May We Be Forgiven

giant molten blob. By Trenton, I’m having second thoughts. The noise level of Ricardo’s video game seems to drive only me crazy, it’s like no one else can hear it. “Can you turn it down? Can you please turn it down? How about off? How about turning it off for a little bit? Just take a rest. Please. I’m asking you nicely. Okay, I’m begging you, I can’t keep driving if that noise persists.” And then he starts kicking the back of my seat and opening and closing the electric windows—changing the air pressure in the car. Nate and Ash speak to the kid in Spanish, he laughs, he puts the game away. The kid has a really odd, almost animal laugh that’s off-putting, and yet totally genuine and charming.
    I ask the aunt where she’s from—I’m assuming Colombia or Nicaragua.
    “The Bronx,” she says.
    “And where were you from originally?”
    “The Bronx,” she repeats. “My father is the super for a group of buildings, and my mother owns a store.”
    Jealous, or worried she’s leaving him for the murderer’s brother and two kids, the aunt’s husband calls every twenty minutes.
    Meanwhile, despite the great laugh, Ricardo is hyper—he never stops moving, except when he’s eating smelly papaya and blowing explosive farts.
    On the Delaware Memorial Bridge, after the fifth phone call from her husband, the aunt breaks down: “It’s too much for me, I can do no good for anyone. Everyone wants my attention—I don’t know why men can’t take care of themselves, why they can’t cook something to eat. … He works in a restaurant, you would think he could cook. … I am only one person. I cannot be there for everybody all the time. There is nothing left of me. I work for someone else, and then I come home and work for him, and then my parents need my help, and my husband says I’m not fun anymore. I used to laugh and go to the beach and play with him—or watch him and his friends race remote-control cars. …” I nod, hoping she’ll keep talking as I cross the bridge. I don’t know why, but I worry she’s going to jump out of the car and throw herself over the guardrail—I wouldn’t blame her if she did.
    “He can’t share me with anyone. In my dreams I run away, I get a job taking care of a very old man who likes to sleep all day and have oatmeal for dinner and oatmeal for breakfast. He has no teeth, so he can’t bite me. The man falls in love with me and his family is glad—okay, not really glad, but I pretend they are. We have a wheelchair wedding and he takes me to a spa that I already have the T-shirt for—Canyon Ranch. I got it from my cousin who cleans houses, who got it from the lady she works for, who was doing ‘spring cleaning.’ He takes me to Canyon Ranch for our honeymoon and says, ‘I knew you would be happy here, because your T-shirt told me so.’”
    She goes on and on. I’m nodding and listening, occasionally offering a compassionate “uh-huh,” or “I can imagine that would be difficult.”
    Somehow, in the back seat, the kids know better than to interrupt; it’s like a curtain of quiet has fallen over them, and they play video games with the boy.
    We go from Delaware into Maryland, slip past Baltimore, and then are in downtown Washington, D. C. I take them on a quick tour of the Capitol, the World War II Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Lincoln Monument, Iwo Jima Memorial, and the White House.
    As we go from place to place, I fill everyone in on the history. At one point the aunt stops me and says, “Why do you think my history is different from your history? I was born here.”
    “But your family came from somewhere else,” I say, lamely.
    “So did yours,” she says, and she’s right.
    The husband calls a half-dozen more times, and just before we’re about to get back on the road towards Virginia, the aunt announces she’s decided to go home; she gives me Ricardo’s medication and writes out the instructions on how and when to give it.
    “What exactly is it for?” I ask.
    “It’s to help him think at school,” she says. “But when it wears off, he’s cranky and bouncing off the walls—I like to send him outside.”
    We say goodbye and put her on a train in Union Station with a souvenir FBI baseball hat from the terminal gift shop. The aunt seems relieved to be dismissed, and the boy happy to be with Ash and Nate.
    We continue on to Williamsburg, arriving just before supper. The children quickly get into the program.