From Angel, Amadeo has gathered that Marissa has never been lacking for romance. He hopes Marissa doesn’t ask if he’s seeing anyone. Occasionally a woman at a bar will catch his eye, and they’ll chat, and even more occasionally he’ll go home with her. His last actual girlfriend was four years ago. She moved in with him and his mom for about twenty minutes before getting fed up. Since then, he’s spent a certain amount of time on free dating websites, carrying on endless text conversations—conversations that are less conversation than clumsily phrased juvenile flirtation and premature disclosures of sexual preferences and deadly serious negotiations over what each person is looking for in a partner—over the course of which the relationships rise, peak, and crash, so that he already feels smothered or rejected or resentful before the women have even consented to meet him.
There’s something defeated in Marissa’s manner that he’s never seen before, in her slump, even in the snarled knitting on her lap. Amadeo finds himself feeling generous, sorry that she didn’t achieve the astonishing future he always imagined for her. He doesn’t even feel compelled to make up a girlfriend.
“You look good.”
“Thanks.” Marissa regards him. “What happened to your hands?”
“Nail gun.”
“Both of them? Shit.”
Apparently Angel hasn’t said a word to her mother about the procession. Amadeo is peeved for a moment, before he remembers he told her to keep it a secret, and then he is filled with admiration for his daughter.
Marissa pinches her hairline, then yanks a long strand out of her ponytail, inspects it. “So you’re doing construction again?” Amadeo is surprised to see gray at her temples. She’s only thirty-one.
Amadeo shrugs. “You’re still working at State Farm?”
“Yeah. Same old. I’m office manager now, though.” She jerks her thumb at the delivery room door. “I can’t stand it in there. It’s ten times worse watching than going through it yourself.”
This is the same thing Amadeo’s been thinking all afternoon, but hearing Marissa say it now rankles him. “Angel is terrified,” he says, indignant. “Poor kid.”
“Remember how little she was? God, she was cute.”
“I always thought she looked like a naked mole rat. At first.”
Marissa laughs. He wonders if they could ever end up together again and then wonders if the possibility has occurred to her, too. Amadeo imagines wrapping his arms around her, being naked with her, wonders if it would feel familiar. It would make a good story: Angel’s parents brought together after sixteen years over the birth of their grandchild.
“Hey, has she ever said anything about the”—he lowers his voice—“the father?”
Marissa flattens her lips. “No. I don’t get the sense that he counts for much.” She clears her throat. “I’m not even sure she knows who it is.”
“Not something a dad wants to hear.”
Marissa laughs harshly. “Yeah.”
“I guess it’s better than some guy trying to control her.” He thinks of a guy he knew in high school, a dealer who did well for himself, who was always demanding that his babies’ mothers dress the kids better, criticizing their mothering, even as his own contributions to their upkeep were paltry and inconsistent.
“You don’t think anyone”—he forces himself to say it—“hurt her?”
Marissa shakes her head, twisting the hair around her fingers. “She’d have told me.”
She stretches the hair in and out, as though putting it through a stress test. “I just hope she’s okay. I don’t know what I’ll do if something happens to her. Nothing will happen to her. Still. Things aren’t great between us now. As I’m sure she’s told you.” Marissa slumps.