Angel’s eyes well, and her left one overflows. The tear runs fat and hot down her cheek, and she swipes it away. Yes. It’s her life, her one life, to be treasured and tended and protected. How has she never seen it like this? How has it taken Ryan, this pale, zitty teenager, to show her this?
But then Ryan says, “You gotta just ask for what you want.”
Angel looks at him in disbelief. Just ask for what you want. Of course he thinks he can just ask for what he wants. He’s a guy, white, the precious only child of a mother focused entirely on him. He’s got a minivan and a college fund. He’s every bit as culpable for Connor’s creation, yet being a parent hasn’t cramped his style any. He’s still in school, acing English and kissing up to teachers. He goes to fucking media camp. What even is that? Where he learns to be a newscaster? Angel would like to do that, why not? She thinks of how in geometry, he always raised his hand, regardless of whether he knew the right answer. At the time, she thought his willingness to be so publicly wrong stemmed from a kind of misplaced, witless courage, and she’d been almost touched, but now she sees it for what it is: pure entitlement. She thinks of her own grandmother, greeting him with such obvious pleasure, praising him for stopping by. Oh, what a good boy! As if, for the simple gesture of not completely ignoring his own infant son, he’s in the running for a Nobel.
“I mean it,” he says earnestly, bouncing Connor. “The future is yours.” He’s proud of himself, she realizes, truly thinks he’s helping someone less fortunate, buying her a hamburger dinner out of his allowance and giving her an inspiring little heart-to-heart. He thinks he’s doing his part to encourage her. He’ll probably put it on his college application: mentored a teen mother.
Now he’s staring at her, puzzled. He can’t even guess at how little he understands.
A rage rises in Angel so vicious she can’t stand it. She wants to leap up, but holds herself motionless. “He’s not yours, you know,” she says.
Ryan’s knee stills, and the smile drops from his face. Connor’s shrieks last a beat longer, and he rocks on his butt, trying to get Ryan’s knee to bounce again.
Ryan’s mouth actually drops. “What do you mean?” The words sound as if they’ve been squeezed from him.
Satisfaction washes through Angel. She half thought he’d be relieved, then realizes, no, of course she knew he’d be hurt, and that’s why she said it. “I lied to you.” Her voice is airy, as if it’s coming from some other person. “Look at him. He doesn’t look nothing like you. You were just too stupid to figure it out.” She despises him for taking her at her word, for his kindness to her and to Connor. Doesn’t he know she’s a slut? Didn’t he ever think to wonder if the kid was his? She hates his awful uneven facial hair, his pale skin, his lank curls, the frankness of his vulnerability.
“You’re not the only guy I’ve fucked,” she says kindly, cruelly, and is pleased when he flinches at the word. “You’re not special.”
“I don’t think I’m special.” On Ryan’s lap, Connor leans forward at the waist, grabbing at a napkin and giving it a thrashing Ryan holds onto Connor’s other hand. “Can I still hang out with him?”
Angel looks at him, astonished. “No,” she says, afraid of herself. “I can’t trust you with him.” She is Connor’s mother, and if she doesn’t want someone to see her child, they can’t see him. Who knew she had it in her, this authority?
“I keep forgetting that you don’t like me. I don’t know why I keep forgetting that.”
Angel is abashed, but why? She doesn’t like him. And then she’s angry again, because it isn’t Angel he’s sorry to lose, anyway, but Connor.
She stands. She thinks about plucking Connor from Ryan’s arms, detaching Connor’s clinging fist from Ryan’s finger.
“You know what? You want to be his father? Fine. Be his father. You can take care of him for once.” She swings her purse onto her shoulder.