Mrs. Quintana was wearing a smirk. She didn’t smirk much. “Let me know what your father says.”
“And another thing. Julian can call the cops if he wants.” I was wearing a smirk of my own. “You think that’s going to happen?”
“You’re pretty streetwise, aren’t you, Ari?” I liked the look Sam had on his face.
“I know my way around.”
Twelve
MY DAD DIDN’T ARGUE WITH ME ABOUT NOT PAYING for Julian’s hospital bill. He looked at me and said, “I guess you’ve just decided to settle out of court.” He just kept nodding pensively. “Sam talked to the old lady. She could never recognize those boys. Not in a million years.”
Julian’s dad came over and had a talk with my dad. He didn’t look very happy when he left.
My dad didn’t take away my truck.
Thirteen
IT SEEMED THAT DANTE AND I DIDN’T HAVE MUCH TO say to each other.
I borrowed books of poems from his father and read to him. Sometimes, he would say, “Read that one again.” And so I would. I don’t know what was wrong between us in those last days of summer. In some ways I had never felt closer to him. In other ways I had never felt further away.
Neither one of us went back to work. I don’t know. I guess, after what had happened, it all seemed so pointless.
I made a bad joke one day. “Why does summer always have to end with one of us all beat to hell?”
Neither one of us laughed at the joke.
I didn’t take Legs to see him because she liked to jump on him and she could hurt him. Dante missed her. But he knew I was right not to take her over.
One morning, I went to Dante’s house and showed him all the pictures of my brother. I told him the story as I understood it, from the newspaper clippings, from the questions my father answered.
“So you want to hear the whole thing?” I said.
“Tell me,” he said.
We were both tired of poetry, tired of not talking.
“Okay. My brother was fifteen years old. He was angry. From everything I understand about him, he was always angry. I especially got that from my sisters. I guess he was mean or, just, I don’t know, he was just born angry. So one night he’s roaming around the streets of downtown, looking for trouble. That’s what my father said. He said: ‘Bernardo was always looking for trouble.’ He picked up a prostitute.”
“Where’d he get the money?”
“I don’t know. What kind of a question is that?”
“When you were fifteen, did you have money for a prostitute?”
“When I was fifteen? You say it like it was a long time ago. Hell, I barely had money for a candy bar.”
“That’s my point.”
I looked at him. “Can I finish?”
“Sorry.”
“The prostitute turns out be a guy.”
“What?”
“He was a transvestite.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. My brother goes ballistic.”
“How ballistic?”
“He killed the guy with his fists.”
Dante didn’t know what to say. “God,” he said.
“Yeah. God.”
A long time went by before either one of us said anything.
Finally, I looked at Dante. “Did you know what a transvestite was?”
“Yeah. Of course I did.”
“Of course you did.”
“You didn’t know what a transvestite was?”
“How would I know?”
“You’re so innocent, Ari, you know that?”
“Not so innocent,” I said.
“The story gets sadder,” I said.
“How can the story get sadder?”
“He killed someone else.”
Dante didn’t say anything. He waited for me to finish. “He was in a juvenile detention center. I guess one day, he took out his fists again. My mom is right. Things don’t just go away because we want them to.”
“I’m sorry, Ari.”
“Yeah, well, there’s nothing we can do, is there? But it’s good, Dante. I mean, it’s not good for my brother. I don’t know if anything’s ever going to be good with him. But it’s good it’s all out there, you know. In the open.” I looked at him. “Maybe someday I’ll know him. Maybe someday.”
He was watching me. “You look like you’re going to cry.”
“I’m not. It’s just too sad, Dante. And you know what? I’m like him, I think.”
“Why? Because you broke Julian Enriquez’s nose?”
“You know?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you knew?”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Ari?”
“I’m not proud of myself, Dante.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“I don’t know. He hurt you. I wanted to hurt him back. I did a stupid kind of math in my head.” I looked at him. “Your black eyes are almost gone.”
“Almost,” he said.
“How are the ribs?”
“Better. Some nights it’s hard to sleep. So I take a pain pill. I hate them.”
“You’d make a bad drug addict.”
“Maybe not. I really liked pot. I really did.”
“Maybe your mother should interview you for that book she’s writing.”
“Well, she already gave me hell.”
“How’d she find out?”
“I keep telling you. She’s like God. She knows everything.”
I tried not to laugh but I couldn’t help it. Dante laughed too. But it hurt him to laugh. With his cracked ribs.
“You’re not,” he said. “You’re not like your brother at all.”
“I don’t know, Dante. Sometimes I think I’ll never understand myself. I’m not like you. You know exactly who you are.”
“Not always,” he said. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Does it bother you, that I was kissing Daniel?”
“I think Daniel’s a piece of shit.”
“He’s not. He’s nice. He’s good-looking.”
“He’s good-looking? How shallow is that? He’s a piece of shit, Dante. He just left you there.”
“You sound like you care more than I do.”
“Well, you should care.”
“You wouldn’t have done that, would you?”
“No.”
“I’m glad you broke Julian’s nose.”
We both laughed.
“Daniel doesn’t care about you.”
“He was scared.”
“So what? We’re all scared.”
“You’re not, Ari. You’re not scared of anything.”
“That’s not true. But I wouldn’t have let them do that to you.”
“Maybe you just like to fight, Ari.”
“Maybe.”
Dante looked at me. He just kept looking at me.
“You’re staring,” I said.
“Can I tell you a secret, Ari?”
“Can I stop you?”
“You don’t like knowing my secrets.”
“Sometimes your secrets scare me.”
Dante laughed. “I wasn’t really kissing Daniel. In my head, I was kissing you.”
I shrugged. “You got to get yourself a new head, Dante.”
He looked a little sad. “Yeah. Guess so.”
Fourteen
I WOKE UP EARLY. THE SUN WASN’T OUT YET. THE SECOND week of August. Summer was ending. At least the part of summer that had to do with no school.
Senior year. And then life. Maybe that’s the way it worked. High school was just a prologue to the real novel. Everybody got to write you—but when you graduated, you got to write yourself. At graduation you got to collect your teacher’s pens and your parents’ pens and you got your own pen. And you could do all the writing. Yeah. Wouldn’t that be sweet?
I sat up on my bed and ran my fingers over the scars on my legs. Scars. A sign that you had been hurt. A sig
n that you had healed.
Had I been hurt?
Had I healed?
Maybe we just lived between hurting and healing. Like my father. I think that’s where he lived. In that in-between space. In that ecotone. My mother, too, maybe. She’d locked my brother somewhere deep inside of her. And now she was trying to let him out.
I kept running my finger up and down my scars.
Legs lay there with me. Watching. What do you see, Legs? What do you see? Where did you live before you came to me? Did someone hurt you, too?
Another summer was ending.
What would happen to me after I graduated? College? More learning. Maybe I would move to another city, to another place. Maybe summers would be different in another place.
Fifteen
“WHAT DO YOU LOVE, ARI? WHAT DO YOU REALLY LOVE?”
“I love the desert. God, I love the desert.”
“It’s so lonely.”
“Is it?”
Dante didn’t understand. I was unknowable.
Sixteen
I DECIDED TO GO SWIMMING. I GOT THERE RIGHT WHEN the pool opened so I could swim some laps in peace before it got crowded. The lifeguards were there, talking about girls. I ignored them. They ignored me.
I swam and swam until my legs and lungs hurt. Then took a break. Then swam and swam some more. I felt the water on my skin. I thought of the day I met Dante. “You want me to teach you how to swim?” I thought of his squeaky voice and how he’d outgrown his allergies, how his voice had changed and deepened. Mine, too. I thought of what my mom had said. “You talk like a man.” It was easier to talk like a man than to be one.
When I got out of the pool, I noticed a girl staring at me. She smiled.
I smiled back. “Hi.” I waved.
“Hi.” She waved back. “You go to Austin?”
“Yeah.”
I think she wanted to keep talking. But I didn’t know what to say next.
“What year?”
“Senior.”
“I’m a sophomore.”
“You look older,” I said.
She smiled. “I’m mature.”
“I’m not,” I said. That made her laugh. “Bye,” I said.
“Bye,” she said.
Mature. Man. What exactly did those words mean anyway?
I walked to Dante’s house and knocked at the door. Sam answered.
“Hi,” I said.
Sam looked relaxed and happy. “Hi, Ari. Where’s Legs?”
“Home.” I pulled at the damp towel I’d flung over my shoulder. “I went swimming.”
“Dante will be jealous.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Good. Getting better. You haven’t been over in a while. We’ve missed you.” He led me into the house. “He’s in his room.” He hesitated a moment. “He has company.”
“Oh,” I said. “I can come back.”
“Don’t worry about it. Go on up.”
“I don’t want to bother him.”
“Don’t be crazy.”
“I can come back. It’s not a big deal. I was just coming back from swimming—”
“It’s just Daniel,” he said.
“Daniel?”
I think he noticed the look on my face. “You don’t like him very much, do you?”
“He sort of left Dante hanging,” I said.
“Don’t be so hard on people, Ari.”
That really made me mad, that he said that. “Tell Dante I came by,” I said.
Seventeen
“MY DAD SAID YOU WERE UPSET?”
“I wasn’t upset.” The front door was open and Legs was barking at a dog passing by. “Just a minute,” I said. “Legs! Knock it off.”
I took the phone into the kitchen and sat down at the table. “Okay,” I said. “Look, I wasn’t upset.”
“I think my dad would know.”
“Okay,” I said. “What the shit difference does it make?”
“See. You are upset.”
“I just wasn’t in the mood to see your friend Daniel.”
“What’s he ever done to you?”
“Nothing. I just don’t like the guy.”
“Why can’t we all be friends?”
“The bastard left you there to die, Dante.”
“We talked about it. It’s okay.”
“Okay then. Good.”
“You’re acting crazy.”
“Dante, you’re so full of shit sometimes, you know that?”
“Look,” he said. “We’re going to some party tonight. I’d like it if you came.”
“I’ll let you know,” I said. I hung up the phone.
I went down to the basement and lifted some weights for a couple of hours. I lifted and lifted until every part of my body was in pain.
Pain wasn’t so bad.
I took a shower. I lay down on my bed and just lay there. I must have fallen asleep. When I woke, Legs had her head on my stomach. I kept petting her. I heard my mom’s voice in the room. “Are you hungry?”
“Nah,” I said. “Not really.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. What time is it?”
“Six thirty.”
“Wow. Guess I was tired.”
She smiled at me. “Maybe it was all that exercise?”
“Guess so.”
“Something wrong?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Just tired.”
“You’ve been hitting those weights a little hard, don’t you think?
“No.”
“When you’re upset, you do weights.”
“Is that another one of your theories, Mom?”
“It’s more than a theory, Ari.”
Eighteen
“DANTE CALLED.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Are you going to call him back?”
“Sure.”
“You know you’ve been moping around the house for the past four or five days. Moping and lifting weights.”
Moping. I thought of what Gina always said about me, “Melancholy Boy.”
“I haven’t been moping. And I haven’t just been lifting weights. I’ve been reading. And I’ve been thinking about Bernardo.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“What have you been thinking?”
“I think I want to start writing to him.”
“He returned all my letters.”
“Really? Maybe he won’t return mine.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “It’s a worth a try. Why not?”
“Did you stop writing?”
“Yes, I did, Ari. It hurt too much.”
“That makes sense,” I said.
“Just don’t be too disappointed, Ari, okay? Don’t expect too much. Your father went to see him once.”
“What happened?”
“Your brother refused to see him.”
“Does he hate you and Dad?”
“No. I don’t think so. I think he’s angry at himself. And I think he’s ashamed.”
“He should get over it.” I don’t know why, but I punched the wall.
My mother stared at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know why I did that.”
“Ari?”
“What?”
There was something in her face. That serious, concerned look. She wasn’t angry, she wasn’t wearing that stern look that she sometimes wore when she was playing mother. “What’s wrong, Ari?”
“You say that like you have another theory about me.”
“You bet your ass I do,” she said. But her voice was so nice and kind and sweet. She got up from the kitchen table and poured herself a glass of wine. She took out two beers and put one of them in front of me. She put the other at the center of the table. “Your father’s reading. I think I’ll go get him.”
“What’s going on, Mom?”
“Family meeting.”
“Family meeting? What’s th
at?”
“It’s a new thing,” she said. “From here on in, we’re going to have a lot more of them.”
“You’re scaring me, Mom.”
“Good.” She walked out of the kitchen. I stared at the beer in front of me. I touched the cold glass. I didn’t know if I was supposed to drink from it or just stare at it. Maybe it was all a trick. My mom and dad walked into the kitchen. They both sat down across from me. My father opened his beer. Then he opened mine. He took a sip.
“Are you ganging up on me?”
“Relax,” my father said. He took another drink from his beer. My mother sipped on her wine. “Don’t you want to have a beer with your mom and dad?”
“Not really,” I said. “It’s against the rules.”
“New rules,” my mother said.
“A beer with your old man isn’t going to kill you. It’s not as if you haven’t had one before. What’s the big deal?”
“This is really weird,” I said. I took a drink from the beer. “Happy now?”
My father had a really serious look on his face. “Did I ever you tell you about any of my skirmishes while I was in Vietnam?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I was just thinking about all those war stories you tell me about.”
My father reached over and took my hand in his. “I deserved that one.” He kept squeezing my hand. Then he let go.
“We were in the north. North of Da Nang.”
“Is that where you were, Da Nang?”
“That was my home away from home.” He smiled at me crookedly. “We were on a reconnaissance mission. Things were pretty quiet for a few days. It was monsoon season. God, I hated those endless rains. We were just ahead of a convoy. The area had been cleared. We were there to make sure the coast was clear. Then all hell broke loose. There were bullets all over the place. Grenades going off. We were pretty much ambushed. It wasn’t the first time. But this time was different.
“There was shooting from all sides. The best thing to do was just fall back. Beckett called for a chopper to get us out. There was this guy. A really good guy. God, he was so young. Nineteen years old. God, he was just a boy.” My father shook his head. “His name was Louie. Cajun guy from Lafayette.” There were tears running down my father’s face. He sipped on his beer. “We weren’t supposed to leave a man down. That was the rule. You don’t leave a man down. You don’t leave a man to die.” I could see the look on my mother’s face, her absolute refusal to cry. “I remember running toward the chopper, Louie was right behind me, bullets flying everywhere. I thought I was a dead man. And then Louie went down. He yelled my name. I wanted to go back. I don’t remember exactly, but the last thing I remember was Beckett pulling me onto the chopper. I didn’t even know I’d been shot. We left him there. Louie. We left him.” I watched my father lean into his own arms and sob. There was something about the sound of a man in pain that resembled the sound of a wounded animal. My heart was breaking. All this time, I’d wanted my father to tell me something about the war and now I couldn’t stand to see the rawness of his pain, how new it was after so many years, how that pain was alive and thriving just beneath the surface.