Like Son (11 page)

Her heart stopped. My father’s mother’s heart stopped outright, though not literally, of course. It hurt. The kiss had truly hurt. But she wanted another. And another. And another still. The pain of that kiss was delicious. The pain was a life she could understand. The pain was one she’d carry with her for the rest of her days.

The book Nahui had given her held tight to her chest, my father’s mother felt her son kick with particular force. She sat at the fountain for hours and read the book’s intricate words until the hot sky blushed her cheeks. That blush never went away.

Eventually, she walked home, carrying a little honeycolored worry stone and the book inscribed to her by the most elegant of hands.

… and then, in Chicago, after the train crash …

My father’s needy infant mouth still hungry at her breast every night, his mother worried for his safety. She feared she had caused her baby girl’s death.
An innocent love
, any Godfearing soul would concur,
was taken away as punishment for wicked love
. After all, hadn’t she longed for more of Nahui’s kisses, for more of her touch? Hadn’t she thought of Nahui when her husband sought her affections? Wouldn’t she run back to Nahui if she could? Didn’t she think of Nahui still? The possibility that God had more punishment arranged terrified her.

And so, soon after the railroad company took what remained of her little girl’s body and buried it, she made her decision. Barely twenty years of age but not so young anymore, she cautiously prepared her four worldly possessions for travel.

Twelve-inch iron skillet. Threadbare sock filled with earned green bills. The tiny pebble she had collected from the dirt road back home. And Nahui’s book. The skillet was oiled and wrapped in old newspaper. The sock sewn shut. Those two items she handed to her husband for the journey. The worry stone she placed carefully into her pocket. And in the warm snug space between the small of her back and the stiff denim of the American bluejean workpants she’d taken to wearing, she tucked Nahui’s book.

The book. Her husband knew about the note Nahui had written on the inside of the back cover. He knew, same as everyone else. With a heavy heart, he’d heard gossip about the day Nahui gave his love the book. He knew the details of the fountain kiss almost as clearly as he knew the small of his wife’s back—her skin there pale and untouched by sun, soft with a dusting of fine hair as innocent as he liked to think they’d once been together. A private spot. One of
his
spots. To see her let the book touch her there was more than he could bear.

“Please, leave the book, Consuela,” he said.

“Take the boy,” she said and handed my father to him.

… and in Mexico, five years later …

As my father helped his father tend to the crops, storm clouds gathered overhead and turned the sky dark.

“We’ll go in soon, just a little more work,” his father said.

Meanwhile, my father’s mother sat inside their simple shack home, stealing time with thoughts of Nahui.

Sweet love, how I’ve missed you
, Nahui had said when she returned from Chicago.

Nahui, why do you do this to me?

Be mine.

I can’t.

Thunder and lightning struck the field.

That same thunderclap woke me from my lucid dreams. I opened my eyes to see it had started pouring outside. For a moment, as I lay in the bed of my new apartment, the lights off, all the smells and sounds unfamiliar, I wasn’t sure where I was, let alone how long I’d been asleep. It was like waking up into yet another strange dream. I’d never experienced a thunderstorm in the middle of summer before. The thunderclaps were so loud, car alarms wailed in beeping mechanical choruses on the street below. I heard people scream and laugh in the sudden downpour. The air was thick with the overpowering scent of city rain, the mix of damp asphalt and diluted motor oil. There was the occasional splashing sound of tires driving by on the wet street. In all that earthly dampness, my mouth felt unbelievably dry. And my gut was in knots for how hungry I was. My stomach was empty. Literally. I wasn’t sure how it had happened exactly, but only coffee had passed my lips for two days. No wonder I was so goddamned loopy.

The wind shifted outside, and rain started coming through the open windows in horizontal sheets. I couldn’t see much in the dark room, but I realized the retablo of Nahui would be soaked shortly if it wasn’t already. As I stood, my vision blurred, I saw blue sparks, and I had to sit back down quick to avoid falling outright. An embarrassing thought filled me: I was a young brave on a vision quest, I had fasted and I was in the woods, the deer were talking to me now, everything would soon be clear, I would know my spirit name, and I would learn my mission in life. Told you it was embarrassing. At least I can admit to shit like that. Of course, all that was really going on was that I needed something to eat. And some more sleep. I was just a dumb kid alone in a big city with a big scary thunderstorm outside. I took some deep breaths, stood up slower this time, and managed to close the windows. Somehow, miraculously, Nahui was untouched by the rain.

Fireflies still sparkling in the park like microcosmic parallels of the lightning filling the sky above and Nahui watching me from the windowsill, I fell asleep again before the rain subsided. Until early the next afternoon, I slept the most refreshing sleep.

I woke the next day with Nahui’s book pressed between my face and the pillow. Not only had I kept it in bed the night before, I’d slobbered on it in my sleep. Hoping to not injure the book further, I slipped it back in its padded envelope, returned the envelope to my father’s briefcase with the rest of his things, and tucked the briefcase up on the top shelf in the closet.

By week’s end, I had a job with a courier service in the financial district. Starting at 4 A.M., eight hours each day, Monday through Friday, I manned dispatches. The hours seriously sucked and the work was beyond dull, but it paid decently, and I was able to leave it behind when I clocked out. My life was simple. And it was mine entirely. Sure, I met some people—work buddies and random people at coffee shops, a few parties here and there—but mostly I kept to myself. On the average day I’d work my hours, grab a couple slices and a soda on the way home, watch television until I was tired, sleep, wake, and do the same all over again. Heck, sometimes on my day off I’d throw a movie (or two, if I could sneak a second showing) into the mix. Very exciting … Not really, but I was happy this way. Don’t get me wrong, living in New York was totally cool, but mostly I was stoked just to be far from what I’d left behind.

Two months into my subletting, Ted’s buddy’s lease ran out. When he came to move all his junk, he asked me if I wanted to buy some stuff dirt-cheap. Sure, I said. Why not? He sold me the bed, kitchen table, a couple chairs, the ancient television, and the stereo with its two foam-covered speakers for fifty bucks total. He even threw in two pillows, sheets, and some towels for another dollar. It was like stumbling on my own personal bargain stoop sale. He must have left a good luck horseshoe tucked somewhere amidst the things I bought, because for some reason the realtor knocked on my door that same day and asked if I wanted to take the place—with a huge rent increase, of course. No big deal, I just picked up more hours at work. For three months I coasted along and nothing major or notable happened in any way, shape, or form. Then, without any warning whatsoever,
wham
, everything, absolutely fucking everything, changed.

CHAPTER NINE

O
kay, please don’t laugh, but I swear meeting Nathalie was like being hit by a force of nature. It was as if all the challenges and ups and downs in my life had existed only to strengthen and improve me, to try and make me worthy of the moment I’d meet her. I know, it sounds so fucking corny. Total gag reflex material, right? But I swear on my father’s ashes, I swear to you it’s true.

Nathalie. Gorgeous, addictively engaging, ballsy, and, devil help us all, she had the stare. Those eyes. Those golden brown spark eyes. The sort of eyes my father had tried to warn me about. Sweet mercy. Nathalie had Nahui’s stare.

So:
as if
. As if I could have done anything but be floored when our lives collided. Cautious for one brief second the night we first met at a bizarre and otherwise terrible post-Thanksgiving you-survived-dinner-with-your-family-of-origin or celebrate-with-your-family-of-choice bullshit cocktail party, there
was
a moment when I thought Nathalie might be crazy. Like, seriously, clinically demented.

At said party, I stood in a small cluster of people listening to Mr. Party Host, a fashion photographer, talk about how he’d just been hired to art direct the next ad campaign for Diesel Jeans and how, blah blah blah, he wanted to do something high concept about the bullshit of domesticity and family, something with an ironic country kitchen twist. His inspiration, he said, was his mother.

“She’s a chronic liar. Covered in gingham. Entirely pathological.”

Naïve me, I felt a sudden bond with him.

“I totally know what you mean,” I said. “My mother’s a Pilgrim.”

“You mean she’s a
Puritan
,” he corrected me with a snooty sneer.

My neck and face burned.

“No, I mean she’s a
Pilgrim
,” I said. “Square white starched collar, clunky buckle shoes … the whole Plymouth Rock gig.”

Of course I hadn’t been speaking literally.

And then, the most incredible scratchy-voiced creature standing next to me said: “What a coincidence, my mother’s a Pilgrim too. Jewish, but she’s a Pilgrim.”

I turned to face this saving grace girl. And, damn, one look and I knew. It was her. She was the One. As I stood there staring and wondering how I could get her to be mine forever and ever and then some, she laughed the most wonderfully insane laugh and socked Mr. Party Host in the arm—hard, too hard—as if he were in on the joke. I smelled her breath as she laughed. Bergamot and peppermint and just a hint of expensive vodka. She had on this wrinkled vintage Ginger Rogers copper-orange ballroom gown, teetering faux–leopard fur open-toe platform heels, and a rust-colored rabbit fur jacket—an outfit that would have looked like costumed ridiculousness on anybody else, but on her was just right. Her flyaway auburn hair was a tangled mess of a Vargas girl updo. Her perfume was incredibly sweet, almost too sweet, like rice milk about to turn. Sorry for the hokey factor, but seriously, that was it; I was done for.

And from that moment forward, everyone else at the party hated us because it was obvious that we were so goddamned perfect—at least together. So they despised us. But they stayed near us. To watch. And listen.

Once her laugh eventually wound down, my wicked little angel retrieved one of the hand-rolled cigarettes she kept tucked behind her powdered ears like some glammed-up rockabilly moll. Her ears were small and perfectly shaped, but for some reason they reminded me of mothers scolding their kids to put a washcloth and a bar of Ivory to work.

“Cigarette?” she asked me.

That glimmer in her eye. Her boldness. God she was hot. At absolute worst, I figured a quick fuck in some dark corner outside wouldn’t hurt any. No strings attached, easy exit if things turned slack, just two kids getting off in an alley. Who could argue with that? She took a small box of wooden matches from her dirty fur jacket.

“Cigarette?” she asked again. I thought I’d already answered.

“No. Thank you.”

“Because you don’t smoke, because you don’t like unfiltered, or because you don’t want to be obliged?”

Everyone stood silently and listened like we were some radio play performing for their benefit.

“I don’t smoke,” I said.

“What a good boy you are.” She tapped the tip of my nose with a bitten-down crimson-polished fingertip.

I didn’t want the conversation to end.

“But …” I stalled, and prayed the gods would have mercy on my stunned brain, “given the right occasion, I might smoke.”

Didn’t matter if it was true or not. The game was on.

Eyebrow raised, cigarette hanging from her lips, Nathalie stopped mid-strike of a match.

“What exactly would the
right occasion
entail?”

I shrugged.

She pressed the match against her cigarette, thinking, staring at me. And then she tucked the cigarette, still unlit, back behind her ear.

“Don’t want one after all?” I asked.

“Just waiting for the right occasion,” she said with a devious smile.

Heart be still. Dear motherfucking Jesus Christ, please just kill me now.

“My name is Nathalie,” she said.

“Frank.”

Thank God succinctness could pass as tough and cool. I no longer seemed to possess the ability to speak more than a single syllable without gasping outright.

“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Frank.”

“Same.”

“Goodnight, darlings,” she said to everyone still watching us, and wiggled her fingers at them in the most perfect sexy evil-bitch wave. “Come on,” she pulled me out the door. Once we were downstairs and outside the building, she said: “Take me to your place, handsome.”