Like Son

by Felicia Luna Lemus

  She went through me like a pavement saw.

  And how.

  I didn’t want to inherit the bad with the good. The bad:

  Both times Nathalie bailed I’d reacted the same as Nahui had when my father’s mother wouldn’t be her girl; I’d stewed in my hurt and waxed nostalgic (and, yes, this was also my father’s reaction when his young wife took off in Death Valley and when my mother left him in New Haven). And then there was the train wreck coming home from D.C.—I couldn’t help but imagine Nahui, little Ms. Earthquake Sun herself, gathering up all the Aztec gods to cause the crash. I mean, why not? Maybe the same unified cosmic forces had created the 1943 derailment in Chicago—the cursed train wreck that killed my father’s sister and that, perhaps a coincidence but maybe not, happened so soon after my father’s mother left Nahui broken-hearted. And—I know I’m going out on a limb with all of this, but whatever, I’m already hanging from a bough by my fingertips—what about little Ángel and all the unpleasant similarities between Nahui and my mother’s fundamentally misguided maternal instincts? Fuck if any of this was a legacy I wanted to embrace.

  Time to get a reality check, Frank—that’s what you’re thinking, right? Point taken, but wouldn’t you freak out a little too if you suddenly realized you were necrophilic? Personally, I’d never thought that particular perversion was my cup of tea, but really, when it comes down to it, isn’t retrospection, sentimental or otherwise, ultimately romancing the dead? I mean, of course it’s important to learn from the past … but I’d spent far too much time coddling what once was and wasn’t and what might have been. I’d done this in regards to my father, my mother, the life I’d been born into, Nahui, my relationship with Nathalie, everything. Hell, it was probably this very devotion to the past that led me to open my shop. I mean, really, who but a nostalgic fool wants to buy and sell dead people’s things for a living? Point is, I was tired of feeling alternately depleted and sustained by the memories I kept pulsing alive with each breath I took in. I’d had enough. I wanted to get on with my life, unhindered by all the things I’d never be able to recapture or change.

  First plan of action on my agenda was to put as much physical distance as possible between Nahui and me. I totally needed to let go of my one-sided adoration. Nahui was a projection, a false promise, a desert mirage, an ancient myth she herself had appropriated and that I had then dutifully continued elaborating and editing in her honor. Nahui Olin. The Earthquake Sun. All I’d ever really known about her was a construct—some parts historically substantiated, some not. The illusion of her had accompanied me through times I hadn’t wanted to experience alone, but the demands of wellbeing and longevity finally necessitated I untangle myself from the lovely chaos I associated with her. Out of respect, I wanted to return her to the place I’d originally found her. And so I retraced my steps, and walked backward in the very footprints I’d left when we met, with hopes that I would now be able to walk away with a renewed and uncluttered stride.

  Obviously, I couldn’t actually leave the retablo and book back in my father’s old living room. So, as gently as possible, I locked Nahui in the safe deposit box my father had purchased—but not before I retrieved the bundle of love letters contained therein.

  Ready to continue on, I returned the safe deposit box to the bank manager, certain I’d never come back again. And then, naturally, with no hope of actually finding the woman in the love letters, I drove to Laguna Hills.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Same as seven years before, when I arrived at my mother’s property, I worried the shoddy little car I was driving wouldn’t make it up her ski-slope fortress driveway. So I parked at the bottom of the private hill, grabbed the bundle of letters, and walked up. A fancy car—not the one my mother had owned the last time I was there, but, from a quick look at the mess of trash, junk mail, and office files cluttering the seats, clearly her new car—was parked in the carport. She was home.

  I walked to the front door and rang the doorbell. I waited a couple minutes. When my mother didn’t answer, I knocked.

  “Mom? I know you’re home,” I called at the door.

  No reply.

  “I have something for you.”

  Silence.

  “Mom?”

  Still she didn’t open the door.

  I placed the letters on her doormat. And then I walked back down the driveway.

  As I drove away from the hilly labyrinth neighborhood, I was sure my mother was still staring out her front door peephole. Her falsely polite Who is it? would eventually echo into the foyer through the intercom system several times— this, her way to determine if I was still waiting but standing beyond the peephole’s scope of vision—before she’d finally, hesitantly, open the door. Scared, lonely, disquieted woman, she’d find the letters. Maybe, just maybe, she’d then remember that once, long ago, she’d led with her heart. Regardless, the letters and the history they narrated were hers to take charge of. They were no longer mine.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  No emotion overwhelmed me. But it wasn’t that I felt numb. Rather, and this is an important distinction, I knew I was simply where I needed to be. In fact, I felt like I was walking through a process already completed. There I was, alone on a desolate stretch of Pacific Ocean beach, presenting myself to the specter of a man I’d failed to bury properly when he died. I was ashamed that I’d left my father’s ashes for his lawyer to scatter impersonally in the ocean. But that had been several lives ago. I had grown up. And I wanted my father to see me now, to really see me, to look at me more clearly than he’d ever been able to in life. I wanted to say a respectful goodbye, son to father, man to man.

  When my father died, I’d chosen only a few items from his home to remember him by: blind man glasses, walking stick, worry stone, briefcase, and those damned glorious suits. Obviously, my disaster of a trip to D.C. had me reconsidering plenty of things, not least of which was that I might want to think twice about playing dress-up in my father’s wardrobe. Suit bloodied and shredded, briefcase lost entirely, his threads had hardly been the protective armor I’d thought they’d be. And as for his dark glasses, walking stick, and worry stone—I liked to believe that my father’s blindness and worry, both literal and figurative, were not what he would have wished for me to take as my own.

  So, careful of my left arm in its cast, I dug a hole three feet deep in the moist sand near the ocean’s edge. And in that hole I placed my father’s glasses and folded walking stick. Handfuls of sand patted over his things in the small grave, I buried the ill-chosen tokens. Once the hole was completely filled, I took off my shoes and socks, rolled my pants up to my knees, and walked into shallow water. I leaned down and pushed my father’s worry stone into the thick wet sand.

  “To ground you,” I said.

  I wasn’t sure if I was saying it to my father or myself. But I said it. Again.

  “To ground you.”

  The sand was cold on my toes. Small sharp shells scratched my ankles. Salt water stung my skin. Seaweed wrapped itself around my feet as if in a final embrace. Somewhere overhead, even though I couldn’t see it through the heavily clouded sky, I knew a high noon sun was shining. I stood and watched the waves for a few minutes. And then I went home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  5 March 2003. Ash Wednesday.

  New York City.

  I waited in shadows under the Temperance Fountain’s gazebo, keeping an eye out for cops and watching the traffic pass on Avenue A. Not that many people knew it, but the Temperance Fountain was the most perfect place in the city, maybe the entire world, to revolt. The Temperance Fountain. To look at it, Tompkins Square Park’s smallish neo-classical monument seemed like any other old and prissy municipal structure. Sure, the fountain was interesting in that the four directions of its stone gazebo were carved with its founding fathers’ Victorian ethos: Temperance (south), Charity (west), Hope (north), and Faith (east). And yeah, the slightly smaller-than-life bronze statue of Hebe—hottie
mythical water carrier, standing watch atop the gazebo all gentle smile and tunic-wearing perkiness—was a nice touch, but that hardly makes the fountain sacred ground, right?

  Wrong. And here’s the reason why:

  Hebe—maybe not all renditions of Hebe, but Tompkins Square Park’s Hebe for sure—would explode your mind if you let her. She seemed so innocent—just a peaceful girl resting a water pitcher near her right thigh and gazing into the bowl she held in her left hand—but if you watched her long enough, you’d realize she was revolution itself.

  Why, you might ask, was Hebe staring into her bowl instead of out into the city? Well, Hebe preferred to bow her head introspectively rather than be forced to face society and abide by its stifling expectations and impositions. Furthermore, she refused to imbibe Temperance’s offerings and instead prepared to drink the potion of unique delights and risks she carried in her bowl. Best part was that Hebe stood with her back to the east—toward Faith—and with her bowl at the western edge of the gazebo—toward Charity. I swear, if she’d leaned down and, faithless charitable creature that she was, offered me a drink from her bowl, I would have joined her for a nightcap. As for the actual fountain’s cold drinking water, since junkies used it to clean their works and to bathe in summer, same as Hebe, fuck if I’d ever let it touch my lips.

  Temperance was for fools. The flapper whose portrait had graced my wallet for a short while had taught me that much. Over three-quarters of a century earlier—a camera’s bulb flashing hot bright white light—the flapper and Hebe had both signaled one truth loud and clear with those serious flirt eyes of theirs: Imposed self-restraint is the most simplistic and naïve of elixirs and should be avoided at all costs. I took the flapper girl’s departure from my wallet as a sign that she refused to be confined even in spirit. A person must leave behind what no longer serves them and instead take hold of what they want and need. With no hesitation. Demand your thrill, the flapper girl whispered in her slurred purr.

  It was no shocker that Nathalie wanted to meet at the fountain. And I was glad for it.

  As though I had conjured her with that thought, I heard the clicking of high heels approaching from somewhere to my left. I turned to see Nathalie walking toward the fountain. All the park’s gates locked, Nathalie must have jumped the fence to get in, same as me, but somehow she’d remained the antithesis of dishevelment. The glass-bead hem of her favorite evening gown visible under her coat, her hair pinned into a loose chignon, my favorite Cuban-heeled pumps lending a regal air to the arch of her step—I watched lady elegance approach from the north, from Hope. I wondered if Nathalie realized the symbolic message she had thus communicated or if the direction of her arrival was merely the chance result of catching a train to Union Square and walking southeast into the neighborhood from there; I preferred to think it was the former.

  I stood to greet Nathalie, to embrace her, to knock her down and make sure she never got away again. As I reached for her, she noticed the cast on my arm.

  “What happened?”

  “Long story.”

  Concern knitting her brow, Nathalie leaned forward, stood on tiptoe, and gave me the softest kiss. If I could have stopped time and kept it freeze-framed, I’d have wished for that kiss to last forever.

  “Nat,” I took a deep breath, “don’t leave again.”

  Her lips moved as if she was going to respond, but no words came out. A cab honked on Avenue A and an electrical surge hummed through a lamppost. Vulnerability painted my neck a hot red. Nathalie’s silence was the most awful sound on planet earth.

  “This really fucking terrifies me, Frank.”

  I wasn’t sure what she was referring to exactly. Coming home? My asking her to stay? Us? Regardless, of course it terrified her. Living was an inherently frightening business. And personally, even though I’d said a final goodbye to my father hours earlier, part of me wished I could have just one more word of advice from him, a little bit of illumination, anything to show me I was heading in the right direction.

  Dad? Help? Please?

  Nothing.

  But it was okay. I knew what to do.

  “Let’s go home,” I said, gently tugging Nathalie’s elbow.

  As I walked away from the Temperance Fountain to 7th Street with my girl on my good arm, I looked up toward our building and noticed a warm light radiating from our apartment window. I was always extra careful to turn off all the lights when I left, and I couldn’t remember accidentally leaving any on.

  But then again, maybe I had.

  Acknowledgments

  With much respect and warmest appreciation, I thank: Johnny Temple, Johanna Ingalls, all of Team Akashic, Shirley, Esteban, and Cooper/Fenberg Inc. Endless thanks to Murray for his moral support and devotion.

  And thank you, Mr. T Cooper … for everything.

  Also from AKASHIC BOOKS

  A FICTIONAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

  WITH HUGE CHUNKS MISSING

  EDITED BY T COOPER & ADAM MANSBACH

  332 PAGES, A TRADE PAPERBACK ORIGINAL, $15.95

  Original stories & artwork by: Felicia Luna Lemus, Daniel Alarcón, Amy Bloom, Kate Bornstein, T Cooper, Ron Kovic, Adam Mansbach, Paul La Farge, Alexander Chee, Keith Knight, Valerie Miner, Thomas O’Malley, Neal Pollack, David Rees, Sarah Schulman, Darin Strauss, and Benjamin Weissman.

  “This is a ‘people’s history’ with tongue in cheek: delightfully funny, imaginative, but with a subtle undertone of seriousness. I enjoyed it immensely.”

  —Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States

  SOME OF THE PARTS BY T COOPER

  *A BARNES & NOBLE DISCOVER GREAT NEW WRITERS PROGRAM SELECTION 264 PAGES, A TRADE PAPERBACK ORIGINAL, $14.95

  “A wholly original novel that’s both discomforting and compelling to read.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “T Cooper skillfully twists, entwines, and collides generations, gender identities, and sexual orientations so deliciously that I don't think there’s anyone who can read this book without ruefully identifying with at least one of the central characters—and without hopelessly falling in love with at least one of the others.”

  —Kate Bornstein, author of Gender Outlaw

  THE UNCOMFORTABLE DEAD

  A NOVEL BY PACO I. TAIBO II & SUBCOMANDANTE MARCOS

  268 PAGES, A TRADE PAPERBACK ORIGINAL, $15.95

  “Great writers by definition are outriders, raiders of a sort, sweeping down from wilderness territories to disturb the peace, overrun the status quo and throw into question everything we know to be true … On its face, the novel is a murder mystery, and at the book’s heart, always, is a deep love of Mexico and its people.”

  —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  AMERICAN VISA BY JUAN DE RECACOECHEA

  *WINNER OF BOLIVIA’S NATIONAL BOOK PRIZE; TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH BY ADRIAN ALTHOFF; WITH AN AFTERWORD BY ILAN STAVANS

  260 PAGES, A TRADE PAPERBACK ORIGINAL, $14.95

  “American Visa is beautifully written, atmospheric, and stylish in the manner of Chandler … a smart, exotic crime fiction offering.”

  —George Pelecanos, author of The Night Gardener

  “The streets of La Paz have never looked so alive. This is one of the best Latin American novels of the last fifteen years.”

  —Edmundo Paz Soldán, author of Turing’s Delirium

  WITH OR WITHOUT YOU BY LAUREN SANDERS

  318 PAGES, A TRADE PAPERBACK ORIGINAL, $14.95

  “A wickedly crafted whydunit … Sanders shows a surprising ability to simultaneously make you feel infuriated with and sorry for her borderline-schizo heroine.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Sanders’s vibrant, vigorous second novel is a sendup of America’s obsession with pop culture, B-list celebrities, and prison life … In lyrical, potent prose, Sanders navigates the terrain of loneliness, obsession and desperation with the same skillful precision as her vulnerable, calculating protagonist.”

&n
bsp; —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  THE BOY DETECTIVE FAILS BY JOE MENO

  *AUTHOR OF THE HIT HAIRSTYLES OF THE DAMNED; BEST BOOKS OF 2006:

  CHICAGO TRIBUNE, BOOKLIST, KIRKUS REVIEWS; PUNK PLANET BOOKS

  330 PAGES, A TRADE PAPERBACK ORIGINAL, $14.95

  “The Boy Detective Fails will break your heart, and then pick up the pieces and put you back together again.”

  —T Cooper, author of Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes

  These books are available at local bookstores. They can also be purchased online through www.akashicbooks.com. To order by mail send a check or money order to:

  AKASHIC BOOKS

  PO Box 1456, New York, NY 10009

  www.akashicbooks.com info@akashicbooks.com

  Prices include shipping. Outside the U.S., add $8 to each book ordered.