Part 3 — The Other Card
Yolanda looked at her phone, and then at the table, and she read the number out loud in her clear old church voice.
“Four hundred and twelve dollars. Signed by Vince in one night, on his sisters name, between nine and midnight.”
Marcy set down her glass very slowly.
“And the card he handed Quincy last Tuesday,” Quincy said, finishing his sentence at last, “belongs to Mrs. Dolores Reyes. It has her name on the front.”
Mom did not move. She was eighty-five, in her good blue dress with the turquoise pin at the collar, and she looked at her son for what felt like a full minute.
“Mijo, you took my card.”
“Mom, I was going to put it back.”
She did not raise her voice, because she never had to; the whole room leaned toward her anyway.
“I gave you my card number once,” Mom said, “when you called me from the hospital and said you needed gas money. I did not know you wrote it down.”
The restaurant owner came to the table with a tray of flan nobody had ordered. He said, quietly, that the bill was covered, and the card would be returned to Mrs. Reyes, and they would not be filing anything. He had known the family for thirty years.
I thanked him. I asked for the folder, and I paid the tab for my mother and for my table. It was the last time I intended to pay anything for anybody but her.
Then I turned to my brother.
“Vince. I love you. I am done being your bank.”
He looked at me with his eyes full, and for the first time in six years he did not try to be charming.
Marcy reached across and put her hand on his arm. She said she had known, and she had been wrong to toast it. She apologized to me in front of everyone, and her voice cracked when she said the word jealous.
The next Monday, I took Vince to a clinic on St. Francis Drive that has a sliding-scale program. I sat in the waiting room with a magazine. He was in there an hour and forty minutes.
The ring I redeemed from the pawn shop on Cerrillos for the amount on the ticket, and I took it to Mom wrapped in a green chile napkin.
She slipped it on her finger and held out her hand to the light.
In September she put a bag in my freezer, with NOREEN written on it. And a second bag marked VINCE, for the day he was ready.