Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (23 page)

People I didn’t know walked up to me. “Ari?” they would ask.

“Yes, I’m Ari.”

“Your aunt adored you.”

I was so ashamed. For having kept her on the margins of my memory. I was so ashamed.

MY SISTERS WENT BACK HOME AFTER THE FUNERAL.

My mom and dad and I stayed on. My mom and dad closed up my aunt’s house. My mom knew exactly what to do, and it was almost impossible for me to imagine her residing on the borders of sanity.

“You keep watching me,” she said one night as we watched a summer storm coming in from the west.

“Do I?”

“You’ve been quiet.”

“Quiet’s pretty normal for me.”

“Why didn’t they come?” I asked. “My uncles and aunts? Why didn’t they come?”

“They didn’t approve of your aunt.”

“Why not?”

“She lived with another woman. For many years.”

“Franny,” I said. “She lived with Franny.”

“You remember?”

“Yes. A little. Not much. She was nice. She had green eyes. She liked to sing.”

“They were lovers, Ari.”

I nodded. “Okay,” I said.

“Does that bother you?”

“No.”

I kept playing with the food on my plate. I looked up at my father. He didn’t wait for me to ask my question.

“I loved Ophelia,” he said. “She was kind and she was decent.”

“It didn’t matter to you that she lived with Franny?”

“To some people it mattered,” he said. “Your uncles and aunts, Ari, they just couldn’t.”

“But it didn’t matter to you?”

My father had a strange look on his face, as if he was trying to hold back his anger. I think I knew that his anger was aimed at my mother’s family, and I also think he knew that his anger was useless. “If it had mattered to us, do you think we’d have let you come and stay with her?” He looked at my mother.

My mother nodded at him. “When we get back home,” she said. “I’d like to show you some pictures of your brother. Would that be okay?”

She reached over and wiped my tears. I couldn’t speak.

“We don’t always make the right decisions, Ari. We do the best we can.”

I nodded, but there weren’t any words and the silent tears just kept running down my face like there was a river inside me.

“I think we hurt you.”

I closed my eyes and made the tears stop. And then I said, “I think I’m crying because I’m happy.”

I CALLED DANTE AND TOLD HIM THAT WE’D BE BACK
in a couple of days. I didn’t tell him anything about my aunt. Except that she’d left me her house.

“What?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Wow.”

“‘Wow’ is right.”

“Is it a big house?”

“Yeah. It’s a great house.”

“What are you going to do with the house?”

“Well, apparently there’s a friend of my aunt’s who wants to buy it.”

“What are you going to do with all that money?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”

“Why do you suppose she left you the house?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, you can quit your job at the Charcoaler.”

Dante. He could always make me laugh.

“So what have you been up to?”

“Working at the drugstore. And I’m sort of hanging out with this guy,” he said.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Yeah.”

I wanted to ask his name but I didn’t.

He changed the subject. I knew when Dante was changing the subject. “My mom and dad are in love with Legs.”

ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, WE WERE STILL IN TUCSON.

We went to watch the fireworks.

My dad let me a have a beer with him. My mother tried to pretend she didn’t approve. But if she hadn’t approved, she would have put a stop to it.

“It’s not your first beer, is it, Ari?”

I wasn’t going to lie to her.

“Mom, I told you when I broke the rules, I was going to do it behind your back.”

“Yes,” she said. “That’s what you said. You weren’t driving, were you?”

“No.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

I drank the beer slowly and watched the fireworks. I felt like a small boy. I loved fireworks, the explosions in the sky, the way the crowd sometimes uuhhhed and aahhed and oohhhed.

“Ophelia always said Franny was the Fourth of July.”

“That’s really a great thing to say,” I said. “So what happened to her?”

“She died of cancer.”

“When?”

“About six years ago, I guess.”

“Did you come to the funeral?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t bring me.”

“No.”

“She used to send me Christmas gifts.”

“We should have told you.”

I THINK MY MOTHER AND FATHER HAD DECIDED THAT
there were too many secrets in the world. Before we left my aunt’s house, she put two boxes in the trunk of the car. “What’s that?” I asked.

“The letters I wrote to her.”

“What are you going to do with them?”

“I’m going to give them to you.”

“Really?”

I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.

ON THE DRIVE BACK TO EL PASO FROM TUCSON, I SAT
in the backseat. I could see that my mom and dad were holding hands. Sometimes they would glance at each other. I looked out at the desert. I thought of the night Dante and I had smoked pot and run around naked in the rain.

“What are you going to do the rest of the summer?”

“I don’t know. Work at the Charcoaler. Hang out with Dante. Work out. Read. Stuff like that.”

“You don’t have to work,” my father said. “You have the rest of your life to do that.”

“I don’t mind working. And anyway, what would I do? I don’t like to watch TV. I’m out of touch with my own generation. And I have you and mom to thank for that.”

“Well, you can watch all the television you like from here on in.”

“Too late.”

They both laughed.

“It’s not funny. I’m the uncoolest almost-seventeen-year-old in the universe. And it’s all your fault.”

“Everything is our fault.”

“Yes, everything is your fault.”

My mom turned around just to make sure I was smiling.

“Maybe you and Dante should take a trip together. Maybe go camping or something.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“You should think about it,” my mom said. “It’s summer.”

It’s summer, I thought. I kept thinking of what Mrs. Quintana had said:
Remember the rain.

“There’s a storm up ahead,” my father said. “And we’re about to run into it.”

I looked out the window at the black clouds ahead of us. I opened the back window and smelled the rain. You could smell the rain in the desert even before a drop fell. I closed my eyes. I held my hand out and felt the first drop. It was like a kiss. The sky was kissing me. It was a nice thought. It was something Dante would have thought. I felt another drop and then another. A kiss. A kiss. And then another kiss. I thought about the dreams I’d been having—all of them about kissing. But I never knew who I was kissing. I couldn’t see. And then, just like that, we were in the middle of a downpour. I rolled up the window and I was suddenly cold. My arm was wet, the shoulder of my T-shirt soaked.

My father pulled the car over. “Can’t drive in this,” he said.

There was nothing but darkness and sheets of rain and the awe of our silence.

My mom held my father’s hand.

Storms always made me feel so small.

Even though summers were mostly made of sun and heat,
summers for me were about the storms that came and went. And left me feeling alone.

Did all boys feel alone?

The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.

Through all of youth I was looking for you

without knowing what I was looking for

—
W. S. Merwin

IT RAINED OFF AND ON THE WHOLE TRIP BACK TO
El Paso. I dozed off to sleep. I’d wake every time we hit a heavy downpour.

There was something very serene about that trip back home.

Outside of the car, there was an awful storm. Inside of the car, it was warm. I didn’t feel threatened by the angry, unpredictable weather. Somehow, I felt safe and protected.

One of the times I fell asleep, I started dreaming. I think I could dream on command. I dreamed my father and my brother and I were all having a cigarette. We were in the backyard. My mother and Dante were at the door. Watching.

I couldn’t decide if the dream was a good dream or a bad dream. Maybe a good dream because when I woke I wasn’t sad. Maybe that’s how you measured whether a dream was good or bad. By the way it made you feel.

“Are you thinking of the accident?” I heard my mother’s soft voice.

“Why?”

“Does the rain ever remind you of the accident?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you and Dante talk about it?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“We just don’t.”

“Oh,” she said. “I thought you two talked about everything.”

“No,” I said. “We’re just like everyone else in the world.” I knew it wasn’t true. We weren’t like everyone else in the world.

When we drove up to the house, it was pouring. Thunder and lightning and wind, the worst storm of the summer season. My dad and I got soaked taking the suitcases back into the house. My mom turned on the lights and put on some tea as my father and I changed into dry clothes.

“Legs hates thunder,” I said. “It hurts her ears.”

“I’m sure she’s sleeping right next to Dante.”

“Yeah, guess so.” I said.

“Miss her?”

“Yeah.” I pictured Legs lying at Dante’s feet, whimpering at the sound of the thunder. I pictured Dante kissing her, telling her everything was all right. Dante who loved kissing dogs, who loved kissing his parents, who loved kissing boys, who even loved kissing girls. Maybe kissing was part of the human condition. Maybe I wasn’t human. Maybe I wasn’t part of the natural order of things. But Dante enjoyed kissing. And I suspected he liked masturbating too. I thought masturbating was embarrassing. I didn’t even know why. It just was. It was like having sex with yourself. Having sex with yourself was really weird. Autoeroticism. I’d looked it up in a book
in the library. God, I felt stupid just thinking about these things. Some guys talked about sex all the time. I heard them at school. Why were they so happy when they talked about sex? It made me feel miserable. Inadequate. There was that word again. And why was I thinking about these things in the middle of a rainstorm, sitting at the kitchen table with my mother and father? I tried to bring my thoughts back into the kitchen. Where I was. Where I lived. I hated the thing of living in my head.

My mother and father were talking and I sat there, trying to listen to their conversation but not really listening at all, just thinking about things. My mind just wandering around. And then my thoughts fell on my brother. They always fell there. It was like my favorite parking spot in the desert. I just sort of drove there all the time. I wondered what it would have been like if my brother had been around. Maybe he could have taught me stuff about being a guy and what guys should feel and what they should do and how they should act. Maybe I would be happy. But maybe my life would be the same. Maybe my life would be even worse. Not that I had a bad life. I knew that. I had a mom and dad and they cared, and I had a dog and a best friend named Dante. But there was something swimming around inside me that always made me feel bad.

I wondered if all boys had that darkness inside them. Yes. Maybe even Dante.

I felt my mother’s eyes on me. She was studying me. Again.

I smiled at her.

“I’d ask you to tell me what you’re thinking, but I don’t think you’d tell me.”

I shrugged. I pointed at my father. “Too much like him, I guess.”

That made my father laugh. He looked tired but at that moment, as we sat at the kitchen table, there was something young about him. And I thought that maybe he was changing into someone else.

Everyone was always becoming someone else.

Sometimes, when you were older, you became someone younger. And me, I felt old. How can a guy who’s about to turn seventeen feel old?

It was still raining when I went to sleep. The thunder was far away and the soft sound of it was more like a distant whisper.

I slept. I dreamed. It was that dream again, that dream that I was kissing someone.

When I woke, I wanted to touch myself. “Shaking hands with your best friend.” That was Dante’s euphemism. He always smiled when he said that.

I took a cold shower instead.

FOR SOME REASON I HAD A FUNNY FEELING IN THE PIT
of my stomach. Not just the dream thing, the kissing thing, the body thing, and the cold shower. Not just that. There was something else that didn’t feel right.

I walked over to Dante’s house to get Legs. I was dressed for a run in the cool morning. I loved the dampness of the desert after all the rains.

I knocked at the front door.

It was early, but not too early. I knew Dante was probably still asleep, but his parents would be awake. And I wanted Legs.

Mr. Quintana answered the door. Legs rushed out and jumped up at me. I let her lick my face, which is not something I let her do very often. “Legs, Legs, Legs! I missed you.” I kept petting her and petting her, but when I looked up, I noticed that Mr. Quintana looked—he looked, I don’t know—there was something in his face.

I knew something was wrong. I looked at him. I didn’t even ask the question.

“Dante,” he said.

“What?”

“He’s in the hospital.”

“What? What happened? Is he okay?

“He’s pretty beat up. His mother stayed with him overnight.”

“What happened?”

“Would you like a cup of coffee, Ari?”

Legs and I followed him into the kitchen. I watched as Mr. Quintana poured me a cup of coffee. He handed me the cup and we sat across from each other. Legs placed her head on Mr. Quintana’s lap. He kept running his hand over her head. We sat there in the quiet, me watching him. I waited for him to talk. Finally, he said, “How close are you and Dante?”