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"Then we'll stop. But she will still be my friend. She's part of my family. I'll grow up and I'll see her every Christmas, like that. I feel strange when I think about it. I'm happy to have her as my friend. She taught me how to learn to like yourself, and you have to learn to like yourself, you know, because if you like yourself, you can like other people."
"Do you know how she feels about you?"
"Geraldine hugged me once. In front of my mother and everyone. I got embarrassed. I hugged her once too, and then I pulled away. I haven't hugged my sister in years."
"When do you plan to hug her again?"
"When I leave for college. Or maybe when I graduate."
"That's going to be some hug."
"Geraldine has no trouble showing people she likes them, you know? She has a big heart for everyone."
"Do you think she cares for everyone equally?"
"Equally, but differently. Because everybody is different."
She approaches her house, with the blue windows. "I want you to meet my grandmother." A small, shy woman is led out into the hall in her slippers. She smiles, nods and retreats. Maria shouts upstairs to see who is home. "You won't meet him. He'll be out drinking until late." She calls to her sister in Spanish. Cara, the youngest, comes downstairs in her pajamas and greets the stranger politely, as Maria's eyes suddenly shine with a prospective joke: "Cara," she says, "this is your real father."
XII MALLORY
The trouble with the people who give those psychological tests is that they're trained in books, but not real life. That's what I say. So they tell me Michael has emotional problems, that he's immature. Well, what do you expect? He's young. And his mother don't exactly help either. She doesn't know how to treat kids. She talks stiff to Michael. Like when we're eating, she tells him she won't give him any food. I tell her: "Don't do that to him." I give him mine. She doesn't see what I see, you know what I mean?
I try to tell this to Sister Geraldine. She says that Eileen is intelligent. I say, "Yes, all crazy people are intelligent." I mean, they show real intelligence, but they do funny things along the way. I've known Eileen since she was 18. She changes: angry state one day, happy state the next. She used to take Michael to bars with her when he was a baby. She's run off eight times already, leaving me with Michael. And they say I neglected him. How you gonna help leave him alone sometimes when you're alone?
Tell you something else: When Michael was born, I was so happy. I didn't have any children with the woman I was married to. But when I walked into the hospital, Eileen tells the doctors that somebody not me is the father. She put down the name of some guy in New Jersey. Can you beat that? I told her she wasn't getting a dime until Michael had my name, and I went to court to make it legal. I could have murdered her then. She killed my fatherhood from the beginning, the first born.