The Burning Side(83)

Cameron and Otto flip through a picture book as we wait for Rico. Leo has decided to let him meet his grandchildren. But when the songs and books are over and the table is set, Rico still hasn’t arrived.

Leo glances at the clock and then at his phone. “Oh.” He taps his screen. “He texted. Says his alternator went out and he’s on a Greyhound bus. Sounds like he’ll be pretty late.”

Rachel says we’ll wait. She covers the food and crams dishes into the warm oven.

An hour later, Otto is whining, even with a steady drip of Cheerios.

Leo sighs. “Let’s just go ahead and eat.”

Everyone looks around uncertainly, so he adds, “It’s getting late.” And he goes to the oven to get the food. Stomachs growling, nobody argues.

Otto devours a pumpkin tamale and begs for more. Cameron tells holiday jokes that delight his father. And as Otto is polishing off the last pumpkin tamale, there’s a knock at the front door.

Cameron disappears from the room, and he comes back in with Rico, whose hair is slicked. He is holding two gift bags. His fingernails are scrubbed clean.

“I’m really sorry.” Looking at his toes, he says something about his clunker of a car and the bus schedule and—he raises the gift bags a bit—that he didn’t know Sadie’s favorite color.

I smile at Rico with his tidy hair and long trek. Love can hide in our best efforts.

Josie jumps up from the table and goes over to him. “I’m April’s sister, Josie.” She sticks out her hand. “Texas public transportation sucks. You must be starving.”

At her cue, everyone springs into action.

Rachel introduces herself and offers to take his jacket.

Billy says, “Good to see you again.” Which isn’t saying much, because he now defaults to assuming that he should know everyone. I’m curious as to whether he truly recognizes Rico, though I suspect he doesn’t. It has been six months since our one unwitting encounter.

Rico spots Sadie hiding behind her mother’s chair, a finger hooked shyly in her mouth as she eyes this man who looks suspiciously like her dad. It was hard for her to understand that she has two grandfathers. If this is true, she asked Leo, then do I have another grandmother somewhere too?

Rico kneels eye level with Sadie, not too close, and he extends one of the gift bags. Slowly, she extracts a doll in a purple dress, and she grins, shimmying her shoulders back and forth a tad. Chin tucked into her neck, she tells him, “Purple’s my favorite color.”

This is patently false. That girl is obsessed with yellow, she talks about it all the time. But something about this interaction has made her say purple to the man with her daddy’s face.

Rico lights up, his grin silver and sincere, and Sadie considers him. Then she steps forward and wraps her arms around his neck, declaring, “I’m going to name her…Lofee!”

She runs off with Lofee, and Rico rises, his knees cracking.

Otto is in Leo’s arms, eyeing the other gift. He points at it. “My?”

Rico faces Leo now. “Hope I didn’t make you wait too long.”

The rest of us try to give them privacy.

Rico says, “I wanted to be here sooner.”

He wanted to. But he wasn’t. And now he is. It’s so much of life, the timing.

Otto stretches to peek into the gift bag, and Rico helps him part the tissue paper to reveal some Hot Wheels. Otto claps. “Car!”

Rico puts a hand to his grandson’s shoulder and says, “Dios mío.” He shakes his head. “Spitting image.”

“Car,” Otto repeats, sandwiched between his father and grandfather.

At the end of the evening, the kids fall asleep with their toys in hand. Games and music have been played. Rico has made some frothy hot chocolate. I have made some valiant attempts at speaking Spanish. And Billy has squinted at Rico and said, “Did I borrow a hammer from you?” He exists in a thickening fog where he knows that he knows people, just not how.

After the dishes are done, I sneak over to Rico while Billy gets our jackets. I pull a small package from my purse, wrapped in shiny paper and tied with ribbon. When I hand it to Rico, he’s horrified to have nothing in return, and I suddenly feel thoughtless. “No, it’s really not a big deal!” I press the gift into his hand. “Your son wrote this, and I just thought you might want to read it.” I bought whole boxes of Seventh City when Leo published it, bragging to the neighborhood ladies and also saving a stash for occasions like this.

Billy returns and drapes my jacket over my shoulders. He shakes Rico’s free hand. As before, his skin is a blank canvas beside Rico’s sleeve of tattoos.

The two grandfathers slip into their coats as Billy offers his default, “See you soon.”

Rico gives his shoulder a squeeze. “Take it easy, papi.”

Waving good night to our kids, we take our leave into the crisp December air.

On the drive home, I decide against Rosetta Stone. I’m too tired to repeatedly explain that I can’t understand it, that I’m trying to learn. Yes, even though it’s hard. Yes, even at my age.

Instead, I turn the classical station on low volume, and I get a memory of something Billy’s mother once said as she sat at her Kawai piano with curlers in her hair: Home is the note where the song starts. Come back to it for the resolve.