Chapter Twenty-Seven
Vince had been involved in long hospital stays before, several of them a lot longer and more involved than Mindy’s, but somehow Trey’s situation seemed worse right off the bat. On the third day of shuttling Sophia and Trey back and forth, it hit him what the difference was: he’d never done something like this without his family.
There’d been Grandma Marisa’s fight with cancer, ending in a coma same as Mindy, except first they’d endured several surgeries and two trips back home before the endgame. Amanda’s first birth had been seven kinds of hell, and they’d nearly lost both mother and baby. Not only had she been in the hospital for four months—three prior to birth, one month after—she’d needed help around the house for almost six months after before they were through. Walter’d had a heart attack just last year and needed quadruple bypass surgery. Grandpa Giorgio hadn’t been taking his pills and had eaten too many desserts, and his diabetes got away from him to the point where he had to lose a toe. He’d been lucky it hadn’t been his whole foot. The Fierros were no strangers to family medical emergencies. But whenever one happened, no matter what else was happening, the family stepped in and took care of them. They’d done so for all of Vince’s wives, even the ones they didn’t like.
Right now he needed them to pull together like that for Trey.
For a long time he sat in the hospital lobby, staring at his cellphone, arguing with himself. The truth was, he knew if he told them Sophia and Trey needed help, they’d help, because while they weren’t family, they were friends and neighbors. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was that once they got here, he’d have to make a choice. He’d either have to put some distance between him and Trey, start treating him like a friend instead of a lover, or he’d have to let his family see. He’d either have to not be there for his boyfriend when his boyfriend needed him most, or he’d have to take a giant leap out of the closet whether he was ready for it or not.
Vince knew what he had to do, knew what he was going to do. He’d known less than thirty seconds after he’d realized what Trey and Sophia were missing and that he could give it to them. Even so, he sat in the lobby a long, long time.
Then he picked up his phone and dialed. “Hey, Mom? Do you have some time this morning? Because there’s something I really need to tell you.”
Lisa Fierro strode into the coffee shop as if she were considering taking it over, at least until she saw Vince as he rose from the sofa he’d commandeered near the side window. She opened her arms and embraced him even as her jaw took on its Italian steel. “What’s wrong, sweetheart? Don’t tell me something isn’t wrong, because I can tell.”
“I know, Mom.”
“Because you’ve been acting funny for months. You always dodge me when I try and talk to you, and you’re evasive all the time about what you’re doing.”
“I know, Mom. I’m sorry.”
Her hands tightened like a pair of vises on his arms. “If you’re doing drugs—”
“Ma! I’m not doing drugs. Now will you sit? I got you an espresso, and if you let me talk for a change, I’ll tell you everything.”
Mollified, but only a little, Lisa let him go and settled gracefully onto an end of the sofa. She picked up the coffee he’d ordered for her and sipped carefully before nodding. “This isn’t bad. Full Moon Cafe. I’ve never heard of this place, but it’s good.”
“Yes, it is.” Mostly, though, it was familiar, faithful ground, and Vince had wanted as much ammunition as he could get.
“Do they roast their own beans? Because we could contract them for the restaurants—”
“Ma.”
She smiled wryly and held up a hand in surrender. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’ll let you talk.”
At least for a few minutes. Vince squared his shoulders and readied himself for the speech he’d been practicing all morning. “Awhile back you said you thought I was seeing someone. You’re right. I am.” When his mother threatened to burst into maternal joy, he cut her off with a look and continued quickly in case it didn’t last long. “And the someone I’m seeing is having a family crisis. Someone’s in the hospital, and it’s bad, very bad. I need our family’s help. My family.”
“Vinnie! Of course we’ll help. You could have told me on the phone, you know—goodness, what she must think, not even meeting us and here we are. Why have you kept her a secret? Do I know her? You didn’t have to—”
“Listen, please, Ma. I really need you to listen to me right now.”
His mother stilled, looking confused, but she quieted too, as much as Lisa Fierro could. “I’m listening, darling. But you know it doesn’t matter what’s going on. We’ll help her family, because as long as she’s seeing you, she’s our family too.”
Vince’s heart pounded so hard he wanted to double over at the pain, but he swallowed it and made himself press on. “Will you help her even if the someone I’m seeing isn’t a she?”
His mother blinked at him. Then again. And then again, and then she frowned. “Vincent, this isn’t funny.”
No shit. “Do you see me laughing?”
She frowned harder. “If this is about politics, if you’re trying to make some kind of ridiculous point—”
“I’m not talking about politics.” He swallowed another load of bile and fear. “I’m talking about me. And Trey Giles. That’s who I’m seeing. That’s whose mother is in the hospital, who needs us. It’s killing me, doing it by myself. I need the family to help. But first I need the family to understand who they’re helping, because I’ll probably be holding him and comforting him and doing everything else boyfriends do when their partner is upset, and I don’t want Trey to have to see a bunch of Fierros freaking out.”
For the first time in Vince’s experience, his mother seemed unable to speak. She opened and closed her mouth several times before sinking back into the sofa as if someone had let the air out of her. “You’re serious. Oh my God in heaven, you’re serious.”
Pushing aside the hurt and uncertainty, Vince pressed on. “I am. I’m sorry it’s all coming out like this. I’d wanted to be more careful and slow, but to be honest I think I’d have put it off until the second coming if I could have gotten away with it.” He paused, because the next part cut even to say it out loud. “If you hate me, if you’re going to abandon me, please, help me first. Please don’t turn them away because of me. Help them as neighbors and friends and ignore me. But they need us so bad, Ma. They’re exhausted and wrung out, and they don’t have anyone but me, and I’m not enough.” He blanched and fished wildly around for a tissue. “Oh God, please don’t cry.”
“Don’t cry.” Lisa withdrew a tissue from her purse and wiped angrily at her tears. “Don’t cry, you tell me. But first you tell me I’m going to abandon my son, and you remind me what my Christian duty is to my friends, as if I wouldn’t remember on my own.”
She sobbed once, but when Vince tried to reach out to comfort her, she slapped him away. She was still crying, but she was pissed too. Furious in a way only Fierro women could be.
“Is that what you think of me?” she went on. “That I would turn you away, turn your lover away? You think the family would turn you away?”
Vince paused. Well, yes he did. “I heard them talking at the baptism. About Hank. About how awful he was.”
“He was caught with a hooker. Of course they were talking about him.” She waved her hand angrily in the direction of the northern suburbs. “He gives everyone plenty to talk about. Has he ever come home with a nice boy? No. He comes home high and drunk and breaks his mother’s heart. He gets diseases and yells and has boyfriends who beat him up. Then he blames us for his problems.”
Vince was not buying this. “Well, in his defense, it’s not like you make it easy. Find a nice girl. Find a nice boy. Have babies. Get a good job. Go to church. So many goddamn rules, we about choke on them.”
The other patrons in the coffee shop were starting to watch them uneasily, and for half a second Vince felt bad. Then his mom started up again, and he forgot everyone else.
“Rules! Rules to protect you, to guide you? Maybe. The rules of the church, of God.”
“The church that says my loving Trey is a sin?”
Lisa rolled her eyes. “Please. They say the same thing about birth control, and do we pay attention to that?”
“Oh, so it’s a buffet now, is it? Good to know.”
“You’re not too old for me to paddle your backside, young man!”
“I heard them.” Vince didn’t shout, because getting the words out hurt, every one. “I heard them talking about Hank. I heard them say people like that aren’t family. And they meant that he was gay, Ma. I could tell.”
His mother deflated. “That was probably Olivia. She’s always been a bigoted little bitch.” Lisa closed the distance between them and took Vince’s hands, squeezing them tight. “I won’t lie to you, Vincent. I’m surprised. Upset too, I’ll admit that, because…well, it’s not what I’d pick for you. And yes, the family will be tricky. Hank made sure this road is littered with trash. But what you say to me, your mother! To have you stand here and imply I won’t love you because—because—”
“Because I’m gay?”
She reached up and touched his face. “You think I would turn you away for that? You think that of me?”
Vince was having to blink, a lot, to keep his own tears away. “I was afraid of it, yeah.”
She slapped him, but without any heat. “Don’t you ever think that again.”
He gave up and let the tears roll down his cheeks. “Yes, ma’am.”
Kissing him on the cheek, she drew him into her arms. Vince hugged her back, and over her shoulder he saw several of the other patrons wiping at their eyes. Trey’s coworkers were openly blowing their noses and hugging each other.
He smiled. Nobody did drama quite like the Italians.
Lisa patted him and went back to business. “So you said Mindy is in the hospital? How long has she been there? Have they gone home? Do they need food? Of course they need food. What about the house, has anyone been tidying up for them? And you, have you been getting any sleep? Poor little Trey, he works so hard. You’ve been watching out for him, yes? He’s such a young thing, so sweet, grew up so fast. You take care of him, Vincent, and we’ll take care of the rest. I wonder if Flora is home?”
She kept going, pulling out her cellphone and texting people as she continued to rattle off questions and demands, and Vince simply stood there and watched her, grinning and beaming and bursting with familial pride.