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By Root 626 0

and a freshman at the University of Chicago. She’d come out of the accident with nothing more than a few scratches but shortly after being admitted she was diagnosed with viral meningitis. That’s what had caused the seizure, which caused her to lose control of her car, which caused Benicio’s mother to be plucked from the crosswalk and crushed against the red brick of a flower shop. The girl was inconsolable. She received treatment in a dark, quiet room that she filled up with sobbing as soon as Benicio entered and introduced himself. He visited twice—once two days after the accident and once again with Alice on his way to pick up his father from O’Hare. He wasn’t able to get a word in either time. The doctors believed—and Benicio let them—that he was visiting to assure the girl that she was forgiven. That whatever the police might decide about suspended licenses, about liability, he didn’t blame her for what had happened. But really he just wanted to ask a question. He wanted to know if his mother had looked. If she had seen it coming.

“I don’t know,” the girl insisted two months later. “My head was below the dash. Please, can you please stop calling me?”

The funeral was a big affair, and difficult to arrange. They delayed the event as long as possible to allow his three aunts and their children to fly in from Costa Rica, and in that time word of his mother’s death spread through a tremendous group of friends that Benicio had never known she had. The church service was filled with Latinas in heavy coats, a few of them Costa Riqueñas and the rest Dominicanas and Puerto Riqueñas. They got along with his aunts and cousins at once, exchanging tears and smeared eyeliner as they hugged cheek-to-cheek. Benicio tried his best to greet them all as they entered the church, but he was overcome with a sudden and intense self-consciousness about his accent and pronunciation, and so limited what he said to “Gracias por venir,” and “Dios te bendiga.” When the service started he took his place between his father and Alice, and though he wasn’t but one pew away from his mother’s family and friends he felt oddly distanced from them—as though he’d come to a big country wedding only to discover that he was the only guest sitting on the deserted groom’s side.

Benicio’s father blubbered throughout the service, and when he reached down for his hand, Benicio let him take it. “I’m sorry,” his father said. It came out as breathy and loud, but he seemed to think he was whispering. “Benny, I’m so sorry.”

“Please,” Benicio said. “Please, don’t call me that.”

His father’s hand loosened but Benicio held on to it. They were quiet for a while.

“I’m going to forgive you,” Benicio said. A tremble ran from Howard’s fingers into his. “I haven’t yet. But I will.”

IT WAS DARK BY THE TIME Benicio landed in Manila, got through customs and exited the airport. Sliding glass doors opened out under an ugly concrete overhang, and as soon as he stepped through he could feel hot moisture in the air. People crowded all around, pressing themselves against metal barriers and gazing hopefully into the cavernous airport behind him. They looked like families, mostly—young women with infants in their arms and children hanging on the hems of their skirts. They reached out to wave, call and touch. A Filipino man who left the airport at the same time as him ran up to the barrier and was swallowed by arms. A uniformed woman on Benicio’s side of the barrier came up to him and asked if he needed a taxi. Benicio blinked. “Do you need a taxi?” she asked, slower this time. Her English took him by surprise.

“No,” he said. His father had warned against the airport taxis and promised to pick him up. Benicio wandered beyond the barrier and into the crowd, a little overwhelmed by the voices, the faces, the smells, the heat. He searched out his father in the crowd and didn’t find him. He waited. He set his suitcase against one of the concrete columns, sat on it, and waited more. Doug emerged from the airport, so sleepy he looked strung out, and was set upon by a pretty, middle-aged