When the first call comes, Angel is at school, which turns out to be a good thing.
“You fix car windows?” the man says.
“Most definitely.” Amadeo glances at the clock above the stove. Angel will be home in an hour, so they can head out then. “Where you located?”
“Do you take insurance?”
“No,” says Amadeo.
The guy goes on as if Amadeo hasn’t said a word. “My window’s all busted up. Passenger side. Some asshole smashed it, didn’t even take nothing.”
“Oh, see, if it’s totally broken I can’t help you. If you got a crack, then I’m your man.”
“You can’t replace a window?” The incredulity in the guy’s tone is insulting.
“No,” says Amadeo deliberately. “I just told you that.”
“You kidding me? I got your flyer right here. You said, let me see—” A rustle, then the man comes back on the line. “Let me save your life!!!!!!! All cracks fixed, cheap,” emphasis on all. “I’m gonna call Windshield Doctor. I only called you because you said you were cheap.”
“Yeah, well, a pile of shattered glass isn’t a crack,” Amadeo says, but the line is dead.
FOR TWO DAYS, Amadeo refuses to go on his rounds. “There’s no point.”
“You can’t get discouraged.” The concern in Angel’s expression makes him feel worse.
“It’s fine, Angel. Let it be.”
“We just got to let the advertising do its work. People will call.”
The next morning, he wakes to find that Angel has slipped an article under his door: Fail Your Way to Success: Lessons in Resilience. At the top, in Brianna’s photocopied handwriting, are reading comprehension questions. The text is covered in pink highlighter. Amadeo snorts, but he’s moved by Angel’s gesture, and actually the article is pretty inspiring. Apparently seventy percent of start-ups fail. There are some useful tips for instilling resilience in children, too, and he sees where Angel gets some of the things she tells Connor: “You’re really trying to lift your head, baby. It’s hard work, but keep trying and you’ll get it.” Amadeo doesn’t recall ever having praised Angel for hard work—and certainly not for lifting her head, which seems like a low bar—yet Angel has turned out to be remarkably resilient.
That night Amadeo intercepts his mother as she walks in the door, laden with grocery bags, the plastic handles cutting into her wrists. “Mom, listen. Can you take my flyers to work? Pass them out? I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before.”
His mother’s coworkers do this kind of thing, swap favors and support each other’s enterprises. For years Yolanda has been bringing home vitamins and health drinks and cosmetics from one or another of “the girls” at work. While the state’s dilatory business creeps along, interminable meetings arranged and attended, meaningless press conferences held, bills proposed and drafted that will never see the light of day, other business flourishes in the halls and offices of the Capitol building: turquoise jewelry is haggled over, Super Bowl pools bought into, homemade tamales and tortillas pulled from coolers and tucked snugly into desk drawers until five o’clock. All around the circular halls, money is changing hands, private economies prospering. When Amadeo was a kid, whenever his school held magazine or chocolate fund-raisers, while his friends trudged door to door or sat bored in hot supermarket parking lots, Amadeo had only to send his mother to work with the order form and wait for his incentive prizes to roll in.
Yolanda detangles herself from the bags, but shows no sign of putting the groceries away. She leans against the counter and rubs her eyes so violently that Amadeo winces. “Oh, honey, I’m not so sure.”
“You never believe in me!” Glancing at his daughter feeding the baby in the living room, he lowers his voice. “I need a support system.”