Mario (LETTERS TO A GENTLEMAN Book 1)

by Jamie Lake

  He’d learned a long time ago that arguing with her was just a waste of time; she’d always win and, macho as he was, he would have his feelings hurt by her words. So, he forced a smile.

  “Anything else?” he asked on the way out the bedroom door.

  “Don’t be a smart ass,” she said, a cough racking her frail body as she struggled to clear her throat. When she could speak again, she said, “And I want that shed spic n’ span.”

  CHAPTER 3

  No matter how obnoxious his mother was, no matter how overbearing she’d been most of his life, Mario would be sad to say “goodbye” to her. After all, she had brought him into the world.

  She had always been there for him, holding his hand through the best and worst moments of his life in her own way - even if that was partly because she didn’t think he could stand on his own two feet or because she wanted to keep her tentacles of control over him or maybe because she didn’t want him running off to live his own life.

  He knew he should be spending what little time he had left with her—her “dying hours,” as she called them—by her side, but he also knew those hours would just be miserable if he didn’t do what she told him. So, he went to clean out the shed. Even though the morning was still young, it was already searing hot. The sun beat down on his head and neck as he trudged across the dry brown grass of the backyard to the shed, which was a small wooden structure with the chipped red paint peeling off the walls. Grabbing the key that hung from a nearby tree branch, he unlocked the old rusted lock and yanked the molded door open.

  The smell of musty air and cedar wood hit and overwhelmed him with memories. He understood it now. The shed was full of ghosts. This was where he and his cousin Paco, Paula’s brother had played hide and seek, crouching in the dark corner behind the lawn mower even though his mom made it clear she didn’t want them playing in there around all the sharp tools. This was where his mother stored everything that had once belonged to, or reminded her of, his “good for nothing” father—things that were now dusty, moldy, moth-eaten or rusted. She would have done better to just burn them or throw them out. But, then again, he knew how love could get you knotted up in a twisted mess. Even though his mother said terrible things about his father, Mario knew that she still held a torch for him. Even though it had been twenty years since she’d seen him, she had kept the things in this shed because she hoped secretly, in her heart of hearts, that he would come back one day. It was a pretty farfetched dream, but wasn’t he doing the same thing when it came to Maria?

  No, he resolved. I’ll never be like her. If I have children, I’ll be kind to them and let them live their own lives. They don’t deserve to suffer because I’m bitter from a broken heart.

  His mother hadn’t always been bitter, though. There were times when she had been much happier, usually after one of his father’s rare visits. He’d visit them a handful of times a year. His mother never welcomed him with open arms at first—she would demand where he had been, scream at him for abandoning her to take care of their son all by herself, and throw plates and vases at him until Mario ran and hid under his bed to avoid the shattering glass, plugging his fingers in his ears so he couldn’t hear them shouting. But then, suddenly, the shouting would change to moans of pleasure, and his mother would cry out his father’s name, and the battle would be followed by one of those passionate sessions of loud, all-night love making that neighbors for miles around could hear.

  In the morning, the sun would be streaming into the kitchen, and when Mario walked in for breakfast, he would find his father at the table, reading the newspaper and humming a cheerful Mexican folk song, and his mother at the stove, frying up his father’s favorite breakfast. His father would greet Mario with a big hug and pull him onto his lap, and then reach over to spank his wife’s behind, making her shriek and swat at him playfully with her spatula.

  Of course, the fighting always began again soon—his father would announce that he had to leave again, and his mother would send the breakfast in the pan flying across the room to splatter at the wall, and the shouting would escalate even louder than the night before. But Mario chose to remember those brief, happy memories, of when his parents were together.

  For many years, Mario’s father came and went. But then one day, his father left and never came back. Not even for Christmas, not even for Mario’s birthday. He didn’t call or send a single letter.

  Secretly, Mario blamed his mother. She had pushed his father away, just like she had pushed away almost everyone else in her life. Part of Mario, though he hated to say it, felt like she deserved what she got. If she died bitter and alone, it was all her fault.

  She had even come close to driving Mario away, in her worst moments. When she was angry, she told him that he was a mistake—not a symbol of her and his father’s brief but fleeting love, but an unwanted accident. When Mario was born, he had destroyed her chance of making something of herself, of becoming a great actress like she had dreamed. She had settled for being a grammar school teacher instead, but she never forgave him or his father for that.

  “I could have been somebody,” she used to tell Mario over and over again. “I was better than anyone else in my university.”

  For so long, Mario and his mother each blamed the other for driving his father away. But as Mario grew into a man himself, he realized that the blame wasn’t his mother’s alone. His father had made the choice long ago to marry her. He’d chosen the life he’d had with her. Who was he to run away?

  Coward, Mario thought. Yellow-livered coward.

  Sometimes Mario would imagine that his father had died in some horrible accident or in a bar fight. That’s what he deserved, he would think bitterly, and then ask forgiveness for thinking it. It wasn’t just bitterness that made him think that way. If his father had died, then there was a reason that he hadn’t come back to visit, hadn’t called them or even written. There was a reason Mario had been left to care for his mother alone, his own love on hold.

  But every few years, he’d hear a friend or relative say they had seen his father, usually passed out at a bar or in a back alley. Others claimed, he was much happier, sober—a church-going man with a new family.

  A family that was better? Mario always wondered. A family that he could love?

  Now he shook his head, trying to squash the flood of emotions rising in his chest, and squinted through the dust floating in the air of the dark shed at the stacks of boxes and piles of junk. Where to begin?

  He figured he’d begin with the box right in front of him. But as he lifted that box, one that seemed out of place, as if it had been moved only recently, something caught his eye.

  An envelope.

  Not a typed envelope that your gas bill came in, but an envelope that would hold a personal letter. He picked it up and, though it was hard to see clearly because he hadn’t reached to pull the rusty chain that switched on the bare light bulb overhead, he recognized the handwriting immediately.

  Those loopy letters made his heart skip a beat. Maria, the envelope said. A surge of excitement coursed through him, and it had been so long since he’d let himself feel anything that the emotion made him dizzy.

  Was it some letter he’d read and lost? No. He flipped it over and saw that the envelope was still sealed. It had never been opened. He tried to swallow, but his mouth had dried up. In the humid, musty heat of the shed, he felt light-headed. His tongue felt thick and his fingers were numb. He fumbled with the envelope as he held it up so he could see it better in the shafts of light coming in the cracks of the shed walls. The date on the front said October— a good month after the last letter he’d received from her.

  If he opened the letter, he would be opening up his heart to a new world of pain. Maybe it was better just to burn it and let the letter he had kept with him all these years be his last memory of her, as he finally moved on with his life.

  It’s time to let go, he told himself for the hundredth time. Just destroy it. Never think about it agai
n.

  He gripped the envelope, prepared to tear it into a dozen pieces … but something stopped him. The letter may have been ten-years-old, but even if it broke his heart all over again, even if it could do nothing to change his hopeless future, he just had to know what was in it.

  CHAPTER 4

  Before opening the letter, Mario stepped out of the shed. Even under the bright sun, he was trembling all over. The ground beneath him felt like it was shaking. He had to lean against the side of the shed to stay standing. Memories washed over him. He couldn’t stop thinking about the last letter he’d written her, in response to the scathing letter from her that he kept in his pocket. Even though he had mailed it over ten-years-ago, he still remembered every word he had written to her, and he still regretted every word of it. If only he had the chance to do everything over again. But he didn’t, and as if to torture himself, he went through his own letter in his head for the thousandth time:

  Dear Maria,

  I love you and I cannot believe you’d question this. You talk about promises and you promised to stick with me no matter how long it took. I’m sorry I cannot see you when I want to, I am, but I have to say I’m disappointed in you for giving me more pressure than I already have.

  My mother is sick, there is nothing I can do about that. Do you expect me to abandon her? I’m the only one she has. I thought about asking you to wait a little while longer. I thought you’d love me enough to do that, but it’s clear that is not the case.

  And so, if your heart is telling you that you cannot wait anymore, do what you need to do.

  I wish you the best. I will miss you.

  Until we meet again,

  Mario

  He took a deep breath thinking about those words—until we meet again. One of his tears had even dropped onto the page, smudging the ink, but the words had still been legible. Oh, how he regretted writing them now. If he had it to do all over again, he would. But he had been so mad that day he wrote it; he could still remember the anger that had coursed through him as he’d bent over the kitchen table, scratching out the letters with his pen, furious with Maria for not understanding his circumstances and responsibilities, for doubting that he loved her and wanted to be with her, frustrated with himself for having allowed himself to be backed into a corner and separated from her in the first place. If only he had been honest with her, instead of shutting the door on their love. He and Maria had always been real with each other; that was one of the many reasons he had been so in love with her. But he’d said “goodbye” to her, explaining to his mother, if you let a bird go and it comes back to you, it’s meant to be.

  His mother had snorted. “That’s horseshit,” she’d said. “I told you she wasn’t any good for you.”

  Even though her words had felt like vinegar in a wound, he had tried to see his mother’s point of view, especially as the years passed and Maria never wrote back to him. But deep inside there was a glimmer of hope, a flame that hadn’t been extinguished, a whisper that said, Wait. Maria will be back.

  He was his mother’s son, wasn’t he? She would always fight to the bitter end—as she was proving it right now in her bed in that dark little room as her frail body gave it her all, refusing to die.

  That glimmer of hope, that whisper, had been right. Maria had written back. And even though the letter had been buried under boxes all this time, his heart raced with possibilities.

  He hooked his index finger under the flap of the envelope and tore it open.

  As his finger slid across the paper, he could feel the imprint of the pen Maria had used. The all-too-familiar curls and loops of her handwriting threatened to sweep him away again. It took all he had to ground himself so he could read her words.

  Dear Mario,

  You know it isn’t easy for me to say I’m sorry. It’s not easy to admit that what I said was hurtful and that I never should have said it at all. For the last few weeks, I’ve been doing everything I can to stay angry at you, to forget you, but the truth is, I cannot. The truth is, I can’t get you out of my mind.

  I know what I said was hurtful. I know you can’t help it, that you’ve been doing the honorable thing taking care of your mother and that you couldn’t abandon her to run away together with me thousands of miles away. I know this now, but I was selfish. You see, I don’t just love you. I’m in love with you. And the truth is, I cannot imagine life without you. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, to forget everything I ever said to you and just give us one more chance, just say the word and I promise I’ll wait for you until the moon is no more. I will not be writing you back after this anymore. If I don’t hear back from you in the next month, I can only assume then, you’ve moved on.

  Love,

  Maria

  Mario’s heart leapt as he looked at the date: ten years ago. The letter was musty and yellowed with age. Ten years. She had given him one month to win her back, to assure her of his love, to take the first step toward that future they had imagined together, and she hadn’t heard from him in ten years.

  “But I never saw the fucking letter!” he cried aloud in frustration. Mario had thought that he could never know pain as deep as the wound of ten years ago, but now as he imagined Maria watching for the mailman, running to take the letters and look for one with his handwriting, and weeping in disappointment when day after day it did not arrive, agony pierced him like a hot, searing spear. Guilt and regret ripped the old wounds open, and they were more agonizingly painful than ever.

  Why hadn’t he seen this letter? How could fate be so cruel? He could have written to her, he could have gone to her, taken her in his arms and proclaimed his love to her. They could be standing, now, with their arms around each other, watching from the back porch as their children splashed and shrieked happily in a sprinkler on the lawn, Maria laughing as she watched them, her head on his shoulder.

  Did she ever think of him now? He wondered if his name ever came up. If his image flashed across her mind every now and then. He wondered if she smiled with pleasant memories of what could have been—or if, when people asked about him, she stared blankly said, “Mario who?” It had been over a decade. She had probably long forgotten about him. Surely, she had met someone else. Surely, some other man had swept her off her feet. She was too good of a catch. Maria had moved on, Mario was sure, and he was stuck in this hell hole he’d created for himself.

  He refolded the letter and tucked it back in the envelope. There was no sense fantasizing now. Those chances, those times, had come and gone. He snapped back to reality. He had better get back to cleaning out the shed before his mother had another fit.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Well, it took you long enough,” his mother managed to say between wheezes. “I’ve been sitting in this bed with absolutely nothing to do and no one to talk to.”

  “They say plants grow faster if you sing to them,” he smirked nodding at the dying cactus in the corner. “Why don’t you try that?”

  “Just like your father,” she grumbled.

  Mario chuckled, though he knew that comment was meant to sting. His mother grunted in return. Leaning over her bed, Mario put the back of his hand to her forehead. It was still burning up. He dipped a cloth into the bucket of ice water next to the bed, wrung it out, and lay it across her forehead. Fighting the fever was fruitless; all he could do was keep it low enough so she wouldn’t be miserable. He felt helpless; he had never been good at making his mother happy. He had failed at it most of his life.

  First, he had left for America when he was eighteen, hoping to make enough money working in the strawberry fields and grape vineyards to send home and support her. Instead of being grateful, she had accused him of abandoning her in her time of need. It was always, Mario knew now, his mother’s “time of need.” Then, when he failed to come home as a doctor or ‘something useful’, as she put it, his mother only shook her head and said, “Should have known you’d come back empty-handed. Well, I hope you don’t expect to stay here.” B
ut, of course, he had expected to stay there, and he had. What other choice did he have? Besides, she needed someone to take care of the house and, whether she wanted to admit it or not, she’d missed him.

  “How about some TV?” he asked her now, trying to push the unpleasant memories from his mind. He hoped a little TV would distract them both, taking her mind off her pain and his off Maria’s letter. “Are you hungry?”

  “No. You couldn’t cook if I asked you to make toast. And there's nothing on TV anyway. It’s the middle of the night.” she snapped, squirming restlessly in the bed, trying in vain to make herself more comfortable.

  Mario had a knack for staying calm and being patient, something he remembered Maria loving about him too. “It’s almost noon, Mami.” he corrected her gently. He got up and pushed the curtains to the side a bit so more light fell into the room. His mother squinted against the sudden light and grunted.

  “Are you trying to blind me on top of everything else?” she screamed.

  “A little sunshine never killed anybody. Unless you’re a vampire. Oh, I forgot, let me close it,” he smirked starting to close the curtain.

  “Can’t a mother have a little respect in her dying hours?” she asked. “Well, find anything interesting out there in that shed? Took you long enough,” she asked.

  “Oh … I … no,” he lied.

  Maria wasn’t someone he could discuss with his mother. He could never really talk about relationships with her. She had always been far too caught up in the misery of her own failed relationship to offer any words of encouragement or untainted advice. Besides, he knew how much she’d always hated Maria; someone she’d never met and had no reason to hate except that she was the one person who could take her only son away.

  “No?” she questioned as if she knew better.