The Book of Unknown Americans(59)

“I’m just asking you if she’s okay.” That was all I wanted to know. As long as she was okay, I thought, nothing else my mom could say would matter.

“She’s fine,” my mom said. “Just—” she started, when, behind me, my dad walked in the front door.

He took one look at my mom and said, “What?”

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

“What happened?”

“Mayor, go to your room. We’ll come see you in a minute.”

“Papi’s home now. Why can’t I just stay here?”

“Mayor, please,” my mom said.

My dad cast his gaze at me. “You heard her,” he said. “Go.”

Angrily, I dragged my backpack across the carpet toward my room.

“Pick it up!” my mom screamed.

Without turning around, I snatched it off the floor and went to my room. I heard my dad say, “Celia, what the hell?” before I shut the door.

I sat on my unmade bed with my elbows on my knees. I got up and kicked my shoes off into the corner. I tried to listen through the door, but I couldn’t hear anything. From my pants pocket, my phone vibrated, and when I checked it William had sent me a text. “good movie. Ur mom mad?”

I wrote back: “dont know. sent me 2 my room.”

William: “haha. *.”

Me: “ttyl.”

I turned off my phone and threw it on my dresser.

After an eternity, my parents knocked on my door and came in. I could see right away that my mom had been crying. She was clutching a used tissue in one hand, and she stood with her body half hidden behind my dad, who had a dark look in his eyes. I stood in my socks, facing them, waiting for the news, whatever it was.

“We received a call,” my dad said, his voice stony.

“I already told him that part,” my mom said.

My dad raised his hand to silence her.

“Se?ora Rivera said that you and Maribel were in my car the other day.”

I gulped. “We didn’t do anything to it.”

“So it’s true?”

I nodded.

“Is it my imagination,” my dad asked, “or are you still grounded?”

“Yes.”

“How did you get the keys?” my mom asked.

“I took them off the windowsill.”

My dad looked at me evenly. “Did you kiss Maribel?” he asked.

Flames shot through my cheeks. “What?”

“Did you kiss her in the car?”

“Why?”

“Answer the question, Mayor.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Maybe yes or maybe no?”

I just stared at them.

“What did you do with her?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you kiss her?” my mom asked from behind my dad.

“I mean, yeah, I guess. It wasn’t a big deal.”

My dad glanced at my mom and for one delirious second I thought I was off the hook, that somehow I’d exonerated myself, and that we could all just go back to business as usual. But then my dad said to me, slowly, gravely, “You are not going to see her anymore.”

“What?”

“No more.”

“But what does that mean?”

“It means exactly what I said.”

I felt a dullness in my chest. “But why?”

“Her parents don’t want you to see her,” my dad said.

“Because I kissed her?”

“Was there more?”

“I mean, no …”

“No?” my mom asked hopefully.

“I swear, there wasn’t.”

But my dad shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. You broke the rules, Mayor. You’re only supposed to be with her in one of our apartments, aren’t you? I know you might think that’s unfair, but that’s what the Riveras want for her, so you have to respect it. And on top of that, you’re still grounded. Which means you shouldn’t have seen her no matter where you were.”

“This is because you don’t like her,” I said.

“No.”

“You never liked her!”

“Mayor, calm down,” my mom said.

“You don’t even know anything about her. I mean, did anyone even ask her what she wants?”

My dad shook his head. “You’re not going to see her again.”

“So that’s it?” I said. I felt the whole thing reeling away from me, like a rope slipping through my hands.

“Dios,” my mom said. “Qué lío magnífico.”





José Mercado


My wife, Ynez, and I were both brought into the world by way of Puerto Rico, me in 1950, and she five years later. Not long after we were married, I enlisted in the navy. I always wanted to do something heroic. With the navy, I traveled to Vietnam, Grenada, the Persian Gulf, and Bosnia. I was injured in Bosnia, which requires me to use a walker now. But I came home. I came home. And that is all any soldier cares about.

I love the esoteric things in life. My father used to call me an aesthete. He meant it not as a compliment, of course. He was disappointed by my interests and by the fact that they were not the same as his, which were farming and raising livestock. He believed a man should work hard with his hands, that toil and sweat were evidence of a virtuous life. He did not appreciate that I wanted to read books and that I saved money to buy an easel when I turned fifteen and that I would spend the afternoons painting pictures of trees. The only time he was proud of me, in fact, was when I joined the navy. He was an old man by then, nearing death, but I still remember his face when I told him, the way he had smiled with those teeth of his that were brown around the edges, the way the wrinkles rippled up to the surface of his cheeks.