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“His bandmates have insisted on me fetching you. Seems he’s not himself since he left this place.” Mickey presses his lips together and smiles, raising an eyebrow.
Not himself since he left me.
“Well, it’s not my job to make him feel like himself.”
Mickey laughs. “You are stubborn. Just like your mother said.”
“Okay, what the fu –”
“Mami!”
I stop in my tracks when I see Leo running toward me, followed by my mother. “What is going on?”
Leo runs up to me, his backpack over his shoulders packed to the gills. “We’re going on a trip!”
“We… are?”
“Mija.”
Mama stands next to Mickey, my suitcase at her side.
“You knew about this?”
My mother bumps her elbow against the manager. “He called me a few days ago.”
“Tracked her down through the Our Lady of Lourdes parish registry,” Mickey says.
“This is crazy. This –” I put my hands to my temple. Not only was Rex’s manager executing this plan, but he also got my mother involved. And doubtlessly, she got Amina and the hospital involved. “What is going on?”
“It’s simple, isn’t it?” Mama says.
“No,” I say with a firm cut of my hand through the air. “It is not simple. It’s… you are all forcing something that isn’t supposed to be.”
My mother glances at Mickey. “Told you, didn’t I?”
“I’m. Not. Stubborn!” I cry out, forgetting I’m standing in my place of work having some intolerable domestic squabble. “I’m sensible! I’ve made choices for Leo because I –“
“Mi mija –” Mama steps forward and takes my cheeks in her hands. “You are making choices because you are used to those walls you’ve built around us. Thank you for those walls. But as your mami, I am telling you, it is time for those walls to come down.”
I stare at her, terrified. My mother, her face beautiful and lined from all her years on earth. I know she’s right. She has always been right about Rex.
The moment I allow myself to agree with her, my black-and-white mind expands into technicolor. Glitter and tie-dye bursting to life, painting pictures of a life of possibility, not one of bracing and anticipating when things might fall apart.
“You love him,” she says in Spanish. “And look what he gave you.”
I glance down at Leo who has remained at my legs, arms wrapped around me. I slide my fingers through his hair. For some, being left with a baby in the wake of an affair would be a burden. For me, it was just the next right step. Leo is not a product of my love for Rex. He is an extension.
I’ve been carrying the torch all these years. And been so intent on extinguishing it.
But how can I when my son grows older and Rex…
Rex wants to love me too.
“This is ridiculous, Mama,” I say, a last-ditch effort.
“Let me talk the way you talk. What is right and wrong, eh? It is right for Leo to know his papa. It is right for Leo to understand how incredible he is. Is that enough?”
It is.
