Yours to Keep (20 page)

“What makes you think she’s undocumented?” Ethan asked, as casually as he could.

“Someone who used to work at the high school told my mom. And my uncle is an immigration lawyer. He did a little digging around and told my mom that, based on what he could find out, he thought so. And then my mom asked Ana if she’d want to talk to my uncle, and she kind of freaked out. My mom said she definitely acted like someone with a secret.”

“But your mom’s not a hundred percent sure, right?” Ethan asked. He was disgusted by the hopeful note in his voice. Because in his heart, he knew. Ana’s being undocumented explained everything. It made perfect sense.

“Not a hundred percent, but she said she’d bet on it.”

Ethan began to get angry, bit by bit, first at Leah for being a blabbermouth, then at Mrs. Abrams for being a busybody, and then at Ana for …

For lying to him.

To be fair, she’d all but told him. She’d hinted more than once that what he didn’t know about her life could fill a book. She’d implied, even said, that the circumstances of her life made her a terrible fit for him.

But in the end she hadn’t. She hadn’t told him. She hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him.

That hurt—a stab of pain under his ribs.

He pulled into the Hawthorne Multiplex parking lot. “Well, it’s probably not something you should repeat. I’m sure Ana wants it kept private.”

He chanced another peek at the rearview mirror. Theo was biting the heck out of his thumbnail.

“I just told you guys because I know you’re kind of friends with her, too.” Leah looked chastened.

That’s right, kiddo,
thought Ethan.
Not all secrets are fun.

But it wasn’t Leah he was so upset with, was it?

He released the door locks for them. “Have fun, guys.”

They got out of the car. Leah waited for Theo on the passenger’s side, smoothing her hair and straightening her clothes. Theo slammed his door and stepped in front of the window
on the driver’s side. Ethan rolled it down and Theo leaned in. His eyes were accusing. “She’s not supposed to be in this country?” His voice was barely a whisper.

Ethan wanted to turn away from his son’s gaze. “That’s what Leah is saying.”

“Does this mean she can’t tutor me? Does this mean you can’t—” Theo stopped. Ethan felt a chill. He didn’t know the exact words for what was between him and Ana, either.

“We’ll talk about it later, okay?”

But it wasn’t okay. The look on Theo’s face made that clear.

“I promise. We’ll figure it out.”

“You knew.” Theo’s voice was thin and icy.

“I didn’t know.” It sounded lame and unconvincing. He barely believed it himself. What was wrong with him that he hadn’t put the pieces together? It was the power of denial, that’s what it was. And, he admitted, the skill with which she spoke English. People like her—God, had he thought those words?—were supposed to be barely bilingual. Barely literate. Not articulate, not skilled teachers, not well read. His prejudices had snared him.

And maybe? Maybe? There was still a chance that Leah was wrong?

But it fit. The pieces fit. “My life …” she’d tried to tell him.

“Theo,” Leah called, sweetly. “We should go.”

“Maybe Leah’s wrong,” he told Theo.

He hated himself even more when Theo looked suddenly hopeful.

“Go watch the movie,” Ethan said.

He watched the two of them walk across the parking lot together. Leah bumped against Theo once. She liked him, Ethan could see. He felt elation for Theo, and fear, in equal proportions. It sucked to be an adult. You knew how easy it was to get your heart broken.

His cell phone rang, and he tugged it from his pocket. Her home number. His hands shaking, he flipped it open. “Hello?”

“We ate early. Do you want to pick me up at Duarte?” She sounded cheerful and eager.

“Sure.” He wasn’t going to demand answers from her on the phone. “I can be there in twenty.”

“Can’t wait,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”

He felt a tug, heart and groin, despite himself. “Missed you, too.” He flipped the
phone shut and started the car.

The exchange with Leah kept going around in his head as he drove. He wanted a version of things where Leah was just plain wrong. Where he’d ask Ana for the truth and she’d laugh, the way she had when he asked her if she was married.

He wanted that so badly it made his chest ache.

He wished he knew more about immigration law. There were articles about the situation in the
New York Times
all the time, but he didn’t always read them carefully. He’d followed the health-care debate in detail, had strong opinions about how the system ought to be reformed, but, to be truthful, he’d never been exactly sure what to think about immigration. He didn’t want soldiers with guns or a giant fence along the border. He felt that raids and mass deportations were wrong; the stories about the terrible conditions in detention centers made him sick. But he knew that, when it came down to it, he was as clueless as everyone else.

Suddenly, without warning, his anger flared. He shouldn’t be clueless. He should have known. They’d made love. It hadn’t been casual or anonymous. It had been serious, and they’d both known it. He’d chased her all over creation, for God’s sake, to hell and back, to get her into his bed. He’d told her, straight out, what she meant to him, how she’d changed his life already. She knew he wasn’t kidding around. He had every right to know who she was.

He was near her neighborhood now. Every other streetlight was burned out; the streets were empty. For the first time, he felt afraid of how different her life was from his, how much he might not know or understand about her.

He turned into the parking lot at Duarte and saw her standing near the circular drive at the entrance. Security lights illuminated her; for a moment, it looked as if she were onstage and about to burst into song. His heart lifted at the sight of her, then sank. Stone in his belly.

He pulled up, pushed the door open for her. She was wearing a stretchy black top with a deep scoop neck, and she came right into his arms, so quickly that he didn’t have time to consider whether he wanted her there or what to do about it. She lifted her mouth to his, totally trusting and absorbed. He kissed her—he couldn’t have stopped himself if his life depended on it—and it was just as it had been before. He was instantly aflame, hungry.

When he caught his breath, he looked at her. She was smiling at him, pleased with herself, pleased with them.

“Are you here illegally?” he blurted out.

The look on her face. As if he’d smacked her. Eyes huge, mouth agape, color draining from her skin.

“Leah Abrams said you were.”

She put her face in her hands. “I wanted to tell you. I meant to tell you. I knew I needed to tell you.”

All his anger, the great, roaring rush of it, suddenly coalesced. “But you didn’t. You didn’t trust me.” He turned away from her, from her sad eyes. His face burned as he thought about what he’d said to her, in bed, afterward, about how she’d woken him from his sleepwalking. And all the time he was talking she was lying there, not telling him. Not telling him who she really was. What a fool he’d been, his happy little family fantasies, hatched in three weeks. What a lovesick teenage idiot. Because things were not, at all, okay. She didn’t belong here, and if she didn’t belong here there was no way, no way on earth, that she could belong to him and Theo.

Theo.

Beside him she said quietly, “I was scared to tell you.”

He was instantly chastened. Of course she was scared. Scared that he’d freak out, just as he was doing.

“I liked you so much—”

Past tense. He stared out the windshield, not daring to look at her, feeling that he might shatter if he did.

“If it matters, I’m out of status. I stayed too long. We didn’t come illegally.”

“Why— How?” He dared a quick glance at her.

She stared straight ahead. “My dad had a work visa—he had a job as a college professor. The rest of us had what were called derivative visas, which meant we could come because he was here. I told you my dad was supposed to come a couple weeks after us but didn’t. Months passed, my mom got more and more frantic, then more and more depressed. She wanted to go home. She promised us we’d go home. But the money was screwy. She didn’t have enough to book the tickets, and we couldn’t get in touch with my dad. Then she got sick, so sick, and we were taking care of ourselves and the visa extension, all of it, slipped through the cracks.

“Ricky still talked about going back to D.R. after my mom died, as soon as we had enough money, but then Cara got pregnant with Marco, and it all got very complicated.”

“And in all the time since then? You’ve never done anything—”

“I was nine when my mom died. I trusted Ricky. And by the time I was old enough to understand, it was too late. Once you’re out of status—”

“What happens if you get caught?”

She turned to look out the side window. Her hair tumbled like a wave of jet over her shoulders; he wanted to touch it but was afraid of himself. “If I get caught,” she repeated slowly. She stopped. “I’ve been here twenty years. I haven’t gotten caught yet.”

But she said herself that things had changed. And they would only change more if immigration reform ever got traction. Maybe for the better. Maybe for the worse. Nothing was certain or would ever be certain for Ana. For anyone who—who—needed Ana.

“What happens?” he repeated.

“Ethan.”

“You’d have to go back, wouldn’t you? And stay?”

She was trembling when she spoke again. “I’d have to leave for ten years before I could reenter,” she said, her voice barely audible.

“Oh, God,” he said. Ten years. A lifetime.

“Do you want me to get out?” She reached for the door handle.

“No! No! What would make you say that? I’m just—I’m just in shock.”

“I should have told you.”

“Yes.” He turned to look at her. “You should have.” It was impossible to keep the anger, the hurt, completely at bay.

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

There were things he didn’t understand, needed to understand. “There must be some way to fix it.”

She shook her head. “Believe me, we’ve investigated. If there were anything we could have done, we would have done it.”

“I can’t think. My brain is mush.”

“I can go—I should go.” She reached again for the door handle.

A part of him knew that she wanted him to protest, to insist that she stay. And yet—he
wanted to catch his breath. Make a plan. Do some research. Find the strength to break this off if that’s what was best. If she stayed with him again tonight, if she was in the house tomorrow morning when Theo woke up, her very presence at the breakfast table suggesting permanence, it would only be harder—for him, for Theo, for her—if he had to end it.

“I might need some time to think,” he admitted.

He heard her intake of breath, felt her freeze beside him.

“Just a day or two. To figure things out.”

She turned those huge dark eyes on him again. If it had been just him, if it had been only the two of them, he’d have put his arms around her and kissed her until neither of them could think straight. But it wasn’t just them.

“Let me drop you at home.”

For once she didn’t protest. He pulled away from the curb at Duarte. She directed him, and they wove back into her neighborhood. Amid that motley collection of two- and three-family houses, hers was a vinyl-sided, boxy triple-decker that edged right up to the sidewalk, with no garden or parking strip to buffer it. Three water meters sprouted from the front of it like warty growths. It was as ugly and utilitarian as it was possible for a home to be.

He felt a pang of emotion that could only be called pity, and he knew, as deeply as he knew anything, that she’d hate it if she knew. He turned to look out the window, so she couldn’t see.

She pushed the door open and slung herself out.

“I’ll call you when I figure this out,” he said. “I promise.”

She said nothing. She turned away.

“Ana.”

But she went into the building without looking back.

Ana lay in bed, curled on her side. She’d sneaked past Cara, still watching TV in the living room, and shut herself into the bedroom, where Leta was breathing slowly and evenly on the bottom bunk. Ana lay as still as she could, hoping it would help with the pain, an ache that had started in her throat and spread everywhere, to the very edges and tips of her. Her heartache had exactly the same dimensions and ferocity as her desire for Ethan.

A month ago, she hadn’t known him, had been only vaguely aware, if at all, that
something was missing from her life. A week ago, she was still holding him at arm’s length, convincing herself that she was safe. Then, on Tuesday night, everything had changed.

He wouldn’t call her. She was sure of that. She’d been here before.

She tried to imagine what it would be like now. If she was lucky, he wouldn’t fire her. She’d keep tutoring Theo, and Ethan would stay at work until after she’d left to go home. More likely, he’d fire her. Theo would muddle along okay in Spanish. He didn’t really need her. She wouldn’t blame Ethan if he ended the tutoring sessions.

Maybe she should quit and save him the trouble. After all, it was her lie that had brought all this about.

You will get over him,
a little sensible part of her brain told her.
You’ll feel this way about someone else again someday.

She didn’t believe it, though.

It had been heart-stoppingly good all three times they made love, but it was the last time she thought of now. They had been drowsing in each other’s arms. She’d nearly been asleep. He’d moved very slightly under her—later she understood that he’d awakened before her and reached out for a condom—and she’d had that near-sleep sensation of plummeting through space. She’d tightened her arms around him, hard, clinging, trying to stop her fall. His arms tightened, too, and his mouth found hers in the dark void and anchored her, held her down, pouring heat into her, heat that, in half sleep, had the texture of velvet. She woke completely to the total experience of him, his soapy, musky male scent, the taste of his mouth, his weight moving over her. She was boneless, poured liquid gold; he paused for a moment to sheathe himself, then slid into her to the hilt and moved painstakingly slowly, withdrawing his whole length and entering her again, hitching his pelvis up over hers, the melted-butter sensation spreading like fire from the center of her outward until she cried out against his mouth. He kept moving in and out of her at that same pace, and her second orgasm had a black center, like true flame, into which he yelled her name.