“Couldn’t you have been anything else?” she asks. “What about something with computers? Or fixing cars? Or building things? You were always so good with your hands.”
“Still am,” I say.
“Remind me, when can you retire?” she asks.
“You know I re-enlisted last year.” I exhale, steadying my patience. We’ve been through this a hundred times, but I shouldn’t get frustrated. Her medications fog her memory.
Ma clucks her tongue. “I always thought you and your sisters would open a restaurant someday.”
“Yeah, well, they went ahead and did that without me, but that’s all right. You’ve tried my cooking before.” I smirk, thinking about the time I made the family tacos but forgot the seasoning. For years they refused to let me live that down. I never stepped foot inside the kitchen again after that. “I brought you some dinner. You hungry?”
Rising, I head to the kitchen, grabbing the hearts of palm salad I ordered from her favorite Brazilian steakhouse down the street as well as a bottle of water, her evening meds, and a tin TV tray.
When I return to her room, she’s situated in her corner chair, flicking through TV stations on the thirty-inch TV perched on top of her hand-me-down dresser. After a minute, she settles on Jeopardy, and then her eyes flicker. Ma struggles to stay awake but she fights through it.
“Thank you, meu amor,” she says when I situate her dinner before her. Lifting her hand to my face once more, she smiles. “You’re so good to me, Isaiah. I don’t deserve you.”
“Ma, don’t say that. You deserve tudo. You deserve everything.”
Once upon a time she was a vibrant woman who couldn’t sit still for more than two minutes and taught her American-born children every Brazilian lullaby she could remember. With a contagious laugh, long dark hair down her back, and a wardrobe full of bright, happy colors, Alba Torres was the loudest person in the room, literally and figuratively. Her enthusiasm for life was nothing short of infectious and her five-foot two frame could barely contain her enormous personality.
And then she got sick.
But someone’s got to take care of her, and it sure as hell hasn’t been my siblings. They only do shit when they have to—which is when I’m gone.
I’ll admit my oldest sister, Calista, tends to carry the brunt of the load in my absence, but she’s also raising four kids while her husband works two jobs, so I tend to cut her some slack.
“What are you doing the rest of the week?” she asks. “Anything special?”
I shrug. I’ll mostly be biding my time. “A little of this. A little of that.”
Ma rolls her eyes, returning her sleepy gaze to Alex Trebek. “Always so secretive, my Isaiah.”
“No secrets here. Just trying to stay busy.”
“With women and booze?” she asks, lifting a dark brow.
“Is that what you think I do in my spare time?” I pretend to be offended, though we both know she isn’t wrong. I had every intention of hitting up the sports bar down the street tonight … tomorrow night … and the next.
Maybe even the night after that.
That’s the beauty of being a lone wolf. Your life is one-hundred percent yours and you can do whatever the hell you damn well please.
“I’d like to think you’re volunteering at a homeless shelter or cleaning up litter on the highway, but I know you.” She reaches for a fork before glancing at her salad. “Maybe one of these days you’ll meet someone nice and then you’ll finally stop playing around and wasting the best years of your life on strangers who don’t deserve you.”
“You worry too much.” I lean down, kissing the top of her head, which smells like stale, unwashed hair. I’ll have to call Calista over to help her shower soon. “I’m going to the grocery store. Your cupboards are empty.”
Her frail hand lifts to my cheek and her full mouth bends. “Don’t tell the others, but you’ve always been meu favorito.”
I smirk. “I know.”
My cart is overflowing, filled mostly with organic non-perishables. Unlike my siblings, I decided not to be a cheap ass. She deserves good quality food that’s not going to make her sicker than she already is, which is why I drove all the way to the Whole Foods in Brentwood instead of hitting up the discount grocer with the bars on the windows down the street from her apartment.
I count forty cans of soups and vegetables, twenty boxes of all-natural rice and pasta dinners, eight loaves of bread I intend to stick in the freezer, ten cartons of shelf-stable milk, and a few other necessities; mostly soaps and shampoos and paper products. Passing through the candy aisle, I grab a few bars of her favorite Mayan chocolate.
I didn’t earn the title of Alba Torres’ favorite child by accident.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m loaded up and headed back to her place, waiting at an infinite red light. Two green arrows light, allowing the left two lanes to go, but the rest of us are stuck waiting.
Checking my phone, I fire off a text to an old army friend who lives nearby, asking if he wants to get drinks later, but before I get a chance to press ‘send’ a metallic crunch fills my ears and my car lunges forward several feet, stopping the second it smashes into the back of a cherry red Mercedes Benz.
“Motherfucker.” I pound my hands on the steering wheel before stepping out, and by the time I head back to examine the damage, the driver who caused this mess is already there, crouched down with her hand grazing a section of her dented Prius bumper.
“The fuck is the matter with you?” A man in a gray suit is shouting at the two of us, his phone plastered against his face as his tawny complexion turns fifty shades of red.
“I’m so sorry, sir.” The girl rises, her hands cupping her face. “I saw the green light and I hit my gas. I didn’t realize it was only for the turn lanes. I wasn’t paying attention.”
I lift a finger to silence her. Clearly she’s never been in an accident before or she’d know not to accept the blame.
“Great. Now I’m going to miss my reservation.” He shakes his head, jaw clenched. “Hope you’re happy.”
“Man. Come on,” I say, tossing my hands in the air. “It was an accident. She apologized. Let’s do what we need to do here so we can all get on with our lives.”
Returning my attention to the bumper of my vintage Porsche 911T, I examine the deep scratches and blue paint remnants littering her once-pristine Carrara White bumper. As much as I, too, would like to berate this woman for forgetting how to fucking drive and denting up my most prized possession, I take a deep breath and gather myself. Last thing I want is to look like el douche bag over there in the Mercedes.
“Here you go.” The girl hands me her insurance card, and I grab my phone, taking a picture of the front and back before handing it over. Our hands graze in the process, and it’s only then that I finally get a good look at her.
Jesus Christ.
It’s the waitress.
From the pancake place.
The second our eyes lock, her expression suspends. She recognizes me too.
“You got your insurance card?” The huffy bastard interrupts us, practically yanking the little piece of paper from her hands. “You are insured, right?”