“Yes, sir. And your other son?”
“Max works for my brother-in-law, Raul. He’s a contractor.”
Contractors drove trucks.
“You must be very proud of them,” I said.
“I am.” Ivan scratched his elbow. “Do you have children?”
“One. One on the way.”
“Does your brother?”
I shook my head.
“Is he married?”
“Yes, sir, he is.”
“Good for him.”
The phone chimed. He peered at it. “Stephanie says she’s never heard from him.”
He tapped a reply and put the phone in his lap. “What did I tell you? Right on time.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They don’t change from when they’re small. You’ll see that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You said your brother’s a new person.”
“In certain respects.”
“Such as what.”
“He’s tried to stay out of trouble.”
“Does he succeed?”
“I think so.”
“And how is he?”
“Sir?”
“Is he well? Is he happy?”
“That’s hard for me to say.”
“What does he do to pay the bills?”
I hesitated. “He works at a cannabis company.”
Ivan tilted his head. “Really?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He’s allowed to do that?”
“Apparently.”
He burst into laughter. He took off his glasses and began cleaning them on the hem of his shirt. “Unbelievable... Is he allowed to drive?”
“Not for the first year. He can now.”
“He hasn’t killed anybody else, though.”
A bright-green Camaro.
A garage door, stuck partway open.
A man with three holes in his back.
I said, “No, sir.”
He replaced his glasses. “Well, that’s progress.”
“Yes, sir. May I ask about your sister?”
“I have five sisters.”
“Your sister Janet. How do you think she’d react if Luke called her?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think she’d sit there with him like I’m sitting with you.”
“I understand that she and her husband split up.”
“Their marriage was never that great to begin with. Lucy was what they had, and once they didn’t have her... ” He fluttered his fingers like falling leaves.
“What about her husband?”
“He left town. I think he moved to Idaho.”
“You’re not in touch with him.”
“Craig? No.” Ivan Arias paused. “It made things tense between me and Janet, too. We don’t talk as much as we used to. So in a way I lost her, too. Have you ever lost someone you loved?”
“No, sir, I have not.” Unless.
“I don’t wish that for you.”
The phone chimed. He glanced at his lap. “Max hasn’t heard from him either.”
He tapped a reply. Seconds later the phone sounded again. They made several more exchanges before Ivan laid the phone facedown on the table. “I’m getting a Coke. Want one?”
“No, thank you.”
He started for the kitchen.
“One week till we hear from Christian,” he called. “Start the clock.”
I believed Ivan Arias was telling me the truth. He’d never seen my brother. As to his children’s denials, there were too many unknowns.
How honest they were with their father; how he’d phrased the question. I began preparing a polite goodbye. Eyeing the wall unit, the photos of bearded faces. Could I pass close enough on my way out to get a look?
Ivan brought his can of Coke, sat down, and began to talk.
He told me about the first time he met Rosa, the summer she turned seventeen, when she worked at the mall. He told me about his big unruly family. He described Rosa’s difficulty fitting in, Janet sticking up for her. He told me about Rosa teaching Lucy to sew and the quinceañera dress. He pointed to the photograph on the end table, taken at a wedding a month before Rosa’s death. She’d made the boys’ outfits. The last picture with the five of them together. He had others from that night, but — believe it or not — that was the best of the bunch. Without fail at least one child had their eyes shut, or was frowning or staring off into the distance.
“Law of nature,” he said.
He smiled, remembering the gagging face Rosa made when Lucy described the chartreuse leopard print dress. After Rosa got off the phone, she said to Ivan it sounded like something a hooker would wear. The word she used, he told me, laughing, was puta-licious.
At the funeral it occurred to him that he would never hear his wife speak again. Her book had closed. A few days later he drove to the fabric store and the restaurant and asked them what they remembered. He learned that Rosa’s last words on earth were when she checked to ensure that her children’s chicken and noodles weren’t spicy.
There had to be more words spoken, between her and Lucy in the car, prior to the crash. He would never know, though.
I sat in the prickly heat and listened, time slipping away, light ripening. Children ran by in the street, slap of sneakers and a basketball. How could they breathe in this air? Salt crusted my upper lip. I had stopped sweating. Ivan’s voice had dropped to a near whisper; he was inhabiting the past. The leaf blower resumed its lament and I could scarcely hear what he was saying. Still I sat and I listened. I owed him that much.
The phone chimed, cutting him off in midsentence.
“Faster than a week,” I said.
Ivan smiled faintly. He read the screen. His eyes narrowed. “It’s Max.”
“What did he say?”
“He’s here.”
Chapter 16
A series of clicks came from the front door, tumblers dropping, dead bolt shooting back, and I stood, wobbling on numb legs. I’d been sitting for forty minutes, listening to Ivan Arias’s outpouring of grief, the forty minutes it took his son to get in the car or truck and drive over.
Max Arias stomped in and planted himself between the door and me. He wore scuffed work boots and loose denim shorts and an oversized T-shirt flecked with paint, standing with his thumbs and index fingers rigidly extended, like a child miming six-shooters.
“Who the fuck do you think you are,” he said.
He was clean-shaven.
“Max,” Ivan said. He had risen, too, blocking my path to the other point of exit, the sliding glass door.
The drowsiness had left me, driven out by a speedball of fight and flight.
Max Arias’s T-shirt bore the logo of a lumber supply company. It bloused at the waist, wide enough to conceal a handgun. Cords stood out in his arms and neck. What had he and his father texted about? Why hadn’t Ivan moved toward his son in greeting?
I said, “I’ll go now.”
“No no no,” Max said. “You don’t get to walk in, stir shit up, and walk out.”
Ivan said, “Max.”
“Your brother’s too chickenshit to show his face?”
“I told your father, I’m here on my own.”
“Why.”
“I wanted to know if you’d spoken to Luke.”
“Why the fuck would I do that?”
“Calm down, please,” Ivan said.
“I’m calm, Pop. I’m asking questions. He asked his questions, now it’s my turn. Why the fuck would I talk to your brother?”
“He said he might try to reach out to you,” I said.
“He didn’t.”
“I understand.”
“I don’t,” Max said. “I don’t understand it at all. You want to know if he’s talked to me, why don’t you ask him?”
“I will when I speak to him.”
“You didn’t ask him.”
“Not yet.”
“Oh yeah? How come?”
“I haven’t had a chance.”
“You mean you didn’t even try?”