When Tito Loved Clara

by Jon Michaud

  “It's nothing,” said Clara. “Just some medical records. Why don't you go upstairs and unpack? Make yourself at home. I'll call you when dinner's ready.”

  “OK, Tía,” said Deysei agreeably, and climbed the steps to the sanctuary of her new room.

  Clara was still reeling from her niece's revelation about Raúl, still reeling from seeing Tito Moreno in the airport. She decided she wasn't ready to look at the envelope's contents. She needed a few minutes to compose herself. The television noise coming up through the floorboards told her that Guillermo was safely in his cave; through the dining room window, she could see Thomas at the grill on the patio preparing dinner. She left the envelope and busied herself setting the table, seeking solace in the quotidian on such a non-quotidian day.

  Clara took pride in setting an attractive table. One of the first things she'd done after moving out of her mother's apartment was to buy herself a set of new dishes at Fishs Eddy. While Guillermo was still very much in the age of paper and plastic, she and Thomas regularly unfurled linen napkins into their laps, ate off their wedding china, and drank from Tyrone Crystal tumblers. She saw no point in owning these beautiful things if she wasn't going to use them. Would you buy a new car and not drive it? Would you get a new plasma television and not watch it? She'd eaten from chipped plates with bent-tined forks and pitted spoons all of her youth and she associated those indignities with where she had come from, not with where she wanted to be. Putting out her gilt-rimmed dishes every night and setting a soup spoon and dessert fork for a meal that would feature neither soup nor dessert was a daily affirmation for her. Some people leaned on Bible passages, others their bank balances: Clara had the flatware from her wedding registry.

  Once the tablecloth had been changed, the napkins folded, and the places set, she crossed her ams and admired the result, quickly noticing that something was still missing—a centerpiece. In the living room, there was a vase of week-old flowers, a thank-you gift from her firm's Westlaw rep for renewing their contract. A small bouquet could probably be salvaged from them, but when she went into the living room, she discovered that the flowers were gone. Had Thomas thrown them out? Such attentive housekeeping would have been unlike him.

  She walked through the kitchen to the back door and out onto the patio, where her husband stood at the grill listening to a ball game on an ancient transistor radio and drinking a bottle of beer. The radio, a shiny chrome-and-plastic tablet with its rapier-like antenna, was a relic from Thomas's adolescence, one of several out-of-date contraptions he self-consciously cherished in a kind of sentimental rebuttal to his digital-age profession. Up in his study, there was an Olympia manual typewriter so ancient that the lowercase l had to be used for the number 1. From time to time Thomas rolled a sheet of paper into the thing to write a letter, an actual old-fashioned letter placed in an envelope and sent through the mail to his mother in D.C. or to one of his college friends, all of whom seemed to have made their careers in technology startups in Boston or Silicon Valley. The cackle of the keys on the platen always sounded to her like the chatter of a diabolical monster, but Thomas took inordinate pride in still using the machine. He was similarly attached to the Raleigh ten-speed that hung from hooks in their garage. Like a marine with his rifle, Thomas could disassemble and reassemble the thing blindfolded. Clara had once floated the idea of buying him a new bike—a Trek or Cannondale—but he'd shot her down. “What's wrong with my old one?” he'd asked. Back when they were dating, she had found his attachment to these objects endearing (she'd received more than a few typewritten letters from Thomas during their library-school courtship), but now that they were married, she had to admit, it bugged her. There was intransigence in it—an unwillingness to move forward, a trait, she believed, that was hampering him from finding another job, almost as if he were rhetorically still asking himself, What was wrong with my old job?

  “Hi,” she said, kissing him. He smelled of charcoal smoke and beer, and his eyes were a little swimmy, either from the smoke or the beer or both.

  “Hello,” he said, and smiled a weird smile at her.

  “Everything OK?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “What's cooking?”

  “Fish,” he said. “Salmon. I figured we'd have something light after going to Church's for lunch.”

  “Sounds good,” she nodded. “By any chance did you throw out those flowers I had on the coffee table?”

  “No. Guillermo knocked them over,” he said. “He was playing with that squeaky ball when he got home and bam! Down they went.”

  “Oh,” she said, wincing. “What about the vase?”

  “Broken,” said Thomas, “but I think a little Super Glue will put Humpty Dumpty back together again.” He gave her that weird smile once more.

  “I wanted it for the table. Oh, well. So, how was Gilly this afternoon?” She felt a sudden bolt of guilt as she realized that she hadn't yet gone downstairs to greet him.

  “He was a little out of control, actually,” said Thomas.

  “What? Really?”

  “Yeah. I was trying to get him to help me clean up the basement and he ignored me. Have you noticed? He's obsessed with that robot that Max left here.”

  “I know,” she said. “He wants us to buy him one before he has to give that one back.” Max was a classmate of Guillermo's and Clara had arranged the play-date in the hopes of befriending Max's mother, Jessica, but she'd just had a baby and had taken the offer as an opportunity to drop Max off for an hour while she took the infant to a pediatrician's appointment. Max had spent the duration of the playdate asking Clara when his mother was coming back. No treat, television show, or video could distract him from her absence. “I can't thank you enough,” Jessica had said, when she came back to pick up her son, who in his delight at seeing his mother again had forgotten about his toy.

  “They cost like fifty bucks, don't they?” Clara said to her husband.

  “They're $59.99 at Toys ‘R’ Us,” said Thomas. “I priced one on the Web last week.”

  “So what happened with Gilly? Did he finally calm down?”

  “No. Like I said, I was trying to get him to help me clean up and he kept shooting me with those plastic missiles. ‘Kablam, kablam!’ Then he knocked over my beer and I kind of lost it.” He looked at her. “I spanked him.”

  “You what?”

  “Just once. First the flowers and then the—”

  “You hit him, Thomas?”

  “Just once. Not hard.”

  “I can't believe you hit him. Oh my God. Promise me you'll never do that again! No matter what he does.” Her eyes stung with tears.

  Thomas must have seen the tears brimming because he suddenly looked panicked and tried to reassure her. “C., you know me. I'm not that kind of guy. I just lost my temper.”

  “I'm going to see if he's OK.”

  “He's fine. It's not like I punched him in the face or anything. I just spanked him once on the ass.” But Clara was already headed back to the house, rubbing her nose with her wrist to keep the tears inside. An old fear was squeezing her chest, something she thought she'd never have to face again. She went through the kitchen and down the stairs, her pace quickening. She called out to her son, “Guillermo! Guillermo!”

  The basement was their son's lair: Guillermoland, the People's Republic of Preschool, a domain of toys, arts and crafts supplies, stuffed animals, crumbs, and bacteria. Thomas liked to joke that he and Clara needed visas to enter. There was Guillermo, lying on the couch in a sultan's repose, his sandals on the wrong feet, watching Yogi Bear. Max's robot stood sentry on the floor.

  “Mommy!” he called, sitting up.

  She hugged him. “Are you OK, sweetie?

  “Yes, Mommy. I'm OK.”

  “Did Daddy hit you?”

  He looked at her. “Daddy doesn't like me,” he finally said.

  “That's not true. Your Daddy loves you.”

  “No,” he said. “Daddy doesn't like me
.”

  “He just got mad, Gilly, that's all.”

  Guillermo crossed his arms and looked past her at the television set.

  “I'm sure he's very sorry.”

  Guillermo did not respond. After a moment, he said. “Mommy, I'm sharing this with Max, right?” He reached down and picked up the robot.

  “Yes, baby, but you know what? We're going to get you your own robot! Would you like that?”

  “I don't have to share?”

  “No—one for you to keep.”

  “Oh, yes! Mommy! Yay! I like it.” He hugged her again.

  “You're OK now?”

  “Yes. I'm getting a robot, right, Mommy?”

  “Yes, sweetie. Your father's going to buy you a robot.”

  Gilly let out a whoop of delight.

  “Good, I'm glad to see you happy, baby. I'm going to help Daddy get dinner ready. I'll call you up in a minute.”

  Reassured about her son's wellbeing, and with the threat of her own tears averted, Clara went upstairs and got Guillermo's food ready. He ate the same meal almost every night: six Tyson chicken nuggets, a cup of white rice sprinkled with grated Parmesan cheese, and half a Gala apple, peeled, cored, and cut into crescents. She didn't know what they would do if Tyson went out of business or if the miracles of modern agriculture failed to generate a Gala crop somewhere in the world throughout the year. Guillermo's palate was that discerning. The only other dinner he would eat was Red Baron frozen pizza, and that was reserved for the weekends. Now and then he also consented to eat a piece of grilled steak. Clara took a martyr's pleasure in preparing a separate meal for him every night. It drove Thomas nuts and he refused to participate. “I can't believe we have to make two dinners—one for us and one for him. Remember when he was younger? He used to eat grilled vegetables. He used to eat tofu. What happened?”

  “I don't know, but what are we supposed to do, let him starve?”

  “Let him go hungry until he eats what we eat. Kids all over the world would love to eat our food.”

  In her mind some things were not negotiable. She could no more let her son go hungry for an hour than she could abide him being struck by her husband.

  As she was peeling the apple for Guillermo's plate, Thomas came in from the patio with a platter of the aromatic salmon. Brown lozenges of caramelized garlic studded the streamlined fillet. Thomas looked at the food she was assembling for Guillermo and shook his head.

  “FYI, mister, you're going to be buying your son one of those robots,” she said to him as he went into the dining room. “The sooner the better.”

  Clara summoned Deysei from above and Guillermo from below. In addition to the salmon, Thomas had made a salad and sliced a baguette. She couldn't tell whether the beer he brought to the table was a new bottle or the same one he had been drinking out on the patio. She had passing nightmares about him becoming an alcoholic while he was out of work, though there was little evidence to support such fears. He looked a bit buzzed tonight, but it was not your typical evening on Passaic Street, she was willing to concede. Clara herself wouldn't have minded some wine, but Deysei couldn't have any and it seemed wasteful to open a bottle just so she could have a glass, so she drank iced green tea instead.

  Guillermo appeared from the basement stairs and went straight to his chair, biting into his first ketchup-dunked nugget before he was even properly seated. Deysei was the last to arrive and Clara eyed her closely. Dinner at Yunis's apartment, she knew, was usually eaten on the couch in front of the TV, often in the form of Chinese or Dominican takeout. Deysei was dressed for the couch, too. She had changed into a pair of pink-and-white plaid pajama bottoms, pink flip-flops, and a baggy white T-shirt with the word PRINCESS written across the front in silver cursive. Clara still didn't understand the whole nightwear as daywear fad among teenage girls, but that was probably the point—to piss off the older generation. She was still getting used to seeing her niece with cornrows. Yunis was right: Clara never would have styled Deysei's hair that way. She would have ironed it flat.

  “What can I get for you?” Thomas asked.

  “Umm. Just salad, Tío. Thanks.”

  “Really? You didn't eat anything at lunch either.”

  “We stopped at a McDonald's in the airport,” said Clara.

  “Oh,” said Thomas. “Well, I'm glad I didn't go to any trouble with dinner or anything.”

  Clara ignored this. “I was telling Deysei how I always sent you out for a Big Mac when I was pregnant with Guillermo.”

  “You too, huh, Deysei? Craving that special sauce?”

  Deysei shrugged. “I don't know, Tío. I was just hungry. I won't be asking you to get me no Big Macs in the middle of the night.”

  “That's what you're saying now,” Clara said, laughing.

  “And don't forget french fries!” said Guillermo—another item on his restricted menu. Clara found that she often discounted her son as a listener only to discover that he'd taken in every word.

  “The fish is delicious, Thomas,” Clara said, and it was.

  “Thanks. You want to try some, Gilly?” asked Thomas.

  “Yuck!” said Guillermo. “Fish eat people who die in the ocean.”

  “There you go,” said Clara, who, with Deysei, was laughing. Guillermo, pleased with himself, beamed at his father—a fuck you grin if Clara had ever seen one.

  “Right. Whatever,” said Thomas, and took a drink of his beer.

  AFTER THEY HAD finished eating, Thomas, as the unemployed member of the family, cleared and washed up, while Guillermo savored a last half-hour of cartoons. Clara and Deysei went into the sunroom and called the Dominican Republic to make sure that Yunis had arrived safely. Clara's mother answered. From the music and chatter in the background and her mother's tone of voice, it was obvious to Clara that Yunis had said nothing about Deysei's pregnancy.

  “Is it good to have her there, Mami?” Clara asked. Her mother and sister did not always get along (there was, in fact, nobody that Yunis always got along with), but that didn't stop her mother from complaining that she never got to see her children or her grand-children anymore.

  “It's good right now,” said her mother. “But she just got here. There's plenty of time for her to make me mad.”

  “It'll be fine,” said Clara, and realized that it was actually something of a relief to have her sister out of the country—that she wouldn't be calling unexpectedly to ask for money or to borrow the car.

  “I hope you told that to Yunis,” said her mother.

  “Can we talk to her?”

  In a moment Yunis was on the line. “Yo, Sis. We're having a little party up in here. Chi Chi, Angel, Plinio, Porfirio, Kenya, they all came. I'm getting real nice on Plinio's Brugal.”

  “I'm glad you made it safely,” said Clara. “Be sure to say hi to everyone for me.”

  “How's my girl doing? Let me talk to her,” said Yunis.

  Clara handed the phone to Deysei, whose part of the conversation consisted of three words repeated in varying sequence: “Sí, Mami. . . . Sí. . . . Sí. . . . Bye. . . . Sí, Mami. Sí. Bye.”

  “Everything OK?” said Clara when Deysi had turned off the phone.

  “Yeah. I think she was drunk.”

  THE ENVELOPE REMAINED unopened as Clara put Guillermo to bed. She loved their nighttime ritual, loved her role as the arbiter of his slumber. She dreaded the day when her son would no longer need her in this way, when he would be able to brush his teeth properly, put his own pajamas on, read his own bedtime stories, and fall asleep without her in the room. Since their first night in the hospital together, when she had disobeyed her nurse's orders and let him lie on her chest, Clara had found this—sleep—to be the strongest bond between them. (Breastfeeding was too painful and too much work and she'd abandoned it early on for the ease of the bottle.) Sleep had also been a source of acrimony between her and Thomas. Throughout Guillermo's first year, Thomas repeatedly told Clara not to let him fall asleep in her arms, to put him down, to l
et him cry it out. She disobeyed him, as she had disobeyed the nurse. She didn't care what Dr. Spock or the What to Expect women said. She didn't care what nurses or pediatricians or husbands said. To see her son's fretless features snuggled against her breast made her feel that she was doing for him what her parents had never done for her—providing safety and love. I haven't abandoned you; I'm right here. As Guillermo grew older and advanced from crib to toddler bed, she started getting under the covers with him, a human teddy bear. At some point, she came to understand that she needed it as much, if not more, than he did, this nightly shepherding into slumber. He was five now and still affectionate, still cuddly, but the day was coming, she knew, when he would not want her help, when his definition of being a big boy would mean getting changed by himself, brushing his own teeth, reading his own books, entering his dreams alone. She was already preparing herself for the event, reminding herself not to feel rejected by him. It was her hope that she would have another baby by then and that she could start the process all over again. But, for tonight, that long-dreaded event remained in the future. Tonight Guillermo wanted to wear his Lightning McQueen pajamas. Tonight he wanted to use his Hot Wheels toothbrush. Helping him change, she was pleased to see how dark he was getting from the summer sun. It was only in July and August that he began to approach her skin tone, to look like her. The rest of the year, he was pale and yellowy, white. The rest of the year everyone said how much he looked like his father, thinking they were being nice. But in the summer, his skin was a rich, honeyed brown, and while he would always remain at least two shades lighter than she was, he seemed more her child then.

  They got into bed. Tonight he wanted her to read Where the Sidewalk Ends and Goodnight Moon. When they had finished reading and shut off the light, they went around his room saying “good-night” to his toys and posters, to his dirty clothes on the chair and his water glass, to the glow-in-the-dark solar system Thomas had hung with fishing line from the ceiling. “Goodnight Mercury. Goodnight Venus. Goodnight Earth. Goodnight Moon. Goodnight Mars. . . .”

  Tonight, like most nights, Guillermo wanted to lie in the crook of Clara's arm so that she could not escape once he'd fallen asleep.