Disclaimer: me no own Sammy and Hazel and Leo and Esperanza and that's about it.
January 2nd 1959
If his mind hadn't been made already, it would sure have been made after the horrible New Year's visit from her parents who stayed with them despite their living in the same city. Sammy had learned to have very low expectations of his in-laws, but he was feeling pretty left out and unwanted during the whole holiday. Mrs. Garcia seemed to hate him five times more than usual, Carmen barely spoke a word to him, they always kept the kids busy and away from him... Sticky-sweet smiles were the rule of the holidays. Unless you were Mrs. Garcia. Then you encouraged Gabriel and Felipe not to grow up and be like their father (in front of their mother who said nothing to defend her husband who of course couldn't reply because he'd get in way too much crap). And if you were Mr. Garcia you got to hold Sammy back when he tried to take the kids out for ice cream to get them away from their grandparents' brainwashing.
And so he sat Carmen down after her horrible parents left and he told her that he was tired of being too afraid to talk because he'd set her off and make her spaz (you'll appreciate the irony in this situation: she yelled at me that I was exaggerating her temper). That Sammy was tired of having the kids watch them and wonder what kind of a switch had been flipped to change so much, and that he was tired of being miserable at home. He told her that he wanted to get a divorce and she asked him why he would possibly want that (which really said a lot about her talents as a listener).
Eventually (and Sammy said 'eventually' because the angry Spanish ranting took a while to get out of her system) she agreed with Sammy, and so bam. Things were over.
"If that's how you feel…" Carmen said.
"It's exactly, how I feel," he answered. "And you know, you just don't acknowledge it."
"How is this going to work for the kids?" Carmen said. "You can't possibly keep them, you spend all your time working and…"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa- you're not taking full custody of the kids," Sammy said.
"Nor are you." She snapped.
"I didn't say that I-"
Carmen took a deep breath and brushed her hair behind her ear. Something caught his eye- the bracelet on her wrist. The bracelet he'd brought from New Orleans once he'd failed to give it as a gift, and the one that she'd found in his drawers and kept.
"You know what, I've had enough for tonight. We'll talk tomorrow."
"Alright. Good night."
As she walked away, Sammy just had to blurt.
"I want the bracelet back," Sammy said.
Carmen's fingers wrapped around it. "It wasn't meant for me all along, now was it?" She whispered in horror, thoughts of adultery and affairs dancing through her hair.
"Get your head out of the gutter," he said. "It was meant for nobody."
Dear Anza,
Never refer to the most important person in your life as 'nobody' no matter how much you want to keep that little slice of heaven for yourself, away from the hell you're faced with. No matter how big of a secret that person is. It's when you call someone 'nobody' that you realise that you're just like the rest of the world. That they're dead to absolutely everyone now.
Trust me, you don't want that feeling. I know that I would give everything I had to stop it from curling up in my guts and hacking away at my chest every time I think back of the one time I betrayed my best friend.
Nobody
