Alma read Playboy across the top. She recognized the woman on the cover from the movies. She wore a black cowboy hat and had a cigar in her mouth; a camisole and suspenders pushed her breasts together. Alma pulled her sweater tight around her own breasts and read aloud the caption: “Bo Derek, X-rated—She’s Hotter Than Ever. . . . What is this business?”
Carl didn’t give her a chance to finish. “Even you said he’s not a boy anymore.”
She spread out the other magazines on the table. “Why would you do this, Carl?”
“These are for Robert. It’s time he sees these things, Alma.” Carl reached into his duffel bag. “He’s not going to get the chance—”
“To what, Carl?” She turned the magazine over, which only revealed a half-naked woman on the back cover, blowing kisses across a snifter of cognac.
“To be with a woman. He should know what it’s like,” said Carl.
“Listen to what you’re saying! You can’t decide that for him.”
Alma pulled her shaking hands away twice before Carl could take hold again. “He’s a thirty-year-old man, period, end of discussion. We have to think about him as a man.”
“And what do you expect these are going to do for him?”
“I think he’ll know when he sees them. I did. It’s the same thing as the comics that way. We’re taking the boy to the man.”
Alma rolled her eyes.
He slid the stack onto her place mat. “They’ll take him somewhere he’s never been. I can’t imagine never touching a woman.” Carl pushed his chair away from the table and stood, pointing at the crucifix on the far kitchen wall between two copper pots. “Nuestro Padre, thank you for blessing me with all the beautiful women that’ve come into my life.” He pointed down to Alma. “Please help this very old and narrow-sighted woman understand.”
Alma smacked him. “As many women as you’ve touched, Carl, I’m not giving Bo Derek to Robert. She can go be Hotter Than Ever back in your garage.”
Carl opened to Bo’s centerfold. “You can’t deny it, Alma. Your boy has his father Oscar in him somewhere, just itching to get out.” He smeared his finger across Bo Derek’s abdomen, as if to wipe away the small droplets of sweat pooling in her belly button. “You should watch him like I do when he sleeps, so you can see that there are things happening in Robert’s dreams he can’t explain to us.”
“That’s the muscular dystrophy, not his father’s ways.” Alma turned away and wiped her eyes. She walked out to where Robert sat with his face full of sun, his head slightly tilted back against the headrest as if lounging on a beach. His fingers contracted and then released. It upset Alma that his movements reminded her of a robot. She turned back to Carl. “I don’t even know what to do with him as a man.”
“I know a place we can take him,” Carl said. “He can dance with a woman for the first time. No harm in that, prima.”
Alma had met Oscar at the shipyard back home in Long Beach, where he’d worked as a commercial diver with Carl. She fell in love with him after only seeing his eyes behind the thick Plexiglas shield of his yellow dive helmet. He wore gloves that seemed useless for even opening a door, let alone doing the precise welding he did in deep water, water described in fathoms, and she had wondered how it might feel to have his gloved hands under her shirt, clumsily traversing her. She wasn’t the only girl who ever came to the shipyard. It was the place to find a man that could provide. On occasion, Alma recognized some of the girls from her Pico Rivera neighborhood, older girls with their scribbled-on eyebrows and red lipstick. Even at seventeen, she wasn’t allowed to wear anything other than colorless gloss from Newberry’s. And when she had tried to sneak out of the house with a lip color named Crimson Desire, it became evident that her mother did know everyone in Los Angeles.
To get ahead of the pack, she finally told Oscar after a month of flirting and bringing him lunches that he’d better start thinking about asking her out on a full-time basis. Their first date was to Philippe’s for French dips. Oscar used the sawdust on the floor to describe shield-metal and flux-cored arcs, letting the dust fall from his fingertips to make pictures on the graffitied countertops. She wore a leopard-print sundress that she had hemmed two inches above her knee the day she bought it. Oscar went on at length about friction when he first held her hand, and how when he was underwater too long, he could taste the metal in his mouth.
“It’s the alloy of mercury in your fillings,” he’d said. “They call it dental amalgam.”
Alma shook her head at his words.
Oscar had opened his mouth and pointed to the silver caps that covered five of his top teeth, six on the bottom. He slobbered. “I can taste the fillings in my mouth when the electricity really gets goin’.” He slid his left hand up and along Alma’s thigh. She didn’t mind. Opening his mouth, he took Alma’s longest finger and ran its tip along two silver-capped molars. They felt like turquoise Indian jewelry to Alma. Oscar convulsed with fake electricity that surged through his body, and gnawed on Alma’s finger down to her knuckle. She laughed out loud and pulled her finger away, then pressed her leg closer to his. She thought about the time she had accidently chewed on a tinfoil wrapper, how when she bit down, it was more color than flavor in the back of her mouth.
You could do all you could imagine, and it still wasn’t enough for Alma to get Oscar to be a one-woman man. She was never surprised by the smell of women on his fingers. She’d tell herself while under the weight of his body at night that she deserved better, that given some serious thought, she might consider never seeing him again. And when she became pregnant with Robert, it rearranged all the thoughts in her head as to finding a new man. Damn it, she should. A new man would be like winning the showcase on The Price Is Right. She pictured that flirty gringo Bob Barker handing her the keys to the fancy new car that she would drive to her new life. Oh, the kiss she’d plant on him!
When Alma went to tell Oscar that she was having his baby, he had just finished a two-day pipe-welding job at Dos Cuadras Offshore Oil Field in the Santa Barbara Channel and was forced to spend seventy-two hours in the hyperbaric chamber. Alma peeked through the window. She had written baby on the dive company’s letterhead, accompanied with a crude cartoon drawing of the inside of her belly. She tapped on the glass and Scotch-taped the note inside the small metal window frame of the chamber. She never lifted it to see his reaction.
That night Alma dreamt of Bo Derek. Her big black hat and cigar deep in her mouth. She dreamt of the two of them sitting in Alma’s rusted Malibu in the driveway, looking at photo albums. She showed Bo Derek a picture of Oscar in his wet suit pulled down around his waist from when they first started dating. Water beaded on his hairy chest as he looked at the end of an ignited welding torch. Bo Derek approved. She’s been with her lion’s share of men, Alma thought. Alma asked if she could touch the supermodel’s skin, which looked as soft as the underside of the leaves in her tomato garden. Bo didn’t mind, even pointing out the softest spots on her wrist and behind her knee. As she turned the pages, she noticed that Bo Derek had replaced her in every photo—Oscar is feeding Bo Derek in this snapshot, and he is kissing her neck in another. Here is the supermodel and movie star Bo Derek nursing a half-sleeping Robert the day he was born. Page after page, every photo of Alma was replaced with Bo Derek. Even if Alma had remembered herself in the background of this photo, hidden away in the kitchen checking the temperature of the posole at Christmas, the dream chose Bo Derek to blow across the soup and wince at the abundance of freshly crushed oregano steeping its broth.
Alma woke. She climbed out of bed and walked down the hall to check on Robert. The lights coming from the Albertsons parking lot filled his room with a milky glow. His tremor medication often took time before it kicked in and slowed the jerking in his muscles, so Alma always checked on him when she woke during the night to pee. It was something that his doctors said he’d eventually get used to, but he never did. Robert’s hand rested on the three-legged metal end table that Oscar had welded for
Alma from broken ocean pipe. He had given it to her the day they moved into their first apartment. It’s a triangle, he had said, the strongest shape known to man. But now, watching the twitch in her son, Alma wished that Oscar hadn’t been such a good welder, and that the table would just break apart in the night like the water pipes in the crawl space had every few years, then maybe she’d finally be able to throw it away. But whom was she kidding—no way she could even drag it to the curb on trash day!
She whispered to Robert as he slept. “Mijo, if you want to dance with a girl, squeeze my finger twice.” There was nothing. “Mijo. Squeeze once if I sound ridiculous.” Robert squeezed Alma’s finger twice and then wouldn’t let go. He squeezed so hard that Alma thought he might be having a seizure. Robert’s doctor had described how his body might act when seizing, that it was just part of all the goodies that came with a basketful of disease, and how she should prepare for the inevitable because it was an any moment sort of deal. He had used the word dystonic in his medical offices in Montebello, and Alma had just smiled and nodded politely when he continued on about diaphoretic presentation and a possible, and very likely, apneic and postictal period, which was much like a computer rebooting after a hard shutdown.
Robert’s first seizure had been in the corner booth at Rafael’s after Ash Wednesday Mass. And at that moment, at light speed, Alma knew exactly what all the terms had meant—the full-body shaking, the profuse sweating, and the breathlessness. Robert had turned blue, and the busboys couldn’t find enough towels to dry his body; the palm ash cross on his forehead washed away like glacial silt. Then the urine. The waitress brought extra napkins and a small trash can for someone, anyone, to throw up into. She brought an ice-cold 7Up, then sat down in the booth where Alma had been sitting, and not knowing what more to do, she just apologized over and over again about the breakfast order taking so long.
“This one, Carl.” Alma held up a white dress shirt she had worn during a catering job the previous spring at Echo Park. “There’s a stain right here, but I think a nice tie would cover it up just fine.” She licked her thumb and scrubbed the discolored trim along the buttons. The taste of her own stain was awful.
“I don’t think you should put him in girl clothes,” Carl said.
“This is for both men and women. They call it unisex.”
“Did you wear it?” Carl asked.
“You listen like a rock. I told you—last spring, Carlito.”
“Then, prima, this is a girl shirt. There’s no way around that. Let me go to my truck. I have something behind my seat we can iron.”
Carl came back holding a yellow short-sleeved guayabera. Its seams ran the length of the shirt with embroidered birds-of-paradise at the edges of all four pockets. A real beauty!
“Flores, Carl. How is that better than my shirt?” Alma folded the shirt over and inspected the stitching. It was fine work.
“The Legend.” Carl raised his fist into the air.
“Qué dices, the legend?” Alma asked.
“The shirt. It’s called the Legend. Mira the tag.” Carl took the shirt from Alma and flipped over the collar. He held it up to Alma, pinching the shirt together at the shoulders. The light cut through and exposed all the delicate stitching. “The chica who takes this shirt off Roberto will want to keep it forever.”
“You said dancing,” said Alma.
“You’ll see, La Leyenda—that is what they will call him.” Carl laid the shirt across Robert’s chest. “That is what they will call you, mijo.” He turned to Alma. “And you, old woman, you should know that you will never find a better listener than a rock.”
Alma prayed the rosary from Atlantic Boulevard to Century Boulevard. It wasn’t a long drive with Carl behind the wheel, but she managed to get deep into the fourth sorrowful mystery—Taking My Son to a Dancing Prostitute. She imagined all the turns in her life that eventually led her to a club called Las Palmas Ballroom, which from the curb looked like nothing more than a normal ranch home much like her own, with a glowing red bulb under the awning.
Alma leaned into Carl’s good ear. “Are you sure this—”
“I’ve been here before. It will be okay.”
Alma shook her head at Carl’s reassurance. “You lower Robert down while I get my things together.”
Carl opened the van’s sliding door. Robert woke and smiled at him. “Let’s go, mijo.” Carl imitated the noise the van’s hydraulic lift made as Robert’s chair settled to the street, crunching a plastic water bottle under its weight, sending its white cap skipping across the sidewalk into a patch of ice plant. Alma stood at the base of four shallow stairs that led up to the entrance.
“Go and park around the corner, Carlito.”
“It’s dark. Who’s gonna care about nothing?”
Alma put her coin purse into the emergency-kit pouch that slung over Robert’s chair. “And stay with the van in case we have to leave in a hurry.”
“You’re talking like we’re robbing a bank,” said Carl.
“After doing all this, I know robbing a bank would be easier,” said Alma.
She used her embroidered handkerchief to clean the smudges from the silver plate marked Doorbell before depressing its yellowing button. Carl idled toward the corner around the house into the alley. Music from inside vibrated concentric circles in the puddles on the sidewalk. Alma looked through the missing edges of window tinting that stretched across the front windows. Red lights warmed the space inside. She wondered why it was taking so long and rang the bell again. She stepped back and waited by Robert in his wheelchair as the door opened, revealing a full-bodied woman in a cascading blue sequin dress that swung down from her arms. Her voice twanged. “Can I help you, darling?”
Alma peeked inside past the woman to the flock of white cowboy hats on the dance floor in the middle of the room. Alma moved Robert’s wheelchair forward. The left wheel spun freely under the chair until it clasped on to the gravel, thrusting him to the edge of the porch.
“Do you have a ramp?” The woman gave a confused look. Alma wondered if she had a problem understanding her broken English. Alma made a shape that resembled a ramp with her left hand, and then used her fingers to walk up its slant. “Please—do you have—a ramp for wheelchairs?”
“No, I’m sorry, we don’t.” Alma felt a great distrust from the woman. “Do you need to make a phone call, or get a ride? I can help you with that much.” The woman stepped out to get a better look at Robert. Pollen from the trees above dusted him lightly. “Is that boy okay?”
Alma pulled an old grocery receipt from her pocket and unfolded it to reveal the address handwritten on the back. She adjusted her glasses and lifted the receipt above her shoulder so the woman could see from her position at the top of the stairs. “Las Palmas Ballroom?”
“Yes, but why . . . honey, do you know what kind of business Las Palmas Ballroom is?” She stepped down to Alma and Robert and pulled the blue sequin dress into her body so as not to step directly on it or drag it across the porch. The dress reminded Alma of the costumes rodeo clowns wore. Oscar had taken Alma and Robert to Victorville on weekends to the rodeo, back when Robert could still holler at the cowboys clutching hair on the high arcs of the kicking mares. The clowns popped from large barrels like toys and ran down the unpiloted bulls. They shot water cannons at spectators. It was a dress Alma couldn’t picture herself wearing.
“My cousin Carl told me there’d be women to dance with here.” Alma folded the paper back into a tight square into her pocket. “This is true, no?”
“No, I mean yes. Yes,” the woman answered.
Alma blew her nose into the handkerchief. “Bueno. Can you help to get him up the stairs? His chair weighs two hundred pounds.” She held up two fingers to the woman. “Two.”
The woman nodded and looked back into the glow of the house. “My name is Gloria. I run the place with my son. I know that sounds odd, but you know what they say about beggars.” Alma pretended to understand. The women shook han
ds. Alma wiped the spit forming off the right corner of Robert’s mouth. She wanted to make him as presentable as possible.
“Is this your son?” asked Gloria.
“Sí.”
“You’re his mother?”
The phrase two birds with one stone came to Alma’s mind in a way that she finally understood, and it seemed like a trick question. “Sí, this is my son, Robert. I am his mother. He is here to see you.”
“He’s not here to see me, darling, but we’ll get this sorted out. I make a good business knowing that there’s someone for everyone. But I have to tell you, in all my years of doing this, I don’t think a mother has ever brought her own flesh and blood to meet a girl at Las Palmas Ballroom.” Alma smiled and straightened the seam of Robert’s shirt. The woman winked. “Let’s go inside. I know I have the perfect girl.”
Alma gave her hand again to Gloria. “My name is Alma Lopez.”
“Well, Alma Lopez, let’s get the business stuff out of the way.” Gloria stepped back inside and called out to the rhinoceros-sized man who worked as the bouncer. His belly swung like a bag of pinto beans, and his thick arms stretched out the elastic of his shirtsleeves. “This is my son, Anthony.” He didn’t say a word to Alma but gave her a quiet nod as he pulled a banquet table through the entryway with one hand. Alma felt her jealousy at the strength of Gloria’s son warm her body. He fit the table like a puzzle piece to match the angle of the stairs, and placed two large cinder blocks at the top and bottom to keep it from sliding under weight.
Alma showed him how all the controls worked on Robert’s chair, moving the lever side to side. Robert rotated smoothly left, then right. Anthony’s large fingers dwarfed Robert’s clawlike hand. Alma felt a rocket ship blast off in her chest as Anthony took the controls. He thrust Robert’s chair over the first plywood edge, which stretched out his coiled ventilator hose. Anthony stopped to reassess and to make sure that he hadn’t upset Alma.
Gloria looked down to the street corner. “He with you?” Gloria pointed at Carl peeking through a wood fence.
Dodger Blue Will Fill Your Soul Page 11