Page 19

Mamá’s apartment is on the third floor. The hallway smells like Fabuloso and roasted garlic. The door’s open – Mamá doesn’t lock the door when she’s expecting family, because in Mamá’s worldview, a locked door is a statement and an open one is an invitation, and tonight is an invitation.

I hear her before I see her.

“– and the last connection was through Akron, Mamá. Akron, Ohio. The airport had one gate. ONE. It was the size of this kitchen. The vending machine only sold pretzels and something called ‘Cheese Bites’ that I’m pretty sure have been in there since Obama was president. I sat on the floor for forty-five minutes next to a man who was clipping his toenails into a Ziploc bag. A Ziploc bag, Mamá! He was SAVING them! He had a system – clip, inspect, deposit! I didn’t ask why. You don’t ask why. You don’t make eye contact with a man who has a toenail portfolio. I’ve been through twelve airports in fourteen hours. The pigeon airline lost my checked bag in Dallas and found it in Denver, which is impressive because those are different states. I have seen the inside of America’s regional aviation system and I am not the same person I was this morning.”

“You could have flown direct,” Mamá says. This is said mildly, which means dangerously.

“Direct from Seattle is six hundred dollars. Do you have six hundred dollars? Because I don’t have six hundred dollars. I have a CPA, an eighty-nine-dollar boarding pass from an airline whose logo is a pigeon, and the kind of deep psychological scarring that only the Akron airport can provide. These are my current assets. I’ve done the math and the math is bad.”

I step through the door. Elena’s standing in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, eating directly from a pot of rice with a wooden spoon. Wrinkled flannel, jeans with the creased look of fourteen hours of sitting, hair in a knot that’s entered a state of creative collapse. Dark circles under her eyes. A smear of airport mustard on her left sleeve.

She looks up and sees me.

The spoon clatters into the pot.

“LUCAS!”

The sound that comes out of my sister isn’t a word. It’s a frequency. Dogs in New Jersey are tilting their heads. She launches herself across the kitchen and hits me centre-mass like a heat-seeking missile in a flannel shirt. Her arms lock around my ribs. Her feet leave the ground. I stagger back into the doorframe, catch her, and she squeezes so hard I’m fairly sure she’s fractured something.

“Oh my God,” she says into my chest, her voice thick and wobbling dangerously. “Oh my God, you’re here. You’re so tall. When did you get this tall? Why didn’t you warn me? I hate you. I missed you so much. Your hair is terrible. I love you.”

That’s Elena. Five contradictory statements in three seconds, all of them true.

“I missed you too.” I hold her properly – both arms, tight, my chin on top of her head, the way I used to hold her when she was small enough to carry. She smells like recycled airplane air and the lavender hand cream she’s been using since she was nineteen, and for about three seconds the kitchen disappears and it’s just this – my sister, home, warm, alive, here.

She pulls back. Her eyes are wet and she’s smiling so hard it looks like it hurts, and she smacks my arm.

“You got old.”

“You smell like the Akron airport.”

“That’s my new cologne. Eau de Layover. Top notes of jet fuel, base notes of despair. I’m thinking of bottling it.” She grabs my face with both hands, turns it left, then right, studying me the way Mamá studies a chart – thorough, clinical, and with the implicit threat of a follow-up. “You look tired. Why do you look tired? Are you sleeping? You’re not sleeping. I can tell. Your under-eyes have under-eyes. Your face is running a deficit, Lucas. And don’t try lying to me – I audit corporate finances for a living. I can smell a misstatement from a mile away.”

“I’m fine.”

“Lucas, you taught me how to ride a bike, you held my hair when I had stomach flu at eleven, and when I was sixteen you caught me sneaking Malibu up the fire escape, confiscated it, poured it down the sink, and told Mamá the smell was cleaning products. You don’t get to ‘I’m fine’ me. I have twenty-six years of receipts. Try again.”

“I’m working a lot.”

“‘Working a lot’ gives you bags. You have luggage, Lucas. Matching luggage. That’s not tired – tired I could fix with a nap and a sandwich. That’s worried. What are you worried about? Is it money? Is it the hospital? Blink twice if it’s the husband.”

“Nothing. Eat your rice.”

“Don’t deflect with food. That’s Mamá’s move and you’re not qualified.” She looks past me. Her eyes land on Preston, who’s standing in the doorway in his coat, holding a bottle of wine he bought on the way over. He’s performing “relaxed” the way other people perform CPR – with visible effort, total concentration, and the faint sense that if he stops trying, something will flatline.

Elena’s gaze travels from his shoes – Italian leather, camel-coloured– up to his face. Her expression doesn’t change, but something behind it recalibrates. She’s reading him the way she reads a balance sheet.

“So,” Elena says. “You’re the husband.”

“I’m the husband,” Preston says. He presents the wine with both hands, like a diplomat presenting credentials. “Preston York. I’ve been preparing for this meeting my entire marriage.”

“I know who you are. Lucas talks about you.”

“Only good things, I hope.”

“He doesn’t talk about you that much.”

“Wounding. And yet I know everything about you. Elena the CPA. First-attempt pass. Your certificate lives on our fridge, and I have offered – repeatedly – to frame it in museum glass.”