Last Flight of José Luis Balboa

by Gonzalo Barr

  What’s the big deal with sex, anyway? Me? I prefer curling up with a good book.

  10. ONE WORD FITS ALL

  I sit up in bed, cross my legs, and balance the laptop on my thighs. Maybe I should have traded my topic with Mariella. I could have distracted myself thinking about the virtues, the necessity, of honesty. It’s one of those qualities that’s so simple you can even write a utilitarian argument to support it. The world would simply break down if everyone were dishonest all the time. “Love,” on the other hand, like “art” or “cancer,” is a word that stands for many different things.

  There’s guy-and-girl love. There’s love for your friends, your family, your parents, love for your country, too. At school, Brother Richard talks to us about love for God, but I think that’s mostly fear, like when you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing and all the while you’re being watched by tiny hidden cameras.6

  When I think about plain, old, generic love, I think of my parents. My father’s a doctor, a psychiatrist. My mom’s an attorney. She writes wills for people that their relatives can argue about later. My parents grew up in Miami, after their parents brought them over from Cuba when they were two or something, because of the whole Fidel thing. They met in grade school. Kids in those days went through some pretty scary drills in the middle of the day. The principal made an announcement over the PA, and the nuns said things like, “OK, children, now get under your desks.” And my mom and dad, only they weren’t my mom and dad yet, they were little kids, crawled under their desks in case the Russians dropped a hydrogen bomb on Miami. I’ve tried to imagine what a classroom full of children crouching under wooden desks would have looked like. I’ve tried to imagine what they thought about, practicing for the end of the world. As bad as things are today, I can’t imagine growing up like that.

  My parents married right out of high school, which is one thing they both agree no one should ever do, except them, of course. Their situation was different, my father told me at dinner one evening. They started to go steady in tenth grade, which in those days meant they could go to the beach with a group of friends or to the movies if my mother’s grandmother, who died before I was born, chaperoned them. Cubans were really big into that in the 1960s and 1970s, when my parents were kids. My father said his parents didn’t leave Cuba, they brought it with them. My mother said Cubans in 1970s Miami were still living in 1950s Havana.

  I used to think all men were like my father. I know that’s kind of classic. One day, when I was about four years old and my mother was working late, I asked my father to marry me. He told me that parents could never many their children. Why not? I asked. “Because their children would have watermelons for heads and claws instead of hands,” he said. You should never tell a child something like that. I imagined the watermelon children crawling out from under my bed, their monstrous heads tipping perilously on thin necks, claws snapping in the air above me, while I lay covered to my eyes under one of my mother’s precious Egyptian-cotton, don’t-you-dare-stain-it bed sheets. For months, I had to sleep with Nana. My father, of all people, should have known better.

  All this came up again at dinner not long ago. We were talking about marriage—why some worked and many did not. Well, my parents were talking about it. I listened, mostly. The only thing I said was that I wanted to find someone like my dad. I thought the comment would earn me some good favor, to be cashed in at the appropriate time. Instead, it led to the recounting of the watermelon children story (anything to embarrass Silvia). My father said that I would make up my own mind about men in general and about the kind of man I wanted for myself specifically. “You’ll need a companion,” he said. “Almost everyone does.” “Companion,” to me, means someone who goes along with you on a short trip, two little old ladies sitting next to each other on a tour bus rubbernecking past the Eiffel Tower. My father thinks marriage is feudal, that women should be self-sufficient, so they never have to stay with a man they don’t love anymore or one who is abusive. “Everything in its good time,” he says.

  The first thing my parents want me to do is get an education. They want me to become a doctor, maybe a cancer doctor or a surgeon. I’m not sure medicine is for me. You get to do cool stuff like talk to a family about the dying relative you’re treating, while they hang on your every word, but I’m sure that gets old. My father says that whatever I do, I should get an education so I can have my own paycheck. “Don’t let those nuns at school convince you that money isn’t important,” my father says, jamming a thumb into the air. “If they really believed that, they wouldn’t be forcing us to buy all those candy bars.”

  I think my parents are happy being married to each other. My father makes funny faces at my mother at the dinner table, and more than once I’ve caught her squeezing his thigh, which really embarrasses me. I’ve tried to ask them if they had sex before they got married. I’m almost sure they did. Didn’t they grow up in a time when everyone was sleeping around? But as I start to ask them, I get embarrassed and let the moment pass. My father says I can talk to him about anything I want, but he’s a guy. I’d prefer to talk with my mother, except she can be such a logarithmic dork.

  My parents grew up believing that the one sure way to happiness and satisfaction is through education. I don’t think they really believe that anymore, seeing as the world has changed so much since they were my age, and both lawyers and doctors are dropping out to do things like run bookstores and sail around the world. But my parents want to play it safe, so they tell me the same thing their parents told them: “You never know.”

  My parents say it in English. My grandparents use the Spanish. Uno nunca sabe. One never knows. It’s shorthand for “Look what happened to us.” It means that they went from living one life in 1950s Cuba to another in 1960s Miami, that doctors, lawyers, and bankers were forced to take jobs as busboys, waiters, and housekeepers at the Eden Roc and the Shelborne hotels, that families were separated, sometimes never to speak again, that Havana would begin its slow descent into becoming a pile of old stones, one crumbling balcony at a time.

  It also means that everyone lives in two places at once—the present here and the past there. The past was once a common ground that all Cuban exiles shared, even people like my parents, who spent their entire lives in Miami, but that is not true so much anymore. The old Cubans who left in the 1950s distrust the new Cubans who grew up under communism. My grandfather complains that the new Cubans are snitches and come here looking for a handout. They leech off the government. “That’s all they’ve ever known,” he says. The word “exile” underlines how Miami Cubans see themselves. The second worst thing you can call an exile is “refugee.”

  That’s another kind of love that I can write about in my essay—the love of country. You say “country” and most people think of a colored patch on a map. “Country” for me means New Year’s Eve at my grandfather’s house, roast pork with mojito barbecue sauce, my grandmother’s white rice and black beans seasoned with just the right amount of cumin. It means sweet plantains and my mother’s pumpkin flan.

  11. THE WAR OF MY GRANDMOTHER’S BLACK BEANS

  Like any country, this one has its own customs. I have to tell my grandmother that she makes the best black beans in the universe. I have to serve myself twice, at least, or risk igniting a cultural war. If I don’t exhaust every hyperbole to describe her black beans and I haven’t served myself to the point at which I’m forced to unsnap my jeans under the table, my grandmother will say, “Ay, Silvita doesn’t like the food.” Once she does that, it’s too late. There’s no turning back. Getting up for a second helping at that point won’t help. It’s the first volley in the war, a battle cry to my grandfather, who then pipes up about the loss of Cuban values among the Youth of Today.

  “No, no, no, no,” my grandmother says, her voice running up a scale of notes, flicking her hand, as if the situation were beyond critical, “they don’t even speak Spanish anymore.”

  From the specific—you don’
t like my black beans—my grandparents extract the general—you reject your Cuban roots. From the individual—you look down on the Cuban—they get the universal—your entire generation despises everything Cuban, thus assuring the Imminent Demise of Civilization as We Know It.

  My father used to intervene about this point. He tried to assure his parents that things were not as bad as they thought, but that only made my grandparents turn all their guns on him and his “psychiatric ways.” In fact, my grandfather, who retired from his cardiology practice ten years ago, believes psychiatrists and their ilk are the cause of Everything That Is Wrong in the World. (My grandparents talk like that, using a lot of capital letters.) Now my father knows better, so he remains quiet.

  Then my grandparents set out to prove the superiority of their own times. My grandfather says to me, “You think that you are living in a better world because you have a computer (a word he says in English) and a fancy German car and your own color TV.” My grandmother follows with “Remember those beautiful boleros, Fito?”

  “They were healthy diversions,” my grandfather says, picking up the pace.

  “Now all they have—”

  “Is that . . . what do you call it?”

  “Rrrrap,” my grandmother says, trilling the r’s.

  “I don’t understand how anyone can listen to that, that—”

  “It’s unspeakable,” my grandmother says with such force that her dentures come loose.

  Then my grandfather, eighty years old, very thin, with white hair and wire-rimmed glasses, bobs back and forth in his chair at the head of the table, puffing his cheeks, moving his hands in the air, making mock gang signs with his fingers, the knuckles of which are thick and knobby.

  My mother laughs.

  My father says, “Oh, please.”

  I know better than to say anything.

  “That is what your generation calls art,” my grandmother says, introducing the next phase in the war.

  My grandfather pushes himself away from the table, grabs his cane, and walks to the Florida room, a large, tiled room with a ceiling fan, a wet bar, and an old console stereo, where he keeps his LPs.

  My mother uses the interruption to pick up the plates and serve her pumpkin flan, which is my favorite part of the meal. And while we wait, my grandfather plays his LPs on the stereo, the TV on mute and tuned to Times Square, so we can watch the stupid ball drop at midnight. Logarithmic dorkiness, I know, but it’s not my show. He plays boleros sung by the stars of their generation, their times, their country. He also plays mambos, son montunos, and Cuban big band music, all of it way too loud. It’s no use asking him to turn it down. He stands by the stereo, one hand on his cane, the other pointing at the record, his mouth forming the words. “What do you think of that, eh?”

  My mother motions me to help with the dishes. My grandmother waves everyone to sit down. My grandfather, after dessert and a few more Scotches, takes my grandmother’s hand and they dance. I’d never seen anyone dance holding a cane, but my grandfather is so good, he uses it to pivot while dancing a merengue. My mother takes a picture of them and blinds everyone with the flashbulb.

  Then midnight arrives and the stupid Times Square ball drops slowly and everyone kisses everyone else and stuffs their mouths with twelve grapes, one each time the big clock in the hall chimes, one grape after another, for good luck, and my grandmother opens the front door and throws a bucket of water down the front steps so she can start off clean for the new year and, later, when my grandfather has once again checked to make sure that everyone’s drink is topped off and he’s finally turned down the music, he’ll make a toast. “Next year in Havana,” he says, the glass held in front of him, his head bowed slightly.

  Years later, when I look at the picture of my grandparents dancing, it will be that moment that I will think of as my country, my own corner of the world, from which time and circumstances will inevitably make of me one more exile.

  12. NÚÑEZ’S LAW OF PREDICTABLE UNPREDICTABILITY

  It isn’t like Rolly and I didn’t almost do it. More than once, we got very close to going all the way. Each time, I pushed him back at the last moment, which led to a cascade of reactions by Rolly, beginning with surprise, progressing to pleading, concluding with irritation.

  Rolly had to have it. He had one thing on his mind. He was all hands, all the time. “No, Rolly!” I said. It was funny at first. It tickled. But when we went out and he didn’t let me watch the movie, I got mad. What was the point of going to a movie if you weren’t going to watch it. “Stop it!” I said, pointing a finger at Rolly, the way you do with a puppy.

  Rolly didn’t stop. He slipped his hand down my bra, squeezed my breasts until they hurt, and tried to get the other hand between my legs. “Stop it, Rolly!” Sometimes I wished I were like that Indian goddess with all the arms, so I could fend him off.

  Rolly had five excuses for his behavior that he used in no discernable ordered—

  ♂ “But it’s natural.”

  ♂ “I thought you wanted it too.”

  ♂ “We’ve been going out for almost a whole week.”

  ♂ “Are you frigid?”

  ♂ “They hurt. If I don’t get it soon, they’ll explode.”

  Maybe Rolly and I would have gone all the way if he hadn’t been so insistent. There’s no better way to turn me off to something than to keep bringing it up. But it wasn’t only his insistence that made me resist him; it’s also that sex can be messy, dangerous too.

  Last week, Mr. Pennington in Health class showed us a really gross video about sexually transmitted diseases, some of which have no cure. They are, like, forever. There were pictures: A woman who looked as if she were giving birth to a giant cauliflower. Another of genitals that were raw and blistery red. An emaciated man who looked like a prisoner in a death camp. “And don’t think that it can’t happen to you, that it only happens to the homeless or to drug addicts. It happens to kids like you all the time,” Mr. Pennington said. He picked up the textbook and held it a few inches above his desk. The book was the same one Rudy Menocal tried to steal last quarter to get the answers to a quiz we were having the next morning. As soon as Mr. Pennington stepped out of the classroom, Rudy ran up to the desk and opened the book. The only problem was that Mr. Pennington returned sooner than expected and caught Rudy going through the answers. He could have had Rudy expelled, but Mr. P.’s a nice guy. Instead, he spoke to Rudy’s parents, who took his car away from him for the rest of the school year.7 Rudy takes the school bus, but it hasn’t made him any less obnoxious. You’d think he were still driving his little silver Lexus, offering girls rides home, like Erin Guterson, who models swimwear for a local department store, though I think she likes girls more than she likes boys because I’ve caught her looking at me in the locker room. Anyway, Mr. Pennington picked up the book, held it in the air for a moment for dramatic effect, and let it fall on the desk. And when he did that, the book went boom!

  A few girls jumped. One of the guys said “co-ñí,” which is a Cuban curse word you hear a lot in Miami and which has no equivalent in English. But Mr. Pennington didn’t lose a beat, in part, I think, because he is already half-Cubanized himself. He married a Cuban woman ten years older than him, who owns a big apartment building that she inherited from her last husband. Plus I’ve seen Mr. P. drink cafecitos with Ms. Rodriguez after lunch in the teachers’ lounge. She’s the young French teacher with the face like the Madonna who recently got her Ph.D. from Columbia. People say there’s something going on between them, but I think Mr. P. is a super-nice guy, so it’s no wonder Ms. Rodriguez has cafecitos with him. That day in class, when he dropped the book on the desk for dramatic effect, he waited a couple of seconds before he said it again. “Don’t think that it can’t happen to you.”

  Now here comes the irrational part, the part that my AP Economics teacher says makes his job and the job of economists the world over so much harder than it needs to be, the part he calls the “predictable unpredi
ctability of the human animal’s insistence on pursuing inscrutable ends for unknowable reasons.”8 In spite of everything, my trampled ego, my mother’s advice, Mr. Pennington’s video with people growing weird stuff from their genitals, I am sure that if Rolly called me right now to get back together with him, I’d not only say yes, I’d get in my car, drive over to his house, and let him go all the way. I know this sounds like a contradiction, especially after what I told you about Mr. Pennington and his warts-and-sores show. But, like Mr. Núñez says, people don’t always do the rational thing.

  13. THE THINKING WOMAN’S GUIDE TO TANGAS AND CELLULITE

  I spend the rest of the morning working on my essay. It occurs to me that love, of whatever kind, is not eternal. It can’t be. How many songs go something like “I’ll love you till the end of time”? But love is not a “thing” or a “force” that exists independently of the host or the object. John cannot love Mary after John is dead, nor can he love her after Mary is dead. If John survives Mary, he may love her memory, but that is something else. Because love resides in us, it is dependent on us.

  It gets worse. Even if John and Mary love each other for many years, everybody changes over time. John and Mary are not the same people five, ten, twenty-five years after the day they first fell in love. When they change, their love, too, being dependent on them, has to change. I know this sounds nitpicky, but it’s not beside the point.

  When I was a child, my father kept a chart of my growth. He measured my height every six months. He says that I will continue to develop until I’m in my early twenties, a good thing too, I think, because I am too skinny. Francesca Gutierrez’s parents nixed her getting a boob job, which she wanted instead of a car for her birthday last year. The doctor said she had not yet fully developed and he didn’t want to operate on her until then. On the other hand, Gloria is what you could call prematurely well developed. She was the first in the class to get her period when we were eleven years old. She has a perfect hourglass figure. When we go out, guys ogle her. I’d like to look a little more like that, but then I remind myself that she’ll probably be fat in ten years. Girls like that peak at fifteen and it’s downhill from there. If I were a guy, and if I were in love with the present-day shapely Gloria, I think it would be real tough to stay in love with her, as I watched her balloon. To survive such extravagant metamorphosis, love has to find something other than the physical to attach itself to, maybe her personality, I don’t know.