Barely Missing Everything

by Matt Mendez

  “What? I’m your mom . . . and I need to pull you from class. We need to go shopping,” Fabi said. Hearing her words out loud made her cringe. How wrong they sounded. “And quit talking to me like that.” Wrong again.

  Juan’s face was pure confusion. “Shopping? What are you even talking about? I gotta pass this test. It’s only my future, Má!”

  “Well go back and finish then. I’ll wait. But we gotta talk right after.”

  “Talk about what? About shopping? You never make any sense.”

  Fabi dug through her purse, grabbed Juan’s arraignment letter. “You got court next week, malcriado. You’re facing a year in jail; you need a suit to keep you from that future. Let’s talk about that! Let’s talk about that future.” She knew the afternoon she’d been wishing for, the shopping and talking and making things right with Juanito, had just blown up. That she’d blown it up.

  “Fuck,” Juan said, moving toward the classroom and then stopping with his hand on the doorknob, looking like a spaceship losing signal from its home planet. His face blank and expressionless. Fabi realized he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on what was left of his test. That he would probably fail. That she couldn’t stop failing, either.

  “Let me tell your teacher we have to leave for an emergency. It’s not a lie. You can’t finish the test later?” Juan didn’t move, still frozen.

  Then, as if regaining signal, he shook his head. “Nope. I’m turning my test in. I’m done.” Juan quickly disappeared back inside the classroom.

  What had she done? She stood, frozen in the hallway, not sure what to say or do. She had no business being there. Juan stormed out of the classroom, his backpack slung over his shoulder, and bolted down the hallway, making his way past a security guard and toward the main exit. At least he no longer seemed to be limping.

  Trees lined the front of the school, their naked, weather-beaten branches splintered and gnarled, looking ready to snap in the wind. Dust swirled. Fabi hoped to find Juan waiting by her truck. Hoped that he hadn’t run home or who knew where else. That he wasn’t lost to her. She wanted to make up for what just happened, to still make up for everything.

  • • •

  Kiki’s had been her father’s idea. He loved the hamburger steak, smothered with chile con queso and served with a side of french fries and beans. With a pitcher of beer. Especially if he wasn’t paying. And Gladi and Seth were treating. Fabi had wanted to take Juanito out alone, but she guessed this was okay—she could wait for the weekend, once Gladi was gone, to really start fixing everything. They had time; she could share him. After Juanito had stormed out of the school, he had waited for her by the truck. They’d gone to Penney’s and bought a suit, a real nice one that was just the right price to fit on her card. She tried talking to him at the store, as she pressed pairs of pants against his legs, made him try on jackets and loop on ties over different style dress shirts, but Juan barely said a word, still pissed. She got it.

  Now they all sat at a table by the bar, trying to make small talk. The restaurant was unusually crowded for a weekday. On weekends there was always a long wait, sometimes out the door. The walls were lined with old photographs, celebrity autographs documenting long-ago meals, and yellowing reviews from the local paper. The wood paneling on the walls needed to be replaced, as did the matching tables and booths. “I love coming back home just to eat,” Gladi said. “The Mexican food in McAllen isn’t as good.”

  “I like it,” Seth said, surveying the restaurant.

  “What do you know?” Juan said, not even bothering to look at Seth.

  “You ever been to McAllen?” Seth asked.

  “Why would I go there?” Juan shoved a tostada with salsa verde into his mouth and glared at his uncle. He had the same annoyed look on his face he had whenever Fabi made the mistake of introducing him to a boyfriend.

  “Well, point for me,” Seth said, drumming the table. “One day you’ll leave this place. Maybe after college you can even travel the world.”

  “Travel the world? Sure. I’ll go book my flight.”

  “Well, after college,” Seth said. “Lots of kids do it. Take a year to find themselves.”

  Juan shoved another tostada into his mouth, avoiding eye contact with Fabi. She wanted him to stop talking and wondered if he wanted to, too, but couldn’t help himself. Wondered if, like her, he sometimes felt words burning in him like a fire, growing from small to raging and eventually scorching everyone he talked to.

  Seth scooped a chip with salsa into his mouth and turned to Gladi, who’d been silently watching. “Babe, this is fantastic!”

  “It’s from a jar, and I’m not going to college, pendejo,” Juan interrupted. “I’ll probably have to join the army. I bet I can see Afghanistan. I hear it’s lovely in spring.”

  Papá abruptly banged his fist against the table. “You’re not joining the pinche army. No goddamn way.”

  “Papá,” Gladi said. “No one’s joining the army. Calm down.”

  Juan slowly rolled his eyes. “But how else am I going to find myself?”

  Fabi reached across the table and tried to hold Juan’s hand, but he pulled away. “Por favor, Juanito,” she murmured. “That’s enough.”

  “Enough what? Enough of the truth?” Juan said. “We’re poor. The only time we even get to eat in this dumpy restaurant is when someone else pays.” Juan wasn’t avoiding looking at her now, his eyes laser beams burning a hole into her. “What’s enough was you ruining my last shot at getting into a college, to buy a suit.”

  “Callaté,” Papá said, again banging his fist against the table. Fabi noticed his pitcher of beer was almost empty, and no one had been helping him polish it off. She should have noticed. She’d seen guys like him at work for years, quiet but angry men, seemingly okay until they lost their shit without warning. Her father, she was realizing, was a drunk.

  Seth picked up another chip. “What’s so wrong with the army?” he asked her father. “I thought, being a vet, you’d actually be pushing him toward something like that.”

  “Ay Dios,” Gladi said. “Please stop talking, Seth. Papá, it’s okay. No one is joining anything. Juan is going to college. Everything is going to be okay.”

  Huh. Fabi thought Papá would be pro army too. He’d been around Juan’s age when he was shipped off to war—just a boy, now that she thought about it. Just like Martín Juan Morales, the boy she met while Mamá was sick in the hospital, had been. He’d already graduated from El Paso High and enlisted in the army, was waiting to leave for basic training; his father was dying of prostate cancer at the same time as Mamá was dying of colon cancer. He was quiet. Nice. He played basketball. He was a guy Fabi wouldn’t have gone for if not for the situation. They grieved together, spent weeks together, just the two of them, after both their parents died; it was a relationship that had complicated her life more than any other. It was a relationship that— Her thoughts were interrupted by her father, who was now going off big-time.

  “Let me tell you both something. When I was Juanito’s age, I got drafted. I didn’t have no choice. I had to go to the army, and off to the war, where I got shot in the head—on my second tour. If I didn’t go, I would have been taken to jail. To jail! ¿Me entiendes? And back then, only poor people got drafted. Rich kids got to go to college. Today, it’s the same. Poor people still fight the pinche wars and the college kids don’t have to do nothing. The only difference is now the poor kids get tricked into joining instead of being told—”

  “Hold on there. Nobody is getting tricked,” Seth interrupted. “Nobody is taking anyone to jail for not joining. It’s completely different.”

  “Seth! Why are you still talking?” Gladi exclaimed, tugging at his arm. “Stop talking.”

  “Mira. That means ‘look,’ Seth. You probably think I’m some drunk old man. And that’s because I am. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

  Juan seemed fixated on his Grampá—and not in a sarcastic looking-to-make-a-joke kind of way
. Fabi wondered—oh no—if he was now seriously thinking of joining the army. And like her father, she would be against it.

  “I never said that,” Seth said, suddenly looking around nervously.

  “I’m going to divorce you,” Gladi said, shaking her head in disapproval. “I’m calling a lawyer as soon as we get home.”

  “You know the reason they took the draft away?” Papá paused, taking a chug from his beer. “The draft turned everyone into something. A draft-dodger. A prisoner. A protester. Or a soldier. The war got everyone, one way or another. Now, no one even notices the war. Because no one notices poor people.”

  Martín died in Iraq. She read about it in the paper, his funeral at Fort Bliss. Juan was barely in school at the time. She remembered dropping him off and sneaking into the church the morning of the funeral. Remembered Martín’s wife, a tall blonde woman, standing in the front pew as Martín’s casket was wheeled to the front of the church. She was holding a baby; another was tucked inside a car seat at her feet. Twins who would grow up without their father.

  Gladi moved the pitcher of beer away from her father, but it was too late to keep him from talking crazy. “I could’ve been a great engineer, but I got shot in the head. My brain’s a mess now. Before that, when I was Juan’s age, me and your mamá were in love. That’s when we were fearless. When we were our best. I’ve been sick since the war, since the bullet. When your mom got sick, it was the war all over again. And when she died, I never came back.”

  Across the table Gladi was crying; Seth rubbed her back. Juan, who’d been listening to her father intently, was now looking at Fabi. She recognized the look on his face. Guilt. Guilt for blowing up dinner the way she’d blown up his algebra test. Fabi felt her eyes watering. She turned to Papá. He was munching his hamburger steak, and she wondered what kind of man he might’ve been if he’d never been drafted. Fabi didn’t want bullets for Juan. She didn’t want war. She wanted her son to be fearless.

  THE BADJUANS

  (CHAPTER SEVENTEEN)

  After dinner, when Juan was sure Má and Grampá were asleep, he took the suit from his closet. He’d tried it on at JCPenney but had been too pissed to take a good look. To enjoy it. The pants and jacket were navy blue, the long-sleeved shirt a crisp white. The tie was thin and red and matched a new pair of socks. His má had found them. He knew her coming in the middle of his test hadn’t really fucked him up any worse than the actual algebra, but blaming her came easy. It always had.

  The thing was, he had always secretly wanted a suit. Knew that looking good meant feeling good, and was the reason he hung magazine cutouts of perfectly cut Tom Ford suits and oil-black Chrysler 300s in his room. To feel bulletproof. He imagined himself one day being drafted into the NBA. Standing on a stage under bright lights, television cameras fixed on him, dressed exactly like this. Smiling and knowing that everything was going to be okay. Finally and for the first time.

  Putting on a clean T-shirt first, Juan slipped on the crisp dress shirt and fastened the buttons. He had no idea how to tie a tie; he would have to ask Grampá or jump on YouTube when he found a place with Internet. The dark blue pants felt thin—probably how all expensive things felt. Delicate, fragile. Juan tucked the shirt in and fastened his new black leather belt, centering the buckle along his zipper. His dress socks were even thinner than the pants, but he didn’t try on his new dress shoes next. Didn’t want to crease the new leather, not yet. Instead he popped on the new pair of basketball shoes his má had also gotten him. A little something extra, she had said with a wink. He looked at the shoes, bright white, simple and clean. New. Why couldn’t he have been grateful at the time, when she obviously needed him to be? He was always fucking shit up with her, and his trip across Texas to meet the man she never wanted him to know was going to be another fuckup. How could it not be?

  He stared down at those new shoes. His ankle felt good, maybe healed, but Juan probably wouldn’t really know until game day—no way would he practice hard enough to risk reinjuring his wheel before that. He slid on the jacket—the final touch—and looked at himself in the mirror above his dresser. His single-breasted jacket fitted; he looked taller and felt stronger than normal, not unlike he did on the basketball court. He wished he could wear it all the time. He imagined wearing suits to school, replacing his torn-up backpack with a shiny black briefcase. He would straighten his tie and unfasten his jacket button before taking a seat in each class, take out big sheets of yellow legal paper for notes. Let everyone know that from now on he meant business. Ha. Of course, what he really needed to learn was how to tie a tie. He imagined this was something a father should teach a son, but since his was on death row and Grampá was asleep, YouTube would have to do. If anything, he should be grateful to be a fatherless kid in the Internet age. He grabbed his phone and hoped he hadn’t already gone over on data.

  Hey, Papá Google:

  how do you t

  how do you tie a tie

  how do you tweet

  how do you twerk

  how do you turn a fraction into a decimal

  how do you talk to a girl

  how do you talk to an angel

  Juan thought about texting JD, having him meet him at his old apartment with his laptop to help with the whole blog thing, but instead he grabbed his Má’s piece-of-shit Dell and started to walk, still wearing his new suit. If JD could become a filmmaker, then Juan could be a blogger—or at least he could open a Tumblr. He thought back to his night in jail, the concrete room full of drunks and junkies. The Monster, who scared the shit out of Juan, and the tattoo across his neck. He’d been arrested for beating his wife, his knuckles swollen and bloodied. He’d laughed as he explained to one of the guards how the bitch hit him first and she should be the one locked up. Getting arrested had been worse, though: the swarm of cops had rushed him, their knees, elbows, and fists driving his body and head into the ground before twisting his arms into cuffs. Them laughing before he pissed himself in the back of their patrol car. JD was right to want to record what was happening to them. Why not make a movie about their lives? How else would anyone know the kind of shit that happened to them?

  Armando Aranda had been in prison longer than Juan had been alive; Juan wondered how comfortable he’d become living in a prison, alongside the worst kind of murderers, and decided that would be a question he’d ask. Along with if he ever had a good night’s sleep. Facing a year of jail himself, Juan not only wanted to know who his father was, but also what his father was. Who he might end up becoming. The thought scared him.

  Since it was only about a mile away, it didn’t take long to get to the old apartment. He wondered if Jabba could be watching, the old bitch probably itching to call the cops. But her apartment was dark. He settled on his old milk crate, being careful not to dirty his new pants or jacket. He should have felt right at home, except he couldn’t recognize the landscape. The black sky drowned the silhouettes of trees and bushes, and any outlines of surrounding houses, in darkness. The moon, like the sounds of the neighborhood, all seemingly swallowed by deep space. Juan thought of the day he’d fought JD, and Danny’s gun had gone off. At the time, Juan had been more focused on the fight, but now, knowing how his father killed a man, he couldn’t help but think of Danny’s gun. The bullet. Not one of them had wondered where the bullet had landed. How the bullet, after soaring through the air, could’ve ripped back to earth and hammered through someone’s skull or chest, maybe a kid’s or some old person’s. Shit, Jabba had a reason to call the cops.

  Signing up for a Tumblr account was easy, and so was choosing a name to blog under: thebadjuans. (JD would absolutely hate that!) Not sure where to start, Juan looked up his father. He read about his crime on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice website, but couldn’t find anything more on him besides other articles about the crime, a botched robbery that was only sort of like a Tarantino movie in that it took place in a diner. The articles made fun of him for copying Pulp Fiction, making him more of a cha
racter than a person. JD had made Juan watch an online bootleg of Pulp Fiction a long time ago, and though he’d liked it at the time, he knew he could never watch, or like, the movie again. To the world, Armando Aranda was a piece-of-shit cop killer getting exactly what he deserved. He was also Juan’s father, but who knew if he deserved anything for that. With the screen glowing, lighting his face, Juan typed: Armando Aranda is my father.

  Suddenly, Juan sensed a new glow behind him; the light in Jabba’s apartment kitchen window flicked on, and he saw her standing, looking out to where Juan sat. He slammed the laptop shut and crouched down. There would be no posting tonight. He didn’t know if Jabba had actually seen him, but if she had, she would have already called the cops. They would be on their way.

  The wall separating the backyard from the alleyway had long since fallen, the cement and flagstone just pieces of rubble. He could run toward the alley, past some mesquite trees with thorny branches, and then down the alley. If his ankle had been 100 percent, this would be a no-brainer, there being a slight chance the old metiche wouldn’t see him. But even if Juan made it, there was still the chance the cops would pop up at Grampá’s anyway and he would have to deny being at the apartment in the first place. Lie to Grampá and Má. Shit. He was always lying.

  He bet the cops were already on the way, so he bolted for the alley, where Jabba must have caught a glimpse of him because she lit his ass up, turning on a series of spotlights newly mounted to the building’s brick wall and blinding Juan as they popped on in unison. Juan could no longer see Jabba in her apartment window. He ran blindly, only this time Juan wasn’t in unfamiliar territory, and like a bat, he radared himself out of trouble. And unlike that night at Danny’s, his ankle held up as he raced down the alley. With his má’s Dell securely in his hand, Juan pumped his arms and legs as fast as he could, feeling the night air against his face and burning in his chest. He didn’t hear a single siren as he ran through stoplights but then froze dead in his tracks. The Cutlass, that fucking Cutlass, was stopped at an intersection, at a red light. Juan quickly hid the laptop inside his suit jacket.