At dusk, she emerges again, whispering to Connor. She crosses the hall, shutting the bathroom door. Water runs, and she’s in there so long he understands that she’s bathing the baby. Connor squeals, but his daughter’s replies are muted.
Amadeo sits rigidly on the couch, his eye trained on the hall, his tense fingers pressing into the warm can. The beers do nothing to still his agitation.
The living room has darkened. He’s lying in wait for his daughter, though he doesn’t exactly know what he wants from her. Rather, he does know what he wants from her: attention, forgiveness, love. He wants her to join him in the living room. All things he has no right to.
When she opens the door, Connor rubs his eyes and the top of his head, mussing his damp curls. The smell of baby shampoo reaches Amadeo and fills him with a yearning nostalgia for a simpler, cozier time, a time that has never, for him, existed.
“Hey!” he calls, and she freezes without turning. “Aren’t you going to eat? Have you eaten all day?”
“No. Thanks. We’re going to bed.”
“We need to talk.” His voice comes out sounding high. “You can’t just ignore me. I’m your dad.” He realizes that pulling rank is not the best tactic, given his recent sins against her, and given how much responsibility she has had to shoulder. Her face is in shadow.
“What do you want to talk about?” She hitches the baby higher on her hip.
Amadeo falters. “Nothing, I guess. You go ahead and put him to bed.”
Now she turns to him. Her jaw is set. When Connor catches sight of his grandfather, his face splits into a rubbery grin and he grabs at the air to wave. Amadeo doesn’t wave back. “We could talk about the fact that you’re drinking all the damn time. Or, you know, we could talk about how I’m doing in school. You may be interested to know that I got kicked out. For chewing a piece of gum. Your little girlfriend expelled me.”
“What? But you’re one of the best in the class. Brianna told me so.”
Angel flaps one arm up at the pointlessness of his argument, lets it fall.
“She can’t do that to you. I’m going to talk to her. I’ll go there now.”
“You think that’s gonna work? Mr. President of the PTA? And how are you going to get there? Limo?”
“I’ll take care of this, Angel.”
“Whatever.”
Long after, Amadeo contemplates the phone in his hand, then dials. As he listens to the phone ring and ring, his heart sloshes in his chest. He’s enraged at this woman for bullying his daughter, but he’s nervous, too, and he hates that he’s so nervous. And he’s also unsure, both of his own rights and of Angel’s. He’s already composing his voicemail in his head （It’s Amadeo, we need to talk） when she picks up.
“Before you say anything, I want to be clear that I am speaking to you in an official capacity, as Angel’s teacher.”
“You’re ruining her life over a piece of gum?”
Brianna laughs, one contemptuous honk. “That’s a bit of an overstatement, don’t you think?”
“You’re kicking her out of school over a piece of gum. It’s not about gum, and you know it.”
Amadeo pictures her exactly, her splotchy flushed throat, the anxious blinking. But when she speaks her voice is smooth and collected, brittle. It is the voice of Valerie, of Monica Gutierrez-Larsen, the voice of all these pushy professional women who think they can get the best of him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Padilla. The zero-tolerance rule is what keeps the program functioning.”
“Mr. Padilla? You fucking joking me?”