by Jon Michaud
“Don't say that. Don't blame me.”
“Why not? You made that decision by yourself. Who should I blame?”
“Tito—”
“Look,” he said, reaching into his pocket for the photograph he'd taken of her husband in front of the rich white woman's house. “You think your life is so great now? Look at this.” The photograph shook in his hand as he held it out to her.
“What is that?” said Clara.
“That's your husband. And that's the woman he's been fucking behind your back.”
“Where did you get this?” she said, taking the photo from his hand and holding it closer to her face.
“I took it.”
“You took it? You've been spying on me and my family, Tito?”
“I followed him. It was just one day. I wanted to see what kind of man you'd married, Clara. And this is what I found. Not much of a man at all. I thought you ought to know.”
“This is insane,” she said. “You think this is going to make me come back to you?”
“I would never do that to you, Clara. I would never treat you that way. I would be faithful. I've never loved anyone but you. Please.”
“I can't believe this. I haven't seen you in fifteen years and you want me to leave my husband and child for you? You have to be joking.”
“I'm not joking, Clara. I'm serious.”
She folded the photograph methodically and put it into her jacket pocket. “Goodbye,” she said.
“What? Where are you going? We aren't finished talking yet.”
“Yes we are. I'm sorry about what happened when we were eighteen. I'm sorry that you had to find out this way. And I'm sorry that you can't get over it. People get over much worse things.”
“There's nothing worse than this,” he said. “There's nothing worse than losing a child.”
“Yes there is,” said Clara. “It's worse to give up. It's worse to stop living. That's what you've done, Tito. You stopped living when you were eighteen. You're stuck there and I'm not going back. I moved on. Do you understand? Goodbye, Tito. I am leaving now, and if I see you near my house or my family again, I will call the police. Goodbye.”
She turned and went away from him, jogging across Seaman Avenue to avoid an oncoming car and running up the steps into the little strip of greenery called Isham Park, heading for Broadway, for her car, for her home in New Jersey.
“Clara!” he called.
She did not look back.
TITO STOOD ON the corner outside his parents' apartment dressed in his black jacket, holding a bouquet of funeral flowers, watching Clara ascend those steps, watching her go until he could see her no more, until she reached the top and descended the far side, her head dropping out of view. He stood there for a few more minutes, just in case she decided to come back. He was not in any haste to move from that spot, not in any haste to admit that that was it, that he'd had his long-hoped-for reunion with Clara, that the reunion was over, that there would not be another one, and that he'd fucked the whole thing up. He stood there a long time, long enough that he became worried that his father might come out to the side of the building to smoke a cigarette and see him—or that his mother would come walking up Seaman Avenue from shopping and ask him what he was doing standing there like a pariguayo. That was the only way this could get any worse—to have to face her now—and the fear of it getting even worse motivated him, got him moving along the sidewalk toward the wake. He shouldn't have shown Clara the picture. That was his mistake. Maybe something could have happened, but the picture had killed off any hope of his ever seeing her again. Why had he shown it to her? Because he wanted her to know that the great life she thought she had maybe wasn't so great. Because even before he showed it to her he'd known that nothing was going to happen between them. If she wasn't going to be with him then he wanted her to feel at least a small amount of the pain he'd been carrying all this time.
As he walked along Seaman, he thought about his unborn baby, the child she had aborted. For the last few days, since that afternoon in Ms. Almonte's apartment, he had lived with the possibility that his child might be alive. The child would have been a teenager like Deysei. He had lived with the possibility of already being a father. Now he had to bury those possibilities along with the possibility of ever seeing Clara again. In this stupor, he turned down Academy Street and went across Broadway to the apartment. A couple of other mourners, old teachers from Kennedy, one of them with a cane, were arriving, coming along the pavement behind him. They nodded at him, as they all waited to be buzzed in, but Tito did not nod back. He needed a drink. He needed more than that, but a drink at the very least.
Inside, the apartment's main room had been cleared of all furniture, except for tables. There were probably thirty people in there, with others half-visible in the kitchen and down the hallway in the bedrooms. Every time he came the place looked different, like the stages in a transformation. Set up on the lamp-stand by the entrance was a large framed wedding picture of Ms. Almonte's mother and father. Along one wall, there was a buffet of the standard offerings: chicken, plátanos, rice. The flowers had been distributed through-out the room and Tito set his bouquet down on an empty table. Along the other wall, there was the bar, where an old man in a white shirt polished a glass.
Tito looked around. He was the youngest person there by at least a decade. Certainly, he was the only graduate of Kennedy High School. He recognized a few other former teachers and staff members but no one seemed to recognize him and he was grateful for the anonymity. Most of the attendees were old Dominicans, the first generation who'd come to the United States and blazed the trail for the rest of them—his parents' generation. Is this how they'd pictured their deaths, he wondered. Did anyone ever accurately forecast the circumstances of their own demise? Tito went to the bar and asked for a rum and Coke. He raised his glass in a private salute to his lost child. I know you're in heaven. When he finished the drink, he asked for another. He raised his glass to his parents' generation and drained it. Ms. Almonte appeared at his side. She was wearing a simple black dress. She'd had her hair done; it was straightened again.
“Thank you for coming,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek as if they were old friends. “I'd like to introduce you to my husband.”
Beside her was the portly, bald-headed man he'd spied through the window on his return visit to Oradell, the man eating dinner alone, reading the newspaper. Up close, Tito couldn't help thinking how much he looked like a college football coach—the ruddy jowls and the trimmed no-nonsense mustache.
“Tito Moreno,” he said.
“Glen Reid,” said Ms. Almonte's husband. It sounded like the name on the bottle of whiskey she had shared with him the day of her mother's death. Hearing the name made him thirsty for a glass of that whiskey.
“Tito is the mover I was telling you about. He moved me to Mami's.”
“Oh,” said the husband. “Well, my wife will be moving back to New Jersey as soon as her mother's estate is settled. We'll be looking for a mover again. Do you have a business card?”
Tito patted his pockets. It was not his usual jacket. “No,” he said. “But your wife knows how to reach me.”
“Although, perhaps we should use someone else, given what happened with the bangle.” She smiled at him while taking her husband's elbow. “So, where's Clara?”
“She couldn't come,” he said.
“No? Did you get to meet with her yet?”
“No,” said Tito. “Not yet.”
“So you still don't know about the—”
“No,” said Tito.
“I hope you do soon,” she said. “I think it will be good for you to talk to her.”
Tito said nothing. He felt like he was going to vomit.
“Thank you again for coming. And for the bangle.” She held up her arm to show it to him. The bangle slid down to her elbow.
“It was nothing,” he said.
“Good to meet you,” said the husband, shaking his
hand in farewell.
They moved on to talk to some of the other arrivals, smiling, hugging, talking. Ms. Almonte did not look like someone who had been touched by death. She looked like someone returning to life.
HE STAYED AT the wake for another half hour, drinking two more rum and Cokes, then began the dreary walk back to his apartment. At the corner an idea came to him and he turned and walked uphill to Broadway, heading north, instead of south toward home. He arrived at PJ's Liquor Warehouse. The place was hopping with the Saturday-night stock-up. Cases of wine and spirits were being rolled out of there, bound for fiestas and celebrations, parties he would not be attending. As usual, there were young girls in skimpy dresses standing in the aisles throughout the store, offering tastes of featured products. Tito sampled everything that was being offered, from a mint liqueur to a new blueberry-flavored gin. Near the back, he came to the shelves of whiskey and found a bottle of the stuff that sounded like Ms. Almonte's husband's name. It was ridiculously expensive, but he didn't care. He waited in line, paid. With the bottle in a brown paper sack, he exited the store and walked west to the park. It was getting dark and he sat on a bench near the lagoon, watching the sun set over New Jersey, the lights coming on in the Bronx, the arching span of the Hudson Bridge illuminated before him like a rusty iron rainbow. He uncapped the bottle, peeling off the lead seal, and took a drink. He did not feel drunk. He felt focused—able to see things clearly.
Tito returned to the line of thought he had been pursuing earlier. Before today there had always existed the possibility that when he found Clara again, his dream life and his real life would merge, that he would no longer need his dream life to escape into because he would no longer want to escape from his real life. That was the ultimate dream life: one that was not a dream at all. He took a drink. Now that possibility was lost. His dream life would always remain just a dream—perfect but elusive—and his real life would always remain real—brutal and unavoidable. Without hope of the two merging, he could not continue. One of those parallel lives would have to come to an end. He took a drink. Tito could see everything plainly now. He knew what his course should be. He knew he should cast off his dream life and finally embrace reality—finally embrace adulthood with its compromised promises and crushed aspirations, accept the fact that he and Clara would not be together, and find a woman he could settle for. The world was full of them. He'd even dated a few. He knew that this is what he should do, and yet his heart refused to surrender the other life, the life he should have had. He took a drink. He had to choose. He stood up and walked around the perimeter of the lagoon, sipping at his bottle, crossing the open fields and passing the playground, following the path that led into the old-growth trees, the place where murderers hid. He took a drink and went into the forest because that is where his dream life had once been real, Friday afternoons in the summer of his eighteenth year.
Clara
The airport. Again.
Clara waited in the ground floor arrivals hall. As a point of entry to the land of opportunity, it wasn't much, she thought. But then once you got here, it was too late, wasn't it? The only amenities were a newsstand and a coffee shop. Otherwise, the low-ceilinged space was given over to the necessities: rows of chrome and plastic seats, an interactive hotel and car-rental display, and a desk for ground transportation information, where a young woman was typing with her thumbs into a BlackBerry. Outside, buses and taxis pulled up and drove off in sunlight, leaving confused-looking travelers who gawped, unsure if they'd just missed their chance to get into the city. Clara looked back at the gate through which the international arrivals came, the gate through which her sister would be coming any moment. She had been there twenty minutes and had watched the arriving passengers change from mostly pale to mostly brown as flights from London and Frankfurt gave over to the flight from Santo Domingo. She was nervous about how this whole thing was going to go. Once the last blow-up had taken place between Yunis and their mother, her sister had wasted no time booking her ticket, finding an empty seat on a flight the next day. The apartment was still being sublet, and so she was homeless. She'd be moving into the house on Passaic Street. Thomas wasn't happy about it and she couldn't really blame him, but what could she say? It came with the territory. Once Yunis learned who the father of Deysei's baby was, the fun would really begin. She sipped at the carton of orange juice in her hand, trying to get the metallic taste out of her mouth, trying to think of a way to mitigate this disaster, but the acid in the juice only accentuated the taste, turning it into the kind of rusty flavor you sometimes got in tap water. And then there was her meeting with Tito later in the afternoon. She was unable to come up with a solution to the current situation that didn't involve running away. But, with one exception, she wasn't a runner.
Here came Yunis, arriving like a celebrity, wearing a long white sundress with a deep-dropping neckline and a pair of wedges, looking browned and surprisingly happy, the coils of her hennaed hair bouncing as she walked. She had her big sunglasses in place, a rolling suitcase dragging behind her like a subdued captive, and she was talking on her phone—of course. Clara turned and beckoned to Deysei, who had been pushing Guillermo around the arrivals hall on a baggage cart. Deysei, she knew, was looking forward to her mother's arrival even less than she was. Sensing that Yunis's presence could cause Deysei to disappear completely into the world of her iPod, to hide permanently under the hood of her sweatshirt, Clara had spent much of the previous day gently prodding her niece about Raúl. “You're going to have to tell your mami sooner or later, especially if you are thinking of keeping the baby, which it looks to me like you are.”
“I can't tell her, Tía. She'll go crazy.”
“Waiting will only make it worse. I'll tell her, if you want.”
“No, Tía. . . . I guess I'll tell her.”
In the airport, Deysei banked a turn and arrived at Clara's side just as Yunis came out of the cordon, snapping her phone shut and smiling.
“Tía!” shouted Guillermo, leaping off the cart, his greeting compensating for the more muted welcomes offered by Deysei and Clara.
“Gilly!” said Yunis, picking up the child and pressing him against her breasts, which, Clara noticed, were unsupported by a bra. Probably hoping to snag some guy on the plane, she thought. Guillermo was laughing uncontrollably in her arms. It was a little pornographic. Finally, Yunis put him down and embraced her daughter. “How are you, mija?”
“Good, Mami.”
“Hi, Sis,” said Clara, kissing Yunis on the cheek even though she was still hugging Deysei. “Is that all you brought?” she asked, pointing at the rolling case.
“Yeah, most of the shit I took down with me was for other people. You know how it is. They think you're Santa Claus getting off that plane.”
“I guess we don't need the cart then. Is Mami OK?”
“Mami's Mami. Same shit different day. I don't know why I thought I could live with her. She's always into your business. Country full of chicken-heads. I must have been out of my mind.”
They were walking now, out of the terminal, crossing the drop-off/pick-up lane toward the parking lot.
“You're starting to show a little, Deysei,” said Yunis.
“Really? Maybe it's just this shirt.” Deysei had left her hoodie in the car; she was wearing a pair of baggy cargo pants and a T-shirt that had once been loose-fitting but was now snug. The shirt said GET STACKED and showed a bookcase. It was a National Library Week freebie Clara had given her the year before.
“Nah, you're showing,” said Yunis. “How you feeling? You got any morning sickness?”
“Yes,” said Deysei. “I've been throwing up a lot.”
“Just like I did with you,” said Yunis with relish. “What goes around comes around.”
“Yuck!” said Guillermo, and mimed a gag.
“You got that right,” said Yunis, laughing.
At least she was in good spirits, thought Clara. That would make it easier. As they drove out of the p
arking lot, she reached into a compartment where Thomas kept gum and mints. There was a roll of Life Savers there and she prized one out. It did not help.
“You OK?” asked Yunis.
“I'm on these antibiotics—four of them. Like horse pills. My mouth tastes like I'm chewing tinfoil.”
“You got a UTI or something?”
“No. It's part of the fertility treatments. They want to kill off any bacteria that might be in there.”
“If they don't kill you first, right? So where's Tommy? He didn't want to come see his sister-in-law?”
“He's in D.C.”
“D.C.?”
“Yes,” said Clara, “he had a job interview.”
“For a job down there?”
“No. It's in New York, but the company's executive offices are in Virginia. He'll be back tonight. Listen, I have to ask you a favor this afternoon, Yunis.”
“What's that?”
“Can you look after Guillermo? I've got to go into the city.”
“So that's why you're all dressed up,” said Yunis. “When the cat's away, huh?”
“It's a funeral,” said Clara.
“You don't look like you're going to no funeral. You look like you're going on a date.”
“Can you take care of Guillermo? I should be back by six.” “No sweat, Sis. Manny and Erlinda said they was coming by to see me. Erlinda made a pernil and some moro. So you'll have dinner when you get back.”
CLARA DROPPED THEM at the house and set off for Inwood for her meeting with Tito. As she drove north on the Garden State Parkway, heading for the George Washington Bridge, she thought back on the morning, more than fifteen years before, of her escape from the house on Payson Street. Clara had ridden in the black cab with Yunis (and Deysei, in utero) and their mother and Yunis's father, Javy. That cab had carried them down Harlem River Drive, under the bridges and past Yankee Stadium, across the Triborough, into Queens, retracing the route Don Felix had followed the night he had picked Clara and her father up from the airport. Like going upstream to the source of a river, Clara thought. When they got on the Van Wyck, Clara wondered for a moment if maybe they were actually going to JFK, if maybe they were going to catch a flight back to D.R. and start all over again.