Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (16 page)

I have a new dog! Her name is Legs because I found her the day I got my legs back. She followed me home from the park. My dad and I bathed her in the backyard. She’s really a great dog. She just stood there and let us bathe her. Really tame and mellow dog. I don’t know exactly what kind she is. The vet’s best guess was that she’s part pit bull, part Labrador and part God-knows-what-else. She’s white,
medium-sized, and has brown circles around her eyes. Really good-looking dog. My mom’s only response was: “The dog stays in the yard.”

That rule didn’t last. At night, I let the dog into my bedroom. The dog sleeps at my feet. On the bed. Mom hates that. She gave in pretty easily though. “Well, at least you have a friend,” she said.

My mom doesn’t think I have any friends. That’s sort of true. But I’m not good at making friends. I’m okay with that.

Not much to report other than the dog. No, wait, guess what? I got a 1957 Chevy pickup for my birthday! Lots of chrome. I love the truck. A real Mexican truck, Dante! All I need are hydraulics to bounce around in. Like that’s going to happen. Hydraulics. My mom just looked at me. “Who’s going to pay for it?”

“I’ll get a job,” I said.

Dad gave me my first driving lesson. We went out on some deserted farm road in the upper valley. I did pretty well. I have to get the gear thing down. I’m not very smooth about shifting and I killed the truck a couple of times trying to shift into second. It’s all timing. Push in the clutch, shift, gas, clutch, shift, gas, drive. Someday soon I’m going to learn to do all of those
things in one smooth motion. It will be like walking. I won’t even have to think about it.

After the first lesson, we parked the truck and my dad smoked a cigarette. He smokes sometimes. But never in the house. Sometimes, he smokes in the backyard, but not very often. I asked him if he was ever going to quit. “It helps with the dreams.” I know his dreams are about the war. I sometimes try to picture him in the jungles of Vietnam. I never ask him anything about the war. I guess it’s something he has to keep to himself. Maybe it’s a terrible thing, to keep a war to yourself. But maybe that’s the way it has to be. So, instead of asking him about the war, I asked him if he ever dreamed about Bernardo. My brother. “Sometimes.” That’s all he said. He drove my truck back home and didn’t say another word.

I think I upset him by bringing up my brother. I don’t want to upset him, but I do. I always upset him. And other people too. I guess that’s what I do. And I upset you too. I know that. And I’m sorry. I’m doing the best I can, okay? So if I don’t write as many letters as you do, don’t be upset. I’m not doing it to upset you, okay? This is my problem. I want other people to tell me how they feel. But I’m not so sure I want to return the favor.

I think I’ll go sit in my truck and think about that.

Ari

THIS IS THE LIST OF WHAT MY LIFE IS NOW:

-studying to get my driver’s license and studying hard to get into college. (This makes my mom happy.)

-lifting weights in the basement.

-running with Legs, who is not only a great dog, but also a great runner.

-reading Dante’s letters (sometimes I get two a week).

-arguing with Gina Navarro and Susie Byrd (about anything).

-trying to find ways of running into Ileana at school.

-looking through microfilms of the El Paso Times at the library trying to find out something about my brother.

-writing in my journal.

-washing my truck once a week.

-having bad dreams. (I keep running Dante down on that rainy street.)

-working twenty hours at the Charcoaler. Flipping burgers isn’t so bad. Four hours on Thursday after school, six hours on Friday nights and eight hours on Saturday. (Dad won’t let me cover extra shifts.)

That list just about covered all my life. Maybe my life isn’t all that interesting but at least I’m busy. Busy doesn’t mean happy. I know that. But at least I’m not bored. Being bored is the worst.

I like having money and I like the fact that I’m not dedicating too much time to feeling sorry for myself.

I get invited to parties and don’t go.

Well, I did go to one party—just to see if Ileana was there. I left the party just as Gina and Susie were arriving. Gina accused me of being a misanthrope. She said I was the only boy in the whole damn school who had never kissed a girl. “And you’ll never kiss one if you leave parties just as they’re starting to get good.”

“Really?” I said. “I’ve never kissed a girl? And how exactly did you come by this bit of information?”

“Just a hunch,” she said.

“You’re trying to get me to tell you things about my life,” I said. “It’s not going to work.”

“Who have you kissed?”

“Put a lid on it, Gina.”

“Ileana? I don’t think so. She’s just toying with you.”

I just kept walking and flipped her a bird.

Gina, what was with that girl? Seven sisters and no brothers—that was her problem. I guess she thought she could just borrow me. I could be the brother she could bug. She and Susie Byrd used to go by the Charcoaler on Friday nights around closing time. Just to keep bugging me. Just to piss me off. They’d order their burgers and fries and cherry Cokes and park and honk and wait for me to close up and just bug, bug, bug me and piss me off. Gina was learning to smoke and she’d flash her cigarettes around like she was Madonna.

One time, they had beer. They offered me some. Okay, I had some beers with them. It was fine. It was okay.

Except Gina kept asking me who I’d kissed.

But then I got an idea that would make her just stop hounding me. “You know what I think,” I said. “I think you want me to lean into you and give you the kiss of your life.”

“That’s disgusting,” she said.

“Why the interest, then?” I said. “You’d love to know what I taste like.”

“You’re an idiot,” she said. “I’d rather have a bird crap in my mouth.”

“Sure you would,” I said.

Susie Byrd said I was being mean. That Susie Byrd, you always
had to be nice around her. If you said the wrong thing, she cried. I didn’t like that crying stuff. She was a nice girl. But she didn’t help herself out with all that crying.

Gina never brought up the subject of kissing ever again. That was the good thing.

Ileana would find me sometimes. She would smile at me and I was falling a little bit in love with her smile. Not that I knew a damn thing about love.

School was okay. Mr. Blocker was still all about the sharing thing. But he was a good teacher. He made us write a lot. I liked that. For some reason, I was really getting into writing. The only class that I was having a hard time with was my art elective. I couldn’t draw worth a damn. I was pretty good at trees. I sucked at drawing faces. But in art class, all you had to do was try. I was getting an A for work. But not for talent. The story of my life.

I knew I didn’t have it so bad. I had a dog, a driver’s license, and two hobbies: looking for my brother’s name on microfilm and looking for a way to kiss Ileana.

MY DAD AND I GOT INTO A ROUTINE. WE’D GET UP
really early on Saturdays and Sundays for my driving lessons. I thought—I don’t know what I thought. I guess I thought that maybe my dad and I would talk about stuff. But we didn’t. We talked about driving. It was all business. It was all about the learning-to-drive thing.

Dad was patient with me. He could explain things about driving a truck and his philosophy of paying attention and watching out for the other guy. He was actually a really good teacher, never got upset (except the time I brought up my brother). He said something once that really made me smile. “You can’t expect to go both ways when you’re driving on a one-way street.” I thought that was a funny and interesting thing to say. I laughed when he said it. He hardly ever made me laugh.

But he never asked me any questions about my life. Unlike my mom, he left me to my private world. My dad and I, we were like that Edward Hopper painting. Well almost—but not exactly. I noticed that somehow my dad seemed more relaxed with himself when he and I were out on those mornings. He seemed so at ease
with himself, like he was at home. Even though he didn’t talk much, he didn’t seem as remote. That was nice. He sometimes whistled, like he was happy to be with me. Maybe my dad just didn’t need words to get by in the world. I wasn’t like that. Well, I
was
like that on the outside, pretending not to need words. But I
wasn’t
like that on the inside.

I’d figured something out about myself: on the inside, I wasn’t like my dad at all. On the inside I was more like Dante. That really scared me.

I HAD TO TAKE MY MOM OUT FOR A DRIVE BEFORE
she’d let me go out on my own. “You drive a little fast,” she said.

“I’m sixteen,” I said. “And I’m a boy.”

She didn’t say anything. But then she said, “If I even suspect that you’ve taken one sip of alcohol and driven this truck, I’m going to sell it.”

For some reason that made me smile. “That’s not fair. Why should I have to pay for the fact that you have a suspicious mind? Like that’s my fault.”

She just looked at me. “Fascists are like that.”

We both smiled at each other. “No drinking and driving.”

“What about drinking and walking?”

“None of that either.”

“I guess I knew that.”

“Just making sure.”

“I’m not afraid of you, Mom. Just so you know.”

That made her laugh.

So my life was more or less uncomplicated. I got letters from Dante and I didn’t always write back. When I did write back, my
letters were short.
His
letters were
never
short. He was still experimenting with kissing girls even though he said he’d rather be kissing boys. That’s exactly what he said. I didn’t know exactly what to think about that, but Dante was going to be Dante and if I was going to be his friend, I would just have to learn to be okay with it. And, because he was in Chicago and I was in El Paso, it was easy to be okay with it. Dante’s life was way more complicated than mine—at least when it came to kissing boys or girls. On the other hand, he didn’t have to wonder about a brother who was in prison, a brother his parents pretended didn’t exist.

I think I was trying to make my life uncomplicated because everything inside me felt so confusing. And I had the bad dreams to prove it. One night I dreamed I didn’t have any legs. They were just gone. And I couldn’t get out of bed. I woke up screaming.

My dad came into the room and whispered, “It’s just a dream, Ari. Just a bad dream.”

“Yeah,” I whispered. “Just a bad dream.”

But you know, I was used to them in a way, the bad dreams. But why was it that some people never remembered their dreams? And why wasn’t I one of those people?

DEAR DANTE,

I got my license! I took my mom and dad for a drive. I drove them to Mesilla, New Mexico. We ate lunch. I drove them back home and I think they more or less approved of my driving. But the best part was this. I went out at night and drove into the desert and parked. I listened to the radio and lay down in the back of my pickup and looked out at all the stars. No light pollution, Dante. It was really beautiful.

Ari

ONE NIGHT, MY PARENTS WENT OUT TO SOME WEDDING
dance. Mexicans. They loved wedding dances. They wanted to drag me out with them but I said no thanks. Watching my parents dance to Tex-Mex music was my idea of hell. I told them I was tired from flipping burgers all day and that I was just going to stay home and relax.

“Well, if you feel like going out,” my dad said, “just leave a note.”

I had no plans.

I made myself comfortable and was about to make myself a quesadilla when Charlie Escobedo came knocking on my door and asked me, “’Sup?”

And I said: “Not much. I’m making a quesadilla.”

And he said: “Cool.”

I was not about to ask him if he wanted me to make him one even if the guy looked hungry as hell. But that was his look. He had this hungry way about him. He was the skinny type. Always looked like a coyote in the middle of a drought. I knew about coyotes. I was way into coyotes. So we sort of looked at each other and I said: “You hungry?” I couldn’t believe I said that.

And then he said: “Nah.” And then he said: “You ever shoot up?”

And I said: “Nope.”

And he said: “You wanna?”

And I said: “Nope.”

And he said: “You should try. It’s fantastic. You know we could score some and go out into the desert in your truck and, you know, get high. It’s sweet. So sweet, dude.”

And I said: “I’m really into chocolate.”

And he said: “What the fuck are you talking about?”

And I said: “Sweet. You said sweet. I think I’ll get my sweet from chocolate.”

And then he got mad and called me a
pinchi joto
and all sorts of other names and he said he was gonna kick my ass all the way to the border. And who the fuck did I think I was, thinking that I was too good to shoot up or even smoke cigarettes and didn’t I know that nobody liked me because I thought of myself as Mr.
Gabacho.

Mr.
Gabacho
.

I hated that. I was as Mexican as he was. And I was bigger than he was too. I wasn’t exactly afraid of the little son of a bitch. And I said, “Why don’t you get someone else to do drugs with you,
vato
?” I figured the guy was lonely. But he didn’t have to be an asshole about it.