After the Hurricane(51)
He was a little drunk.
He shook his head to clear it, but Rosalind saw this as a no, and she turned away, shoulders shaking.
“Rosie—”
“I want to be a mother,” she said, flatly. She had contained her tears. She usually did. She was not a woman who cried easily, or for long. She was strong, his wife, so strong that he marveled at her, even now. She was the pampered daughter of Philadelphia Jews, she’d grown up with more than he could have ever imagined a kid could have, and she was so much stronger than anyone else he knew, himself included, he could barely believe she was real sometimes. But that was why she didn’t understand, couldn’t see why he couldn’t do this. He wasn’t strong like her, and he couldn’t have a child. He wouldn’t know how.
“We said we wouldn’t do that,” he reminded her, pleading with her. She had said she understood. She of anyone said she understood. How could she change her mind like this, how could she betray him? “We promised each other we wouldn’t.”
“I’ve, I’ve changed. Please, Santiago, let’s just discuss it, let’s allow for the possibility of it. You aren’t him. Or her. You’re you. I’m me. We can do this. Why can’t we do this?”
“I’m scared,” he offered her. It wasn’t half, even a quarter of what he felt, of the miles-deep fear, terror really, at the prospect of a child, someone who would inherit the things he carried, someone who would be the next in his line, the next inheritor of . . . what? He had no legacy. He came from illiterate jibaritos, from poverty, from madness. He had crawled out of that, but still it clung to him, and he was weak, weak where Rosalind was strong. All that polluted him would seep into his child’s blood. Every part of his past, everything in his mind, how could he risk a child who would bear even half of it? Even if Rosalind gave their child half of herself, the other half would be from him, and what he had was not worth giving anyone.
He was more than a little drunk. His thoughts, sober, were never fanciful like this. He never let himself think these things, sober. The alcohol was supposed to bury things, not bring them up. It wasn’t working like it should.
Rosalind’s expression had softened, and she put her hand on his arm.
“I know you’re scared, Santi.” When she used his nickname, he knew she had forgiven him, but the words still rang through his head, fuck you, fuck you.
He was in his thirties now, how had that happened? Wasn’t he supposed to stay twenty forever, and then it had been twenty-five, but either way he was going to stay real and never sell out, and now he had cut his hair and he wore a tie every day to his job as a lawyer in a corporate firm, where he helped the people he had once deemed fascist capitalist pigs, rotund white men who mangled his name and patted him on the shoulder like a pet monkey.
And he liked it. He was good at it. The salary they gave him allowed him to finally get a fake tooth implanted in his mouth to fill the hole in his smile, the tooth he had lost as a young kid when his mother’s boyfriend slammed his face into a wall, though he would never really smile with his teeth even after this, the habit of hiding too hard to break. The salary they gave him allowed Rosalind to work as an artist, it kept his mother comfortable, paying off her many doctors, softening the world around her with comfort and cleanliness. It gave him status, prominence, importance. He was Mr. Vega. Had anyone in his family ever been called mister before, by white people? By anyone?
He had more now than he had ever had before in his life. They had an apartment at Twenty-first and Spruce Street in Philadelphia. It was a relief to be out of California, where they had always had to pretend to be happy, and a relief to be out of New Haven, where the winters were so bitter birds fell, dead, from the sky, and the food was terrible, except for the pizza. But more than anything, it was a relief not to be in New York, which felt, always, like something Santiago was escaping, could be sucked back into at any moment.
Their apartment was large and comfortable, bigger than any they had had before. Their friends joked that this was because no one wanted to live in Philadelphia, but he didn’t care. They had a color television and an outdoor area where Rosalind grew basil and flowers in the summer and he grilled steaks, real large steaks they bought at Sunny’s Butcher Shop in the Italian market. Santiago had a car, and seven suits that all fit him well, and a camera, and a record player with all their records filed neatly, from Cream to Led Zeppelin, and space for all his books, and money to buy more books. He had comfort, and safety, and time, and Rosalind. There was nothing more worth adding to life, he knew. This life was perfect. They had so much, so much more than he had ever had, more than he could have dreamed of. And weren’t they happy?
A child would change this. A child would break his records and scribble in his books and stain his suits but more than that, a child would look up at him with large eyes and ask him things, need him to be a father. How could he be a father? He did not know what a father even was. He had never had one.
“I’m scared, too.” Rosalind’s voice, bringing him to the present. He almost swayed, gin running through his veins, but he stopped himself. Rosalind’s face wrinkled. “Did you have a drink before you came home?”
“I went out with some of the guys from work.” Santiago tried to make it sound fun, casual, rather than what it had been, what it always was, a group of lawyers vaguely certain that they were making the world a worse place, not a better one, drinking as much as possible in one sitting to forget that they had just done that.