Barefoot Dogs

by Antonio Ruiz-Camacho

  WOW

  He said it was far and tiny indeed. I said, now it’s time for bed.

  He didn’t mention you again until that Thursday. I had no idea where you were and every day I’d wonder why you didn’t even call. When he said you’d checked his feet and hands and face to make sure I was taking good care of him while you were away, I dismissed his daydream, his hallucination as a coping of sorts. But later that night, when Laureano was asleep, I climbed into the tree house to see if you were still there, if I could see you too. I couldn’t fit. I didn’t remember how small it was. How did you manage? How did you sneak through the house without my noticing? Why were you visiting only him?

  • • •

  I knew that one day you’d be gone for good. I knew that in the end, I’d raise Laureano on my own. We were twenty-five years apart. I had no doubt one day I’d have to give Laureano the news of your final departure. I’d played the scene in my mind so many times. I’d even practiced, trying different faces before a mirror like in a crappy flick: devastated, mad, resigned. Always the same line:

  LAUREANO, DADDY’S GONE TO HEAVEN

  You insisted on having him baptized and sending him to a Catholic school, so I thought that if I said:

  LAUREANO, DADDY HAS DIED

  the first thing he’d ask would be whether you’d made it. I knew I’d hesitate, and that would mortify him. In my rehearsals, you were granted instant forgiveness, eternal salvation.

  I liked to think that once you were gone, I wouldn’t have the nerve to keep sugarcoating shit for him, like I still do. I’d see myself becoming the badass honest mom I’ve never been:

  No, Laureano,

  GOD DOESN’T EXIST

  and neither do heaven nor hell. That’s the bullshit Daddy wanted to believe in because it made things easier for him. And, no, Mommy and Daddy were never married.

  That wedding picture on my bedside table is not authentic, it’s

  THE FAKEST WEDDING PICTURE EVER

  The first time you asked to see a picture of our nuptial ceremony, I rented the dress at a costume shop and Daddy dressed in a tuxedo that wasn’t bought for the occasion or anything stupid like that, and we got that picture taken at a photo studio near his office at lunchtime. And when I saw myself in that dress I wished we’d actually married, and when the photographer prompted us to smile I had to fight back the tears and I thought

  WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING

  in this hideous dress? Why am I ruining my life like this? And Daddy was constantly away from home not because of his job, but because he had another family and he lived with them, even after his wife died. Yes. Daddy loved you, Laureano. I think he really did, but he didn’t love you enough. He didn’t love me enough either. He said he did, but he didn’t. He loved us the same way people like him love pedigree dogs, expensive cars, time-shares in Acapulco.

  WE WERE HIS PETS

  an extravagant hobby he could afford.

  And yet, I loved him. I really fucking did. It wasn’t a matter of being smart or idiotic or brave or weak or strong. I only hope this never happens to you, my son. That you know you’re falling fully, immensely, grandiosely, irreparably for someone who’s going to fuck your life wholly, and still you can’t help yourself.

  • • •

  Laureano finished school the following week and I enrolled him in English summer camp, so that I could continue to work in the mornings. On Sunday evening I called my parents, for the first time in years, to see if things were different now. For some reason I thought that my father would be aware of your disappearance and that he might have changed his mind. Perhaps he’d want to meet his grandson. Perhaps he’d even ask me to let Laureano stay with them over the summer. When he heard my voice on the line, he asked

  ARE YOU STILL FUCKING THAT MAN

  I wanted to tell him that you’d been gone for over a month, that I didn’t know if you’d dumped me or died or what, but I just said yes, I was still with you.

  SO YOU’RE STILL A WHORE

  he said, and hung up.

  Every evening, after dinner, Laureano would ask to go to the tree house so that he could play with you. Upon his return, he’d brag about all the fun things you guys had done together. Once, he brought his stuffed animals with him, not only Denver and Pompeya and Pensacola, but also José Alfredo, the boar; Acambay, the T. rex; and Blue Demon, the chimp. He crammed them all into his Spider-Man backpack, as if he were leaving home, and I watched him cross the backyard and rush up the rubber ladder at full speed, the backpack bouncing sideways against his scapulae. You dashing out to you. When he returned he said you had played Chapultepec Zoo. You’d incarnated the zookeeper and he the vet, and together you had cured all the zoo animals of a rare ailment that impeded them from chewing leaves. Another evening, he packed in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back and Little Red Riding Hood. Later he told me that you’d read them aloud, giving each character a different voice, performing the stories as if you were onstage, as many times as he’d asked.

  I’d stay in the living room, looking from the distance at the tree house, trying to get a peek of the activity inside, waiting to see your suntanned, slightly wrinkled face appear through any one of those tiny windows, but nothing ever moved in there. Once I tiptoed across the backyard and got as close to the tree as I could, trying to overhear your allegedly delightful dad-son quality time, but the tree house was quiet, as if it had been empty forever, and the silence was only broken every now and then by the chirping of a squab calling his mother or the howl of a police siren coming from the deep of the city, large and threatening and sorrowful.

  The next evening, when he was packing his stuffed animals, getting ready for another fun day at the zoo with his daddy, I asked him when you’d returned from China. We were in his room. His backpack was on the bed beside him, and he was pushing Denver in by the hoofs to make him fit. He looked up at the map above his bed, then turned to me with confused eyes, as if considering the question for the first time. He said he didn’t know, and kept stuffing animals into the bag. As he walked away I realized I’d learned to hurt him without leaving marks, next time I might as well whip him on the soles of his feet. That night, he didn’t report back to me about your trip. I didn’t press further, and neither one of us mentioned China again.

  • • •

  I tried calling your office. Your assistant sounded frazzled, like she’d been through a horrible accident that had left her teeth broken and she’d had to keep them in her mouth. She inquired who I was, what I wanted. She didn’t talk anymore—she’d learned to bark. I said I was your chiropodist and was calling because you’d missed a couple of appointments and you had another one coming up next week. She didn’t reply. Rainy season had blasted the city at last. I could hear the vehicles swooshing against the flooded street in front of my office. Your assistant said you would be out of town for a while but that you’d get my message. She said it in a way that made me want to hang up. But would you be back in time for your next appointment? It was Friday, and I said you were scheduled for Monday. She told me again to leave a message.

  On Saturday morning, Laureano said he wanted to go to the pool. Let’s get out of town for a change, I said. I wanted to rid my skin of this sensation of crumpled brown paper bag that was eating it. I wanted to let the foreign blue and cloudless sky of the rest of the world rub our bones with its aliveness. Let’s go south, let’s go for some heat! We packed towels and swimsuits and beach toys, and headed to Cuernavaca. Laureano even brought his stuffed animals. He grew excited about the possibility of taking them on a safari adventure; he said you wouldn’t believe it when he told you all about the trip. I suggested we stop for lunch at one of the famous quesadilla stands—of course, you’ve no idea what I’m talking about—along the road right where Insurgentes ends and the Federal Highway begins, where there are trees taller than buildings and some parts of nature haven’t been
taken over by angst yet. But the traffic knot on Periférico grew tighter as we drove farther south. When we reached our exit, we couldn’t continue. It was blocked by police patrols and cranes from the city’s disease control department. Men in white overalls and blue breathing masks stood atop the cranes, retrieving dozens of human limbs that hung from the trees by the side of Periférico, as if severed arms and legs from bodies no one would ever locate were the city’s newest fruit. I’d never seen anything like it before, only read about it in the paper, watched it on TV, refusing to give full credit to such reports. I couldn’t help wondering whether any of those extremities were yours and whether that was the reason you’d disappeared, but the thought was too painful to bear. I wondered whether the mothers of those who’d lost their appendages knew what had happened to their sons, and I felt sorry for them. Laureano asked what these white men in masks were doing. I said, nothing,

  COVER YOUR EYES

  and I threw my copper cashmere cardigan over his head and ordered him to remain covered until I said otherwise. After a great while we reached the next exit. I took it and parked the car, my heart thumping like a boom box. I wondered why I’d told my father that I was still with you. I wondered why I was ever with you, and I felt you growing exotic inside of me. I wondered what Laureano had seen before I covered his eyes, and what kind of feelings, what concept of the world he’d nurture when he understood this moment. I remembered there was a Radisson on the other side of Periférico, and I told Laureano we couldn’t go to Cuernavaca, but we’d still go to the pool. I stroked his legs and then his shoulders and his back, as if it were freezing outside. I pulled him close to me, straining my body across the gearshift to embrace him. He asked if he could uncover his head now. Little you’s voice muffled and shivery. He said the cardigan was itchy and making him hot.

  On Monday morning I called your office again. I explained once more about your appointments, and your assistant repeated what she had said on Friday, like an automatic voice-mail greeting. I said that on your last visit we’d taken some samples of your foot skin and I needed to discuss the results with you urgently. She ignored my absurd excuse and said: Dr. Guevara,

  WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEAVE A MESSAGE FOR HIM

  She sounded warm and sympathetic this time, as if she knew me well and worried for me, like my mother did when she still spoke to me. I tried to imagine her at her desk, answering my call, and I realized I knew very little about her. I knew she was old, like you. The only time you’d talked about her you said she’d been working for you since 1970. I said it was the year I was born. You thought about that for a moment, as if considering a certain logic between both facts, and you said you’d never replaced her with someone younger because you didn’t want your wife to think you could cheat on her with your own assistant. Your wife was still alive; Laureano did not yet exist. I thought our thing was simply something crazy and adventurous, a fling without consequence. Still, it hurt me to hear you talking about your assistant like that. You didn’t add that you’d kept her because she was good at her job or because she was loyal or because she knew you like she inhabited your brain. I realized you had a capacity for disposing of people like they were ziplock bags, but I considered this trait of yours the same way I did tragedy or bad luck, only affecting other people, never myself.

  I was running out of options, so I asked to talk with your oldest son instead. She remained quiet on the line.

  WHO ARE YOU?

  she asked, finally. Her voice soured, heavy and low, back in bitter bitch mode. I said I wanted to know what had happened to you. I said you hadn’t come home in weeks. I said I had a six-year-old who was losing his mind because he was missing you terribly, and I needed to know what was going on. She went quiet and put me on hold, her silence replaced by a sugary and unnerving rendition of Ravel’s Boléro. Several minutes passed. I heard my 10:00 a.m. appointment arrive in the waiting room—an old, chatty Spanish émigré named Silverio, Don Silverio, who’d tell me stories during therapy about his happy childhood in Teruel before the Civil War tore his family apart and he was sent to Mexico, along with other children, away from their families for what became forever. Your assistant came back on the line and asked for a different number where I could be reached. I gave her my cell phone and she said, no, she needed my home number. She sounded like a different person. Your assistant, or whoever was now on the line, said they would call me back in thirty minutes. I’d better be there, this better be real. When I hung up my legs were shaking. I started to feel sick, a hole growing in my stomach. I rushed to the bathroom to throw up but nothing came out; I saw my body jerking in front of the toilet, stooping in spasms. I saw it from outside, as if my body and my mind had split into two different entities.

  I refreshed myself, went back to the office, grabbed my purse, and dashed away. On my way out I told Esmeralda, my assistant, to cancel my appointments for the day. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Don Silverio rise from his chair, his big, plump, freckled, rosy hands gripping the handle of his walking cane, producing the bright, hopeful grin he always did when he saw me, but I didn’t stop to salute him. I didn’t know what I could possibly say.

  • • •

  Laureano was already playing in the ball pit when your other son arrived. I’d chosen a table right by the window, so that I could observe Laureano through the glass. Victoriano sat down across from me. He studied me in silence. He looked fascinated and disgusted by my looks and my age. I felt like a painting by Francis Bacon, repulsive and riveting. I admired the features of his sandpapered face, searching for traces of you. Physically he must have resembled his mother. He was handsome and dull in ways you aren’t, but he was you nonetheless. You’d once mentioned he was older than I was, but he looked younger. His presence radiated singleness, childlessness, all the flaws that distinguished him and distressed you. But he’d inherited your immense cognac eyes, and the corners of your lips, turned up, as if pointing to the sky.

  Victoriano looked out the window, searching for his half brother, and spotted him immediately. I could see it in the way his facial muscles tensed and his body shifted position. That moment you find yourself in someone else. The horrifying instant life reveals itself before your eyes.

  He stared, in silence. Outside, in the ball pit, Laureano was a firework. Your son’s gaze softened for a moment. He looked taken, looking at you.

  He asked Laureano’s age. I replied and he nodded, his eyes shut for a moment. Then a grin. The same grin you’d offer before uttering a cruelty. Before he could say anything, I asked whether he knew anything about Laureano or me. I knew he didn’t. I just wanted to hurt him first, even though he had the upper hand.

  He didn’t answer. He asked

  DOES HE CARRY OUR NAME

  I hated you in that moment for making me go through this humiliation. And I hated myself for letting it happen.

  YOU DON’T KNOW YOUR FATHER, DO YOU

  I said. Victoriano looked away from Laureano, whose acrobatics he’d been chasing around the ball pit, and looked me in the eye. He said he couldn’t care less about Laureano or me. He wasn’t there because of us, but because of his family, yours. He needed to know if Laureano had your name, his name. I asked what difference that could possibly make. He said the steps he’d follow to take care of us depended on my answer. He didn’t sound menacing or concerned, just arrogant. I asked what he was talking about. I said he didn’t need to take care of us. I hadn’t called your office looking for help. I just wanted to know where you were. He looked at me strangely. I felt his contempt. But there was something else. I said, please, I need to know

  WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM

  He crossed his arms, rested his elbows on the table, averted his gaze, and sighed. He stared back at me with the same strange expression, full of rage and sadness, and looked away, shaking his head. He whispered: little motherfucker, and chuckled sourly. He said little motherfucker almost paternally, almos
t stoically, as if he were acknowledging your motherfuckerness, or his, or Laureano’s, or all of them, the inherent motherfuckerness of all men, as if celebrating it and suffering it all the same. I struggled to remain in control, and not to let my eyes betray the terror I felt for me and for Laureano and for whatever could happen next. Then he got serious, he looked at me again, and then he said it. He said you’d been kidnapped the last Thursday of May, on your way home from work. He said they knew very little else about your whereabouts, only that they had proof. I asked what kind of proof, but he refused to elaborate. He said it flatly, as if he were the mere herald of an official dispatch and not your son, but his eyes betrayed him. They brimmed with fear and despair. I realized you’d disappeared from them the same day you’d disappeared from us, and that made me resent you less. I thought of you, alone and afraid, and for a moment I felt I’d do anything to help you, to keep you from suffering. I looked at our son, smaller and wilder than ever. I couldn’t fight back the tears. I sobbed quietly, straining my neck to face the window, covering the side of my face with my hand so that your son wouldn’t see me cry.

  In the reflection of the window, everything inside McDonald’s swelled, deformed and translucent, bright red, yellow, white. In a separate room, a birthday party was taking place. A woman from the staff walked into the room holding a pink Barbie-themed cake with a number 5 for a candle. The group burst out in screams of excitement when they saw it and started singing “Las Mañanitas” in unison; even the birthday girl did, but I didn’t hear any of that. All I could hear was other kids yelling, the buzz of customers going through their meals and shuffling around, and rancid pop music from the eighties blasting from speakers, Chaka Khan and Sheena Easton and Julio Iglesias, one after the other, while my watery eyes sought refuge from your sons and from your fate, from the motherfuckerness of all of it, in that lucky girl’s birthday party which I couldn’t hear but I could see and I could feel. I envied that poor little girl and I envied her family and her friends, and in that moment I wished that the wishes she’d wish when she blew out her candle wouldn’t come true.