Once again he trains his eyes on the Christ up there.
“My mother’s dying,” he tells the statue.
The man on his cross offers nothing. He is gazing at his own bleeding feet.
Jesus also had to take leave of his mother. Amadeo tries to remember this, but the story feels distant and dead.
The story was sadder for Mary, Amadeo realizes, because Jesus never doubted he was the Son of God. Mary, on the other hand—surely she had her doubts. Even if she loved her son and was proud of him, and liked the stuff he was saying about love and humility and all that, surely she sometimes wondered if her kid was nothing more than a deluded narcissist, with gifts, not of prophecy or divinity, but mere charisma. At what point did she begin to believe him, this kid whose diapers she changed and spit-up she wiped? Did she ever wonder if the wine and fishes were cheap conjuring tricks? Until they rolled that stone away, was she ever entirely free of doubt?
At what point might he, Amadeo, begin to believe that Connor, with his unhinged joyful garble, his single-minded focus on gumming his copy of Good Night, Gorilla, might have something to teach him?
He always assumed there was time, time to grow up, time to quit drinking, time to become the astonishing individual he’s surely been on his way to becoming. Now, what’s the point? Who is his audience?
The morada is changed. How had he ever believed this place held magic? It’s just an old gas station, empty but for some benches. He feels like a fool for ever having trusted in it. He should have known better than to seek comfort here.
This whole enterprise—the hermandad, the ritual—it’s all just created by people, feeble, limited people. He thinks of himself hauling the cross up Calvario. His swagger, his exaggerated acting, his humiliating belief that the performance meant something. All the while his mother was losing herself.
“Why?” he asks the man on the cross. “Why do you got to make it all so hard?” But he’s entirely alone in this room.
He flexes his hand, pokes the pink knot of scar. He remembers the fact that the injury hurt, but he can’t summon an actual memory of the pain, which is something his mother has said about childbirth. “That’s why, like an idiot, I went and did it again. But you were worth it, hijito.” If he can’t remember the pain, how could it have meant anything at all? How could Christ’s pain have meant anything over all these centuries?
The knuckles of his thumbs are pressed into his eye sockets, smearing flashes of red and green, when he hears a key grinding in the door. He leans back on his heels, blinks. The door scrapes along the concrete, and daylight leaps in.
“Oh,” says Al Martinez. He runs his hands through still-thick hair. “I didn’t think anyone was here. The lot was empty.” Another younger, smaller man is with him.
“Hey,” Amadeo says eagerly, standing.
The two men hover near the door. “Don’t let me disturb you,” says Al.
“No, no! I’m not disturbed.”
“This is my boy, Isaiah. Isaiah, Amadeo.” Al flashes a guilty glance at his son.
So this is the addict. “Good to meet you, man.” Amadeo shakes his hand.
Isaiah Martinez is thinner and less robust than his father, but takes after him, with a short beard and features that are fine and handsome. When he smiles, the skin around his steady eyes creases.
“I wanted to show him the place,” Al says.
Amadeo would like to engage the old guy in conversation, but they’ve never spoken about anything not directly related to the morada. Maybe they can go get something to eat. “So how’re you guys doing?”
But both men have turned away from Amadeo. Isaiah is standing with his arms loose at his sides, staring at the statue of Christ.