I walk to the window. I open it and call Galileo again. He doesn’t come. But I leave the window open. I know he will return.
On Saturday morning, I drive with my father to the offices of Cruz RC to work on the firm’s website. We are in the Spider with the top down so conversation is not possible, which is probably just as well. I thought that he had forgotten the famous website because nothing was said about it yesterday, but this morning he knocked on my door at seven and told me we were leaving in half an hour.
I lay in bed for a few minutes, wondering whether this was one of those instances where I should push back like Becca told me. I decided it wasn’t. How hard can it be to make a house sound like the one spot on this earth where the sum of all happiness will be found? I also didn’t have the energy to argue with him. The deal is that I will work on the website until noon, and then I get to work on schoolwork until the early afternoon, when we’ll go to the airport to pick up Becca.
In my backpack, I have a stack of poems, stories, and essays that Liz gave me to review for possible publication in The Quill. Yesterday, after my classes were over, I went to the Quill offices again. Liz gave me a key so I can go and hang out whenever I want. There must be a hundred books of poems and about the craft of poetry lining the shelves of the reading room. I sat in one of the wing chairs and closed my eyes. It was so peaceful in there. I felt protected, like when Gabriel and I lay safe under the raft while the rain raged outside.
As we cruise along the highway, I remember how much Mamá liked to go for drives around the city and out past the city limits, often not knowing where she was going. I would sit next to her and we would drive aimlessly for an hour or so, commenting on what we were seeing or whatever came to mind. Mamá used to say that driving was great for conversations because you didn’t have to look at the other person. Both of you could just stare at the road ahead, and somehow this made it easier to communicate. Driving was especially good when you had something to say that might make the other person angry. People had to stay in control, otherwise you’d crash.
It was on one of those drives that Mamá first told me she had cancer. The concentration required for the driving kept her calm and even upbeat as she spoke. She described the type of cancer she had, the treatment she was going to receive, and the side effects. When I asked her if she was going to die, she explained that the survival rate for her type of cancer was forty-two percent after five years and much higher before then. I asked if she had told Father and Becca about the cancer, and Mamá said that she wanted to tell me first, that she wanted to practice what to say with me because I was the strongest one in the family.
Wow, I think now. How can Mamá have been so wrong? But … Mamá was never wrong about people. What if I am strong and I don’t even know it? What if I’m not strong like Father or Becca or Barbara, but strong in a different way? Why did Mamá say that? How am I strong? I make a mental note to think about that.
After about fifteen minutes, my father pulls into an auto repair shop for foreign cars. He turns off the engine and says, “Why don’t you come in? I’m going to leave the car here.”
“How —” I start to say.
“They’ll loan me a car while they’re fixing this one.” Then he gets out, opens the glass door to the shop, and disappears past a row of new, shiny cars inside. Off to the side is a glass-enclosed waiting room with fancy-looking chairs and a television mounted on one wall. I go in there, sit in one of the chairs, and hunt for my cell phone inside my backpack. Dr. Desai called me back yesterday while I was at school and left a message. I tried calling her when I was at The Quill but couldn’t get through. I try again, and this time I reach her.
“Vicky!” she says. “So good to hear your voice. How have you been?”
“So-so,” I say.
“Tell me.”
I tell her everything that’s happened since I returned home. “I feel this pressure in my head, like a thick fog,” I finish. “Everything seems so difficult. It’s like the way I felt before Lakeview. But there are more good moments. Times when I do things that will help, when I remember what I learned from you and the others.”
“I think it’s time to consider medication,” she says. “It sounds as if you’re finding ways to be positive, and now you need the strength and energy to carry out your good intentions. Can you come in today? I’ll be here at Lakeview most of the day.”
“I don’t know. I’m on my way to my father’s office to help him this morning.”
“I’m going to leave a prescription for you on the fifth floor in case you can come and pick it up. Follow the instructions on the label carefully. We’ll start with a small dosage. Will there be a problem with your parents?”
“I haven’t talked to them about seeing you yet. I’ve been trying to avoid conflict.”
“Don’t avoid,” she says, her voice firm. “It just makes it that much worse … while you’re waiting for the confrontation and when you finally get there. I have to go now, Vicky. If you can’t come get the prescription, call and give the nurses the fax number for your pharmacy and they will fax it. Okay?”
“Okay. Doctor, how’s Gabriel?”
Silence. Then, “Gabriel’s fever went away, thank goodness. We still don’t know what that was all about. But I’m afraid the voice is more intense, more frequent, more persistent. He’s in the secured section of the ward where he can be closely observed.”
“Will he be all right?”
There are a few more moments of silence. “I would like to get him started on antipsychotics. He has moments of lucidity and moments when he’s lost to his voice. But he doesn’t want to stay at Lakeview any longer, and he’s refusing medication.” She pauses. “Vicky, it sounds as if you are struggling, but out of that struggle, finding ways to live at home. You need to concentrate on that. I’ll take care of Gabriel. I think the medication will help you, and I want to see you on Monday. It is important that I see you if you start taking the medication. Okay, I have to go now.”
“Bye, Dr. Desai.”
The line goes dead but I keep my cell phone glued to my ear. Gabriel is in the secured section of the ward. He has been upgraded. Should I try to see him? Could I convince him to stay at Lakeview, to take the medication he needs? Did I ever in all those debate tournaments convince anyone of anything? I have to try. I want to see him. He’s my friend. He needs me.
There’s a rap on the glass. It’s my father, motioning for me to come out. I follow him out of the exhibit room into the parking lot, where a smiling man opens the door of the loaner car. It’s another sports car, but this one has a roof, so I’ll be able to talk to my father while we drive, for a change. But that means I have to decide what exactly I want to tell him.
It strikes me that if we were a normal family, I would be able to ask my father to take me to Lakeview to see Gabriel. But I feel unable to ask him to help me. Why? What keeps me from asking? What makes me so sure that if I ask him, he will say no, and then it will be harder for me to see Gabriel?
One of the things I felt that week before the deed was this nausea at all the lying and pretending in my life. I pretended I liked debate when I didn’t. I pretended I was happy when I wasn’t. What would happen if I were truthful and honest with myself and others? Would I feel better?
Father starts the car and backs out. When we get to the exit, he puts his right blinker on, in the direction of downtown Austin.
I take a deep breath. I feel a little like I felt on the edge of the raft, getting ready to jump in after E.M. “Dad, I’m sorry, but I can’t start work right now. I really need to go to Lakeview.”
He turns right and pulls out into the street, then shifts gears and speeds away from an oncoming truck. The truck honks angrily at us. Father glances in his rearview mirror and grins at the hand signal the truck driver sends him. “Why?” he says.
“I need to see a friend who is ill.” There. It felt good to get that out. I said it nicely, without fear. I imagine that’s the wa
y a daughter who has a close relationship with her father would say it.
“A friend?”
“A boy I met when I was at Lakeview. His name is Gabriel and he’s sick. I need to see him.”
He fiddles with the air conditioner for a few moments while we stop at a red light. The angry truck pulls up on my father’s side. One of the men in the truck rolls down the passenger-side window and screams obscenities at us. My father stares at him for a few moments and turns to me.
“Look,” he says calmly. “It’s time we had a talk.”
The light turns green and we move ahead slowly. The truck keeps pace with us, sometimes veering toward our car like it wants to hit us. Father doesn’t budge or speed away. Now the truck and our car are rolling slowly down the road together. Cars behind us start to honk.
“See those guys?” Father points at the truck. “They’re not like us. They’re not educated. They’re not ambitious. They’re not intelligent. They work for people like us. That’s our contact with them. We hire them or we buy from them. We sell to them sometimes. But we live different lives.”
I have no idea why he is telling me this at this particular moment. “Can you take me to Lakeview, or give me some money for a taxi?”
The truck finally pulls ahead, and the cars behind it start to pass us, their drivers giving us dirty looks.
“Let me ask you this,” Father says. “What does this friend of yours do? This boy you met at Lakeview?”
“His name is Gabriel Romero, and he works with his grandfather,” I say.
“Doing what?”
“They have a landscaping business. What difference does it make? He’s sick and I want to see him.” I try not to sound irritated.
“Is he in school?”
“He’s going to go to night school as soon as he can. He left regular school to support his grandparents. Dad, please.”
“One final question. Why is this Gabriel Romero in Lakeview?”
“He was there for observation. It’s possible he has a mental illness … just like me. All right?” I can’t hide my anger any longer. We are now going up the ramp to the highway that will take us downtown, away from the hospital. Then I add, “And I need to pick up a prescription that Dr. Desai left for me, and schedule an appointment with her so I can see her next week.”
My father is silent as our car zooms ahead and merges with the oncoming traffic. Once he’s safely in the middle lane, he speaks again. “Maybe you’re right,” he says. There’s a resigned acceptance in his voice. “Maybe there is something wrong with you. That’s what Barbara says, that there has to be something wrong with you for you to take those pills. So we’re willing to give you some leeway. You want to quit debate? Fine. You want to take a reduced load this semester? Okay. You’re not going to get into an Ivy League. All right. We can live with that. We thought you had the brains to get good grades and it was a case of you not trying. But maybe you don’t have the brains we thought you did, or maybe you do have a mental illness like you say, and this mental illness is keeping you from doing well. Okay, we’ll give you some space and time to work things out.
“But there are limits to what we can allow you to do,” he says. All throughout his speech, his voice has a tone of friendly authority. It’s the voice of someone who knows he doesn’t have to yell to be feared. “You are not going to hang out with kids with mental problems who mow lawns for a living. That’s not going to happen.” He glances over his shoulder and moves to the right lane. The exit to his office is a quarter mile ahead. Then he adds, “And if you are going to take medications, they are going to be prescribed by a good doctor, someone we can trust. So no. I will not take you to Lakeview.”
I don’t care what he says about my brains or lack of brains, or whether he thinks I’m a mule or even a jackass. None of this surprises me. What bothers me, what hurts me, is his attitude toward Gabriel and Dr. Desai. Stand up to him. Don’t be afraid of his anger, Becca said.
“You’re so wrong about Gabriel,” I say. I don’t say it with all the anger that I feel at that moment, because I can’t. The sticky tarlike substance that likes to fill my head has been pouring in steadily all morning, and the little elves inside of me can barely move. “He’s the kindest, most intelligent, most articulate, most mature boy I’ve ever met. He works so hard to support his family.”
He takes the exit off the highway and stops at the light at the bottom of the ramp. “Jaime has been calling for you every day. Why don’t you spend time with him? You’re fortunate to have someone like him interested in you.”
“You know what’s sad?” I speak quietly, as best I can, trying to get my words out between my shallow breathing and racing heart. “What’s sad is that I will never be able to convince you that Gabriel is a hundred times nicer and smarter and even more ambitious, in his own way, than Jaime. When your grandfather came from Mexico, was he rich and educated? When Mamá was alive, you’d tell us stories about him, how he came over from Oaxaca to make adobes in Laredo. You worked as a teenager delivering bricks to construction sites. You started at the bottom, like those guys in the truck. How did you become so different? What happened to you?”
At that moment in the car, I think my father comes the closest he’s ever been to being speechless. When he finally speaks, his words have an edge of controlled anger, but the anger does not seem directed at me. “How did I become so different? Supporting you and your sister after your mother died. Making sure you didn’t lack for anything.”
“We didn’t lack for anything when Mamá was alive. You were different then. Kinder. You looked at me differently. You spent time with me. You cared. You changed after Mamá died.”
“Well, what about you?” He sounds flustered. “What happened to the Vicky who used to beat everyone when we had those swimming races with your sister and your mother? Why don’t you answer that one first?”
I say calmly, “Dad, the last time you were in the pool with me was before Mamá died. I swim every day. You could have raced with me anytime you wanted.”
He clenches his jaw and presses his foot on the accelerator, and all I can think is that I have touched my father in a place he has almost forgotten. Becca was right. He gets angry when he feels hurt.
The headquarters for Cruz RC is a three-story modern building in downtown Austin. Father rents the first floor to a Starbucks and a very exclusive gym where Barbara likes to go for her Pilates workout. The second floor is leased to a prestigious law firm, and the third floor is occupied by Cruz RC. In back of the building, there is a small parking lot. My father’s space next to the back door is marked with a white-and-red sign that says M. CRUZ. Barbara’s space next to his is marked B. HENNEY. Barbara likes to use her maiden name at work.
My father zips from the street into the parking lot and then slams on the brakes. “What the …” he says.
Occupying his space is a huge, old-looking car that was probably yellow at one point but is now pale beige. It has a rust spot that looks like South America on the driver’s door, and the back window consists of a clear plastic sheet. I can see a very-dark-brown elbow sticking out of the driver’s window.
My father honks. The door to the beige car opens.
“E.M.!” I shout as he climbs out of the car.
“You know this guy?” my father asks.
“Yes, he’s from Lakeview.” I wave at E.M., but then I remember our car has tinted windows, so he can’t see me. I open the door and get out.
“Hey, Huichi!” E.M. exclaims. He’s wearing a white T-shirt with the sleeves unevenly cut off. His baggy pants are kept up by a rope tied around his waist.
“How did you find me?” I ask. My father turns the car off and gets out to stand a few paces behind me.
“I remembered your father’s company from one of our meetings. I went up to the office, but they didn’t want to tell me where you lived. I asked to speak to your father and they told me he was on his way in. I saw the sign and thought I’d wait here to ask him how
I could find you.” He looks at Father and makes a move to shake his hand, but he stops when he sees the expression on my father’s face.
“Dad, this is E.M.,” I say. “Emilio Machado.” E.M. nods. My father does not move. He’s not even blinking. His fists are clenched.
E.M. takes a step forward, then relaxes and turns his attention back to me. He’s comfortable with someone else’s aggression. “I came to take you to Lakeview,” he says. “Gabriel’s in bad shape. He’s talking some crazy stuff about leaving the hospital and finding Mona. I never seen him like that. I figured you were the only one that can help him. Convince him to stay. I wouldn’t come get you like this if I didn’t think it was bad.”
I look at him and there in front of me are my fears. Fear of not being strong enough or brave enough or kind enough to help Gabriel. Fear of my father’s anger, of letting him down once again if I leave. But I turn to face my father determined, without doubts or hesitation, just like I jumped in after E.M. when he was drowning. “Dad, I need to go,” I say.
“You mind moving your car,” he says to E.M. It’s more a command than a request.
“Yeah. Sure. I’ll move it,” E.M. responds politely. He looks at me, waiting.
“I’ll be back soon,” I say to Father. I start toward E.M.’s car.
“Go upstairs, Vicky.” My father’s voice is stern but controlled.
I stop. “I need to go,” I say. “It’s important. My friend is very sick. Can you please understand that?”
“You’re not going anyplace.” Red blotches appear on my father’s cheeks. “Go upstairs.”
I stand there, my backpack dangling from my arm, staring at my father. I feel suddenly a tremendous sadness. It feels as if he is trapped in a world of pretend from which he can no longer escape. There’s a kind, loving man somewhere inside of him, the man my mother fell in love with. But there’s a sheet of ice blocking that kindness. How can I shatter that frozen surface?
I look at E.M. He smiles at me reassuringly. “It’s up to you, Huichi,” he says.