As if conjured, Marissa stands above him now, a purse and a canvas tote bag over her shoulder. She’s put on a little weight since he last saw her, nearly two years ago, but she’s still hot, in tight black pants and a sweater that slides off a shoulder. She wears glasses now, oversized and hip. Her skin is smooth and flushed, her hair pulled back into a coarse ponytail. A few strands, too short for the rubber band, fall around her face. “Hey.”
“Oh. Hey. You’re here.” He straightens, runs a hand down the front of his shirt. Of course Amadeo knew he’d see her today, but he didn’t expect this nervousness. “She’s dilated to three centimeters. I was in there a long time.”
He smells the cigarette cloud on Marissa. Amadeo is about to tell her she’d better not go in there smelling like that, that it will snag in Angel’s lungs, make the breathing even harder on her, but he doesn’t want to start a fight, and he also isn’t sure she won’t go in anyway just to spite him.
Marissa tips her head and gives a bleak half-smile. “She okay?”
Amadeo nods with more conviction than he feels.
Marissa pauses before the door and seems to gather her forces. Is she nervous? Amadeo wonders with surprise. She repositions her purse strap higher on her shoulder and then turns the knob and goes in.
Amadeo jiggles his leg and regards the wide hall and the other loitering men. They all look unkempt. Shirts untucked, assorted smudged shoes, exposed hairy arms. They tug at sideburns and uneven facial hair, they wander out to the elevators and back. A few talk on phones, but their voices are muted, as though they’re aware that this place is not theirs.
“You threw up?” Marissa says when she comes out after only ten minutes. She seems cheered. “Why? She hasn’t even started pushing. There isn’t even any blood yet.”
“I’m not good with needles. You know that.”
“I didn’t know that.” She drops into the chair beside him. “It’s a real hurry-up-and-wait, huh. It’s good to see your mom.” He feels her studying him. “It’s good to see you.”
“How’s Angel?”
Marissa’s expression tightens. “She’s fine,” she says testily.
“She was waiting for you. For hours. We must have put in twenty calls.”
“My cell was out of juice. No one tried me at work until your mom just this minute, and then I came right over. Smart Starts! has my work number, so I don’t know what’s up with that. Plus, you know where I work. I’ve been at the same damn place for ten years.”
Amadeo should have tried calling her himself. Or suggested his mom stop by Marissa’s house and office, neither of which is more than ten minutes from the hospital.
After a moment, she says, “Really, she was waiting for me?” She indicates a tangled wad of lavender acrylic at the top of her canvas tote. “I’m knitting her a blanket. For the baby. A lady at work is teaching me. I hate it.” She positions the mass on her lap, scoots the loops up and down the needles, then gives up and spears the snarl.
All at once Amadeo is struck by the oddness of the fact that it’s been so long since he’s seen his daughter’s mother. Their visitation schedule was always casual at best, and these last few years, Amadeo has hardly seen his daughter, despite the fact that she lives just forty minutes away, in a city he goes to literally all the time. Marissa never asked him to do pickups or take Angel to doctors’ appointments; she turned instead to her mother and his. She never had the faintest flicker of faith in him, and was right not to. Again that hot wash of guilt sluices over him, and sorrow, too, because all those years he could have known Angel and didn’t.
Two years younger than him, just a year behind him in school, yet Amadeo used to be in awe of Marissa’s determination. She did better in school than Amadeo, and he always figured that she’d end up a successful real estate agent or lawyer. He figured she’d move up and away and marry someone equally successful and sneer from her great heights at that first boyfriend—that mistake—who didn’t know how good he had it.