When we rejoin the crowd Julia is showing them where to find the cereal, the bowl of hard-boiled eggs, the paper goods, the hard liquor, the ice. She shows Ray the family collection of cookbooks; demonstrates how to open them carefully so the pages don’t fall out of the binding. The last room is the boiler room, where they will tend to their laundry, bathing suits, and towels. She points discretely at the mops and cleaning products.
After the tour of the upstairs and the cupola, we clatter and creak our way back down the grand staircase. Along the wall, we pass oversized, melted-glass windows, where we see panoramic vistas of the glittering sea. The stairs groan under us as we head downstairs in a thunderous stampede. Griswolds stare back from daguerreotypes, with their odd details, like topcoats that button on the wrong side. The photographs progress chronologically down the wall, to present-day Sears Studio portraits of the family’s most current crop of schoolage children. The elders remind me, with their piercing, yellowed, turn-of-the-century stares, that I can’t back down from my decision, regardless of how idyllic the next few days might become.
On the porch, cut hydrangeas sit in hurricane-proof vases that are impossible to tip (one of the many garage inventions that have so endeared me to the family). On the table, ice buckets and pitchers sweat in the sun, perfect stand-ins for the porcelain-skinned gaggle of Victorian aunts who once owned them. The grandfather clock announces the three o’clock hour.
My gang is more polite about the tea and cobbler than I anticipated; they scarf it down, I suppose, because they’re tired, hungry, and thirsty. I watch in utter amazement as Adrian swirls his ice tea with the long-handled spoon under Julia’s tutelage. “Craps anyone?” Raymond says, as he rolls the sugar cubes across the table like dice. Adrian puts on a ventriloquist show starring the sugar-and-creamer frogs, sending Julia and my sisters into a fit of snorts and giggles. My siblings fill the porch with a presence as fresh and colorful as sliced watermelon on a summer day: Holly with her wisecracks and Ray’s window-rattling laughter, Taina with her sarcasm and tinkling bracelets, and with the reverberation in Adrian’s deep, melodic voice. We sit in a circle of rocking chairs. Our sandals and sneakers lie abandoned along the wall. We are all barefoot again, like we were in the picture of us that was taken by the police in 1979.
Bring me here and I’ll remember, echoes Uncle Jim from his grave just a few feet away.
The afternoon sun is really blasting now and Julia claps her hands and offers our guests the antioxidant pomegranate and seaweed ice-pops she’s been pushing on me all summer. I warn everyone flat out that they taste like bile. That’s what I meant to say but then the aphasia finally kicks back in and I say “mild” and so nobody benefits from my warning. I watch my sisters’ worried expressions as they choke them down, lick by torturous lick. I have to admire Adrian’s strategy, which is to wave it around when he speaks and discreetly hold it over a plant when he’s not, until it all melts off. When Julia asks if he liked it, he raises the empty stick and proclaims that it was “terribly refreshing.” To this I mumble, “Yeah, for the plant,” and Ray tells Julia that Adrian has always been a bit shy about asking for seconds. Julia rushes to get him another ice-pop despite Adrian’s protests. I high-five Ray and we roar with laughter. So Adrian dashes off and comes back with his guitar, grips the neck with one hand and fingers the strings with the other, pretending to concentrate on a few tentative first notes. The unwanted popsicle is ceremoniously handed to Ray, who hands it to me. What else can I do but eat it? She made them for me, after all; so I dispose of the dripping mess with three airless bites.
Adrian unleashes a warm, sparkling cascade of guitar music that floats down and across the porch. It drifts like foam across the lawn and dissipates when it meets the sea. Adrian’s smoky voice is heavier, darker, and much older than the youthful body that produces it. “Quedate conmigo,” he sings. Adrian’s the only one of us who speaks Spanish, so don’t ask me what the song’s about. I just know that Adrian’s voice is awesome.
Suddenly I smell the sweet scent of tobacco wafting up from the yard. I can easily envision Uncle James, wandering over to check out Taina as he gnaws on his convenience-store cigar. I pat the empty seat next to me, and invite him, in my imagination, to sit. But you can’t invite just one Griswold, that would be rude. So I imagine them all, hundreds of them, the old and the young, the living and the dead, crowded around the porch. I can see the men in the family lined up against the porch’s rail, arms folded over beer guts, watching Adrian play guitar. I can’t help but notice that they’re all wearing hats: World War II baseball hats and straw boater hats, safari hats, hunting boonies, Navy hats with shiny visors. The women look back and forth at my brothers and sisters, whispering to each other, some in tennis visors, others in gardener’s hats. The cougar in the family narrows her green eyes at Adrian from behind a veiled cocktail hat.
I recently started doing this combination of imagining and remembering, in part, out of a compulsion to constantly challenge my brain. It’s less frustrating than metric conversions are because I already know so much about these people, both as a collection of colorful individuals, and as a clan. They have such a prodigious genealogical memory that the past is hard-wired into their present. Julia, and the familial spirit embodied in this magnificent old house, is helping me to open up my own past; to unblock the dangerous, clogged artery that is starving off my future. It’s not that I think I’m going to die soon, but rather, I’ve accepted the fact that I now have to live with that probability. I’ll always live with the sensation of watching an hourglass drain. But I am incomplete without a beginning. My brothers and sisters, on the other hand, fear that the past will rush in and overwhelm them. The epitaph on Uncle Jim’s grave directly challenges the bliss of ignorance with its lament about forgetting. It is indeed profoundly sad to forget who you are, but, I will argue, how much more so never to have known?
Chapter 2
January 2007 (eight months earlier)
David
We were at Taina’s favorite New York City café. It was four in the afternoon, and she and Adrian ordered Reuben sandwiches. Without looking at the menu, I said, “Three eggs, scrambled, please. And a pint of that Winterfest ale.”
Adrian moaned. “In Puerto Rico they would say, ‘por eso es que tu estás tan flaco, nene.’ ”
“Translate.”
“Dude. You need to eat more fat.” Adrian was sitting next to me and he shrugged and folded his hands behind his head. He studied every woman who passed on the sidewalk outside. Taina had her back to the window and looked over her shoulder to see what had attracted his attention. She put her fingertips to her forehead as if she had a headache. “Adrian, you can’t go for more than three seconds without scanning for booty.” Adrian sat up and looked into her eyes for a couple of seconds, giving her a defiant little squint. A few seconds later, a group of girls with NYU sweatshirts began to cross the street in our direction. Silently, I counted: one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three—his willpower crumbled and his eyes betrayed him as they ping-ponged back and forth between Taina and the approaching girls. I laughed and high-fived Taina, who shook her head. Adrian raised an eyebrow and said, “Looking is normal, okay? Every man does it. Even nice, loyal men like your husband.”
“Loyal my ass. Doug cheated on me emotionally,” she said. “Of course I’m insecure.”
Adrian’s back curved, as if someone had put a weight upon his shoulders. “What the hell is this ‘emotional cheating’ anyway? He either banged someone or he didn’t. We all know he didn’t. So what’s the problem? That he talked to a female coworker?”
“Basically,” Taina said.
Adrian put a hand over his heart. “That dog!”
I have to agree with Rico Suave on this one. Our brother-in-law Doug was having a hell of a time getting over our crazy sister. He must have become addicted to her never-ending drama. Taina had bangles that jingled, leather that creaked, curls that bounced, lips that glistened, and high, meat
y cleavage that shook just by her pressing her teeth together. Taina was nothing less than a force of nature.
Our beers arrived and I took a sip. “I agree with Adrian,” I said. You’re pathologically jealous, Taina. Doug is crazy about you. So what if he poured his heart out to another detective. People do that at work all the time and it doesn’t mean anything. In fact, I bet the poor woman is so sick of hearing about you she could puke.”
Taina turned her eye on me. “So what’s your excuse?”
“Me?”
“Yes you.” She said with a tough-girl shake of the head. “You two are the princes of the royal court of romantic dysfunction. At least I got to the altar. And you, Adrian? Phew.” She drew an invisible upward spiral with her index finger. “Your fear of intimacy is pathological. You go from pick up to breakup in sixty seconds.”
“I’m like a Ferrari.”
Taina couldn’t help a small smile. Yeah, Adrian’s a lot more like a Ferrari than any of us care to admit, but we try not to encourage him.
Exasperated with the same old discussion, I dropped my forehead into my hand. “We just go around and around in the same circles. How messed up we all are, blah blah blah.”
Adrian got a serious look on his face and lowered his voice. “We’re all doing great emotionally. Considering that we were abandoned in such a public way.” He sat back, then leaned in again and whispered, “Each one of us has embraced the mission to learn to honor ourselves and each other,” he pointed at Taina and me, “even though someone thought we were disposable. Do you think it’s any coincidence that you turned out to be so talented at art, or that my music career is taking off?” His hands separated and he held an invisible guitar, fingers plucking chords. “David. You love your career. You have a passion for hiking and you have a fantastic girlfriend—”
“Had,” I corrected.
“Sorry. Had,” he said. “And Holly has her boys . . .” He shot Taina a reproachful look. “Any one of us could be in jail or dead or shooting up drugs. But the very worst that’s happened is that we have some trust issues.” The waiter brought my $15 plate of scrambled eggs.
Taina held a finger up and pursed her lips. “What about Ray?”
“Isolated case,” Adrian said, throwing his cloth napkin across the table. “He was fine until his dad left his mom. Then he started to drink. The point is that despite our weird entrance into the world, so much good has come our way and is still pouring in.” He put his hands out, wiggling his fingers as if all those things were raining down, gold coins flowing between his fingers, and he was trying to catch it all.
Just as Tai’s and Adrian’s fancy sandwiches arrived, someone at the next table said, “Are you Adrian Vega?” Next thing we knew, Adrian was chatting happily with a group of women from Miami. There was the clatter of chairs as the women stood up and crowded in to have their picture taken with him. After ten minutes, Adrian extricated himself from his fans and came back to us. He had turned down pleas from the Miamians to join them for drinks later on. I saw two of the women lean over and size up Taina.
“I love that about you,” Taina said, reaching across the table for his hand. “We always come first.” Adrian winked at her. His starfish tattoo is a spiny, crawling monstrosity that has wrapped itself around his wrist, ten or more times the original size of the green drawings. Adrian and I both have the first initial of our siblings’ names floating over each leg of the starfish. The order of mine is random, A H R T D, whereas Adrian’s is ordered so it spells DARTH (he was into Star Wars as a kid).
“Make it move,” Taina said, staring intently at his tattoo. Adrian made a fist and squeezed the muscles in his hand and forearm, animating the starfish so it looked like it was moving. Taina laughed and clapped.
Adrian said, “Show us your little dinky tattoo, Flaco.”
I rolled my eyes and held it out. “I want the record to show that mine is actual size.”
Taina rubbed it with the yolk of her fingers, passing large, square blocks of white-tipped fingernails over my skin. She held up her own version, a geometric star that looks more like a crystal.
Adrian says, “It looks like a frozen crab.”
Taina pulled her hand away. “It’s art.”
“It’s brilliant,” I said. “It’s Taina’s expression of how our abandonment made her feel.”
“Yeah,” she said, slapping the table. “Thank you.”
Adrian screwed his face up and took a closer look at the tattoo. “You are pretty crabby.”
“She’s frozen,” I say. “Emotionally. Not fully alive.”
Adrian tapped the table with his knuckles. “Ah, bueno, forgive me, then,” he said, pointing at my chest. “It’s a scar that we each interpret.” He raised his beer and offered a toast. “To our biological parents,” he said. “May they rot in hell.”
He and Taina clinked glasses, but I put mine down. “I won’t drink to that. We don’t know what happened.”
What happened. What happened. What happened. The words echoed inside my head. I felt a vague headache coming on again. I hadn’t been taking my breakup with Julia very well, and I’d recently experienced the first nauseating migraines in my life. I had started carrying a bottle of over-the-counter migraine pills in my jacket pocket. I popped it open and downed three of them with the beer. I went to ask the waiter for coffee, hoping the extra caffeine might help, but I couldn’t think of the world for “coffee.” It was the weirdest thing. After a few seconds, the word “café” popped up.
“Are you okay?” Taina asked. “You look puzzled.”
“Mind if we go home soon?” I said. “I’d like to take a little nap before the concert.”
That night, Adrian performed with his band in an industrial warehouse that was completely transformed into a swanky lounge as part of a liquor promotion. The venue provided a steady stream of concerts and celebrity events for a month. By the time we got there, the house was packed. Taina happily accepted exotic cocktails from roaming waiters. We were amused, as we always were, to witness the effect Adrian had on his audience. He and his band were mostly a Miami act, so this was an excellent place to perform and expand their fan base in New York.
I took two tiny sips of seltzer water. I still didn’t feel well. I couldn’t stop my mind from circling something. What, I didn’t know. That was the strange part, like trying to remember someone’s name, or an important number; something just beyond the reach of memory, something as they say, on the tip of my tongue . . . what?
Beside me, Taina was looking up at Adrian adoringly, mouthing the words to his song, “Olvídame,” which I think means “forget me.” She doesn’t know any more Spanish than I do, but she makes it her business to know Adrian’s songs. I saw her lips spread in a slow, Mona Lisa–like smirk, saw her eyelids droop into that dopey-eyed look that Julia used to give me now and then. I had to look away. It’s not right for a sister to look at a brother like that. I felt something shadowy spread across my soul; it struggled, batting its wings against my insides, until the music shifted. The lights lowered and went out, then burst back in a shower of white spots that swam over the dancing crowd. The music got louder and a brass section popped up out of nowhere, playing a salsa number that animated every set of hips in the room. I spun Taina around and we swung out the new moves Adrian had taught us earlier at Taina’s apartment. We did a slick move called “sombrero” where the girl goes under your arm and both dancers’ arms slide across each other in one smooth, elongated, and fluid motion. We danced until I felt the sweat dripping down my face. Taina opened her eyes wide and shouted something into my ear.
“What?”
“I thought he wasn’t starting until . . . !”
“What?” I turned my head, hoping the other ear might work better.
“I thought he wasn’t starting until eleven!” The tap of a drumstick on a metal disk reminded me of the sound a locker makes when you slam it shut. And that’s when it happened. Taina says I just stood there, looking up at
the stage with a blank look on my face.
High school. I was facing a little metal plaque with the number “1140.” I turned the white-on-black numbers of the combination lock dial. Three clockwise, eleven counterclockwise, turn back and stop at seventeen. Click. The lock released. Flesh-colored narrow metal door opening. Book spines were visible on a shelf inside. A blue-and-white wool varsity jacket hung on a metal hook. The vague smell of cold cuts wafted up from the bottom of the locker. On the door, a schedule of soccer meets.
Taina bumped my hip and said, “Wake up!” Adrian hit a high note and threw his head back. The percussion was building and the women in the front were screaming for him. A pair of panties hit the keyboard player on the head and he didn’t remove them, just kept playing with them dangling over his eyes. Adrian was glistening with sweat, in that trancelike state he goes into when he’s playing; his hands move expertly across the spine of the guitar.
I was both nauseous and dazzled. I wondered, for about a millionth of a second, if I might have fainted or had a kind of mini-stroke, but you don’t have either of those things while standing up, do you?
“I need air,” I said, grabbing my jacket and turning to look for the nearest exit. I hoped that Adrian didn’t see me leave, but I had to escape the noise and confinement. I went outside to an alleyway, taking deep gulps of cold air. I found a dumpster and hung my head over it.
I felt Taina’s hand on my back. “Drink too much?”
Stay with Me Page 4