Amadeo kneads his thigh. He can’t tell her to leave. Yolanda would kill him. He just wishes his mom were here. Yolanda and Angel are pretty close; Yolanda sends the girl checks, twenty-five here, fifty there, takes her out to dinner in Espa?ola or Santa Fe, and a couple times a year the two go shopping at the outlets.
“Maybe you could come back when my mom gets home.” A needle of guilt slides into his side.
Angel doesn’t seem to have heard him. “I mean, the woman’s all preaching to me about how I messed up and why couldn’t I learn from her mistake, but what am I going to do now, huh? I mean, I get it: I ruined her stupid life. Fine. But if she’s going to pretend she’s all mature, she should actually act mature.”
Amadeo should call his sister, get her to come take Angel to Albuquerque to stay with her and the girls. Saving the day—that’s right up Valerie’s alley. But he isn’t talking to Valerie now, hasn’t since Christmas.
Angel looks like her mother, the same glossy, thick hair and high color, though her features aren’t as fine as Marissa’s. Amadeo’s genes, he supposes. Amadeo wonders if Marissa acted this young back then. Marissa was sixteen, Amadeo eighteen, but they felt old. Her parents had been angry and ashamed, but had thrown a baby shower for the young couple anyway. Amadeo had enjoyed being at the center of things: congratulated by her relatives and his, handed tamales and biscochitos on paper plates by old women who were willing to forgive everything in exchange for a church wedding. He stood to sing for them, nodding at Marissa: “This is dedicated to my baby girl.” Bendito, bendito, bendito. Los ángeles cantan y daban a Dios. They all clapped, old ladies dabbing their eyes, Yolanda blowing kisses across the room. Amadeo had felt virtuous, responsible for his girlfriend and unborn child.
Later, of course, there was no wedding, no moving in together. Angel was born and learned to walk and talk, with no help from Amadeo. The old women shook their heads, resigned; they should have known better than to expect anything from Amadeo, from men in general. “Even the best of them aren’t worth a darn,” his grandmother used to say. “Except you, hijito,” she’d add kindly, if she noticed Amadeo in the room. “You’re worth a darn.”
By the time Angel was five, he was relieved at how easily the obligation slipped from his shoulders. All it took was for him to stop answering Marissa’s calls—fewer than you’d expect—and he was a free man.
As though answering a question, Angel says, “I didn’t drop out of school for reals. I’m doing this whole program and I’m going to graduate and everything, so don’t worry.” She looks at Amadeo, expectant.
Amadeo realizes he forgot to worry, forgot even to wonder. “Good. That’s good.” He gets up, rubs his shorn head with both hands. “You got to have school.”
She’s still looking at him, demanding something: reassurance, approval. “I mean, I’m serious. I’m going to graduate.” Then she’s off, talking about college and success and following her dreams, echoing what she hears at the teen parenting program she attends. “Brianna, my teacher? She says I got to invest in myself if I’m going to give him a good life. You won’t see me like my mom, doing the same old secretary job for ten years, just trying to snag herself an architect. I’m doing something big.” She turns to her belly. “Isn’t that right, hijito?”
This depresses the hell out of Amadeo. He opens a beer and guzzles half of it before he remembers who he is this week. “Fuck,” he says, disgusted, and pours it down the sink.
Angel looks up at him from the couch. “You better clean up your mouth. He can hear every little thing you say.”
“Fuck,” says Amadeo, because it’s his house, but he says it quietly, and thinks about the sound passing through his daughter’s body to the child inside. He stands. “I got to go.”
EVERY NIGHT OF LENT, the hermanos have gathered in the morada to pray the Rosary under Tío Tíve’s watchful eye, and every Friday they meditate on the Stations of the Cross. On their knees, heads bowed. There are nine hermanos, and, with the exception of Amadeo, they’re all over seventy. Tío Tíve is the oldest, eighty-seven, still going strong.