We blow past valley towns, Issaquah and North Bend, and quickly start gaining elevation. It’s forest on all sides as we cross the Cascade Mountains, the divide separating two different worlds. When it rains on a winter day in Seattle, it’s snowing in eastern Washington. When we’re dying of the heat on an eighty-degree summer day in the west, it’s ninety-five in Yakima. And where in metropolitan Seattle, there are a couple million walking, talking, pale reminders that you’re a Mexican, in Yakima there’s norteño and tejano on the radio and you’re just another brown dude speaking Spanglish.
I text Caleb and tell him I won’t be home tonight but I’ll be back in time for Vince’s tomorrow.
I text Bashir and see if we can skip tomorrow but meet for longer on Sunday.
And I tell myself it’s gonna be fine. I’ll put up with Abita for a night and a morning. Then I’ll come home, work my shift, get a good night’s sleep, and bust my butt for the whole rest of the summer. We’re doing this for Manny, and I’ve pretty much never done anything for Manny. He’s always done stuff for me.
* * *
Abita’s mobile home door springs open.
“Xochitl!” It’s Gladys, Abita’s new caretaker lady. But she’s not a lady. She’s like Xochitl’s age. A couple years older than me, a couple younger than Manny.
Hugs all around. She pats Manny’s shoulder, smiles, and says, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Manuel.”
He says hi and manages a decent smile back.
Xochitl and I walk inside. Manny doesn’t. It looks like he’s stuck in place. Like he’s not coming in.
“Hey, Man,” Xochitl says. “You coming?”
He shakes off a thought and forces a smile. “Yeah,” he says. “Yes. I’m good.”
Xochilt takes his hand and we enter together. I’m hit by the smells. The plastic sofa cover. The carpet. The cheesy soup simmering on the stove.
Gladys says, “Finally, I get to meet you guys. Doli talks about you nonstop. I feel like I know you already.”
In the kitchen, the volume gets turned up on Juan Gabriel.
And Abita makes her entrance.
My not-huggy abuela throws her arms open and squeezes Xochitl tight. She’s got on a sparkly blouse and her hair is cut so it comes down around her face instead of up in a tight bun, like she’s always worn it. She’s got some rosy cheeks put on. She looks years younger than the last time I saw her.
“¡Teodoro!” She kisses and hugs me and I’m like, Who is this lady? It’s so weird I step back, but she pulls me in and hugs me again. “I been missing you, mijo,” she says.
“I been,” I say, “missing you, too.”
Then she turns to Manny. “Manuel.” She touches his face and kisses him all over. She wipes tears off her cheeks. Playfully slaps his cheeks. Says his name a bunch more times. She grabs him and holds on way longer than any Abita hug I’ve ever seen.
He laughs nervously and asks her how she’s doing.
She says, “Ay, Manuel. I’m very good, mijo. Very good.”
And that’s a big deal, because as long as I can remember, a question like that would have been answered with a list of reasons why her life sucks, followed by a guilt trip about how you never visit.
“Where is my manners?” Abita says. And she introduces us to her amiga.
“Hi again,” Gladys says. “Put your stuff down. Dinner’s almost ready.”
Xochitl asks Gladys how it’s going with Abita.
Manny tells her she doesn’t have to incriminate herself in front of you know who.
Abita points a bony finger. “I still got ears, Manuelito. Watch your step, soldier.”
Gladys says she and Abita are doing great. “We’re two peas in a pod,” she says as she walks into the kitchen.
Abita points at her and says, “Esta Go-Go Gladys me tiene corriendo. She takes me dancing at the senior center. Hockey in Tri-Cities. Hockey, mijitos! A wine tour in Walla-Walla. I don’t sit no more. No more novelas.”
“You’re looking good, Abita,” Xochitl says.
“Ay, mija. I’m feeling good.”
I can’t believe it. I don’t see Abita in a year and she’s like a different person.
We sit for dinner. It looks as good as ever. I lean in to the bowl and breathe in that steam.
We been through so much this year. Now I’m smelling these smells again and it’s like all the years of Abita’s cooking add up to this thing in my brain that makes me feel like something—this one thing—is the way it’s always been. She passes me a buttered-up tortilla and I feel that thing even more. My body in this old chair at this old table …
Gladys asks Abita what we were like as kids, and Abita tells our most humiliating stories. But it’s different. She’s got a sparkle in her eye as she tells about me falling into a kid’s pool and just about drowning in ten inches of water. There’s the story about my and Caleb’s magician phase. It’s funny the way she tells the stories, and everyone laughs.
Then Gladys asks how Mami and Papi met.
Xochitl and Manny start telling the story at the same time. Then they both stop and look at each other. Manny says, “You go,” and Xochitl says, “No, no, you go.”
“Mami worked at the perfume counter at the Nob Hill Kmart,” Manny says. He looks at Gladys. Then away. He’s shaking. His voice is shaking. “She was a senior in high school. Papi was picking onions out in Granger. Mami saw him walk in the Kmart door.… She just knew.…”
Manny checks in with Gladys as he tells the story. He smiles. She smiles back. He’s quiet and slow. It’s not easy for him. But he keeps on going.
Manny tells her Mami and Papi had a picnic at this boulder at the Yakima River. And it sounds crazy, but they started making plans right away. Then Papi told Mami he had to go soon. He had to follow the seasons. But he’d save money. They’d write letters every week. He’d come back in a few months. She’d graduate high school. They’d get married. He’d get his papers. Learn a trade. She had plans to go to college. They’d start a family. Mami waited for Papi. She made wedding plans. Plans to move away from Yakima.
“They met at that boulder a year later,” he says, “and promised each other that, no matter what, they’d stay together forever.”
Gladys looks at Manny all dreamy and says, “Awww. That is so sweet.” She looks at Abita. “Isn’t that sweet, Doli?”
“I was wrong,” Abita says, superserious. “I told your mami she can’t marry Daniel. I told her your papi is a maleducado nothing. Your mami says it didn’t matter what I think. So I don’t talk at the wedding. Ni una palabra. She and your papi move away. I still don’t talk. I don’t call. No letters. They try to talk. They try to call. But I don’t—”
Xochitl reaches over. Grips Abita’s hand. “That was a long time ago,” she says.
“I almost lost your mami,” Abita says. “I could have lost you.”
“You came around,” Xochitl says.
“I never tell your mami and papi I’m sorry.”
“They know,” Manny says.
“But I need to tell them, mijito. They need to hear it.”
When Abita’s second husband died, Mami and Papi came back and took care of the funeral arrangements and took care of her. They never mentioned how cruel Abita had been to them. And Abita treated them like that grudge phase had never happened. And that was the start of them—then all of us—visiting Abita in Yakima every month.
It’s unbelievable she opened up like that. Unbelievable she admitted she was wrong.
When Xochitl said Abita’s doing better, I thought that meant she wasn’t going to die. I didn’t have any idea it meant Abita would be nice.
Abita isn’t the only shocker.
I been watching Manny the whole night. His hands are shaking bad as ever. His eyelids look like they’re stuck open wider than normal. He might look even older than he did the day he came home. But there was no craziness on the ride over. No craziness now. He looks like he’s listening and like he’s thinking about
what people are saying. He’s joking with Abita. He’s sweet with Gladys. And the way he told the Mami and Papi story …
Maybe it’s getting him out of the house. Getting him back to a place where our family spent so much time, and where—even with Abita being Abita—he always managed to have a good time.
When it’s time for bed, Gladys takes off to a friend’s place so we can have her room. There are two twin beds in there. I tell Xochitl I’ll take the living room sofa and she and Manny can have the beds.
She says why don’t we all cram in the room.
I look at her, trying to tell her there’s no way I’m sleeping so close to Manny.
She says, “You take a bed, T. I’ll get cozy on the floor. Right in between my bros.”
I get tucked into one bed. Manny gets tucked into the other.
Then Xochitl sneaks in, holding a wooden box. She looks at Manny. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
She empties the contents of Abita’s ridiculous figurine collection onto Manny’s bed and they proceed to use the figurines to re-create most of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Xochitl does her Johnny Depp as Captain Jack impersonation and Manny is hilarious as just about every other character. Xochitl pokes Manny and reminds him how he used to say the wench lines and pushes him to say the silly stuff even sillier. I go in and out of sleep through the big showdown sword fight, a giggle fest that they try to stop over and over, and the shattering of a gnome figurine, followed by a bunch more giggling through attempts to repair said gnome and a ridiculous argument about how best to dispose of the evidence.
SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2009
I wake up alive.
I’m exhausted after the late-night silliness. But that’s fine because there was no slapping or punching of walls in the night. No clicking. No loud TV. No booze or weed. Nothing close to scary.
And Manny’s still sleeping like a log.
Xochitl wasn’t exaggerating. He’s doing a lot better.
Gladys helps Abita make chilaquiles. Abita throws in some green chile—Tío Ed in New Mexico is her much younger brother, so she’s got the chile hookup. It’s a tasty consolation after missing out on my mom’s burgers last night.
We pack up and say our good-byes. Abita kisses us all. Hugs Manny extra hard. Xochitl promises her we’ll come back in a month.
Gladys gives Manny a hug. She tells him she’d like to keep in touch. They exchange numbers. Another hug. It’s not awkward. Manny just goes with it.
And we’re on our way.
I’m shocked I’m even thinking it, but I’ll come back in a month. I’ll come back for sure.
It’s a quiet drive out to Butterfield Road. Then west on Terrace Heights Drive. Over the Yakima River, where Mami and Papi made their promises. Out to I-82 north toward I-90, where we’ll head west, back home to south King County.
* * *
But Xochitl takes the ramp onto I-82 south.
I tell her she’s going the wrong way.
“Oops,” she says. “That’s weird.”
We’ve done this trip so many times there’s no way that was an accident.
Xochitl says she’ll turn around, then she misses every chance to do it.
“What the hell, Xoch? Turn around now.”
She takes her eyes off the road and says, “You know what, T? I think we should pay ol’ Florence Frank a visit.”
Florence, Oregon, is seven hours away. “No way, Xoch. I’m not going there.”
She clenches her jaw, eyes back on the road.
“I’m on shift today,” I say. “I’ll miss Bashir tomorrow. I gotta pay him either way. Take me home now.”
Xochitl shushes me and points back at a sleeping Manny. “Things are looking up, T,” she says. “But Manny’s still got a long way to go. This trip to Abita’s and to Frank’s … We can connect him to good memories. Old friends. Ocean air. Help clear his head.”
“That’s great, Xochitl. Very supportive and sweet and cool. But I got stuff to get done this summer. And I can’t do it if I lose my job.”
“The timing sucks. But I need you here.”
I tell her to let me out in Sunnyside. Maybe Caleb can get me.
“I can’t do that,” she says.
“Fine,” I say. “Next time you stop, I’ll just hop out and figure out how to get home.”
“This is a family trip,” she says. “So you’re staying with us.”
“When did a drive around the block become a family trip? And if it’s a family trip, why aren’t Mami and Papi here?”
“They have stuff they need to work on alone. And we have stuff we have to work on without them, so—”
“Xochitl, there is zero I need to work on with you or Florence Frank. And if you wanted me to come so badly—”
“You would have said—”
“I would have said there is no way in hell I’m going with you, Xochitl!”
There’s no use. I’ve got enough in my account. I’ll just bus it home from wherever.
Xochitl’s phone rings. “Hello,” she says. And she flashes me a creepy smirk. “I was expecting this call so much sooner. Really? Seriously? That is great!” she says. Her smirk turns into an evil smile. “We’ll see you in a few hours, then, Rebecca O’Brien, Wendy Martinez’s mom.”
Wendy.
Wendy.
Wendy in Florence.
I swallow but I can’t, like, normal swallow cuz I’m trying to breathe and I can’t get enough air and my hands are tingling and they’re, like, numb, so I start hitting my legs to get feeling back while I choke in air, and I do that real loud.
“You all right?” Xochitl asks.
I’m gonna hug Wendy.
“It’s hot,” I say.
I’m gonna hug Wendy.
I’m boiling over, so I stick my head out the window and let the wind blow my face like a damn dog.
Xochitl pinches and tickles me as she sings, “Wendy Martinez—Gonna be in Flo-rence!” She yells into the back seat, “Hey, Man, Wendy’s gonna be there!”
I scoot back in my seat and give a big who cares? shrug.
“Come on, T!” Xochitl shouts. “Wendy Martinez!”
It’s been so long since we’ve been to Florence. And these two have no idea about me and Wendy. So I’m like, “Who is that? Who are you talking about? I don’t think I know any Wendell Martinez.”
Xochitl explodes a laugh right in my face. “Nice try, T!” She turns back and slaps Manny to life. “Did you hear that, Manny? Did you hear what T just said?”
No response.
“Manny, T’s being a sonso. You’re missing a great opportunity here.”
He wipes his eyes and mumbles, “Don’t be a sonso, T,” and goes back to sleep.
“You’re no fun, Man.” Xochitl turns to me. “It’s totally cool. If you don’t want to go to Florence, we’ll whip Sally around. Go home immediately. No stops.”
“That’s okay, Xoch,” I say. “I guess this one quick stop in Florence is all right.”
Xochitl slows the car, puts on her turn signal, teasing like she’s pulling over. “You sure, bro? Cuz we don’t have to.”
“It’s fine, Xoch,” I tell her. “We’ll go to Florence. For Manny.”
“For Manny. You’re the bestest brother in the whole wide world, Teodoro Avila.”
I text Caleb and ask him to cover my Sunday shift at Vince’s. He says he’ll try. I call Bashir and tell him we can’t meet till Monday.
I start imagining a weekend with Wendy. I try hard to imagine myself saying all the right things. But I can’t imagine what those things are.
We make our way south, down I-82. At Toppenish, we switch to US 97 and drive through the brown rolling hills of the Yakama Nation, then past sleepy Goldendale.
The Sam Hill Memorial Bridge reaches way out over the Columbia River, into the desert of eastern Oregon. Over that bridge and we’ll start west. We’ll leave the brown and enter forest again. Then it’s not far to the coast. Not far to We
ndy.
We’re driving up the span and in a minute Xochitl’s pumping the gas, pounding the steering wheel. “I got no power, Manny!”
Manny leans himself into the front seat and calmly says, “It’s gonna make it to the high spot. Just keep your foot away from the brake.”
“It’s not going to make it, Manny.”
“Do not touch that brake, Xoch.”
I look behind. A truck is right on our tail. The driver lays on the horn.
Xochitl’s gonna have to brake, or we’ll start coasting backward.
She says, “What now, Manny?”
And the second she says it, some sort of magic intervenes and we loop over and start heading downhill. We pick up speed rolling over the Columbia, into Oregon, then slow again as we coast under the I-84 overpass. Xochitl pulls to the side of the road. She lets out a long sigh and turns to Manny. “Do your thing, bro.”
I have to get air, so I follow Manny out of the car. He grabs a toolbox from the back—Papi’s old kit.
I take in a lungful of truck exhaust and dust as I watch Manny fiddle under the hood. He wrenches stuff. Yanks stuff. Hums. Pours in water. Eventually, he makes a hop toward the front door.
I remember that hop from Manny’s Mustang days. He’s gonna turn the key.
He pulls the door open, steps his right foot inside.
I cross all my fingers because if the spark lights and the crank catches and that engine revs to life, I’m on my way to Wendy.
Sally fires right up. Manny sticks out his tongue and holds up his shaking hand, flashing us the international headbanger’s symbol for Rock ’n’ roll!
Xochitl apologizes to me for the delay. Then she makes a crack about getting us to Florence so Wendy can chase me around like old times.
I tell Xochitl she’s hilarious, and I think the conversation is over, but she says, “You know, T, after Florence—”
“We’re gonna drive straight home and thanks for that, Xochitl.”
She ignores me and asks if I remember Mami’s cousin Elena.
“Elena? Isn’t she, like, Mami’s eighth cousin or something?”
American Road Trip Page 8