Like Son (9 page)
Minutes later, still very much alive, no longer woozy, with no audience to applaud my maudlin misery, yet able to breathe properly once again, I opened my eyes. And that’s when I saw the large manila padded envelope.
Paquita, Birthday Girl
. Hot tears filled my eyes. Practically the second he’d died, I’d remembered the safe deposit key on my keychain and gone to the bank, but I’d all but forgotten about the envelope with the retablo and book my father had given me. I was such an asshole.
Still lying in an uncomfortable right-angle position—it was the least I could do to suffer a little as punishment for my prickish oversight—I leaned over and picked up the envelope. As I opened it, the book slid onto my chest. I reached into the envelope and pulled out the retablo.
Sweet mercy. Those eyes again. They were truly hypnotic. Staring into the blissfully brutal assault of Nahui Olin’s eyes, I managed to think clearly through the noise of blood pounding in my head.
I understood what my father’s mother must have felt when looking into those eyes. And why my father couldn’t help but follow in his mother’s footsteps. It hit me then—without question, my mother had been for my father what Nahui had been for his mother. And as much as it grossed me out to think of my mother in this way, I had to admit that, indeed, she did have the stare. Her entire life she’d used it to seduce, charm, and control. It occurred to me that my mother might hate me most simply for refusing to fall under her spell.
I opened Nahui’s book. I wanted to read her poems, but my Spanish was rocky at best, and her pseudo-scientific poetic diatribe was more effort than my brain could afford. About to put the book down, I stumbled upon the peeling art deco bookplate pasted on the inside back cover. Written in Spanish was:
My love,
“
She went through me like a pavement saw.”
Yours as ever for the revolution,Nahui
My eyes lingered over the inscription written so long ago—to my father’s mother?
Had my father even known about the inscription? He must have.
Fuck.
I put the book down and picked up the retablo again.
“He’s dead,” I said.
As I admitted this fact aloud for the first time, I was certain Nahui Olin reached out to me, to my exhausted and totally senseless body. She held me. I cried. And cried some more.
When no more tears came, I knew it was time. I’d take what my father had given me and go further than he’d ever known possible.
B
ack at my apartment a couple hours later, I tore through my closet and dresser, threw stuff on the floor next to my father’s suits and hats, and packed whatever would fit in the two large maroon Sergio Valente suitcases I’d taken from my dad’s garage. Everything zipped up and ready to go, I placed the birthday envelope containing Nahui Olin’s retablo and book, along with the cash my mother had given me, in my father’s … in
my
briefcase next to the cane, blind man glasses, and little stone.
Now came the pain-in-the-ass part.
Phone in hand, I dialed the number I’d called far too many times in the past several months. My boss …
“’ello,” he answered.
I’d always hated how he acted like it was a private line, not the store’s office number.
“Joe?”
“Yeah?”
“This is Frank.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m really sorry for the short notice, but I won’t be working any more shifts.”
“You haven’t been around much anyway. It’s all good,” he said and yawned.
I felt a swell of both hatred and gratitude in response. What a prick for acting like I’d been flaking on shifts for kicks. I’d been taking care of my father, my dying father, for fuck’s sake. Still, I was glad Joe couldn’t care less. When it came down to it, I was happy to avoid another confrontation.
“Okay, well, thanks,” I said.
“Later,” he said. And hung up.
I only hoped the next necessary task would end up going as smoothly.
“Guys?”
My roomies were sitting on our living room’s crappy IKEA couch, studying in unison.
“What’s up?” Ted asked.
In one exhale, I blurted: “I’m moving out.”
“Why?” Jen said, confusion and maybe a hint of hurt in her voice.
“Well, it’s that … I just need to is all.”
“Alright,” she said with a gentle nod, “do what you need to do.”
Although our relationship had always been mostly surface and pragmatic niceties, Jen was a momma bear by nature. She was the person all her friends came to when they needed a shoulder to soak in tears and snot. She’d been the head cheerleader in high school—not only because she was the prettiest girl in her town, and not only because she wanted to hang with the jocks and popular kids, but because she truly loved cheering people on. She was just like that, pure benevolence. Even though I’m sure it sucked to receive essentially no notice about losing my share of rent, she genuinely wanted me to be happy. Besides—I tried to soothe myself as I prepared to leave the lovebirds high and dry—Ted and Jen would dig having to the apartment to themselves. At least for a while. Until they found another roommate or had a baby or did whatever it was they had scheduled for the next segment of their fiveyear plan.
“Any chance you two still want to buy my car?” I asked, hoping my luck would hold.
In the few years I’d lived with them, any time I’d complained about my piece-of-shit car, they’d joked that they’d gladly buy it off me. Ted and Jen were a bicycle-and-two-bus-passes couple. In Los Angeles. And they went to school full-time crosstown. A set of wheels would absolutely come in handy. But only if the clunker came at a bargain rate. “We’re starving students, after all,” Ted always added before punching me in the arm and offering one of his guffaw laughs. Total dork, but sweet.
“For cheap?” Ted asked and laughed his laugh.
Jen looked at me all bright-eyed hopeful.
Their babies would be so damned jovial.
“If you drive me to the airport,” I said, “it’s yours for three hundred dollars.”
I figured the low asking price was the least I could do by way of peace offering.
“Seriously?”
“Totally.”
“Sounds good to me. Thanks, man.”
“Cool. Give me ten minutes.”
“Whoa … you want to go to the airport
now
?”
“Can you take a break from studying?”
“Wait, you’re moving
today
?” Jennifer asked, more than a little concerned.
“Yeah. I hope that’s okay …”
“Well, whatever you need,” Momma Bear replied. “But what about your furniture?”
Somehow I hadn’t thought past two suitcases and a briefcase. There was my futon. Linens. A garage sale dresser and the mirror I’d installed on the back of the bedroom door. A lamp. Minor stuff.
“Do you want it?”
“You’ll need it, Frank.”
“I’d rather leave it.”
They could chop up my furniture and use my blankets for kindling and host living room campfire sing-alongs with S’mores if it made them happy. I just wanted to go. With as little baggage as negotiable. As soon as possible.
“When’s your flight?” Ted asked.
“Don’t know. I’ll get a ticket at the airport.”
“Do you know
where
you’re going?”
To the place furthest from where I was. Antarctica? Or maybe Mexico? No, silly. Manhattan, of course.
“New York,” I said.
“Do you have a place to stay?”
As kind as they were being, the parental unit act was beginning to annoy me.
I sort of snapped: “Why?”
“An old college buddy of mine lives in the East Village and wants to sublet,” Ted said with a shrug of his shoulders.
Nice guy that he was, Ted called his friend. And it was settled. I’d have a place to look at when I arrived.
Half an hour later, just after eight, the sun barely starting to set, the three of us piled into what would be my car for only a very short while still. We stopped at an ATM en route to the freeway. Ted withdrew three hundred bucks. I slipped the car keys off my key chain, handed them to Ted, signed over the title, and took a seat in the back. Ted hopped on the freeway and drove us to the airport. When we got to LAX, he offered to park and said that he and Jen would be more than happy to go with me to the ticket counter and hang out until my flight. I thanked him, but asked if he could just stop at an unloading curb instead.
“If you insist. Which airline?”
“Any one, I guess.”
My hands started to sweat and I felt panic swelling up. Shit, what was I doing?
Just in time, right before I could freak and change my mind, Ted pulled up in front of American and helped me haul my monster-huge suitcases to the curb. Hugs all around. Jen made me promise to call if I needed anything, then started crying. Why hadn’t we been good friends before? If I was going to go, I realized I better do it quick. And so I did.
Inside I bought a discounted standby ticket, a red-eye direct to JFK. The whole fucking thing was kismet.
At 11:25 p.m., I boarded the plane.
It wasn’t until after I’d settled into my seat that I looked at my boarding pass and noticed the date. June 21. Summer solstice. The longest day of the year. No fucking shit.
T
he second I’d claimed my luggage at JFK, I found a pay phone and called Ted’s friend. He gave me an address—150 East 7th Street, between avenues A and B (as if I knew what that meant)—and said, with total sincerity, that he was so sorry but he wouldn’t be able to meet me until nine.
“Tonight?” I asked, hoping he meant in half an hour instead.
“Yeah, really I’m sorry,
tonight
.”
I had twelve long hours to kill. With two huge suitcases. And this was in the prehistoric era so very long ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth and not all suitcases came outfitted with wheels. But what was I going to do? It wasn’t as if I could tell this friend of Ted’s who was doing me a huge favor,
Fuck you, get there NOW because I’m ready to put my bags down already
… No, of course I couldn’t say that. So, I thanked him profusely and said I was looking forward to meeting him. Then, the awkwardly distributed bulk of my briefcase and two suitcases nearly pulling my arms out of their sockets, I proceeded to bumble around like an idiot tourist lost in the big city amidst what was, at barely 9 a.m., already an insanely hot and humid summer day.
First thing first, I had to get out of JFK. No way was I going to waste money on a cab, but all my Los Angeles “I’m not some country bumpkin” ego and posturing aside, I knew shit about the subways. Somehow I figured out how to catch the airport shuttle bus to the Howard Beach station. There I paid for tokens, got on the A train, missed my stop at Jay Street, got off the train, got on another train headed back to Jay Street, went two stops too far, got off the fucking train again, got back on a Manhattan-bound train, disembarked at Jay Street like I was supposed to the first time, transferred to an F, exited at Second Avenue, and, hallelujah, finally made it up the stairs to a steaming high noon Houston Street. The air was thick with exhaust and the stench of sewers, I was soaked in sweat, my shoulders were cramped, and my hands throbbed from the weight of my suitcases. But I was ecstatic.
Hoping to find an air-conditioned booth I could rent for a handful of hours by purchasing a coffee with refills, I quickly learned that Manhattan waitress stink-eye came free of charge with slowly sipped beverages. So I trekked from one air-conditioned diner to the next, buying mug after mug of coffee, staying at each booth no more than an hour. I was drenched with sweat all over again each short journey between diners, and I turned clammy cold every time I settled into a new batch of cold processed air. But I was nonetheless loving my first New York day. Still, I have to admit, I did look forward to the sun setting—both because then I’d get to see the apartment and because I figured it would blessedly cool down outside like it always did on summer nights back home.
The sun did eventually set, but the temperature and humidity didn’t budge. And, as I finally walked to the apartment to meet Ted’s buddy, it struck me that I really had no clue about the foreign world I’d landed in. I didn’t know the climate, the layout, nothing.
Some things, I learned, were universal—the type of apartment one could get for the amount of money I was willing to spend, for instance. Ted’s friend’s microscopic studio was, generously speaking, total crap—as was all the stuff he said he needed to leave in the place for at least the time being. As shitty as the furniture was, I didn’t have any of my own, so it was a positive in some twisted way.
But, he warned: “The super doesn’t know I’m subletting. So you’d have to be quiet about it, okay?”
“No problem.”
I stood at the curtainless apartment windows. The Empire State Building was visible to the north and all lit up glowing white electric brilliance like a postcard come to life. Added bonus, the southern edge of Tompkins Square Park was practically right under the windows. The trees, there were so many gorgeous trees in that park. I don’t know what I’d expected exactly, but I know I didn’t think I’d find an apartment where I could practically reach out a window and touch the leaves and branches of huge, hundred-year-old elms and oaks. Earlier, I’d even seen hawks circling overhead. And then, still taking in the view, I caught sight of an ethereal, almost spooky, fuzzy patch of flickering lights in the park.
“Trippy,” I said. I was immediately embarrassed to have said it out loud.
“What?”
“That,” I said, and nodded toward the low-to-the-ground on-and-off sparkles.
“Fireflies,” he said, very matter-of-fact.
I wasn’t sure I believed him. Yeah, I guess the lights could have been fireflies. But I would have been equally convinced they were fairies, or even Nahui Olin maybe, dancing in my magic forest, welcoming me to a dream come true.
“They renovated a few years ago,” Ted’s buddy continued, in response to my speechless fixated stare into the park. “With the band shell torn down, you can see the Temperance Fountain from here.”
