The Man With No Borders
Page 23
“None of us will be here when you get back from the airport. We all have plans with our friends. So you’re better off just doing your thing.”
I responded, with as much composure as I could muster. “I didn’t expect anything else, Sam. I was young, too, once. Have fun.”
But I slammed shut the car door with perhaps more force than I intended.
I went directly to the apartment at Hechtplatz, after dropping Lisa off at the airport, and called Miguel. He said I could come over to his apartment at 9:00 p.m. Miguel was now earning enough money, from regulars like the Sweet Freak and me, to afford his own apartment above the Wellenberg Cinema in the Niederdorf. He needed to be closer to his “office,” he told me, which was a rather amusing line, I thought.
But he was gradually becoming someone different than the young immigrant I had first met. He took out escort ads on the back pages of local weeklies, wore Ferragamo and Jean-Paul Gaultier, and his natural and rugged Catalan looks were becoming more feline. He had started dying his hair a brassy blond, which I did not like, but not enough to stop seeing him.
That night I stretched out on his bed, the sheets rumpled beneath me, my ankles crossed. He was in the bathroom at the sink, washing himself with a washcloth. He suddenly looked up from what he was doing and stared at himself in the mirror. He moved his head, this way and that, like he was studying every angle of his face, trying to decide who he was.
“Do you think I should go back to my natural hair color? I think it’s so mousy.”
Lisa called from her parents’ home on Philadelphia’s Mainline, crying, barely able to speak. I am not sure what I mumbled, just sympathetic-sounding noise. She got ahold of herself, blew her nose, and said, “Thank you, darling, for the sweet words.”
She then distracted herself by asking about the boys, what they were up to, what we were doing for meals. I talked, filled the void, until I had nothing more to say, other than the silent truth that hung between our words. Lisa must have heard that silence, too, because she said, out of nowhere, “José, there are days when I don’t know why we ever married, and why I am sitting in that goddamn cow pasture in Ägeri. Some days I think I will go mad there, I am so alone. And you sure haven’t made it easy for me these last few years. But coming back here, I remember. You took me away from all this. And it suddenly all makes sense, the strange direction my life took. You rescued me from all this and we built a good life together and raised fine sons. I love you for that fact. Remember that—whatever you are up to.”
Before I could speak—express my love for her, tell her about my ache and confusion and this compulsive hunt for fulfillment—we were interrupted by the background sound of pans clattering to the floor.
“Here we go again. Mom is having another meltdown. Got to go. Give the boys my love. I’ll talk with them another time.” And then she hung up.
Summer transformed our coldly Protestant city, and everyone was in a better mood. The Lake of Zürich filled with sailing boats; the beaches with bathers lathering up in coconut oil; the cafés and bars with couples and packs of friends, sipping Fendant and enjoying a night on the town. I packed Rob off to summer school in Gstaad, so he could make up for his poor grades the previous year. Normally such a good boy, Rob was suddenly giving us concern and acting out. He wouldn’t do his homework and seemed only interested in making home movies with the Toshiba TA-11 video camera I had given him for Christmas.
The other two, thankfully, were just fine. It was Sam’s second summer at Privatbank Álvarez, and he was in our accounts department, just as my father and I had both started back at the family’s retail bank in San Sebastián. He had a natural aptitude for numbers and a good analytic mind, and his grooming—to eventually take over the bank—was going well.
John, meanwhile, still had some maturing to do, and so I made him our office boy that summer. But he, too, turned out to be a huge addition to the bank, running energetically through the office halls, making the secretaries laugh. It was fun to watch him flirt and make jokes, and, I realized, of all of them, John was in some ways most like my father, outgoing and never really caring what other people thought of him.
But, outside of the bank, I didn’t see much of either Sam or John. They were never around, the summer Lisa was away, neither at the Hechtplatz apartment nor at the house in Ägeri. Sam had use of Lisa’s BMW and he made sure, when he wasn’t working, that he and John were always out with their own friends, as they should be at that age.
Miguel and I headed back to his apartment. It was a balmy Friday night. “Do you want to eat in or out tonight?” he asked. “Maybe we should book a table at the Saffronstube. It will be busy and I want to sit outside. I better call.”
We had just turned off the Niederdorfstrasse, and were climbing the stone stairs that threaded up through the hills of the old city, to the side entrance of his apartment building. Miguel had his back to me, and was fishing in his pants for his keys. I was again struck by his good looks, and, unable to contain myself, I leaned forward and pressed my face into the swan’s curve of his neck, just as the sound of animated voices drifted down to us from up above, the clatter of feet clumping down the steps we had just climbed.
Miguel had his key in the front door, and yet still managed to gracefully lift his other hand around to the back of my head, gently pressing my face deeper into his neck. I moved one of my hands down the front of his pants.
There was a sudden and cold silence on the stairs behind us, almost physical in its manifestation. Miguel sensed it, too, and we both turned to look at what was going on. Teenagers, in the sulfuric glow of the street lamp, were standing stock-still up on the raked hill, staring down at us.
My eyes stopped on the boy in the rear. John, averting his eyes, was red-faced and too humiliated to know where to look. His best friend, Marco, was staring at me with a crude smirk. One of the boys in the front of the group clutched his hands, like he was trying to contain himself, and my focus shot forward, feral-like, sensing danger.
Sam stared at me, his eyes wide with disbelief. The roar in my ears, the nausea, the vertigo of my spiraling descent, it all made me return to my other life and step away from Miguel. I turned and looked anew at him, as if he were a monster from the deep, as if I had been enchanted by a warlock and the spell was in that moment broken, revealing the evil figure of my undoing.
Miguel saw the revulsion I suddenly felt for him, and turned to finish unlocking the door. The hurt and pain in his eyes was exactly what I had seen in his face at that temple in India—and no less real than the looks of pain and suffering that were in my own sons’ eyes at that same moment.
You are responsible for all of it—all this immense suffering.
But my sons came first.
I turned around, to face them, as Miguel slipped inside the building, leaving the door slightly ajar, suggesting I could still come to him for comfort.
“Boys. This is not . . .”
The sound of my bravado, my attempt to bluff, was too much even for my own ears to hear, and I let the sentence trail off, unfinished. A voice chanted inside—
If ever there was a time you needed to be a man and stand up, this is it. This is it.
So, I gathered all my strength and started again. “If you want me to, I will explain . . .”
Sam winced, had to look away. He shifted his weight onto his left foot and turned toward his brother and friends. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.
His friend, a young man I had known since he was an infant, put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Sure, buddy, whatever you want.”
Before I could fully register what was going on, they had turned their backs on me and were clattering down the stone stairs that fed directly into the Niederdorfstrasse. I knew then that they were pulling away from me, forever, and nothing would ever be the same between us. We were broken. And still, as they passed me on the building’s half landing, I could only think of myself. I held up a hand and cried out, “John! Sam! Please do
n’t tell your mother.”
John was still too shocked to speak, after catching a glimpse of the man living behind his father’s façade, and he kept his head down as he walked by. But Sam glanced up at me as he passed, and from a cold distance said, “Trust me, you have nothing to worry about on that front. We won’t tell Mom. She deserves much better than this.”
The street-lamp overhead was buzzing and crackling as the fluttering moths banged against its curved glass case. I don’t know how long I stood on those steps, in the halo of that lamp, my face red and hot and throbbing. Eventually, I turned around to the front door of Miguel’s apartment building, which was still ajar, as he had left it. Crossing the border, to enter his world full time, was still an option.
I grasped the door handle. For a while I was unable to move forward or back, but stood teetering on the border of two worlds. In that moment, however, I could only think of Lisa—not of my sons, not of Miguel, not of my father or mother or my brother, not even of myself. Just Lisa. And I wasn’t thinking about her in any sentimental way, but more like seeing visions, postcards from our long life together, as she drove our sons to school, brought me tea, sat quietly in the chalet’s courtyard with her sketch pad.
And so, with time, I did the only thing I thought I could do. I leaned forward and gently pulled shut Miguel’s front door. But the price I paid, I am not sure if I would do it that way again, for I returned, after a brief vacation, to the country I had occupied since my brother’s death—the land of the walking dead.
I looked up one last time, in Miguel’s direction, before I walked back to the family penthouse. He was standing at his window, one hand clutching the curtain, looking down at me in the street, watching which way I would go. His face was stony, impenetrable. But an internal switch must have been thrown, because his eyelids began rapidly falling and rising, tears came, and I finally got a good look at the hurt and lonely child lurking just behind the man’s hard-edged brassy hair and gym workouts. But still I turned my back and abandoned Miguel—and my empty prayer to save him.
PART VII
2019
ÄGERI, SWITZERLAND
FIFTEEN
I always forget how much I love this old farmhouse. It’s so special.”
Rob stands in the study’s doorway, holding a plate of toast.
“How so?”
“Not sure. Maybe it’s because I have to travel so much with my job. I appreciate the solidness of this old house. It’s so grounded. Just has a good vibe.”
“That’s nice to hear, hijo.”
“Why don’t you come upstairs? Have breakfast with us.”
“It’s too much. Getting up the stairs.” I gesture at the half-eaten and congealed bowl of porridge on the side table. “Besides, I ate earlier.”
Big Bertha has already paid me her stool-softener visit, still without success, and the mere mention of food is making my stomach cramp up some more. Rob has no idea, of course, and strides into the room, sits down in the armchair opposite the bed, and licks a smear of jam off his forefinger.
“So, tell me, what kind of drugs are you on?”
“Opiates.”
“Fun. I’ll take some.”
“Oh, God. Don’t tell me you still take drugs.”
“Just kidding, Dad. Relax. I’m a boring father in his fifties.”
“And a cabrón bass fisherman. I brought you up to be a fisher of salmon. Not some farmer with a ball of bread at the end of his hook.”
Rob freezes.
“Is a joke. I make a bad joke.”
“Yeah, well, I make thirteen million dollars a year with the cable show and I spend my days fishing. Some people would think I have a pretty good gig.”
“Joder. You make that much money?”
“Dad,” he says with weary resignation. “I have eleven million viewers around the world.” He won’t look directly at me, but I can see, in his narrow and flashing eyes, he is angry that I know so little about him and his life. I shift uncomfortably. But then he takes another bite of the toast, and when he does, the heat in his face disappears, as his mind again becomes preoccupied with work.
“We’re in intense negotiations with ESPN right now. Hope to have a richer deal soon.” Rob’s leg is jiggling, just like my brother’s. “My agent is demanding I get more equity in the cable series, or else, he says, we’re going to walk away and create our own streaming series. The new technology means we don’t actually need cable stations anymore, but I don’t know. I still want to stay with ESPN, if I can. We’ve done well together.”
“I thought I heard a party.”
John stands tall and bald in the doorframe, his blue eyes and diamond earring catching the light as he bends his head slightly forward to sip his espresso from a demitasse cup. He has a uniform these days. For some reason John now only wears long-sleeve turtlenecks.
I wave him forward. “Come in. Sit.”
Rob, always the family diplomat, jumps up and wheels the desk chair around so his brother can sit on the other side of the bed. John sits back in the chair, legs crossed, sipping his coffee, eyeing the world as if everything is just fine by him.
“Did you get your bath?” I ask.
“I did. So miss that old bathtub. It’s the perfect fit for my body. I just sink up to my chin. Honestly, I wish I could rip it out and move the entire thing to our Chelsea apartment. Joanne would love it. Americans just don’t get baths. They make these shitty little shower tubs with the drains two inches off the bottom. Half your body is out of the water. What’s with that? It’s not exactly rocket science, making a bathtub that people can fit into.”
“I miss taking baths, too.” I gesture at the study’s bathroom, behind the wall of books. “Your mother and Sister Bertha bathe me, sitting on a chair in the shower. So humiliating.”
John is horrified by the idea. “That’s awful. I am going to arrange for you to have a proper bath while I am here. You must.”
“What’s that?” Sam is leaning against the doorframe.
My three boys are with me. I am in heaven.
“We have to give Dad a bath.”
The stomach cramps make me groan inside a little, and I shift my weight, to ease the pressure. Much to my relief, they don’t notice my discomfort.
Rob turns toward Sam. “What’s on the agenda for today?”
“I’ve got an idea,” Sam says. “Dad, it’s a glorious day outside. A really beautiful, sunny fall day, like you can only get in Central Switzerland. What do you think of lunch on the terrace of the Hotel Seefeld?”
John snaps his head up and says, “How cool. I remember how Dad used to take us down to the Seefeld, when we were kids, for those ice cream sundaes.” He looks over at me. “It’s also where you taught us how to play hearts . . .”
“While you were getting totally ripped on shots of Williamine,” Rob adds.
“I was not,” I say, but we all laugh, because everyone knows I enjoy my eau-de-vie.
“You were so checked out as a parent,” John says. “Our wives would skin us alive if we did half the shit with our kids that you did with us. I remember, by midnight, the three of us were bouncing off the Seefeld’s walls on a sugar rush and because we weren’t put to bed at a normal hour. We’d wind up running and hollering through the restaurant, and you’d, like, wave your hand: Doesn’t matter. ‘No importa.’”
They fill my little room with laughter.
“The bell captain,” John continues. “That nice Spanish guy with the green apron. What was his name?”
“Señor Gomez!” Rob and Sam shout at the same moment.
“Poor Gomez. He was so homesick. He loved talking to Dad in Spanish and he would come sit at our table for hours, late into the night. He’d join Dad for the shots of Williamine, as they rat-tat-tatted away, and he loved it how we kids were so lively and shattered the silence of Switzerland. And then, when he was all buzzed, he’d get all emotional remembering his own kids, back in Spain, with their mother . . .”
Their laughter swells in the room, so powerful a force I see the walls of my study pushing out, making room for their presence. Alfredo gets up and goes from one to the other, nuzzling their legs, wanting to be included in their fun. I am made dumb by the unexpected joy welling up inside me, and I see a series of scenes from those long-ago nights at the Hotel Seefeld, like a slideshow.
“Well, Dad. What about it? Lunch at the Seefeld for old times’ sake?”
My stomach lurches. The idea of getting out of bed, getting dressed, packed into the car, dragging my drip through the restaurant, every Swiss turning his head to gawk, eating a full meal in public—the very idea makes me sick to my stomach.
But my boys’ faces, so expectant, so flushed with the memories of their youth, I cannot bear to let them down.
“Por qué no?”
The morning fills with the logistics of our family outing. It is decided—by Sam—that we should take two cars. I am laid out flat in the folded-down posterior of the Volvo station wagon. I cradle my drip by my side, Alfredo on the flatbed beside me, his ginger-fringed head resting between his great paws. John and Rob, after packing me into the car, look anxiously down at me.
“Are you OK, Dad?”
“Sí, hijos. So is Alfredo. We are ready.”
John and Rob climb into the front seats and we pull out of the driveway. Sam follows in the BMW with Lisa and Sister Bertha. Our caravan sets off, around the lake, until I finally sense we are pulling into the village of Morgarten, with its boat pier and restored fifteenth-century church tower.
Sam has called ahead and the Hotel Seefeld’s new manager, a young man from Canton Vaud, is waiting for us as we pull into the crescent driveway at the family-owned inn. I notice, with sadness, the cream-and-white Jugendstil villa with twenty-five rooms has, since my last visit, had an ugly modernist glass-and-steel extension attached to its face, like an ugly wart.