by Michael Nava
“Hey,” he said. “You all right, man?”
“Is this your yard? Sorry. I didn’t mean to trespass.”
“Don’t worry about that. You don’t look so good.”
“I just have to sit for a minute.”
His face came into focus; skin the color of walnuts, short curly reddish-brown hair, a darker goatee flecked with gray. His eyes were narrowed in what appeared to be the permanent squint of someone who spent a lot of time in the sun. When he stooped down, I saw they were green. I guessed he was a few years younger than me but slightly more battered; deep lines bracketed his mouth, the flesh sagged beneath his eyes. He was long-legged, with a workingman’s heavily muscled arms and chest. A potbelly pressed against his shirt. He grinned as if we were old friends and not two strangers meeting under peculiar circumstances.
“What happened, man? You tie one on down at the corner cantina?”
“I’m recovering from a heart attack,” I said. “I went for a walk and ran out of gas. I’ll be fine in a couple of minutes.”
His eyes were thoughtful “Heart attack, huh? You seem way too young.”
“They run in the family.”
“I’m Johnny,” he said, then quickly amended. “John.”
“Henry Rios,” I said. “Are you DeLeon or son?”
“Huh?”
“Your hat.”
“I’m the son. Where do you live, Henry?”
I pointed to the top of the hill. “Up there.”
He straightened himself up. “Come on, I’ll drive you.”
“If it’s no trouble.”
He shrugged, pulled me up from the curb with a powerful arm and pointed to a red Ford pickup truck in the driveway. “That’s my truck. Can you make it?”
“Sure,” I said. “You live here?”
“No, I’m a contractor. The owner wants to add a master bedroom and bath. I dropped by to give him an estimate. Let me get that door for you.”
“I got it,” I said, but not fast enough. He opened the door, helped me up into the cab, and closed the door behind me. I wanted to reassure him that I wasn’t about to drop dead, but I couldn’t really vouch for it. “Thanks, John.”
He looked at me for a moment and said, “I’m thinking maybe I should get you to an emergency room instead of taking you home.”
“It’s not that bad, really.”
“If you say so,” he said, then went around the truck and climbed in. As he reversed down the driveway, he asked, “How long you been out of the hospital?”
“Four days.”
He looked at me incredulously. “You should be in bed, man, not trying to hike up hills.”
“My doctor wants me to be up and around,” I said. “Take the next left. It’s three houses from the corner on the right. There’s my driveway.”
He pulled in, and before I could thank him, got out of the truck, came around and opened the door for me.
“Thanks for the ride.”
“Someone inside to take care of you?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I’m coming in,” he said simply.
Part of me wanted to shrug him off, but then I took stock of myself and figured it might not be a bad idea if he hung around for a couple of minutes until I was sure I was all right. “All right,” I said. “I appreciate it. Thank you.”
Once inside, I asked, “You want something to drink? I don’t have any liquor in the house, but there’s lemonade and cranberry juice and some other stuff.”
“Lemonade would be great. I’ll get it, you sit down.”
“It’s quicker if I do it,” I said, heading into the kitchen.
“I’m not in any hurry,” he said.
When I came out, he was in the living room, standing at the fireplace holding a framed picture of Josh and me. He put it back on the mantel with a slightly guilty grin and accepted the glass I held out to him.
“That’s a sturdy-looking deck,” he said, glancing through the glass doors. “You do the work?”
“No,” I said. “I can change a light bulb and hang a picture. After that I have to call one of you guys. You want to go out?”
We went outside and stood at the railing, looking across the canyon. John said, “You got a real nice setup here.”
“Where do you live?”
“Up on Mount Washington,” he said. “It’s like this, but wilder and even quieter. I spend all day around saws and hammers and whatnot. When I go home I don’t want to hear nothing but birds and the wind in the trees.”
“You must not have kids.”
“They’re grown,” he said. “My boy’s a junior up at Cal. My daughter’s married. I’m a granddad.”
“So it’s just your wife and you.”
He gulped some lemonade. “Divorced.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
He turned his back to the canyon and said, “It’s okay.” He seemed to be thinking something over carefully. I knew what it was. The picture of Josh, me alone up here with no apparent family. He had figured out I was gay. My stomach clenched. I’d been out of the closet for a long time, but this moment always set me on edge because I could never predict how the news would be received by some new person who entered my life, even as briefly as this nice man with his sad eyes. He showed no visible disgust, but sometimes they didn’t at first, but would then say something stupid or foolish or evil. And what had been a pleasant conversation would become an argument.
“How come your boyfriend’s not here to take care of you?” he asked. I heard nothing in his voice except concern that I’d been left alone in such bad shape.
“Josh died awhile ago,” I said.
“AIDS?”
“Yeah.”
“Man, that’s rough. I’m real sorry.”
He’s a genuinely nice guy, I thought, but I didn’t want to be having this conversation. Although I no longer felt in imminent danger of keeling over, I was still exhausted. “I need to lie down for a while.”
He must have seen from the fatigue in my face that I wasn’t blowing him off. He nodded and said, “I’ll wash up these glasses and get out of here.”
I stretched out on the couch, listening to him shuffle around in the kitchen. He turned the tap off and then came back into the living room, sat at the edge of the couch and said, “You gonna be all right?”
“Yeah, I get tired, then it passes.”
“You need anything?”
“Thanks, John, but I’ll be fine. My friends drop by and check up on me.”
“That’s good,” he said. He stood up. “It was real nice meeting you, Henry.”
“Same here. Thanks for getting me home. I’d still be sitting on the curb if you hadn’t come by.”
“That’s cool,” he said. “Listen, I think I’m going to get that job, so I’ll be in the neighborhood. Maybe I could drop by too, huh? See how you’re doing.”
“Sure,” I said, fading. “That would be great.”
He smiled. “All right, then, I’ll be seeing you.” I fell asleep as soon as he left, and when I woke up a couple of hours later it was as if I had dreamed the whole thing.
When Elena called that night, she heard the fatigue in my voice and forced the story of my expedition to the video store out of me.
“Oh, Henry,” she said. “I’m flying down tomorrow.”
“No,” I said. “I talked to Hayward and he said my panic was psychological, not physical. He told me he wouldn’t have released me from the hospital if I couldn’t handle it.” To forestall further conversation about my health, I asked, “How are things going with Vicky?”
She accepted the change of subject. “I mentioned to her your idea about reporting Pete being in violation of his parole, but she said no.”
“Why?”
“She gave a kind of garbled explanation,” Elena said. “She’s very evasive.”
Alarms went off. “About what?”
“Pete,” she said. “The bruises on her face are still visible
from the last time he hit her, but I think—”
“She wants to go back to him?” I suggested.
“I’ve walked in on a couple of furtive phone calls,” she replied.
“To whom?”
“I can’t be sure, but who else would it be but him?”
I summarized my conversation with Edith about domestic violence, omitting, of course, any reference to anyone’s rap sheet. “You have to be prepared for the possibility she’ll want to hook up with him again.”
“Really, Henry,” she replied impatiently. “You talk as if I don’t know anything about women who put up with violent husbands.”
“I didn’t know you did,” I said, slightly piqued.
“Have you forgotten?” she asked incredulously. “We were raised by one.”
Our mother. And then I understood how deeply my sister was already invested in her daughter and her daughter’s fate.
“You think it’s a case of history repeating itself?”
“Not if I can help it,” she replied.
Afterward, it occurred to me that what Edith had described as my hostility to my as-yet-unmet niece might have something to do with my memories of my mother. Another weak woman in thrall to a violent man, with a child whom no one was protecting. Yes, I’d seen that movie before.
5.
MY MOTHER HAD BEEN DEAD for more than twenty years. She had been so self-effacing it was difficult for me to remember what she looked like, though I could still see her hands, covered with flour from making tortillas or clasped tightly together in prayer as she knelt beside her bed. When I was very small, I prayed beside her, but as her God seemed unable or unwilling to control my father’s rages, I soon drifted away from her and her faith. In the prison of my childhood, she was halfway between an inmate and a guard. Sometimes she was the object of my father’s fury, but more often she seemed to be his collaborator, making excuses for him, admonishing me to stay out of his way, denying the reality of his brutality by pretending he was no more than an average disciplinarian even when he left me black and blue. The time he broke my arm, it was my mother who took me to the emergency room and told the doctor I had fallen from a tree. My hatred of my father kept him vivid in my memory for decades after I had left home, but my mother had faded away, leaving only the faint residue of contempt. Adult life had taught me that she was as much his victim as I was, and he himself was a victim of a culture in which Mexicans were viewed as a simple race of gardeners and maids. With his thick accent, dark skin, and Indian features, every encounter with the outside world was an assault on my father’s dignity. Unable to strike back at the Americans on whom he depended for his living, he took it out on his American son. I had come to terms, if not peace, with my father, but I had simply dismissed my mother without trying to make sense of my feelings about her. Perhaps this niece had tapped into them and maybe that was why, sight unseen, I was ready to think the worst of her.
I didn’t have long to ponder the connection between Vicky and my mother before my sister called with a development that seemed to render the issue moot. She and Joanne had gone away for the weekend on a long-planned vacation. When they’d returned, Vicky and Angel were gone.
Before I could stop myself, I asked, “Anything missing?”
In a flat voice, she replied, “Some cash. A credit card.” Before I could respond, she added, “Don’t tell me to call the police, Henry.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“I would have given her money.”
“Do you think she went back to her husband?”
“I don’t know.” Something in her tone told me she was equivocating.
“That seems the likeliest explanation,” I prodded. “You said you thought she had called him—”
She cut me off. “The Thursday before we left, I had a long talk with Vicky. I tried to explain why I put her up for adoption. It was painful for both of us, but I thought we were getting close to some kind of understanding. Then I reminded her about the time I had gone to the group home when she was fifteen. She didn’t remember it at first, but once she did, she was furious that I had found her and then left her again.”
“What did you say?”
“What could I say? When I put her up for adoption, I was struggling to start my own life. Giving her up was the best choice I could make for both of us, but I couldn’t justify giving her up a second time. That was just fear. I couldn’t explain it, I could only ask her to forgive me.”
“How did she respond?”
“She told me she was sexually molested in that group home, that it was probably going on around the time I came to visit. When Joanne and I returned from the weekend, Vicky and Angel were gone.”
“You think that’s why she left?”
“I think she decided her chances were better with a husband who beats her than a mother who deserts her,” she said.
“If she went back to him, Elena, it’s because that’s her pattern.”
“You didn’t see her face when I told her,” she replied.
“When she’s had time to think about it, she’ll realize that whatever happened in the past, you were willing now to take her in and help her.”
“Joanne says the same thing,” she replied. “I just want to know that she’s all right.”
“Have you canceled the credit card?”
“No,” she said. “Why?”
“Don’t cancel it for a while and find out what charges she makes on it. That may lead to her.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” she said. “Thank you, Henry. I haven’t even asked you how you’re feeling.”
“Better every day,” I replied.
In fact, however, three weeks after the heart attack there were many days when my body simply stalled and it was all I could do to stagger out of bed and into the living room, where I would fall asleep on the couch only to be roused in the afternoon by whichever friend was dropping by that day to check up on me. After eating something, I went back to bed, and when I opened my eyes, it was the next morning. I was having that kind of day when, one afternoon, I was awakened from the couch by the doorbell.
I thought it might be the pair of Mormon missionary boys I’d spotted Mrs. Byrne running off her property earlier. She was a born-again harridan, and in her book, Mormons were no better than devil-worshipers. They were not going to get a much friendlier reception from me. I composed my face into a scowl and opened the door. John DeLeon smiled and said, “Hey, how are you doing?”
He was wearing pretty much the same clothes as he had when he’d given me a lift home a week earlier—maybe the flannel shirt was a different plaid—and looked like he had just come off work.
“John,” I said. I canceled the scowl and put up a hasty—and I’m sure unconvincing—smile of my own. “I’m fine. How are you?”
He wore a small gold hoop earring in his right ear, almost hidden by a graying lock of hair. I felt the glow of his physical vitality. Rarely had I met a person of such palpable warmth. It made me all the more aware of the chill of my ill-health.
He took in my pajamas and bathrobe. “Am I catching you at a bad time?”
“I was asleep.”
He stood irresolutely at the door. “I thought maybe you might want to get a bite to eat.”
“That sounds great, but can I take a rain check? I’m really not up to it.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Hey, I’m really sorry if I woke you up.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“Okay, then. Later.”
“Good-bye, John.”
I stood in the doorway and watched him head down the driveway to his truck. There was something in the movement of his shoulders—the momentary droop of a small humiliation—that made me think this visit had not been as casual or as easy for him as he had made it sound. I thought about him driving off feeling bad because his kind impulse had been rejected, while I wandered back into my house for another long evening of dozing and waking and feeling sorry for myself.
“Hey, John,” I said. “Wait a minute.”
He turned around and walked back. “Yeah?”
“Actually, I think it would do me good to get out of the house for a while.”
“I won’t keep you out late.” He grinned. “I know this great place not too far from here.”
“Come in for a second while I get dressed,” I said, and stood aside to let him pass.
I angled my feet around the toolbox on the floor of the cab. A medallion of the Virgin of Guadalupe dangled from the rearview mirror, and stuck in the sun visor was a prayer card that depicted Michael the Archangel with a fiery sword and Satan prostrate at his feet. We rolled down the hill, past the red-faced Mormon kids, in the warm May twilight. A baseball game was playing on the radio in the background. He was telling me that he’d been hired at the house where he’d picked me up the other morning.
“Should take about three months,” he said. “Damn!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Braves scored.”
“What?”
He glanced at me. “The game. Dodgers playing the Braves. You don’t follow baseball.”
“Not since I was a boy,” I said. “I used to root for the Giants. You’re a big fan?”
“I played,” he said, in a voice resonant with quiet pride. “Played in the minors for the Dodgers organization. I made it up to the bigs for two games. Four innings.”
“That’s impressive.”
With a self-deprecating grin, he said, “It was a long time ago, man. Twenty-five years.”
“What position did you play?”
“Pitcher,” he said. He took a sharp left turn off Santa Monica and pulled up to the curb in front of a brown stucco building with a tattered blue canopy over the door and a small red neon sign on the wall blinking the words MARIA’S RAMADA. “This is it.”
Across the street was a long, three-story brick building with an institutional look. Over the door, however, was a bas relief depicting an angel.