Without any luggage she raced past baggage claim and down the hall, slowing as she approached the exit. There, on the other side of the glass, were her children. She saw them before they saw her, and her heart pounded as she watched Sara and Alex in conversation, Luna with her entire face pressed against the security doors. NO REENTRY stretched in yellow and black decals above her daughter’s head. The accuracy of the statement was almost comical. When she walked through those doors, everything would be different. There would be no going back.
Letty stopped walking, overwhelmed, but just then Luna saw her and shrieked, the sound jolting a tired TSA officer to his feet. Her daughter ducked around the door and bolted past him. With one arm extended he started to say something, but then he stopped, thinking better of trying to stop a wild-eyed, wild-haired six-year-old girl’s reunification with her mother. Letty kneeled down to meet her daughter’s fierce tackle, lifting her up into her arms and carrying her back through the doors to Sara and Alex.
“Are you okay?” Luna asked, tapping the gauzy bandage on Letty’s temple and then continuing before she could answer: “Alex almost died, did you know?”
“What?” Letty’s already racing heart jumped into her throat, and she reached out to check Alex’s forehead, but he stepped back, away from her.
“It was just a little burn,” he said. He rolled up his sleeve to show her a patch of gauze taped to his forearm.
“But you told me you could have died!” Luna protested.
“I said if it turned into a blood infection I could have died, which it didn’t. You need to listen.”
Letty raised her eyebrows at Sara, who smiled. “Welcome home.”
“Thanks.” She set Luna on the floor and gave Sara a hug, squeezing her tight.
“Thank you for taking care of them,” she said. “And for buying my plane ticket. I seriously don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“It’s okay. You know that.”
Letty turned to Alex. He was taller than she remembered, and stood awkwardly in his new height. His sleeves were too short, and the front of his shirt had come untucked, falling over his belt. Sometime, between now and when she’d last looked, Alex had grown up. She leaned toward him, but when he didn’t reach for her, she settled for a pat on the shoulder.
“It’s good to see you.”
“You too.”
She turned back to Luna, the harder, but simpler of her two children—but she was no longer wrapped around her waist.
“Luna?”
After a moment of panic Letty found her in front of a glass café case. “Can I have a chocolate muffin?” she begged. “Please?”
Letty pulled her last three dollars from her pocket, a collection of wrinkled bills and coins splayed out on the counter.
“Chocolate muffins for everyone,” Letty declared magnanimously, but when the barista counted out the money it was enough for only one muffin, which Luna weaseled out onto the curb and wouldn’t share.
—
Sara drove them back to the Landing and stayed just long enough to do the dishes and make the beds before giving everyone a hug good-bye. Luna gave her a whole-body hug, and it took effort for Sara to peel her away and escape out the front door.
Letty followed behind. “You don’t have to go, you know. There’s no one here to chase you out with a spatula.”
Sara smiled. It was a joke they traded regularly, referring to the time they’d been caught watching a horror movie—one that had been expressly forbidden by Maria Elena. Letty had thought she was asleep, but at the first gunshot Maria Elena had burst out of her room in a floor-length nightgown, waving a spatula above her head.
“I would, but I have a night class to teach. And I’ve got to go cram for it. I didn’t have much time to prepare this week.”
“Welcome to the rest of my life.”
“Yep.” Sara smiled, raising an eyebrow. “Welcome to the rest of your life.”
Letty swallowed hard, and Sara reached out and gave her hand a quick squeeze. She took a step toward the stairs and then seemed to change her mind, turning back around. “Hey, I know you probably don’t want to discuss this, but I think you need to talk to Alex. I think he knows.”
“Knows what?”
“About Wes.”
“How could he know?”
“I don’t know. Kids just know things. He’ll be fifteen this summer—it’s not a surprise he’s asking questions.”
Letty sighed and leaned against the railing, looking down at the parking lot below. “But what should I tell him?”
“I don’t know. His father’s name. That he’s a doctor. It doesn’t have to be much.”
“I don’t know much. I haven’t heard from him in over ten years.”
“So tell him that. Just tell him something. I can see it’s hurting him, not knowing.”
“Well, it won’t be the first time I’ve hurt him.”
“Stop.”
The word sealed Letty’s lips before she could start, strong and swift like a hand cranking closed a leaky faucet. Sara would not let her go there. For all her criticism, for all the hundreds of times they’d fought over Letty’s decision not to tell Wes, Sara had never blamed Letty for the day in the parking lot with Alex. When Letty had called, hysterical, she’d flown home from college immediately and spent a week in the hospital room, holding Letty’s hand. Now, she pulled Letty to her. Sara was taller by a good four inches, and Letty pressed her face into the space between her neck and shoulder.
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
“I know you are. But it’s time.”
“Past time,” Letty admitted, and Sara didn’t argue, just gently turned her face, so that she could look into her eyes.
“This isn’t all your fault,” she said. “Remember? You tried.”
She was talking about Luna. Luna was supposed to have been Letty’s second chance, her new beginning. And it was true that Letty had tried. She’d stopped drinking and taken vitamins and quit all her jobs except one, bartending at Flannigan’s, where she could make three times the minimum wage in tips. She’d even saved enough to buy a new crib with soft pink bedding, which Maria Elena had promptly assembled in her own bedroom. It would be easier, she’d claimed, with Letty working nights, and Letty didn’t argue, not then and not when Maria Elena dumped the milk she’d pumped (tainted, her mother assumed, not trusting her) and started feeding the baby formula. It felt selfish to complain, when Alex was growing up healthy and happy, when her children were getting everything they needed, when her mother could so clearly do everything better than she could. But still it gnawed at Letty, and the guilt pushed her further away. Sundays, her only days off, she spent mostly with Sara, where for a few weightless hours she could pretend at a different life, one that did not include two children who needed her and a mother who did not.
“I didn’t try hard enough.”
“Maybe not,” Sara said. “But it isn’t too late.”
Letty thought of what her mother had said, just days ago, before throwing her out of her father’s childhood home: You have your whole life ahead of you.
“I hope not,” Letty said, letting go of Sara. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
She stood on the porch until Sara’s car disappeared, and then took a deep breath and walked inside. Alex and Luna were in the kitchen. Alex stood on a stool, getting the dinner plates from the highest shelf, where Maria Elena insisted they be kept; Luna counted silverware onto the table. As was her job whenever she was home for dinner, Letty filled a pitcher with water and set a glass at each place setting, and then they all sat down for dinner together.
There was a long, awkward moment. Alex and Luna sat at the table like hungry birds, waiting to be fed, and all at once Letty realized. They were waiting for her to feed them.
She sprang up from the table.
Okay, she thought, this is it. Her chance to show her children (and herself) that they were all going to be just fine. She could ma
ke dinner and do the dishes and get them ready for bed. One, two, three: done. It wasn’t impossible. Not even hard, really. Grabbing the ruffled apron Maria Elena kept on a hook, she tied it on and flung the refrigerator open. Foul air poured from within. She slammed the door shut. Better left for tomorrow, she thought, and scanned the cabinets for something she could make.
“She left meals in the freezer,” Alex said, coming to her rescue.
Clear glass casserole dishes were stacked on the left; gallon Ziplocs of soup, tamales, and taquitos were piled on the right. She pulled out a plastic bag of what looked like chicken soup and read the directions written on the front with permanent marker. 1. Thaw in warm water. 2. Transfer to glass. 3. Microwave.
Thawing would take hours. Who had time for that? She skipped to the next instruction, but when she unzipped the bag and tried to dump it into a mixing bowl, the frozen block of soup wouldn’t budge. Resealing the bag, she stuck it into the microwave and set it to cook for five minutes, and just as she finished washing and drying three soup bowls, a noise like a small bomb exploded from inside the microwave.
“Damn!”
She covered her mouth at Luna’s horrified expression. The microwave door beeped angrily when she opened it. Soup dripped from the ceiling and door and dribbled from the shredded plastic, pooling on the glass plate. She salvaged as much of the soup as she could and set the bowls on the table.
“It’s fine,” she said with a smile, picking up a spoon.
Alex took a bite. He immediately spit out a chunk of ice, concealing it in a napkin.
“I don’t like it,” Luna said.
“You didn’t even try it,” Letty said. She took a huge, half-frozen, half-burning-hot spoonful, biting into a long strip of plastic bag. She pulled it out of her mouth, held it up, and laughed. “Come on. What could you possibly not like about this?”
“Gross.” Alex smiled for the first time since she returned.
Letty checked her watch. It was getting late; there was no time to try again with one of her mother’s other meals.
“I think it’s time for the emergency reserves,” she said, standing up to clear their plates. She dumped them with a clatter in the sink. “Your nana doesn’t know everything in this kitchen.”
They looked doubtful but watched as she cleaned the microwave and then pulled a sleeve of popcorn from a paper grocery bag folded flat and tucked into the broom closet. While it was popping she grabbed a box of chocolates from somewhere within their bedroom.
“Dinner is served,” she said grandly. Luna squealed as Letty filled a mixing bowl with steaming popcorn and plopped the box of chocolates onto the table.
They ate quickly, shoveling huge handfuls of popcorn into their mouths. Alex’s eyes darted to the door, as if worried their grandmother would march in and put a stop to it. When the popcorn was gone Luna crawled, chocolate-smeared, under the table and into Letty’s lap. She tilted her head back and smiled with both eyes closed. Luna’s lashes were curly, just like hers, and Letty sighed, leaning over to kiss her daughter’s salty lips. Luna was so forgiving. Letty didn’t deserve it, but she was buoyed by it: all she had to do was try, and they would figure it out together, how to be a family, just the three of them. She sighed, wishing she didn’t have to cut their reunion short. But she didn’t have a choice.
Picking Luna up and setting her on the bench beside her, Letty stood.
“I have to go to work.”
Judging by the looks on their faces, it was like she’d said she had to go to the moon—or back to Mexico.
“I’m sorry. But I’ve missed more than a week already. I can’t miss another shift.” She paused, waiting for them to say something, and when they didn’t she turned to Luna: “I’ll get you ready for bed, and then you can watch TV. Alex will just have to tuck you in when you’re tired. Or fall asleep on the couch, I don’t care.”
Maria Elena never let them sleep on the couch, not even for a nap, and there was something about the suggestion that seemed to terrify her daughter. The color drained from her face. Letty reached out to hug her, but she wriggled away and pressed herself flat against the wall.
“What?” Letty said, growing exasperated. “Alex can take care of you for a few hours, you know he can. You were just home alone for a week and you were fine.”
But looking at them, she knew they had not been fine. Alex was still taking antibiotics for his skin infection and Luna had lost weight, and those were only the things she knew about. There could have been dozens of other near misses and nightmares between when she left them and when she finally got in touch with Sara. The buoyancy she’d felt just minutes before was replaced by a heavy weight. She didn’t want to leave them, but what else could she do? Sara was the only friend she trusted, and she had just been with Letty’s kids for days and bought her a plane ticket home. Letty couldn’t ask Sara to come back barely an hour after she’d left, especially not when she had a class to teach. Besides, if they didn’t get used to it they would all starve, and her parents in Mexico would starve too.
“Fine,” she said, turning away. The longer she lingered, the longer she negotiated with her daughter’s pleading eyes, the harder it would be to walk out the door. “Sleep under the table. I’m already late.”
In her bedroom, she hurried into jeans and a fresh black tank top, scouring a pile of laundry for a clean apron and settling on a dirty one. Avoiding the mirror, she pulled her heavy hair into a high bun. When she walked out, Luna stood by the front door, her rain boots on, skinny knees bare below short shorts.
“I’m coming with you.”
“You can’t come with me. I work in a bar.”
Luna tugged on one gold hoop earring, the way she did unconsciously in the middle of the night, whimpering from a bad dream. “You work at the airport.”
“I work at a bar, in the airport,” Letty corrected.
“I’m coming.”
Letty sighed and reached out her arms, and Luna fell against her stomach. “I don’t want to go. Really. But we have to eat. If I don’t work, we don’t eat.” She tilted her daughter’s face up. “Okay? You’ll stay for me?”
Luna shook her head no. Her eyes filled, and she started to cry, big gasping sobs. Was she mad? Scared? Or did she just want her way? Letty vaguely remembered a tantrum of similar proportions about a missing yellow sweater, but maybe she was remembering wrong. Really she had no idea, and was struck again by the knowledge that she didn’t know her children at all. Alex stood in the doorway watching, and when Letty turned to him for help he shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t know either.
Letty walked down three flights of stairs with her daughter hanging around her waist. In Building B, crazy Mrs. Starks paced inside her apartment. Letty could see her silhouetted against the blue light of the television. Her gaze dropped to the apartment below, where Mr. and Mrs. Ramos used to live. Mrs. Ramos, with the embroidered curtains and embroidered tablecloths and embroidered napkins and embroidered everything, with whom Maria Elena could always leave Letty in a pinch. But the Ramoses had been gone for more than a decade now, and no one had moved in to replace them. There was nowhere at all to leave Luna.
From the lit window on the third story, Letty saw Alex watching. He would take care of his sister. With a swift twist Letty broke free of Luna and started to run.
“Go home,” she shouted over her shoulder, but Luna sprinted after her, her short legs spinning in circles. Looking back, Letty could see the sharp bones of her daughter’s rib cage heaving in and out, the veins of her clenched fists bulging in desperation. You’ll understand when you’re older, Letty wanted to yell back, but maybe she wouldn’t, because Letty could barely understand herself. All she knew was that she needed to work. To do anything else was to risk losing what she had left, her job and her home and her children. Blood beat in her temples. She couldn’t imagine how Luna was keeping up on her tiny, thin legs, but every time Letty glanced back there she was, gravel flying behind her in a wild spray.
Letty ran faster than she ever had. Her only chance was to get to the frontage road that ran along the freeway and turn before Luna could see her. Not knowing the way, she would stop running and let Alex carry her home.
But just then Letty heard a shriek. Spinning around, she saw Luna flat on her stomach, bloody hands lifted up.
She stopped in her tracks and ran back to where her daughter lay.
“What are we going to do?” Letty wailed desperately, idiotically, as if she were the bleeding six-year-old splayed across the road and not the mother standing over her. Luna didn’t answer. Her eyes were shut tight, and she sucked in her lower lip, snot and silent tears running down her face.
Letty rolled her onto her back and then pulled her into a sitting position. “Oh, my God, can you even stand?” she asked, and when Luna stood, blood from both knees dripping into her rain boots, Letty asked: “Can you run?”
Luna hobbled, and then jogged, and then ran.
Reaching for her hand, Letty pulled her forward, and together they sprinted, their faces matching masks of fear, all the way to the terminal and into the airport bar.
There was blood in the gravel where Luna fell. Alex waited until they were out of sight before sprinting down the stairs, around the site of the accident, and all the way to the freeway. Without pausing he climbed the steps of the pedestrian bridge and continued, over the freeway and up the steep sidewalk into Mission Hills. Glancing over his shoulder, he could see his dark apartment at the end of Mile Road. He ran and ran and ran away from it, even as his heart pounded in his ears and he gasped for breath. He couldn’t stop. His mother couldn’t do it alone. When Sara saw his face she would know, and she would come back. She had to.
Alex paused at each corner, comparing the names of the streets to the map he’d internalized from a lifetime of sitting at bus stops. Every street in Mission Hills was named after a tree, and he passed them one at a time as he worked his way toward Sara’s condo: Sycamore, Ash, Cherry, Elm. Elm.