“Months, not years.” Yolanda means for her voice to be clipped, but it cracks into self-pity. For a moment she cries into the coarse canvas of his jacket.
Cal pats her, and then gently steps out of her clutching embrace. His eyes are full of compassion and hurt. He unzips his jacket, removes it, and hangs it carefully on the back of a kitchen chair. He’s looking at his hands, not her, and Yolanda is afraid. “It’s been nearly six months since you’ve spoken to me, Yo. After over a year together. Why call now?”
Yolanda shrugs. Because I missed you, she might say. Because I’m scared. Because I need to be distracted from what is happening. Because I am alone.
Cal waits for her answer, and when it doesn’t come, he lets out a long breath, swipes his calloused hand down his cheek with a sound of sandpaper. He sits. Elbows on thighs, head dropped over limp hands. The knees of his Levi’s are worn nearly white. He searches the linoleum between his work boots. She remains standing before him, a child being reprimanded. The shoulders in his sweatshirt are strong.
When he lifts his head, those brown, kind basset-hound eyes are steady. “If you want to go it alone, you can, Yo. But you should be aware that it’s hard for me, too.”
Oh, I’m sorry, she nearly says, flaring. What can I do to make my terminal cancer easier on you? But it’s not what she wants or means, and she knows she couldn’t get the sentences out whole anyway.
“I’d like to help you, and it hurts that you don’t want me to.” He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, swipes them down his thighs, then hooks thumbs in pockets, before letting them fall once again. “I’d like to say that I’ll always be here for you, but I’m not sure it’s an offer that won’t expire.”
She knows that he has only said what is true, and that it is, furthermore, a brave thing to say. She thinks about Cal’s marriage, the ex-wife who dropped him once she got her real estate license and whom he has never once, in Yolanda’s hearing, bad-mouthed. He’s not a man who deserves to be left, and yet he has been, again and again. He’s a good man.
“Expire. Well.” Yolanda forces a laugh. “I guess the question is which expires first, me or the offer.” The words come, assured and correct, as if her brain has gathered its forces for this parting.
Cal shakes his head. “You don’t have to be so self-protective, Yolanda.” Yolanda senses that if she took his hand now, he would follow her to the bedroom. It would be easy, wonderfully easy, to draw him toward her, to move his hands to her breasts. And god knows Yolanda needs it. She wants him on top of her, crushing the pain out of her.
He’s not her true love, and she understands that she won’t, after all, find that now. She can appreciate the comfort he gives, the possibility that when it happens she won’t be alone. But she doesn’t reach for him. Perhaps she simply—even at this stage—needs to prove to him that she doesn’t need him. Perhaps, for once, she is thinking of Cal.
“Thank you for coming, Cal,” she says gently, focusing hard on each word. “It means so much to me. I appreciate the time we’ve had together.” The words sound scripted, simultaneously too saccharine and too cold, but they are true.
The muscles in Cal’s jaw pulse. “Okay,” he says finally, breaking eye contact. He stands, pushing up with palms on thighs, then slaps his thighs once with finality. He’s not looking at her at all. “Okay,” he says, and then he’s gone.
Amadeo marvels at his daughter’s ease with his uncle. Tío Tíve now delivers groceries to their house, once or twice a week, batting away Amadeo’s thanks, setting them before Angel like offerings. At first he brings the same cans of beans and beef stew and packaged tortillas that he buys for himself, until Angel intervenes.
“This is so nice of you, Tío. To help you next time, I made a little list of things that we specially need. Like, vegetables and stuff.”