México, está muy contento,

Dando gracias a millares…

—and this is his life—this is his city, these are his friends, his beloved friends, these people, and if this is all that there is or will be, it is enough for him, his world, his life, his city, his people, his sad beautiful Juárez…

—empezaré de Durango, Torreón y Ciudad de Juárez…

Pablo sings into the soft night.

—

Sundays are the worst.

They always are, but especially when he has to bring Mateo back to his mother. And Mateo is sad, too. Are they his own feelings? Pablo wonders, or is he picking up my melancholy?

Pablo makes them a simple breakfast of croissants, jam, and butter—Mateo has milk while he has café blanca—and then they walk over to the park to kick the ball around. They try to joke and laugh, but they’re each aware that they’re just killing time, postponing the sadness, and after a while Pablo asks Mateo if he’s ready to go “home” and he says yes.

So Pablo calls Victoria and tells her that they’re on their way, and they take a bus to her neighborhood and then walk down to her condo. It’s a gated community but Pablo has the code, and anyway the guard recognizes them and passes them through.

Victoria is waiting out front.

She hugs and kisses Mateo, then says, “Honey, run inside and get ready for your bath, please. Mami wants to talk to Papi.”

Mateo hugs his father and trudges inside.

“He’s tired,” Victoria says. “Did you let him stay up?”

“He went to bed at Ana’s,” Pablo says a little defensively. “At the usual time.”

“Well, Ana has some sense,” Victoria says. She looks tired herself and she’s dressed professionally and Pablo is sure she took advantage of the free Sunday to get some time in at her desk. Tired or no, she looks beautiful, and Pablo is chagrined to feel the same old stir that he always feels.

Then she says, “Pablo, I’ve been offered a new job. A promotion.”

“That’s great. Congratulations.”

“It’s El Nacional. In Mexico City.”

Pablo feels his heart stop. “Well, you’re not taking it.”

“Well, I am,” she says. “A national newspaper? Editor of the financial desk? Come on.”

“What about Mateo?”

She has the decency to look a little abashed. “He’s coming with me. Of course.”

“He’s my son.”

“I’m aware of that, yes.”

Pablo feels anger welling up inside him. “Then you’re also ‘aware,’ ” he says, “that I have certain paternal rights.”

“I was hoping you’d be reasonable.”

“That I’d be reasonable?! You’re talking about taking my son to live a thousand miles away!”

“Please keep your voice down.”

“I’ll yell if I want!”

“So mature.”

“You’re not taking Mateo away from me.”

“I’m not staying in this…border town,” she spits. “Not when I have the opportunity to go someplace else. And think of Mateo. Better schools, better friends…”

“His school and his friends are just fine.”

“The problem with you—”

“Oh, just one problem today?”

“One of the problems with you,” she says, “is that you can’t see beyond this backwater. Nothing happens here, Pablo. No one who lives here makes any decisions about what happens here, because the people with the power all live somewhere else. This is a colony and you’re a hopeless colonial. I don’t want that for Mateo and I don’t want it for me.”

It’s quite a speech and he’s sure that she carefully rehearsed it. “But you’re all right with him growing up without a father.”

“You’re a wonderful father. But—”

“Not a phrase generally followed by a ‘but.’ ”

“—you have no ambition. And Mateo sees that.” She looks down, and then makes herself look back up at him. “You can come on weekends—”

“I can’t afford that.”

“—or I’ll bring him here,” Victoria says. “When he’s a little older, he can fly himself—”

“He’s four!”

“The flight attendants take very good care of children,” Victoria says. “I see it all the time.”

“This is not going to happen,” Pablo says.

“I’ve already accepted the position.”

“Without talking with me first.”

“You see what happens when we try to talk,” Victoria says. “You won’t listen to reason, you get emotional—”

“You’re goddamn right I get emotional about losing my child!”

“You’re not losing him!”

“Then let him stay here with me,” Pablo says. “This is the only home he knows.”

“That’s part of the problem,” Victoria says. “He can’t live with you, Pablo. You’re out half the night. Covering stories, drinking, doing God knows what…”

“I’m always there, sober, when he’s with me!”

“Yes, I know.”

“You’re the one who’s leaving, not me,” Pablo says. “It isn’t fair.”

“You sound like a child.”

“See if I sound like a child in court.”

“You will,” she says, because she can’t help herself. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. But I have spoken to an attorney—”

“Of course you have.”

“—and she tells me that I will have no trouble retaining custody of Mateo when I explain how this will improve the quality of his life—”

“You bitch.”

“You could always move to Mexico City,” Victoria says. “Get a job there and then you’d be close. I could talk to some people…”

“There are thousands of journalists in Mexico City,” he says. “Natives. I know Juárez. I cover Juárez.”

“And that’s all you want.”

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“And there we are.”

She turns and walks away, leaving him standing there.

—

Victoria goes inside and lets herself cry for a minute before she calls Mateo for his bath.

Poor Pablo, she thinks.

Poor lost Pablo, adrift in a sea of his own sorrow.

He was never the same after the feminicidio, never the same and never even knew it. Day after day—more often night after night, or dawn after dawn—he would come home depressed, angry, tired, and sad.

As, one after another, young women disappeared and his beloved city became an abattoir. He could never understand it, never account for it, never explain it—to himself or to his readers—and when the killings faded away it seemed that he had faded away with them.

His drive, his ambition, his fierce love of life.

All muted or gone.

She tried to talk to him about it but he wouldn’t talk, became angry if she even brought it up. He went out all the time, seeking answers, and if she complained then she was the heartless bitch.

The feminicidio killed their marriage.

Killed, to some extent, the woman inside her.

Because she could never understand, can still not understand, how he could love a city where that could happen.

—

If Sundays are the worst, Sunday nights somehow manage to achieve a less-than-zero, a negative “quality of life” number, especially when your ex-wife tells you that she’s taking your son, and you decide to get a lawyer of your own and fight it, but when you know that you can’t afford a really good lawyer and that she’s going to win anyway.

And that a court fight will tear your kid apart.

And that there’s no good answer.

He thinks of seeking Giorgio out to commiserate, or Ana, or even Ramón. Ramón would be good to drink with tonight, because he wouldn’t intellectualize it, he’d just say, “Fuck that segundera” and “No one can take a man’s son away from him” and things that Pablo wants to hear.

But he doesn’t call Giorgio or Ana (would they fall into bed together on this sad night, him needing, her needing to offer, consolation) or Ramón. He just goes alone from bar to bar in old downtown, in Old Juárez, and has a whiskey in each, even though he knows it won’t help his financial situation at all. He gets miserably, soddenly drunk, but at least manages to refrain from phoning Victoria and begging.

He makes it home, flops down on the bed, and sobs.