“And you, Joe.” He smiled at my father, having finally given in to my father’s insistence that he use his first name. Mr. Foster was my grandfather, and my father did not want to be him.
“Leo, is that you?”
We all turned as my mother popped her silver-frosted black head out of the kitchen.
“Mom.” I almost whined because I knew suddenly that I was caught in the middle of another one of their things.
“What? He said he would do it three days ago, and it’s still not done.”
“I’ve been sick!” my father snapped defensively, opening the box the iPad was in.
“And you can’t put up a new can opener that I had to buy because you broke the old one opening a huge can of queso?”
“It was for your brother,” he apprised her, clearly exasperated. “None of us eat that crappy queso, and it only comes in that huge can when you go to Costco, and then what are you supposed to put the leftovers in?”
“Not the canister that holds the sun tea, Joe!”
“Then what else are you supposed to use?”
“You throw it out! It’s crappy queso anyway!”
“Which is what I said to begin with!”
She threw up her hands and turned her flashing dark brown eyes on me. “Get in here and put up the damn can opener.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I agreed, chuckling, walking by her into the kitchen, kissing her on the cheek when she tipped her head for me.
“My beautiful son.” She smiled up at me before her brows furrowed. “Do not take your father’s side. I’m going to outlive him.”
I laughed at her. She was adorable.
“Charlie!” she yelled at him. “Come kiss me already!”
“You don’t have to kiss her if you don’t want to,” my father assured my friend.
He moved fast to reach Donna Foster. No matter what my father thought, I knew clearly that Charlie was in love with my mother. The way he hugged her, sat and watched her cook, listened to her stories about growing up in San Juan and moving to Hawai’i when she was fourteen—the man was enchanted.
She had been Donna Rios back then, before she went to college in Arizona and met my father, Joseph Foster. They had moved back to his hometown of Carson City, Nevada, after graduation so that my father could begin work for his father, my grandfather. But when my grandparents met my mother, there was suddenly a contingency on the understood offer of employment. No Puerto Ricans in the family. My father needed to marry a white girl.
Joseph Foster had always planned to go to work in the family insurance business, but when the stipulation became dumping my mother, everything went right out the window. My father loved Donna Rios more than anything. He was addicted to her smile, to her heated anger, and to her huge, compassionate heart. He loved to hold her in his arms, watch her blush when he kissed her in public, and walk down the street with her hand in his. She loved fiercely and possessively, and he wanted to have that for the rest of his life. He told them all to go to hell, moved a few miles down the highway to Easton, and opened up his own insurance business.
He worked hard, and with my mother doing his marketing, in two years he had three others working for him. In five years, he had eight. When I was born, my grandmother came to the hospital and, the way my mother told it, took one look at me and told her husband and her son to bury the hatchet. She wanted to hold the baby.
I only heard about all the bad blood when I was older and never saw any of it when I was growing up. My grandmother always said that if my father had just married Susie Apelt like he was supposed to, that I would have had blue eyes instead of brown. I shook my head and explained that I wouldn’t even be me without my mother, but she would wave her hand dismissively like I was stupid. Of course I would still be me, only better. My eyes would be the right color. But it was okay; my mother didn’t care, because she and my grandmother had become friends over the years. It was, my mother said, generational. My grandmother categorized her friends: my Korean friend Jean, my Black friend Tanya, my grandfather’s dear Chinese friend Tommy. It was ingrained in her to see the race of a person, just like it had never been ingrained in me to care. Now in their eighties, my grandparents spent a lot of time golfing and going on cruises. My parents had even joined them on the last one.
“Leo, did you eat breakfast?”
“Yes, Mom. We’re on our way to a job site after this.”