When Tito Loved Clara

by Jon Michaud

  He went back to the school the next day to wait for the girl—he didn't quite want to call her “my daughter” just yet—but she did not show up. Probably avoiding him, he thought. And who could blame her? Again he had the déjà vu feeling of looking for Clara and not for this girl who might be his daughter. The following day he waited at the back entrance to the school, which gave out onto the ball fields and parking lots. Again, the bell rang at two-forty-five and, after a long moment, the doors opened and the building emptied. Half-hidden behind a tree, he watched her: the same slow pace, same hooded sweatshirt. He could pick her out anywhere now, he thought.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “You again? I'm going to scream.” She pulled the hood down and removed the earphones. Her skin looked as if it had been brushed with a thin coat of whitewash.

  “Are you OK?” Tito asked.

  “No, I feel like shit,” said the girl. Her hand went to her abdomen, which even in the loose-fitting sweatshirt appeared engorged.

  “I've got something to ask you,” Tito said.

  “What?”

  “How old are you?”

  “I'm sixteen,” she said.

  He nodded. “I think I am your father,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Yes.”

  “You're crazy. My father lives in Florida.”

  “Are you sure that's your father?”

  “Of course I'm sure.”

  “Your mother's name is Clara Lugo, isn't it?”

  “No. That's my tía.”

  “Your tía? Are you Efran Lugo's daughter?”

  “Efran Lugo? I never heard of him. No. My mother's name is Yunis Martínez.”

  They were standing in the middle of a soccer field with the girl's peers going past, nobody giving them much notice. He felt every-thing crumbling. What a fool he'd been. The sister. Of course. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm very sorry. I must have made a mistake.”

  “What kind of crazy shit are you on?”

  “It was a mistake. I'm sorry. But I really need to speak to Clara. She can explain everything. Will you ask her if she'll meet me?”

  “Tía Clara? Weren't you looking for Raúl the last time? You're really starting to confuse me, mister.”

  “I know. I guess I'm confused, too. I was looking for Raúl. I was. But now I'm looking for Clara.”

  “Why do you need to talk to my tía?” Her tone had changed. Now that she was no longer the subject of his questioning, she seemed more assertive. Assertive and a little amused.

  “It's complicated, but—” He stopped and took a breath.

  “You should know, I talked to Raúl last night.”

  “You did?”

  “But you're not looking for him anymore, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I ain't telling you where he is, anyway. You know what he told me?”

  “No.”

  “He said you were OK. But you're too nice. He said he knew you wouldn't do shit to him. Or to me. He told me you still live with your parents.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “So, come on, Mr. Nice. How do you know my tía?”

  “She and I went to Kennedy High School together and, for a little while, anyway, she was my girlfriend.”

  “She's married, you know.”

  “I know, I know.”

  The girl clutched at her midsection and winced. “Ow. Shit. You got a car?”

  “Yes.”

  “You give me ride? Coño, I'm going to throw up.”

  “Sure. Are you OK?”

  “Please, if you give me a ride, I'll talk to my tía.”

  “My car's parked over there,” he said, indicating a side street at the end of the ball field. “Are you OK to walk?” He didn't want to leave her now.

  “Yes.”

  “What's the matter?”

  “Stomach,” she said. “I barfed this morning and I feel like I'm going to do it again.”

  “You eat something bad?” he asked.

  “Yeah, maybe,” she said.

  They made their way slowly across the grass and into the neigh-boring streets. Tito took her backpack, which felt like it held a couple of encyclopedias, and, with a free hand, cupped her elbow. She didn't seem to mind and made it all the way without vomiting.

  At the car, she appeared to reconsider, looking at him and then at the passenger-side door, which he was holding open.

  “You ain't gonna try nothing, right?”

  He raised an eyebrow to indicate that the question was not worth answering.

  She winced. “All right. We better hurry. God, why do I feel so shitty?”

  He let her give him the directions back to Clara's house, did his best not to anticipate her next command.

  “Stop here,” she said, and he brought the car to a halt right in front of the house. Before the girl could open her door, a silver minivan swung around them and pulled into the driveway.

  “There they are,” she said. “Tía Clara and Tío Thomas. You want to talk to them now?”

  “No, you talk to Clara first.”

  “Oh, I get it, you don't want her husband around.” She smiled at him.

  “Something like that,” he admitted.

  “Thanks for the ride. I don't think I could have walked.”

  “De nada,” Tito said. “There's just one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “What's your name?”

  “Deysei,” she said.

  “Deysei what?”

  “Deysei Reyes,” she said, and got out of the car.

  Tito watched her walk up the drive toward Clara, who was being helped out of the minivan by her cheating husband. Thomas. Before Deysei reached them, Tito released the emergency brake and pulled away, accelerating down the street like the driver of a getaway car deserting his partner inside the bank.

  Clara

  Clara was out in the backyard. The previous owner of their house had constructed a stone gazebo in the stretch of grass beyond the patio, and Clara, whenever she got the chance, liked to retreat there, especially at the end of the day, with a drink, for a few minutes, and enjoy the fact that she owned a gazebo. It was a sultry Thursday evening in early September and in a few minutes she would have to go into the kitchen and prepare dinner. Guillermo was downstairs watching cartoons; Deysei was upstairs in her room; Thomas had left before she got home, heading to D.C. for his interview the next day. Clara had the cordless with her and a glass of wine. She slipped Tito's business card out of her pocket: Cruz Brothers, with the Z enlarged and made into a lightning bolt. She had been haunted by the logo for years. Whenever she saw one of the Cruz Brothers' trucks, she would feel a constriction in her chest. On the first and last days of the month, especially in the summer, nearly every building in Inwood had a van, pickup, or U-Haul parked out front and a string of put-upon-looking youths standing amid an assortment of boxes and furniture on the sidewalk and discussing the order in which things should be packed. The neighborhood looked like a giant stoop sale, or a mass eviction. Mixed in among the do-it-yourselfers, in their rented Ryders and U-Hauls, there were always a couple of professional units, or semi-professional—Moishe's, Student Movers, Schleppers, and Cruz Brothers. This was during the period after college, before Clara had met Thomas, the period when she was living in the studio in Morningside Heights but spending many evenings on Cooper Street, helping Yunis raise Deysei, often babysitting for Deysei so that Yunis could go out on dates. Friday nights after work, she would buy Chinese on Broadway and pick up a bottle of white zinfandel at PJ's Liquor Warehouse and then make her way over to the apartment, threading a path through all the furniture and boxes. Another week gone. If she saw a Cruz Brothers truck, she would cross the street just in case Tito was still working for them, just in case he might be coming down one of those stainless steel ramps carrying a television set. By then, she was more worried about running into him than she was about running into her father.

  A few years later, when she mov
ed to Queens with Thomas, she sometimes saw the trucks in traffic on the Triboro Bridge or Astoria Boulevard. The brothers had expanded their business out of upper Manhattan and the Bronx. Now they served all five boroughs, Yonkers, and northern New Jersey. They'd started advertising in the subway and on the sides of buses. Put your move on Cruz control. By then, almost a decade had passed since the summer of Tito. He must have moved on, too, no pun intended. She imagined him taking over his father's building or working for the MTA, married, children of his own. She'd seen the trucks less often since the move to Millwood, but every now and then, one would cross her path on the turnpike or the George Washington Bridge, an emissary from her past. The trucks and their lightning-bolt logo no longer elicited the jolt of anxiety that they once had, for she was convinced that by now, there was no way Tito would still be working for them. How blissful had been her ignorance! All this time, Tito could have been in any one of those trucks, sitting in the driver's seat, looking down on her in her little Honda, honking, driving her off the road.

  Maybe this was the new direction her curse had taken. No longer was she going to be prevented from having a baby. Now she was going to have to face the father of the baby she didn't want, the baby she couldn't forget. In her most remorseful moments, she still heard the breathy little pop! of the zygote being sucked from her uterus. Tito's DNA fused to hers and turned into medical waste. It was that guilt that made up her mind to talk to him, but it was not an easy thing.

  What was she going to say? Her stomach had been churning all day, but there was no avoiding it now. He knew where she lived. He would call. He would pester Deysei. He would knock on the door. She needed to do something now to prevent this thing from getting out of hand. Already, in the days since the hysteroscopy, Deysei had started teasing her about her “boyfriend” when they were alone. Thomas, perhaps stressing about his interview, had said little, an omission that Clara found somehow more worrisome than his initial offer to talk to Tito himself. Yes, she needed to take action, but she felt completely overwhelmed, completely at a loss.

  She picked up the phone and dialed the cell number on the card. “Moreno,” said the voice on the other end in a way that suggested he was in the middle of something—driving or eating. It was a business voice, assertive and curt. It startled her.

  “Hello, Tito,” she said. “This is Clara.”

  The silence on the other end of the line lasted so long that she thought they'd been disconnected.

  “Tito? Are you there?”

  “Sí,” he said. “I am here.”

  “Deysei said that you wanted to talk to me.” The whole thing was so bizarre that she wound up saying this as though they were family.

  “Yes, Clara.” There was another pause, but this time she heard something, as if he were rubbing the phone's mouthpiece with a cloth.

  “Tito?”

  “Yes. Clara,” he said. “Do you want to talk to me?”

  “I do, Tito. I think we should talk.”

  “Good. OK. That's good.” There was another long silence.

  “Tito?”

  “Yes. I'm sorry. This is not easy for me.”

  “It's not easy for me, either, Tito.” Why did she keep saying his name? Perhaps it was something to hold on to in this weird conversation.

  “Could I come and see you tomorrow?” he asked.

  Whoa! “Tomorrow?” she said. So soon.

  “Or . . . wait. Do you remember Ms. Almonte? From Kennedy?”

  “Alicia? Yes, of course I remember her.”

  “Her mother passed away this week and the funeral is on Saturday, the day after tomorrow. Maybe you want to go with me?”

  “To a funeral?”

  “Or just to the wake afterward. It would mean a lot to her if you came.”

  “I'm surprised she even remembers me. And why did she invite you? You were never in one of her classes, were you?”

  “No, but I moved her this summer. We were talking about you, actually.”

  “And what was she saying?”

  He hesitated. “Is it a secret?”

  “Maybe we shouldn't do this on the phone. I could pick you up on Saturday, drive you into the city.”

  “That's OK,” she said. “Why don't we just meet at the Piper's Kilt for lunch on Saturday? I'm not sure about the funeral.”

  “Piper's. Sure. What time?”

  “Two.”

  “Two on Saturday.”

  “I'll see you then. Bye.” She hung up, glad to have that over with.

  She took a breath and let the air out through her nose. Her parting from Tito was so directly connected to her finding—or being found by—her mother that she now felt compelled to hit speed-dial number 4 on the phone.

  “Hola, Mami. Soy Clara.”

  “Clara,” said her mother. “¿Qué pasa?”

  “Is Yunis there?”

  “No.”

  “What's the matter?” she asked. She could tell by her mother's voice that something was.

  “I am not going to take it anymore. Yunis thinks she's staying in a hotel. She goes out. I don't know where. She comes back late. Doesn't tell me anything. Then she sleeps until lunch. She thinks she's on vacation.”

  This was a variation of the litany her mother had been giving her since Yunis's move. Clara had been doing her best to placate her, but she knew only too well how infuriating her sister could be.

  “It's going to be OK.”

  “Please God, mija. Yes. It's going to be OK because she's leaving. I told her she has to go. She don't lift a finger around here. Just eating and drinking. Never washes a single dish. Doesn't help me pay for a single thing.”

  “OK, Mami, take it easy.” She didn't want her sister to come back. No. That was the last thing she needed now. “Did you really tell her she had to leave?”

  “Yes,” she said defiantly. “I'm kicking her out. And you know, the new man is already cheating on her.”

  “Oh, God,” said Clara. She couldn't take much more of this. “What about the inheritance?”

  “The lawyers, they are all fighting about it. You know, that man, her papi's papi, had eight children with a bunch of different women. It's going to be long time before she gets those moneys.”

  “Can you tell her to call me when she gets back?”

  “Who knows when that will be?” There was a brief silence.

  “Think about giving her another chance, Mami.”

  “I'm not talking about it anymore, mija. She's leaving. How's everything there? How's my grandson?”

  “He's fine.”

  “And Thomas?”

  “Fine, too.”

  “You pregnant?”

  “No, Mami. We're working on it.”

  “It's not really work, is it?” she said, laughing.

  “OK, Mami, that's enough. I'll talk to you later. Tell Yunis to call me. Bye-bye.”

  “Bye, amorcita.”

  Clara hung up. Yunis coming back. It hadn't even been a month. The timing, as usual, was terrible. Just when she started to feel that she was getting somewhere with Deysei. On the phone, she'd heard merengue playing in the background and someone laughing. She could picture the scene: Tía Gigi and Tío Plinio sitting at the kitchen table slicing a mango or maybe smashing the shells of walnuts. A cousin or two with a toy on the floor. The adults would have been sharing one of those large Presidentes, drinking it in small glasses to keep the beer from getting warm. The windows would be open, the doors ajar, and a breeze drifting through the room, an early warning that they could expect rain later in the evening. But later, not now. Now it was time to drink and cook and tell stories. Clara wanted to be there. She wanted to be on vacation in Santo Domingo, to be catered to by her family, to be away from all these troubles. Her aunts would take Guillermo and feed him, entertain him. They would do her laundry; they would make her favorite foods and that oatmeal-milk-and-mango drink she could never quite get right herself. Now that she was in the midst of the kind of craziness that was
the norm in Yunis's life, she could see just how tempting running away to D.R. must have been to her sister. And, indeed, it was wonderful in short spells—as long as your money held out. Because there were expectations in the other direction, too. An aunt who needed a new TV, another whose car had broken down, the cousin who had lupus and couldn't afford the medication. These were the unwritten rules of her family relations, the tithes you were expected to pay if you visited from New York. Her mother, now that she had retired there permanently, was the worst of them all, the neediest. She had First World tastes on a Third World budget. There was always something to be repaired at the house, new tile for the bathroom, new cabinets for the kitchen, new locks to keep out the handyman who'd stolen the keys to the old locks. Her mother held the position as the matriarch of the clan, the underfunded provider for the under-provided. That slow financial bleed would have been at least part of the problem for Yunis. The cousins and aunts and uncles and their hangers-on would not have understood that she couldn't keep a job, would not have understood that she relied on welfare to help her with the rent, food stamps to feed her daughter; all they knew was that she came from New York, which meant that she had to have money, an assumption Clara had once made about her parents. As if that were not enough, there would also have been the issue of the boyfriend. Thrice married, twice widowed, and once divorced, their mother was currently without male companionship of a certain stripe. She would not have enjoyed seeing Yunis coming and going with her latest marido. She would have undermined, complained, done whatever she could to make sure that the relationship failed. Once she realized that Yunis was broke, that she was there to mooch until this “inheritance” came through, she would have done whatever she could, in her passive-aggressive way, to drive her back to New York. No, it was not surprising at all that it was happening—only that it was happening so fast.