AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I worked at a local art gallery, which featured not-so-well-known regional artists with not-so-great work, but it was a distraction, and for that I loved it. I would gaze listlessly at paintings of donuts and sketches of naked women, and I would try to forget. But then, as fate would have it, one day a new collection was introduced to the gallery, one by a slightly-more-well-known artist from New York, featuring naked men with golden skin that reflected the light in such a way that prevented you from looking away.
Lucas.
So, for the sake of honesty, I couldn’t forget about him. Not for a second. I tried, but life had a way of keeping him on my mind: the painting collection, the men I saw on television, even the local mechanic,Lucas’ Auto Repair, which had apparently been there for fifteen years yet eluded my attention until my return.
But I found a way of passing the time. I chatted with friends with such frequency that even Tala suspected something was off, and threw myself into my art, painting portrait after portrait of “Mystery Man,” as my parents called him—who really was Lucas but whose identity was unbeknownst to them. My mother offered time and again to hang these pieces throughout the house, but always I resisted. It was my compulsion, and nothing more.
But around the time my mother stopped asking this question, she began asking another: why was I gaining so much weight? Was I alright, and did I need to visit a doctor?I don’t know; Yes, Mom, and no, Mom, I responded, but about a month after she started asking, I noticed changes myself. My breasts had gotten bigger and ached constantly. I seldom weighed myself but knew my approximate weight; when I decided to weigh myself one morning, I found I was twenty pounds heavier. I hadn’t been getting my period, which had been a relief, but once considered in tandem with these observations pointed to a painfully obvious conclusion.
Did this mean what I think it did?
Well, according to three at-home pregnancy tests, it did.
Impossible, I told myself, although I knew it wasn’t. Lucas and I had unprotected sex. I had taken Plan B the day after, before Tala’s wedding, assuming that would be the end of that. But clearly it hadn’t worked. And I hadn’t slept with anyone since. I considered the timeline. By then I was four months along—this meant I had options. I could abort, I could carry it to term and give it up for adoption, or I could keep it. Realistically, I knew that if I carried it to term, I would want to keep it. And so, the question was whether to go through with the pregnancy.
I was young, unwed, and financially unstable; I lived with my parents and put a substantial percentage of my income towards helping them pay their mortgage. After I moved away to college, a wildfire burned down much of my hometown, including my father’s carpentry business. My mother had been in the building, barely conscious when the rescue team found her. The business had been around longer than I had, and that fire took more than just his workshop; it took his spirit, too. And of course my mother was traumatized—though, fortunately, physically unharmed—so neither of them worked. It was a sort of involuntary retirement, with welfare from the government in lieu of a traditional pension. My brother, Christofer, had tried to support them as well, but his marriage and special needs son demanded most of his time and resources, and so that responsibility fell on me.
And yet, despite it all, something told me to keep it. To have this baby. Married or not, there would be no shortage of emotional support in its life. My parents had been wonderful, and I suspected I would be a good mother, and whatever I lacked in money I could make up for with love. I wasn’t fully convinced by this logic, but it kept me from doing anything about the pregnancy.
Four months became five, and then six, until finally I accepted this new reality: I was going to be a mother.
6
A Family History
Lucas
One morning I awoke to my mother’s sobbing. What might have prompted this was just then unclear to me, but as I emerged from the fog of slumber I remembered: Mateo. It had been five years since his death; today was the anniversary.
So much had changed since his passing—and not for the better. Toxicology reports had confirmed that Mateo was in fact under the influence at the time of the accident, which caused ripples and severely compromised public opinion of Mendosa Enterprises. My family reckoned with a sort of emotional whiplash; Carlos Mendosa, my father, had died two years prior.
And then there was the matter of Mendosa Enterprises itself. After my father’s death, Mateo had taken over as CEO—though his track record didn’t render him an exceptionally qualified candidate, I had made it clear to my father I had no interest in taking over the business, and my sister was a socialist, and for a good while, things were alright. That was until the big scandal. Mateo had been embezzling company funds into his personal account, much of which, it was widely speculated, he spent on cocaine. There was an uproar, and in response Mateo publicly vowed to check himself into rehab.
This happened the week before his accident.
And now my mother and sister, the only remaining heirs to Mendosa Enterprises, served jointly as CEOs. My mother didn’t have much experience—she never had to work, for obvious reasons—but had learned a thing or two from my father; my sister, on the other hand, had been involved in non-profits, and the skillset translated well to the business. With her track record, and the fact of their being the first female CEOs of a major Minnesota company, the public’s faith in the business was restored.
At first things went smoothly—the company’s $250 million in assets ensured as much—but as time passed the employees saw how these Co-CEOs differed from their predecessors; they were all too generous. They began taking advantage of this, demanding inordinate raises, and threatening to strike if their demands were not met. Simultaneously, my sister’s efforts to make Mendosa Enterprises “go green” were both costly and ineffective. She invested $20 million on solar panels at the headquarters, neglecting the fact that Minnesota only received sunlight four or five months out of the year.
This profligate spending added up, and before long Mendosa Enterprises was declaring bankruptcy. I hadn’t heard this first-hand; I had seen it on CNN from the army base. Immediately I called my mother, who attempted to downplay the severity of the situation. And how could she not, when she’d lost as much as she had—a husband, a son, and a multimillion-dollar business. She was too proud to ask for help, insisting things would find a way of working themselves out. I knew even then that’s not how the world works. And so I resigned from the army—or, rather, was “honorably discharged,” in light of the circumstances—and moved back home, to help my family pick up the pieces.
Mendosa Enterprises had taken a massive hit; many major companies—companies that, historically, had been allies—turned their backs on us. I became the COO (I had no desire to run the company, even then) and did everything I could to bolster the company’s reputation, not to its former glory, but to a level that did not invoke connotations of scandal or bankruptcy when one heard the name Mendosa.
From the moment I got home, the family dynamic was in sharp decline. My mother developed a severe depression, and my sister had been seeing someone who, in less than a year, became her wife. The conflicts were constant—whether it was my mother screaming at my sister, insisting her wife was a no-good gold digger, or my sister screaming at my mother, criticizing her for choosing alcohol over therapy. I didn’t come between them—I tried my best to avoid conflict—but the walls were thin, and their struggles, in a sense, were mine.
And so, on that morning, I thought to comfort my mother, to take her in my arms and tell her everything was going to work itself out, like she’d said—but I couldn’t. I couldn’t, because I didn’t think it was true, and because she was probably drunk, and because I was not one for false hope. I went about my morning routine, as usual, and slipped quietly out of the house.
I was meeting up with an old friend, Fernando, whom I hadn’t seen since before I served. I pulled up to the restaurant and saw him sitting in a booth, waiting for me. He looked up from his phone and smiled.
“Hey, buddy! How the hell are ya?” Fernando asked me.
And I told him.
Only I didn’t tell him everything.
I said nothing of Natalie, the mystery woman, who all those years later was still in my thoughts.
7
