I was driving Mom and Benny home from Jacob’s. Dinner had gone well. Benny got to talk to Joy about her transplant. I think it made him feel better. He’d never actually met anyone who’d been through the surgery.
“Why was the parrot screaming about Bieber?” Benny asked from the back seat.
“He wakes up every day choosing demonic possession,” I said. “And what’s up with the weird room with all the dead things?” “I did not like that room,” Mom said. “So many eyes.”
“His dad’s a taxidermist. I think they’re funny,” I said, turning onto the freeway. “You didn’t like the raccoon on the skateboard?” I asked my brother.
Benny shrugged in the rearview. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Briana, why don’t you give that old man a cigarette?” Mom asked. “He’s on oxygen, Mamá. It could make him hypoxic.”
“So? Does he have dementia? He can’t decide if he wants to smoke himself to death?”
“No, he doesn’t have dementia.”
“Then why no cigarette? You tell him, ‘Look, I give you this, and maybe you can’t breathe. You still want it?’ And if he says yes, then it’s yes. I’d give him one. You should give him one.”
“Joy doesn’t want him to have them.”
She waved me off. “Uno no lo va a matar. He’s a grown man, you give him what he wants. He’s going to die, you let him die happy. And that goes for me too. Don’t you tell me I can’t have what I want because you’re trying to make me live forever. I want to die doing the things I love. I want to be happy until the very end.”
“Okay, Mamá.”
“You want to be happy?” she said, going on. “Marry an ugly rich man who loves you more than you love him.” She nodded at the windshield. “This one’s not ugly, but he’s got the rest of it. Enculado.”
I snorted. “Jacob is not whipped.”
She pulled her face back to stare at me. “Estás ciega! Are you blind? I like this one. I never liked Nick.”
“Ha,” I said, changing lanes. “Now you tell me.” I let a slow breath out through my nose. “Jacob definitely does not love me more than I love him, Mamá.”
She scoffed. “You are blind. You’re worrying in the wrong direction.
Worry the other way.”
“Why doesn’t he ever kiss you?” Benny asked. “He kisses me,” I said defensively.
“No, he doesn’t. He always looks like he wants to, but he never does.” I shifted in my seat. “He doesn’t like PDA.”
“But he’s always holding your hand and touching you and stuff.” “Kissing is different.”
“It’s not that different…” he mumbled.
“If he asks you to marry him, say yes,” Mom said. “You’re not getting any younger.”
“Okay, Mamá? I just went through a horrible divorce and we’ve only been dating for five seconds.”
“And he’s already giving your brother an organ. Dios mío, what more do you want? I like him. Good job, good-looking. He’s very polite.”
“He is polite.” And generous, and kind. “But just so you know, I probably won’t ever remarry.”
She pivoted to look at me like I was speaking in tongues. “Why?” “Because it didn’t end well for me?”
She waved me off again. “You just be smart about it. You make him give you an expensive ring. You put your name on everything, all his property. Then if he leaves you, you take his house.”
“Mamá!”
“What? That’s what I did with Gil. It’s how I know he’s not going to leave me. He can’t afford it.”
“Gil is obsessed with you and couldn’t live without you,” I said. “And if he did, he’d do it without his house.” She shrugged.
I laughed. Then I looked in the rearview. “So what’d you think of Jacob’s family?” I gave my brother a twisted-lip smile. “BEN.”
“Shut up,” he muttered.
“Jane’s pretty, huh?” I said, looking back at the road. “She’s single,” I sang.
“I know. She told me.”
I gasped. “You asked her?”
“No. She asked me. And then she said, ‘Me too.’”
“So? What are you gonna do about it?” I asked, looking at him through the mirror.
“Nothing. Not like this,” he mumbled, gesturing to the catheter under his shirt.
My face went soft. “One more month, Benny.” “I liked his family,” Mom said. “Good people.”
“Speaking of good families,” I said. “Levi Olsen came in today.” “Levi? Little Levi?”
“Yeah, he moved back. He wants to have drinks.” Mom eyed me. “Jacob’s letting you go?”
“Okay, first of all, no man tells me what I am allowed to do.”
She crossed her arms. “Why not? You don’t tell him what to do?” “Uh, no. I don’t.”
“You should not be going there when you have a boyfriend,” she said. “Levi is not trying to make a move on me. He’s dating Cindy Baker. She
will be there.”
“Take Jacob with you,” Mom said.
“Why?”
“So he won’t get jealous.”
I rolled my eyes. “Mamá, he is not going to be jealous. And Jacob is not a let’s-go-have-drinks-with-my-random-friends kind of guy. He doesn’t like stuff like that.”
She tsked. “Men get jealous, mija. At least tell him to go so he knows he can. It’s like you’ve never met a man before.”
I couldn’t explain to Mom that this man wasn’t going to get jealous. That he wasn’t going to care one bit who I had drinks with.
Because this man wasn’t really mine.
