When the old man looks up at Angel, it’s with a kind of open amazement that strikes Amadeo as sweet. His sister also watches their great-uncle, as surprised as Amadeo by his interest in Angel and her kid.
“Tío,” announces Valerie from her cross-legged posture on the floor. “Lily’s doing a report on New Mexico statehood. I’m sure she’d love to include oral history from her great-great-uncle.” Valerie always tries to make their uncle map the family’s genealogy and asks earnest prying questions about life in the olden days. Her interest in the plumbing of his childhood is depthless. “What were those early years of statehood like?”
“He’s not a hundred and thirty years old, Valerie. He wasn’t keeping no journal of his thoughts in 1912.”
Lily drags her eyes from the cooking show on the mute television. “It wasn’t a report,” she informs her mother. “It was a worksheet. Just some stupid random worksheet. It wasn’t even for a unit.”
Amadeo catches his uncle’s eye, and is startled to see the hint of a smile tugging the old man’s mouth.
Flustered, Valerie turns her attention to her younger daughter, who is going through the baby toys, methodically rattling, squeaking, and crinkling each one. “How’re you doing, bean?” Sarah declines to answer her mother, allowing Amadeo the novel experience of feeling sorry for his sister.
“Oh my heck, I just realized—” Angel crows to the baby, “That’s your great-great-great-uncle.”
“Holy,” says Tíve.
Valerie shakes her head. “That’s crazy.”
“Great-great-great-great-great-great-great,” chants Sarah. She gives a plastic rattle a celebratory fling into the air. It hits the ceiling with a crack, drops to the carpet.
“Quit it,” says Lily. “Mom, tell her.”
Yolanda has finished the dishes and joins them now. She lowers herself onto the couch beside her uncle and the baby. “Whew.”
Since when did his mother start moving like an old person? Amadeo scans them all with alarm: his suddenly frail mother, her hair full-gray at the roots; his daughter, whose bright features have become puffy and pale; his rickety uncle; his sister slumped on the floor, her ridiculous woven scarf hanging from her stooped shoulders. Even his nieces, homely and intelligent and socially deficient enough to eventually find success in tech or academia, seem doomed. Connor, the newest and theoretically least doomed among them, can’t even hold his own head up. Since when did everyone around him become so fragile?
Yolanda waggles one of Connor’s fat feet, and his red-blotched arms and legs recoil briefly before relaxing again. “Does he remind you of Elwin?” she asks her uncle with tenderness.
Tíve looks up sharply. “No.”
“What about me?” asks Amadeo, aware that he sounds desperate. “Does he look like me when I was a baby?”
Tío Tíve frowns as if Amadeo’s question is an insect buzzing around his head. “I can’t remember that long ago.”
Amadeo is jealous of a baby. The humiliating realization zings through him. He has the sense of being the least necessary person in the room, the person they’d all be justified in cannibalizing in the event of a nuclear apocalypse.
Amadeo would not have noticed anything at all amiss about his uncle if Angel didn’t exclaim, “Wait, are you crying?”
“Nah,” says Tíve, eyes swimmy.
“What’s wrong, Tío?” Yolanda touches his arm.
“He’s just a real cute little guy,” Tíve says, dipping his head.
Everyone lowers their eyes to the baby. Tíve’s arms tremble. Connor starts fussing noiselessly, grimacing in his sleep. Tíve jiggles him. Connor struggles to pry his eyes open, and when he does, he squints up at the light fixture and, to everyone’s relief, lets out a howl.