Maricruz and Benny lay wrapped up together on the couch beneath his black and yellow fleece blanket, surrounded by the saintly halos of the choir of candles. Benny had fallen asleep in the middle of a game of twenty questions. He'd been nodding off and finally when Maricruz asked, "Is it something you would wear when its cold?" she didn't get an answer, just the sound of deep breaths that reminded her of the yoga class she'd taken once with her Aunt Yolanda.
Out of habit, Maricruz started to get up from the couch as she did every night from Benny's bed. One night he would read a chapter to her from one of his books and the next night she would read a chapter from the same book. After she turned off his light, she'd clean house or balance the checkbook or pack his lunch for the next day. But that night she realized there was nothing she could do. The electricity was off, the phones had gone dead, and the room had already cooled a little so she couldn't bring herself to get out from under the covers. So she just lay there for a change, her body at sabbath, but her mind unable to join.
Where might Lyle be at that moment? What is he doing? Is he still alive? Is there really nothing, absolutely nothing, she could do? She was used to stepping into any situation and doing what needed to be done to remedy it. Like her father, Fernando, she was a fixer. It was she and her father who came to the rescue of Los Tres Hermanos when Abuelo's stomach pains ended up being pancreatic cancer. Abuelo had started the restaurant all the way back in 1958 with his two older brothers, who died a few years before him, and he'd run it like an extension of his own home, which it literally was for a time when he and Abuelita lived in the same apartment where Maricruz and Benny now lived. But as Abuelo wasted away in the hospital, yellow-eyed and skeletal, Maricruz's father pored over the restaurant's financials. When Maricruz came back to Rocky Ford for the funeral mass, driving down from Boulder two weeks before finals near the end of her first semester at the university, she heard the whispered conversations. $120,000 was the number she kept hearing for how deep the hole was. "We're going to lose the restaurant," she heard Aunt Yolanda tell one of the cousins. Knowing her parents would let go of the restaurant so she could stay in school, against her parents' tearful protests, after finals she moved home to help her father save Los Tres Hermanos. Together they cut costs and put in countless hours without pay. She waited tables and kept the books back then just as she continued to; the only difference was that now she got paid for it. With the help of Abuelo's small life insurance policy, they managed to pay it off in a matter of only six years.
There had never been anything Maricruz couldn't fix or at least handle with a relentless grace, but that night the snow was just too deep, the wind too strong, and the air too cold for her to fix this for Lyle. If there was anything, any thing, she could do, she would. She stared into the flame of the St. Jude candle on the coffee table and whispered out her own petition since she did not know the prayer to St. Jude by heart, praying the way she imagined Protestants must. "Please God, bring him home. He's come too far. He's worked too hard to make things right. I don't want to lose him. I don't want my little boy to lose him." Her lips fell silent for a moment, and then she tried to cut a bargain. "I promise that, if you give him the strength he needs, I'll tell him the truth. I'll tell Benny. I'll make Rick tell his wife." She'd often considered doing that, but this is the first time she'd ever heard herself say these words out loud. "Please help them all to understand the past is in the past and that we never meant to hurt them by not telling them, just to protect them. Just give me that chance, Lord. Just give me that chance." She crossed herself as best she could while still cuddling with Benny. "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen."
Maybe she shouldn't have made that promise to God, although getting Lyle back was worth having to keep it. But what if she got him back just to lose him again over this? How was she supposed to tell him? "I'm so glad you survived, Lyle, and by the way your AA sponsor is Benny's father. I must have forgotten to tell you... and Benny." How long should she wait to tell him? Should she tell him over dinner? In a public place? Should she tell Lyle and Benny at the same time? Should Rick be there? How would Rick feel about her telling them? What would happen when Rick told his wife? Does that matter? Would that kind of shock send Lyle back to drinking in order to cope? And Rick? Maybe she should just sit Lyle down, after making chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes for him and putting on the low cut red dress she'd worn when they drove all the way up to Colorado Springs for dinner that one time, and tell him the story, the true story, the whole story, like this:
"Lyle, you remember how I've told you about how after we paid off the restaurant debt my dad offered to pay for me to get an Associate's Degree in Accounting at the community college over in Pueblo, about how after six years out of school I went back? And you know that's how I got to know Rick. He taught the "Introduction to Literature" class I took for my humanities credit. I loved that class. You know how I love to read. One day in class he read from Dylan Thomas. I know you're not big on poetry but I love the first lines of the poem he read, "Do not go gentle into that good night,/old age should burn and rave at close of day;/rage, rage against the dying of the light." He told us about how Dylan Thomas was a raging drunk, then he told us us that he had been one too, and that he'd been sober for less than a year. He said he read Thomas's poetry to remind him of what he might have become, a lush who stumbled out of a Greenwich Village pub then collapsed into a coma only to die not long after. 'That's the power of poetry,' he said. 'It can save your life.' I loved that class so much I thought about changing my major over to English but I knew my dad wouldn't go for that. Do you want some more gravy? Maybe a little more steak?
"Well, later that semester I stopped by his office to see if he would read the first draft of the essay I was writing on Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find." I wasn't sure if the Misfit in the story represented something in particular. Pure evil? Modern society? Geez, I'm getting off subject. Anyway, we ended up just talking about life, about my short time in Boulder, about the restaurant. He told me about how his drinking problem started when he was in college in Kansas. After college everybody else quit drinking, but he just kept going. He told me about how just a few months before I got to know him, his wife, Jacqueline, had taken their two boys and left, moving in with her parents all the way off in Dayton, Ohio where she'd grown up. That had been his wake up call that finally sent him into AA. He'd tried it before but never followed the program, didn't bother reading the Big Book, tried to skip steps. But after his wife left he went all the way with it. 'It wasn't easy,' he said, 'but it worked. One day at a time.' You like this dress, don't you, Lyle? I don't know. Do you think it shows a little too much skin? I'm not sure about it.
"After that we started getting together for coffee. I mostly asked him questions about literature. He mostly talked about his wife and kids. He was obviously still in love with her. He was alone, wounded, you know. I was twenty-four-years-old, going to school and working full-time at the restaurant, and living with my parents and younger brothers in Rocky Ford. You better believe I was lonely too. I'm sure you can see where this is headed, Lyle, and you don't need to hear the details. You just need to know the truth. We slept together, Rick and I. How many times? Do you really want to know that? Probably seven or eight. It wasn't like he was seducing me or anything or like I was some innocent teenager. We were both adults, lonely adults. I couldn't believe we were doing it. I sure wasn't raised that way, and if anybody had found out he would have lost his teaching position, not to mention what my family would have said.
"We broke it off because we both knew what it was or what it wasn't, and because our messing around helped him to realize how much he really did want his family back. Yeah, it hurt a little, but not because I was in love with him or anything like that. It just hurt because life was going to go back to normal... or so I thought. We both promised never to talk about it again, but then a few weeks after we broke it off I missed my period. Oh my God, I thought. What in the world am I going to do? After the pregnancy test came out positive I went to him and told him. He cried and broke a coffee mug on the floor of his office, but he knew better than to suggest I do anything about the pregnancy. His wife had just promised to come home to give it another shot. He hadn't told her about us, which I don't blame him for. I hadn't told anyone either and didn't plan to. His family was finally getting back together. I didn't want for our foolishness to keep that from happening, but I also didn't know what was going to happen to me.
"Over the next couple of weeks we came up with a plan. I'd tell my parents I had a one night stand with someone at the school but that I didn't want to be stuck with that guy in my life for the next eighteen years so I wasn't going to involve him, which was at least partially true. He would empty out his savings to pay for my doctor visits and diapers and food and stuff. Then he'd send me some money every month. We'd meet with a lawyer and he'd sign over all parental rights. We'd leave each other alone after that, like we were erasing each other from a chalkboard.
"My parents freaked, but they were really very good about it after the shock wore off. I think Abuelita told them that they just had to deal with it or they'd end up losing me and the baby too. I think Father Carl actually talked to them too. They came around. You know how great my parents are. My mom and Aunt Yolanda went with me to all the appointments and got me through the birth. My dad was the first to hold Benny. I've been telling Benny ever since he asked about his dad for the first time that his dad was a good, smart man but that it just didn't work between us. Sometimes I'd get down and jealous of what Rick had with Jacqueline and his boys, but I've never blamed him. Why should a month of stupidity cost him his whole life. It must have been so hard for Rick. It must be hard for him, knowing he has another son just forty-five minutes away. Over the years we saw each other a few times by accident at the mall or movie theater in Pueblo but we'd just pretend we didn't know each other. He'd keep looking over his shoulder to watch Benny. I can't help but feel bad for the guy. I hate it that Jacqueline doesn't know. I wish we could go back in time and not be together or that we could at least go back and be honest with everybody from the beginning.
"We had to stay away from each other, but then when you fell down those stairs and you needed help getting sober I didn't know who else to call so I called Rick and told him, 'You owe me this. Help Lyle get sober. Give me and Benny this chance. I gave you your life back, now give me mine." I thought about telling you then, but you and Rick got to know each other so well and you were actually staying dry. It's been so weird that you've brought him around some. Oh, you had no idea. No, there's no feelings there at all for him. Seeing him and Benny together has been surreal. I've had to step out of the room a few times. Oh, Lyle, don't get mad at him. It's just a shitty situation all around. If you're mad at him you have to be mad at me too. Do you really want to be mad at me? Especially after all you've put me through? You have to know that I don't want for Rick to be Benny's dad. I want you to be Benny's dad. Please forgive me. Surely if anyone on this planet knows what its like to need forgiveness it's you. Sit down, Lyle. Please don't leave me. Please don't leave Benny. We can both put away our pasts. We can both be forgiven together. This can be new, Lyle. You and me and Benny and maybe even someday Savannah. This can be new, brand new."
What would he say to that?
Maricruz jumped as she was startled out of her imaginary confession and apology. Benny's eyes opened wide, and they both sat up and looked toward the door. Did they really just hear a knock? There it was again. Could it be? Maricruz ran to the door and, filled with hope, she turned the knob.
Out of habit, Maricruz started to get up from the couch as she did every night from Benny's bed. One night he would read a chapter to her from one of his books and the next night she would read a chapter from the same book. After she turned off his light, she'd clean house or balance the checkbook or pack his lunch for the next day. But that night she realized there was nothing she could do. The electricity was off, the phones had gone dead, and the room had already cooled a little so she couldn't bring herself to get out from under the covers. So she just lay there for a change, her body at sabbath, but her mind unable to join.
Where might Lyle be at that moment? What is he doing? Is he still alive? Is there really nothing, absolutely nothing, she could do? She was used to stepping into any situation and doing what needed to be done to remedy it. Like her father, Fernando, she was a fixer. It was she and her father who came to the rescue of Los Tres Hermanos when Abuelo's stomach pains ended up being pancreatic cancer. Abuelo had started the restaurant all the way back in 1958 with his two older brothers, who died a few years before him, and he'd run it like an extension of his own home, which it literally was for a time when he and Abuelita lived in the same apartment where Maricruz and Benny now lived. But as Abuelo wasted away in the hospital, yellow-eyed and skeletal, Maricruz's father pored over the restaurant's financials. When Maricruz came back to Rocky Ford for the funeral mass, driving down from Boulder two weeks before finals near the end of her first semester at the university, she heard the whispered conversations. $120,000 was the number she kept hearing for how deep the hole was. "We're going to lose the restaurant," she heard Aunt Yolanda tell one of the cousins. Knowing her parents would let go of the restaurant so she could stay in school, against her parents' tearful protests, after finals she moved home to help her father save Los Tres Hermanos. Together they cut costs and put in countless hours without pay. She waited tables and kept the books back then just as she continued to; the only difference was that now she got paid for it. With the help of Abuelo's small life insurance policy, they managed to pay it off in a matter of only six years.
There had never been anything Maricruz couldn't fix or at least handle with a relentless grace, but that night the snow was just too deep, the wind too strong, and the air too cold for her to fix this for Lyle. If there was anything, any thing, she could do, she would. She stared into the flame of the St. Jude candle on the coffee table and whispered out her own petition since she did not know the prayer to St. Jude by heart, praying the way she imagined Protestants must. "Please God, bring him home. He's come too far. He's worked too hard to make things right. I don't want to lose him. I don't want my little boy to lose him." Her lips fell silent for a moment, and then she tried to cut a bargain. "I promise that, if you give him the strength he needs, I'll tell him the truth. I'll tell Benny. I'll make Rick tell his wife." She'd often considered doing that, but this is the first time she'd ever heard herself say these words out loud. "Please help them all to understand the past is in the past and that we never meant to hurt them by not telling them, just to protect them. Just give me that chance, Lord. Just give me that chance." She crossed herself as best she could while still cuddling with Benny. "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen."
Maybe she shouldn't have made that promise to God, although getting Lyle back was worth having to keep it. But what if she got him back just to lose him again over this? How was she supposed to tell him? "I'm so glad you survived, Lyle, and by the way your AA sponsor is Benny's father. I must have forgotten to tell you... and Benny." How long should she wait to tell him? Should she tell him over dinner? In a public place? Should she tell Lyle and Benny at the same time? Should Rick be there? How would Rick feel about her telling them? What would happen when Rick told his wife? Does that matter? Would that kind of shock send Lyle back to drinking in order to cope? And Rick? Maybe she should just sit Lyle down, after making chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes for him and putting on the low cut red dress she'd worn when they drove all the way up to Colorado Springs for dinner that one time, and tell him the story, the true story, the whole story, like this:
"Lyle, you remember how I've told you about how after we paid off the restaurant debt my dad offered to pay for me to get an Associate's Degree in Accounting at the community college over in Pueblo, about how after six years out of school I went back? And you know that's how I got to know Rick. He taught the "Introduction to Literature" class I took for my humanities credit. I loved that class. You know how I love to read. One day in class he read from Dylan Thomas. I know you're not big on poetry but I love the first lines of the poem he read, "Do not go gentle into that good night,/old age should burn and rave at close of day;/rage, rage against the dying of the light." He told us about how Dylan Thomas was a raging drunk, then he told us us that he had been one too, and that he'd been sober for less than a year. He said he read Thomas's poetry to remind him of what he might have become, a lush who stumbled out of a Greenwich Village pub then collapsed into a coma only to die not long after. 'That's the power of poetry,' he said. 'It can save your life.' I loved that class so much I thought about changing my major over to English but I knew my dad wouldn't go for that. Do you want some more gravy? Maybe a little more steak?
"Well, later that semester I stopped by his office to see if he would read the first draft of the essay I was writing on Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find." I wasn't sure if the Misfit in the story represented something in particular. Pure evil? Modern society? Geez, I'm getting off subject. Anyway, we ended up just talking about life, about my short time in Boulder, about the restaurant. He told me about how his drinking problem started when he was in college in Kansas. After college everybody else quit drinking, but he just kept going. He told me about how just a few months before I got to know him, his wife, Jacqueline, had taken their two boys and left, moving in with her parents all the way off in Dayton, Ohio where she'd grown up. That had been his wake up call that finally sent him into AA. He'd tried it before but never followed the program, didn't bother reading the Big Book, tried to skip steps. But after his wife left he went all the way with it. 'It wasn't easy,' he said, 'but it worked. One day at a time.' You like this dress, don't you, Lyle? I don't know. Do you think it shows a little too much skin? I'm not sure about it.
"After that we started getting together for coffee. I mostly asked him questions about literature. He mostly talked about his wife and kids. He was obviously still in love with her. He was alone, wounded, you know. I was twenty-four-years-old, going to school and working full-time at the restaurant, and living with my parents and younger brothers in Rocky Ford. You better believe I was lonely too. I'm sure you can see where this is headed, Lyle, and you don't need to hear the details. You just need to know the truth. We slept together, Rick and I. How many times? Do you really want to know that? Probably seven or eight. It wasn't like he was seducing me or anything or like I was some innocent teenager. We were both adults, lonely adults. I couldn't believe we were doing it. I sure wasn't raised that way, and if anybody had found out he would have lost his teaching position, not to mention what my family would have said.
"We broke it off because we both knew what it was or what it wasn't, and because our messing around helped him to realize how much he really did want his family back. Yeah, it hurt a little, but not because I was in love with him or anything like that. It just hurt because life was going to go back to normal... or so I thought. We both promised never to talk about it again, but then a few weeks after we broke it off I missed my period. Oh my God, I thought. What in the world am I going to do? After the pregnancy test came out positive I went to him and told him. He cried and broke a coffee mug on the floor of his office, but he knew better than to suggest I do anything about the pregnancy. His wife had just promised to come home to give it another shot. He hadn't told her about us, which I don't blame him for. I hadn't told anyone either and didn't plan to. His family was finally getting back together. I didn't want for our foolishness to keep that from happening, but I also didn't know what was going to happen to me.
"Over the next couple of weeks we came up with a plan. I'd tell my parents I had a one night stand with someone at the school but that I didn't want to be stuck with that guy in my life for the next eighteen years so I wasn't going to involve him, which was at least partially true. He would empty out his savings to pay for my doctor visits and diapers and food and stuff. Then he'd send me some money every month. We'd meet with a lawyer and he'd sign over all parental rights. We'd leave each other alone after that, like we were erasing each other from a chalkboard.
"My parents freaked, but they were really very good about it after the shock wore off. I think Abuelita told them that they just had to deal with it or they'd end up losing me and the baby too. I think Father Carl actually talked to them too. They came around. You know how great my parents are. My mom and Aunt Yolanda went with me to all the appointments and got me through the birth. My dad was the first to hold Benny. I've been telling Benny ever since he asked about his dad for the first time that his dad was a good, smart man but that it just didn't work between us. Sometimes I'd get down and jealous of what Rick had with Jacqueline and his boys, but I've never blamed him. Why should a month of stupidity cost him his whole life. It must have been so hard for Rick. It must be hard for him, knowing he has another son just forty-five minutes away. Over the years we saw each other a few times by accident at the mall or movie theater in Pueblo but we'd just pretend we didn't know each other. He'd keep looking over his shoulder to watch Benny. I can't help but feel bad for the guy. I hate it that Jacqueline doesn't know. I wish we could go back in time and not be together or that we could at least go back and be honest with everybody from the beginning.
"We had to stay away from each other, but then when you fell down those stairs and you needed help getting sober I didn't know who else to call so I called Rick and told him, 'You owe me this. Help Lyle get sober. Give me and Benny this chance. I gave you your life back, now give me mine." I thought about telling you then, but you and Rick got to know each other so well and you were actually staying dry. It's been so weird that you've brought him around some. Oh, you had no idea. No, there's no feelings there at all for him. Seeing him and Benny together has been surreal. I've had to step out of the room a few times. Oh, Lyle, don't get mad at him. It's just a shitty situation all around. If you're mad at him you have to be mad at me too. Do you really want to be mad at me? Especially after all you've put me through? You have to know that I don't want for Rick to be Benny's dad. I want you to be Benny's dad. Please forgive me. Surely if anyone on this planet knows what its like to need forgiveness it's you. Sit down, Lyle. Please don't leave me. Please don't leave Benny. We can both put away our pasts. We can both be forgiven together. This can be new, Lyle. You and me and Benny and maybe even someday Savannah. This can be new, brand new."
What would he say to that?
Maricruz jumped as she was startled out of her imaginary confession and apology. Benny's eyes opened wide, and they both sat up and looked toward the door. Did they really just hear a knock? There it was again. Could it be? Maricruz ran to the door and, filled with hope, she turned the knob.
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