What am I doing? she wonders. A student’s father—a student’s deadbeat father, no less—though he is back in the picture now, and seems committed to being in Angel’s baby’s life. But who knows what kind of person he is? He doesn’t have a job, didn’t go to college. And now he is her First.
Although why she is thinking in these absurd terms, Brianna can’t imagine. She is a health educator. A teacher licensed by the State of New Mexico. She likes to think of herself as knowledgeable and unembarrassed, yet compassionate. A mentor. And here she is freaking out over a guy. A man, she amends.
Because Amadeo is a man, bulky, muscular, an unemployed male on the social margins, unable to provide for either mate or offspring, with the porous roseate beginnings of an alcoholic nose. But despite all this, she finds him very, very attractive.
“It’s cool,” he says, smoothing her hair.
She submits to his comfort, resting her head against his chest, feeling him hard now between her legs, feeling herself open smoothly to receive him.
“I won’t tell.”
“Thanks,” she says softly.
He chucks her under her chin. “If we can do this again.”
“Yeah,” she breathes. She grins into his shoulder.
Everything pisses Angel off these days, even the good things. At Tabitha’s birth party, Brianna said the exact same empty, encouraging things she’d said at Angel’s party. She and Connor and the incredible physical feat she’s performed are old news. Even the little basketball shoes irritate her. They keep falling off and ending up under the sofa or in the gravel, and who ever heard of spending fifty dollars on sneakers for a baby that just lies there? She’s so, so tired—it seems Connor wakes up every few minutes throughout the night, wrenching her from sleep, and then when he finally settles, she’s tense under the blanket, eyes open in the dark, her heart hammering.
When Smart Starts! lets out, Angel’s mother is waiting for her on the concrete portico outside the agency. Fear seizes Angel like a claw in the chest, and her first thought is that her mother’s been fired.
She’s in her work clothes, tight black pants and heels and a drapey blouse, hair blown smooth. She looks put together, as she usually does for work, and thinner, too—Angel notes with envy that her shoulders are sharp and glamorous under the silky fabric—but her expression is wary. Her big purse is over her shoulder, and she’s gripping it with both hands, one arm crossed protectively in front of her body.
It’s an old fear, dating back to when Angel was five and Marissa actually was laid off when the car dealership where she’d been working closed down. It was a scary time. For six months, they lived with Marissa’s parents. Her grandmother Lola had been showing the first confusing and erratic signs of early-onset Alzheimer’s—loving one minute, spiteful the next, panicked the minute after that—and her grandfather was still disapproving of Marissa for not marrying Amadeo, all of which had resulted in fights that made Angel, even at five, pity her mother.
Since then, Marissa has had the same job at the State Farm office, and there’s never been a real danger that she might be fired, not really. Her boss loves her. But still the fear has lingered, because where would they go, now that Marissa’s mother is near comatose with dementia and Marissa’s father has fallen into baffled, resentful depression?
Whatever, Angel reassures herself, her mother isn’t her problem now. But even thinking about that time, thinking about Marissa’s stubborn, unhappy face when she was back in her parents’ home, makes her soften toward her mother.
“What are you doing here?” Angel cups Connor’s head protectively, but he peers with solemn interest at his grandmother.
“Hey, Angel.” Marissa comes in for a hug, but they’re as self-conscious as strangers. She presses her palms together. Angel has the anxious sense that her mother is about to deliver bad news.