What he wants is for his daughter to be on board, to support and cheer him, to admire him and believe in his business. He wants the same from his mother, but he can understand why her faith in him might be faintly shaken.
“So, what,” Angel says, “people are just going to, like, stop by Las Penas to get their cars fixed? Because it’s such a thoroughfare? How’re you going to do all this with a suspended license?”
Amadeo freezes. Somehow he’d overlooked the fact that his suspended license would make it virtually impossible for him to get the business off the ground. “Ten bucks?” he says. “You think you can get a windshield repaired for ten bucks?”
Angel regards the kit spread out across the carpet, the empty little baggies. “Just keep that crap away from my baby. I don’t want him choking.”
Mike moved in with them nearly two years ago. He was supposed to be the good guy, the sensible choice. He doesn’t smoke pot or drink overmuch. He isn’t handsome, like the men Angel’s mother often goes for. Mike is forty-five, fourteen years older than Marissa, with a soft belly and a baby face, thin brown hair flecked with gray at the temples. He is an architect and works for the state, working on teams to design various nondescript buildings: rest stops and DMV satellite offices and the like, buildings that Angel hadn’t even realized required architects.
He and Marissa had been dating for three months before Angel met him, and for all that time, Marissa had been giddy, buying forty-dollar face creams and new lacy underclothes, which she would hand-wash and leave dripping from the shower curtain rail. Those months were suffused with festivity, and Angel felt close to her mother, proud of her beauty: her full lips, shining dark eyes, her thick, glossy hair. Before her dates—three or four a week—Marissa modeled her outfits and consulted with Angel on eye shadow colors, and then Angel stayed up as late as she could, usually falling asleep on the couch, so she’d know when her mother got home and could ask how it had gone. This business with Mike seemed to Angel to be a joint project, and her advice was crucial to the success of the courtship. She also had the sense that she was her mother’s apprentice; now that she was in eighth grade, Angel must pay attention, keep alert, learn what she could about relationships.
The evenings Marissa stayed home, they ordered pizza and rented movies. If it was a weekend, Marissa let Angel invite Priscilla to sleep over, and all three of them would stay up late, laughing and baking cookies like girls in teen movies.
“Architects are rich, right?” Angel asked on one of these nights, made braver by Priscilla’s presence.
Marissa explained regretfully that, sure, Mike made decent money, but he owed it to his ex-wife in California. He had two kids, teenagers, a boy and a girl, whom he saw only rarely, and though Angel hadn’t even met Mike yet, the mention of this distant, nameless daughter caused a fillip of envy.
Mike lived in a tiny apartment in Santa Fe, a quick bike ride to his office. “It’s nice, though,” Marissa assured Angel. “Right downtown. He just doesn’t care about things.”
“Do you think you’ll get married?” Priscilla asked.
Marissa laughed. She always pretended nonchalance when talking about Mike, but then would be unable to stop herself. “Maybe? Who knows! But the other night we were watching this movie set in India and he said, ‘Let’s go there for our honeymoon.’ ”
“What movie? Did you go to a movie theater or did you rent it?” Angel asked, not quite liking the thought of her mother snuggled up against a man in an apartment in Santa Fe she’d never seen.
“Oh!” cried Priscilla. “You could do an India-theme reception! Like, bright silk tablecloths and little wooden elephants for centerpieces. The cake could be, like, spicy.”
Marissa pushed her hair back from her face, seeming to take Priscilla’s idea seriously. “I don’t know, I’ve just always thought a traditional wedding is better. What do you think, Angel?”