‘Hmm.’ He raises an inquisitive eyebrow. ‘Well, our team trainer andyourlady love did happen to leave a few days ago with little to no warning, and a notice to the entirety of Heidelberg that she’s “fulfilled her task” here. You’ve got to be struggling.’
‘Well, the thing is—’
‘Did she dump you?’ blurts Henri.
God, these kids. Nothing if not straight-shooters. I throw my hands up in disbelief. ‘Really, dude?’
‘Hey, if you’re not going to give Miguel a valid answer, I figure I might as well try. We’re allslightlyconcerned. This came about pretty fast,’ he points out.
Before I can respond, a stray ball lobbed in our direction cuts off the conversation, and I deflect it with the inside of my foot.
‘Pass it back!’ calls Peter with a wave of his arm.
Henri gives me a knowing glance. ‘Kick it out, dude.’
I do. I kick everything out of my system until the ball hits the back of the net a satisfactory number of times, all the anger evaporating into thin air so thoroughly that by the time I get back home at the end of the day, to the one person I’ve always been able to open up to with little effort, I’m ready to talk.
I drive over to our Santa Teresa house. It’s seen me through my best and worst times, and I need it to see me through this one, too. Small, simple as it always has been, with all my mom’s chaotic flowers and bushes surrounding it. I’ve never minded the size. It holds plenty of love, anyway.
Mãe is out the door the second I’ve pulled up. With a broad smile and a hug smelling of peaches and mangoes, she’s made me a little kid again, running to her after my first karting victory in San Francisco. She ruffles my hair. ‘Oh, Magalinho.Finalmente.’
My mother sits me down on an eye-popping yellow couch, and before I can even suggest it, arms me with a can of Guaraná, my favourite soda.
‘Diz,’ she demands. ‘Last I saw you, you were on, what, summer break? Talk to me.’
It takes a minute to find the words. I pop the tab on my soda, killing time. Pai’s always been a sore topic for her. Everything I know about him –everything –is a mishmash of my hazy memories and stories from mytioandtia. But I ask, because maybe I should have done so a long time ago, and because, right now, I think only my mother has what I’m looking for.
‘Why’d you never find anyone else after Pai?’
She’s been leaning forward intently, but now, it’s like her face freezes, a mask of shock.
‘Mãe?’
‘Não me diga isso.’ My mother’s jaw is stiff, set just the way I do mine. ‘I won’t have answers for you.’
‘But you do, huh?’ I insist. ‘Por que não?’
She shakes her head. ‘Why you ask me this, Darien? Out of nowhere?’
I’m not actually sure why, and my lack of a response is all she needs to figure it out. Her voice goes soft, her face sad, as her eyebrows lower slowly, her eyes full of concern. ‘Darien … what happened with Shantal?’
And there it is.
Moms don’t really have to probe, they don’t have to conduct a thirty-minute interview to get down to the nitty-gritty and extract the information from you. They know you went out that night with your friends to TP Sam Pullman’s house, they know that you pregamed senior prom, they know that you suffered your first heartbreak because Cindy Gomez said she did not, in fact, want to go seeJohn Wickwith you, and they know when you hide something – anything – from them. I’ve never had to hide anything from Mãe. She always finds out before I can tell her.
I lean back against the couch, looking straight up at the ceiling to avoid letting the tears go. I tell my mom everything, from the very beginning, from how I found out what happened to her, to how we got closer and closer until our paths crashed, and I realized that my life had been divided into ‘before Shantal’ and ‘after Shantal’. I told her about the moment that I really, really fell, when I gave her that steering wheel, and when it all went to hell, Shantal’s parents, Shantal’sobligationto her parents, leaving her with Mãe’s bracelet.
‘Right girl, right time,’ my mom had told me when she gave me that bracelet at the beginning of my F1 career. Right girl, I’d ticked that box, at least. As for the time? It’s possible it could be so cruelly wrong.
‘So how come you never moved on?’ I nearly whisper the last two words. ‘How come she can’t bring herself to?’
With a heavy sigh, my mom smiles sadly. ‘As women, all we’re told, all our life, is that we are the centre that has to hold. We undertake responsibilities for others, Magalinho. With every person we care for comes a sacrifice. We hold the centre, even if that means not moving on. Even if that means doing whatever it takes to patch things up, if what you patch up heals someone for whom you care. Especially if what you patch up will fill a hole left behind by grief.’
A hole left behind by grief. My father’s death. Is that why she never found anyone else, because she had to look after me? Because I became her responsibility? ‘Mãe …’ My voice cracks. ‘I-I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize you had to … I didn’t know, didn’t do anything to …’
‘Magalinho.’ Mãe takes my face in her gentle hands. ‘Don’t you say sorry. Yes, maybe Nico left, maybe Nico took the love with him, but he didn’t take it all. He left meyou. You didn’t need to do anything. Even if I was hurting, I still had you. You are reason enough for me to never look for anyone else, anything else, Darien. Hope.Esperança.’
Her reassurance is as warm as it’s always been, the kind of thing only a mother is capable of, but her words stick in my brain, echoing over and over until they lose meaning, and then regain it.
