Part III
LENT
On Ash Wednesday, Amadeo meets with the rest of the hermanos in the morada after five o’clock Mass. As the men, foreheads smudged with ash, clap each other on the back, catching up on news, Tío Tíve stands, small and nervous, gripping his trembling hands. “Okay,” he says brusquely. “Sit down.”
Frankie Zocal and John Trujillo exchange tolerant, bemused glances. Al Martinez gives Amadeo’s shoulder a friendly squeeze, then lowers himself to the bench. Shelby Morales rewraps his gray ponytail in the purple elastic, smoothing the length of it, and looks up at Tíve expectantly, like a student.
The old man is dressed in his best clothes: stiff jeans, pearl-snap shirt. He wears his silver-dollar belt buckle and turquoise bolo tie. Amadeo feels affection for his uncle. He isn’t, for a moment, sure why the guy ever seemed so intimidating. The other evening, he stopped by the house, bringing groceries, and stayed for dinner, just a smiling old man clutching a squirming Connor on his skinny lap.
Tíve stands before the men, palms raised like a priest. “I’m retiring. Al Martinez is taking over as Hermano Mayor.” Tío Tíve looks oddly ecstatic as he stands before them, light gleaming in his hazy eyes. “This year his son Isaiah is our Jesus. You explain it all to him, Al, and make him pray regular.”
From the surprise on Al’s face, it is evident that Tío Tíve didn’t run any of this by him. With a nod, Al clears his throat. “Brother,” he says. “Thank you.” He stands, and makes as if to embrace Tíve, but Tíve walks past him, mouth serious, and takes his place on the bench.
“All right,” Al says, turning slowly, as if seeing the morada for the first time. “All right. Let us pray.”
As Amadeo speaks the words along with the other men, he pities his old self, the self that once believed there was a single, big thing he could do to make up for all his failings. He missed the point. The procession isn’t about punishment or shame. It is about needing to take on the pain of loved ones. To take on that pain, first you have to see it. And see how you inflict it.
That December night, as Marissa drove them all down into the valley to get Connor checked out in the ER, Amadeo neither explained nor excused himself. He told Angel everything: the drinking, the coyote, the baby’s cry. It was the fullest confession he’d ever made. Amadeo and Angel sat in the back, leaning over Connor’s car seat as he babbled. He expected his daughter to lash out, but she was silent, her eyes wide and afraid. “The thing everyone warned me about, that’s what I did,” Amadeo whispered.
After a scan, their second miracle: Connor was fine. He didn’t have even a single cut from the shattered windshield. He’d been thrown clear and had somehow landed upright.
“This accident,” the admitting nurse said as she flicked a penlight in and out of Connor’s eyes. “Were drugs or alcohol involved?”
“No,” Angel said. When the nurse narrowed her eyes at them, Marissa looked to Angel, asking, and then chimed in, in that authoritative office voice that always so impressed Amadeo. “No, none. I was driving.” And perhaps because it was a busy night in the ER, the nurse appeared to believe them. She offered to examine Amadeo’s leg, but he just shook his head, and she did not press it.
This thing Amadeo did is too terrible and too large for them to deal with. He understands that it will remain with him—and with Angel and Marissa, too—forever. Trotting along his life will run a ghost life, a life in which Connor is killed on this night.
At home, the three of them crouched around Connor’s crib as he slept, disbelieving that his chest rose and fell. Amadeo reached through the bars, placed his hand close to the child’s muzzle to feel the faint stirring. “I don’t know why you lied for me. Both of you.”
Amadeo’s ears buzzed in the silence.
Then, in a voice that was low and steely, Angel said, “He’s okay. And we need you at home. And you’ll never drink again.” It’s true. Each time he wants to, he remembers that night, and when he doesn’t drink, it’s like a stone, one after another, building a bridge back to her.