Our relationship was strained, to say the least, and most of our conversations were not especially pleasant. Given recent developments, I didn’t feel especially inclined to chat with her. But then I remembered: she rarely called. I wasn’t sentimental, but I could recognize when she needed something. And if she was calling me, this was probably the case. Reluctantly, I answered the call.
“Hola, Mamá,” I said softly, trying to conceal any edge in my tone.
She didn’t respond. I heard her breathing, though. I tensed up.
“Mamá?”
“Lucas,” she said, her tone so delicate I felt my heart break a little.
“What’s going on?” I prompted.
“It’s… it’s Mateo.”
Almost immediately I shut down:Mateo, of course. It’s always Mateo.
“Look… I love you, but you can’t keep putting me in this situation. I can’t be here to pick up the pieces every time Mateo fucks up.”
“Lucas…”
“What? You know I’m right!” I sighed, took a deep breath, and then continued; my tone was heavy with frustration despite my efforts at self-constraint. “What did he get into this time? Does he need money again? A place to stay?”
She was silent.
“Mamá?”
“Lucas…” she said quietly, as if confiding a secret. “Mateo is dead.”
I froze. The phone slipped from my hand and hit the floor. “Lucas? Lucas?” I heard, but I couldn’t respond just then. I closed my eyes. This was all a bad dream, it had to be. But then I opened my eyes, and there was the evidence. The phone, my mother still on the line, the underwear from the disappearing damsel, just beside it. Tentatively I picked up the phone.
“Are… are you serious?” was all I could manage.
She said nothing; I heard her sniffle. “Yes,mijo. It happened last night—we just found out this morning.” She paused for what felt like minutes, before continuing. “He got into a car accident, on the freeway.”
I whimpered. I knew how Mateo was, how reckless he could be. Sometimes when I rode with him he would go well over one hundred miles an hour, when there were no cops around. It took all I had not to imagine him, driving that speed, at the time of impact—I had to set the phone down, and take deep breaths.
“The service is tomorrow,” she continued through the phone. “I’d like it if you were there.” Then, when I didn’t immediately respond, she said quietly, “Goodbye, Lucas.” And she hung up the phone.
Still in a state of disbelief, I grabbed my phone and searched “Mateo Mendosa,” and there it was, a main-page article onThe Daily Minnesotan: “Mateo Mendosa, Heir to Mendosa Enterprises, Dies in Car Accident.”I felt my stomach churn and could not bring myself to read the article. Hoping for some sort of clarity, I scrolled to the last paragraph: “Mendosa had a documented relationship with substances; autopsy reports will reveal whether he was under the influence at the time of the accident. The Mendosa family has declined to comment.”
I was about to call my mother again, I was so furious—How could she not comment when this was how the media was portraying her son’s final moments?— but before I could my phone lit up, and I saw an email notification from the Army, with the subject “RETURN TO BASE.”
Things were not at all playing out as I thought they would. My brother had died, a most horrible death; I would miss my best friend’s wedding, where I was to be the best man; I would return to base by the end of the week, with only a few days’ notice.
And then there was Natalie.
5
A Bump in the Road Natalie
I landed back in Minnesota with a feeling of unease. It had nothing to do with the flight; it had everything to do with Lucas.
From the instant I’d left him there had been an incessant nagging in the back of my mind, telling me to leave some trace of myself—a phone number, an email address,something—or at the very least to have the decency to thank him for his hospitality, for the wonderful night, and say a proper goodbye.
But I had done none of those things. In the moment I hadn’t been able to articulate what it was that compelled me to disappear as I had—the connection had been genuine, and he was very much my type, from what I could tell—but as I sat and watched my best friend marry the love of her life, the reason occurred to me: I was scared. I’d never studied psychology, but I could only infer it was some sort of defense mechanism, something that kept me from holding onto the good guys, while letting the mediocre ones have their way with me. There was Daniel—my most recent relationship, and my longest—though perhapsmediocrewas too severe a term. He had been in one of my classes in college and had asked me out after the first lecture. I hadn’t found him cute, but he was charming. I admired how he knew what he wanted and wasn’t afraid to ask for it. But as the months passed, I began to see more and more clearly how dissimilar we were. He was conservative, I was liberal; he studied economics, I studied art; he kept his socks on during sex, I couldn’t stand the thought of it. None of these had been deal-breakers, but as the dissimilarities accumulated there came a point when I asked myself:Is he the one?Maybe it was my youth, my naivete, but it had been instilled in me from early on that “the one” did in fact exist, and that if I didn’t find him, it somehow reflected on me. I had to ask myself, did I want to lie, and be with someone I knew wasn’t my soulmate, for the sake of protecting my ego, or was I willing to risk it all and keep searching?
I opted for the latter, and the day after graduation, I ended things. Daniel was apoplectic—I had seen him in one of his moods before, but never had I truly been afraid for my life until that moment—and after we left campus, I blocked his number. He didn’t know where my family lived (and had never cared to ask, in the two years we were together), and for the first time I cherished the fact that I had withheld something. Since then, I was careful not to overshare, in case things ever played out similarly. Luckily my family was two hours away from campus, and none of my friends knew any of his friends. It was a clean break, a teaching moment.
But had I taught myself the wrong lesson? Had opting for secrecy cost me a potentially beautiful thing, my soulmate? Perhaps. But as there was no value in considering it, I did what I could to compartmentalize, and tried to go about business as usual.