Olga Dies Dreaming(102)
He was screaming now, he realized. He wanted to lower his voice, but he couldn’t.
“I don’t know!” she said. “I’m sorry! I’ll go! I’ll just go!”
She was always making him chase her. Always.
He grabbed her and spun her around, pinning her face down against the counter. Now, she would see what it felt like to be the one without control.
* * *
LATER, AFTER SHE had gone, he still found himself boiling. He picked up his phone.
“Nick? Dick Eikenborn here. I’ve thought about it. Count me in on the Puerto Rico deal.… I’ll stay out of the market until you give me the green light. At the terms discussed, of course.… But, and this could be nothing, there’s someone trying to bulk purchase solar for down there.… I don’t know who. But I heard about it through the Acevedo girl.… Yes. Of course, that one. Anyway, do with that information what you will. I don’t fucking care.”
TRUTH AND A SLICE
After seeing his mother, Prieto was left to grapple with the reality of who she was and not the versions that had lived in his mind for the past twenty-seven years. She was not a hero nor an impotent kook. She was some sort of mad genius—for that compound had surely required genius. And she had felt herself meant for a different life. Stuck in too-small skin. So she freed herself. Shed her old life. For Prieto, this truth blew through him like a bullet. Fast and clear. Not a fatal wound, but the kind that forces a reappraisal of life. He, too, knew the sensation of too-small skin. Knew what it felt like to experience thousands of tiny deaths, year in and out, as he watched the life he wanted escape him while feeling trapped in the life he had. But instead of empathy or sympathy for his mother, he felt regret. And rage. And despair. Despair that a large part of what had kept him here—inside his own too-small skin—was to please the woman who had left him behind in order to shed her own. Yes, it hurt to know his mother had never wanted to be a mother at all, but an equal weight of his sadness came from the deprivation of life he’d inflicted upon himself in this futile quest for her love.
On the plane home, as he watched his island disappear into the distance, the tears came easily. He ran through all of the compromises of both his values and desires he’d made over the years. All of these shameful actions and choices, he now had to acknowledge, were made to present to the world a person, a life, that his mother would be proud of. Whom his mother would love. Somewhere, deep down though, he had always known she had no such capacity. He and his sister had been pining for a mother who’d never wanted to be a parent to begin with. But Prieto had. His daughter was a gift in his life his younger self never thought he’d be able to have. She gave him purpose and filled him with love.
When his plane landed, his intention had been to go directly to Olga’s. To tell her everything. About the visit, about the Selbys, all of it. When she didn’t answer his calls, he didn’t want the courage he’d mustered to go to waste and decided that that day was as good as any to finally talk to Lourdes.
* * *
SHE DIDN’T LIKE getting picked up from school anymore. She was big now and wanted to walk home with her friends, but he figured if he tried to lure her in with a slice from L & B, she might look past him “embarrassing her” by showing up. The drive there was uneventful, mainly peppered with recaps of the latest season of The Voice.
“So, Lourdes, what’s up at school?” he asked once they were seated. “Are people, like, crushing on other people yet? Or are y’all too young for that?”
“I mean, I don’t like anybody, if that’s what you’re asking.”
He felt relieved but also guilty that he couldn’t find a more creative way into this topic without giving her the third degree. Where was his sister? She’d have known how to do this.
“Nah, nah. I mean, you’re young. There’s time. I’m just curious.… You know when I was your age, everybody made a big fuss over what girl liked what boy and vice versa and if you didn’t like anybody after, I don’t know, seventh, eighth grade, everybody called you gay, you know?”
“So?”
“So, what? What do you mean so?”
“So, they’d call you gay. So what? Tomás is into boys. He told us last year.”
“Sonya’s kid? That little boy told you last year—when he was ten years old—that he was gay?”
“Queer, Papi. But, yeah, he told us he likes boys.”
“And he’s the only one?”
“I mean, probably not, but like, it’s not a big deal. People like who they like.”
“That’s true,” Prieto said.
“I feel bad for them, though.”
“Who? Tomás?”
“No. The little kids when you were young. That were gay. That they would get made fun of. It’s stupid.”
This was his window. He knew. He took a sip of his Coke.
“You know, Lourdes, when I was little I wasn’t as cool as you. My sister, she was more like you. Didn’t care what anybody thought about nothing. Lots of confidence. Me? I was worried about getting picked on. Always wanted to fit in. Make people like me. It’s probably not my best trait.”