When Tito Loved Clara

by Jon Michaud

  “Yes, but she's a girl.”

  “That doesn't matter.”

  “Everyone calls her jibara.”

  “Tito!” said his mother.

  “I'm sorry, Clara,” said Don Felix, cuffing Tito on the head. “Pay no attention to this fool.”

  Clara blushed. She didn't care. All she wanted was more mangú.

  THE BABY WAS a boy. He and Dolores came home from the hospital the following day and, for a time, Dolores had better things to do than chase Clara with her stick—though she still had plenty to yell and complain about. The baby's arrival also made the house a little less of a prison. Dolores's friends and relatives came to pay their respects. They also came to have a look at Clara. Some of them were courteous and kind to her. Others made comments, noticing how dark she was and wondering if her mother was Haitian. Clara had heard it all at school and the words barely made any impression on her. She had already begun to develop the forbearance of someone with an open mind raised among people with closed minds.

  On Sunday afternoons after the baby was born, Don Felix and Doña Sylvia made a point of seeking them out and helping with the newborn. They would spread a blanket in the park near the Emerson Playground and Doña Sylvia would bring a basket of her delicious food and she would hold the baby, talking to it and singing to it while everyone else ate. The four grownups would drink beer when the meal was done and the baby was asleep. Tito and Clara would go to the playground.

  Tito's hostility to Clara provoked in her the urge to smother him. She was always chasing after him. She couldn't do it in the school, not without being laughed at, but in the park she would not let him get away from her. It was how she bullied him back. She insisted on doing whatever he was doing. There he was on the monkey bars. She joined him. “Get away,” he said. There he was going down the slide. She followed. “Leave me alone,” he said. There he was on the swings and there was an empty swing next to him. She ran toward the empty swing, but before she got there, something hit her in the chin, knocking her down, filling her mouth with blood. And then there was Tito's voice.

  “I said get away from me!”

  SHE WENT AWAY from him then, back to New Jersey, to a hospital bed surrounded by white curtains and the nurse—the one who liked lasagna—standing there, saying, “Your husband's here.”

  They'd made him put on a paper jumpsuit over his clothes and a kind of shower cap on his head. He looked like a too-big kid dressed up for trick-or-treating.

  “Hi, sweetie. How are you?”

  She tried to say, “OK,” but she could tell from Thomas's expression that something incomprehensible had come out of her mouth. He came forward and sat on the bed, reached out to stroke her cheek.

  “You want some water?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “That's better,” she said, after the drink had washed her mouth clean, had made it possible for her to speak again.

  “Have they said anything to you?”

  “No,” she said. “I just woke up.”

  “Hi Mama,” said a different nurse, sticking her head through the part in the curtains. “You hungry? You want some crackers?”

  Clara nodded. She didn't mind all the attention. Not one bit.

  She heard somewhere down the row of beds separated by their curtain walls the doctor saying, “You're going to have a little bleeding for a couple of days. That's normal. If you're still bleeding after five days, you need to call us. Do you understand?”

  She heard the patient say, “Yes.” Clara wondered what news the doctor would have for them. She felt the fogginess in her brain dissolving, like an antacid tablet in a glass of water.

  The nurse returned with some packets of Saltines. “Here you go, Mama. You want some apple juice, too?”

  Clara shook her head.

  “Awright,” said the nurse, and left them.

  After two failed attempts to get her fingers to open the cracker wrapping, she handed the packet to Thomas. He handed her back two Saltines like some magic trick. Obviously she was still not completely out of the anesthesia yet. She chomped the crackers and asked her husband for another packet. As she was about to eat seconds, Dr. Davidian parted the curtain.

  “Hello, Mrs. Walker. How are you feeling?”

  “Fine,” she said, through crumbs.

  “Well, the procedure went smoothly and I'm happy to tell you that there is no physical reason that you should not be able to have a baby.”

  “I'm OK?” she asked. It was not what she'd been expecting.

  “Yes, everything looked fine. We're going to let you have a week to recover from the hysteroscopy. Then we'll put you on a course of antibiotics to take care of any lingering infections. Once you're done with that, you can start your first IVF cycle.”

  Thomas had plucked a tissue from the box beside her bed and was wiping something off her face. Cracker crumbs? No, she realized. Tears. She took his hand and pulled him close for a kiss.

  “I'll leave you two alone,” said the doctor. “Just rest another half hour. The nurse will take your blood pressure and then you should be able to go.”

  ON THE WAY home, she thought about how similar this happiness felt to other joyous occasions in her life—being reunited with her mother, her wedding day, the day of Guillermo's birth. Happiness filled you with the expectation of more happiness. Clara wondered if the lingering effects of the anesthesia—still tingling her scalp, still dumbing her brain—weren't also contributing to her sense of elation and her feeling that the decades had been crushed together, that her emotions were strung like pearls in time.

  “Are you pinching yourself?” Thomas asked as he drove.

  “Kind of,” she said.

  “So much for being cursed,” he said.

  “Well, we did lose one, and there was the blighted ovum, and there's no guarantee that the IVF—”

  “I know, but let's not go any further with that thought. Let's be positive for a change.” He placed his hand on her thigh and squeezed. It stayed there until he had to make the hard right turn onto Passaic Street. Yes, she thought. Let's be optimistic.

  A white car was parked in front of their house. Thomas swung the Odyssey around it and she saw that both the front seats of the car were occupied. As the van came to a stop in the driveway, Clara turned and saw Deysei getting out of the passenger side of the white car, pausing before closing the door to say something to the driver. For a moment, she thought the driver might be Raúl. The car sped away and Deysei walked up the driveway toward them.

  “Hi Tía. Tío,” she said, as Thomas came around to open Clara's door. She stepped gingerly out of the Odyssey, planting one foot and then the other on the driveway. “How did it go?”

  “It went fine, baby. Who was that?” she asked. “In the car?”

  Deysei gave Clara a look of wonderment. “His name is Tito Moreno and he thinks he's my father.”

  “What?” asked Clara and Thomas simultaneously.

  “He wants to talk to you, Tía,” Deysei said.

  “I'm sure he does,” said Clara, who felt like she'd been hit with a delayed dose of the anesthesia. “Why the hell does he think he's your father?”

  “Because he thinks you're my mother.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” said Clara.

  “Did you explain to him who your real parents are?” said Thomas.

  “Of course, Tío, but he doesn't believe me. He's really nice, but he doesn't believe me.”

  “You've got to talk to him,” Thomas said to Clara.

  “I think that's probably what he wants and it's the last thing I want to do,” said Clara. She still felt buzzed.

  “Do you have his phone number, Deysei? I'll talk to him,” said Thomas.

  “Yes, Tío,” said Deysei, producing a business card.

  “Wait,” said Clara, “OK. I'll handle this.” She snatched the business card from her niece and went into the house.

  Tito

  Tito almost never took vacations. He had no desire to
travel, no need to lie on a beach or hike a mountain trail. The only time he ever took off was to cover for his father. He had plenty of days saved up. That wasn't the problem. The busiest season of the year had just passed at Cruz Brothers, and so that wasn't the problem either. The problem was that he wanted to take three weeks off—in a row. Three weeks was a lot of time, even for someone who took as little vacation as he did. Three weeks was a lot of time, especially for someone whose numbers had been down the last few months, months when all the other reps' numbers had been up.

  “Why you need three weeks?” Orlando asked him. “You going to Santo Domingo?”

  “No.” Tito almost said yes, but there was a good chance someone who worked for Cruz Brothers would see him on the streets of Inwood in the next three weeks and that would be trouble.

  “So, what you need three weeks for?”

  “I've got shit to take care of.”

  “We all got shit to take care of. Most of us take care of our shit on the weekends. What is this shit you got to take care of? You getting married or something?”

  “No. It's personal.”

  “Personal. What the fuck isn't personal? You tell me.” Orlando looked at him and Tito felt that he was being evaluated, that his whole career at Cruz Brothers was somehow in the balance. “All right,” he said, finally. “But you better come back with a whole new attitude. You think I didn't notice the discount you gave that client in New Jersey? You think I haven't noticed the way you been slacking off the last couple of months? Seems like you been a little out of it.”

  It was true. Until he'd knocked on Ms. Almonte's door, there had not been much latitude for anything more dangerous than a little daydreaming on the job. Since then, though, the separators had collapsed. Customers were real. Commissions were real. Pieces of furniture were real. Bangles were real. But Clara walking down the driveway in New Jersey? Surely that was a dream. Surely it was no more real than the fleeting belief that he would become Wyatt's stepfather. Still reeling from that fiasco, Tito did not want to get ahead of himself. He wanted to take his time. He wanted to be sure. He felt like his life depended on it.

  And that was why he needed three weeks off.

  HE WENT BACK to Millwood the next morning, to the same spot where he'd seen Clara and the girl with the bangle getting out of the minivan. He was going to be patient, he reminded himself. He had three weeks. This day would just be for reconnaissance, to get to know the comings and goings of the household, to see what there was to see.

  Around eight that morning, the girl came out of the house with a book-bag on her back and walked down the street away from him. Was she Clara's child? Could Clara have a teenage daughter? Or was she maybe a relative—a cousin or a niece? The way Dominican families were, anything was possible. She was dressed once again in a pair of loose-fitting jeans or overalls and a hooded sweatshirt. He noticed that she walked slowly, almost ponderously. Going to school, he thought, and not too thrilled about it. He would have to find out where the high school was. It couldn't be far if she was walking.

  A few minutes later, Clara appeared, dressed for work in a pair of brown slacks and a short-sleeved floral blouse, a satchel in her hand. His entire body hummed with desire and longing for her. Seeing her again, he felt almost seasick and believed, for a moment, that his imagination had brought her back from the past. He took a few deep breaths and calmed himself. He wondered what she did. She looked professional without being too formally dressed. A teacher perhaps? That seemed possible; she was smart enough and she'd always loved school. She walked past him on the other side of the street, heading toward the avenue where the shopping plaza and the apartment blocks stood. It was all he could do not to run over there and lie down in front of her. Look! Here I am. Remember me? He wanted to see her up close, to match her face now to the image in his memory—the image in the photograph he carried on his phone. Again, he resisted. There would be time. There would be time to talk to Clara, to look into her eyes again, to ask her all the questions that were bubbling up in his head. First, he needed to learn more. He could not afford to screw this one up. It was a second chance and there would not be, he was certain, a third. He watched as she turned along the avenue and disappeared. A little groan escaped him, as if he might never see her again. But he stayed where he was and turned his eyes back to the house.

  A half hour passed and nothing happened. He started to regret not following Clara or the girl. Just when he was about to give up, the side door opened again. A white guy came out with a kid who looked to be about Wyatt's age. The kid was high-yellow but had straight hair. You almost wouldn't know he was biracial. Clara's son, he thought. The white guy was dressed in khakis and a pressed short-sleeved shirt, tucked in. He looked like someone you'd see in a commercial for one of those retirement funds. Have you thought about how much money you'll need when you're ready to stop working? What's your magic number? We can help you get there. He carried a Hot Wheels backpack. At the corner, across the street from the shopping plaza, they stopped and waited. The white guy—he had to be Clara's husband, Tito begrudgingly acknowledged to himself—peered into traffic as if awaiting a ride. Not long after that, a pint-sized school bus stopped at the corner and the kid boarded it, waving. “Bye, Daddy!”

  Tito slouched into his seat, his Yankees cap pulled low on his forehead, so that he'd look like he was sleeping. He watched the guy walk past and go back into the house. Who else could be in there? Was Raúl in there? What about Raúl's girlfriend, Yunis? An intuition derived from years of entering the abodes of strangers told him that there was no one else. This was not the kind place where Raúl would live, even temporarily, and Santiago had told him that the girlfriend had gone to D.R. So, what was he going to do now? He had his box of flyers in the passenger seat. Should he go up there and do a cold call on the husband? The minute Clara saw the name on the flyer, she'd know.

  Before Tito could decide, he heard the minivan's ignition. It was the husband behind the wheel. He backed out of the driveway and headed for the avenue, hanging a left toward the center of Millwood. Tito started his Sentra and did a quick U-turn to follow him. By the time he made the turn, there were a couple of cars between them. Fortunately, the van was easy to spot and he followed it at a safe distance to a small parking lot in the center of town. The man got out of the van and went into a flower shop across the street, emerging a few moments later with an expensive-looking bouquet. He got back in the van. Tito followed him out to the far side of town, up into a neighborhood of mansions. He was now almost as curious about this guy as he was about Clara—and there was the added advantage that he wouldn't be recognized. What kind of man had Clara married? And where was he going with these flowers?

  The minivan stopped in front of a large house with a CONTRACT PENDING sign planted in the front yard. Maybe a chance for some business, he thought. The house was bigger than the place in Riverdale where he'd gone to give the estimate earlier in the week. There would be lots of furniture to haul and a good commission. Not to mention that it might put him back in Orlando's good graces.

  The husband got out of the van carrying the flowers and walked up the path to the front door. He had no bag, no briefcase. Tito reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone and aimed its minuscule lens at the man waiting outside the house. A woman answered the door. From this distance, he couldn't make out much of her. Blond. Thin. Fit. She kissed Clara's husband on the mouth. It was not the way you kissed a friend. Tito took a picture, and then another. Clara's husband offered her the flowers, but the woman crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. She was refusing the flowers. Clara's husband scratched his temple, said something, and then turned away. Tito dropped his phone out of view and let his head fall to one side, half-closing his eyes, as if he were dozing. The husband looked upset, disappointed. He tossed the bouquet into the van's passenger seat before driving off again.

  Tito followed him back to the house. The husband went inside and did not reappear during
the next hour. Feeling hungry, Tito decided to go into the center of town. His first stop was the village hall, where he used the public restroom. Posing as someone who was thinking of moving to this part of New Jersey, he went into the property tax bureau and asked about the high school. The clerk handed him a brochure: “Education in Millwood,” paid for by the local chamber of commerce. Tito read through the glossy pages of multiracial multi-culturality at a bagel place down the street from the village hall, near the commuter station. The town seemed well-heeled and calm, though depleted, probably because most of the people who lived there were in Manhattan office buildings. Rush hour and the weekends were the times when you'd see the place alive, Tito thought. In this bagelry, there was a cluster of college kids in sweatshirts, pajama bottoms, and flip-flops laughing about some foolishness the night before. A crossing guard, a man in his late sixties, probably a retired police officer, blew on the steam from a cup of coffee while he read the high-school sports section of the Star-Ledger. A couple of mothers sat with their toddlers, whose faces were smeared with cream cheese. One mother was black and the other was white, but they both had kids with light brown skin. Maybe the white mother was actually a nanny? He couldn't tell. That's the kind of place it was.

  There were still a couple of hours before the high school let out, and Clara wouldn't be home until even later, so he decided to go back to the house on the hill for a little sales call. Start at the edge of this thing and work his way in.

  He did a slow cruise through the downtown. It was an odd mix of high-end eateries and places that catered to college kids, with a handful of older establishments that clearly were aimed at a black customer base: a beauty supply shop that sold wigs and extensions, a religious bookstore, and a gallery of African statues and artifacts. There was no Spanish presence in the town at all. He wondered, briefly, if he could live there. If he and Clara had stayed together, would they have ended up here?

  Up on the hill, on the street of mansions, he parked in the spot where the silver Odyssey had stood an hour before. He took one of the leaflets out of the box in the backseat as well as his clipboard full of estimate forms and walked up the path to the front door. The house had those old leaded-glass windows that were smoky and warped. Made the place look haunted, he thought. He pushed the bell and waited. The inside of the house was dark and he could see nothing moving in the blurry glass.