“I’m fat, huh? I barely got these pants and already they’re too small.”
“Hey.” He pats his daughter’s back gingerly between her bra straps, then steps away. “What’s happening?” he says. It’s too casual, but he can’t afford to let her think she’s welcome, not during Passion Week, and with his mother away.
“Ugh. Me and Mom got in a fight, so I told her to drive me here.” Her tone is light. “I didn’t know where you and Gramma were. I’ve been here, like, two hours, starving my head off. Pregnant people need to eat. I almost broke in just to make a sandwich. Don’t you guys check your phones?”
Amadeo hooks his thumbs in his pockets, looks up at the house, then back at the road. The sun is gone now, the dusk a nearly electric blue.
“A fight?” In spite of himself, Amadeo takes some pleasure in Angel’s indignation at her mother. Marissa has always made him feel insufficient.
“I can’t even. Whatever,” she says with conviction. “What me and the baby need right now is a support system. That’s what I told her.”
Amadeo shakes his head. “I’m real busy,” he says, like an actor portraying regret. “Now’s not a good time.”
Angel doesn’t look hurt, just interested. “Why? You got a job or something?”
She lifts her duffel and begins to walk toward the door, swaying under the weight of luggage and belly. “My mom’s not here,” he calls. He’s embarrassed to tell her the real reason he wants her gone, embarrassed by the fervor that being a penitente implies.
“Where’d Gramma go?” There’s real worry in her voice. She holds the screen open with her hip, waiting for him to unlock the door.
“Listen, it’s a busy week.” He rushes this next part, his breath short. “I’m carrying the cross this year. I’m Jesus.”
“Uh, okay. She’ll be back soon, right?”
Yolanda took her vacation after the end of the legislative session, right before Holy Week, exactly when Amadeo needs her most. “Maybe I’ll just stay out there forever,” she told him lightly as she packed. “I love Vegas. The shows, the lights, the commotion.”
“She didn’t say when she’d be back. End of next week, probably.”
Angel heaves her duffel and purse on the kitchen floor with a dramatic sigh, and only then does it occur to Amadeo that he should have carried the bags in for her. But she doesn’t seem to notice. She’s still talking.
“I told my mom, ‘Whatever, I’m going to Gramma’s, then. She loves me.’ ”
THAT NIGHT Angel chatters about food groups as she makes dinner—a can of chili dumped over an underdone squash and a package of frozen cheese bread—then takes over the TV. She talks to her belly. “See, baby? That heifer is going home. You can’t be like that to your girls.”
Amadeo sits at the other end of the couch, strangely nervous. He tries to remember the last time he was alone with his daughter, but can’t. Two or three Christmases ago, maybe; he remembers sitting awkwardly in this same room asking Angel about her favorite subjects while Yolanda was at the grocery store or the neighbors’。
He wipes his palms along his thighs, works his tongue inside his mouth. Frozen-eyed porcelain dolls stare at Amadeo from Yolanda’s corner cabinet, where they sit in their frilly dresses on shelves beside souvenir bells and shot glasses. With a sudden stitch in his gut, Amadeo thinks of Tío Tíve. What will he say about Angel being here?—the fruit of his sin, laden with sin of her own.
“So,” Amadeo says. “Your mom’s probably going to want you back soon, no?”
“I got to teach her she’s not the only one in my life. She’s got to learn to respect me.”