And anyway, that was the alcohol, you know that, she says. That was a disease, a disorder. He did things and said things he would not have done or said if he wasn’t sick. You should understand that.
I slouch again as soon as she moves her hand away.
When we used to fight, you know when he used to drink … I have accepted that was not the man I married, she says, and that’s not the man he is now. He’s just an old man. I just want us to be, oh, a normal family again.
Now it is my turn to laugh. Mom, I say. I’m nineteen. It’s a bit too late for that, don’t you think? And he’s not drinking, because he can’t. And it is the man he was. And I don’t love him, okay? I’ve decided I don’t love him.
My voice snags in my throat and comes out hoarse, and then before I know it I’m gulping and crying and she’s looking at me and shaking her head like she just doesn’t understand and I’m thinking, say it, say it, and still I can’t.
Just choose me or him! I scream at her instead.
But I would always choose you! she yells back at me, and now she looks like she’s going to cry too. I just don’t understand why you think I need to make that choice! Why we both can’t be happy and healthy. I just don’t get why you don’t want me to be happy. You think you’re protecting me? You think I want you to hate your father?
And she’s rambling again about how he’s better now and they don’t fight anymore and none of it is about me, so I start to gather my bag at my feet and wipe my eyes, glad it will look like rain smeared my eyeliner.
Wait, she says, leaning over the console between us. She puts her arms around me and pulls me toward her and I end up just leaning my head on her chest while she strokes my hair like when I was small. Outside the rain lets up. A valet in front of the department store starts to wander over to us, but he sees us and awkwardly stops and goes back to his station, glancing over every few minutes. I look up at my mom, and she looks tired.
You know I would do anything for you, right? she says, leaning her head back. I just want to see you well, she says.
I know, Mommy, I say. I know.
I’m late to work that day, but I don’t even care.
And that day the woman comes back with her husband. He holds her bicep as he walks her over to my counter, his knuckles red but not cracked like Mario’s, and I think, I know his hands would be soft in mine. I think, hers would be too.
I thought you bought a moisturizer last week, the woman says to the husband. She fiddles with the sapphire ring on her finger. I thought last week I brought you—
We didn’t come here last week, honey, the man interrupts.
No, we did—I mean I think we did—and I said you didn’t want anything flowery, the woman says.
Honey, the man says, the fact that you keep imagining these things is really starting to worry me.
He smiles at me, and the smile is so warm I imagine a stone that sloughs the dead skin from my body, sloughs away the rain, the car, my mother’s hand on my back, Mario sleeping more and more and more.
I am so sorry, the man says to me, and I want his hand gripping my biceps too. When he buys the cream, he does what no one has ever done for me—hands me a tip, fifty dollars. You’re beautiful, he says, and his wife looks away.
I agree to see her again. She bombards me with phone calls, and what can I do? I say okay, okay, fine, and I pop some Xanax so that I can at least relax but it just makes me sleepy.
My mother orders a disco volador with guava and cheese and I order a greasy pile of churros that I dip into hot chocolate so thick it’s more like sweet mud. We sit outside on uncomfortable metal seats like playground benches under the multicolored tarp that reminds me of one of those circus-looking termite tents that engulf the unluckiest homes in Miami. The traffic on Calle Ocho zooms by, headlights blink and circle, neon signs light up the night. Another pain clinic across the street. Another dark window. I’ve accompanied Mario to his clinic a couple of times to pick up his paychecks. I notice them everywhere now.
They have blossomed like someone scattered seeds from above and hit every strip mall, every billboard, every back page of the free weekly. There are discounts and two-for-ones, promises of no wait time and in-and-out appointments, cash only, three hundred, twenty-four hours, doctors on call. Walk-ins welcome, HGH and testosterone, too, discount with MRI, commissions on every customer referred, blackout windows, flashing OPEN sign. The massage parlor next door. Check cashing across the street.
Mario tells me some of the doctors don’t even bother with pretense, just ask, What do you want? How much? The pharmacies on-site behind bulletproof glass. The clinic managers who carry heat. The parking lots crawling with out-of-state license plates: Kentucky, Virginia, Maine. The Oxy highway, the Oxy Express. The patients, all tapping feet and abscess scars, lining up outside the doors some days, some already sniffling and rheumy, itching—no, dying—to stave off the sickness. The doctors barely glancing their way, the doctors with their fat gold watches. So unlike my father the doctor, my father the classy super-clean. The money is fucking insane, Mario says. I just have to get a bigger piece of the pie, he says.
My mother cuts her sandwich with a knife and fork. She looks so out
