True North

by Nicole French

  “What do you mean?” Nico asks, his brow furrowed in confusion. He pulls his hat backward so he can see me clearly, and for a moment, I’m taken aback by the beauty of his face, even in its confusion. The curl of his lashes, the almond-shaped eyes. The carved cheekbones and full lips. It’s not a face I’ll ever tire of.

  I clear my throat. Okay, pregnancy is seriously doing things to my libido. I’ve barely slept in two days, we’ve just accomplished a major victory in his mother’s life, and all I can think about is getting this man into bed. Where are my priorities?

  “Well, I tried,” I say. “But the clerk really didn’t want to give me the birth certificate. She said no, rejected the money I brought. I was freaking out, and then…my dad showed up.”

  I look at Dad, who actually looks somewhat bashful. It’s a weird look for him––his olive skin is slightly flushed, and for the first time, he can’t totally make eye contact with me. It’s…sweet.

  “She didn’t like me,” I tell Nico. “But she liked my dad.”

  Everyone else listens to the story as I relay the rest as best I can, considering I didn’t completely understand the entire exchange. But in the end, the meaning is clear, and everyone, even my mom, is gazing at my dad with gratitude.

  “You did good, Serge,” Mom murmurs, earning a soft look from my dad. Huh.

  Nico steps forward, and his family quiets a little, despite the hum of the city moving around us. Nico extends his hand––the same hand that gave my dad the bruise over his cheek.

  “Thank you,” he says solemnly. “I mean it. Me, my family. We’re in your debt, Dr. Barros.”

  They shake hands for what seems like an eternity, and it really does seem like something passes between them. Something big.

  Carmen pushes her way through her kids to stand in front of my father.

  “Dios le bendiga,” she says. God bless you. “Dr. Barros. Thank you.”

  Dad blinks, a sheen clear over his deep-set eyes. He shakes his head––something about the blessing got to him, but I’m not sure what it is. She beckons him down, and to my surprise, he obeys, allowing her to kiss him on both cheeks on a busy street in the middle of New York.

  “‘Brigado,” he murmurs, seemingly unaware that he’s lapsed into Portuguese instead of Spanish.

  “Time to celebrate!” calls out Alba. “My house, now! Food, everything. It will be perfect. K.C., you go pick up some pizzas, okay?”

  K.C. shrugs, like he’s not a well-known DJ at this point, just a kid who takes orders from his mother. “Sure, Ma. Whatever you say.”

  “Come on. Sergio and Cheryl, you too!” Alba calls. And before my parents can answer, she gets into a cab with K.C., followed soon after by the rest of us.

  ~

  “So, habla español, huh?” Nico asks my dad as they both sprinkle their slices with extra hot chili flakes.

  Mom watches as Nico folds his massive slice in half lengthwise so he can hold it without it flopping over, then gingerly does the same with what’s probably the first piece of pizza she’s had in ten years.

  Dad quirks a sardonic smile and gives a brief nod. “Some, yes. I learned in Argentina when I was a boy. Not so bad for a culo, eh?”

  Nico raises a brow, though he has to suppress a smile. “Good to know. Now if the baby’s first language is Spanish, you’ll be able to speak to it.”

  Dad looks less than pleased by the idea, but he says nothing. Mom just takes another tiny bite of her pizza and pretends not to have heard anything.

  Nico looks at me. “What do you think, baby? Should we try to speak Spanish at home?”

  I shrug. “I mean, sure. I bet just having Carmen as its grandma guarantees the baby will be fluent, don’t you think?”

  “Baby?” Carmen’s voice cuts through the clamor around Alba’s big table. “Quién va tener un bebé, papito?”

  Nico pauses mid-bite, his face slightly reddened. Oh. Of course. In the craze of everything, no one knows our big news.

  He swallows heavily, then sets his slice down on his paper plate. “Ah, well, Mami…” He reaches out an errant hand, and immediately I take it in my lap and squeeze. “We found out in Brazil that…well, Layla’s pregnant. And while we were there, well, I asked her to marry me, and”––he grins––“she said yes.”

  “What?” Selena cries out.

  “That’s amazing!” Maggie shouts, just as Gabe reaches around me to slap Nico’s shoulder. Immediately, almost everyone in Nico’s family is on their feet, and we are too, accepting another round of kisses and congratulations and hugs like crazy from everyone in the room. Allie immediately jumps up and demands to be the flower girl, while Alba starts talking about dates with Carmen. I grin at Nico over K.C.’s shoulder. His eyes shine with happiness.

  “Was it a shotgun proposal, Dr. Barros?” K.C. jokes.

  Everyone turns to my dad, who still hasn’t gotten up. My mom sits next to him, blank-faced, though clearly she already knew––there is no surprise on her face. My heart falls. No, Dad, I will him. I know what’s coming.

  “No, asshole,” Nico shoots back at K.C. “I asked her before, if you really have to know.” He turns to me and presses a sweet kiss on my lips. “So we’re getting married. Soon, I hope.”

  There’s a loud clearing of a throat. I shut my eyes. Shit.

  “No, you’re not.”

  Just like that, all of the joy in the room vanishes as everyone turns once again to my father. Dad pushes a hand through his hair, then crosses his arms over his chest. His pizza sits on his plate, growing cold. I doubt it’s going to get eaten now.

  “I am sorry,” he says slowly, looking at me, not everyone else. “I didn’t want to do this now. Not with the celebration and everything. But you’re too young, Layla. He is…even with the baby, he is…this boy is not a good fit for you. He will not be able to give you the same life you have. The life you know. You are too…different.”

  He gestures toward Nico, like there is something there that I should see in him that’s self-evident. Whether it’s the tattoo on his arm or the darker color of his skin, the fact that he has a delinquent record or that he grew up in relative poverty…it’s all just surface. None of it matters.

  His arm still around my shoulders, Nico shrinks. His eyelashes sweep across his cheeks as he looks down.

  No. Absolutely not. I am not having that.

  I turn to my dad, ready to tell him to get the hell out, but Nico’s family beats me to it.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Who the fuck do you think you are, man?”

  “Coño, who the fuck is this dude, huh?”

  Nico’s family and friends all speak at once, practically jumping over themselves to shout at my dad. Maggie looks like she’s about ten seconds from taking off her earrings, and even Carmen looks like she wants to take a swing at my dad for insulting her son.

  But it’s the last voice that surprises me the most.

  “Sergio, that’s absolutely ridiculous.”

  My mother’s voice drops through the cacophony and cuts them all off at the knees. Dad turns to his wife––if you can even call her that, since they’ve lived apart for close to two years now. But if I’m not mistaken, looking at her pains him a little. I wonder if, despite everything they said, the church wasn’t the only reason they didn’t want to divorce.

  “You don’t know, Serge,” Mom says, speaking directly to him in a voice that is stronger than I’ve ever heard her use with my dad. “We owe that boy Layla’s life.”

  Sergio glares at Nico, but his anger fades when he turns back to Mom. “So he says. But we don’t know really that––”

  “I do,” she corrects him. “Layla stepped off that plane utterly broken, Sergio. Her face. Her soul. She had a cut from here to here.” With a delicate hand, Mom gestures across her eyebrow and up her forehead. I actually still have a delicate scar there, but the surgeon Mom took me to see did good work last spring. You can barely tell anything is there.

 
Nico buries his nose in my hair, but I can feel him vibrating next to me.

  “A man did that to our little girl, Serge,” Mom continues, like there isn’t an audience of nine staring at her. “And would have done worse, I’m sure of it, if this boy hadn’t stepped in!” Her voice is shaking now, and then she turns to Nico. “I never thanked you properly,” she tells him. “But I’m doing it now.”

  “Cheryl, let’s talk about this another time.”

  “We’ll talk about it now,” Mom bites out. “Before you insult Layla’s new family even more.”

  Dad bites his lip, but has the courtesy to look contrite.

  “What I know is this,” Mom says. “This boy is the kind of man who would step in and do what needed to be done…when we were too wrapped up in ourselves to see what was going on.” She pauses and darts a glance at Nico again. “We are very lucky, I think, to have someone like this, like all of the Soltero family, love our daughter. I don’t think we could ask for more.”

  I swallow a sob, and behind her, I see both of Nico’s sisters swiping at their eyes. It means a lot to this family to have the oldest of the kids, their caretaker––the one other people always seemed to see the worst in, but in whom they see and have the best––validated like this. Nico clenches my hand like he’ll never let it go. He’s watching my mom now too, and to my surprise, his eyes are also glossed over. This means more to him than he’d ever want to admit.

  Mom clears her throat. “And if you don’t think so, well, I’ll just have to make sure they don’t need your approval to live. You’re not the only one who can pay bills, Sergio.”

  I turn to Nico, willing him to look at me, to see the belief in us that I have in my eyes. There is nothing I know better than the fact that we are supposed to be together. I would go to hell and back for this man. I would give up everything I know to follow him anywhere. He just needs to see it.

  “Where’s the license?” I ask quietly.

  His black brows quirk, and the side of his mouth twitches. Damn. I really want to kiss him––actually, I want to do a lot more than that. Freaking pregnancy hormones! Focus, Layla!

  Nico pulls out the piece of paper we got at the clerk’s office today, when everyone thought we were going to the restroom after leaving the courthouse. We weren’t.

  “Let’s do it now,” he whispered in between kisses as his black eyes shined with happiness. “I don’t want to wait. Today’s a day for new beginnings, baby. I want ours to start right now.”

  I grinned and pressed my nose to his. “Show me the way.”

  The memory still fresh in my mind, I unfold the paper and hand it to my dad.

  “Tomorrow,” I say, then turn to everyone else, speaking loudly, though my voice shakes. “We’re getting married tomorrow. We decided to elope, and we’re getting married at city hall. Dad, I really want you there. I understand if you can’t. It’s a lot to take. But this baby deserves to have its family intact when it comes into the world. So now…it’s your choice. Support us. Don’t support us. But this is my family too now. And if you can’t treat them with the respect they deserve, then maybe you shouldn’t be here at all.”

  Dad looks at me for a long time, then glances between the two of us. Eventually the energy in the room subsids, but no one moves from the table. Finally, Dad stands with a screech of the chair leg on the floor and comes to stand in front of me.

  “Come,” he says, draping an around over my shoulder and pulling me close.

  Nico releases my hand, and I stand up to lean into my father’s embrace. His familiar scent––Hugo Boss cologne, cachaça, and a hint of cigarette smoke––overwhelms me, and my eyes well up. When I look up, my father’s eyes are closed.

  “This is what you want?” he asks. “This life? It won’t be what you grew up with, Layla. Not like the one I made for you.”

  I shake my head. Like that matters. Like any of that ever mattered at all. “I don’t need you to make a life for me, Dad. I want to make it for myself.”

  He gazes down at me for a long time with a look I barely remember: one of pride.

  “With him?” he asks.

  “He’s the best man I’ve ever met,” I whisper fiercely. I don’t have to say the rest––it lingers anyway: even better than you.

  Dad winces, but holds me that much tighter.

  “I guess…” He sighs. “Tomorrow, then. But you’re not getting married at city hall, linda. Do it right. We’ll find a church, okay?”

  “Sí, sí!” Carmen cuts in on top of my dad. I hear, rather than see her smack Nico on the shoulder. “You are not getting married in a church?” she demands in Spanish.

  I’m released, and when I turn around, Nico is grinning while he fights off his mother’s slaps. He gives me a lopsided smile, as if to say, “What did you expect?” When we had planned to run off and get married, we hadn’t counted on having our two very religious parents fighting our every step.

  “Well, we do already have the license,” he says to me.

  I shrug. I don’t really care where we get married––just that we do.

  Nico turns to his mother and my dad, who have unwittingly found the one thing the both of them care about most: being good Catholics.

  “You find us a church,” he tells them. “And we’ll show up. Otherwise, it’s city hall. Because I’m not waiting more than a few days, and neither is she.”

  ~

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Nico

  I should be nervous, but I’m not. Cold feet, that’s what they call it, right? Well, as I let my mom fix a new red tie around my neck, my feet are anything but cold. They’re perfectly warm and ready to take off at a run the four blocks to the church where I went almost every Sunday for Mass my entire life.

  I don’t know how she did it, but somehow Cheryl managed to convince the priest to officiate a wedding before the six o’clock Mass tonight. Turns out that if Layla’s dad has a way with clerks, her mom has a way with priests. And I can’t tell you how fuckin’ awkward it was hearing about Cheryl charming the pants off Father Boylan. Layla said the man actually blushed.

  Layla and Cheryl stayed at our apartment the last few nights while her dad got a hotel close by, and I went back to work another seventy-two-hour shift that ended this morning. So I haven’t seen Layla in three days, and when I do see her again, I’m going to marry her.

  Cold feet? Try blazing.

  “Ma, it’s fine,” I tell her, batting her hands away. I straighten the knot in front of the mirror, then spread everything down. It’s the same suit I’ve been wearing for years, but I splurged for a new white shirt, and was surprised when Sergio left a gift from him and Cheryl last night––the red tie.

  “Ay, bendito,” Ma murmurs behind me as I check over everything. “You look so handsome, papi.”

  I turn around to face her, and I soften when she reaches up to smooth back my hair.

  “Un hombre,” she says as her hand drifts over my chest.

  I smile. It’s the same thing she said to me when I got dressed for my first real job. I was eighteen and trying to knot a tie for the first time in my life. The new job as a part-time doorman was a step up then, at a time when I wondered if I’d ever be able to get a real job. But slowly, I came to realize that my past didn’t have to define me. That it doesn’t have to define any of us.

  I look over my mother’s shoulder to where my sister plays dominoes with Allie. My niece is about to start school next year––Maggie went overboard and got her a scholarship spot at a private school on the Upper East Side. Maggie catches me watching them and winks. They’re both dressed up––Allie in her little red dress so she can be our impromptu flower girl; Maggie in a flowery green thing that makes her look really pretty. It’s funny, I don’t normally think of her that way, but she is. She’s strong and solid, just like our mom, and usually doesn’t have time to bother with things like getting her hair done or wearing the kinds of clothes that get her a lot of attention. But today, my sister re
ally does look beautiful.

  Gabe strides out of the back room, fixing his glasses and his tie, followed by Selena, who’s just as gussied up. We’re all in more than our Sunday best. But then again, this isn’t any normal Sunday.

  “I look like a penguin,” Gabe says as he comes to stand next to me and look in the mirror. He’s wearing the same as me: a black suit, white shirt, but his tie is black.

  “No, you don’t,” I tell him. “You look like a waiter.”

  “Pare,” Ma orders us. “All of my children look beautiful today.” She surveys us, real joy beaming out of her face. “Every single one.” She turns to the kitchen, where Alba and K.C. are having a drink, and beckons Alba to take our picture.

  “Ma!” Selena protests. “I hate having my picture taken!”

  “Sel, hush,” I tell her, already moving toward the picture window that looks over New York. “Come on. I’m getting married. Pictures are a requirement.”

  With only a little bit of groaning, we assemble together, the four of us standing on either side of our mom. Ma comes to just above my shoulder, taller than I remember her being before. The flowers she put in her hair today tickle my nose; the smell of gardenias filters all around us. But then I realize that for the first time, my mother is standing up straight. She’s not cowered down, trying to hide from the world. Instead, she stands with her head held up, her chest out, looking straight at the camera with an unabashed grin on her face. The realization makes me stand tall too––it makes all of us do it. I toss an arm around Gabe on the other side and pull my sisters close. We’re all grinning already, and it’s not because Alba’s telling us to. Our smiles are real. Even Allie, clutched by her grandmother, can’t stop giggling.

  This feeling won’t last. Life is like that––bad things happen. People get sick. They lose their jobs. Shit happens that make things hard, but they also make the sweet moments like this that much better. My family has dealt with the bitter for a long time. I close my eyes for a second. For just a moment, we finally get to enjoy a little bit of the sweet.