Dad: WFTD = College
THE FIRST CHAOTIC week of school was over. And only two fistfights. Let’s make this the greatest year ever!
I was sitting in my dad’s studio, half watching him paint and half looking over the final list of colleges I was applying to. All summer long it was all about getting my college apps together—financial forms, forms for this and forms for that, looking at websites, and sending emails to admissions counselors and programs and degree plans and on and on and on. Sam was way into it.
One day she’d come over and really ripped into her mother. “She’s put a hold on my application process, that witch. She said the schools I applied to were way out of my league, and where the hell did I think I was going to get the money to pay for it all? And who the hell did I think I was anyway? I hate her. I really hate her. She told me I was going to UT, and that was final. I. Hate. Her.” Not the first time I’d heard that hate her thing.
At my house, I was trying to keep the whole process as low‑key as possible. I didn’t want to move away. I was thinking I could just take a year off and hang out at home. Like that was gonna happen.
So I’d finally come up with my list. And the only thing I had left to do was get my letters of recommendation and write some damn stupid essay on why they should accept me. I had time. I put the list on my father’s desk:
University of Texas
UCLA
Columbia
University of Chicago
NYU
University of New Mexico
University of Arizona
University of Colorado
University of Washington
University of Montana
The future. All on one list. Change. Shit. I watched my dad, lost in his work. I liked watching him paint—the way he held the brush, the way his whole body seemed alive, the way he made painting look so easy. I wondered what that felt like. “The final list is on your desk,” I said.
“’Bout time,” he said.
“You can stop badgering me now.”
“I don’t badger,” he said.
I knew he was smiling. He knew I was smiling too. He just kept working. And then he asked me something he’d never asked before. “Do you ever wonder about your real father, Salvie?” He didn’t stop painting, and I couldn’t see his face.
As I sat down on his old leather chair, I heard myself say, “You’re my real father—and yes, I wonder about you all the time.”
The light in the room made his messy salt-and-pepper hair look like it was on fire. He stopped painting for just a moment, and I wondered about the look he was wearing right then. I knew that what I’d just said made him happy. Then he just continued painting in silence. I let him be. Sometimes you have to let people have their own space—even when you are in the same room with them. He taught me that, my dad. He taught me almost everything I know.
I didn’t remember a time when my dad wasn’t around. And there was a reason for that: He had always been around. He was there when I was born. He was with my mom in the hospital. He was her coach. He witnessed me coming into the world. That’s the word he uses. He says, “I was there to witness the whole beautiful thing.”
So he was there from the very beginning.
This is the thing. The truth is, I did sometimes wonder about my real father, especially lately for some reason. And I felt like a traitor. I’d lied to Dad just then. Suppose it was half a lie. Call it a half-truth. If something was half a lie, it was just a lie. Period.
Mima and Sam
MIMA REALLY LIKED Sam. And Sam really liked Mima.
When we were little, sometimes Mima would spend the weekend and take care of us when Dad was away at one of his out-of-town art shows. She was great with Sam. I had always liked to watch the two of them together.
I was on the phone with Mima. It made her feel good when I called. It made me feel good too. What did we talk about? Anything. Didn’t matter. She asked me about Sam.
“She likes shoes,” I said.
“She’s a girl,” Mima said. “Some girls are like that. But she’s a good girl.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but she likes bad boys, Mima.”
“Well, your Popo was a bad boy when he was young.”
“And you still married him?”
“Yes. He was beautiful. I knew he was a good man even though a lot of other people didn’t think so. I knew what I saw in him. He settled down.”
My memories of my grandfather didn’t include the phrase settled down. “I just worry about Sam sometimes,” I said.
“If you’re so worried, why aren’t you her boyfriend?”
“It’s not like that, Mima. She’s my best friend.”
“Isn’t your best friend supposed to be a boy?”
“Well, Mima,” I said, “I don’t think it really matters if your best friend is a boy or a girl. As long as you have a best friend. And anyway, girls are nicer than boys.”
Somehow I could tell Mima was smiling.
The Letter
SATURDAY. I WAS all about Saturdays.
My dad walked into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. He didn’t look at the newspaper—which was weird. My dad was a creature of habit. He had his daily rituals. Coffee and the morning newspaper. He didn’t read newspapers online. He was old-school. He wore Chuck Taylors, black high-tops. He wore 501s and khakis—pleated with cuffs. And he wore thin ties. Always. Old-school all the way. On Sundays he read the New York Times—that was definitely one of his things. But on this day Dad didn’t even look at the paper. He was petting Maggie, but he didn’t seem to be in the room. He had a very serious look on his face. Serious, not in a bad way.
Finally Dad nodded. I knew he’d been having a conversation with himself and he’d settled some kind of debate. He got up from the table, leaving his coffee behind. Maggie followed him. A few minutes later, Maggie and Dad appeared back in the room. He was holding an envelope in his hand. “Here,” he said. “I think it’s time I gave you this.”
I took the envelope. My name was written on the front in neat and deliberate handwriting. It wasn’t Dad’s handwriting. Dad scrawled. I stared at my name. “What’s this?”
“It’s a letter from your mother.”
“A letter from my mother?”
“She wrote it to you just before she died. She said she wanted me to give it to you when I felt it was the right time.” He had that I-think-I’ll-have-a-cigarette look on his face. He smoked sometimes. Not very much. He kept his cigarettes in the freezer so they wouldn’t go stale. “I think this is the right time,” he said.
I kept staring at my mother’s handwriting. I didn’t say anything.
My dad took his cigarettes out of the freezer, removed one, and fished his lighter out of the drawer where he kept it. “Let’s have a cig,” he said. Not that he’d ever let me smoke. It was just an invitation for me to sit on the back steps with him.
Maggie followed us outside. Maggie was like me—she didn’t like feeling left out. I watched Dad light his cigarette. “You can read it when you’re ready,” he said. “It’s up to you now, Salvie.”
He leaned toward me and nudged me with his shoulder as we sat there.
“This is freaking me out,” I said. “I mean, a letter from your dead mother would freak anyone out.”
“Well, your mother—” He stopped. “She didn’t write it to freak you out, son.”
“I know,” I said.
“You don’t have to read it right away.”
“So, if I don’t have to read it right away, why give it to me now?”
“Should I have waited till you were in college? Till you were thirty? When is the right time for anything? Who knows? Living is an art, not a science. Besides, I promised your mother I’d give it to you.”
“You made a lot of promises to her, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did, Salvie.”
“And you’ve kept your promises, haven’t you?”
&nb
sp; “Every damn one of them.” He took a drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke out through his nose.
“Were they hard to keep? All those promises?”
“Some of them.”
“You want to tell me about them?”
“Someday.”
That wasn’t exactly the answer I was looking for. I looked at my dad. He was grinning. “Well, there is one promise that was easy to keep.”
“Which one was that?”
“I promised her I’d love you. I promised her I’d keep you safe. That was the easy one.”
“Sometimes I’m a lot of trouble.”
“No,” he said. “You were never trouble. Not ever.”
“Well, I did almost break Enrique Infante’s nose. And there was that rock I threw and broke Mrs. Castro’s window. And then there was that phase when I loved killing lizards.” I wasn’t going to tell him that I broke Mrs. Castro’s window on purpose. She was mean.
Dad laughed. “Yeah, the killing-lizards thing. You were just a boy.”
“But I liked killing them. Remember when you caught me and we had a little funeral for the poor dead lizard?”
“Yeah.”
“Your way of telling me to knock it off.”
Dad laughed again. “You’re not perfect, Salvie. But there’s so much decency in you that I sometimes wonder where you came from. Take your friend Sam. Now, she’s trouble.” He laughed, not a loud laugh. It was a joke. He loved Sam. “Look,” he continued, “like I said, living is an art, not a science. Take your Mima for example. She’s the real artist in the family.” He looked up at the sky. “If living is an art, your Mima is Picasso.”
I loved the look on his face when he said that. I wondered if Mima knew how much he loved her. I didn’t know anything about the love between mothers and sons—and I never would.
My father put his cigarette out. “Here’s the thing about the letter. I had to decide when to give it to you. Maybe it’s not the right time. Only you can decide that. Read it when you’re ready.”
“What if I’m never ready?”
He gave me a look, leaned into me, and nudged me again with his shoulder.
We sat there for a long time, the September breeze and the morning sun on our faces. I wanted to stay there forever, just me and Dad and Maggie. A father and a son and a dog. I was thinking that I didn’t really want to grow up. But I didn’t really have a choice.
My dad had a quote taped to a wall along with some sketches: “I want to live in the calmness of the morning light.” I liked that a lot. But I was beginning to understand that time wasn’t going to stand still for me. I had photographs to prove that things changed. I’d been seven once. And I wasn’t always going to be seventeen. I had no idea what my life was going to be like. I didn’t want to think about the letter. Maybe there was something in it that would change things in ways I didn’t want them to change.
I don’t know why she left me a letter.
My mom was dead.
I didn’t even remember loving her. And the letter wasn’t going to bring her back to life.
WFTD = Fear
I STARTED TO PUT the letter in my bottom drawer, where I kept my socks. But I figured that wasn’t a good place to store it, because I wore socks every day, and every time I opened the drawer, I’d think of the letter. So I paced my room trying to think of the perfect place to keep it. Maggie was lying on my bed watching me. Sometimes I got the feeling that Maggie thought I was nuts. Finally I put the letter in the box where I kept all my pictures. I didn’t take that box out very often. That was the perfect place.
I texted Sam: Wftd = fear.
Sam: Fear?
Me: Yeah
Sam: Explain
Me: It’s a scary word. Lol
Sam: Funny boy. You afraid?
Me: I didn’t say that
Sam: Spill it
Me: U ever been afraid of something?
Sam: Course. U?
Me: Yeah
Sam: Talk to me
Me: I was just thinking, that’s all
Sam: I’ll get it out of u
Sam
TEXT FROM SAM: What up?
I texted back: Took a quick rinse. No plans. U?
Sam: Wanna hang out?
Me: Yup
Sam: U got eggs?
Me: Yup
Sam: Bacon?
Me: Yup
Sam: ☺! Wftd = breakfast
Me: C u in 5
Sam—that girl, she was always hungry. Her mother never kept any food in the house. It wasn’t as if they were poor. They weren’t rich, but they weren’t exactly using a Lone Star card to get their groceries. Sam’s mom was more into fast food and takeout. Dad and I almost never did takeout. We did the takeout pizza thing, sometimes Tara Thai. Otherwise we cooked. I liked it.
Dad was talking on the phone as I walked past him toward the front door. “Who are you talking to?” I asked. For some reason I always wanted to know who he was on the phone with. Not that it was any of my business—but I had a (bad) habit of asking him. “Mima,” he whispered—then shook his head and kept talking. I think I annoyed my father sometimes. It worked both ways. Sometimes he annoyed me. Like him not buying me a car, even though we had enough money. That really annoyed me. And it didn’t matter how many times I brought the subject up—he’d shoot it down like it was a duck in hunting season. “But we can afford it,” I’d say. And then he’d say: “No, I can afford it. You, on the other hand, can’t even afford to pay for your cell phone.” He’d give me his snarky smile, and I’d give it right back to him.
Maggie and I sat on the front porch and waited for Sam. She lived a few blocks away, but we never hung out at her place—not ever. “Sylvia likes to listen in on conversations that are none of her business,” Sam said. She always claimed she liked hanging out with Maggie. “Sylvia won’t let me have a dog.” And even though Sam and Maggie had their own love affair going on, I knew Maggie had nothing to do with her wanting to come over. My theory was that Sam and her mother were too much alike. I told her that once. “You’re full of shit”—that’s all she had to say on the subject. One thing about Sam, she could be direct as hell. And like everybody else in the known universe, she didn’t always let herself in on the truth.
I saw her walking up the street. I waved.
“Hi, Sally!” she yelled.
“Hey, Sammy!” I yelled back. Maggie ran out to greet her. Sam was wearing a yellow blouse with printed daisies all over it. She looked like a summer garden. I mean that in a good way. She bent down and let Maggie lick her face. It made me smile watching Sam and Maggie loving on each other. I bounced down the steps, and she gave me a hug. “I’m starving, Sally.”
“Let’s eat,” I said. I knew I was going to be making the breakfast. Sam was like her mother. The only part of the kitchen she was familiar with was the kitchen table.
We walked into the kitchen. Maggie scratched at the door, and I let her out. I noticed my father sitting on the back steps smoking another cigarette. That was strange. Dad rarely had a two-cigarette morning. I got that same feeling I had on the first day of school, like something was shifting in my world.
“What’s wrong?” Sam asked.
“Nothing,” I said, grabbing a pan and taking some bacon out of the fridge. Sam poured herself a cup of coffee. Sam, she was a walking advertisement for Starbucks.
“Your house is always so clean,” Sam said. “That’s so frickin’ weird.”
“There’s nothing weird about wanting to live in a clean house.”
“Well, our house is pretty much a pigsty.”
“True that. I wonder why,” I said.
“Funny, funny. The thing is, you guys live like girls, and we girls live like guys.”
“Cleanliness—I don’t think that’s a gender thing,” I said.
“Maybe not. You know, I think maybe I should move in with you guys.”
That really made me smile. “I don’t think you’
d like my dad’s rules.”
“Your dad’s super cool.”
“Yeah, but he has rules. They’re mostly unwritten. Keeping the house clean is one of them. Somehow I can’t picture you cleaning a toilet.”
“I can’t either. Sylvia hires a maid to clean the house once a week.”
“I hope she pays her a lot of money.”
“Don’t be snarky.” She glanced at her cell phone—then looked at me. “Unwritten rules, huh? Sylvia doesn’t have any of those. She’s not that subtle. She writes down all her rules in lipstick on my bathroom mirror.”
“Serious?”
“Serious.”
“In this house most of the rules are unwritten. No drugs. No drinking. Well, I can have a glass of wine with him on special occasions.”
“On second thought, if I lived here, you guys would bore the crap out of me.”
“Yeah, to begin with, we don’t have lipstick. And we don’t have collections of shoes.”
She shot me a look.
“And we don’t like to argue. You, on the other hand—”
“Don’t finish that.”
“Dad and I would bore the crap out of you. What would you do in a house where people didn’t argue?”
“Shut up.”
I tried to picture her living with us. I shot her a look. She practically did live with us. I didn’t think it was a good idea to verbalize what I was thinking. Verbalize was a Sam word.
“Oh, and by the way, Mr. I Follow All the Rules—I’ve seen you down a few beers at parties.”
“I don’t go to that many parties—and have you ever seen me drunk?”
“I’d love to see you drunk. Then I could tell you what to do.”
“You already tell me what to do.”
“Snark, snark, snark.” We both laughed. “I just don’t get it, Sally. Your father’s an artist. How the hell did he wind up being such a straight-edger? I bet he’s never even done drugs.”