The Soup and Sorrow Digest

andrew is having a bad day

Maria was another daughter of the neighborhood; another face Andrew had seen all his life but never spared a thought.  And during her confirmation mass, he did not think of her or for her but was scanning the pews for the light of Rosa.  But the heads were all unremarkable black.  People’s backs were indistinguishable like a field of grave markers.  Color, glitter, sound came from the direction of the altar. No Rosa there; instead Maria looking sufficiently girly in her sequined dress, and her parents sufficiently prideful as they sniffled at every word of nothing from the priest.

Andrew slunk back against the pew and glanced at his father, Enrique, hissing softly, scratching cracked line of scaly skin on his neck as though he had been caught red-handed doing something innocuous. Andrew could not understand the sham of the day.  Why had he dragged him to the confirmation? After all, Enrique used to call Maria’s father, “more useless than a leaky cup.” 

But everyone attended these neighborhood family events, everyone from the happy housewife, to the overworked father, to the druggie, to the whore, the gang-member, and to the rabble-rouser.  Well, Inez was not there, at least not the Catholic events.  It would to be too much of a papist profanity.

The mass ended with a cavalcade out the earthy church dullness into the open day dull with clouds covering every patch of sky. There would be a party in Maria’s house. Andrew imagined the toddlers who would not shut up, the women smiling crookedly, the men approving aggressively.  Too bad, he had to attend as well. Enrique considered these functions important for keeping his customers close—responsibilities, part of being a good business owner.

Andrew looked over the cars peeling out of the parking and wondered again about Rosa.  She had to be around somewhere.  And there was Emilio jabbering with his relatives by a station wagon.  He wanted to speak with him about Ricardo and his latest find, but not now, not even during the party.  If his father caught him being chummy with Emilio, he should prepare himself to say hello to Escondido and goodbye to Rosa.

“Get your scrawny ass over here.”  Enrique’s aggressive tone ill-fitted the look of a laboring athlete in a silvery green tracksuit.

Andrew shook his head and followed the tall, thick figure of Enrique to the car. As they drove down the road into the afternoon glare of streetlights, Andrew wished he had overruled Enrique’s threatening bellows and brought along his dictionary.

***

Andrew watched Enrique give his demonstration of a good bat swing to the boys too old to care. Over and away. Perfecto! Amid the shrugs accompanied rising half-smiles, Enrique looked pleased, perhaps satisfied that he was enjoying the party as one should; and after the boys slunk off, leaving him alone to the wall peeling with blackened paint, he repositioned his collar, sleeked back the oiled hair and shambled off to the verandah where sat Maria’s parents and her coughing grandmother.

What is the grand, percipient, colossal point?  Andrew glanced at his wristwatch and minutes had moved no faster.  Bella Rosa was nowhere among the jubilating crowd. A forest of balloons was floating above Benito doing his robot dance before the jumping excited twigs of his twin daughters.

Another child bumped into Andrew’s seat, then a commenced a flood of wails and the insufferable pressure on his eardrums. Another child took courage from the wailing to start her whine for attention, and all children around ululated a toddler choir of discontent.

“Xavier, at least play with them a little.” Flora pranced on the scene, tapped the little heads, cooed them to silence and then shifted a wanting stare onto Andrew, who was at loss to know which precept of chivalry he had broken. She took the opportunity to shift in a chair towards him, invading his space with the infantry molecules of agave sweet perfume.  Andrew thought better than to draw away. He fixated on the conical mole on her cheek and wondered if it was artificial or real.  Women did strange things to themselves for beauty and attention, but never for his attention.