“？Co?o!” Olga said. “I know you’re traumatized from Papi and shit, but you’re an elected official. Educate yourself. Not sure if you heard, Prieto, nobody dies of AIDS anymore. At least not in America. You just get stuck taking a shit-ton of meds that might leave you broke and not feeling amazing, but you can literally end up undetectable. Let me finish my story before you start fucking rumors.”
Prieto paused. “So then how did he die? If he didn’t die of AIDS?”
“He killed himself,” Olga said. Her brother banged the wheel again. “He hung himself in his fucking closet when he found out. Can you believe it?”
Prieto stared at the road ahead, silent.
Here, Olga saw a long-closed window and decided now was as good a time as any to attempt to pry it open.
“It’s crazy because even though he lived with another man for almost two decades, he was still in the closet. Can you believe it? When I went to his funeral, no one in his family ‘knew’ he was gay.”
“Why do you say it like that?” Prieto said. “With your hands like that. They didn’t ‘know.’”
“Because, Prieto,” and she turned her full body towards her brother now, and with frankness said, “everyone always knows, all right? They just never say anything. They might all want to go along with the story forever, if given the chance, but if told the truth, they would never be surprised. Don’t you think?”
Her brother glanced at her. There was silence for a long moment. The window would stay closed, and so she moved on.
“Anyway, you’re acting so crazy, you made me forget the point of even telling you about this.”
“When did it happen?”
“Five, six weeks ago?” Olga continued quickly so as not to get derailed from her objective. “His boyfriend Christian realizes, after the funeral and the celebration of life and the dust of the whole thing settles, that the only way the math on his life—the apartment, the jobs he has, his Obamacare, all of it—the only way it works is if there are two incomes in the house and now he’s down to one. So, he calls Jan’s old boss to see if he can pick up a couple of shifts, but the guy is a performance queen—I mean, he’s done some light bookkeeping and reception work—but he was not cut out for that waiter life. They gave him a chance and I can tell you it was a first and last because he was working the party today and did a face-plant while carrying a tray of caipirinhas.”
Olga looked at her brother, who seemed lost in his thoughts. She figured she would make the suggestion now, while he seemed distracted, to see how it landed.
“Anyway, he was so distraught, I felt like I had to try to help and the easiest way to do so was finding him a cheaper place to live, so I offered him up the second-floor apartment as soon as Mabel gets out of there. We can give it a fresh coat of paint, ya?”
There was a pause and Olga was about to move on to another topic, patting herself on the back for how smooth this had been, when Prieto turned off the music.
“Olga, that is so not cool. We always said that was our family apartment.”
“Yes, for when our family is in need, Prieto, and, God bless, we’re all good right now. Tony might want the place, but he’ll still want it next year. Lord knows he’s not getting a spot on his own between now and then. There’s no way Christian will want to live all the way out in Sunset for more than a year and—”
“And my daughter lives in that house, Olga. And he’s a stranger.”
Olga felt her throat get tight.
“He’s a stranger to you. And it’s a separate fucking apartment, Prieto, with its own doors and its own locks. He has his own life and while I love Lourdes dearly, I don’t think hanging with a twelve-year-old is his schtick, you know?”
There was a thick silence. Her desire to do a good deed was now situated in opposition to her brother’s fears. Olga could feel her anger quickening, the vexation overtaking her rational mind. She tried to calm herself before she played the card they both knew she held in her back pocket.
* * *
THOUGH OLGA NORMALLY delighted in advantages, this was one that made her uncomfortable: the knowledge that the house, the epicenter of the Ortiz clan, had not been left, as one would have thought, to all the children, or even all the grandchildren, or even to just the two grandchildren who had lived in the little limestone on Fifty-third Street for their whole lives. Instead, Abuelita had decided that the best way to keep the house, and thus the family, intact was to leave it in the hands of just one person, and that person was Olga.