Angel reclaims the baby and kisses the old man’s cheek, which hangs brown and loose and clean-shaven. Amadeo imagines that it would be cool against her lips.
Back in her seat, she pulls up her satin shirt and unhooks her nursing bra. Only a few days in, Angel is no longer self-conscious about baring her breasts. She just pops one out, blue-veined and swollen, brown nipple jutting, and draws the baby toward her. Connor shakes his head furiously, trying with his open mouth to get at the nipple, milking her flesh with a tiny red hand as wrinkled and dexterous as a monkey’s.
The routine is impossible not to watch, and it’s embarrassing to be caught watching, but they’d all rather focus on the baby than on whatever sour vulnerability has blown into the room.
“I’m so glad you’re breast-feeding,” Valerie says.
“I already know about the research, Aunt Val,” Angel says testily. Amadeo marks another point in his column, but derives no pleasure from it.
Connor snuffles away, kicking like a drowning victim.
“Welp,” says Yolanda into the silence. The cheer in her voice is at odds with her grim expression. She stands. “There’s more cake.”
Without any provocation, she seems to lose her balance, sways first one way and then another, as if playing a drunk in a comedy act. Her eyes and mouth open in terror so pure and magnified that it can’t be real. And then, as if the ground has summoned her, she tips forward onto her face.
“I’m okay,” she cries. And then she’s laughing, tears running down her cheeks, as her nose begins to trickle blood. “I’m okay!”
Yolanda doesn’t forget about her brain tumor—she couldn’t—but somehow she allows herself to slip back into her life. She goes to work as she always has, makes dinner. All the while, she is waiting for someone to notice that she’s dying. It seems ludicrous to Yolanda that no one checks on her to make sure she follows up on Dr. Mitchell’s diagnosis. Did she expect official calls? A summons to the hospital as if to the principal’s office? Yes, actually.
Even Cal, attentive Cal, hasn’t called. In their one conversation after her return, she told him in the vaguest, most clichéd terms, “I need time. To figure out what I want.” After a pause, during which she could hear the long inhalation whistling in his nostril, and then the long, resigned exhalation, Cal said, “Take your time. I love you, but I’ll give you time.” And true to his word, he hadn’t tried to contact her since.
She should get her affairs in order, but the practicalities of her own funeral arrangements and finances are boring and unreal.
Yolanda watches herself for worsening symptoms, and indeed they come. Words—nouns especially—become maddeningly elusive, ducking away as she reaches for them, leaving her with other, unsuitable nouns to slot into their places. Periodically the world swirls, as if God has decided to give it a stir around her. She drops things. Multiple times throughout the day, fatigue crashes into her, and she rests her head on her desk, flickering out of awareness. Soon, she’ll fall again. Soon, she will no longer be able to work, will no longer be able to leave the house alone, and the prospect of this new, diminished existence terrifies her. She especially worries about letting down Monica. It’s fortunate that the chief clerk’s schedule is so packed, because somehow, miraculously, Yolanda doesn’t get caught.
So she continues to work, simple tasks looming large. She needs to reorder letterhead for three legislators, and then she’s supposed to put in a request to Building Services to have a flag flown over the Capitol, which will then be sent to a new senior center in Alamogordo. She needs to prepare a certificate and letter of authenticity for that flag. It’s not complicated work—just a matter of filling in dates and names and affixing seals—but it’s overwhelming. Also, what’s the point? Who cares if a flag has been flown over the Capitol? Do any of the little old people who gather for their mediocre two-dollar lunches of posole and green Jell-O even notice the flag?