g us t avo l 245
I was drenched and cold and trembling.
But I kept walking toward that alley. Where I’d found Angel.
I don’t know what I was expecting to find. I half thought he’d be gone. But he was there, sitting under the dim light of a blinking lamppost. His eyes wide open, looking up toward the heavens, a needle at his side.
So this is how the world ended for people like Angel.
He looked almost like a painting in a museum: Angel looking toward heaven. Only he wasn’t a painting. And he wasn’t sitting in a museum.
I’m the fucking future.
I’m making this up. I’m making this up. I’m making this up.
I ran. That’s what I did. I just ran. I stopped running only
when I crossed the bridge over the freeway into Sunset Heights.
That’s when it started raining again.
xo ch i l . ch a r l ie .
Would it be so bad, if I were like Gus?”
“No, it wouldn’t be so bad. But you’re not him, Charlie. You’re you. Be yourself.”
“It’s boring to be me.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You’re beautiful.”
“Sure.” He took a breath. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know. But Dad’s going to kill him.”
“You better not let him.”
“Mom will stop him before— Shhh—” She put her finger to
her lips. “That’s him,” she whispered.
They froze. Listening, dogs with their ears up, alert, ready.
“It’s him. He’s home.”
xo ch i l . charl ie . l 247
“They’re arguing.”
“No. Dad’s lecturing.”
“That’s a bad sign. Dad never lectures. That’s a really, really bad sign. You think we should go out there?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just not a good idea, Charlie. It will only make things
worse.”
“Worse?”
“Trust me. Shhh, shhhh, listen—”
o c t avio. g us t avo. lourde s .
Your grandmother dead—and you stumbling home drunk at
midnight?”
Gustavo stood in the middle of the living room, his head
down, his lips quivering. He felt his head pounding, couldn’t
think, felt as if he’d just been hit on the head with the sharp edge of a broken stone and he half expected to feel blood running down his face—did feel it—just rainwater running down
his wet hair and God, he couldn’t keep himself from trembling.
He wanted to say something. He felt the word sorry swelling up on his tongue. But it seemed such a thoughtless and shallow thing to say, and his tongue felt numb and thick, the news of his grandmother’s death leaving him stunned and even more
wordless than he had ever been—and how could his father break
the news to him like that, in the form of a lecture, as if she had meant nothing at all to him and suddenly he remembered how
o c t avio. g us t avo. lourde s . l 249
she would hold him and smell him and tell him he had the odor
of a cloud about to burst with rain, rain!
“Where were you?”
Gustavo refused to look up at his father.
“Where were you?”
“Juárez.”
“Looking for a woman.”
“I was just drinking.”
“Where?”
Gustavo hated this, hated his father’s need to know details
as if they mattered, as if the details were part of an equation that was crucial to the understanding of life and all its deeper questions or something profound like that, hated his father when he became an interrogator, and he wanted to scream at him, The fucking Kentucky Club, downing beers and smoking cigarettes and thinking about a junkie named Angel who told me he was the fucking future, what else do you want to know Dad? The number of bottles lining the bar? The stunned look on the man when his wife poured a beer on his head and told him she knew he was screwing someone else?
Do you want to know everything I heard tonight, Dad, the hundred tragedies that don’t matter a damn to anyone but—
“Gustavo? Answer me.”
He pushed his wet hair off his face. “The Kentucky Club,” he
mumbled.
“Everyone was here tonight, your uncles and aunts, your cous-
ins. And you?”
Gustavo said nothing.
“Look at me.”
Gustavo shook his head.
“I said look at me.”
“Here. Put this on. You’ll catch a cold.” He stared at his
mother as she held out the clean, warm T-shirt. He wondered at
250 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p the softness of her voice, but it was also firm and in control, and he wished he were her because she wasn’t lost and he was, God, lost, and how had he gotten lost in just one afternoon?
“Lourdes, we’re not finished here.”
“You can finish your lecture after he changes into something
warm.”
“Lourdes—” he stopped himself, took control of his voice.
“Let’s not argue.”
“Good.” She shoved the shirt into Gustavo’s hands. “Go
change,” she said. “And dry your hair. And put on a dry pair of jeans.”
Gustavo stared at his mother, her eyes, tired but alive, her
hands holding a towel, offering it to him. He moved his face
away from her, taking the gift, then looked at his father. He was tired too, only his eyes were hard with relentless anger. He had seen and known those eyes all his life. He looked down at the
floor.
“There’s no excuse for this.”
I didn’t know she was dead. It was the truth and he clutched at the thought— I didn’t know. His father knew that. He knew that.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He felt the hot tears on his face, hated that they were there, didn’t even know why they were there and he hated himself for his graceless and pitiful inability to control his own body as if he were a boy pissing in his pants, hated himself for his self-pitying tears and for the limp way he was standing, ashamed, half drunk, but not drunk enough, sober enough
to know everything, sober enough to feel the pain and he kept
thinking of his grandmother and the way she’d always looked at him, and if he’d known she was going to die today he would’ve
kissed her one last time and smelled her old skin and combed her hair with his fingers the way he’d always done when he was a boy and God he hated this crying in front of his father. In front of his father. He felt his whole body shaking, trembling as if he were
o c t avio. g us t avo. lourde s . l 251
going to come apart from the inside, getting ready to explode, self-immolate—and then he felt his mother’s arms around him,
her push leading him gently into his room.
“Cry all you want,” she whispered, then slowly unbuttoned
his shirt and dried him off, dried his wet hair and his wet back and his wet chest just like he was a baby, and she held him in her arms and all he did was sob and her voice kept whispering Cry, cry, cry all you want.
lourde s . o c t avio.
He didn’t know she was dead.”
He let her almost-whispered statement hang in the air.
“He didn’t know she was dead.”
He stared at his wife’s lips for an instant. “He would’ve known if he had stayed home.”
“But he didn’t.”
“He didn’t ask permission to go out.”
“Does he need our permission?”
“He lives in our house.”
“Our house?”
“Maybe he should just leave.”
“Mayb
e he will.”
“He’s not old enough to drink.”
“He’s certainly old enough to pick up a gun.”
“Don’t, just don’t, Lourdes. You sound just like them, adopt-
lourde s . o c t avio. l 253
ing their arguments—what next? You’re not a child. You’re not
eighteen. Soon you’ll be borrowing Xochil’s clothes.”
“The way you say that—their arguments—as if your children
are enemies.”
“He’s not old enough to drink. The Kentucky Club. What is he doing in the Kentucky Club?”
“Running away, I think.”
“Running away? From what?”
“From us.”
“He comes home, dragging the smell of a bar along with him,
and you think that’s acceptable?”
“I have very little patience for drunks. I have even less pa-
tience of cruelty.”
“Disciplining a son is cruelty?”
“Your mother adored that boy. And he adored her. In the past two years, did you ever bother to get off that chair, walk into your mother’s room, and watch your oldest son as—Octavio, you should have seen them—all of your children. They loved that woman. You should be proud. You should be happy. He walks into the house
and you spit out the news of her death like so much saliva.”
“I don’t spit.”
“He didn’t know she was dead.”
“He was drunk.”
“Drunk or not, there’s no defense—”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t more tender with—”
“Don’t take that tone. He’s a boy.”
“It’s damn time he becomes a man.”
“It’s damn time you become a father.”
“Lower your voice.”
“Lower yours.” She took a breath.
“And what’s that supposed to mean—damn time I became a
father?”
254 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p
“It means you should be kinder to your son. More tender—as
you put it.”
“So you want me to excuse his behavior?”
“Apparently that job belongs to me. Just as it’s always been
my job to excuse yours. But not tonight, amor. Not even tonight.”
She walked toward the cabinet and studied her husband’s col-
lection of liqueurs. She took out a crystal glass, examined it. She took a breath, then another. “I can’t figure out what I want.”
“Drambuie. You like Drambuie.”
“I’ll have a brandy.” She watched herself pour the thick gold
liquid into the snifter. She took out another glass, then poured a second drink. “I want peace in this house.”
He took the drink from her and nodded.
She touched her glass against his.
“I can’t tell what you’re thinking.”
“I can’t figure out what I want.”
“Sometimes it doesn’t matter what we want.”
“When does it matter?”
“What?”
“When does it start to matter?”
He let the brandy numb his tongue.
“Gustavo was crying.”
“You think I don’t care.”
“He was sobbing. Is your heart so hard?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“He doesn’t want me to love him.”
“What?”
“Can’t you see that? He doesn’t want me. He doesn’t want his
father.”
g us t avo
I was sitting on my bed. Numb as a stone—except that stones
don’t cry.
Xochil and Charlie must have heard my sobs.
My mom dried me off and held me, then let me alone. The
last time she’d done that I was five. She was good enough to
know when to leave the room.
I still felt the cold rain on my skin, and I was shivering and sobbing—and then there they were, Xochil and Charlie.
I have fragments of that night floating around in my brain,
forever floating there. They’re like these soft pieces of light—
that’s how I remember it—they were like leaves raining down on me, but the leaves were made of light.
I don’t think I was crying just because my grandmother was
dead. I was crying because I was afraid of going off to fight in Vietnam. What if I got used to killing? What if killing would
become something normal to a heart like mine, a heart that could
256 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p lose its discipline so easily, a heart that could explode? I was afraid of going into the army. I was afraid that the men in the military would be as disapproving as my father, as if that disapproval could turn me into a man. I was afraid of everything, and I didn’t know what to do and the beer had done something to my ability
to hide the things I felt, and I was so addicted to the hiding. My mom was wrong about me trying to hide my good mind. I wasn’t
trying to hide my mind—I was trying to hide my heart.
And I didn’t even know if my heart was good or bad. I just
knew it was the source of all pain.
I remember sobbing and Charlie taking my hand and hold-
ing it, just holding it, and I squeezed his hand back as if it were the only hand in the world. And Xochil pressed me against her
chest, and I cried into her. I tried to let them comfort me, but so much of me was inconsolable and in some ways I’ve remained
that way—numb and inconsolable.
I remember Charlie’s voice, the smallest and kindest voice
in the world, and he kept whispering, “It’s okay, Gus, nothing can ever hurt you.” It didn’t matter that it wasn’t true because I knew what he meant: right now, we’re here, me and Xochil, and that meant I was safe.
I wondered about the savage mystery of the human heart. Ev-
erything that ever hurt me ran across my mind like mean, careless children stomping across a park—Leandra, the first girl I ever made love to, who moved away to San Antonio and told me I’d
ruined her; the time a swarm of bees attacked me and wouldn’t
stop biting me, my whole body swelling up until I thought I
would burst like a balloon; the time Charlie almost died when he was four and had to be hospitalized and me and Xochil refused to leave his room and how Xochil clung to me and kept telling me, Don’t let him die don’t let him die make it stop Gustavo make it stop, and me unable to do anything but hold her; the first time Dad
looked at me with that look of disgust in his eyes; the first time I
g us t avo l 257
got into a fight with Alberto Pedregon and understood that I had a frightening violence in me; the look on my grandfather’s face when he died, how he seemed to be looking at me with a combi-nation of fear and relief; the afternoon Grandma Rosie held my face between her soft and ancient hands and told me she wanted to die and that I should pray for that, for her death; the day I got the notice to report for my physical exam. Everything was there, every ache, every hurt, every memory.
And then, I don’t know, I just stopped crying.
I could see Angel’s eyes, open, lifeless, full of torment, full of a punishing, relentless despair, but still clinging to that last mol-ecule of hope, a wanting, a waiting for a moment of grace that would never come.
xo ch i l . g us t av o. ch a r l ie .
Are you better now, Gus?”
“What’s the greatest book ever written?”
Xochil and Charlie looked at each other, smiled, then broke
out laughing. He was playing the game. He was talking and he
was alive and he wasn’t broken. He was back from wherever his
pain had taken him. “Wait, wait,” Xochil laughed. She sounded
like s
he had a cold. Because she’d been crying. “I need my spot.”
She threw herself on Charlie’s bed, and threw a pillow on the
floor. For Charlie. That was his spot, on the rug between the two twin beds. Sometimes, they would all lie in the room, none of
them talking, all of them reading, and then someone would say
something, and they would talk. Mostly Charlie listened. Some-
times they argued about the meaning of the books they’d read, or about something they’d heard, or about their friends, or about the news reports, or about, well, sometimes they just argued. Xochil always won.
xo ch i l . g us t avo. charl ie . l 259
Charlie turned off the light, then threw himself on the floor
and folded the pillow. That’s what they did, talked in the darkness.
“You smell clean,” Xochil said.
Charlie laughed. “You always say that when you lie on my
bed—but you never tell me the smell. What’s the smell?”
“Freshly mowed grass.”
“I smell like freshly mowed grass?”
“Yeah. A little more subtle than that—but like that, yes.”
Gustavo laughed. “Sometimes he smells really bad.”
“He is in the room, Gus.”
They laughed. And nothing bad had ever happened. There
was only the game. “The greatest book,” Gustavo repeated.
“The Bible.”
“Doesn’t count.”
“Doesn’t count?” Charlie tried to imagine the look on his sis-
ter’s face in the darkness of the room. “Why not? Because you’re an atheist?”
“No, that’s not why—and I’m not an atheist.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Maybe I am. Maybe I’m just an agnostic. And anyway, we’re
talking novels, Xochil.”
“Novels? You said books.”
“Implied.”
“Not implied, but okay, novels. Greatest novel? Great Expecta-tions.”
“Hell, no.”
Charlie laughed. “He doesn’t like English novels, Xochil.”
“I forgot.”
“He is in the room, Carlitos.”
God, they laughed. Sweet. Good. Laughter. Like rain.