by Lewis Shiner
She smiled, Cole thought, rather wickedly. «No, but he’s my second husband. I was married and working on the US advertising account for Cuautémoc when I met him. Very, very scandalous. I married much too young the first time, un ogro, you know that word?» Cole shook his head and she said, “A monster,” in English.
“Ogre,” Cole said.
«Esto. Adalberto was divorced himself and already excommunicated and going to hell anyway, so he had nothing to lose by marrying me.» She glanced at Cole. «That was Susana’s mother, back in Guanajuato.»
«Alex never told me.»
«No, he wouldn’t. Alejo, Adalberto, they don’t talk about Susana’s mother. They’re ashamed of her.»
«But you are Alex’s mother, right? In spite of not looking old enough for it?»
«Yes, I am. And you never stop, do you?»
«Stop what?»
She was easy to talk to, so Cole kept drawing her out. That and trying to think in Spanish helped distract him. She had majored in Spanish in college and was fresh out of school when she joined the ad agency and met Alex’s father. She said the stork must have delivered her to the wrong family. She loved Mexico, loved mambo and Don Quixote, avocados and tacos al carbon.
Then Parkland Hospital loomed before them and the weight of the moment came down on Cole again. In the elevator, Alex’s mother put her hand on his shoulder, the kind of gesture they didn’t make in Cole’s family. His longing for it made him resent his father even more.
His father was in a private room with tiled walls. A heart monitor on wheels was parked next to the bed, beeping steadily. On its screen, a green dot drew a sharp peak and two smaller bumps, over and over. His father lay on his back, eyes closed, sheets neatly folded beneath his collarbone, arms out straight at his sides. He had a breathing tube down his throat, a glucose drip in one wrist, and a catheter bag hanging near the foot of the bed.
Behind him, Alex’s mother said, “Hi, I’m Linda Montoya. I’m so sorry we have to meet like this.”
Then his mother’s voice, less steady than he’d ever heard it. “Thank you for bringing him. Jeff…?”
He couldn’t look away from his father. And as he watched, his father’s eyes rolled open. Hooded, like the eyes of a predatory bird. They stared at him with a complete lack of emotion. Nothing else in his face changed, no turn of the mouth, no lift of the eyebrows, no sign of recognition, confusion, or acknowledgement. The eyes closed again. The monitor continued its steady beeping. The respirator made a sucking noise, a clank, a hiss, and then did it again.
Finally Cole turned his head to look at his mother. “Are you all right?” he asked.
She smiled weakly. It had been less than 24 hours since the last time he’d seen her, and she looked ten years older. “All things considered, I suppose so. After the first shock, there was something kind of inevitable about it. Like the other shoe had finally dropped.”
“Listen,” Alex’s mother said, “I should probably go.”
“No,” Cole said.
They both looked at him.
“This doesn’t change anything,” he said. “Mother, I’m not coming back to your house. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Jeff…”
Now that the words were out, he felt a fierce, exultant sense of freedom. “I love you,” he said. “I hate that you’re going through this and I know it’s going to be really hard to do it alone.” He took a breath. “But I don’t love him. And I’m not going to give up the other things I love just to be with him.”
His mother looked down at her hands, folded in her lap.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’ll call you.” He walked into the hall.
Alex’s mother came out a few seconds later and together they walked toward the elevators. Suddenly she stopped and leaned against the wall. She fumbled in her purse for Kleenex.
“You’re disappointed in me,” Cole said.
She dabbed at her eyes. “No. And I would never make you go back to that house, feeling the way you do.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I just can’t.”
“I know,” she said. “And it breaks my heart.”
*
That night Cole called Janet. He let it ring ten times, hung up, and dialed again. On the third try, her mother picked up.
“It’s Cole,” he said.
“Somehow I guessed that. Janet asked you not to call her.”
“She needs to know that I’m not at my parents’ house anymore. It’s a long story. If she wants to get hold of me, she can call me at my friend Alex’s house.” He gave her the number.
Janet’s mother had always liked him. Girls’ mothers always liked him, especially in comparison to guys like Woody. Her voice softened and she said, “What happened?”
“My father went crazy. I had to get away from him.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Physically, anyway.” He was willing to go for the sympathy angle if it might change Janet’s mind.
Her mother said, “I’m sorry, Cole,” and said she would pass the message along.
Cole struggled with his homework until 10:00, most of his attention focused on the phone that failed to ring. Finally he gave up and plugged his guitar into the practice amp and turned it down low. “I did this for you, you know,” he told it. Holding the familiar weight in his arms soothed him. He started a few songs and then settled into “Georgia on My Mind.” He and Janet had danced to the Chessmen playing it at the Studio Club, the drummer singing like Ray Charles, Cole’s body glued to Janet’s by their mingled sweat. The song was all ninths and sevenths and minors, keening and hollow and sad.
He looked up to see Alex in the doorway, who disappeared and returned with his acoustic and sat cross-legged on the floor. He picked up the chords at the bridge and Cole filled in with snatches of melody and partial chords high on the neck.
They worked the song for five minutes, until it ran out of steam. Alex played a few random chords, marking time, and then Cole started into Floyd Cramer’s “Last Date,” one of the Chevelle’s break songs. From there Alex took them into a slow blues in G, and after that E to B7 in an insistent rhythm that Cole didn’t recognize until the chorus came around, and then he saw that it was “Cielito lindo.”
The song had snuck up on him. Suddenly this stereotype of a Mexican ranchera, ubiquitous in Villahermosa to the point that Cole had sickened of it, flowered into something new, something heartfelt and apt. Canta y no llores, the refrain said. Sing to keep from crying.
So they did, barely above a whisper, Alex taking the verses, their voices interlocking on the chorus. When it was done, Alex stood up and said, “You okay?”
The immensity of Cole’s gratitude closed his throat. He nodded, and Alex nodded back and closed the door gently as he left.
*
On the fourth day, Steve was sitting up in the hospital bed, having managed to escape all too briefly into the fat paperback of Michener’s Hawaii. The phone rang and Betty answered it. She listened and then said, “Hold on.” She looked at Steve and said, “Al Montoya’s at the nurses’ station. He wants to know if you feel up to talking.”
Steve reluctantly marked his place and put the book down. “He’s got his nerve, coming here.”
“You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to.”
Steve sighed. “Let him come in.”
Montoya was dressed in a yellow shirt, slacks, and a brown V-neck sweater that looked like cashmere. He stood at the foot of the bed with his hands clasped beside him and said, “You’re a remarkable man. They tell me most people would not have survived what you went through.”
Steve grunted. “Have a chair, if you like.”
Montoya sat down. “Will they keep you here much longer?”
“Another week,” Steve said. “They’ve already got me up and walking around.”
“A good sign,” Montoya said.
“Look here, I appreciate the courtesy, but can we skip the small talk? You
’ve somehow charmed my son away from me, and I want him back where he belongs.”
Montoya nodded. “We’re both businessmen, and plain speaking is fine with me. I’d like to offer you a deal. The problem is that, for whatever reason, Jeff is determined not to go back to living with you. You could get the police to drag him there against his will, but short of chaining him to the wall, there’s no way to keep him from running away again. If he didn’t run away to my house, he’d run somewhere else—if not to another friend’s house, then out of town, out of state, maybe out of the country. If he does that, he’ll never graduate from high school, let alone go to college. I know that’s not how you want things to end up for him, not after all you’ve done to give him a head start. I’m sure you’ve thought all this through yourself, still, I wanted to get it on the table.”
In fact Steve had not thought it through. The kid’s Spanish was passable enough that he could disappear into Mexico and never surface again.
“If he’s at my house,” Montoya said, “he’s agreed to finish St. Mark’s and keep his grades up.”
“That was exactly the promise he made me, and his inability to keep it was what started all of this.”
“There’s no guarantee, of course,” Montoya said. “But you raised him well. He’s a thoughtful, disciplined, resilient young man. Not to mention very talented. In any case, the thing I offer you is the knowledge of where he is and the confidence that he’s being watched over by people who care about him. I think it’s the best you can hope for at this point, and I don’t know any other way you can be sure of it. That’s just the reality of it.”
“I suppose you know,” Steve said, “that in a couple of weeks he can legally do whatever he wants.”
“Yes.”
“So the true reality of the situation is that I don’t have any choice in the matter. While I appreciate your coming in here with a carrot instead of a stick, I can’t stop you from doing whatever you want with my son, short of selling him into white slavery.”
“You have the choice,” Montoya said gently, “of making your peace with the situation, which is why I came.”
“I’m afraid the only peace I’m going to find is of the eternal sort, and I hope that’s still some ways off.” He nodded slightly. “Thanks for stopping by.”
Montoya, unruffled, stood up. “I wish you a complete and speedy recovery.” He smiled at Betty, said, “Pleased to meet you,” and left.
Betty said, “He seems like a good man.”
“He’s a charmer. The problem with men like that is once they’re out of the room and you go over what they said, there’s nothing of substance there. It’s all fairy dust.”
“Would it have killed you to be a little nicer to him? Considering everything he’s doing for Jeff?”
“Yes,” Steve said. “Quite possibly it could have.”
*
After school on Monday, Cole caught a ride with Alex to a small, well-kept house in Irving, ten minutes west of Dallas. There he paid $700 cash to an old man for a 1959 Cadillac Miller-Meteor hearse in fine condition. “Always wanted me a Caddy,” the old man said, “and that were the only one I could afford. Used to belong to Restland, over there in Dallas. Still runs great, just a mite out of style these days.”
Cole gave it a thorough inspection, then got behind the wheel. He felt weightless. For the first time in his life he could go wherever he wanted.
He’d found it in the Times-Herald want ads on Sunday. The Novas and the Chessmen and some of the other local bands had hearses to haul their equipment, and if it came to that, he could sleep in it. Alex’s father had agreed to co-sign on the title and insurance. His only conditions were that Cole was not to stay out later than ten on a school night, and that he was to park it where the neighbors couldn’t see it and become alarmed.
On Monday night, he pulled it into the Montoyas’ garage and thoroughly vacuumed the interior. He ran the curtains from the back through the washer and dryer. Alex dug up a couple of old quilts from the attic and Cole spread them over the Formica and the hard rubber bumper strips in the back.
On Tuesday, as soon as he got out of the shower after gym, he drove to East Dallas in the falling darkness. He parked in front of Janet’s apartment and ran up the stairs. He was sure he would think of something to say by the time he got there. Instead, when Janet opened the door, he could only stand there with his heart thudding and his cheeks burning from the cold. She was still in her disd-approved calf-length skirt and a ribbed sweater that clung to her curves. She was beautiful and desirable beyond words and Cole struggled not to reach for her.
“I thought we had a deal,” she said. She didn’t sound angry.
“I had to see you,” he said. “Even if it’s only this much of you.”
“What’s so urgent about seeing me?”
“Can we just… can you come for a drive with me?”
“I’m almost out of gas.”
“Not your car. My car.”
She tilted her head in curiosity. “Just a minute,” she said, and closed the door. When she came back, she was wearing a heavy jacket and gloves.
She laughed when she saw the hearse. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“You don’t like it?”
“I guess it makes a statement.”
He opened the door for her and then got in and started the engine. He turned the radio down low and said, “You want to get something to eat?”
“This isn’t a date.”
He pulled out of the parking lot. For want of a better idea, he headed for White Rock Lake. “Did your mother give you my message?”
“About you staying at Alex’s?”
“I had a fight with my father and I moved out,” he said.
“I can’t imagine your father letting you do that.”
“I didn’t tell him before I did it. When he found out, he had a heart attack. He’s in Parkland now.”
She softened. “Oh, Cole, no. Is he going to be all right?”
“He’ll live.”
“What was the fight about?”
He gave her the details, including the disaster at klif and his brief visit to the hospital. As he talked, he drove around the deserted lake and finally pulled into the shadows under some trees.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“I wanted us to be able to talk in peace.”
“The cops will see this thing from miles away.”
“It’s dark,” he said. He saw that they had come to a crisis point. He turned toward her and put his arm on the back of the seat. “Come over here.”
To his amazement, it worked. She scooted across the long bench seat and leaned her head on his shoulder. “Poor baby,” she said. “What a week you’ve had.”
That was all he needed. He tilted her face upward with his hand and kissed her. She kissed him back. They were both trembling. “Want to see the back?” he whispered.
*
Cole managed to see Janet three times in the last week before the holidays. She didn’t mention the separation again. In between, the band played Christmas parties and Cole did his schoolwork. He was afraid, as he’d never been with his own father, to disappoint Al Montoya. He got an A on his Russian History paper and he started to speak up in class. It was easier than he’d imagined.
Then, before dawn on December 23, the family took a taxi to Love Field and got on a plane for Mexico.
Nobody mentioned his birthday, and Cole assumed they’d forgotten in the excitement of the trip. He wasn’t overly bothered. His birthday had always been overshadowed by Christmas. On the flight he had Alex on one side and Susan, who’d arrived from Austin late the previous night, on the other.
He hadn’t seen Susan in over a year. She was cheerful in conversation, but in the silences, reading Time magazine, she seemed restless and vaguely unhappy, in a way that made Cole want to comfort her. She’d been sincerely concerned about his injured hand, and in the moments when they’d talked by themselves she’d
made him feel like they shared a bond, like they were both just outside the line that defined the family.
They landed at the León airport, an hour from the city of Guanajuato. From the moment the plane touched down, Susan and Alex started talking across the aisle to their parents in Spanish. Cole, who was not completely fluent, had to shift gears. The airport had high ceilings and murals, and Cole remembered that it was Villahermosa that he had a problem with, not Mexico in general, which on the whole suited him well. Here was a guy in a yellow guayabera and dark blue pants, hunkered down on the floor with his son, playing with a toy car and laughing. A clerk at the Mexicana desk sang “She Loves You,” massacring the lyrics. A bad muffler in the street made a machine-gun sound and Cole smelled tamales cooking. Christmas decorations everywhere, poinsettias on all the counters.
An old man waited for them at baggage claim. He hugged Al Montoya and shook hands with the others. Montoya introduced him as Octavio and said he ran the family house in Guanajuato. They collected their bags and followed Octavio to a cream-colored Ford Country Squire station wagon with fake wood-grain side panels. The luggage that didn’t fit in the rear got tied to the roof rack with sisal rope. Alex and Cole squeezed into the third seat and they all rolled their windows down. Cole’s watch said high noon and his stomach told him he was starving. The sport coat that hadn’t been enough in Dallas was now too much. He wriggled out of it and threw it in the back.
Everything was familiar. Tiny old women mummified in black shawls, men in straw cowboy hats and low-rise boots, teenage girls with babies straddling their hips, gaudy peluquerias and fly infested carnicerias, smells of bus exhaust and frying food, dopplered accordion on passing car radios. Cole was happy to be so far from Dallas.
The road to Guanajuato took them over rolling hills dotted with cactus and mesquite, steadily climbing another thousand feet in the course of 50 miles. Alex nudged him as they came to a tunnel entrance. They emerged on the far side into an enclosed wonderland where stairstep rows of pastel houses climbed the sides of the natural bowl that held the city. At the bottom of the bowl he saw steeples and domes, red tiled roofs, expanses of blue and mustard yellow walls, and swatches of green parkland.