Moondogs - Alexander Yates [156]
“No.” Reynato kisses Lorna on the cheek and comes away with foundation-dusted lips. “She’s come home to defend me, right Bea-bee?”
Bea sits at the kitchen counter, legs crossed, hands wrapped around a mug of steaming tea. The corners of her bottom lip, heavy with fat, pinch to resist a smile. “I won’t help her kill you,” she says, “but I won’t turn her in when she does.”
Reynato gingerly hoists himself onto a stool beside his daughter—moving stiffer and slower than he needs to—and runs fingers under her cool, grapefruit-smelling hair. Lorna trundles behind the counter and serves him green tea in a mug bearing his name, Charlie Fuentes’s likeness and numerous inspirational messages. “Enough with the sad face,” she says. “I ran out of sympathy when you ran out of the hospital. And those doctors have no manners on the phone. Yelling like I went there myself and pulled you out of bed. I’m not talking to them again, but you should call to tell them you’re alive.”
He sips tea smilingly. Beatrice works her neck, the base of her skull, into his callused palm. Lorna refills his mug even though he’s hardly had any. “Does anything hurt?” she asks.
Reynato points at his heart and his wife and daughter go still. “You’re breaking it,” he says.
“God forgive you.” Lorna takes his free hand in hers and kisses his knuckles. “And if he doesn’t, let him at least not punish you too badly.” She releases him. “You smell. Did your doctors say if you can shower yet? Did they say if you can eat real food?”
“Didn’t say I couldn’t.” He stands and makes for the stairs. Bea and Lorna try to help him up but he shoos them away. He only makes it a few steps up before calling them back.
Reynato basks in special privileges the rest of the afternoon. Lorna makes a pinakbet with calabaza and lechon, and lets him eat in his bathrobe. Bea finds an extension cord and rolls the television into the dining room. They put on Ocampo Justice VII, thinking it’s what he wants to watch. Reynato uses his pork-tipped fork to point out inaccuracies in the script, and in Charlie’s performance, and his wife and daughter coo and coddle him with questions. They miss punchlines and laugh when they shouldn’t. Reynato blushes at the deathless timber of their voices, at how little they know of him, and finds he misses Monique. He wishes she could meet them, but that’s impossible, of course.
It’s not until dessert—a full-blown halo-halo with purple ube ice cream, whole milk, frosted flakes, sweet beans and Nata de Coco—that the conversation becomes serious. Lorna reveals that she is starting up a fund—with some seed money of their own, or course—to bring Elvis’s and Lorenzo’s people in from the provinces in time for the funerals. “Those poor, poor men,” Lorna says in a lamenting voice, holding her head back so tears won’t smear her eyeliner. “Those poor boys. A person isn’t just a person,” she says. “He’s everybody who ever loved him.” In that case, Reynato thinks, Lorenzo and Elvis were nobodies. His cheeks burn a little at his own dishonesty. He amends his thought: they weren’t nobody, they were me. “I pray that the American knows how much has been sacrificed for his sake.”
“He may never,” Reynato says. “The nurses are talking miracles.”
“The Lord have mercy. I saw his son on the news last week, a sweet-looking boy. And what about Racha?”
The small, upside-down Reynato in his spoon stares up at him. “I don’t think he’s going to make it, either,” he says.
• • •
AFTER THE MEAL he excuses himself to his study. The room overlooks their machete-trimmed back lawn and is chock-full of documents, tax forms, unpaid bills and those scraps of memorabilia that he hasn’t yet sold. All the uniforms he’s ever owned—some worn just once—hang on hooks along the walls like shed skins. Medals presidential, congressional, departmental, civil, honorable, charitable and military lie rusting in glass cases on the dusty floor. His desk is decked with framed photographs of him and the last four presidents, none of them as glorious as the shot of