“Sí, amorcito,” she said.
“Hello, Father,” she said to Dave as she went back out.
Dave raised his hand and blessed the air behind her.
“Father?” said Little Angel.
“He’s my priest,” Big Angel explained.
“Indeed,” said Dave. “Father David Martin, SJ.”
“Es un Jesuita,” Big Angel said. “Going to do my funeral.”
“Oh shit!” said Little Angel. “Sorry, Padre.”
“No worries. Jesuits say it too. Every Jesuit in the world said ‘Oh shit’ when Francis was made pope.” He nodded at the prone patriarch. “We are deciding when to do last rites.”
“Are you dying tonight?” Little Angel said.
“I am,” his brother replied.
Dave shook his head. “I think he has more time.”
“He’s pretty sick.”
“I am right here, pendejos. Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”
Little Angel dropped the books and sat on the end of the bed too. “God,” he said. “This is all too much for me.”
“Carnal—I’ll have cake first. Don’t worry. We got time.”
“Shut up.”
“Maybe dance too.”
“Not funny.”
“You don’t need to tell me what’s funny.”
“Brothers, you have some business to attend to,” Dave said. He raised his hand over them and made the sign of the cross in the air. “I do this a lot,” he noted.
“Does it work?” said Little Angel.
“It got you here.”
“Boom,” said Big Angel. “Owned.”
“Lalo teach you that?”
“I’m an OG,” Big Angel said smugly.
Dave clapped his hands once and said, “Okay! Call me, Miguel—or have Perla call me. You know. And I’ll call you, Gabe,” he said. “Your brother gave me your number. You will help me at the funeral.”
“Wait,” Little Angel said. He was going to say I’m leaving. But he stopped.
“Thanks, guys,” Dave said. He waved at them and strode from the room, maintaining a splendid pace through the house and front yard until he was far down the street and climbing into his SUV and whistling.
* * *
Random-selecting thoughts, Big Angel announced, “I never took drugs.”
“No?” Little Angel replied. “Me neither.”
“Not even marijuana.”
“Same.”
“I thought you were a hippie. I am going to start smoking marijuana,” Big Angel said. “Eat it in cookies. What do you think about that?”
“Why not? They say it helps.”
“They say it makes you laugh. I want to laugh.”
“I hear magic mushrooms make you very happy.”
Then Little Angel said, “I saw what you did.”
Coming so soon after confession, it hit Big Angel with a cold rip of panic all down his back. “What did I do?” he blurted.
“In the shed.”
“What?”
“Ookie.”
“Oh!” Big Angel lay back. “I did lots of things,” he confessed and let a slow leak of relief breath whistle out. “Yes. Ookie’s city. That was good.”
Little Angel moved up and lay next to his brother. Together they stared at the ceiling.
“I can’t believe you did that,” Little Angel said.
“My little secret.”
“People will find out.”
“I know. When I’m gone. That’s a good thing. They’ll see what Pops did.” Now his right hand was trembling. He tucked it under too. Mother, he thought, maybe I am tired after all.
Big Angel was aware of the sad steps of the dance. It cost him great effort to speak now. When you died, you died in small doses. You had trouble speaking. You forgot who was beside you. You were suddenly furious and in a panic of outrage. You wished you could be saintly. You wished you weren’t so weak. You suddenly felt better and fooled yourself into believing that a miracle was about to happen. Well, wasn’t that all a dirty rotten thing to pull on somebody.
He produced a smartphone and struggled to control his hands and tap on it.
“What are you doing?” Little Angel said.
“Texting Minnie.” The phone pinged. “She’s coming.”
In a minute, Minnie hurried into the room. “You rang?”
“In the closet,” Big Angel said.
Minnie squeezed past the bed and said, “The chud is back. He’s outside. He’s wasted. I’m so pissed.”
“Qué?” Big Angel said.
“Nothing, Daddy. Just talking to my tío.” She turned back to Little Angel. “Lalo. I told him to stay clean. He doesn’t listen.”
“Lalo?” said Big Angel. “Is he using again?”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I got this.”
Big Angel kicked his feet.
“Really, Daddy. Lalo’s just having a tough day. Everybody is.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No! No, no.”
“It’s my fault.”
“Stop it, Daddy. No such thing.”
“Carnal,” said Little Angel. But he didn’t have anything else to say, so he left it hanging.
Minnie rattled around in the closet and came out with a small flat plastic storage box with a snap-on lid. She laid it beside Big Angel’s feet. She went back into the shadow and came out with a heavy brown wool overcoat. It had brass buttons and looked floor length. She nodded at Big Angel and smiled, and she squeezed Little Angel’s shoulder as she slipped past him.
“Have fun, you two,” she said and went back to managing the fiesta.
“This is our father’s police overcoat,” Big Angel said. “I give it to you.”
Little Angel just stared at it.
“You can touch it,” Big Angel said.
Little Angel reached over and took up the coat; it was heavy. It smelled faintly of mothballs. He studied the buttons—they were tarnished, but the eagle battling a snake on a cactus was clearly visible. He stood up, held the coat to his chest, and looked down at himself. His shoulders were wider than his father’s had been. And the long coat reached only two inches above his knees.
“I thought he was a giant.”
Big Angel wheezed slightly. “So did I.”
“He was tiny!” Little Angel said.
“My size,” Big Angel said.
“Sorry.”
“I used to think I was so big. I thought I was a big man.”
“So did I.”
The line fell flat and hard.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Big Angel said.
Little Angel shook his head. “Nothing.” It wasn’t what he had meant to say.
Their entire life as a family had relied on playacting, he suddenly realized. He dropped the coat back onto the bed.
“It sounded harsher than I meant for it to sound. No harm, no foul, right?”
“I have disappointed you.”
Little Angel turned away. “Come on, man,” he said. “Let’s not.”
“I must have failed you. Is that right?”
“Jesus, man.”
“Tell me now.”
“Knock it off.”
“Go on! You have a complaint? Last chance, pinche Gabriel.”
“You fucker. Stop waving your death in everybody’s face.”
Death? Big Angel thought. Really? What do you know about death? “Nice,” he said.
“Look—”
“Don’t say look to me, mister!”
Little Angel walked out of the room. Who do you think you are, my mother? He walked to the kitchen and hugged La Gloriosa, who was startled.
* * *
Little Angel returned to the room and sat on the end of the bed. “Look—” he said.
Big Angel raised his hand. “I know,” he said. “I was not a perfect brother to you.” He put up his other hand. “Don’t say it. I don’t want to hear it. ‘You did the best you could.’ That’s
talk for losers.”
“Hey, now. Tone down the harshness there, Angel.”
They didn’t look at each other.
“Maybe I wasn’t a perfect brother either,” Little Angel gallantly announced.
Big Angel laughed. “Maybe?”
“Shut up.” Little Angel was furious, and he didn’t know why.
Big Angel laughed again—cruelly, Little Angel thought.
“Who cares, all right?” the younger brother said. He hated it when his voice sounded like some sitcom teenager in his head. He wanted his big brother to take him seriously. “Nobody cares about all this ancient family bullshit. Just enjoy your day!” He leapt from the bed and towered over his brother. Grabbed the coat. It was astonishingly heavy. “You wanted this goddamned dramatic event, so get out there and live it up.”
“Really, Baby Brother?”
Little Angel meanly noted his brother’s accent made the word into rilly. “You’re having a great time. Just be honest. Enjoy it. You set this all in motion for yourself, yeah? Who cares how I feel about things?” Little Angel wanted to embrace the coat and toss it to the floor in equal measure. He laid it back at his brother’s feet yet again.
Big Angel was so furious he was almost healed. “You don’t like my party?”
“Sure. It’s great.”
“Prick.”
“Back at ya.”
“You were always a crybaby,” Big Angel snapped.
“I know. Like when you taught me to swim at the beach.”
Big Angel reddened. “You had everything,” he said.
“Are we really doing this?” It was Little Angel’s turn to laugh. “Everything,” he said. “You think it was all happiness on my side of the street.”
“Now we get to it!” Big Angel said. “You dare—!” He just pointed at his little brother. “I didn’t have food, cabrón!”
Minnie rushed in. “Tía MaryLú!”
“What,” both brothers said.
“It’s a disaster,” she cried.
“Porqué?” said Big Angel.
“Tía Paz tore her wig off! This whole party’s turned to shit!”
“MaryLú wears a wig?” Little Angel said.
In spite of everything, both brothers laughed.
“Ain’t funny! I had to pull them apart! Paz kicked over a table. MaryLú ran off with a napkin over her head.” She hurried back out.
The brothers wiped their eyes.
“I know you were happy not to be here,” Big Angel said. “You didn’t have to deal with all the struggles we had. All this excitement, it never ended.”
“You don’t speak for me.”
“I speak for all of you. I am the patriarch.” He had meant for it to be funnier than it was.
Little Angel cleared his throat and looked away.
“I always had one question for you, Carnal.” Big Angel pounced: “What did you ever have to cry about?”
“Well, Miguel. He left us too.”
Big Angel took a noisy gulp of the tamarind La Gloriosa had brought. “He left us first. For you,” he said.
“For me? I wasn’t even born yet, for God’s sake. I thought you were a computer guy. Figure it out.”
“Father said your mother was an alcoholic. That she picked lice out of her hair and snapped them with her nails.”
Little Angel guffawed. “That’s what he told us about your mother.”
Big Angel was trembling. “Take it back,” he said.
“I didn’t start this.”
“Father was forced to marry your mother. Because he was a gentleman,” he snapped. “She was knocked up.”
Stunned silence. They couldn’t even hear the party. They couldn’t hear the kids in the room next door or their video games.
“My— What?” Little Angel said.
Big Angel looked away. “Now look what you made me do,” he said.
“What did you say? Just now.”
“Forget it.”
Little Angel stood. He sat back down closer to Big Angel. “Holy God,” he said.
“Your mother was pregnant with you. That’s why they got married.”
“Liar.”
“Oh, it’s true. And you call me a liar again, I’ll get up.”
“And what?”
“I can still fight.”
“Ooh, I’m shaking.”
Big Angel rocked forward and grabbed a fistful of Little Angel’s shirt. “Hey!” Big Angel bared his teeth. “I can still show you!”
“I don’t want to hurt you.” Little Angel put his palm against his brother’s chicken-bone chest. “Come on, now.”
“Teach you!”
“Don’t—wanna—hurt—you.”
They wrestled on the bed. Big Angel landed several loud, smacking blows on his baby brother’s face.
“Stop it, you dick!” Little Angel said.
Perla rushed in and spanked Little Angel with her slipper. “Están locos?” she shouted.
“Flaca,” said Big Angel, occupied with ripping Little Angel’s pocket off the front of his shirt. “Please leave us alone right now.”
“I am so sick of all of you!” she said and stomped back down the hall.
They collapsed on the bed, panting.
“I kicked your ass,” Big Angel said. He sat upright and gulped from his glass of juice, then passed it across the bed to his brother.
Little Angel didn’t want Big Angel’s tepid tamarind juice, but he recognized a gesture of reconciliation when he saw one. He took the glass and drank some down. “I went away,” Little Angel said, “to make something of myself. I thought I was going to change the world.”
“And what happened, Carnal?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, come on.”
Little Angel took a deep breath. “I know you hated me for leaving. I know you thought I looked down on all of you. Well, maybe I did. All my life I thought I had to escape to survive. Maybe even to escape you. And now you are leaving me, and I can’t imagine the world without you. I always thought I didn’t really have the father I wanted. And all this time it was you.
“To be here now, to see what you have made, humbles me. The good parts and the bad. It doesn’t matter. I thought I was going to save the world, and here you were all along, changing the world day by day, minute by minute.”
Big Angel was going to say something but decided against it.
changing the world
poco a poco
a little better
right here, right now
* * *
7:30 p.m.
The Satanic Hispanic lay in his unkempt bed, hoping Moms wouldn’t come home. Lily lay against him, her head on his chest. They were naked. She totally snored. He ran his hand up and down her narrow back. Her bottom was like two soft fruits or something. Like, handfuls. Her shades were on the table with his Deadpool action figures.
His hands smelled like her. He had never smelled that before. He held his hand over his face. He couldn’t tell anybody in his family about it. It smelled really good. He didn’t think he was ever going to wash his hands. Because he could smell her later. He could be right here again. “Oh,” he said. Maybe he’d tell Little Angel about it. Little Angel wouldn’t think he was a perv. He probably knew some poem about it. But Pato? His own dad—nah. Pops would try to sniff his fingers.
After they had made love—she had, incredibly, mounted him and allowed him to see her slender body as she moved—she had nestled against his chest and scratched at his body hair. “I’m glad you aren’t a waxer,” she said.
He actually snorted but felt like that was too unsophisticated.
“I’m a dreamer,” she said.
“Yeah, no kidding.” He made a small laughing chuff. “People in the sky.”
“No. Not that. A dreamer. Like, the DREAM Act.”
“What’s that?”
“DACA? You never heard of it? For undocumented students?”
He hove up on his elbow. “Dude—yo
u’re illegal?”
Her eyes were closed. “Marco,” she said, finally using the right name. “You almost were not a moron for a moment.” She found his chin and kissed it and rolled over to sleep.
* * *
Lupita muscled Tío Jimbo onto the couch and tucked a nice blanket around him. She paused in the bathroom and touched up her makeup, rinsed out her mouth, stole a cigarette pack from Jimbo’s stash. She stared down at him. He almost looked at peace. She hurried out to the car. She wasn’t about to miss the birthday cake.
* * *
Ookie was feeling good. He wandered down the street. He hadn’t seen his mom for a couple of days. But his pockets were full of cookies. His ghost show was on TV pretty soon—Ghost Bros creeping around freaky places going, “Is that you?”
He was tired, though. He was going to eat whatever was in the fridge. If he could stay awake, he was gonna go into Myrna Bustamante’s backyard later and steal the Legos in the sandbox. But he also had to watch out for his toy cars. They were gonna be delivered. Good old Little Angel. Goody, good. Cars and buses and pigeons.
“Wild thing,” he said, “you make my heart sing.”
* * *
Giovanni had all that dude’s drug money wadded up in his pocket. He tried to fist-bump Lalo, but his father was limp in a lawn chair, staring at his splayed feet.
“Later, Pops,” he said. “You might wanna get out of town for a minute.”
Lalo raised one finger.
“Whatever,” Gio said.
* * *
Minnie and La Gloriosa cleaned the tables. They had never seen so many paper plates. Where had they come from? Red plastic cups.
“Just keep working,” La Glori said. “Don’t let your mamá do anything.”
Perla had joined the card game.
“Daddy and Tío are fighting,” Minnie said.
“Men are idiots.”
None of the comadres argued with her.
* * *
Back in the bedroom:
“I’m done,” Little Angel said. He got up to go.
“Sit.”
“No.”
“Carnal! Sit down for a minute. Please.”
Rage and sorrow, rage and sorrow.
“I am trying to walk out of your house.”
Walk through the house, away from this barrio, away from this family. For good this time. No big brother, no beautiful niece, no relatives, no Gloriosa, no damned father. No history. Just that big ridiculous cop car outside. Just that. Just drive. He would drive to Seattle. He would drive north until he could turn right and vanish into the western American mountains. He would bury himself in snow. He would keep going north. He would drive to the end of the highway, to settle in Homer, Alaska. To watch eagles work the shore. To write poems. He could meet a poet there—a woman with great hair and good coffee. He would get so far it would take a week for a postcard to get out. But he couldn’t even step away from the foot of Big Angel’s bed.