Deanna Roy - Forever Loved

She pointed to a white adobe house with brown shutters, built into the side of a hill. An enormous clay sun adorned the exterior wall. I parked the bike between an aging but still respectable Taurus and a red Chevy pickup.

When the Harley went silent, I asked her, “Are they expecting you?”

“No.”

“Will she guess who I am?”

“No. She will think you are a boyfriend.”

Rosa stood from the bike and rubbed her thighs. It was a long ride for someone unaccustomed to it. For a second I remembered that I had pretty intimate knowledge of this woman, and yet I knew nothing important, not even her last name.

“I need to call someone,” I told her, intent on Corabelle. I hadn’t even looked at my phone since I left San Diego. A quick scan of the pile of messages made me realize she was upset. She needed her keys. Her clothes. Her parents were making her crazy. I thought of how easily she’d chosen the sea a few days ago and my panic began to rise.

Rosa tugged on my jacket but I shrugged her off. “I have to make a call. Have to.”

“Look, Gavinito.”

I intended to turn away, but behind her, a small boy stood on the porch of the house, dark haired and solemn in jeans and a button-down plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He held a truck in his hand and watched us with big, quiet eyes.

I had never seen anything so beautiful in my whole life.

I approached the stairs, wondering if the boy would be afraid of me, or if he too would see something that would let him know that he belonged to me.

“That’s a cool truck,” I said, sitting on a stair so that we were about the same height.

He clutched the green plastic toy to his chest and said nothing, just continued to look at me beneath long curling lashes that actually made me think of Corabelle. We both had dark hair. It seemed possible, in that fleeting moment, that this could be Finn.

Rosa stayed down on the street. I swallowed a huge lump in my throat. Even in the fading light of early evening, I could see the whorl of the cowlick that had clued me in on the photograph. I fingered my ear, staring at his.

His eyes were pure Rosa, like almonds, coming to a little point in the corners. After a moment, he decided I was not a danger and sat down, running the truck along the wood slats of the porch.

I realized he probably did not speak any English. I searched for the few phrases I knew well enough to say competently. Most of my Spanish involved beer, pool, money, or insults. I didn’t know “truck” or “toy” or anything else that might interest a small child.

“¿Tu es Manuelito?” I asked.

He scowled suddenly and smacked his small hand against his chest. “Me llamo Manuel. No Manuelito. No no no no.”

I laughed. Made sense. I wouldn’t want to be called “little” either.

“Manuel, then.”

He pushed his truck around a bit more, glancing back up at me as if wondering why I was there. “¿Tienes chicle?”

Thankfully that was also one of the few words I knew, as children along the border were always selling boxes of gum, shouting, “¡Chicle! One dollar! ¡Chicle!”

 I shook my head. “No.” I fumbled a minute, then was able to say, “¿Te gusta chicle?”

He nodded, then abruptly jumped up and ran inside the house, leaving his truck.

Rosa approached then, sitting on the top step. “What do you think, Gavinito?”

I shrugged. Yes, I thought it was possible. But I wasn’t giving any game away to her. My feelings had shifted upon seeing him. If he was mine, then I wasn’t sure who Rosa was to me anymore.

“You didn’t tell me about him before. All those years.”

Rosa pushed the truck back and forth on the porch, the plastic tires rumbling over the boards. “Too late. I not find you when I carry him. By the time you come again, he is gone.”

“I could have helped you then.”

The door pushed open wider and Manuel came back out, proudly holding out a clear plastic tub filled with little square gum packets. “¡Chicle!” he said. “¿Mama Rosa?”

Rosa shook her head, so he pushed the container at me. “¿Chicle?”

I took one of the little squares of packaged gum, four yellow pieces wrapped in clear plastic. “Gracias, Manuel. I like yellow.”

He set the tub on the porch and reached in, fishing around until he found a green one.

“You like the green?” I asked. At his quizzical look, I said, “Te gusta…” Crap. I didn’t know “green.”

“Verde,” Rosa said. “¿Verde es bueno, no?”

Manuel fumbled with the plastic wrapper, then shoved all four pieces in his mouth.

“¡Demasiado!” Rosa said, but she laughed. “Manuelito. Hijo loco.”

Manuel chomped on the gum, trying to make it a manageable size, and resumed pushing the truck.

“¿Donde esta Mama Letty?” Rosa asked.

Manuel pointed to the door. Rosa stood up, but I didn’t want to go anywhere else. I didn’t want to see this woman who had raised my boy, who would lay claim to him, take him deep into Mexico where I could not easily go.

I wanted to help Rosa.

“I come back,” Rosa said. “Get to know your boy. He not say much English words yet, he is little, but he understands. Letty speaks English to him.”

I watched Manuel to see if he would react to that.

After she had disappeared inside, I asked him, “Manuel, do you understand me?”

He ignored me, now making truck noises around the wad of gum. I wasn’t sure how to relate to him, what to do. I had the crazy urge to pick him up, to crush him against me, to know his weight, to feel how real and substantial a boy he was.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked.

He looked back at me, one hand on the truck, the other propping him up as he crawled along the porch. In that glance, I could see myself as a boy, the small face that had looked back from the mirror, one that was caught in photographs my mother tucked inside albums.

Rosa was right, he was mine, but I didn’t know what to do about it.

A beautiful woman in a velour sweat suit pushed through the door, holding two boxes that she could barely manage. I stood up as she brushed by.

“Can I help?” I asked, but she ignored me, dashing down and dumping the boxes in the back of the pickup. I realized now that there were several others already there. She was packing.

“Are you Letty?” I asked as she passed.

She halted, turning her face to me, the perfectly styled hair and heavy lashes out of sync with the panic in her eyes. “You cannot have the boy,” she said. “I love Rosa, but she tells many wild tales.”

I stood up. “I’m pretty sure he is mine.”

She straightened to her full height, and up on the porch, she towered over me. “That would be easy for her, no? Some American boy come in and save her? What, you plan to marry her and make more little babies?”

“I’m not sure what is going on here. She brought me here to see him.”

Letty whirled around and snatched up Manuel. He was too large to carry easily, and he fought her, but she pinned him against her hip with practiced ease. “He is all I have now, and I must keep him safe. So get out of here and let us be.”

She opened the door, then closed it behind her again. I could hear the twist of several locks.

Bloody hell.

The truck sat forlorn on the porch. I leaned over and picked it up, moving it next to the tub of gum. I knew I could knock on the door, or go around and find another way in. But hell, I didn’t know anything. Maybe you could line up a half-dozen dark-haired kids, and I would see something of myself in every single one.

I waited until the sun dipped low in the sky and the lights began to pop on in the houses. Rosa never came out. Finally I knocked on the door. No one came, but I could hear voices, shouting and crying. I wanted to smash in the door, get to them, but damn it, I had no clue what was going on. Rosa could be lying. I couldn’t just snatch the kid.

I didn’t have any choices here.

I had to walk away.

The thud of my boots on the hollow stairs echoed on the quiet street as I stomped back down to my Harley. The roar of the engine was tremendous, bouncing off the stucco facades and down the lane. I turned the bike around and headed back the way I came.

I would forget it all. Pretend it never happened.

The hospital corridors were quiet, the visitors either gone for the day or settled in for the night. I hesitated at the end of Corabelle’s hall, bracing myself for another confrontation with her father. I’d texted her a dozen times on the way home from Ensenada, pulling over every few miles, but I hadn’t heard back. For all I knew, her father had taken her phone.

The door to 425 was ajar. I knocked and stepped inside, but the bed was stripped, the flowers gone. Had they sent her home?

I had her keys. Maybe she’d been able to get a set from her complex office. I rushed back down the hall to leave, but when I passed the nurse station, I decided to make sure she had been discharged rather than moved.

“Corabelle Rotheford in 425? She’s gone?”

An unfamiliar nurse looked up. “And who are you?”

I hesitated. “Her brother. I was supposed to bring her clothes when she got out, but I guess she already went home?”

The nurse clicked on a keyboard. “No, she was moved to ICU.” She glanced up at me. “But you won’t be able to visit her there. That floor has strict visiting hours.”