What's Mine and Yours(78)

The chapel doors creaked open, and Robbie turned to see Margarita, his tall girl in knee-high boots. She wore a skirt that hardly covered her thighs, a flimsy shirt with big sleeves. He put on a big smile for her, although he ached everywhere: his knuckles, behind his eyes, his gums. It hurt to be this sober.

Margarita sat beside him, her skirt disappearing underneath her. He didn’t ask how she’d known where he’d be. The girl had a sixth sense. The rest of them, they were always underestimating her.

“Where’s your sisters?”

“Noelle isn’t coming. Diane and Alma are already in the room.”

“La novia?”

Margarita nodded.

Robbie sighed. He hadn’t been surprised by the news about Diane; his American daughters had their American lives. They were adults. And even he had to admit Alma, and that hair—she was really something.

“Noelle’s going to miss me if she doesn’t come.”

“You’re not leaving again, are you? Diane’s paid up the motel through the end of the week.”

“Why wouldn’t my own daughter want to see me?”

“She said it’s too much for her. She’s just being dramatic.”

Robbie smiled mischievously. “I wonder where she gets it from.”

“The both of you.” Margarita was sharp and didn’t return his smile, but Robbie didn’t mind. They had all found their ways to survive; Margarita had hers.

He had never asked her how she got in touch with Amado’s men, whether they had given her any trouble. He had never confessed that when she and Noelle arrived at his room, two hours southwest of town, he was expecting them to be a delivery, and he was nearly jumping out of his skin, eager, waiting.

Margarita crossed her arms, and Robbie saw that on her pinkie she was wearing the ring he had given her—the R etched into gold.

“My God,” he said, pointing. “You still have it.”

“I just got it from Mama’s house. She saved it for me.”

Robbie felt a little pained she’d left it behind, never took it with her to California.

“And yours?”

“Lost,” Robbie said, although he couldn’t explain how. He might have left it in a soap dish in a motel. Someone might have wrenched it from his finger, robbed him one night he was high. He might have pawned it. It might have been ten years since it went missing, or five, one. He wasn’t sure.

If Margarita was disappointed, she didn’t show it on her face. “Come on,” she said. “Mama is waiting.”

“Maybe I should leave.” He made up a lie about how Lacey May probably didn’t want to see him. He knew she’d been asking for him, but he was terrified to see her sick, to see her irritated with him, to see how far they were from his dreams of growing old together.

“Oh, shut up,” Margarita said, and Robbie was startled, chastened by her. “Stop pretending you don’t matter.”

“All right.”

Robbie stood and crossed himself. They left the chapel together.



Lacey May was out of the bed, sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. She wore a thin robe the color of wine, and she had crossed her bare legs. They were freshly shaven, lotioned, and Robbie couldn’t remember the last time he had seen so much of her body. Her legs were wider, the threads of her veins thick behind her knees, at her ankles. She was eating grapes from a carton and looked more or less like herself, perhaps a bit paler. Hank and Diane were sitting on the windowsill, and Alma was beside Lacey May, perched on the arm of the chair. Together, they pinched the red grapes from their stems.

It was uncannily placid, the television playing the weather report on mute. Clear skies. High winds.

“Robbie.” Lacey May smiled at him. She rose to meet him, and Alma offered her arm to help, but Lacey May was fine.

Robbie shuffled forward to meet her. They embraced, and she smelled of antiseptic, the grainy hospital sheets. When she returned to the chair, he kneeled beside her, and she offered him a fistful of grapes. They were sweet and hard; they burst against his teeth.

Robbie saw they had a spread laid out on the bench at the foot of the vacated bed. A platter of waxy orange cheese, a box of crackers, a fragmented chocolate bar, broccoli, a bottle of ranch dressing.

“It’s like a party,” Robbie said because he wasn’t sure what else to say. He flashed smiles at them all—Alma, Margarita, Diane, Lacey, even at Hank, who hadn’t turned to look at him, hadn’t even nodded his acknowledgment when Robbie entered the room. He was tapping on his phone.

Now that he was here, Robbie wanted to make them laugh, wanted to help them see how good it was to all be together. There was too much you couldn’t control in life, too many terrible things. They should be happy, even if only for a little while, even just for right now.

The doctors had said Lacey May could lose her vision, her ability to speak, if the tumor went on growing. But for now, the swelling was down, and she’d be going home soon. She’d come back in for radiation; they would zap the tumor, and she’d get better, go into remission. Or, she would need surgery, and they would cut open her skull and lift out the mass. Or chemo. Or nothing would work, and she’d die. Robbie didn’t like her odds. But Lacey May seemed animated, calm. Unguarded. She grinned at him, and he wondered what kind of drugs they were giving her.