CLICK, CLICK, ZIIIIIP. LII.- THE MOTHER OF P. 👩‍🦳

Cristina's mother, P's mother, was named Cristina.

She was seventy-one years old, a widow for four years, with a shitty pension and an apartment in Puente de Vallecas, a ten-minute walk from her son's place.

She would go to P's house for lunch on Sundays.

Angel planned the first meeting to get to know her on the second Sunday of December.

He arrived at twelve with Sofia by his hand and a bottle of wine.

Laura opened the door, beaming. P, sitting in the living room with the TV remote, saw him enter and his face fell apart. And in the kitchen, cutting tomatoes with a flowered apron, was Cristina.

L: Cristi, this is Angel. The father of Claudia's little friend.

Cristina wiped her hands on the apron and extended a damp hand.

C: Delighted, son. Laura has told me a lot about you.

Angel held her hand a second longer than necessary. He smiled with that wide, warm smile that melted Laura and now caused an unusual blush in a seventy-one-year-old woman.

A: The pleasure is mine, Cristina. Can I help you with the tomatoes?

C: Oh, how nice! If my son were half as attentive...

P, from the living room, heard the phrase and squeezed the TV remote until his knuckles cracked.

Sundays became routine.

Angel, Laura, the girls, Cristina, and P sitting in a corner of the living room, increasingly silent, increasingly small in his own home.

Angel dominated the conversation. He flattered Cristina. Made her laugh. Touched her arm while talking. Brought her pastries from a bakery in Lavapiés.

—This guy is a sweetheart —Cristina would say to Laura in the kitchen, thinking Angel couldn't hear.

L: You see, mother-in-law.

Angel heard. Angel always heard.

In mid-January, Angel began visiting Cristina at her apartment.

The excuse was to fix a blind. Then a faucet. Then the TV, which had fallen off its bracket.

Cristina lived alone, had no one to fix these things for her, and Angel would appear with a toolbox and stay for two hours, drinking coffee with her, listening to her talk about her late husband, her pension that wasn't enough, her loneliness.

C: My son never comes to visit me. Only on Sundays, because Laura forces him. And when he comes, he doesn't even look at me.

Angel took her hand over the kitchen table. Cristina didn't pull it away.

A: You deserve to be taken care of, Cristina.

C: Call me Cristi. People close to me call me that.

Angel filed away the information. Cristi. That was easier. More intimate.

Cristina started calling him for things that didn't need fixing. "The bathroom window is stuck." "I couldn't turn on the new oven." "My back hurts and I couldn't reach the top shelf."

Angel always went. Without hurry. Without an apparent agenda. He would sit with her, listen to her, touch he...