Page 65 of Sean's Sunshine
He remembered that moment in bed when he’d said, “Sex isn’t like this.” He was starting to understand that sex may actuallybelike that, all-encompassing and all-consuming when there were whole lives attached.
Color him surprised.
Outside Observations
BILLY’S MOTHERwas like the female mold for all the women in his family, Sean thought. Five two to five four, with dark glossy hair that might be streaked or dyed blond but definitely could not be tamed, as well as wide hips, tiny feet, Billy’s enormous limpid eyes, tiny noses, and smiles that could knock a cat off a wall from fifty feet away.
Beautiful—his mother, Lucia, his sisters, Teresa, Lily, and Cora—all four of them were simply stunning, and as they gathered around Billy, hugging him and burbling mostly in Spanish about how much they’d missed him, Sean understood to the bottom of his toes where Billy’s no-nonsense brand of dishing out orders must have come from.
There was a lot of maternal chaos in that room.
His brother Miguel was there, hanging with Teresa’s husband, Alexei, and Sean sensed a deep bonding between the two men in the room that he could appreciate.
Roberto—or Robert, apparently—was not there.
But as Lucia led them into the living room, where battered couches vied for space with a battered recliner, desk chairs scavenged from the kid’s rooms, and kitchen chairs, so that everybody had a place to sit, Lucia was full of nothing but praise for her second-oldest son, who, she said, had helped her make rent and car payments with his business walking dogs.
“He’s really been a miracle, Guillermo,” Lucia told them, smiling through tired eyes. “I’m still working at the hospital—they always need nurses—but your brother got us through some tough times in the last months.”
“Fuckin’ Dad,” Miguel muttered. “I can’t even believe him!”
Lucia sent her son an unhappy look, but she didn’t seem to have any defense for her ex-husband.
“What did he do?” Billy asked. “I mean, you’re divorced, right?”
Lucia nodded, but Lily was the one who spoke up. “Mom didn’t change all her bank codes when they first split, right after you left, Ghee. She got back from the hospital, Dad was still on a bender, and she had us grab our clothes and then moved us out and found this dump before he even knew what she’d planned.”
Teresa, who was perched on the arm of the recliner, which Lucia was sitting in, reached down to grab her mother’s hand. “Mommy was really brave,” she said softly, glancing at Billy with pleading in her eyes. “She told us all that she wouldn’t live with any man who had done what he’d done to you, Ghee, and who would chase one of her children away. But Dad….” All the kids in the room shuddered, but their mother kept her expression carefully blank. Sean had checked out his share of domestic dispute calls, and he had seen that expression on the faces of abuse survivors. He looked at Billy, sitting next to him on the couch, and saw an identical expression.
Billy had borne the brunt of the abuse, along with his mother, until that final beating when he’d been kicked out—Sean had known that—but sitting in this spotless house with the spare furnishings and eclectic decorations, Sean could see the enormity of Billy’s childhood hit him.
Sean didn’t know what Billy’s rules for holding hands in front of his family might be, so he very carefully shifted his weight until their thighs were touching. It was casually done. It might have happened to any two people sitting on the broken couch, but if Billy needed it, Sean’s warmth was right there.
As if reading his intentions, Billy reached over and grabbed Sean’s hand, apparently almost without thinking. Sean laced their fingers and allowed himself to be pulled back into the family, this time knowing his touch was anchoring Billy to the here and now instead of letting him get lost in the past.
“What did he do?” Billy asked, voice hard.
“He waited until I had some money saved,” Lucia said bitterly. “By the beginning of this summer I was going to try to get a house—get a loan. I was getting my paperwork in order, and suddenly my savings disappeared. I have no idea how he got my passwords and bank information. I know Teresa thinks I didn’t, but I could have sworn I changed everything. There should have been no loopholes, but it was gone. Roberto—I mean Robert—called him up and said he’d confirmed everything.” She shook her head. “Oh, your brother was so angry.Soangry. But we couldn’t make it not happen. We couldn’t press charges. The police wouldn’t believe I hadn’t given him the bank information in the first place. If Teresa hadn’t gotten a job at the hospital as a ward clerk, we may have gotten evicted. And Roberto’s job walking dogs was the only reason we ate for at least two months.”
“Yeah,” Miguel said. “And even that was sad. Somebody let one of the big dogs out. Robert was all ripped up about that, man. So pissed. Thought somebody in the neighborhood had let the dog out on purpose. It was sad. Berto—dammit,Robert—was really ripped up.”
Sean couldn’t help searching out Billy’s gaze. “Sweaty?” he mouthed.
“Hey,” Billy said, “was the dog named, uhm, Sweaty? Like after those books I read you guys?”
“Yeah,” Teresa said, looking sad. “I think that’s one of the reasons Robert missed that dog so bad.” Once again she squeezed her mother’s hand. “We missed you, Ghee—all of us. And… and once you were gone, it hit us. How much you’d been hiding from all of us. How much you’d held us all together. How hard that must have been.”
Miguel snorted bitterly. “Yeah, until some ignorant pendejo put you out of your misery.”
Billy gave him a sharp look. “That wasnotyour fault, mijo. I never blamed you for that.”
“Did you blameme?” Lucia asked softly, and Billy tightened his grip on Sean’s hand.
Sean squeezed back again, and Billy looked his mother in the eye. “Yeah, mami,I did. You….”
“I let him,” she said, her voice choked. “I was so afraid. But the kids missed you so badly, and I had time to realize how much I’d put on your back, you know? How much of the protecting you were doing, how much you’d kept from your father. All of it on your back, from the time you were younger than Cora to the time he… he beat you and turned you out with not much more than your schoolbooks. It’s okay,papacito. You can be angry.”
Sean heard his dry swallow. He remembered his own words about how porn was sometimes so much more than rent or sex for the people in it.