The Boy by Lara Santoro Page B

much.”
    “You can watch them, too.”
    “But no, it’s not what I’m saying.”
    “I know what you’re saying.”
    Esperanza shook her head, plunged her hands into her pockets.
    “This isn’t right. It’s just not right. I wash your dishes, I mop your floors, I do your laundry. What does he do?”
    “Nothing.”
    “He eats your food, he lives in your house, he drives your car.”
    “He does.”
    “So he owes you money, no?”
    “He does.”
    “Like I owe you money.”
    “Like you owe me money.”
    “So he can do the dishes, no? He can do the laundry, no? He can get down on his knees and scrub your toilet, no?”
    “Esperanza.”
    But Esperanza shook her head, dug her hands deeper into her pockets. “This isn’t right. It’s just not right.”
    “He’s leaving, Espi. He’ll be out of here in two weeks.”
    Esperanza took her hands out of her pockets.
    “Don’t call me Espi,” she said.
      
    Anna took Paco down by the river and sat on a rock watching the golden thing run smiling in and out of the water with a stick in his mouth.
    “You’ve got it easy,” she said, and the dog agreed with a sharp bark, a delirious wag of the tail.
    “It’s messed up.”
    Again, the dog agreed.
    “Go fetch!” she said, throwing the dog the stick.
      
    Esperanza was gone when she got home, the boy was stretched on the couch, occupying every angle of the couch, coating the piece of furniture like a finish, a veneer, a beer in one hand, the remote in the other.
    “Where’s Espi?”
    He barely looked up.
    “I don’t know. She left.”
    “Did she say where she was going?”
    The boy hit pause.
    “No, she didn’t. Why, what happened?”
    “You have to start washing some dishes.”
    The boy put the remote down.
    “I have to start washing some dishes?”
    “You have to start washing some dishes.”
    He looked at her with great, almost lofty neutrality, as if the message she had just delivered didn’t involve him somehow.
    “I have no problem washing dishes.”
    “No? You have no problem? How come you haven’t washed a single one? How has this strange, this honestly puzzling occurrence come to pass? Go ahead. Enlighten me.”
    “Nobody asked me.”
    “Nobody asked you. Can’t you see? Are you blind? There are dishes in the sink all the fucking time. All the fucking time. ”
    The boy got up.
    “All right,” he said, “this is where we start calming down. This is where we take a deep breath and start calming down.”
    And standing there, pushed up against the foulest quarters of her soul, wrapped in rage as in barbed wire, certain of what would come next—the fission, the cleave at nuclear level, the implausible, the unimaginable blast—she looked at him, at his smooth skin, at his clear eyes, at all the things he had yet to live through, all the pain he had yet to feel, and felt herself grow still, and quiet, and afraid.
    “I’m sorry,” she said.
    He took his time, looking at her. Then he put out a hand.
    “You maniac,” he said.
      
    The phone rang early the next day, and it was Richard Strand.
    “I hear my son lives next door.”
    Anna rolled over and gave the boy the phone. In the kitchen, grinding coffee beans, trying to drown out the sounds from the bedroom, she saw a magpie land fatly on her fence and turn its head sideways with a mechanical jerk. The colors were deafening—cobalt blue, brilliant white, black like a killer whale coming up from the deep—the head tender and fragile beyond what, in Anna’s sudden fury, seemed right.
    Nothing is right, she thought. Nothing.
    The boy came into the kitchen, slapped one hand against the wall.
    “Fuck,” he said.
    “Okay. Let’s hear it.”
    “He started crying.”
    Anna turned. “Crying?”
    “Crying.”
    “Jesus.”
    “It’s all I need. A grown man crying on the phone.”
    Anna threw the sponge into the sink. “He’s your father . Show some fucking respect.”
    The boy brought his face within an inch of hers. “I show