EVER SINCE THE BIRTH, Marissa has been calling Angel on her cell, and then, when Angel disregards the calls, on the landline. Amadeo listens to Angel’s monosyllabic responses to whatever her mother says. He wonders if Marissa ever asks after him, but Angel just hangs up and returns to her grumping. Since their pleasantly unconflicted interaction at the hospital, he’s found himself thinking about Marissa; she’s cropped up here and there in his idle sexual fantasies. He can only think that his newfound interest in her has something to do with his heightened role as Angel’s preferred parent; they’re equals now; Angel herself proved that he’s no longer a deadbeat when she moved in with him.
One evening Marissa arrives unannounced, bringing a plastic bag filled with rattles and blocks and musical stuffed animals, toys that even Amadeo can tell are for a baby much older than Connor, a baby with some modicum of control over its own limbs. For Angel she brings fancy truffles in a golden box.
“Super,” Angel says, not getting up. “I’ve been trying to get fatter.” She flicks her eyes to her mother and then back to the TV.
Marissa’s face falls. She sets the truffles on the coffee table.
“Hey now,” Amadeo tells his daughter. “Your mom’s just trying to be nice.” He hopes Angel will open the chocolates now and offer him one.
“Which is more than I can say for you,” Angel shoots back. “How old’s he going to be before you change a diaper?”
Amadeo tries to meet Marissa’s eye, ready to shrug. What can you say, she’s a teenager. It could have been a nice moment, the two of them united by Angel’s brattiness. But Marissa bites her bottom lip and frowns, deepening the two creases between her brows.
“I’ll change him,” she says. “Give him here.”
“He doesn’t need changing.”
Marissa digs in the bag and holds up a painted wooden stacking tower, shakes it weakly. “You used to have a toy almost exactly like this. There was this one blue ring that you especially loved to chew. I was always afraid you were going to get splinters in your gums.”
“Lucky Connor. Lead poisoning and gum infection. Thanks a lot, Granny.”
“Can I hold him?” Marissa’s voice is pathetic, supplicating. She gazes at Connor as though she might absorb him with her eyes.
“Whatever.” Angel sets Connor on his back beside her on the couch and looks away. The baby kicks and flaps his arms as if trying to take flight.
Marissa approaches and gathers the baby to her chest. She’s hunched so far over him Amadeo can’t see her face.
The television keeps jabbering away relentlessly, spewing the screeching announcers’ voices and frenetic jingles. “Wanna shut that thing off?” asks Amadeo. “So we can talk or something?”
“No,” says Angel aggressively. “I don’t wanna. Taking a cue from Aunt Val?”
Marissa kisses Connor once on the forehead, her lips lingering, eyes closed. There’s an almost religious solemnity to her manner with the baby, which seems too weighty, too private for Amadeo to witness. In embarrassment he counts the small items scattered on the carpet: a plush Very Hungry Caterpillar, a bootie, a plastic ring of clacking keys, a used diaper wrapped tightly on itself that he wishes they’d thrown away before Marissa’s arrival.
“Well,” says Marissa, after many long minutes have passed without Angel speaking. “I guess I better get back home.” As if she’d just stopped by on her way. As if Las Penas was on the way to anywhere.
Angel doesn’t shift her eyes from the TV as she accepts the baby from her mother. “Mike needs his dinner?” she asks bitterly.
“I made him move out.” Marissa stands in front of Angel, awaiting her pardon or approval. She clasps and unclasps her hands, then crosses her arms as if shivering. “I wanted to tell you that.”