Yours to Keep (32 page)

It was therapeutic, scraping pumpkin out of a can with a rubber spatula. It was the first time he’d felt semi-human in days. Not good—nowhere near good—but functional, at least. In a rhythm.

In a few hours James and his parents would be here, fighting with one another, griping about the food, and embarrassing Theo.

He had wanted Ana to come to Thanksgiving. He’d wanted to introduce her to his parents, to hear her banter with James. He’d wanted to see her and Theo sitting side by side, to watch that strange and easy camaraderie between them. As if she’d always been in their lives.

He’d meant to bring it up with her on Friday night, before Ricky and his big friend showed up in the parking lot, before everything went to hell.

He broke the eggs and began whisking the pumpkin and the eggs and evaporated milk to a uniform texture and color.

If he’d invited her to Thanksgiving, would she have said yes? He realized that he didn’t even know if her family celebrated Thanksgiving.

He hung his head and tried to ease the tension out of his neck with his thumb.

The truth was, if they’d gotten married Ricky would never have allowed Ethan at his place for Thanksgiving—or any other holiday. Instead, Ana would have come to Ethan’s house. And the less welcome Ricky made Ethan the more she’d have withdrawn, thus fulfilling Ricky’s prophecy that Ethan would steal her away from her family.

He didn’t want to be that man.

And yet if he were given a second chance and that was the bargain he had to strike, he’d steal her. What did that say about him?

The metal bleachers were freezing cold, and Ana wished she’d worn long underwear. Her nine-year-old niece had climbed, all bony knees and elbows, into her lap and perched there, nearly obscuring Ana’s view of the field. Her younger nephew huddled close for warmth. Cara sat on her other side, and Ricky beyond. The marching-band musicians stood in the stands, blaring out the school anthem as the players took the field.

Ethan should be here,
Ana thought.
He’d love it.

Hawthorne, in royal purple, had won the toss and opted to kick. The kick was high, and the wind tugged it to the right. It came down slowly, and Ana was sure Mercer would fair-catch it, but no—the receiver pulled it out of the air near the thirty, made a yard or two of progress, and was leveled by Hawthorne’s special teams coverage.

The crowd was rowdy, almost angry. Hawthorne and Mercer had one of the oldest and ugliest Thanksgiving Day rivalries in the state. There were more injuries, and the injuries were more serious, in Hawthorne vs. Mercer games than in any other football games in Massachusetts. It was a point of pride. Two years ago, players from both teams converged in a bench-clearing brawl over a late hit. It took the refs almost five minutes to pry all the players off one another and restore order.

Marco’s coach had made them promise to play clean and not fight this year, Marco had told his aunt earlier that morning. “It takes all the fun out,” he complained.

She wondered if Marco and Theo would have gotten along. Marco was a sweet boy, despite his complaints about having to play nice. He stayed out of trouble and got his homework done—and having an adult around the house who tutored and spoke fluent English had helped. Marco wasn’t an outstanding student, but, then, neither was Theo. You wouldn’t guess, by looking at their grades, that Theo was the son of a doctor and Marco the son of an undocumented immigrant who hadn’t finished high school.

Mercer was driving steadily downfield. Two running plays of a couple of yards each, and a twelve-yard pass. Two more runs. A long, beautiful spiral …

Hawthorne’s No. 85—Ana thought it was Marco’s friend Andre, but she wasn’t sure—intercepted it and ran it back almost twenty yards before he was demolished. The crack
of the helmets made Ana jump. What had Ethan said about that?
“There shouldn’t be helmets cracking in high-school football.”
She couldn’t agree more. The audible impacts nauseated her, probably because it was her nephew out there—his neck, his skull, his knees. In fact, he was trotting out on the field now, taking his position. He was a wide receiver, good enough to have started nearly every game since the middle of his freshman year. He might be able to get a college-football scholarship.

How different it was to be born here. You had that sense of a backstop behind you, instead of always feeling on the brink of an infinitely long drop into disaster. She envied her niece and nephews.

She watched the quarterback throw a short but perfect pass into Marco’s big, sure hands and rose to her feet with the rest of her family, cheering.

She wondered if Ethan secretly wished that Theo played football.

She wondered when the hell she’d stop thinking about them all the time.

“Where’s Ana?” Theo demanded.

Ethan had been waiting for that question since Friday, but it still caught him off guard. The knife hiccupped out of the turkey’s flesh and bit a chip out of the ceramic platter.

“Who’s Ana?” Ethan’s mother asked.

The elder Hansens, Sheila and Ted, had arrived twenty minutes ago with James. Ethan had set out a cheese plate, and Ted was eating cheese as fast as he could slice it. Sheila nibbled delicately at a piece of Brie draped over a cracker.

Ethan examined the knife’s edge, which appeared to be unscathed, to give himself time to think. “She’s having Thanksgiving with her family.” He knew he’d have to level with Theo soon, maybe even later today, but at least he could ease himself into it.

“Who’s Ana?” Sheila asked again, her eyes bright. She was almost as tall as Ethan, skinny, white-haired. She’d been a professional modern dancer and still had that dancer’s upright posture and nervous energy.

Oh, hell,
thought Ethan. There were only two ways this could go, and he didn’t like his chances either way. He knew his mother, and he knew how hard it was to get an idea out of her head once it was in there.

“Ana is my Spanish tutor,” Theo said happily. “And she and Dad are—”

“Theo, can we talk about this later?” He tried to warn Theo with his eyes.

Sheila crossed her arms. “What’s going on?”

“She’s Dad’s girlfr—”

“No, she’s not,” Ethan said.

Theo’s face twisted. “You’re joking, right?”

“What the heck …?” Sheila tried again.

Ethan shook his head. He watched the expression on Theo’s face shift, from suspicion to realization to rage. “Did you break up with her?” Theo demanded, stomping his foot.

Ethan could feel his parents’ gazes, the heft of their confusion and disapproval. And they were right to disapprove. He’d failed his son. He could have told Theo any day this week that he and Ana were kaput, let him throw his fit and blow off steam and recover in time for Thanksgiving. But he’d been too clobbered, and now they were all going to witness the fallout. “Theo—” he began.

“I can’t believe you. I can’t fucking believe you.”

“Theo!” said Sheila.

Theo flushed and raised his hands. “I’m outta here.”

“Theo!” Ethan, James, and Sheila all said simultaneously. Ted had a mouthful of Brie.

But they were talking to the back of his head.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” he called.

Ethan chased him to the front hall. Theo threw open the coat closet, grabbed a jacket, and shrugged into it.

“Where are you going?” Ethan tried to keep his voice semi-steady. Things were bad enough without him losing his cool.

“To Leah’s.”

“You can’t barge in on her Thanksgiving!”

“She invited us to her Thanksgiving.” Theo wrenched open the front door and pushed past the screen.

“You can’t—”

“Her mom said I was welcome if I wanted to drop by.”

“Theo!” he yelled out the front door as Theo receded across the front lawn, trotting toward the street.

Oh, God.
He was yelling up the street at his teenage son, and it was Thanksgiving, and he’d totally lost control of his life.

As far as Ethan was concerned, there was nothing happy about this Thanksgiving.

He went back into the kitchen. “I’m sorry,” he said to his parents and James.

“Not your fault.” Sheila’s tone implied the opposite. “But start explaining.”

When Theo came back, everyone had gone home and Ethan was watching his TiVo’d football on TV. Ethan turned the television off. Theo didn’t look angry anymore, although Ethan knew that he still had a lot of explaining to do before his son forgave him—if that ever happened. “How was Leah’s?”

“You’re not angry?”

Ethan sighed. “I’ve seen more polite exits. But you might’ve had a point. I should have told you. I—I knew how upset you’d be, and I was too knocked on my ass, and I’m sorry. It was wrong of me.”

“Leah’s was pretty cool.” Theo had been hanging back at the doorway between the living room and kitchen, but now he sat on the arm of the couch.

Normally Ethan would have told him to sit properly, but this wasn’t the moment.

“Leah has a big family. Lots of cousins.”

That made Ethan’s chest ache. “I would have liked us to be a bigger family. Your mom and I wanted more kids. She had a couple of miscarriages, though, and then she was too sick to risk getting pregnant again.”

“You could still get married and have more kids.”

“It’s kind of late for that. You’re almost all grown up.”

“I bet Ana wants kids.” Theo stood up and took a few steps away from his father, facing into the far corner of the room so that Ethan couldn’t see his face.

Ethan’s throat tightened. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner that Ana and I broke up. I know you’re probably very angry at me right now. But—”

He felt very old. He shook his head. “Some things aren’t meant to be. Ana’s family and our family are too different. Her life—there are things about the way she has to live to survive here that are a hundred and eighty degrees from what it’s like for us. Sometimes you can’t fix all those differences.” He’d made this speech to Theo’s back, but he could tell from a
shift in Theo’s shoulders that he was listening.

“Do you love her?”

Ethan took a breath. Then another. It had been like that all week, a struggle to keep doing what had to be done. He loved her so much that breathing had become a chore.

Theo turned and gazed at him, his expression as curious and open as Ethan had ever seen it.

“Yes,” Ethan said, finally. “But it’s only a nice fantasy to think that love overcomes all that other stuff.”

Theo was very quiet. Ethan suspected that he was thinking about Leah, about his new feelings for her. Ethan remembered what love had felt like at fifteen, roaring through his head and body like a freight train. And was it so different now, really?

“She went to see Leah’s uncle again,” Theo said suddenly.

For a moment, Ethan couldn’t understand.

“I overheard Leah’s uncle telling her mother. I eavesdropped. I knew I wasn’t supposed to, but—” He put out his hands, palms up.

“It’s okay,” Ethan said.

“She’s going to try to get her status changed. Even without getting married.”

A chill eased its way into Ethan’s bloodstream. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Leah’s uncle said she’s probably going to get sent away.”

“He said that?” It came out louder and harsher than he’d intended, and Theo shied away and nodded.

What the hell was she thinking? She’d lived this way for twenty years, and suddenly, suddenly it was urgent that she put things right?

Even if he couldn’t see her, the idea of her gone for ten years was unbearable. He wanted someone to blame. Ricky, his thuggish friend. That expired visa, the broken immigration law, the whole fucking system.

Himself. And Ana, too, because they’d both been too chicken to do what was needed.

“Dad?”

Ethan regarded his son, who was peering at him, the bridge of his nose crinkled with worry.

“Are you okay?”

He was not okay, hadn’t been okay since the moment he laid eyes on her, except for the times he held her in his arms, buried himself in her. She’d taken okay away from him, and now she was going to pack it up and export it to the Dominican Republic, where, for all he knew, it would live for the rest of his life.

And hers. Everything she’d worked so hard to build—her classes and the tutoring and that pathetic veggie-burger box of cash in her freezer, the shaky well-being of a family held together by strength of character: gone.

“Dad.”

The phone rang.

Theo ran to the kitchen to pick it up. “Hello?” He listened for a moment. “Oh!” he said. And then, “Dad—”

It took a tremendous effort to mobilize his limbs to walk toward the kitchen. Theo met him halfway and thrust the phone into his hand. “It’s Ana.”

Chapter 29

She was talking incredibly fast and lapsing into Spanish.

“Slow down,” he said. “Start over.”

He heard the slight edge of hysteria as she took a breath and slowed down. “Marco has food poisoning. He’s thrown up so many times we’ve lost track; it’s all bile now. I’m worried that he’s dehydrated—he drank a few sips of water and threw up again. The nurse at his pediatrician’s says not to worry, but he’s acting weird and Cara’s freaking out and, Ethan, I’m so scared!”

Her fear slipped under his skin, cold and writhing. Then the doctor in him took charge, shutting out all his other impulses. “What did he eat?”

“Pork,
tostones
—that’s plantains—
habichuelas,
like I made for you.”

He heard her pain as she said it, an echo of his.

“Was the pork cooked through? What about earlier in the day?”

“He had eggs for breakfast before the football game, but that was so long ago, it couldn’t be—”

But his mind had latched on to the key fact. “He played football today?”

“Yeah. The pork didn’t have any pink in it. Cara always overcoo—”

Ethan interrupted. “What position does he play?”

“Wide receiver,” Ana said irritably. “He had peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for lunch. That wouldn’t have—”

“Did he take any hard hits?”

He heard her take a deep breath. “It was a brutal game,” she admitted.