Accidental Love

by Gary Soto

  "Hey, Dad," Marisa greeted. She scooted her chair in and picked up her spoon.

  Her father wagged his head, his way of saying hi. He was a quiet man who preferred gestures to long-winded sentences.

  "Tell him what happened," her mother started in immediately.

  Here we go, Marisa thought, dinner talk about my wicked, wicked ways. She played dumb and said, "What?"

  "You know 'what.'" Her mother blew on her bowl of albóndigas. The surface of the hot broth rippled.

  "You mean that I skipped school and went to see Alicia. I know Dad would go see his best friend if he was in the hospital." She looked at her father, who was dipping a chunk of sourdough bread into his soup. "Huh, Dad?"

  "I don't have a best friend," he answered simply.

  "Pete," Marisa reminded him. She set her spoon like an oar into her soup and stirred, creating a current that made the peas and chunks of carrots swim in a circle.

  "Oh, Pete," her father remarked as he brought a paper napkin to his stubbly face. "He ran away with another woman. Left his wife and kids. How can I be friends with an hombre like that?"

  "At least he ran away with another woman, not a guy," Marisa replied. Then she wished she could pull back that string of words and push it down her throat. It was rude, she realized, inconsiderate, and—yes—plain dumb.

  "That's not funny at all," her mother said.

  "Whatever," Marisa said absently. Again she wished she could retract that comment.

  "Don't 'whatever' me," her mother scolded. With a large fork like a pitchfork, she stabbed at some bread in the basket and told her husband their daughter had cut school to see Alicia. What did he think of that?

  The father slurped his soup but didn't say anything.

  Marisa waited for her mother to elaborate on her adventure at the hospital. She waited for her to tell her father how she'd had to chunk it up with Roberto, but her mother didn't bring up the fight outside the elevator. Bless her, Marisa thought, maybe she's really not so bad after all. Perhaps her father would have grumbled and lectured her by telling her a long story about how when he was a young man he kept his temper by counting to ten in Spanish. This was in Fresno, where young men at street corners fell over like bowling pins. Times then, as now, were dangerous.

  "Your friend, Alicia, is she okay?" Marisa's father tore his bread in half and dipped one piece into his soup. He ate with his face close to the bowl.

  "She's getting out of the hospital tomorrow," Marisa answered. She slapped her roll with butter before she dipped it into her soup. "She has to use crutches."

  "She shouldn't have been with that boy," her mother interjected. "Rafael, I had a nail in the front tire."

  "What chavalo?" her father asked. "And did you get the tire fixed?"

  "Helen's son," Marisa's mother answered. She told them that Rudy at Rudy's Tire and Wheel had fixed the tire himself. She reminded him that Helen was a person she had known when they both worked in a drapery shop.

  "I don't know her," her father remarked.

  "Yeah, you do, viejo," her mother mumbled with her mouth full. "Helen Lopez. Her husband is the one who started the nursery on Jensen Avenue. They have real nice roses."

  Her father answered, "Oh, now I remember." He lifted a glass of water, drank, and set his water glass down.

  Marisa could tell that her father didn't remember, not Helen or Helen's husband. He was a poor pretender.

  "This soup is good." Marisa hoped that her compliment would steer the conversation away from Roberto the rat. She blew on her soup and nearly spilled it when her cell phone, stuffed in her front pocket, started to ring.

  Her father raised his eyes from his bowl. "You got ants in your pants?" He smiled at his feeble joke.

  Marisa returned the smile. She excused herself and rushed from the kitchen into the living room and finally the hallway, where she clicked on the cell phone.

  "Yeah," she said.

  "This is Rene," the voice said.

  "I don't know no Rene." She grimaced. Dang, I sound stupid, she thought. Why can't I say things right?

  "We met—," Rene started to say.

  "Oh, yeah. At the hospital," she completed. "And you have my cell phone and I've got yours."

  Silence. A branch scratched the window on the side of the house. The furnace was kicking on in the basement. Ages of more silence.

  "And you want yours back, huh?" Marisa finally asked. She brought a strand of hair into her mouth and began to nibble it like a straw.

  "I guess that's why I'm calling."

  "Where do you live?" Marisa asked. She could tell that he was a shy person. His voice was small, like a little boy's.

  "Do you know where Willow Park is?" he asked. "I live over there, near Hamilton Magnet."

  Marisa knew the area. It had nice homes and green, green lawns and its own private security car that circled the neighborhood like a shark. She remembered how she and Alicia had gone trick-or-treating up there and hauled away bags crammed full of wrapped candy bars, not fistfuls of cheap candy, raisins, backyard apples, and walnuts. She remembered devouring the candy until her jaw hurt and chocolate darkened the corners of her mouth.

  "That park's too far away. I don't know how I'm going to get your phone to you."

  "I got a bike," he replied. "Do you go to Washington with Roberto? I could meet you tomorrow."

  "If you want to," she said. "How do you know Roberto, anyway?"

  "I tutor him in math."

  Marisa cringed at the sound of her mother's voice calling from the kitchen. She was yelling, "MA-RI-SA! You gotta help with the dishes!"

  Marisa held the phone away from her mouth. "I'm talking on the phone, Mom!" she screamed in return. When her mother didn't cry, "Then get off the phone," Marisa raised the cell phone back to her ear. "Sorry," she told Rene. "Can you meet at three thirty?"

  "How about four thirty?" Rene asked. "I got a chess meeting."

  "Chess meeting!" she nearly exclaimed. But she held her tongue and agreed to meet in front of her school. She hung up and stared at the phone, trying to reassemble what the boy looked like. Her memory could only bring up Roberto's startled look when she landed an impressive punch to his gut.

  "Dishes!" Marisa's mother yelled.

  Marisa returned to the kitchen. She slurped the rest of her soup and nearly fit a whole roll into her mouth before she thought better of it. She wasn't hungry; plus, she could hear her mother's footsteps padding toward the kitchen. Her mother would badger her about eating too much—one bowl of soup should be enough for any girl. She thought for a moment that it was like prisoner's food. Bread and water.

  Her mother came into the kitchen. "Mira," she said. She waved something in Marisa's face that at first she thought was a dead bat. "You washed your black sock with the whites."

  "I didn't do it," Marisa snapped back.

  "What, did the sock walk into the whites and say, 'Bleach me'?" Her mother started to stuff the leftover rolls into a plastic bag.

  Marisa plucked the once-black sock from her mother's hand and pushed it into her back pocket like a flag used in flag football.

  "Mi'ja, I don't want you to cut school again," her mother said softly.

  "I won't," Marisa said weakly.

  "We want you to do well in school." She hugged her daughter and said that she was a good girl. "You're our only daughter."

  To Marisa that was one of the sweetest things her mother had said to her in a long time. Her mother usually told her things to do—pick up clothes, put the milk away—and was constantly warning her about trouble she could get into if she wasn't careful.

  "I want to do good, too. I don't want to mess up."

  Her mother hugged her and left the kitchen when her husband began wailing that there was something wrong with the remote control.

  Marisa gathered the bowls and spoons from the table and carried them to the sink. She turned on the water and waited for it to rise in the plastic tub before she submerged the dinnerware.
She squirted dish soap into the steaming tub, pushed her pudgy fingers into rubber gloves, and started on her evening chore. She found herself thinking about that boy with the sweet voice, whose face she could have remembered if she hadn't been so busy pummeling Roberto.

  Chapter 3

  Marisa sized up a gangly boy approaching on a bike. He looked familiar, so she guessed he was Rene. He wore dress pants, like the kind her father put on for church, and a plaid button-down shirt with his shirttail tucked in. His eyeglasses were slightly bent on his face. As he pedaled she made out white socks with three red stripes near the top. Dang, the boy's a nerd, she thought. Was he really the same one who had been with Roberto?

  "Hi," Rene squeaked after he kicked a leg over the bar and glided his bike onto the patchy lawn in front of the school. He brought a handkerchief from his pocket and swabbed his face. "I got here in—" He peered at the large watch on his skinny wrist. "In twenty-three minutes. I would have gotten here sooner, but I had to stop for construction." He extended a sweaty hand. "I'm Rene Torres."

  Marisa shook his hand, which appeared to have just enough strength to lift pencils and pens but nothing heavier. She was mystified. She had shaken hands with adults but never with someone her own age, and it felt strange.

  "It's a pleasure to meet you," he said, his head bowing slightly.

  She gawked at him. This guy didn't talk like a kid. She sensed that her mouth hung open, but she couldn't help herself.

  "How was your day?" Rene asked.

  How was my day? she thought. This boy is muy wimpy. Still, she answered without a hint of sarcasm, "Okay, I guess," and quickly added, "How come you're tutoring Roberto?" If he was going to try to make conversation, she might as well do her part.

  "Because he needs help," Rene explained. "I like it and I get paid. He plans to go into ROTC in college and then into the army, but he needs to retool the mechanical side of his brain."

  "Roberto has a brain?" Marisa almost blurted out. Instead, she asked, "How come you were hanging with him?"

  "He was going to give me a ride to Office Depot."

  More pens for this guy's shirt pocket, she thought snidely. She caught herself being mean and didn't like it.

  Rene stuffed his handkerchief into his front pocket. He shifted his gaze from her face to the front of the school. Two boys were digging their hands into a bag of potato chips. A girl on her cell phone was yelling, "You lyin', girl! You snatched it without paying a damn dime!" Sneaking a quick smoke, a janitor had his hands cupped around a cigarette.

  Marisa could tell that the nerd wasn't familiar with her kind of school, one with security guards who themselves looked like thugs. She felt a little embarrassed at the yellow lawn, the torn blinds in the front window, and the steps splattered with old gum. The American flag was hoisted only halfway—due to a problem with the broken chain that hauled it up—and gave the impression that the school was in mourning. Someone or something had died, perhaps something called hope.

  "Roberto wants to be an army officer?" Marisa asked. If he was such a good guy, why did he cheat on Alicia? She would have thrown out the question but heard someone shriek from the front steps, "Who's that? Einstein?" A crew of girls bent over, holding their sides laughing.

  "Come down here and say that! We can chunk right here!" Marisa barked. Her hands curled into fists and then uncurled, each of her long fingernails like daggers.

  None of the girls moved, but none stopped laughing. They guffawed and did a dance around the backpacks at their feet.

  "My school is sick," Marisa grumbled. "I wish I went to a different one." There, it was out. She had thought it often but never said it.

  "Don't worry about me," Rene said. "People are always picking on me."

  Marisa winced at his admission. "They wouldn't pick on you if I was around. They would show you some respect." She was surprised by her proclamation. She hadn't known the nerd more than five minutes and yet she was defending him. She could tell that he was shorter than she by an inch or two, and certainly a lot skinnier. The buckle was on his belt's last hole.

  Rene was touched. "That's very nice of you."

  "Come on." Marisa beckoned. She was curious about Rene. He was so different from the homeboys she knew.

  Rene turned his bike around and walked it down the street, where potato chip bags, smashed paper cups, and hamburger wrappers scuttled in the wind. Cars passed with radios blaring and the drivers shouting over the songs. Marisa led Rene to a small park, where they sat on the grass. A woman bundled up in three sweaters was feeding pigeons. A sea of pigeons the color of cement followed her as she tossed seeds to the left, then the right.

  "Here, before I forget." Rene brought out her cell phone from his fanny pack. "You got a couple of calls, but I didn't answer them. I believe strongly in privacy. That's why I'm so against the policies of our country. Privacy is becoming scarce."

  What's he talking about? Marisa wondered. Does he always talk like this?

  "Like right now, we assume we have privacy, but if the Secret Service wanted they could listen to our conversation."

  "We ain't said anything," Marisa argued. It was usually she who was the chatterbox, but she found herself growing quiet. A leaf floated down from the maple tree and settled on her knee. She flicked the leaf from her knee, stood up, and brought Rene's cell phone from her pocket. "What's so important about privacy, anyhow? My mom doesn't give me privacy. She'll come in and check my drawers to see if I have drugs and stuff."

  Rene looked disbelieving. He licked his lips, assembled some nerve by puffing up his muscle-depleted chest, and started to ask, "You don't do..."

  "¡Chale! I don't do drugs. All I'm saying is..." She thought, What am I saying? Why are we talking about stupid stuff? Suddenly her anger began to cook inside her, but was that heated cauldron going to spill onto a boy who wore white socks and carried a handkerchief? He didn't deserve it.

  Another leaf floated downward in a seesaw motion and settled on Rene's bony kneecap. Rene took the leaf between his thumb and index finger and twirled it. "It's the end of life for this leaf."

  Marisa seized the leaf from Rene and was about to crumple it when she was struck by the cruelty of her thoughts. He's so skinny, skinnier than Roberto. He should eat more. Work out with weights. Man, this guy's a genuine nerd.

  "You think I should go?" Rene stood up and leaned over to pick up his bicycle.

  Another leaf slowly descended from the tree and hooked itself in Rene's curly hair.

  "You're kinda silly, you know," Marisa remarked. Her anger had disappeared and so had her brooding thoughts. She had had a hard day at school—a C on a math quiz, and a C minus that was almost a D on a history exam. She had figured that this was the source of her grumpiness and that it had nothing to do with the boy sitting next to her.

  "I would describe myself as occasionally preposterous, but never silly," he countered. "I know people laugh at me ... Are you laughing at me?"

  "No way!" Marisa crowed.

  "It's okay if you are."

  "I'm straight-up. I ain't laughing!"

  The woman with the pigeon feed passed them with the pigeons parading behind.

  They twirled leaves and Marisa, pulling her hair back behind her ears, scooted a little closer to him. She would later debate with herself what that little gesture meant. But for now she was enjoying the presence of this boy, whose bicycle was too big for him and whose eyeglasses were crooked on his cute small face.

  That night her father wolfed down his dinner—a second evening of albóndigas, but this time with a salad drenched with bottled blue cheese dressing—and hurried out the front door with his bowling ball. It was Wednesday, when he played in a thirty-five-and-older league. There was a whistle on his lips.

  "Mom," Marisa said after she had done the dishes and returned to the living room wiping her hands on a dish towel. She could tell that her mother was in a good mood, because she was listening to her favorite CD: Linda Ronstadt's Canciones de mi
Padre.

  "What?" her mother asked. She was seated on the couch with a blanket over her knees, reading an old People magazine.

  "Mom, I want to go to a new school." She had made this decision when she watched Rene ride away in an awkward crooked path. He had no leg strength, no way to protect himself. True, she had Alicia to protect, but Rene really needed help or he might be squashed like a bug.

  "Did you see Ricky Martin's mansion? He's got seven bathrooms." Her mother's eyes were lit with excitement. "I wish we had two bathrooms. That wouldn't be asking too much."

  "Mom, I don't like my school."

  Her mother turned a page of the magazine and whistled at the sight of a blue pool overlooking the sea. "I wish he would invite me over for a barbecue and a swim." She licked a finger and turned another page.

  "My grades aren't so great and I was thinking that if I used Aunt Sara's address, I could go to Hamilton. I could get a transfer." She pointed northward, where Hamilton Magnet High School was located among nice homes. "It's a much better school."

  Her mother put down her magazine and sat up. Ricky Martin's seven bathrooms went down the toilet in a large surge. "What are you saying?"

  "About going to a new high school. I hate mine. Everyone's into drugs and stuff. There's this freshman girl named Jasmine who even got pregnant."

  "And you?" The question was calm, yet serious. Her mother sat up straight with the magazine on her lap.

  "Nah, Mom," she replied. Although she could see Ricky Martin's perfect smile on the cover of the magazine, Marisa couldn't share in his happiness for his seven bathrooms or the pool that could probably fit all of her ninth-grade class. His smile seemed completely fake.

  "Then why?"

  "I don't know. Maybe I could do better." Marisa imagined herself sitting up in class and really listening to her English teacher. She could see Rene in the corner, his hand up, because he was the one with the mouthful of answers.

  "How are you going to get to that school from here?"