to come to this. I keep trying to do right, but I don’t know how.”
So many emotions warred in Tomás. He had seen her like this before, wanting to do better. He’d watched her try and then fall. Part of him wanted to guard his heart, to push her away. He thought maybe it would be the smart thing to do. But he couldn’t be smart, if that’s what it came down to.
He squeezed her hand, leaning in close to cradle her head as he spoke softly into her ear. “Keep trying, Alisa. Because I won’t stop believing in you.”
She blew her nose again. “You get so angry with me.”
“Because I want better for you. I love you. You’re my sister. I’m going to want you in my life no matter how many mistakes you make.”
She collapsed onto his shoulder, sobbing silently, her shoulders shaking, her voice barely a whisper. “I’m the worst mama in the world if I give up my babies.”
Tomás hugged her close. “No. Giving them up this way, today? It makes you the best mama in the world. And then you’re going to get clean, get your life on track, so you can be in their lives again as that great mom. Spenser and Mom and Dad and I will all help you.”
She clung to him, her body easing as he rocked her back and forth. “I’m sorry I said such bad things about Spenser. About you. For leaving so much work for you. For causing so much trouble. Can you ever forgive me?”
Tomás shut his eyes and let the last of his resentment sail over the top of the conference table. “It’s already done.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
On the last day of school, Spenser resigned.
It was a strangely anticlimatic moment, since it mainly involved submitting a letter to the principal and the head of the school board. He stood at the inter-office mail boxes for ten minutes, but once it was done, he felt sad but relieved. He’d gone round and round on whether or not he wanted to resign, to see if the school would decide to overlook the fact that he was getting married to a man, but in the end he decided preempting them and going quietly would be the better way to go, not only for the sake of his resume, but for his own peace of mind and that of his family.
Nothing else much happened on that front. A few teachers expressed their regret, and several parents tried to get him to reconsider, but overall Spenser’s departure from his job was quiet and uneventful. He would have thought Harvey would gloat or at least glare in triumph, but he simmered with the same disdain as ever. Spenser wondered what triumph would look like for Harvey, if it could exist at all. What would the moment be that would make Harvey gloat, or smile in victory? Was such a moment possible? Clare had always told him hate was a cancer, and in that moment, Spenser understood what she meant. Hate could never have an endgame celebration. In Spenser’s absence, Harvey would simply find someone or something else to despise.
The school issue was now settled, and the Jimenez family’s immigration issues were as in hand as they could be this point. His adoption of Duon was proceeding without incident and with no further challenges to their parentage. But weeks later, Spenser still couldn’t get Dorothy Graves out of his thoughts.
Eventually he spoke to Vicky about it. “I can’t decide if I’m projecting my own family issues onto Duon or if this is legitimately something I should try to rectify. The social worker says it might be best to wait until after the adoption, but I can’t help feeling as if I’m betraying him. Or maybe I feel as if I’m betraying her.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I honestly can’t make sense of that anymore.”
Vicky nodded, patiently letting him talk until he’d laid all his emotions on the table. “It’s not an easy situation. I always would rather see families stay together. I think it’s good your instinct is to keep Duon connected to his. If it helps, I know he wants to be with you and Tomás. I think if she had a better understanding that your orientation doesn’t make you a threat, Dorothy would welcome your help with what for her is an unstable and unfair situation. Maybe she will in time.” She sighed. “But I have to agree with the social worker. Meeting her right now isn’t the best plan. It might make you feel better, but it wouldn’t be good for her or Duon. You need to let her grieve, to process this in her own way. Trust the social workers to know when would be the right time. That’s their job, after all.” She squeezed his hand. “I’ll help you too.”
It sobered Spenser, made him ashamed to acknowledge this had been about him and his guilt, more than altruism for Dorothy. Except he did feel for her still. It was such a difficult thing, to accept giving her space was the right way to honor her. “I want to do something. I don’t care for the way the hearing had to make her sound like a bad choice. I wish it didn’t have to be that way.”
“Why don’t you write her a letter? Don’t send it yet, but give it to the social worker, or to me. Or share it with Tomás. Work your feelings out on paper. Write as many letters as you want. Then one day, when the time is right, you can use parts of them to actually write to Dorothy, to anyone in Duon’s family you like. Invite them to join your family the way Clara invited your mother back into yours.”
Spenser wiped tears away with his fingers. “I don’t know if I’m good enough a parent to be like Clara.”
“You’re already a good parent. And you’re going to become even better.” She winked at him and released his hand. “Go write your letters.”
Spenser did. He got up every morning and wrote Dorothy Graves a letter. One morning he wrote his mother a letter too. He wrote his sisters letters. He wrote Tomás, and Vicky, and Ed and Laurie. He wrote Duon. He wrote Clara, and the social workers, and even the ICE workers long, heartfelt letters he never sent, missives expressing the feelings he didn’t know how to share. He was fairly sure it would take him months before he had enough of it out to compose an actual letter he could give to Duon’s grandmother, but every day he wrote, he felt better.
But the best day was the one when he wrote to himself. The one that, late one night, he shared with Tomás, and as his fiancé read from the laptop screen, Spenser curled into the crook of his arm and read along.
Dear Spenser Harris,
I’m writing this letter to the eight-year-old Spenser. If I could, I would send this letter to you on the day the social workers came to take you away, delivered to you on the night you spent in an emergency foster placement, all alone. I would appear in the middle of the night and hand this to you, with a flashlight so you could read it under the covers instead of crying yourself to sleep.
Little Spenser, I want you to know that everything will be all right. I know adults say this all the time, and you don’t want to believe it, but I’m actually in a position to tell you and know it will become truth. Things are dark now, and they’re going to be hard for a while, but they will be all right eventually. I promise.
It will take you a long time to find a home you feel safe and loved in, but you will find it. And you won’t only find one. You’ll find two, then three, and then more than you can count. You will get married, Little Spenser. And yes, it will be to a man, even though you can’t believe that’s possible right now. You’ll get married to a wonderful man who wants to take care of you and love you and live a life with you.
You’ll have children too. One for sure, a sweet, beautiful boy who loves to dance and who will teach you how to dance too. You hopefully will have three more children, the nieces and nephew of your husband. Maybe you’ll have more children, because you’re going to be a foster parent. That’s right. Someday you’ll be able to take in families who need help just like you did. And if I can arrange it, you’ll have a great big house so if four children need a home at once, you can give it to them.
You’ll have wonderful in-laws, a father-in-law who can fix anything and a mother-in-law who teaches you the secret to perfect tortilla
s is to pray over them. And you won’t mind doing it even though you don’t believe in God—you believe in Renata, and that’s enough.
You’ll have friends. Lots of them, but your best ones will be your husband’s employer and his husband. They will also teach you to dance.
So many people will teach you to dance, Little Spenser. You’ll be afraid to do it, because a lot of people will tell you that you can’t, and you’ll be at the front of the line of those people. But you can dance, Spenser Harris. You can dance all day long. You can look like a fool or look like an angel, and it doesn’t matter, so long as you dance. Because sometimes dancing is all we have—and no one can take it from us.
Life is hard. Your life will sometimes be exceptionally difficult. But it will also be good and wonderful. You’re smart and you’re perfect as you are, and you will rise above all your struggles and become an amazing, strong, loving adult. You won’t ever be the fanciest man on the block. But you will always be the man who has the biggest heart and the most love around him. You can’t see it yet, but it’s coming.
Your life will be amazing, Little Spenser. All you have to do is open your heart and let yourself enjoy the dance.
When he finished reading, Tomás closed the laptop and set it aside, pulling Spenser tighter against his body as he kissed his forehead, his cheek, his lips. “It’s beautiful, Spenser. As beautiful as you.”
Spenser kissed him back, stroking his face. “I love you, Tomás. Whatever happens, I love you, and I always will.”
“I love you too.”
Tomás kissed him again, deeper this time, shifting in the bed to cover Spenser with his body. He pushed their clothes aside, and Spenser helped him, until they were naked and twined together, dancing with one another.
Tomás was not prepared for how long and grueling his parents’ immigration hearings would be.
The worst part was it was clear that without Oliver Thompson’s thumb on the judicial scale, the proceedings would have been more drawn-out, and they would have occurred with Tomás’s parents in Mexico. As it was, their “fast-track” case was heard over three two-hour hearings throughout the month of June. Whereas the string of witnesses and testimonials the lawyers had trotted out for Duon had been designed to deliver a neutron bomb, Renata and José’s lawyers were putting in six times the effort just to have a prayer of getting the outcome they desired. The lawyer constantly warned them not to think anything was settled. “Anything could happen. It’s going to depend on the judge and how hard the ICE feels like pushing their side of the case. We have to hope we push harder.”
Push they did. The lawyer presented reams and reams of depositions and testimony citing not only Renata and José’s good standing as members of the community but arguments about why they were crucial to the well-being of the children. Alisa—trembling but bold—took the stand and testified she’d terminated her rights to the children and made it clear her wish was for her parents to act in her stead while she sought drug treatment and other programs to turn her life around. The lawyers laid Tomás’s tax returns for the past six years on the table, pointing out it would be impossible for him to have custody of the children and continue earning enough to care for them without the help of his parents. They did the dance of the seven veils around the issue of his upcoming marriage and adoption, arguing that was different because Duon was being adopted by Spenser, that this was quite an assumption to say Tomás and Spenser must assume care of three children in addition to their own simply because the ICE would prefer to deport their caregivers or send them into the foster care system. They brought up José’s health, noting he’d have no way to support himself in Mexico and that sending him back would be a death sentence. They trotted out pictures of houses shot up with gang bullets in the town Renata and José were originally from, pointing out this was the place they’d be going back to and giving as much evidence as they could that the cartel they’d fled from would still seek retribution. They showed pictures of a roofless wreck of a house Tomás had never seen, was shocked to find out was the home his parents had lived in before they went to Arizona, a home squatting on land that did not belong to the Jimenez family. Every angle they could work, the lawyers did.
Every night, Tomás went home, curled into a ball, and wept.
Spenser was beside him every moment of the ordeal, and he, Duon, and Laurie and Ed did their best to comfort Tomás, but there was no true comfort that could come until the hearing was finished. When the arguments were over and the final hearing was set for June 26, Tomás marked the date in red on his calendar, staring at it every morning as he numbly approached his personal doomsday.
He did his best to distract himself. The May recital was long over, but Duon coaxed him to try out for the summer talent show at Halcyon, and they spent hours perfecting a pointe routine with Laurie to keep him from thinking about whether or not he was counting down to his last days with his parents. He also, along with everyone else, threw up his hands in frustration with every passing day that the Supreme Court failed to rule on DOMA.
“Can they get away without saying anything at all?” Laurie asked one day as they all sat around in the studio, glaring at a radio that had once again failed to mention the Windsor DOMA case in their list of decisions for the day.
“They can do all sorts of things.” Spenser waved a hand at the radio. “They can kick it back to the lower courts. They can uphold it. They can ask Congress to adjust it.”
“And they can simply strike it down,” Ed pointed out.
God, but Tomás needed them to do that. He thought about it late at night, his emotions so high he couldn’t sleep and had to pace the apartment. Sometimes they were so much he had to go to the roof, to stand there with the night wind whipping around him, trying in vain to steal his pain.
The night before the hearing he went to the roof with intent to remain there all night long, but he only had a few minutes to himself before the access door opened and Spenser and Duon emerged to join him.
“We couldn’t sleep either.” Spenser came over to him and hugged his side. “We didn’t want you to be alone.”
Tomás hugged him back, taking Duon under his other arm when he hovered close, looking like he was trying to find a way in. Tomás cherished this part of his family even as he sent up fervent, constant prayers he didn’t lose the other half. He’d spent the evening with his parents, had been tempted to stay up with them all night, but they were as tense as he was, and his mother insisted his father get sleep.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if they send them away,” he whispered, voice breaking.
“We’ll move to Texas or Arizona,” Spenser said. “Get passports. We’ll visit them as often as we can.”
“Both those states are hot as hell and bigoted as fuck. And even if they struck down DOMA, we wouldn’t be married there.”
“Maybe they’ll rule for marriage equality someday, and we would be. And not everyone there is a bigot. We’ll find a good place. We’ll make it work.”
“You’re just getting back with your mom. We can’t leave Minnesota.” He let out a shuddering sigh. “I don’t want to leave Minnesota.”
“I can fly to her. She can fly to me.” Spenser took hold of Tomás’s arms and looked him in the eye. “We will make this work, do you hear me? No matter what. You are my family. You and Duon and your parents and your nieces and nephew. We will make this work. No matter if the government says your parents can be citizens or not. No matter if they say we’re married or not. No matter what, Tomás Jimenez. Do you hear me? No matter what. We’re going to dance, like you said. Together.”
Tomás nodded, swallowing the thickness in his throat as best he could. Then he looked around, frowning. “Where did Duon go?”
“I don’t know. He was here a second ago, I thought.”
Just as Tomás was about to go look for him, the door opened again, and Duon came through it—followed by Renata, José, and the kids. “I went to get something and heard them talking.
We might as well all be awake together.” He held up his Bluetooth speaker over his head. “And I figured we might as well make it a party.”
They did. On the rooftop of the apartment building Tomás had lived in almost his entire life, they played music, held hands, hugged each other, laughed, cried, and danced. Duon played DJ, taking requests, hunting things down when Renata and José came up with songs he didn’t have. But when a MIKA song began to play, Duon took Spenser’s and Tomás’s hands and led them into the center of the rooftop.
“This is our song. We gonna dance the sh—heck out of this,” he amended, glancing at the kids.
Tomás had heard this particular song before because Duon and Spenser played it all the damn time. He hadn’t thought of it as his song before. But as the three of them laughed, held hands, and boogied down that night, the words wrapped tight around Tomás, and it did indeed become his song. They were young and strong. They were where they belonged, didn’t need anyone to tell them who or where they should be. And they would be there no matter what happened. They were free. They would go on, even if they had to move forward bloody against the tide.
But they would do it as a family. The three of them, the five of them, the eight of them, the nine of them. Because they would be together. Always, for as long as their lives would let them.
They never slept, though the kids did curl up on a blanket Renata fetched for them. Duon played “their” song over and over, and the three of them shouted the lyrics into the night.
At four in the morning they went back downstairs, where Renata made a great feast, cooking what seemed to be everything in the house. No one looked at the suitcases packed beside the door, which would be placed in the trunk of the car, in case. No one thought about what would happen if they needed to be used. In that moment, they lived and laughed together. They told stories. They teased each other. They made dreams and promises they weren’t sure they’d be able to keep.
Enjoy the Dance Page 23