As she pushes through the glass door, she looks back at them. Connor isn’t even watching as his mother strides away: he’s riveted by Ryan’s stricken face. He stands unsteadily on Ryan’s thighs, bucking, his greasy fist tight on Ryan’s collar.
Pain is jagged in her chest, and she crosses the parking lot and then the street. The sky is low and deep blue with the cold dusk.
ANGEL MANAGES TO make it all the way to Lizette’s street, her phone shoved deep in her pocket, fingers clenched around it, before she checks her messages. Ryan hasn’t texted. Fuck him, she thinks, each word punctuating a step. Fuck him fuck him. But already, through her jumpy anger, her worry for Connor reasserts itself. Remorse descends like a sodden woolen cloak, itchy and claustrophobic and intolerable.
Her mother, Priscilla, Brianna, and now Ryan. It is so easy to cut people out, to make permanent rifts. She hadn’t known this. She’d always thought there was room for fights, for cruelty, that things would work themselves out, given enough time, given enough honest conversation. She hadn’t ever really wanted to push any of them away—she was only asking them to draw her close again, testing to see whether they’d let her go. And always, always, they’ve let her go. The only person who wouldn’t let her go is her grandmother, but her grandmother is dead.
Ten minutes from home. Amadeo has spent the day out driving, making up errands in Espa?ola to be out of that empty house: gas station, Walmart for diapers, Dollarland for zipping sandwich baggies that don’t seal too well, but are fine for crackers. Thank god he can drive again. The stores are frantic with Christmas cheer, tinsel and cardboard cutouts shiver above the aisles. Now it’s dusk, and he’s climbed out of the flat sea bottom of Espa?ola, the lights smeared in his peripheral vision, into the safety of the trees.
He’s on the tight road that will lead to his door, and the closer he gets, the higher his anxiety creeps, until he’s actually quaking.
It’s Angel who does it to him, snapping, putting him in his place, withholding. She’s been angry since his mother died, since before, since forever. Just occupying the same room with her is torture, waiting for her to turn on him with righteous condemnation.
Amadeo pulls onto the shoulder, fishes a mini of vodka from the plastic bag on the passenger mat. The metal top comes off with a pleasing little crack, and just the sound calms him, even before the vodka washes over his tongue and down his throat, clean and hot. He needs to still that incessant jitter.
He’s not stupid. He’s not flouting the law, not really, not endangering anyone. There are no cops up here on the twisting mountain road, especially not now, early on a Tuesday evening, hardly any cars at all, and certainly no pedestrians. It’s okay to drive on one drink. Plus, it takes time for the alcohol to enter his bloodstream, won’t even hit him until he’s home. He knows this from his DWI class, the PowerPoint slides on Blood Alcohol Concentrations and Impairment Over Time.
He’s relieved to find his mother’s car—Angel’s car, now—safe in the drive, the light in the living room. He’ll lift the baby from Angel’s arms, give her a break, and even if she doesn’t show it, she’ll be grateful. Amadeo will be grateful, too, for the wriggling, forceful heat of the baby. They can play on the carpet, build a tower with blocks that the baby will demolish, or Amadeo can read to him, holding that sleepy, trusting weight against his heart.
He grabs the plastic bag, bottles clinking, tucks it into his jacket. He’s doing nothing wrong, but he doesn’t need Angel’s disapproval. The liquor is working already. He takes a deep breath, holds the cold purple air in his lungs. One click to lock the truck, that comforting beep, up the steps, screen door pressing against his backside as he puts the key in the lock.
The light shines on an empty house: table clear, Connor’s toys in the basket, the clock with flowers instead of numbers ticking.
“Hello?” he calls, but terror grips him, outsized and certain, because he knows that what he’s feared has finally come to pass: he’s been abandoned.