Masie and Jillian shrugged.
“I don’t want to argue about it,” said Masie. She took a bored bite of salad. “Okay, new topic: I heard Mr. Kirkpatrick is screwing Ms. Tobin.”
But no one took the bait, and they sat picking at rejected bits of food on their trays.
“Well,” said Masie after a minute or two. “It’s been fun but gotta run.”
Jillian stood, cookie crumbs still piled on her ample chest, and said, “Me too. There’ll be a line in the loo.” They turned to each other and burst out laughing. “We’re poets and didn’t know it,” said Maisie as they walked away.
When they were out of range, Natalia said, “They’re idiots, that’s what they are.” Evangeline laughed, but Natalia studied her gravely. “If there’s ever anything you want to talk about, you know you can tell me, right?”
“What would I want to talk about?” Though of course she wanted to talk about everything, like homelessness and love and abandonment, like how to survive in a parentless world. Most of all, she wanted to talk about the baby, how her child would need things—food, clothes, parental wisdom—things she had no way to provide.
The bell rang, and Natalia stood with her tray. “It’s just that you’ve been through a lot of crap.”
“I get by,” Evangeline said, gathering her things. “I feel sorry for Rebekah, though.”
“Why?”
“Everyone talking about her like that.”
Natalia laughed. “Rebekah’s the one playing those two. She’s the ‘someone’ who started the rumor about her and Daniel. Jillian’s right, she wants people thinking two boys got killed over her.”
“You don’t think a girl was involved?”
“Rebekah? No way.” They slid their trays into the collection rack. “Some other girl?” She paused, studying Evangeline. “Maybe.”
* * *
—
THEY WERE NEARLY TO THEIR LOCKERS WHEN NATALIA SAID, “You want to come over this weekend? Saturday, maybe? Make tamales with my mom and me? My little sister will be there too, but don’t worry, we can ignore her.”
It seemed such a normal thing, this simple invitation. It was a wonder Evangeline didn’t cry.
33
Judith, Peter’s secretary, buzzed me in the middle of class. There was a call for me in the office. As I headed there, I couldn’t imagine who would call the school, rather than my cell, with a message sufficiently urgent to require interruption.
On picking up, I heard the smoke-roughened voice of Harriett Spencer, a longtime friend of my aunt Becky, my father’s last living sibling. Harriett wanted me to fly to Pennsylvania as soon as possible. My aunt, nearly ninety and confused by multiple small strokes, was facing imminent foreclosure.
I wasn’t particularly close to Aunt Becky. She had worked overseas with American Friends Service Committee most of my childhood. But my father had loved her, and at any other time in my life I wouldn’t have hesitated to take family leave. I offered to handle things by phone, but Harriett insisted. Apparently, Aunt Becky was forgetting more than her mortgage. The prior week, she’d left a hamburger cooking on the stove and lay down for a nap, waking only when the fire alarm went off, the house filled with smoke. “Becky’s a tough one,” Harriett said. “She’s going to need some persuading, but if she doesn’t get into a special-care unit soon, I’m worried something far worse than foreclosure will happen.”
* * *
—
THAT EVENING, EVANGELINE PRATTLED ON ABOUT NATALIA. I was thankful that she was distracted and oblivious to my own preoccupations.
“Natalia said her mom makes the best tamales in the world. She’ll show me how to make them. Do you like tamales?”
She talked in an excited, girlish way I hadn’t heard from her before. These past weeks, she’d been so secretive and guarded. To see her relaxed, maybe thinking of my home as hers, helped to soften my bleak mood.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever had one,” I said, though of course I had.
Evangeline’s jaw dropped in feigned shock, newly playful, her cheeks flushed bright. I continued to exaggerate my lack of experience with Mexican food, and she gushed about its marvels.
“Could I go to Natalia’s this weekend? I could make you tamales for Sunday dinner.”
I told Evangeline about my aunt, my need to be gone. “I’ll try to get back as soon as possible, but it might take a week or so to find a placement for her.”
She stabbed a piece of cucumber, ate it, said, with forced indifference, “Why so long? I mean, couldn’t you just search online, make a few calls? Sounds like she won’t even recognize you.”
I must have looked surprised, because she scowled and said, “You’re the one who said she’s lost it, not me. You’re the one who’s just up and leaving because of some crazy old aunt you’ve never mentioned before. You haven’t even gone to your office to ‘reflect’ on it. I mean, you had to do your frozen-mummy-freak-show thing to decide if we could turn some lights on at night. But now, poof, you’re just hopping on a plane?”
It wasn’t the words so much as the savage way she flung them at me that made me see her as I had that first night—scared and wild and fierce.
“I’m coming back,” I said. “I promise. I’m coming back.”
She began gathering the dishes. “Hell yeah you’re coming back. You think I don’t know that? You’ve got this house and school to teach. I know how devoted you are to ‘your kids.’”
“You too. I’m coming back to be here for you.”
She went to the sink, muttering, “Like I give a fuck about that.”
I remained at the table, choosing to ignore the provocation while she snapped on the faucet, started banging dishes around.
“There’s the baby too,” I said.
She froze, then flipped round, flung suds across the floor. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? All this so-called generosity. You’re not looking out for me. You still think I’m carrying your grandkid. Well, what if I told you I’m not, that I thank God every day I’m not? What if I told you there were lots of guys and your son wasn’t one of them, that I hated your son? Then what? Would you be rushing back to make sure I was okay? Would I even be here now?”
She stood at the sink, her eyes filling with tears, her mouth mean and trembling.
I couldn’t respond. Not then, not without seeking Divine grace to mute the beast that had begun to prowl with the call this morning—a beast that used Evangeline’s incitements to break through my barriers, thrust me upright, and urge me to slap her hard across her face.
She stared at me, watching my struggle, and as she did, her lips transformed into an odd, self-satisfied smile. “That’s what I thought,” she said, and turned back to the dishes.
I left Evangeline and went to my office to engage in my “freak show.” Strange how it shook me, this materialization of part of my son’s hidden life. Her adamance that he wasn’t the father only increased my suspicion that he was. Her anger toward him, though played to wound me, felt visceral and real. And that, too, increased my suspicion, because it takes intimacy in one form or another to foster anger like that.